Election-Denying Republicans Will Keep Losing Elections While We Point And Laugh
It's simple math!
Republicans promoting the "Big Lie" of rigged elections have maintained a solid grift. Kari Lake spent the past six months insisting she won the Arizona governor's race that she lost to actual Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. However, she's raised millions from the gullible that she can redirect toward purchasing more soft-focus cameras or running for Senate next year.
There is a downside, though. Undermining your supporters’ faith in elections can suppress turnout. It could cost her the Senate race. Heck, it might've actually cost her the governor's race.
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According to a new study from States United Action, it seems that feeding Donald Trump's ego starved Republicans in statewide elections somewhere between 2.3 and 3.7 percentage points in last year's midterms. That's not insignificant. In almost every key race that Democrats won, anything within that range would've flipped the result.
In the US Senate election in Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt tried to "walk the tightrope" of claiming the 2020 election was "rigged" while reassuring his supporters that "your votes are going to count." He narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto by 48 to 48.9 percent. What's interesting is that the Real Clear Politics polling average had him ahead 3.4 percentage points. Polls are hardly perfect but this does fall neatly into the "election denial" deficit.
Living brain donor Herschel Walker lost the Senate race in Georgia for many good reasons, but when he wasn't declaring war on trees, he was also promoting Trump's "Big Lie." He once claimed that the state officials who certified Joe Biden's presidential victory should go to jail.
From Mother Jones:
In the days and weeks after the November 2020 presidential election, Walker called on the Supreme Court to step in to change the election results; advocated for seven states to throw out their election results and hold new elections; argued that there was “country wide election fraud”; and pleaded for Trump to figure out who “stole this election.”
On December 27, 2020, Walker also took aim at state officials for not doing more to keep Trump in the White House, tweeting that “any person that certified Votes for their state when their state may have had voter fraud but they turned a blind eye and did no research and certified anyway, they need to go to JAIL ASAP. Our Country was built on LAW AND ORDER.”
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are hardly saints but they acknowledged electoral reality. This earned them Trump's wrath, but they each handily won re-election. True, Walker was a scandal-plagued buffoon whose serial lies seem quaint now that we've met George Santos, but he was also the lone election denier of the three.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes beat Republican Abraham Hamadeh by just 280 votes, the smallest margin of any statewide election in 2022. Hamadeh tweeted in April 2022, “My message to those who worked to rob President Trump in the rigged 2020 election: Your day of reckoning is coming when I take office January 2023.” He reinforced his unhinged point with a subtle photo of someone's cuffed hands. He also vowed to prosecute abortion providers. Those were 280 very important votes.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes defeated Republican election denier Mark Finchem by a far more decisive 120,000 votes. Finchem was well ahead of Fontes in polling prior to the election.
Lake, of course, wouldn't shut up about election fraud. She claimed "they" were stealing the Republican primary that she actually won and told CNN's Dana Bash in October that people "don't trust our elections." She was probably the best possible surrogate for Hobbs's campaign.
Election denial isn't just immoral, it's also bad politics. Who'd have guessed? However, that won't stop the former malignant narcissist in chief. Trump kept pushing the "Big Lie" during his CNN sponge-bath town hall. As long as he controls the party, Republican candidates can't move on from 2020 and retain his favor. That means the extremist loons face off against normal Democrats. Fine by me! We'll take that 2.3 to 3.7 percentage handicap in 2024.
[New York Times /States United]
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Mississippi Voters Haaate Gov Tate Reeves But Too Afraid They'll Catch Democrat Cooties
Did we mention Brandon Presley is Elvis's (non-kissing) cousin?
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is awful, and most Mississippi voters know it. A Mississippi Today/Siena College poll from late April showed that the number of voters who'd prefer "someone else" to the incumbent cold mashed potatoes impersonator had grown from 57 percent to 60 percent. That should be good news for Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, who last we checked is "someone else." Unfortunately, he's also a Democrat, and Mississippi is Mississippi. The same poll showed Reeves, who has a 42 percent approval rating, expanding his lead over Presley, who has Elvis blood in his veins. In January, Reeves had a slim four-point lead against Presley with 14 percent of voters undecided. Now, Reeves is a full 11 points ahead, with just six percent of voters unsure if they should stick with the gross racist who imagines himself as a modern-day Clint Eastwood shooting brown people.
