Month: April 2021

Biden And The All-Star Game: A Presidential Wild Pitch?

Posted on by RealClearWire

By Philip Wegmann for RealClearPolitics

The president loves baseball, and has said the earliest memories he has are of the sport: a glove under his pillow the night before his first game and a too-big Little League jersey that hung past his knees. Given a chance to pick between an inning on the mound in the majors or the vice presidency, a much younger Joe Biden wouldn’t hesitate.

“I would have pitched!” the then-vice president told a crowd gathered for the final game of the 2009 Little League World Series, before following through with his trademark addendum, “By the way, I’m not kidding.”

Biden’s whimsical yearning was a variation on an old anecdote told by Dwight Eisenhower, and the crowd laughed appreciatively. He told them how he started at shortstop in elementary school but was playing centerfield by high school.

RELATED: Trump Goes All-In: ‘I Would Say Boycott Baseball’

The lesson he learned along the way, Biden said that day in Williamsport, Pa., is that “we owe our best to whoever is watching.” Here, Biden was paraphrasing Joe DiMaggio, as he acknowledged, adding that he hoped “I have done that in my career.”

Almost a dozen years later, Biden is in the Oval Office. Mixing sports with politics, however, may have led to a few errors in his still-new presidency.

It included an ESPN interview; he said he would “strongly support” pulling the All-Star Game out of Atlanta to protest new voter laws in Georgia. It ended with an extended rundown, caught between angry fans and legislators.

The White House now insists, contrary to fact, that Biden never weighed in on where the “Midsummer Classic” should or should not be played.

Like most Democrats, Biden opposes the new voting law, which requires a photo ID to cast a ballot, sets limits on absentee voting, and reduces the number of ballot drop boxes.

But the president erred when he said during his first press conference that the law “ends voting early” at 5 p.m. (it actually extends early voting hours and keeps Georgia’s 7 p.m. Election Day voting hours intact). He called it “un-American.”

The Washington Post fact-checker gave his claim “four Pinocchios.” The error has not been acknowledged, let alone corrected, and corporations have started making business decisions in response to public pressure on the issue.

Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and Home Depot oppose the law. Outside of Georgia, Apple, JPMorgan, and United Airlines issued similar statements. This kind of posturing isn’t unusual and usually only spooks the local chamber of commerce when a company actually decides to act instead of issue press releases.

RELATED: Top Republicans Take On MLB, Big Business Over Georgia Voting Law

Late last week, Biden was asked about “the possibility that baseball decides to move their All-Star Game out of Atlanta because of this political issue” by ESPN’s Sage Steele.

“I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that. People look to them, they’re leaders,” Biden replied.

The exchange was almost Trumpian. No, Biden didn’t shout. But he went beyond politics. He talked about sports and politics, almost like a talking head — and exactly like his press secretary promised he never would act.

When reporters pressed Jen Psaki earlier this year on the impeachment trial of former President Trump, she demurred, saying Biden wouldn’t comment because “he is not a pundit.”

The answer about the All-Star Game, however, has opened the president up to a host of related topics. Now that he’s weighed in on baseball in light of the Georgia voting law, for instance, will he do the same regarding the U.S. participating in the Beijing Olympics given the anti-democratic tendencies of the Xi regime?

RealClearPolitics put that question to Psaki on Friday, and while the press secretary punted, saying that the U.S. Olympic Committee would play a “big role,” she insisted that the president “did not” weigh in on baseball.

“I don’t know if you heard the answer, the question and the answer that happened a few minutes ago where we addressed this, and I answered the question. And I give a little more context, but maybe you weren’t paying attention to that part,” Psaki replied.

Another reporter had asked earlier in the briefing if Biden believed businesses should consider pulling out of Texas as that state considers a bill similar to Georgia’s new law.

RELATED: Marco Rubio Dares MLB Commissioner To Give Up Augusta National Golf Club Membership In Georgia

“Well, first, he didn’t call for businesses to boycott. Businesses have made that decision themselves, of course. He also was not dictating that Major League Baseball move their game out of Georgia. He was conveying that if that was a decision that was made, that he would certainly support that,” Psaki said.

But the president had weighed in on the question, and less than an hour after the briefing wrapped, MLB announced that there would be no All-Star Game in Atlanta.

Georgia Gov. Kemp laid the decision at the feet of Biden, saying that it was “the direct result of repeated lies from Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams about a bill that expands access to the ballot box and ensures the integrity of our elections.”

Abrams, a Democratic activist and former gubernatorial candidate who led the opposition to the law, released her own statement praising the league and its players “for speaking out.” At the same time though, she added that she was “disappointed” that the MLB is relocating the game due to its economic impact. She wasn’t the only Democrat to do so.

Newly elected Sen. Jon Ossoff broke with Biden, telling National Review, “I absolutely oppose and reject any notion of boycotting Georgia. Georgia welcomes business, investment, jobs, opportunity, and events.”

The solution, he said, was to “stop any financial support to Georgia’s Republican Party, which is abusing its power to make it harder for Americans to vote.”

Republicans reacted at the national level by condemning the move, and South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan even announced he was drafting legislation to strip MLB of its federal antitrust exemption. And while that is a doomed effort so long as Democrats control the House, it was indicative of a shift on the normally corporate-friendly right.

