2022 Congressional & State Elections

[andydp]

Nov 23, 2022 16:50:12 GMT LFC said:

Nov 23, 2022 16:28:40 GMT goldenvalley said:

Those Georgia voters who support Walker won't care about this.  They will not see him as a carpetbagger.  

Wait. What? Do you mean that the party of family values and morals doesn't actually believe in what they attack Democrats for not living up to? I'm shocked, shocked I say!

How else can they own the libs ?

[LFC]

Remember this post about GA Republicans trying to block a day of early voting? The GA Supreme Court just unanimously told them to go f*** themselves.

The Georgia Supreme Court, unanimously and without commentary, shot down Republicans’ attempt to bar a day of early voting in the Senate runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Herschel Walker.

The high court upheld a decision from a Fulton County judge last week, who said that blocking the vote on the Saturday after Thanksgiving would “irreparably harm the Plaintiffs, their members, and constituents, and their preferred runoff candidate.”

When the Georgia Court of Appeals declined to block that lower court order, the Georgia Republican party, along with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Republican National Committee, appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Each day of early voting took on more importance ever since Republicans in the state legislature, dismayed by their party’s losses in 2020, passed a bundle of voter restrictions that included chopping the runoff calendar in half.

[LFC]

I think the majority of Alaskans would agree that ranked choice voting was successful. I'm even more certain the majority of hard-core Republicans would disagree. It appears, however, that the state has a decent crop of reasonable Republicans who are capable of winning elections again since the system doesn't reward the extremists.

Seventeen of Alaska’s 20 state senators and senator-elects have banded together to form a bipartisan majority coalition that members promise will be moderate and consensus-focused.

Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican and veteran lawmaker known as a moderate, will be president, returning to the role he held from 2009 to 2012.

“It’s a pleasure for me to announce that we have a very healthy majority and we’ve found a way to share responsibilities between all of us. I think we have a great organization,” Stevens said at an Anchorage news conference late Friday.

Cathy Giessel, a Republican from South Anchorage, will be the majority leader; Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat from East Anchorage, will be chairman of the Rules Committee, which determines with the president which bills are voted upon, Stevens announced. The powerful budget-writing Finance Committee will have three co-chairs, he said: Republican Sen. Bert Stedman of Sitka, overseeing the operating budget; Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman of Bethel, handling the capital budget; and Democratic Sen. Donny Olson of Golovin, managing other bills.

Announcement of the new organization came two days after the state Division of Election made a final count of ballots cast in the state’s new ranked choice system. That confirmed that 11 Republicans and nine Democrats will be in the Senate. For Democrats, the results represent a two-seat gain. For some Republicans, the results affirmed the value of past bipartisan work.

Those Republicans include Cathy Giessel, who served as Senate president in 2019 and 2020 but lost her seat after being criticized for working with Democrats. This time, thanks in part to the new ranked choice system, Giessel was elected to her old seat, beating the farther-right Republican who had ousted her in the 2020 GOP primary.

The new majority is, in some ways, a reprise of past Senate coalitions. The Senate was led by a bipartisan caucus from 2007 to 2012, with Wasilla Republican Lyda Green serving as president for the first two of those years.

In other ways, the new majority formalizes what had been a de facto coalition in recent years comprising Senate Democrats and the more moderate Republicans. That experience, Stevens said, is evidence in favor of a bipartisan majority over an all-Republican majority. Over the past four years, these senators have opposed unplanned draws from the Alaska Permanent Fund, as well as the deep cuts to government services that Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed in 2019.

“I think this is a recognition of the reality of the last four years. We have not been able to get several of our senators to support the budget. We’ve had to go around them and bring the Democrats in in order to pass the budget,” he said.

The three senators left out of the majority group – Sen. Mike Shower of Wasilla, Sen. Shelley Hughes of Palmer and Sen. Robert Myers of North Pole – are all conservative Republicans who voted against this year’s budget. They have called for larger Permanent Fund dividends.

Gee, hard right politicians wanting to "make it raaaiiiinnnn!" today while leaving future generations with a more difficult financial situation. It sounds positively ... Republican.