\u201cWe\u2019re back. #msgov\u201d— Team Tate! (@Team Tate!) 1683060657
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According to Morning Consult, Reeves is the fourth most unpopular governor in the US and the least popular governor in the entire South. The Mississippi primaries are August 8, and you'd think ambitious Republicans would line up to challenge such a reviled incumbent whose face is stupid. House Speaker Philip Gunn and Secretary of State Michael Watson noped out of running so Reeves's only competition are fringe losers such as the anti-vaccine "Doctor" John Witcher and Army veteran David Hardigree.
Reeves is better at fundraising than he is imaginary sharpshooting, so that might've scared off serious contenders. Meanwhile, Presley, a public service commissioner, is struggling with low name recognition — probably because "Presley" itself isn't a big draw. Even the recent movie about the King was called simply Elvis.
However, Presley has started going on the offensive. This week he launched his WAR ON CORRUPTION. This is a good way to distinguish between himself and Reeves, who is saddled with a corruption scandal.
\u201cBrandon Presley officially launches his WAR ON CORRUPTION after years of Tate Reeves and his corrupt circle of insiders ripping of working people in Mississippi #MSGov\u201d— Sam Newton (@Sam Newton) 1684251090
Reeves was accused of helping former Gov. Phil Bryant and his wife Deborah cover up their involvement in the Brett Favre welfare scam. Reeves fired state attorney Brad Pigott when Pigott subpoenaed Favre's athletic foundation for communications with the Bryants.
Presley has called Reeves “a man with zero conviction" (true) and "maximum corruption” (that is also true). He said he wants to “build a Mississippi where we fight corruption, not embrace it." Presley is also hammering Reeves on last summer's Jackson water crisis, yet another catastrophe that occurred on Reeves's watch.
After Reeves’s State of the State address in January, Presley delivered his response from inside a shuttered hospital in Newton, a town of roughly 3,000 people.
"When Tate Reeves finally wakes up and asks why hospitals in Mississippi are closing, he should look in the mirror,” he said. Presley noted that the state could keep such rural hospitals open by choosing to expand Medicaid—an option created for states under the Affordable Care Act, but which Reeves opposes even as some Republicans have proposed a voter referendum.
Reeves constantly prioritizes petty politics over struggling Mississippians. He's announced that the state will treat student loan relief as taxable income, which hurts his constituents with limited upside. He still resists expanding Medicaid through what he calls "Obamacare," and presumably white people will shrug off how he's screwing them. He said last month, "Adding 300,000 additional people to welfare in our state is not the right path for Mississippi.” Apparently, Republicans only approve of spending welfare funds when they're building volleyball stadiums.
Republicans bemoan so-called "identity politics" while treating their political party as a rigid identity. They don't even like the boorish, incompetent Tate Reeves, but they simply can't consider an upgrade if the candidate's a Democrat.
ABC News / New Republic / Mississippi Today
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Democrat Donna Deegan Wins Jacksonville Mayor's Race In DeSantis's Florida. Now, That's A F**king Nice Time!
Why do they call it an 'upset' when we're so happy?
Florida has lately been a source of ongoing woe, so I admit I was a little choked up last night when Democrat Donna Deegan defeated Republican Daniel Davis in the Jacksonville mayoral race. The current Republican mayor, Lenny Curry, is term-limited out of office, and Davis was considered a favorite to win the Republican stronghold. Jacksonville has elected only one Democratic mayor, Alvin Brown, since 1993.
Jacksonville was also the most populous city (954,614) in the US with a Republican mayor. Now, that's Fort Worth, Texas (935,508).