RELATED: Newt Gingrich Slams ‘Disgraceful’ Big Corporations For Attacking GA Election Law – Shows How ‘Corrupt’ They’ve Become

The Georgia House of Representatives threatened to pull Delta’s tax cuts on jet fuel, the Texas GOP is reportedly mulling a similar response to corporate criticism, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threw a brush-back pitch at the business community. He argued in a statement that corporations were acting like a “woke alternative government” with their boycotts.

If that continued, McConnell warned, their actions would “invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from the constitutional order.”

At a moment when Republicans are fighting to keep the White House and Democrats in Congress from increasing the corporate tax rate, McConnell likened the threatened boycotts to “economic blackmail.”

Psaki responded to that statement Monday by saying, “We’ve not asked corporations to take specific actions. That’s not our focus here.” And without going into details Tuesday, she declined to comment on MLB moving the All-Star Game to Colorado even though that state has laws similar to Georgia’s, other than to say “the Georgia legislation is built on a lie. There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.”

The White House has not backed down from Biden’s false claim that the Georgia law limits voting hours. But the president appeared to moderate his tone and acknowledge the economic harm that boycotts cause to local communities.

When asked about a different sport in the same state, the president demurred. And if he was a cheerleader who was “very supportive” of MLB’s decision to can the Georgia All-Star Game, he was more libertarian this week when it came to golf.

Should the Masters tournament relocate? “I think that is up to the Masters,” Biden said after remarks about the pandemic in the State Dining room at the White House. Talking sports this time, he was more cerebral, weighing the pros and cons of boycotts.

“Look, you know, it is reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are,” he said.

“The other side to it too is: When they, in fact, move out of Georgia, the people who need the help the most — people who are making hourly wages — sometimes get hurt the most.

“I think it’s a very tough decision for a corporation to make or a group to make, but I respect it when they make that judgment, and I support whatever judgment they make,” he started to conclude, before adding that “the best way to deal with this is for Georgia and other states to smarten up.  Stop it.  Stop it.  It’s about getting people to vote.”

Before Biden spoke to reporters, State Department spokesman Ned Price announced that the U.S. is considering a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in 2022.

The president had previously said that his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, didn’t have “a Democratic bone in his body,” and Price told reporters that a boycott “is something that we certainly wish to discuss.”

State then appeared to quickly flip-flop. A senior department official, speaking anonymously, told CNBC in that “our position on the 2022 Olympics has not changed. We have not discussed and are not discussing any joint boycott with allies and partners.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post Biden And The All-Star Game: A Presidential Wild Pitch? appeared first on The Political Insider.

Rep. Alcee Hastings dies at 84

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Rep. Alcee Hastings died Tuesday morning, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. Hastings, 84, had reportedly been in hospice recently after a 2019 diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. First elected to the House in 1992—one of three Black House members elected that year, a first since the end of Reconstruction—Hastings was at the time of his death the longest-serving member of the Florida congressional delegation. 

Just three years and two weeks before he was elected to Congress, Hastings—then a federal judge—was impeached, convicted, and removed from office relating to criminal charges of which he had been found not guilty by a jury in 1983. He was just the sixth federal judge ever removed from office by the Senate, a decade after having become Florida’s first Black federal judge. Being elected to Congress, then, was a significant form of redemption, even if his impeachment continued to shape his career, leading him to be passed over for chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections.

Retired public defender Howard Finkelstein saw those criminal charges as retaliation for Hastings’ outspokenness. “In the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, the government only—only—only went after Black men that ascended to power,” Finkelstein told the Sun-Sentinel. “That is what they did, and they came after Alcee—all the king’s horses and all the king’s men—with everything they had to destroy this man.”

Before he was a federal judge, Alcee Hastings was a civil rights lawyer, one who moved to Broward County, Florida, in the early 1960s, when motels refused to rent him a room and the lawsuits he filed included one against a restaurant that was popular with judges and lawyers even as it would not serve Black customers. He was then appointed a Broward Circuit Court judge in 1977.

In Congress, the Sun-Sentinel recounts, Hastings “didn’t have a long list of marquee legislative achievements. He exercised influence internally, serving on the Rules Committee, a critical panel through which the majority party controls the flow of business on the House floor.” He chaired the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission.

The child of domestic workers, Hastings attended a segregated high school, then received his B.A. at Fisk University and his J.D. at Florida A&M. He is survived by his wife, Patricia Williams, three adult children from previous marriages, and a stepdaughter.

Hastings’ successor will be chosen in a special election, the timing of which will be decided by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“He feared no man. He feared no institution. He was not shy about voicing his dissent about any issue,” Rep. Frederica Wilson told The Hill of Hastings. 

Alcee Hastings, longtime U.S. congressman, dies at 84; entered Congress after impeachment as judge

Posted on by Matt Sedensky, Terry Spencer

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Rep. Alcee Hastings, the fiercely liberal longtime Florida congressman who was dogged throughout his tenure by an impeachment that ended his fast-rising judicial career, died Tuesday. He was 84.

Hastings' death was confirmed by his chief of staff, Lale M. Morrison. Hastings, a Democrat, announced ...

Posted in Uncategorized

Morning Digest: GOP field slowly develops for 2022 race to break Dems’ single-party hold on Nevada

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● NV-Gov, NV-Sen: The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Rory Appleton takes a deep look at the developing Republican fields to take on the two leading Nevada Democrats up in this swing state in 2022, Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. Republicans seem to agree that former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who was Team Red’s 2018 nominee for governor, would have little trouble winning the Senate primary should he run, but the gubernatorial field appears to be wide open.

