2022 Congressional & State Elections

[goldenvalley]

In other PA news: Republican panic grows after Mastriano wins.

Conversations with Republican strategists, donors and lobbyists in and outside of Pennsylvania in recent days reveal a party seething with anxiety, dissension and score-settling over Mastriano’s nomination.

In the run-up to Tuesday night, Republicans openly used words and phrases like “suicide mission,” “disaster” and “voyage of the Titanic” to convey just what a catastrophe they believed his candidacy will be for their party.

But I expected panic after Trump gained the nomination in 2016 and if there was panic, the party quickly adapted. Bashing Hilary Clinton was mostly what they did anyway so who cared who the nominee was.

[LFC]

May 18, 2022 23:09:04 GMT goldenvalley said:

In other PA news: Republican panic grows after Mastriano wins.

Mastriano's choice for lt. gov lost. He's also in on The Big Lie.

While state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) easily won his party’s primary for governor Tuesday night, his favored lieutenant governor candidate was not so lucky.

He’d endorsed retired police officer Teddy Daniels, who came in third with just 12 percent of the vote. Governors and lieutenant governors don’t run on the same ticket in Pennsylvania, but the two were so linked as to be referred to as “running mates” in local reports.

“The swamp is still alive,” Daniels said Wednesday morning in a Facebook live video. “It just goes to show that in the state of Pennsylvania, if you put $2 million behind somebody, you can literally elect a turd — and that’s what we got.”

He's a real piece of work. A violent spouse abuser fits just fine in the GOP today.

Daniels’ campaign was rocked by scandal when his wife obtained a court order barring him from their home and child late last month.

“He stalks me at work, screaming at me, making me cry. He cursed at me continually and our son repeats it to me,” Jaime Daniels wrote in a note accompanying the order, obtained by TPM. “He has constantly said he would throw myself and our son out of the house and, if he lost the campaign, I wouldn’t have a place to live in three weeks.”

“Ted’s campaign manager has called me 12 times to persuade me not to file this PFA,” she added of the protection from abuse order.

She alleged episodes of violence and terror, including Teddy Daniels following her when she went to the courthouse to obtain the order.

He and Mastriano are two peas in a pod.

Teddy Daniels spoke at a far-right conference put on by QAnon believers and permeated by conspiracy theories last month, along with Mastriano. Before he spoke, going off on tangents dismissing the pandemic and fixating on right-wing obsessions like critical race theory, Mastriano’s endorsement played.

“I can think of no better person to serve along my side as Teddy Daniels,” Mastriano said in the video. “He’s a fighter, he’s tough, he’s combat-tested, he’s a veteran, he put aside a comfortable life to serve our country — that’s exactly the kind of man we need as our lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania.”

[LFC]

Cook Political Report thinks Mastriano's win is good for the Dems.

The Cook Political Report changed its rating of the Pennsylvania governor’s race from “toss up” to “lean Democratic” after far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) easily won his party’s primary Tuesday night.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro was running unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Mastriano more than doubled the vote share of his next-closest competitor, former congressman Lou Barletta.

“Pennsylvania Republicans had been wringing their hands for weeks, worried that if state Sen. Doug Mastriano — the chief disciple perpetuating former President Trump’s false stolen election narrative in the state –— won the primary for governor, they’d lose a prime opportunity in an incredibly favorable climate to flip the open governor’s race back to their control,” wrote the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter, Jessica Taylor and David Wasserman. “That political nightmare became a reality on Tuesday night, as Mastriano easily won the nomination over other high-spending rivals by 25 points.”

Shapiro wasted no time underscoring the extreme beliefs of his newly minted opponent.

“Pennsylvanians need a Governor who can meet this moment, but Republicans just nominated a dangerous extremist who wants to take away our freedoms,” he said in a statement Tuesday night. “The contrast in this election could not be clearer – Doug Mastriano wants to ban abortion without exceptions, restrict the right to vote and spread conspiracy theories, and destroy the union way of life for hard working Pennsylvanians.”

Mastriano made his name on efforts to overturn the 2020 election, holding hearings and lobbying the legislature to conduct an “audit.” He organized buses to travel to Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, and recently spoke at a conference put on by QAnon activists and permeated by conspiracy theories, old and new. He has openly embraced the Christian nationalist movement at his back.

[LFC]

Trump advises Oz to just declare victory, just like he did in 2020.

When Donald Trump looks at Dr. Oz, he sees himself.

(He probably sees his own reflection in the glint in everyone’s eye, but …)

Mehmet Oz is super close to transforming into his highest self as a Trump mini-me — he’s already got the celeb status, he’s a reality TV host with no business being in politics, he’s just as bombastic in his MAGA beliefs as the ex-president. But he’s missing one key ingredient that Trump is already subtly calling him out for.

He hasn’t yet tried to steal his election.

“Dr. Oz should declare victory,” Trump truthed. “It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they ‘just happened to find.'”

The premature victory dance appears to be a principal element of Trump-style Big Lying. And also, a willful misunderstanding of how vote counting processes work. Nonetheless, Trump’s urging Oz to take his easier-to-apologize-than-ask-permission logic and run with it.

Declaring victory ahead of a loss makes it that much easier to cry voter fraud in the end.

[LFC]

Idaho avoided putting a Big Lie proponent in charge of state elections.

Idaho Narrowly Avoids Choosing Election Denier As SOS

One primary on Tuesday that might’ve flown under your radar was Idaho’s GOP primary for secretary of state, in which two out of the three candidates denied that Biden won the 2020 election (Biden did win the 2020 election).

• The lone candidate who did acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election, Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane, ended up winning the race.

• Isn’t it awesome and great that we’re at the point where there’s an actual risk of a person in charge of running elections just straight-up rejecting election results they don’t like?

How close was it? Just 2% and together the Big Lie proponents took well over 50% of the vote. Without a spoiler Idaho would likely have a fascist in charge of its elections.

McGrane received 43% of the vote in Tuesday's GOP primary. Moon received about 41%, and Souza received about 15.5%.

[LFC]

Michigan politics get even more insane as multiple Republican candidates, including top candidates, turned in piles of bogus signatures with their ballot applications. The numbers are enough to disqualify them from running.

A signature forgery scandal has turned the race for the GOP nomination to be Michigan’s next governor on its head: Two leading Republican candidates did not collect enough signatures to qualify for the primary ballot after invalid signatures were excluded, according to a report from the state’s Bureau of Elections.

The Bureau of Elections reports will now go to the Board of State Canvassers, which will vote Thursday on which candidates qualify to appear on the ballot for the state’s Aug. 2 primaries.

Thirty-six petition circulators — campaign workers hired to collect signatures — “submitted fraudulent petition sheets consisting entirely of invalid signatures,” according to the Bureau. In all, according to the Bureau’s report Monday, these circulators submitted at least 68,000 invalid signatures across nominating petitions for 10 candidates.

Both leading Republican candidates submitted well above the 15,000 signatures necessary, but were subsequently hit with complaints that that counts contained fraudulent signatures.

James Craig (pictured above), the former Detroit police chief, submitted more than 11,100 invalid signatures and just under 10,200 valid ones, according to the Bureau’s report. Bureau staff noted “consistent handwriting for the entirety of a petition sheet, including signatures” and evidence of “round-tabling,” or the practice of passing a petition sheet around in a group to make entries appear more authentic.

Another candidate, Perry Johnson, submitted nearly 14,000 valid signatures — not enough to make the ballot — and over 9,000 invalid signatures. The same group of petition circulators who submitted thousands of invalid signature pages for Craig’s campaign did so for Johnson’s, the Bureau reported. A report noted incorrect addresses and misspelled names.

Three additional Republican gubernatorial candidates also fell far short of the valid signatures needed to qualify, the Bureau said: Michael Brown, Michael Markey and Donna Brandenburg. Each submitted well more than 15,000 signatures, but in all three cases, more than 10,000 were deemed invalid.

The Democrats need to play by the Republican rules and not allow them on the ballot. Rules are rules, as Republicans remind us over and over again when it suits them.

The ultimate decision on the candidates’ qualifications for office is up to the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, which is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans and is set to meet Thursday.

If the Board of State Canvassers heeds the Bureau of Elections’ report and disqualifies 5 out of 10 Republican gubernatorial contenders, that could open the door for Tudor Dixon — who’s denied that Joe Biden won Michigan in the 2020 election and on Monday received the endorsement of the wealthy DeVos family, Michigan’s most influential political kingmakers. Dixon, notably, is also the only candidate to receive a shout-out at Donald Trump’s rally in Michigan last month: The former president called her “fantastic” and “brilliant.”

At least one campaign vowed to fight for their qualification Monday night.

[LFC]

Josh Marshall with a few thoughts on the Michigan Republican signature scandal (paywalled).

The practical impact of this signature forgery scandal in Michigan is that it may significantly reshape this year’s gubernatorial campaign in the state. One or both of the leading candidates to challenge incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer may not even appear on the ballot. This may open a path to the nomination for Tudor Dixon, a down-the-line Trumper who just yesterday received the endorsement of the powerful DeVos family. She’s also been praised by Trump himself, though as yet Trump hasn’t endorsed anyone in the race. For whatever reason, she was the only GOP contender who submitted a petition list with very few forged signatures.

I wanted to say a bit more about the mechanics of this scandal and just what appears to have happened. Matt Shuham has the nitty-gritty here. But I want to highlight a few points. It appears that most of the Republicans running for governor used the same small group of signature gatherers to collect signatures. As Matt notes, it’s not clear whether this small group was just super popular and making the rounds or whether they all worked for a single GOP consultancy. From what I can tell there’s no specific evidence that this forgery group operated as a group per se as opposed to all coincidentally working for the same campaigns and having the same MO.

One explanation put forward for this is that with the job market so hot, it’s not nearly as easy to get people to do the short term and not very lucrative work of collecting signatures. But that doesn’t seem like an entirely satisfactory explanation. These campaigns spend money on lots of things beside signature collecting. Most of them have the ability to pay a bit more. After all, it can’t be that there aren’t 15,000 people in Michigan available to support a Republican running for governor. It’s just a matter of finding them.

One additional point to put this in perspective.

Since voter registration work is low-paid and occasional, fraudulent registrations happen a lot. This is where you get the Republican scare tactics about Mickey Mouse being registered to vote. But mostly these are just crimes against state workers who have to manage bloated voter roles. Mickey Mouse doesn’t actually show up to vote. So there’s no clear harm to the electoral process. This is different. These fake people weren’t voting. But their purported support for these candidates was helping them get on the ballot. So that is affecting the electoral process in a direct way. It is a big deal — even if the role of the candidates may turn out only to have been poor oversight and vetting.

Setting aside the impact on who appears on the ballot, there must be a bigger story here. Fake petition signing happens. It very seldom happens at anything like this scale. And the real mystery is that this forgery group appears to have worked for basically all the other candidates. It’s hard to imagine that some crooked or extremely careless or unlucky consultancy or vendor isn’t behind this. Presumably we’ll find out soon enough.

[goldenvalley]

May 24, 2022 18:22:37 GMT LFC said:

Josh Marshall with a few thoughts on the Michigan Republican signature scandal (paywalled).

I don't know how it worked in Michigan but there are paid signature gathering firms in CA that get paid by the signature, not by the hour.  When you're paid by the signature there is a lot of incentive for the gatherers to do what it looks like this bunch did...just sign the petitions yourselves.  Any reputable signature gathering firm will check for this.  They want to work on future elections and it's bad for business to have a large percentage of the signatures thrown out.  

And don't ever forget that this fraud was detected by signature checking and comparison to signatures of the registered voters.  This is something that is part of the process before any candidate appears on the ballot. The fraud is detected because the process is designed to look for it.

[LFC]

Some results from yesterday's primaries. It looks like vapid blart Suckabee-Sanders will be Arkansas's next governor. "Deplorables" fits both a bit part of the GOP base and a huge number of their candidates and officials.

A Bad Night For Trump In Georgia
Incumbent Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) fended off challenges from their Trump-backed rivals in the state’s GOP primaries Tuesday night, despite the revenge-hungry former president’s best efforts to kill their careers for not helping him steal the 2020 election.

• Kemp beat ex-senator David Perdue. Ate him alive, in fact.
• Raffensperger beat Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA). Kind of ate him alive too.
• At least Trump’s other Georgia picks prevailed, including Senate candidate Herschel Walker and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and ex-state Rep. Vernon Jones (R) is headed toward a runoff in his U.S. House race. But there’s no way those wins would’ve been anywhere near as satisfying for Trump to see his punching bags go down.


Ken Paxton Survives Scandal Avalanche (For Now)
Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), endorsed by Trump, defeated Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush in the state’s GOP attorney general runoff last night. Bush was the last member of his family in elected office, by the way, so RIP Bush dynasty.


Mo Brooks Survives Trump’s Un-Endorsement (For Now)
Despite Trump yanking away his endorsement, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) is now headed toward a runoff against rival Katie Britt on June 21 in the GOP Senate primary. With 91 percent reporting, Britt leads Brooks 44.7 to 29.1.


Sarah Huckabee Sanders Wins Guv Nomination
Trump’s ex-White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, won the GOP Arkansas gubernatorial primary last night.

[LFC]

More on the Michigan signature scandal. I find it interesting that this is going to a board that had two Republicans drag their feet on election certification. One eventually abstained and the other voted to certify, the latter quickly being replaced for their lack of loyalty to the party and The Big Lie.

3  On Thursday, Many More Candidates Could Be Disqualified

The report deeming thousands of signatures invalid on Monday isn’t the last word: The actual decision on whether candidates can appear on the ballot falls to the Board of State Canvassers, a four-person body with two Democrats and two Republicans. The Board will vote on qualifications Thursday.

You may have heard about the Board: In 2020, Donald Trump pressured its members to ignore Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan and certify the race for him instead. One Republican ultimately abstained from that vote, and the other sided with Democrats to affirm Biden’s win. The Biden-voting Republican was subsequently replaced by the state GOP.

There are some signs that the Board’s Republicans will heed the report from the Bureau of Elections — including recent interviews in which they voiced their commitment to election rules. But they’re no doubt feeling the pressure now that the Bureau has found leading Republicans may not have enough valid signatures to qualify. A consultant for the Johnson campaign said Monday night that he and others on the campaign “look forward to winning this fight before the Board, and if necessary, in the courts.”

And it looks like it might all come down to one guy with quite the record.

4  A Key Figure In The Alleged Fraud Is The Forrest Gump Of Signature Schemes

As mentioned, the Bureau appears to believe that the group of allegedly fraudulent circulators are tied to a man named Shawn Wilmoth. Brown confirmed that he’d hired Wilmoth’s firm, and the Bureau’s report cites several news reports about him in its footnotes.

“None of my clients are willing to admit they are my clients,” Wilmoth told the website Sports Handle last year. “I pull the strings in the background.”

In 2011, Wilmoth pleaded guilty to two counts of election fraud in Virginia, admitting to hiring two ex-cons and tasking them with signing their names as witnesses to dozens of signatures they didn’t actually collect. (He reportedly later claimed that the allegations were false.)

In 2017, Michigan’s then-Lt. Gov. Brian Calley hired Wilmoth to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would make the state’s legislature operate seasonally, but the effort ended without enough signatures to make the ballot.

Last year, Wilmoth worked on an unsuccessful Las Vegas Sands-backed effort to gather signatures supporting the expansion of casino gambling in Florida. Officials across the state uncovered thousands of potentially fraudulent signatures for the campaign. They did not claim Wilmoth was involved in wrongdoing in Florida, and Wilmoth denied wrongdoing in that state in an interview with Sports Handle.

[goldenvalley]

May 25, 2022 17:42:23 GMT LFC said:

More on the Michigan signature scandal. I find it interesting that this is going to a board that had two Republicans drag their feet on election certification. One eventually abstained and the other voted to certify, the latter quickly being replaced for their lack of loyalty to the party and The Big Lie.

And it looks like it might all come down to one guy with quite the record.

4  A Key Figure In The Alleged Fraud Is The Forrest Gump Of Signature Schemes

As mentioned, the Bureau appears to believe that the group of allegedly fraudulent circulators are tied to a man named Shawn Wilmoth. Brown confirmed that he’d hired Wilmoth’s firm, and the Bureau’s report cites several news reports about him in its footnotes.

“None of my clients are willing to admit they are my clients,” Wilmoth told the website Sports Handle last year. “I pull the strings in the background.”

In 2011, Wilmoth pleaded guilty to two counts of election fraud in Virginia, admitting to hiring two ex-cons and tasking them with signing their names as witnesses to dozens of signatures they didn’t actually collect. (He reportedly later claimed that the allegations were false.)

In 2017, Michigan’s then-Lt. Gov. Brian Calley hired Wilmoth to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would make the state’s legislature operate seasonally, but the effort ended without enough signatures to make the ballot.

Last year, Wilmoth worked on an unsuccessful Las Vegas Sands-backed effort to gather signatures supporting the expansion of casino gambling in Florida. Officials across the state uncovered thousands of potentially fraudulent signatures for the campaign. They did not claim Wilmoth was involved in wrongdoing in Florida, and Wilmoth denied wrongdoing in that state in an interview with Sports Handle.

Uhmm who better to spot fraudulent signatures than the guy whose company specializes in them??  Really aren't there any conflict or background checks before people are appointed to this sort of thing?

[andydp]

Remember ACORN ?  memories from 2018

How The ACORN Scandal Seeded Today's Nightmare Politics


www.huffpost.com/entry/2009-acorn-scandal_n_5ae23fa6e4b02baed1b86696

[LFC]

May 25, 2022 18:23:04 GMT andydp said:

Remember ACORN ?  memories from 2018

How The ACORN Scandal Seeded Today's Nightmare Politics


www.huffpost.com/entry/2009-acorn-scandal_n_5ae23fa6e4b02baed1b86696

F*** McCain. To me he'll always be a grifter who rode his time as a POW to fame and fortune but who all too often failed to live up to his self-crafted persona. From that link here he is in 2008 going full metal Trump before Trump.

She was watching the final presidential debate of 2008, and John McCain had just said something insane. “We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy,” the Arizona Republican proclaimed.

[LFC]

The race here in PA between the schlock doc and the hedge fund manager is still a toss up. Once again it could all come down to mail-in ballots.

Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state made a long-anticipated announcement Wednesday: There will be a recount in the Republican Senate primary.

In Pennsylvania, an automatic recount is triggered if the margin is within .5 percent. Candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick are well within that, separated by fewer than 1,000 votes in recent days. The Associated Press reported that 1,342,580 ballots had been cast in the race.

Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D) said her office would require counties to begin their recounts by June 1, and to complete them by noon on June 7. Counties have to hand in their tallies to her office by noon on June 8, after which the acting secretary will publish a report.

McCormick filed a lawsuit with a lower court this week, asking for an emergency injunction mandating that undated mail-in ballots be counted. He asked the state Supreme Court to intervene soon after. McCormick has so far done better with mail-in votes than Oz.

The Republican National Committee and state GOP have indicated that they will intervene to oppose McCormick’s lawsuit.

Chapman said her office would require all counties to segregate and tabulate “undated and incorrectly dated” ballots.

“Our position is that undated and incorrectly dated ballots should count,” she said. “Our guidance will allow counties to arrive at an accurate count no matter what the courts decide.”

[AnBr]

Why Trump’s 2024 chances are even worse than Georgia suggests

Donald Trump’s critics are pointing to Tuesday’s primary results in Georgia, where his favored statewide candidates were routed, as evidence of the former president’s waning influence in the Republican Party. Yet Trump’s supporters could just as easily point to his backing of J.D. Vance, who came from behind to win the Ohio GOP’s Senate nomination, and Mehmet Oz, who is ahead by a hair in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary.

For those looking to assess Trump’s potential strength in a 2024 presidential primary, his 2022 endorsement scorecard surely has some predictive value. But just as important is understanding how the political game itself has changed in recent years. Even without consulting polls or primaries, it’s clear that the internal Republican Party conditions that enabled Trump’s 2016 rise are no longer in place.

[LFC]

The Michigan candidates who submitted piles of fake signatures are out of the race ... for now. We'll see how much the people who screeched "the law's the law!" at Hillary will follow the law when their top shots at winning the governor's office is imperiled.

The Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidates who the state found submitted thousands of fraudulent signatures will be kept off of the Aug. 2 primary ballot for now, after the state board that decides candidate qualifications split along party lines.

That includes the two frontrunners for the GOP’s nomination to run for governor, Perry Johnson and James Craig.

Several are expected to go to court to get their names on the ballot. The state’s elections director said Thursday that, in order for elections to run on time, ballots would need to be finalized by June 3.

The vote by the Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers — the same body that Donald Trump pressured to steal the election for him in 2020 — came after a parade of candidates and their lawyers cast themselves as victims of a ring of fraudulent signature-gatherers who took their money, but provided forged or otherwise invalid signatures in return.

Others took issue with the methods the state had used to declare those signatures fraudulent: Because campaigns collectively submitted nearly 70,000 invalid signatures, the state’s Bureau of Elections said Monday, it spot-checked signatures against state databases rather than confirming every single fraud.

On Thursday, state officials said they spot-checked roughly 10% of suspect signatures against the state’s qualified voter file, or around 7,000. Jonathan Brater, the state’s director of elections, did separately confirm that the Bureau “looked at every line” of the suspect petition sheets. The state Bureau of Elections said it identified 36 signature-gatherers who it thought were responsible for the fraudulent signatures; on these individuals’ petition sheets, the state said, it could not find a single valid signature.

But that wasn’t enough for some candidates, who protested on Thursday that it was the state’s responsibility to confirm every single signature they ruled invalid. They’ll likely take that same argument to court.

[goldenvalley]

Wow I've never seen a political ad like this.

[LFC]

Santa Claus is running for a House seat. No, really.

Santa’s Running For Congress

There’s a guy whose legal name is Santa Claus who’s running in the special election for late Rep. Don Young’s (R-AK) seat against ex-GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and dozens of other people. He also couldn’t look more like Santa if he tried (though I’m pretty sure he does).

• Santa Claus is a councilman in North Pole, Alaska (I swear I’m not making that up) and he had his name legally changed to Santa Claus in 2005. His pre-Santa name was Thomas Patrick O’Connor.

• He’s running as a democratic socialist whose platform aligns with that of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), according to his campaign site.

[LFC]

Herschel Walker says he isn't convinced that Trump claimed the election was stolen. He really is brain damaged.

[LFC]

I'd say Mo Brooks was casting off his last shred of human dignity but that ship sailed long ago. Summary of this article is Mo begs Trump to love him.

In a pitiful news, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) is begging for former President Trump to re-endorse him just over two weeks before the Alabama Senate GOP runoff.

Trump yanked his endorsement of the GOP congressman in March after complaining that Brooks made the “horrible mistake” of apparently becoming “woke” by daring to at one point suggest it was time to move on from the 2020 presidential election.

But it appears that Brooks himself has not moved on from the breakup — and wants the former president back in his life. In a statement released Sunday, Brooks called on “MAGA Nation” to vouch for him so that Trump would reinstate his endorsement. He even created his own hashtag ☹️.

“Join me in asking President Trump to #ReEndorseMo so that we can send a message to Mitch McConnell by sending a real America First conservative to the Senate on June 21,” Brooks wrote.

And in another groveling twist, Brooks actually thanked Trump for dumping him, claiming it was some brilliant three-dimensional chess move on Trump’s part and crediting the former president for “the kick in the pants” that his Senate bid against Katie Britt needed.

“He was like a football coach, grabbing us by the face mask, and getting us in gear,” Brooks said. “Part of me wonders if he also knew that in pulling his endorsement, he’d bait ol’ Mitch into thinking we couldn’t win and get Mitch to stop attacking us.”

[goldenvalley]

California's primary was yesterday. Shasta County (small population, rural & mountainous & State of Jefferson) has been a hotbed of political unrest in the last couple of years.  See what happens as ballots are coming in to the elections office.

On the night of one of the most significant elections in Shasta County’s history, the business of processing ballots was interrupted by a group of people who decided election night was the perfect time to demand an audience with Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen.

Darling Allen was waylaid in the alley behind the elections department by a group of people who wanted answers, and they wanted them now. They crowded around her, peppered her with inquires and questioned her ability to conduct a fair election.

The confrontation occurred minutes after Darling Allen had stepped into the alley with some reporters to point out a surveillance camera one of the election workers had discovered hidden in a tree.

It was during the trail-camera discussion when, out of the dark, came a group of people walking rapidly toward the elections activity where workers were doing intake and processing the ballot drop-offs.

The first wave of people who arrived at the county clerk’s office under the guise of being election “observers” started out in the alley.

The “observer” group grew in number as they moved from the alley to inside the large room that was abuzz with election workers going back and forth as they attempted to maneuver around the visitors as they processed precinct ballots.

They argued with Darling Allen downstairs, with what seemed repeated requests for security “stickers” as Darling Allen explained her office had all kinds of safety and security mechanisms, such as tiny plastic locks with their own numbers. The only way to open a lock is to break it. No matter how many times Darling Allen attempted to explain that she truly does know what she’s doing, the group continued to hammer her with arguments. All the while workers continued to to maneuver carts – “excuse me, excuse me, excuse me” — around and through the mob who seemed oblivious to the fact that Darling Allen, as the county clerk, was supposed to be overseeing the election.

[LFC]

Another Trump backed fascist running for office.

Blake Masters, who is endorsed by former President Trump in the Arizona Senate GOP primary, reportedly pushed a debunked conspiracy theory that suggests that the FBI was behind the Jan. 6 attack, according to new audio obtained by CNN of Masters’ meeting with conservative activists in March.

During the meeting, which took place at a Phoenix IHOP this spring, Masters raised the “false-flag” conspiracy theory that’s been percolating in some fringe circles of the right-wing media for several months. Masters was reportedly asked whether he would support investigations of U.S. intelligence operations, aimed at somehow revealing the federal government’s “nefarious activities” on Jan. 6.

Masters replied, “absolutely,” before diving head first into the fever swamp, CNN reported, citing a recording of the March 30 meeting.

“Don’t we suspect that like one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out?” Masters wondered aloud at the GrassRoots Tea Party Activists of Arizona event, according to CNN. “What did people know and when did they know it? We got to get to the bottom of this.”

[goldenvalley]

Jun 8, 2022 20:13:55 GMT LFC said:

Another Trump backed fascist running for office.

Blake Masters, who is endorsed by former President Trump in the Arizona Senate GOP primary, reportedly pushed a debunked conspiracy theory that suggests that the FBI was behind the Jan. 6 attack, according to new audio obtained by CNN of Masters’ meeting with conservative activists in March.

During the meeting, which took place at a Phoenix IHOP this spring, Masters raised the “false-flag” conspiracy theory that’s been percolating in some fringe circles of the right-wing media for several months. Masters was reportedly asked whether he would support investigations of U.S. intelligence operations, aimed at somehow revealing the federal government’s “nefarious activities” on Jan. 6.

Masters replied, “absolutely,” before diving head first into the fever swamp, CNN reported, citing a recording of the March 30 meeting.

“Don’t we suspect that like one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out?” Masters wondered aloud at the GrassRoots Tea Party Activists of Arizona event, according to CNN. “What did people know and when did they know it? We got to get to the bottom of this.”

I guess he didn't fall for the "Antifa did it" line.  

[pnwguy]

Unverified into being posted about GED Barbie. I haven't seen any news coverage on the sites' accusations.

www.fireboebert.com/

[goldenvalley]

Jun 14, 2022 20:55:30 GMT pnwguy said:

Unverified into being posted about GED Barbie. I haven't seen any news coverage on the sites' accusations.

www.fireboebert.com/

Eh...personal attacks are not impressive. What she did with her life isn't of interest to most people.  That she runs a bar where everyone can bring their uhmmm...evidence of overcompensation...is the only thing that matters.  Hypocrisy is not a defect if the hypocrite is on your side.  It's how Trump gets by.