2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[elengil]

Hey, gotta keep that impoverished workforce manned somehow.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Crime, boy I don't know."



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Also in Georgia: a few days ago, former Senator David Perdue (who lost his seat to Jon Ossoff on January 5, 2021) said this about his attempt this week to unseat Georgia's current governor, Brian Kemp: "Hell no, I'm not down 30 points. We may not win Tuesday, but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points."

He was right!

Kemp beat him for the Republican nomination today by 50 points.

[Eldy]

He was right!

Kemp beat him for the Republican nomination today by 50 points.

In additional Georgia news, not only Kemp, but also Carr and Raffensperger also won their primaries.

Brad Raffensperger defeats Trump bid to oust him as Georgia’s top election official - The Guardian

Brad Raffensperger defeated congressman Jody Hice on Tuesday in a closely watched Republican primary for Georgia secretary of state, a significant victory for a politician who has been scorned by his own party for refusing Donald Trump’s request to overturn the 2020 election.

In a surprise, Raffensperger avoided a runoff and won an outright victory over Hice, receiving more than 50% of the vote, according to the election monitoring website Decision Desk HQ. The race was called by the Associated Press and other outlets late on Tuesday night.

Raffensperger’s victory is the biggest rebuke so far to Trump in this election season. There have been few other Republicans who have attracted the former president’s wrath for refusing to overturn the election result. Two other Republicans, Georgia governor Brian Kemp and attorney general Chris Carr easily fended off Trump-backed challengers Tuesday evening.

There was a record turnout going into election day, and the Republican primary for secretary of state – long an overlooked office – was seen as perhaps the most important test of Donald Trump’s efforts to install allies who have questioned the election results in roles in which they would wield considerable power over election rules. Trump’s preferred candidates have already won GOP nominations in Michigan and Pennsylvania, also critical battleground states, elevating concerns that officials could reject valid election results in 2024 and beyond.

I can't quite string together the words to say I'm glad Carr won, but despite him jumping on the anti-trans bandwagon, I think it's good for the future stability of American democracy to not have election conspiracy theorists winning statewide offices, or even primaries.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Also, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s opposition to all three incumbents (Kemp, Carr and Raffensberger) will siphon off enough votes in a closely divided Georgia electorate to allow the Democrats to squeeze out victories.

[N.E. Brigand]

Deja vu. Crime, boy I don't know.



You'd think that U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker's experience with gun violence would lead him to have better answers on this subject.

Walker married his college sweetheart, Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, in 1983. They have a son named Christian. After 19 years of marriage, they divorced in 2002. In filing for divorce the year before, Grossman accused Walker of "physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior." After the divorce, she told the media that, during their marriage, Walker pointed a pistol at her head and said: "I'm going to blow your f'ing brains out." She also said he had used knives to threaten her. In 2005, a restraining order was imposed on Walker regarding Grossman, after Grossman's sister stated in an affidavit that Walker told her "unequivocally that he was going to shoot my sister Cindy and her [new] boyfriend in the head." As a result, a temporary gun-owning ban was also issued to Walker by a judge. Walker attributed his aberrant behavior with his wife and others to his dissociative identity disorder for which he was diagnosed in 2001.

[N.E. Brigand]

Also in Georgia: a few days ago, former Senator David Perdue (who lost his seat to Jon Ossoff on January 5, 2021) said this about his attempt this week to unseat Georgia's current governor, Brian Kemp: "Hell no, I'm not down 30 points. We may not win Tuesday, but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points."

He was right! Kemp beat him for the Republican nomination today by 50 points.

As noted above, Brian Kemp beat David Perdue by 50 points to secure the Republican nomination for governor. That's more than 622,000 votes.

Today, Donald Trump, who had endorsed Perdue, put out a statement claiming that Kemp's victory last week was due to voter fraud.

[N.E. Brigand]

Congressman Madison Cawthorn, the controversial Republican from North Carolina, has narrowly been defeated in today's primary by challenger State Senator Chuck Edwards. I wonder if Cawthorn will remain in Congress through the end of his term.

Today Rep. Cawthorn posted a bizarre and perhaps Anti-Semitic message on Instagram that concludes as follows:

"I am on a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering globalist goal. The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end. It's time for the rise of the new right, it's time for Dark MAGA to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming."

At first I thought "gentile politics" was a typo for "gentle politics," but given that it seems to be contrasted with "self-profiteering globalist," I wonder.

Business Insider reports that Rep. Cawthorn "failed to properly disclose up to $950,000 in cryptocurrency trades, including 'Let's Go Brandon' coin, bitcoin, and ethereum."

[N.E. Brigand]

A couple weeks ago, five Republican candidates running to be Michigan's governor were disqualified after it was found that a substantial number of the signatures that had been collected to put them on the ballot were fraudulent.

One of the remaining five Republican candidates, Ryan Kelley, was arrested today for his participation in the January 6th insurrection. He was leading one recent poll, with 19%, but most of Michigan's Republican electorate is still undecided. The primary is August 2. There are four federal charges in the criminal complaint against Kelley:

--Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority
--Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds
--Knowingly Engage in any Act of Physical Violence Against Person or Property in any Restricted Building or Grounds
--Willfully Injure or Comite any Depredation Against any Property of the United States

I thought the Dept. of Justice had a prohibition on taking overt steps regarding any candidate for political office in the months prior to an election.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was going to post about this but I figured I would just wait and let you do so.