Sisolak, though, may have more immediate worries. Appleton reports that Clark County Commission Chair Marilyn Kirkpatrick is considering challenging the governor in the primary, though she has yet to confirm her interest. There’s no word on why Kirkpatrick might want to unseat a member of her own party, though Appleton says she’s come into conflict with the governor before.

No matter what, though, Democrats will need to prepare for a tough general election as they seek to hold the governor’s office. Until now, the only notable Republican who had publicly talked about running was Rep. Mark Amodei, who reaffirmed his interest this month. Appleton also says that former Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who share a consultant, are considering; neither man has said anything publicly, though Amodei relays that he’s spoken to him about this contest recently.

Campaign Action

While things are unsettled now, there may be a Republican frontrunner before too long. Appleton writes, “The belief in Republican political circles is the potential candidates will come to an agreement in the next month and not compete against one another in a primary.”

Other Republicans, though, may decide to run no matter what any member of this trio does. Appleton notes that casino owner Derek Stevens, whom he describes as a “newcomer,” is thinking about getting in.

A few other Silver State politicos may also take their chances. North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, who previously served in the state Senate as a conservative Democrat, acknowledged he’s been “approached by different people in both parties” about switching to the GOP and running for governor. Lee didn’t rule the idea out, saying, “I’m flattered, but at this point, I’m still focused on some big projects in North Las Vegas, and I don’t want to be distracted.”

GOP state Sens. Ben Kieckhefer and Heidi Gansert, whom Appleton characterizes as “wildcards,” also could run either against Sisolak or Cortez Masto. Kieckhefer said he was “still thinking about what a race for governor looks like” and “has had a few conversations about the Senate.” Kieckhefer, who portrayed himself as a moderate focused on “consensus building and problem solving in a bipartisan way,” said he hoped to make up his mind in June.

Gansert, for her part, was more evasive, but she did not reject the idea of a statewide campaign. Gansert, who is a former chief of staff to former Gov. Brian Sandoval, said, “I certainly see the growing frustration over the lack of checks and balances and the one-party rule in our government, but I have a lot to get done in the legislature.”

There are two big GOP names from yesteryear, though, who probably won’t run for anything in 2022. Appleton name-drops former Sen. Dean Heller as a possible gubernatorial candidate, though he writes that Amodei and most Republican operatives doubt he’ll campaign for anything this cycle “unless the waters change.”

Appleton also reports that, while both sides are watching to see if Sandoval will run for the Senate, few expect him to. Republicans tried hard to recruit him to run here six years ago, but he never seemed particularly interested in joining Congress. Sandoval is currently serving as president of the University of Nevada, Reno, and a spokesperson says that he “would prefer to keep his time and attention focused on that role.” Sandoval, who was a relative moderate during his time in office, could also be deterred from running by the threat of a difficult GOP primary against a possible conservative alternative.

1Q Fundraising

● CA-Sen: Alex Padilla (D-inc): $2.6 million raised

● NC-Sen: Jeff Jackson (D) $1.3 million raised

● OH-Sen: Jane Timken (R): $2.1 million raised

● PA-Sen: Chrissy Houlahan (D): $580,000 raised, $3.5 million cash-on-hand (has not announced a bid); Jeff Bartos (R): $1.2 million raised

● CO-03: Lauren Boebert (R-inc): $700,000 raised

● MI-03: Peter Meijer (R-inc): $500,000 raised

● NC-11: Jasmine Beach-Ferrara (D): $380,000 raised (in one month)

● OH-11: Nina Turner (D): $1.55 million raised; Shontel Brown (D): $640,000 raised, $550,000 cash-on-hand

● OH-16: Max Miller (R): $500,000 raised

Senate

● AK-Sen: Republican Kelly Tshibaka has released a new poll from Cygnal that shows her leading Sen. Lisa Murkowski 34-19 in a hypothetical all-party primary with three other undeclared candidates to argue that the incumbent is in a "weak" position, but it doesn't address Alaska's new instant runoff for general elections. Under this system, the top four vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance from the primary, then compete via ranked-choice voting in November. Without simulating a potential runoff, it's impossible to know any candidate's true strength.

● CA-Sen: Rep. Ro Khanna isn't ruling out a challenge next year to fellow Democrat Alex Padilla, whose appointment in January to succeed Kamala Harris made him the first Latino senator in California history. In new remarks to Politico, the Bay Area congressman said he's "keeping [his] options open" regarding a potential Senate bid.

● PA-Sen: Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh kicked off a bid for the Senate on Monday, making her the third notable Democrat to enter the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Arkoosh, a physician, unsuccessfully ran for the House in 2014 for what was then numbered the 13th District, finishing last in a four-way primary with 15% of the vote. (The nomination was won by Brendan Boyle, who now represents the redrawn and renumbered 2nd District.) The following year, though, Arkoosh was tapped to fill a vacancy on the commission in Montgomery County, a large suburban county just outside of Philadelphia, and won election in her own right that fall. In 2016, her fellow commissioners selected her as the board's first woman chair, and she easily won a second term in 2019.

If Arkoosh were to prevail in next year's race, she'd also be the first woman to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate. First, though, she'll have to get past a primary that already features Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, with more poised to join.

