Happy Special Election Day!
Go vote, Florida, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, etc., unless you are a idiot!
Is the Republican platform of chaos, cruelty, and fecund overlord Elon Musk compelling enough to get voters to turn out and reject (or approve) today? We will soon find out! There’s a bunch of special elections today, including in Wisconsin, Florida, Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.
And Republicans are shaking in their sneaker-oxfords after Democrat Andrew Malone surprise-beat church-pastor-insurrectionist-vibes MAGA Josh Parsons last week for a Pennsylvania state Senate seat, in a district that no Democrat has won EVER.
That was such a freaky scene that Trump told Elise Stefanik she could not be nominated for UN Ambassador any more, instead she will have to cancel her order for drapes in New York and stay in stinky Washington, in the $1.2 million house her parents bought for her. Because the Republicans’ five-seat House majority does not leave much room for defection, and Trump’s approval rating has been going down, and they seem a little worried!
Should-be-safe House seats are now imperiled, and it’s Trump’s own personal fault: He got Matt Gaetz to pull out from Florida’s First District to be his attorney general, and we all remember how THAT turned out, what with the Venmos for the company of underage girls etc.! (Hey, did Marjorie Taylor Greene ever release that secret list of Republican sex predators like she promised? No? HUH!)
And then Trump plucked Mike Waltz from Florida’s sixth district to serve as the National Security bonerguy who invited a reporter from The Atlantic to his Signal chat, and also to be the guy who tags along with JD Vance to give him advice for huffing AMERICA GONNA TAKE OVER GREENLAND in his too-shiny coat. So now those Florida seats are open! (Whoever gets them should definitely change the upholstery, or at least add a slipcover.)
Florida’s First and Sixth are double-deep red; Gaetz’s District 1 swamp is up in Florida’s panhandle-taint, and Waltz’s 6th is on the front of the shaft, around Volusia way. Trump won the First District by 37 points and the Sixth by 30 points in November. But how disillusioned are the swampbillies and retirees by now? That is the question!
For Gaetz’s old seat, Republican Jimmy Patronis is running against Democrat Gay Valimont, who also ran against Gaetz last November. Valimont has also raised more money — five times more — than her Republican rival, but it’s a tough climb. Republicans are ahead in early turnout, and these are the voters that somehow went for Gaetz by 66.1 percent last November, even after they knew all of the gross things he was allegedly up to.
But Waltz’s old seat in the Sixth is maybe not a gimmie. Democrat Josh Weil, a schoolteacher, has raised nine times more than his opponent, Republican state Sen. and sentient can of Spam Randy Fine, and internal Republican polling reportedly show Fine narrowly trailing Weil. What a humiliating loss that would be! Polls are open in Florida until 7.
And all eyes are on the race for a state supreme court seat in Wisconsin, now the most expensive judge race in US history. Elon Musk has spent about $20 million of his PAC dollars trying to get former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel seated, a “pro-life” guy with a pattern of letting rapists off the hook, who sucked up to Trump at his inauguration and pledged to serve as a part of his “support network.”
Musk has even run one of his fake lottery giveaways and wore a cheese hat to award a million bucks to two “randomly selected lucky winners” who signed his AMERICA PAC’s petition “against activist judges” for $100; one winner just happened to be the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans, and the other, Ekaterina Diesler, posted a gushing video that she “did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do” and signed his petition “because we need to stop Susan Crawford and get Brad Schimel to win Wisconsin.” Very random, very unstaged!
Should we mention that Musk has a case about trying to open Tesla dealerships in Wisconsin that is coming before the court real soon?
The sure-sounds-fake giveaway sure seems illegal in all kinds of “offering someone something of value to induce someone to vote” ways, and probably truth-in-advertising lottery-law ways, but for whatever reason the state supreme court decided not to stop him. So now it is up to voters to tell him to fuck off! Polls in Wisconsin close at 8.
And there are municipal elections all over: In Oklahoma there are 214 races, for local stuff like mayors, school boards, bond proposals and state House seats. Omaha has a mayoral and City Council primary; Anchorage is filling state Assembly and school board seats; Colorado Springs has City Council seats to fill; Jackson, Michigan, has a Democratic mayoral primary with 19 candidates in it; Tuscaloosa’s got a City Council runoff. If you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be voting on something today, probably Google it because maybe you are!
We try to not be optimistic, any more, but Democrats are good at showing up for special elections. Without Trump on the ballot, will MAGA cultists be as motivated to show up? Guess we shall see when we wake up in the morning!
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OT: Cory Booker - 20 hrs and counting. AND sucking all the energy out of any Truth Social tantrums.
𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗜𝗦 𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗜𝗧'𝗦 𝗗𝗢𝗡𝗘, 𝗗𝗘𝗠𝗦!!!!!
As a reminder that our votes actually DO FUCKING COUNT, we are still reveling over the news that Louisiana overwhelmingly told Jeff Landry to blow a nutria about his constitutional amendments. Even Jeffy's super Catholic wingnutty home parish (St. Martin) voted against all four amendments, as did ultra conservative Jefferson Parish (outside New Orleans). And Jeff is still BIG MAD because Louisianians across political stripes told him to get fucked.