Deegan, a former local TV anchor and founder of a breast cancer research organization, whooped Davis 52 to 48 percent. She is also Jacksonville's first woman mayor. Cherelle Parker made similar history in Philadelphia last night. (Parker technically only won the Democratic nomination for mayor, but Democrats account for 85 percent of the city's electorate. It's OK if she starts measuring the drapes.)
Republicans can't spin this as a fluke victory because Deegan ran against a MAGA extremist soft-focus loon like Kari Lake. Davis, chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, was considered a business-friendly "normal" Republican, and he'd crushed Deegan in fundraising by a margin of four-to-one. Yet Davis did embrace DeSantis-style positions on the LGBTQ community. He said he'd sign some gross loyalty pledge to the bigoted Moms for Liberty regarding education, medical care, and “moral upbringing of their children.”
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During her victory speech, Deegan held up a photo of her grandfather and talked about the "five generations of love" her family had for Jacksonville.
“I made a decision when we got into this race that, no matter what happened, no matter what the landscape was like, we were going to lead with love over fear,” Deegan said. “We would not go with division. We would go with unity.”
It's not surprising, given her professional background, that Deegan is a skilled communicator, but her speech was a true barnburner that called out Florida's right-wing reactionary politics in the most moving way.
“I’m so excited about creating a city that sees everybody, that brings everybody in, that gives everybody a voice, a city that truly does finally reach its absolutely amazing potential," she said. "And the only way we were ever going to do that was by bringing everybody together. We have the most beautiful mosaic of a city that you’ve ever seen in your entire life, and everybody’s going to have a voice in a Donna Deegan administration."
After her daughter embraced her and the crowd cheered, Deegan continued: "This is about my kids. This is about your kids. This is about creating a city where our kids will want to stay and raise theirs."
Boom.
Davis had trotted out the boilerplate Republican smears against Deegan. He criticized her for supporting racial justice protesters after George Floyd's murder and claimed that she would make Jacksonville the murder capital of Florida (homicides have significantly increased over the past eight years with a Republican in charge). Deegan deftly deflected this nonsense, stating (correctly) that improving police accountability would actually help lower the crime rate.
“In addition to putting more officers on the streets," Deegan said during their debate last month, "we need to focus on things like literacy and food deserts and other things that contribute to what ultimately are higher crime numbers."
Gov. Ron DeSantis had endorsed Davis but in the half-assed manner that we've come to expect. He's no electoral Svengali, and Trump world happily pointed out that the candidate DeSantis backed in the Kentucky's gubernatorial primary came in third, as in neither first nor second.
DeSantis didn't bother tweeting his lukewarm endorsement until late March, well after Davis had been forced into a runoff against Deegan. He didn't visit Jacksonville to personally campaign for Davis, although Sen. Rick Scott did go door to door on Davis's behalf, which probably didn't help. Hey, if DeSantis wants to bail on Florida Republicans while mounting a likely doomed presidential campaign, we won't stop him.
Jacksonville is in Duval County, which DeSantis won by 11 percentage points against Charlie Crist, who I assume was trying.
According to the New York Times, Republican voters outnumbered Democrats by about 3.5 percentage points. This means Deegan won both independents and crossover Republican voters.
“Everyone said it could not be done in Jacksonville, Florida. We did it because we brought the people inside," Deegan said. “I can’t tell you how many people from across the political spectrum reached out to me and said, ‘We want you to know, I’ve never voted for a Democrat before. I’m going to vote for you.’”
Even Wonkette might've suggested Florida was a lost cause after DeSantis and Marco Rubio smacked their Democratic opponents upside the head last year, but perhaps that was premature. Deegan has laid out a road map for success that Democrats can follow elsewhere. Ashley Walker, Deegan's political consultant and my new favorite person, said, "Democrats in Florida have to eat the elephant piece by piece. We have to go win in these local areas that are purple and get down to the base of some local campaigns to have any chance of coming back statewide.”
Damn right.
[New York Times / The Guardian]
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The Philadelphia Mayor's Race Is Today, If Only Philly Voters Knew About It
There's still time, go vote!