[goldenvalley]

Remember the very important fraud units some states instituted to restore faith in elections? 

State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.

An Associated Press investigation found there was no widespread fraud in Georgia or the five other battleground states where Trump disputed his 2020 loss, and so far there is no indication of that in this year’s elections. Certification of the results is going smoothly in most states, with few complaints.

But we all know what's really wrong with elections.

Smith, of the Campaign Legal Center, said there are real issues related to election security, including protecting voters, poll workers and elections staff, and securing voting equipment. But he said Republican steps to boost what they often refer to as “election integrity” to combat voter fraud often are about something else.

“It’s a myth that’s created so they can justify making it harder for people to vote,” he said.

[LFC]

Arizona again. Bold mine. This guy thinks he should be anointed AG because ... "belief."

Yet another Republican candidate for office in Arizona is refusing to accept his loss—or, in this case, a recount.

Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh filed a lawsuit—with backing from the Republican National Committee—on Tuesday contesting the results of his race against Democratic opponent Kris Mayes, who’s currently leading in the final tally by 510 votes.

Mayes’ lead was slim enough to trigger an automatic recount in the state, but that wasn’t enough for Hamadeh: The former prosecutor is asking the State Superior Court in Maricopa County to overturn the results (which he believes to be fraudulent because of … printer issues) and name him the winner.

“Upon information and belief, a complete and correct tabulation of all lawful ballots will establish that Contestant Hamadeh received the highest number of votes for the office of Arizona Attorney General in the November 8, 2022 general election,” the complaint says.

The suit, which also lists Arizona governor-elect Katie Hobbs as a defendant, argues that a handful of technical errors that occurred on Election Day led to a flawed vote count. As you’ve probably read a thousand times by now, 70 out of 223 voting centers in Maricopa County experienced printer issues for a few hours that day, so election officials gave voters the option to submit their ballots through a drop box to be tabulated later or vote at another precinct. 

Hamadeh’s suit cites this as one of the reasons the final tally shouldn’t be trusted, and even argues that the technical difficulties complicated the voting process so much that it prevented many Arizonans from voting.

[LFC]

Oh, Herschel ... Episode 482.

Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker said he decided to run for a seat in Georgia while living at his home in Texas during a campaign speech in January, CNN reported. “I live in Texas,” Walker said during a speech to University of Georgia Republicans. Walker was getting a tax break on his Texas home by filing it as his primary residence, which might violate both Texas tax laws and Georgia election laws, leading Georgia Democrats to call for an investigation into Walker’s residency. During the speech, Walker said he “never … ever, ever, ever” thought he’d run for the Senate, but changed his mind due to the way he believes the country’s “trying to divide people.” “As I was sitting in my home in Texas, I was sitting in my home in Texas, and I was seeing what was going on in this country,” he said. The CNN review found that Walker had sat down for interviews from his Texas home at least four times while on the campaign trail, most recently in March.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 30, 2022 23:06:23 GMT LFC said:

Oh, Herschel ... Episode 482.

Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker said he decided to run for a seat in Georgia while living at his home in Texas during a campaign speech in January, CNN reported. “I live in Texas,” Walker said during a speech to University of Georgia Republicans. Walker was getting a tax break on his Texas home by filing it as his primary residence, which might violate both Texas tax laws and Georgia election laws, leading Georgia Democrats to call for an investigation into Walker’s residency. During the speech, Walker said he “never … ever, ever, ever” thought he’d run for the Senate, but changed his mind due to the way he believes the country’s “trying to divide people.” “As I was sitting in my home in Texas, I was sitting in my home in Texas, and I was seeing what was going on in this country,” he said. The CNN review found that Walker had sat down for interviews from his Texas home at least four times while on the campaign trail, most recently in March.

I don't think there is a residency requirement to run for office. At least in the House...I'm aware of one Congress Member who does not live in his district, but lives within California.

The Texas issue of taking a tax break while not living in Texas is probably the more serious issue.

[LFC]

Dec 1, 2022 0:02:03 GMT goldenvalley said:

I don't think there is a residency requirement to run for office.