● UT-Sen: The Salt Lake Tribune's Bryan Schott runs down a whole host of possible primary challengers to Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who is largely drawing heat from those dismayed by his wholehearted embrace of Trumpism. In any other state, that would be unimaginable, but a sizable contingent of Mormon voters remain nonplussed with the GOP's direction over the last half-decade—enough, at least, to spur chatter about trying to take down Lee.

The roster of potential candidates includes former state Rep. Becky Edwards, whom we'd previously identified as running based on her statement that she was "all in"; Schott, however, says that she's "all in" on exploring a bid, which is really not a helpful use of the term. There's also businesswoman Ally Isom, who was previously reported to be interested but has now confirmed she's looking at the race. Isom quit the GOP in 2016 over Trump but re-registered as a Republican last year; like Edwards, she encouraged Mormon women to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.

Meanwhile, real estate executive Thomas Wright, who ended up last with just 8% in last year's four-way Republican primary for governor, didn't rule out a bid, saying that "there continues to be a desire to serve." However, the third-place finisher in that race, former state House Speaker Greg Hughes, flat-out said he wouldn't run and would back Lee for re-election.

Schott adds that there have been "persistent rumblings" that Tim Ballard, the head of a nonprofit that combats child trafficking, could run, but there's no word on his interest. As for former CIA officer Evan McMullin, who took 22% in Utah running as a conservative independent in 2016's presidential race, Schott says any hope he might enter is "probably more wishful thinking than reality at this point."

Governors

● TX-Gov: Former Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke pointedly did not rule out a bid for governor in new remarks on Friday, saying only, "I've got no plans to run." After lots of folks (who aren't wicked smart Digest readers like you) misinterpreted this statement to conclude that O'Rourke had closed the door on a challenge to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott next year (he hadn't), his team released a further statement to clarify. "I'm not currently considering a run for office," said O'Rourke. "I'm focused on what I'm doing now (teaching and organizing.) Nothing's changed and nothing I said would preclude me from considering a run in the future."

In November of 2018, O'Rourke said, "I will not be a candidate for president in 2020. That's I think as definitive as those sentences get." O'Rourke launched a bid for president in March of 2019.

● VA-Gov: Former Democratic state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy's campaign for governor just received a $500,000 infusion from a political advocacy organization thanks to state laws that place no caps on political giving. The PAC that made the donation, Clean Virginia, was created by a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive named Michael Bills in an effort to oppose Dominion Energy, which the Virginia Mercury's Graham Moomaw describes as "the state-regulated utility many progressives see as exerting undue control" over state lawmakers.

Moomaw also notes that Clean Virginia had previously given $100,000 each to Foy and another rival in the June 8 Democratic primary, state Sen. Jennifer McClellan. It does not appear that the group gave a comparable donation to McClellan this time.

Meanwhile, in an aside buried deep in a long profile piece, the New York Times indicates that former Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman is still thinking about a bid. Riggleman, who lost renomination at a party convention last year and has since become a vocal critic of of Trump-fueled disinformation, has until June 8—the same day as the state's primaries—to file as an independent.

House

● KS-03: Former state GOP chair Amanda Adkins, who'd reportedly been prepping for a rematch with Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, kicked off a second bid for Kansas' 3rd Congressional District on Monday. Davids beat Adkins by a convincing 54-44 margin last year, as the district, based in the Kansas City area, moved sharply to the left, going for Joe Biden by the same spread—just eight years after backing Mitt Romney by precisely that margin.

However, last year, then-state Senate President Susan Wagle specifically exhorted supporters to preserve the GOP's supermajorities in the legislature to ensure Republicans could draw a new congressional map that "takes out Sharice Davids up in the 3rd." Republicans were in fact successful keeping their two-thirds majorities while also purging some of the moderates in their caucus in last year's primaries, meaning they'd likely be able to override a veto of any new districts by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

● LA-02: A newly created PAC named Progress for the People has begun what The Advocate's Tyler Bridges describes as a "six-figure ad buy" against state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson ahead of the April 24 all-Democratic runoff. This appears to be the first negative TV spot of the runoff, though Peterson's opponent, fellow state Sen. Troy Carter, went up with a spot directed against her just ahead of last month's all-party primary.

The PAC's commercial declares that Peterson accepted her taxpayer funded salary even though she "missed 85% of her votes in the legislature last year," including on "COVID guidelines, voting rights, [and] gun safety." Peterson said at the time that she didn't feel safe going to the Capitol in the early months of the pandemic, and she put out a statement this month blaming the legislature's GOP leaders for rejecting her call "for a mask mandate and social distancing to protect the hardworking staff at the Capitol."

● MA-09: Peter Lucas of the conservative Boston Herald relays that some unnamed observers believe that Republican Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito could challenge Democratic Rep. Bill Keating. Polito and Gov. Charlie Baker are up for a third term in 2022, and there's been plenty of speculation that Polito could run to succeed her boss should Baker retire.

Polito has said nothing about a potential bid for Congress, though she and her husband notably purchased a $1.8 million second home last month that's located in Keating's district. Polito, however, has continued to raise cash for her state campaign account, which is money she could not use on a federal campaign

Keating's constituency, which includes the South Shore region near Boston and stretches east to Cape Cod, is the most conservative of Massachusetts' nine congressional districts, though GOP presidential candidates have still struggled here. Joe Biden won 58-40 here last year, which was an improvement from Hillary Clinton's 52-41 victory in 2016. Legislative Democrats also have more than enough members to pass a new congressional map over Baker's veto, so it's unlikely this turf would dramatically change.