Today, Philadelphia voters will select the Democratic nominee for mayor. Democrats account for a whopping 85 percent of Philly's electorate. A Republican will run against the Democratic nominee in the fall but they'll consider themselves lucky to pull in more than 10 percent of the remaining vote. That makes tonight's primary winner all but a lock for mayor.
This election is a big deal. Philadelphia's population of more than 1.5 million is greater than the US states of Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, both Dakotas, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.
Yet coverage of this race has been muted, and the expected voter turnout is about 15 percent of eligible voters. Recent polls show the primary is a statistical tie among five candidates — Rebecca Rhynhart at 18 percent, Cherelle Parker at 17 percent, Helen Gym at 15 percent, Allan Domb at 14 percent, and Jeff Brown bringing up the rear at 11 percent.
\u201cWe have the chance to really remake Philly government with a woman mayor and a fresh and younger City Council. We could move away from the old school Philly politics that most of the mayoral candidates still seem tied to, despite some flashy ads and law&order rhetoric. \n3/\ud83e\uddf5\u201d— Victoria Brownworth (@Victoria Brownworth) 1684145126
Philadelphia-based journalist Victoria Brownworth tweeted Monday, "We have the chance to really remake Philly government with a woman mayor and a fresh and younger City Council. We could move away from the old school Philly politics that most of the mayoral candidates still seem tied to, despite some flashy ads and law & order rhetoric."
One of the top three polling candidates could become Philadelphia's first woman mayor. Rebecca Rhynhart is the former city controller who promises to make government work, because apparently government is just like a jammed printer. She does have a considerable number of plans to address the opioid epidemic, public safety, the housing crisis, and education. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, she "appeals to a mix of progressives who like how she talks about underserved neighborhoods, conservative Democrats who see her as pro-business, and good-government types who think she knows the bureaucracy."
Cherelle Parker, who's Black, was a member of the City Council until last September. She'd previously served from 2005 to 2015 in the state House of Representatives. (She's not yet 50 so this is impressive.) In 1990, she won a school district-wide oratorical competition with a speech that moved the adult audience to tears: "I, Cherelle Parker, was a child that most people thought would never succeed ... You know? They almost had me thinking the same thing.” She clearly proved the doubters wrong.
Helen Gym is considered a rising progressive star. She'd also become the city's first mayor of Asian descent.
Gym helped pass legislation to protect tenants from eviction and to guarantee a range of upgrades to city schools, including the guarantee of full-time nurses and clean water in buildings, as well as a “Fair Workweek” ordinance that promises wage workers fair notice of schedule changes. She is campaigning on a platform that includes a jobs guarantee for adults younger than 30 and the promise to declare a state of emergency on gun violence on her first day in office, along with robust funding for schools and a “holistic” public safety project.
“I want political change to be more than just a change of faces,” Gym said, when asked about the historic nature of her campaign. “It just has to be bigger than that. There needs to be a real transformation of what politics can do right now. And especially at the municipal level, where the odds are set against us.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have both endorsed Gym. She also has the support of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. Former Philadelphia Mayor and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has backed Rhynhart. House Reps. Dwight Evans and Brendan Boyle are in Parker's corner, along with Philadelphia Council President Darrell Clarke.
Brown and Domb are self-funded millionaire candidates who have the financial advantage of reminding voters they exist.
Brown is running a classic “pick up the damn trash” and “do something about crime” quality-of-life campaign that harkens back to John Street’s campaigns for mayor. (Street promised to get abandoned cars off the streets — and did.) Domb is, inexplicably, running against Mayor Jim Kenney with a couple ads featuring the Mayor’s unfortunate comments about how he looked forward to not being mayor following a July 4 melee that had people fleeing gunshots at the concert on the Parkway.
If you're a Philadelphia resident, please make sure you've voted before the polls close today. We also wouldn't mind if you helped make mayoral history. (Yes, we are openly pushing for the woman candidates.)
[Philadelphia Inquirer / CNN / EPGN]
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