I have no idea about that, just that once again Walker proved himself to be a babbling idiot. I suppose there are a few voters who aren't crazy about the idea that he is a carpet bagger.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 1, 2022 0:16:07 GMT LFC said:

Dec 1, 2022 0:02:03 GMT goldenvalley said:

I don't think there is a residency requirement to run for office.

I have no idea about that, just that once again Walker proved himself to be a babbling idiot. I suppose there are a few voters who aren't crazy about the idea that he is a carpet bagger.

I wonder why the Warnock campaign didn't pick up on the residency issue.  At least some Georgians might care about him being a carpetbagger.  I suppose the rules are different for football stars as opposed to doctors on tv.

[LFC]

Dec 1, 2022 0:39:20 GMT goldenvalley said:

I wonder why the Warnock campaign didn't pick up on the residency issue.  At least some Georgians might care about him being a carpetbagger.  I suppose the rules are different for football stars as opposed to doctors on tv.

This is fairly new and I suspect he will. He's already digging at him more and more.

Though the University of Georgia football legend is one of the most scandal-plagued major candidates in history, Warnock spent much of the 2022 campaign avoiding the revelations that Walker had allegedly paid for two women to obtain abortions, had several children he hadn’t talked about, and was also allegedly violent toward his ex-wife. Warnock largely attacked Walker over his policy positions on issues like abortion access and health care, or his embellishment of his business and academic record.

In the final weeks of the general election, Warnock appeared to stop pulling his punches. To his million-plus followers on Twitter, the senator increasingly invoked his opponent’s record of serious controversies and misleading statements to make the case he is “not fit for the job.”

That strategy has only intensified since Warnock and Walker entered the four-week runoff campaign. “Herschel Walker lies about the basic facts of his life,” Warnock wrote in a Monday tweet, listing his opponent’s false claims that he was a policeman, a FBI agent, and a University of Georgia graduate. “He’s not fit to represent Georgia.”

It was far from Warnock’s most sharp-elbowed move. Before Thanksgiving, Warnock rallied in Walker’s hometown of Wrightsville—where Walker’s former high school football coach described all the reasons why his former star player was unfit to serve in the Senate.

“He has been a little more hard, as people say, with the tweets this time,” said Jeremy Halbert-Harris, who was a senior adviser to the Georgia Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign for the 2020 runoffs.

Warnock’s goal, said Halbert-Harris, is to make the contrast between himself and Walker as stark as possible. “Especially in a race as close as this one, you can’t leave any crumbs on the table,” he said. “He is taking the approach of, leave no stone unturned.”

[LFC]

"Christians" will ignore this as effortlessly as they ignore all the other sins of anybody they perceive as on their team. Evangelical "morality" continues to be transactional. Bold mine.

Cheryl Parsa is the latest in a long line of women who have come forward with allegations of violent behavior against Georgia’s GOP senate nominee Herschel Walker in recent months and years. And she’s the first to come out on the record with accusations since he announced his Senate bid in August 2021.

Dallas resident Parsa described an intimate yet turbulent five-year relationship with Walker to the Daily Beast. 

Parsa, who said she started her relationship with the former Georgia Bulldog in the 2000s, shortly after his divorce, detailed a 2005 incident that allegedly turned violent after she caught him cheating. Parsa told the Daily Beast Walker grew enraged when she caught him with another woman, put his hands on her chest and neck, and swung his fist at her. “I thought he was going to beat me,” Parsa recalled.

“He’s a pathological liar. Absolutely. But it’s more than that,” Parsa told The Daily Beast. “He knows how to manipulate his disease, in order to manipulate people, while at times being simultaneously completely out of control.” Parsa added that when she was in a relationship with Walker, he used his diagnosis as an “alibi” to “justify lying, cheating, and ultimately destroying families.”

Go to the link to see a list of his violence and threats towards women.

[goldenvalley]

Well Mr. Republican Lt Governor I guess your commitment to democracy is lacking:

Pick the best candidate on the list.  None of the above choices are a dereliction of voter duty.

[jackd]

Of course, many Republicans in Georgia will vote for Herschel precisely because he will be Trump's puppet.

[LFC]

Dec 1, 2022 20:33:15 GMT jackd said:

Of course, many Republicans in Georgia will vote for Herschel precisely because he will be Trump's puppet.

Oatmeal between the ears is a feature, not a bug.

[indy]

I guess the new guessing game is who is going to be speaker of the house? My guess is won't be McCarthy and it won't be Biggs. I have no idea who it will be though.

[LFC]

Yes, some of the sleaziest of the sleazy are still fighting, but in Kari Lake's case the judge isn't putting up with baseless bullshit. Alan Dershowitz managed to get himself caught up in this mess. What a small, sad, pathetic attention seeker. He reminds me of Andrew Sullivan's description of Rudy Giuliani as "a small man in search of a balcony."

Kari Lake Lawyers Sanctioned for False Claims in Election Suit

Alan Dershowitz was among the lawyers for losing GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake who were sanctioned by a federal judge for making false and unsupported claims in her pre-election lawsuit seeking to change Arizona’s voting mechanisms.

[AnBr]

I wanna hear Herschel's confection speech.

[indy]

Dec 7, 2022 14:06:58 GMT AnBr said:

I wanna hear Herschel's confection speech.

That'd be sweet!

[LFC]

Dec 7, 2022 14:18:40 GMT indy said:

Dec 7, 2022 14:06:58 GMT AnBr said:

I wanna hear Herschel's confection speech.

That'd be sweet!

[LFC]

Final results?

It looks like this race is one that keeps on giving to the people of Georgia.

Newt Gingrich on Newsmax : "I'm leaving Georgia because it is now a Democrat state. "

[jackd]

Way too close!

[goldenvalley]

Dec 8, 2022 19:59:32 GMT jackd said:

Way too close!

+10000.  How can anyone look at Walker and think "that's a guy who should be a legislator"?  

I feel badly for him...he was totally used by the Republicans in a very cynical and racist way.  "You want a black guy as Senator, well here's one for you!"

[goldenvalley]

Seems like Kari Lake is struggling to keep lawyers on her case:

[LFC]

Kari Lake and her legal team are getting their day in court. They are performing with all the professionalism and competence that you'd expect from them.

Kari Lake’s attempt to get her Arizona gubernatorial loss overturned went to trial Wednesday, as her lawyers pushed the two of 10 claims still standing in her lawsuit. 

On Monday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed the other eight claims, letting Lake proceed with accusations centered on ballot printers and ballot chains of custody. 

Her lawyers present at Wednesday’s trial came laden with MAGA bona fides: Kurt Olsen, who was deeply involved in legal attempts to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump and who spoke to the then-President multiple times on January 6, 2021, and Bryan Blehm, best known for representing the Cyber Ninjas in cases stemming from the infamous partisan audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona. 

Team Lake got off to a shaky start, as the soft-spoken judge chided them for mislabeling their exhibits. 

“The plaintiff’s exhibit-numbering system…left something to be desired,” Thompson said as the trial began. 

The numbering caused confusion and interruptions throughout the proceeding, as did prolonged technical difficulties plaguing Lake’s lawyers’ attempts to bring up the exhibits they were referencing on a screen. For multiple, prolonged interludes, Blehm couldn’t figure out which exhibit he was referring to, permeating the courtroom with irritable confusion. 

Later in the proceedings, the trial was ground to a halt as Lake’s attorneys tried to call a witness missing from the submitted witness list. 

“We’re now burning time trying to find out who Mr. Smith is and where he is,” the judge said of the missing witness, exasperated, while Lake’s attorneys feverishly whispered, trying to figure out who to call instead.

At times, Thompson rephrased questions for Lake’s attorneys to help them circumvent objections. 

The procedural chaos crescendoed when Lake’s attorneys tried to play a voicemail clip from someone identified only as “Betty” who allegedly worked in the Maricopa County elections department — that the defense had never heard before because, they said and the clerk confirmed, Lake’s team failed to upload the clip ahead of time. 