● MI-06: Freshman state Rep. Steve Carra, who late last month posted on social media that "[i]t's time to replace Fred Upton with a proven conservative," says he's kicking off a campaign on Tuesday. He's by no means the only Republican elected official gunning for Upton over his vote to impeach Donald Trump, though: Berrien County Commissioner Ezra Scott, who expressed interest in a primary challenge in January, has now filed paperwork with the FEC, though he hasn't launched a bid yet.

● NY-23: Several more Republicans are talking about bids to succeed GOP Rep. Tom Reed, who recently announced his retirement after a lobbyist accused him of sexual misconduct. The newest names are Steuben County Republican Party Chairman Joe Sempolinski and businessman Matthew Burr, who both say they're considering the race. In addition, Chemung County Executive Chris Moss reiterated that he's looking at the contest, but added that he wants to wait to see how redistricting unfolds. Moss said that for now, he plans to seek re-election to his current post next year.

● OH-12, OH-Sen, OH-Gov: Turns out it's door number three for Franklin County Recorder Danny O'Connor: The central Ohio Democrat, who'd previously been considering bids for Senate or statewide executive office, will instead wage another campaign for the House. O'Connor narrowly lost two competitive races for the 12th Congressional District to Republican Troy Balderson in 2018—a special election and then, not long after, the November general election—though redistricting could pit him against someone else.

It doesn't sound, however, as though he'd challenge Rep. Joyce Beatty, a fellow Columbus-area Democrat whom he called "a champion for working families" and suggested was someone (along with Sen. Sherrod Brown) he'd want to emulate in Congress. O'Connor could, though, wind up facing off against Balderson's 2020 opponent, businesswoman Alaina Shearer, who said last month that she's running again but plans to re-evaluate once a new map is in place.

● TN-05: On Monday, community activist Odessa Kelly launched a primary challenge against longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper, a member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition who survived a primary last year by an underwhelming 57-40 margin. Kelly charged Cooper with failing to do enough for the city of Nashville, where Tennessee's 5th District is based, during his "decades in Congress," and identified Medicare for All and the Green New Deal as her top priorities.

If elected, Kelly would be the first Black woman to serve in the House from the Volunteer State and also the first openly gay Black woman in Congress. (It was only after she died in 1996 that news accounts identified legendary Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan as a lesbian; she never discussed her sexuality during her lifetime.) However, Tennessee Republicans could chop up Nashville in the coming round of redistricting, dividing it between the dark red surrounding districts to create another safe seat for the GOP.

● TX-06: Former Trump official Sery Kim unleashed a racist anti-Chinese rant at a candidate forum in Texas' 6th Congressional District last week, prompting two Asian American Republicans in Congress to withdraw their endorsements.

In her opening remarks, Kim launched into a conspiracy theory about the COVID-19 pandemic, baselessly claiming, "We were lied to for the last one year and two months and stayed at home because China created coronavirus in a Wuhan lab." Later, when answering a question about immigration, Kim said of Chinese immigrants, "I don't want them here at all. They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they don't hold themselves accountable." She added, "And quite frankly, I can say that because I'm Korean."

California Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel, who were the first Korean American Republican women to win seats in Congress with their victories last year, took sharp exception to Sery Kim's remarks. Saying that she'd refused their demands that she apologize, the two congresswomen said, "We cannot in good conscience continue to support her candidacy." Kim responded by claiming that "the liberal media is targeting me" and filing a lawsuit seeking $10 million in damages against the Texas Tribune for calling her statements "racist."

On an entirely unrelated note, Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez has launched her first TV ad ahead of the May all-party primary, which the Tribune's Patrick Svitek says is backed by a "six-figure buy on cable and satellite." The spot features some basic biographical details (she "put herself through college and started a business from scratch"), then bashes "Washington politicians like Ted Cruz" for opposing $1,400 relief checks. Displaying a photo of Cruz lugging his suitcase through an airport during his notorious trip to Mexico amid Texas' devastating ice storm last month, Sanchez adds, "They even abandoned us when the lights went out."

● WA-04: Businessman and Navy veteran Jerrod Sessler is the latest Republican to launch a challenge to GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump. He also describes himself as a "former NASCAR driver," but his competitive involvement was limited to local competitions that could be considered the equivalent of baseball's minor leagues, and his name does not come up when searching the auto sports database Racing-Reference.

Legislatures

● Special Elections: Tuesday brings a packed slate of five special elections across four states:

CA-AD-79: This Democratic district in the eastern San Diego suburbs became vacant when former Assemblywoman Shirley Weber was appointed as California’s secretary of state in January. There are five candidates seeking this seat and if no one takes a majority Tuesday, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held on June 8.

Four of the candidates vying to replace Weber are Democrats: La Mesa City Council member Akilah Weber (who is a daughter of the former Assemblywoman), organizer Leticia Munguia, criminal justice reform advocate Aeiramique Glass Blake, and middle school teacher Shane Parmely. Businessman Marco Contreras is the lone Republican in the running.

The is a solidly blue seat that backed Hillary Clinton 64-30 in 2016 and is one of two vacancies in this chamber, which Democrats control 58-19 (with one independent member).

MO-HD-54: This Democratic seat in the Columbia area became vacant when former Rep. Kip Kendrick resigned to become chief of staff for state Sen. Greg Razer. No Republican opted to run for this solidly Democratic seat that supported Clinton 60-32, so attorney David Smith will represent Team Blue against Libertarian Glenn Nielsen. According to Columbia Daily Tribune, Smith would be the first Black Missouri legislator elected from outside of Kansas City or St. Louis.

Republicans control this chamber 114-48 with just this seat vacant.

OK-SD-22: This seat located northwest of Oklahoma City became vacant after former Sen. Stephanie Bice was elected to the U.S. House last year. Speech pathologist Molly Ooten is the Democratic candidate taking on businessman Jake Merrick, a Republican. Merrick ran in the GOP primary for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District last year, a race Bice won, and took 3%.  

This is a strongly Republican district that backed Donald Trump 68-25 in 2016. Republicans control this chamber 38-9 with just this seat vacant.

WI-SD-13: This Republican district in central Wisconsin, which takes in a slice of Madison’s suburbs, became vacant when former Sen. Scott Fitzgerald was elected to the U.S. House last year. The Democratic candidate is teacher Melissa Winker who is taking on Republican state Assemblyman John Jagler. Two candidates from obscure minor parties are also in the race: Businessman Ben Schmitz from the American Solidarity Party and chauffeur Spencer Zimmerman from the Trump Conservative Party.  

This is a solidly red district that supported Trump 58-37 in 2016. Republicans control this chamber 20-12 with just this seat vacant.

WI-AD-89: This Republican district north of Green Bay became vacant when former Assemblyman John Nygren resigned last year. Democratic Marinette County Supervisor Karl Jaeger is facing businessman Elijah Behnke, a Republican. Jaeger ran for this seat last year, losing to Nygren by a 69-31 spread.  

This is a strongly Republican seat that backed Trump 63-32 in 2016. Republicans hold this chamber 60-38 with just this seat vacant.

Mayors

● Boston, MA Mayor: State Rep. Jon Santiago earned an endorsement on Friday from the Laborers Local 223, a high-profile construction union that was led by Marty Walsh until he was elected mayor in 2013. The group is now run by Walsh's cousin, who also happens to be named Marty Walsh; the Boston Herald's Sean Philip Cotter tweets that the current union head is identified as "Big Marty" to distinguish him from his famous relative and the many other Marty Walshes in Boston politics.

P.S.: Marty Walsh, as in the former mayor turned U.S. secretary of labor, said last month that he would not be endorsing in this year's mayoral race.

● New York City, NY Mayor: Politico reports that a PAC named New Start NYC has reserved $2.74 million on TV ads through early May in support of Shaun Donovan, a former director of the Obama-era Office of Management and Budget, ahead of the June Democratic primary. The group has received $1 million from the candidate's father, tech executive Michael Donovan.

Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

Posted on by Bill in Portland Maine

Welcome

In the previous POTUS’s naturalization video, he barked out a message about “loyalty” and “assimilation” to new American citizens before heading up to his bedroom for an afternoon of rage-tweeting against immigrants. I like the new guy’s message better:

YouTube Video

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Free advice, newcomers: avoid Republicans. They’re having...issues.

Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Note: Today is C&J's annual Random Religious Objection Day. How it works is, you each get to draw one random religious objection from the God Jar and adhere to it all day long.  It’s fun!  I'll go first.  [Draws from God Jar]  It says your carbon dioxide exhalation goes against my sincerely-held religious beliefs.  See you in court, breathers!

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By the Numbers:

16 days!!!

Days 'til Earth Day: 16

Percent of Americans polled by AP who approve of President Biden’s job performance: 61%

Minimum number of America’s largest corporations, including FedEx and Nike, that paid no federal taxes last year despite billions of dollars in profits, according to The New York Times: 55

Years since Holland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage: 20

Number of countries where same-sex marriage is now legal: 28

Estimated number of Maine children who will be lifted out of poverty, thanks to the Democrats' American Rescue Plan: 15,000

Amount Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised in two days during her latest recess—her biggest 48-hour haul ever: $6 million

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Meanwhile, the other puppies are in the kitchen drinkin’ all the beer…

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CHEERS to jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs. The hills are aliiiiive...with the sound of paychecks! Yes, folks. Though we've still got a ways to go, the Biden recovery rolls on and last week brought more good news. The latest weekly jobless-claims report says first-time unemployment claims are at their lowest month-to-month level since March of 2020, and the previous week's report was revised down by 26,000. Then there's Friday's monthly employment report: a whopping 916,000 jobs created in March and the unemployment rate is at a 13-month low of 6 percent:

The hiring and employment data, released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, firmly beat economists' predictions of 675,000 positions added. Totals were revised upward for January by 67,000 to 233,000 positions and for February by 89,000 to 468,000.

Wow—even the Bureau of Labor Statistics logo is rebounding.

Sectors critical to economic recovery saw some of the biggest gains: The construction sector added 110,000 jobs, leisure and hospitality posted 280,000 new positions, and bars and restaurants added another 176,000.

The most vulnerable area of employment as of this writing: the Matt Gaetz sector.

JEERS to one big hot mess. Did you hear about this? It's just about the worst thing imaginable. There's a steady leak of toxic sludge pouring through a gaping hole down in Florida—awful radioactive stuff that, if allowed to go unchecked, will turn into an out-of-control gusher that could make the state's already perilous threats (pandemic, rising sea levels, golf cart wars at The Villages) look tame by comparison. Engineers are trying to figure out how to stop the flow of slimy ooze, but the only surefire course of action, of course, is to remove it entirely and dispose of it so that it can never threaten the state like that again. But enough about Governor Ron DeSantis's mouth. Have you heard about the toxic phosphogypsum pond that's about to burst?