With regard to the Justice department's policy, my understanding is that it is generally applied to general elections and usually they avoid charging anyone later than September 1st or so.

[N.E. Brigand]

Vanity Fair has a what I think is an important article for understanding the so-called "New Right" (sometimes abbreviated "NRx," which is short for "neo-reactionary"; among the other terms used are "radical young intellectuals" and "post-leftists" -- the latter acknowledging a horseshoe aspect to some of its members), a movement whose intellectual leader is a former computer programmer (and crypto-white nationalist) named Curtis Yarvin, who is friends with the billionaire tech financier Peter Thiel and two candidates for U.S. Senate that Thiel is funding: venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance of Ohio (of whom I've written many times) and venture capitalist Blake Masters of Arizona. Vance was just endorsed by Donald Trump (following which Thiel gave another $3.5 million to a PAC supporting Vance; Thiel had previously donated about $10 million to that cause). Trump has yet to endorse in the Arizona race, but he did appear last fall at a fundraiser for Masters.

The website of Senate candidate Blake Masters, Republican of Arizona, calls for not only Roe (1973) and Casey (1992) to be overturned (both concern abortion rights) but also for Griswold (1965) to be overturned. That's the case that makes contraception legal.

This article in the Tucson Sentinel includes video showing a 73-year-old liberal gadfly protester named Peter Jackson (!) being roughed up by attendees at an event for Republican Senate candidate, Blake Masters. As the reporter notes, Jackson's own description of what happened is somewhat exaggerated, but the video shows one woman punching him and then shows that Masters himself "lunged at Jackson, put both hands around his neck and pushed him backward".

As with Greg Gianforte of Montana, who won election to Congress in 2017 after beating up a reporter and then, after being convicted of misdemeanor assault, last year went on to be elected as that state's governor, I expect this will only help Masters in Arizona.

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Meanwhile in New York, a Congressional candidate named Carl Paladino has been endorsed by Representative Elise Stefanik, the third ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. Earlier this week, it was discovered that on June 1, Paladino "posted a conspiracy theory claiming that the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings were false flags on his Facebook page". He has since apologized for that. But then two days ago, a 2021 radio interview with Paladino resurfaced in which, after being asked about how politicians could "rouse the population" and "get people thinking about the possibility of change," Paladino replied:

"I was thinking the other day about somebody [who] had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds. And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him. I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it, so that it’s not a strange new world to him."

We need Hitler?

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile in New York, a Congressional candidate named Carl Paladino has been endorsed by Representative Elise Stefanik, the third ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. Earlier this week, it was discovered that on June 1, Paladino "posted a conspiracy theory claiming that the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings were false flags on his Facebook page". He has since apologized for that. But then two days ago, a 2021 radio interview with Paladino resurfaced in which, after being asked about how politicians could "rouse the population" and "get people thinking about the possibility of change," Paladino replied:

"I was thinking the other day about somebody [who] had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds. And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him. I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it, so that it’s not a strange new world to him."

We need Hitler?

Asked by a reporter today about his citation of Adolf Hitler as a model leader, Paladino responded: "I should have used Churchill."

[RoseMorninStar]

There is a (huge) difference between the ability to inspire and the ability to enthrall, mesmerize, dazzle (seduce, entrap, deceive, beguile, etc...) A difference that should not be understated or confused for the other.

[N.E. Brigand]

According to a new report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the former football player Herschel Walker, who is the Republican candidate challenging Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, claimed in speeches in 2017-2019 that he had been an "FBI agent" and "worked in law enforcement, so I had a gun" and specifically that "I work with the Cobb County Police Department." He's also claimed to have earned a degree from the University of Georgia. None of this is true. His campaign says he attended a week of training with the FBI and that his reference to Cobb County meant only that he had been given an honorary position by that department (but the AJC thus far has been unable to get confirmation of those claims).

[N.E. Brigand]

It's just a typo, but given all the criticism that Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, has already received for not having lived in the state until he supposedly moved there last year from his longtime home in New Jersey, he probably should have been careful on his official candidacy filing to not misspell the name of the Pennsylvania town where he now claims to live.

[Sunsilver]

There is a (huge) difference between the ability to inspire and the ability to enthrall, mesmerize, dazzle (seduce, entrap, deceive, beguile, etc...) A difference that should not be understated or confused for the other.

My parents lived through WWII. My mom told me how Hitler's mad screaming contrasted with Churchill's calm delivery of his speeches. No similarity whatsoever:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Hitler presided over a short-lived empire that caused huge harm to many human beings in the name of them being lesser human beings. Churchill presided over the end -- and desperately sought to preserve -- of a longer-lived empire that caused huge harm to even more human beings in the name of them being lesser human beings.

[Sunsilver]

Well, if you're talking about their politics and not their manner of delivering a speech, yes, there were some similarities...

[N.E. Brigand]

Some good advice here:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Skeptical of what?

[N.E. Brigand]

Any supposed news story that hasn't appeared in a reputable publication, especially if it appears to good to be true.

We once produced a play called Too True to Be Good by George Bernard Shaw. I very much enjoyed it.