The technical fumbles in particular plagued Blehm’s initial questioning of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer as the attorney tried to establish issues in the chain of ballot custody. Richer, who has become a special target of Lake’s ire, at times seemed amused by the questioning and corrected Blehm about granular election procedure, including what is reported to him versus the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

At one point, Blehm got sharp with the witness as Richer attempted to discern which ballot receipt the attorney was asking him about.

“I’m not gonna spend the time if you don’t understand your own documents,” Blehm sniped, prompting an immediate objection from the defense.

“Mr. Blehm, that’s not a question, that was a comment, strike that,” Thompson interjected. 

Blehm returned after the defense’s cross examination with the air of pulling the death blow from his pocket. 

“Isn’t it true that you ran a political action committee that was opposed and spent money opposing my client for governor?” he asked Richer.

“That is 100 percent false,” the recorder replied. 

Blehm sat with no further questions.  

Olsen similarly struggled to find a gotcha moment in his questioning of Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett. 

There's more stupidity.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 22, 2022 21:19:39 GMT LFC said:

Kari Lake and her legal team are getting their day in court. They are performing with all the professionalism and competence that you'd expect from them.

Kari Lake’s attempt to get her Arizona gubernatorial loss overturned went to trial Wednesday, as her lawyers pushed the two of 10 claims still standing in her lawsuit. 

On Monday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed the other eight claims, letting Lake proceed with accusations centered on ballot printers and ballot chains of custody. 

Her lawyers present at Wednesday’s trial came laden with MAGA bona fides: Kurt Olsen, who was deeply involved in legal attempts to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump and who spoke to the then-President multiple times on January 6, 2021, and Bryan Blehm, best known for representing the Cyber Ninjas in cases stemming from the infamous partisan audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona. 

Team Lake got off to a shaky start, as the soft-spoken judge chided them for mislabeling their exhibits. 

“The plaintiff’s exhibit-numbering system…left something to be desired,” Thompson said as the trial began. 

The numbering caused confusion and interruptions throughout the proceeding, as did prolonged technical difficulties plaguing Lake’s lawyers’ attempts to bring up the exhibits they were referencing on a screen. For multiple, prolonged interludes, Blehm couldn’t figure out which exhibit he was referring to, permeating the courtroom with irritable confusion. 

Later in the proceedings, the trial was ground to a halt as Lake’s attorneys tried to call a witness missing from the submitted witness list. 

“We’re now burning time trying to find out who Mr. Smith is and where he is,” the judge said of the missing witness, exasperated, while Lake’s attorneys feverishly whispered, trying to figure out who to call instead.

At times, Thompson rephrased questions for Lake’s attorneys to help them circumvent objections. 

The procedural chaos crescendoed when Lake’s attorneys tried to play a voicemail clip from someone identified only as “Betty” who allegedly worked in the Maricopa County elections department — that the defense had never heard before because, they said and the clerk confirmed, Lake’s team failed to upload the clip ahead of time. 

The technical fumbles in particular plagued Blehm’s initial questioning of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer as the attorney tried to establish issues in the chain of ballot custody. Richer, who has become a special target of Lake’s ire, at times seemed amused by the questioning and corrected Blehm about granular election procedure, including what is reported to him versus the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

At one point, Blehm got sharp with the witness as Richer attempted to discern which ballot receipt the attorney was asking him about.

“I’m not gonna spend the time if you don’t understand your own documents,” Blehm sniped, prompting an immediate objection from the defense.

“Mr. Blehm, that’s not a question, that was a comment, strike that,” Thompson interjected. 

Blehm returned after the defense’s cross examination with the air of pulling the death blow from his pocket. 

“Isn’t it true that you ran a political action committee that was opposed and spent money opposing my client for governor?” he asked Richer.

“That is 100 percent false,” the recorder replied. 

Blehm sat with no further questions.  

Olsen similarly struggled to find a gotcha moment in his questioning of Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett. 

There's more stupidity.

I wish there were some immediate sanction judge could issue for this kind of nonsense.  These election deniers have nothing but suspicion and faulty logic.  Do they even realize that or do they understand their whole function is to file fraudulent lawsuits to help election deniers raise money?