Yr Wonkette is always ready to take a run at whatever hopey-changey football gets held out for us to kick, and we have plenty of bruises on our butts from getting excited about long-shot candidates. But then you have years like this, with a whole bunch of surprising wins by Democrats in what shouldn’t be friendly territory for them, and a “president” whose approval ratings are so low they might unleash geothermal energy. (His stupid Iran war is actually doing that, in fact.)
So heck yes, when we see stuff like JD Vance sending a panicky fundraising letter to Republicans in Idaho, warning that ancient Sen. Jim Risch is facing a serious challenge from independent Todd Achilles, then darn right we’re going to at least sample a dose of that Hopium.
And then we take another hit off the Hope Pipe when we see polling suggesting that Democratic candidates are in statistical dead heats in the Florida governor’s race, and even in the race for US Senate. Yes, yes, we tell ourselves, all long shots, but … Jesus, people really are mad about Trump and about incumbents, and voters are looking for some goddamn change from all of it.
This time we really could kick that fuckin’ ball, is what we’re saying. Won’t know unless we try!
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Idaho: Yes, Really, Idaho!
Drive around the blue parts of Boise — that’s many of the city’s parts — and you’ll see a lot of yard signs for Todd Achilles, a retired Army tank commander and platoon leader who has served in the Idaho Lege and teaches public policy at Boise State University. That’s one well-rounded nerd! He’s going up against incumbent Sen. Jim Risch, an establishment Republican who’s so bland and unappealing that when I first mentioned him to Yr Editrix over a decade ago, she exclaimed, “Risch? Who the fuck is Risch? I have literally never heard that name before in my life.” She suspected I had somehow hacked her computer with a fake Google page saying he’d been in the Senate for five years at that point. Risch is now seeking a fourth term, insisting he’s MAGA because who’d know anyway, and still as boring as oatmeal. Thanks to that R behind his name, he keeps winning, and now he’s very old oatmeal and somehow chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where his job seems to be rolling over and wagging his tail for Trump on everything from tariffs to the Iran war.
Check out this new ad from Achilles, slamming Risch for supporting the sale of Idaho’s public lands to private developers (fortunately, the bill didn’t have a chance). That’s not at all popular with Idahoans, who are relentlessly outdoorsy, in the view of my girlfriend, a recently transplanted Californian (Hi, M!).
As a drone camera follows Achilles riding a mountain bike through the Boise foothills, the ad highlights Risch’s “F” voting record on public lands, while subtly calling attention to Achilles’s youth and vigor. By comparison, Risch, at 82, is the fourth-oldest member of the Senate. When Risch started his political career as Ada County prosecutor in 1970, Achilles was just three years old. Protecting public lands is just one of several key issues for Achilles, along with the fact that while Risch has spent 18 years in the Senate, he’s never held a single town hall with voters.
Oh yes, not incidentally, Achilles also supports mandatory retirement at the age of 72 for all members of Congress. That would require a constitutional amendment, but in polling, the idea has broad support from both Republicans (83 percent) and Democrats (78 percent), with Mitch McConnell voting “cauliflower.”
In that fundraising letter with his name on it, “JD Vance” warns that scary Democrats want to flip Idaho and “strike a major blow against President Trump’s agenda,” which hell yes. Achilles campaign comms director Crispin Gravatt was quick to release a statement saying the Vance letter shows that Risch “knows he’s in trouble and the race is competitive — and that he’s willing to do anything to win except answer directly to the voters,” hammering home once more the point that Idahoans almost never see Risch in the state, and that he’s refused to debate Achilles.
If you’d like to send Todd Achilles a long-shot donation, here’s where to do it!
Florida: Yes, Really, Florida!
Again, call us suckers for having hope, but we have long looked forward to Florida voters finally deciding they’ve had enough of the far Right’s endless culture warring and attempts to turn Florida into Gilead, but with hurricanes. In 2024, a whole bunch of Florida school board candidates supported by “Moms for Liberty” lost bigly, and the flameout of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s brief primary run against Trump was fun too. This year, DeSantis is term-limited out of the race, and while Republican goober nominee Byron Donalds has tons of GOP money to burn, several polls have him in a statistical dead heat with Democrat David Jolly, the former Republican congressman who left the party because he was sick of Trump. (Yes, that is two governor’s races in a row where Democrats have run former Republicans.)
Donalds has long touted his close ties to Trump and Trumpism, but that may actually be turning into something of a liability as Trump’s approval rating sinks like a waterlogged boat in Miami-Dade’s Haulover Inlet.
Last month, the Miami Herald noticed that the Donalds campaign website, which used to brag about Trump’s endorsement so much that Donalds could have legally changed his name to “Trump-endorsed Byron Donalds,” was suddenly largely scrubbed of mentions of Trump (gift link). Trump’s endorsement still appears, but only as one among many from righties like Elon Musk, Rick Scott, Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, and other people you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a minivan with on a road trip. His “Issues” page, which formerly had “Enact the Trump Agenda” as its top item, now lists “affordability” up top, with Trump memory-holed right off the page. Neener, neener, Great Leader.
Florida’s economy is in the shitter, too, with low consumer sentiment and insanely high home insurance costs, because while DeSantis and Donalds himself have denied the reality of climate change (while taking huge donations from Big Oil), actuaries know that Florida is not a safe place for endless development.
Jolly has argued that the state’s insurance market needs fundamental reforms, and has proposed an overhaul of the state’s catastrophic insurance fund that would take hurricane and wind risk out of the calculation for homeowners’ insurance, lowering rates for consumers, and move reimbursement for hurricane damage to a stronger statewide hurricane fund instead, pooling the risk more broadly and paying for it by “making insurance companies pay the taxes they currently avoid,” along with revenue sources that won’t burden homeowners.
Jolly explains the model already works, since Florida has run a catastrophic fund for 30 years, with the support of successive Republican-dominated legislatures. Unfortunately, “right now, that fund only bails out insurance companies. We want it to cover actual Floridians.” The Miami Herald endorsed Jolly Wednesday (gift link), praising Jolly’s insurance reform proposal among several other policies.
Unsurprisingly, Donalds has no alternative, and instead blames woke European reinsurers for unfairly including “climate change” in their pricing, and insisting that he’ll magically bring down insurance costs by requiring “transparency,” so homeowners can shop from competing private insurance plans they can’t afford, if they’re even offered. Big surprise: Donalds is heavily supported by the insurance industry. He’s also getting big bucks from AI hucksters who want more data centers sucking up limited water, where Jolly has called for a one-year moratorium on new data centers.
You can help out David Jolly right here!
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[Idaho Capital Sun / Post-Register / NPR / Miami Herald (gift link) / Todd Achilles / David Jolly]
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In typical me fashion, I said I'd make cannoli for Sunday's cakes post thinking I had some cannoli tubes in one of my baking cupboards (I have 3). Looked everywhere, couldn't find them.
A little research led me to the understanding that cannoli tubes can be cooked in an airfryer. You lose a bit of crunch, but that's a small price to pay to avoid burning down the house by trying to fry cannoli tubes made using a thrown-together aluminium foil tube.
Cannoli tubes are going on the Christmas list, but not before I check the boxes of baking bits that are stashed in the garage.
Harry toe beans, too much squee!
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-350663493?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc