2022 Congressional & State Elections

[pnwguy]

Jun 14, 2022 21:01:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

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.

I have no problem with the alleged sexual behavior, any more than I do of Falwell Jr's kinks.  It's their lives to lead.  But the hypocrisy aspects deserve some sunlight, not unlike the virulent homophobic politicians who are hiding their same sex relationships.  It's a careful balance.  

[andydp]

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/

Just read the link. It would be quite the bombshell if they could prove/get proof or witnesses.

But… excellent chance it’s a sham too.

IGs in the Army are told about 30% of anonymous allegations are true. Doused why there would be a difference in these cases.

[indy]

Jun 14, 2022 21:42:10 GMT andydp said:

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/

Just read the link. It would be quite the bombshell if they could prove/get proof or witnesses.

But… excellent chance it’s a sham too.

IGs in the Army are told about 30% of anonymous allegations are true. Doused why there would be a difference in these cases.

The people behind that site are the same ones that went after Madison Cawthorn, rather successfully.

[goldenvalley]

Missourians got rid of this guy once, but he's baaaack!

Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.

“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

What a man!

The ad by Mr. Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled following lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Mr. Greitens’ former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Mr. Greitens then to quit the race.

The Greitens campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on the ad.

Mr. Greitens has sought an endorsement from Mr. Trump, so far without success. His campaign chair is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.

[LFC]

Jun 20, 2022 17:39:23 GMT goldenvalley said:

Missourians got rid of this guy once, but he's baaaack!

Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.

“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

He's a grifter and politics is where the most lucrative grift is for him. He's a "patriot" who was a SEAL but of course his political threats have now rendered any service he may have provided to America moot. Much luck Michael Flynn there is literally no amount of service that offsets being a traitor and a domestic terrorist.

[LFC]

Oh, no! No Mo! His concession speech was about as gracious (i.e. childish) as you'd expect.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), projected to lose Alabama’s GOP Senate primary runoff against rival Katie Britt after a full slap in the face from ex-President Donald Trump, concluded his rocky campaign with some bitter words in his concession speech on Tuesday night.

“The voters have spoken,” but “they might not have spoken wisely,” Brooks complained to supporters at his election night party, per the Washington Post.

The ultra-MAGA congressman took a shot at Britt, who won a last-minute endorsement from Trump, and her apparent lack of MAGA-ness.

“It’s always appropriate to congratulate the winners, and some of these winners might be a little bit unexpected, but I’d be remiss if I did not congratulate the Alabama Democratic Party for helping to ensure that the Democratic nominee in the Republican primary won,” a sardonic Brooks declared, per the Washington Examiner. “Congratulations to the Democrats. They now have two nominees in the general election.”

“Another group I’d be remiss if I did not congratulate are special interest groups generally and more specifically the special interest groups that support open borders and cheap foreign labor,” he added. “They worked hard for their values.”

[LFC]

Another of Trump's picks lost their primary. I'd call this encouraging if the sane less insane Republicans were actually willing to stand up for American democracy but at best they hunker down and shut their mouths.

Georgia businessman Mike Collins defeated his Trump-endorsed rival, self-described “Black Donald Trump” Vernon Jones, in the GOP’s 10th Congressional District primary on Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press. With 50 percent of the votes counted just before 9 p.m., Jones, a former Democrat turned “Stop the Steal” rally speaker, was trailing Collins by more than 50 points in the solidly red district. His shellacking comes on the heels of Trump-backed David Perdue’s loss to Brian Kemp in the Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary.

[LFC]

I don't know how rigged Wisconsin is to protect Republicans but RonJohn isn't polling well.

Ron Johnson has managed to win two elections in Wisconsin – both of which were races Democrats were optimistic about winning. But this new poll number out of Wisconsin is pretty striking on a number of counts.

Here are the numbers.

Head to head (in alphabetical order), it is Barnes 46% and Johnson 44%. It is Godlewski 45% and Johnson 43%. It is Johnson 45% and Lasry 42%. And it is Nelson 44% and Johnson 43%. #mulawpoll
— MULawPoll (@mulawpoll) June 22, 2022

Let’s say that this is at best a tie for Johnson with his support in the mid-40s. In the old days we’d say an incumbent with those numbers was probably going to lose. The calculus is different today for a number of reasons. But it is striking that Johnson is at best tied with a middling level of support when the country is in a deeply cranky mood and the Democratic President is struggling to pull 40% support.

One takeaway is the obvious one: Johnson is a very vulnerable incumbent. He’s beatable and the slight differences in the numbers from one candidate to the next are probably just noise.

It is however another example that Biden’s abysmal approval ratings don’t seem firmly tethered to support for Democrats generally, at least not in the Senate races.

[LFC]

Now that the primaries are over "Dr" Oz is dumping Trump as fast as he can.

Dr. Oz Quietly Squeegees Trump Off His Campaign

With an eye on the general election, GOP Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Dr. Mehmet Oz has been quietly painting over Trump’s face on his campaign lately, Axios notes.

• Oz’s website and social media platforms, which all previously flaunted the ex-president’s endorsement, have been de-Trump’d: The banners bragging about the endorsement are gone, the candidate hasn’t tweeted about the ex-president since the May 17 primary, his Twitter bio no longer brags that he’s a “Trump Endorsed Candidate”–and (possibly as the biggest sting), Oz hasn’t posted on Trump’s fake Twitter at all since he won the primary.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 23, 2022 15:23:10 GMT LFC said:

Now that the primaries are over "Dr" Oz is dumping Trump as fast as he can.

Dr. Oz Quietly Squeegees Trump Off His Campaign

With an eye on the general election, GOP Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Dr. Mehmet Oz has been quietly painting over Trump’s face on his campaign lately, Axios notes.

• Oz’s website and social media platforms, which all previously flaunted the ex-president’s endorsement, have been de-Trump’d: The banners bragging about the endorsement are gone, the candidate hasn’t tweeted about the ex-president since the May 17 primary, his Twitter bio no longer brags that he’s a “Trump Endorsed Candidate”–and (possibly as the biggest sting), Oz hasn’t posted on Trump’s fake Twitter at all since he won the primary.

Is he going to erase his dual citizenship and the fact that he moved to Philadelphia from New Jersey simply to run for office in PA?
Note:  I don't hold dual citizenship against him but the other I would if I were in PA.

[LFC]

Another Q candidate is going to Congress.

Normal Times We Live In

Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX), a newly elected congresswoman who flipped now-retired Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela’s seat in Texas’ special election last week and who will also be on the ballot in November’s general election, posted QAnon hashtags and slogans repeatedly on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in 2020, CNN and Media Matters found.

• Flores also posted and shared conspiracy theories about the Capitol insurrection claiming that the attack was a “set up” by Antifa and “infiltrators.”

• It almost goes without saying that Flores promoted Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election too. And at one point, she praised MAGA lawyer/Krakenista Sidney Powell, who lost every single election lawsuit she filed, as an “American hero” on Twitter.

• All the posts have been deleted and Flores now denies being a QAnoner. She told the San Antonio Express-News in April that she’s “always been against any of that” and “never been supportive of it.” (Unfortunately for her, CNN has the archived versions of the tweets.)

[LFC]

Cheney is fighting for her political life.

Cheney Trying To Get Dems To Switch Parties To Save Her

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who isn’t doing super hot in the polls against her Trump-backed rival, is specifically targeting Wyoming Democrats with mailers to help them switch party affiliations to be able to vote for her ahead of her state’s Aug. 16 primary.

[LFC]

And another Republican slides toward insanity and fascism to keep their seat. Read on to see how pathetic the pandering to the utter nutter wing has become.

A mainstream Republican is facing off against a Hitler-quoting first-term Republican in a newly drawn Illinois congressional district.

Rep. Rodney Davis has represented a swing district in central Illinois since 2012 as one of the GOP's more moderate lawmakers, but the state lost a House seat after the 2020 census and redrew its congressional map to place him in a primary battle against hardcore conservative Rep. Mary Miller -- which drove the veteran lawmaker to the right, reported The Daily Beast.

“Just like the good district man, he is adapting to his district, and his district is changing a little," said Christopher Mooney, a politics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The newly drawn district is more rural than the one Davis previously represented, and would have backed Trump in 2020 by a 40-point margin, and Miller touts her endorsement by the former president to compensate for virtually no legislative accomplishments, compared to Davis' record.

Miller was forced to apologize just after starting her first term for approvingly quoting Adolf Hitler at a "Moms for America" rally on Jan. 5, 2021, and her husband's pickup truck bearing a III Percenters sticker was spotted parked outside the U.S. Capitol the following day, when Trump supporters stormed the building.

Polling shows Davis just ahead of Miller, 38 percent to 35 percent, with 27 percent undecided, but Miller's support jumps to 47 percent to Davis' 39 percent when respondents were told that Trump had endorsed Miller.

Davis, who once chaired the moderate Republican Main Street Caucus and was among 35 House Republicans to vote in favor of an independent Jan. 6 commission, has become a prominent critic of the House select committee and promised to use his power to investigate that panel for alleged abuses of power and go after House speaker Nancy Pelosi for her supposed involvement in security failures at the Capitol.

He appeared last week alongside Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to talk about Stephen Colbert staffers getting detained while filming in the Capitol, and shortly before that appeared on a right-wing Newsmax program whose host claimed Pelosi wanted Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh to be assassinated.

[goldenvalley]

Wasn't sure where to put this but it talks about the PA governor race in the end...it's from a Substack related to the Bulwark...Jonathon Last wrote this:

This is a thought you often hear:

Joe Biden is unpopular because he was elected to bring normalcy back to politics, and instead there is inflation and $5 gas. And in addition to a couple of big-ticket bipartisan bills he passed, Democrats also failed to pass a couple of large-scale, party-line bills that were unpopular.

This is a thought you never hear:

Ron DeSantis is unpopular because he spends all of his time passing culture-war legislation that has nothing to do with people’s real lives and he does this without any bipartisan support.

This is a thought you often hear:

Democrats are in trouble because whatever Joe Biden’s legislative achievements may be, he gives too much rhetorical ground to the left wing of his party.

This is a thought you never hear:

Republicans are in trouble because they attempted a coup on the American government and support for this coup is now an item of dogma for most GOP candidates, at every level of government, nationwide.

This is a thought you often hear:

Democrats overreached when they failed to pass two bills—BBB and H.R. 1—sufficiently moderate to attract 16 Republican senators. Voters are going to punish them for this overreach.

This is a thought you never hear:

Republicans overreached when they passed laws awarding bounties for citizens who spied on women seeking abortions and for passing many laws banning abortion that have barely 40 percent approval. Voters are going to punish them for this overreach.

This is a thought you often hear:

Democrats must not use Procedure X (eliminating the filibuster, adding states, expanding the Supreme Court) because (1) voters would punish them for such unwise maneuvering and (2) you should never play hardball politics because some day the other side will be in charge and they will do the same to you.

This is a thought you never hear:

After Republicans refused to vote on a Supreme Court vacancy while Barack Obama was president and then rushed to fill a Supreme Court vacancy shortly before Donald Trump was defeated, (1) voters were deeply upset by this procedural irregularity and (2) Democrats retaliated once they took control of the White House and Congress.

It is almost as though there are different rules for the two political parties.

The reason for these divergent rule sets is that voters still apply the standards of the before times to the Democratic party. And the Democrats themselves still act as though they are living in the before times.

Meanwhile, the Republican party is evolving into a post-liberal institution in which various insane people and white nationalists and aspiring authoritarians ride herd over the old chamber of commerce set. Voters have watched this transformation and mostly not been repelled by it. Instead, the general public has decided that this is the new normal for Republicans and that judging the party by the old standards is impossible.

So they don’t even try.

Just as a for-instance, consider the Pennsylvania governor’s race.

Josh Shapiro is a normal, by-the-numbers, Democratic candidate running in a state that’s pretty close to par. Maybe you like his politics. Maybe you don’t. But he clearly lives between the 40-yard lines of American politics.

The Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano, is an insane person. A seditionist. A Christian nationalist. A conspiracy nut.

And yet this race is a toss-up.

I don’t know what the Democratic version of Mastriano would be. But let’s pretend that, instead of Shapiro, Democrats had nominated that guy. Our pretend insane Democrat won’t stop talking about how the Diebold voting machines stole the 2004 election for George W. Bush and why 9/11 was an inside job. He’s a tankie who constantly spouts Russian propaganda. He’s a militant atheist. Maybe he’s a member of the New Black Panthers. Again: We’re pretending that Democrats nominated their mirror-image of Mastriano.

Do you think Pennsylvania voters would be poised to give this hypothetical insane Democrat 48 percent of the vote?

Because I do not.

I think that in a 50-50 state like Pennsylvania, Republicans can run a crazy person, count on a floor vote-share of 45 percent, and have a fair chance to win. But if Democrats ran a similarly crazy person, his floor would be closer to 35 percent and he’d get blown out.

Because today voters hold the parties to different standards.

Posted in its entirety because it's paywalled.

[andydp]

My opinion.  With that, and a NY Transit card, I can get a subway ride.

Saw a front page (under the fold) article about how Democrats are joining the GOP.  The figure given was about 1 million nationwide.

I also saw an article in the Denver Post describing how a bunch of Democrats in Colorado are changing affiliation so they can keep Trumper candidates from winning the primaries.

I bet the two are related.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 29, 2022 4:06:34 GMT andydp said:

My opinion.  With that, and a NY Transit card, I can get a subway ride.

Saw a front page (under the fold) article about how Democrats are joining the GOP.  The figure given was about 1 million nationwide.

I also saw an article in the Denver Post describing how a bunch of Democrats in Colorado are changing affiliation so they can keep Trumper candidates from winning the primaries.

I bet the two are related.

Oh yeah.  I know people who routinely changed their party affiliation before a primary to vote for a weak candidate of a disfavored party and then changed back (or not) for the general.  This was before California started its open, top two winner primary where party affiliation is meaningless.  And now some Republican candidates in this state complain that Democrats are funneling money to weak Republicans' campaigns to skew the results.

[jackd]

I really can't understand the California thinking. Why is it in the public interest to keep a party off the ballot?

[goldenvalley]

Jun 29, 2022 18:10:24 GMT jackd said:

I really can't understand the California thinking. Why is it in the public interest to keep a party off the ballot?

Do you mean the impact of a top two primary which can result in 2 of the same party being on the ballot?  

The general intent was that districts would choose the more moderate candidates if given the opportunity...regardless of party. And that more moderate people would run because they had a shot at getting voters who rejected the party extremists.  This was adopted in 2010, but before that most parties except for the Republican Party allowed non party registrants to vote in their primary election.

By the way CA has 6 recognized political parties.  Right now though the number of people who register with no party preference is almost equal the number that claim Republican.

[jackd]

Yes, that's what I mean. I have no problem with people getting to choose what primary they want to vote in. However, the California method appears consign minority parties to never having a shot at the general election. If there're multiple parties, I don't mind them being culled down to two but culling to one just induces more apathy, if that were possible.

[LFC]

Most Georgians seem to prefer a Senator who isn't a batshit crazy serial liar with no grasp of reality. Huh.

We talk a lot about potential Democratic Senate pick ups. But Democrats also need to hold on to endangered seats in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. I was frankly stunned to see this new Quinnipiac poll showing Warnock opening up a 10 point lead over Herschel Walker, 54%-44%. The results seem mostly driven by Georgians thinking Warnock is a good guy who cares about ordinary people and many fewer thinking the same about Walker.

[LFC]

Colorado Republicans showed a bit of sense. They not only rejected Big Lie fraudster Tina Peters but also others of her ilk. I guess they don't like the idea of a handful of really stupid, emotional, and ignorant partisan hacks controlling elections and laws. Good for them.

Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk now facing multiple federal felony counts for allegedly violating the security protocols of her own election office — and stealing a local man’s identity to do so — was soundly defeated in her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state. She was bested by a candidate, Pam Anderson, who has called for a return to professionalism in election administration and who accepts that Joe Biden won in 2020.

But that was just the start. As Bolts Magazine reported Monday, the Bie Lie crowd was represented on several ballots across Colorado.

In El Paso County, Peter Lupia promoted Peters’ false claims about Dominion voting machines producing fraudulent results and claimed the machines “destroy accuracy.” He called for eliminating mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes altogether.

His competition, County Assessor Steve Schleiker, accepted the 2020 election results and ran on increasing transparency. As of 10 p.m. last night, Schleiker was leading 66.31% to Lupia’s 33.69%, according to unofficial results from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.

In Mesa County, one of the candidates running to replace Peters in the clerk’s office also worked under Peters in that office: Julie Fisher, who said in an interview, referring to the 2020 election, “I have seen enough information to question what’s going on.” She accused the federal government of lying when it referred to the 2020 election as, in Fisher’s paraphrase, “the cleanest ever.”

According to the state’s unofficial results last night, Fisher was trailing behind her GOP competitor Bobbie Gross by nearly 2,000 votes. Gross lost to Peters in a close race four years ago, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel noted, and has said “Colorado is on the leading edge of voting.” While there are sometimes one-off cases of fraud in elections, Gross added, it’s “nothing that would overturn an election.”

But then there's this.

And Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), the far-right congresswoman who Peters said “encouraged me to go forward with the imaging” of the county’s election machines — a detail Boebert’s spokesperson denied — won her nomination for re-election by a 30-point margin.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 29, 2022 23:34:16 GMT jackd said:

Yes, that's what I mean. I have no problem with people getting to choose what primary they want to vote in. However, the California method appears consign minority parties to never having a shot at the general election. If there're multiple parties, I don't mind them being culled down to two but culling to one just induces more apathy, if that were possible.

Yeah that argument was made at the time.  However looking at the past before top two, members of the minority parties never ever were elected. They picked up a few votes here and there.  No money, no campaigning.  You'd think the Green Party would be more powerful in California given climate concerns but it never gains traction.  I'm not sure it tries.

[jackd]

But between the two parties there has been shifting over time. For example, Democrats have a chance for election in Orange County.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 30, 2022 15:56:08 GMT jackd said:

But between the two parties there has been shifting over time. For example, Democrats have a chance for election in Orange County.

Oh yes.  Orange County has had an influx of people that are not died in the wool Republicans.  It is no longer the land of upper middle class Republicans.  

The geographic distribution of Republicans in CA falls increasingly in rural areas...Central Valley, areas north of Sacramento, the Sierra foothills.  But the foothills have recently been populated by retired people from other parts of the state so the number of Democrats has increased.  Wildfire may put an end to that.  

[pnwguy]

Jun 30, 2022 14:39:29 GMT LFC said:

Colorado Republicans showed a bit of sense. They not only rejected Big Lie fraudster Tina Peters but also others of her ilk. I guess they don't like the idea of a handful of really stupid, emotional, and ignorant partisan hacks controlling elections and laws. Good for them.

And Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), the far-right congresswoman who Peters said “encouraged me to go forward with the imaging” of the county’s election machines — a detail Boebert’s spokesperson denied — won her nomination for re-election by a 30-point margin.

If you see her 3rd district boundaries, it looks as empty as her skull.