CHEERS to little reminders.  Forty-one years ago today, Post-It Notes were introduced by 3M.  The road to market was a textbook case of serendipity.  Little-known fact: A Post-It Note will play a central role in archiving our 45th president’s accomplishments at the Donald J. Trump Presidential Grift Shop:

Took Oath. Broke Stuff.

Got impeached twice. Lost. Pouted.

Died. Buried along with his name. Nobody came.

Meanwhile 83 years ago, in 1938, Roy Plunkett invented Teflon.  It has saved many a meal...and many a presidency.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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Galaxy Rise narrated by Carl Sagan. pic.twitter.com/snxfz44t2S

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) March 29, 2021

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to great moments in synthetics.  On April 6, 1869, the first form of plastic—celluloid—was patented. 152 years later, the talking heads at Fox News swear by it for their almost-lifelike appearance. Memo to Sean Hannity: time to order another case—you're sagging again.

CHEERS to following the bouncing balls. Now that the final shots have been made into the—to use Ted Cruz's term—basketball ring, we can now announce the victors in 2021's NCAA greedy money grab posing as wholesome college basketball tournaments. The men's championship belongs to Baylor, and the women of Stanford showed Arizona the business end of a slam dunk...by one point.

Show-off.

And now that this year's March Madness is all over (in April, yes, thank you, we're aware of that), it's time to take the final step: you must now pour your shredded brackets into a bowl and eat them.  [Munch Munch Munch…gulp.]  We'll speak no more of it.

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Ten years ago in C&J: April 6, 2011

JEERS to number crunching…and squishing and squashing and making up altogether. The Republicans unveiled their latest budget yesterday.  The cocktail-napkin formula: destruction of social safety net + extraction of America's soul + screw the least among us + bestow gold and jewels on the richest among us – regulation x barely-concealed sadism = a rainbow in every back yard and a unicorn in every garage. But only if you squint hard enough and chew enough peyote.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to 13 years in the winner's circle. It's a well-established fact that C&J's "Who won the week" poll, introduced this week in 2008, is considered America's 500-pound gorilla of weekly polls. Every Friday we pluck a gaggle of worthy candidates from the previous seven-day news cycle and affix them to their place of honor on the front page. The candidate who gets the most votes wins. Period. No electoral college here—fuck that.

I can't remember what inspired me to create the first one, but today it's a feel-good feature that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with such time-honored American traditions as stickball, setting pies on window sills to cool, and following Republican shitbags with competent and popular Democratic presidents. As we leave behind the first quarter of 2021, let's take a moment to review the winners from January through March, which is also a good time to review the slate of accomplishments our 46th president and the first woman vice president have achieved in the wake of an insurrection during a killer pandemic and in spite of unified opposition:

Jan 8  "All of the above" related to the people who thwarted the attempted Republican coup and the Democrats taking control of the Senate.

Jan 15  U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, for steering a Republican mob away from the Senate chamber door during the insurrection, buying time and saving lives

Jan 22  All of the above, related to the Biden-Harris inauguration

Jan 29  President Biden: signs massive orders on climate, covid, criminal justice; reverses trans military ban; 56% approval; announces re-opening of Obamacare marketplace; and the dogs have arrived!

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Each Daily Kos WWTW poll winner gets a free fat-melting belt massager. True fact: President Barack Obama has 84 of them. Pope Francis, believe it or not, has six.

Feb 5  Team Biden-Harris: Firing Trump's embedded cronies in droves; honors memory of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick at Capitol; frees up billions in Puerto Rico aid; and covid response is full steam ahead

Feb 12  The impeachment managers—Reps. Raskin, DeGette, Cicilline, Castro, Swalwell, Lieu, Dean, Plaskett, and Neguse—and their staffs for their devastating January 6 timeline of Trump's insurrection

Feb 19  The glorious nerds at NASA, successfully landing the Perseverance rover near the Jezero Crater on Mars

Feb 26  New York prosecutors, as the Supreme Court deals a catastrophic loss to Donald Trump by green-lighting the handover of his tax returns

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Mar 5  Team Biden-Harris: speeds up vaccine avail goal by 2 months; invokes war Powers Act to forge Merck/Johnson & Johnson vaccine production alliance; supports Amazon union organizers; approval honeymoon continues in mid-50s

Mar 12  Team Biden-Harris: signs order to expand voter access and election information; 100 million vaccine pledge ahead of schedule; 1st address to nation is a hit; and signs Rescue Plan Act into law

Mar 19  Team Biden-Harris: barnstorms for Rescue Plan Act; now favors talking filibuster; 60%-plus approval; completes 100-million shots in only 58 days; nominates 3 for USPS Board (pack your bags, Louis DeJoy)

Mar 26  Team Biden-Harris: vaccine program kicking butt; aces 1st press conference; extends open-ACA enrollment through August; lowest jobless claims since pandemic began; and the dogs are back!

Biden is certainly coming out of the gate hot, but he's got a ways to go to beat the all-time champ. "Senator" Barack Obama won our first poll in 2008, and by the time he left office as president he'd won 84 polls voted on by the Daily Kos community, making him indisputably first in the hearts of our countrymen. Sorry, George Washington, nothing personal—we're just not into your "uniformity in weights and measures" shtick anymore.

Have a winning Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial

"There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Bill in Portland Maine.”

—John Boehner

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Trumpworld has no lifelines it wants to throw Matt Gaetz

Posted on by By Gabby Orr, Meridith McGraw and Sam Stein

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) built a public profile as an unapologetic, unambiguous, omnipresent booster of President Donald Trump.

But as his own political career skids toward disaster amid allegations that he had sex with a minor and paid for sex with women of legal age, neither Trump nor anyone in the ex-president’s orbit is rushing to Gaetz’s defense. A group that often instinctively decries any such charge as part of some nefarious, coordinated witch hunt from deep-state operators has, instead, said virtually nothing at all.

“Not a lot of people are surprised,” said one person involved in Trump’s post-presidential operations.

In the days since news broke that the Department of Justice was looking into whether Gaetz had violated sex trafficking laws — an allegation he denies — no Trump aide or family member has tweeted about the Florida congressman. Nor have almost any of the most prominent Trump surrogates or Trump-allied conservatives and media personalities, including Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk or American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp, at whose annual CPAC conference Gaetz had recently appeared.

The Daily Beast reported on Friday night that Trump himself was monitoring the situation but following the advice of aides to stay quiet about it. And several people familiar with their relationship said Gaetz and Trump have not spoken regularly lately, even after the lawmaker had offered to resign from Congress to join the ex-president’s impeachment defense team in February.

Operatives inside Trump World say the silence is owed to a variety of factors. Among them is the fact that Gaetz has always been regarded as a grenade whose pin had already been pulled. The congressman had a reputation for a wild personal lifestyle that, associates say, occasionally bordered on reckless. Some of Gaetz’s own aides would regularly send embarrassing videos of their boss to other GOP operatives, according to two people familiar with the videos.

“Anyone that has ever spent 10 minutes with the guy would realize he’s an unserious person,” said one former Trump campaign aide.

Neither Gaetz nor his office returned a request for comment.

As Gaetz has defended himself from the charges — with a TV appearance that left Fox News host Tucker Carlson stunned, and statements that denied the underlying charge but conceded that he was “generous as a partner” — that perception has only grown firmer.

"The reason you haven't seen people in MAGA world defending Gaetz is less about him being unpopular, which he is in a lot of circles, and more about the fact that he hasn't done a single thing to make people comfortable to defend him. His interview with Tucker was an absolutely embarrassing train wreck," said one Trump confidant.

Gaetz does have friendly ties to some of the former president’s biggest media champions and Mar-a-Lago members. The Florida congressman proposed to his fiancée, Ginger Luckey, during a New Year's Eve celebration at the Palm Beach club last December that included a lengthy guest list of MAGA celebrities and GOP donors.

“Congressman @MattGaetz asked and Ginger said ‘yes,’” Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, one of the network’s leading pro-Trump commentators, wrote in a tweet announcing Gaetz’s engagement at the time.

But the congressman does not enjoy particularly strong relationships among the core Trump crew. Some Trump confidants regarded him as a leaker during Trump’s presidency who was as eager to use his association with the 45th president to lift his own career as he was to help Trump’s.

His self-promotion produced eye-rolls at times, including how he managed to get positioned as a protagonist in an HBO documentary on D.C. during the Trump era. And he irritated others by constantly attacking his own colleagues inside the House GOP conference. In late January, for instance, Gaetz organized a rally outside the Wyoming State Capitol where he encouraged voters to dump Rep. Liz Cheney, one of 10 House Republicans who had voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting an insurrection.

Of the half-dozen lawmakers who rushed to put out a statement in support of Rep. Jim Jordan when it was reported that the Ohio Republican covered up sexual abuse allegations on the Ohio State University wrestling team, none have defended Gaetz. But Jordan has. And so has Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), whose dabbling in conspiracy theories cost her committee assignments earlier this year.

In an op-ed published Monday, a defiant Gaetz said he would not resign from Congress and compared his own predicament to allegations made against Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose Senate confirmation battle descended into chaos after he was accused of sexually assaulting a former high school acquaintance. In a precisely worded statement, Gaetz denied ever paying for sex or having sex with an underage woman.

“My lifestyle of yesteryear may be different from how I live now, but it was not and is not illegal,” Gaetz wrote.

But Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has called the allegations “serious” and said if they proved to have merit, Gaetz would be stripped of his assignments on the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees. And even former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned her California seat in late 2019 after becoming the target of revenge porn, said she would not stand by her friend from Congress after he once came to her defense. Gaetz, according to reports, had shown nude photos of women to colleagues of his while on the House floor.

“If true, Matt had engaged in the very practice he’d defended me from,” Hill wrote in Vanity Fair. “Sharing intimate images or videos of someone without their consent should be illegal, plain and simple.”

The congressman’s strenuous denials have been accompanied by an odd series of claims that his father became the victim of an extortion plot involving a former Justice Department official earlier this year. In his March 30 appearance on Carlson’s primetime show, Gaetz said his father, former Florida Senate president Don Gaetz, had worn a wire during a meeting with one of the individuals involved in the alleged extortion plot. The Florida Republican also said the FBI was investigating the situation.

“If you just saw our Matt Gaetz interview, that was one of the weirdest interviews I have ever conducted,” Carlson told viewers afterward.

Gaetz has not appeared on Fox News since.

Posted in Uncategorized