Governor Sherrill

Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill will be inaugurated as the fifty-seventh governor of the state of New Jersey, and she plans to hit the ground running with an energy emergency declaration to cut utility rates, invest more in solar energy, make housing more affordable, and improve the motor vehicle office.

That is all good and fine, but just because we in New Jersey will have a center-left governor who will pursue more humane policies than what's coming out of Washington doesn't mean we will be safe from Donald Trump.  Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who is more progressive than Sherrill is,  has ICE agents overrunning his state and is being investigated for obstructing federal authority even as Trump threatens to send the Army in.  The end. 

It doesn't take much for something to happen in New Jersey to give Trump an excuse to send federal troops or agents to New Jersey, particularly our cities, most of which have been down on their heels for so long that there are generations of New Jerseyans who don't remember a time when Newark or Camden were places people wanted to go to.   Trump sending troops to our cities, where brown people are a majority, would be a calamity.  U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, who is black, was arrested for trying to investigate an ICE detention center in Newark that housed Hispanic migrants, as was Mayor Baraka; McIver has since been charged and three felony counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with a federal officer, and the case is still set to go to trial.  What better way for Trump to divide the mostly black and Hispanic cities against the white suburbs and rural areas (yes, we have some)?

You know where I'm going with this.  As a secessionist, I feel compelled to promote my arguments for secession whenever and with whomever I can.  Therefore, once Governor-elect Sherrill is sworn in, I am writing a letter to her to advocate for New Jersey to secede from the Union and hopefully encourage other Democratic states - like Minnesota - to follow.  (Personally, I hope that Minnesota secedes first, and I have not ruled out writing Governor Walz to say that Minnesota to do so.)  I am making the argument to Sherrill that a soft secession - withholding New Jersey's federal tax revenue, for example - is not enough and that it is time for the United States to split into separate countries.  I am also making the argument to her that if enough states pull out of the Union, it can lead to a negotiated national divorce that effectively dissolves the Union and creates new countries without a shot being fired. 

I still support the dissolution of the Union.  I am still a secessionist.

(P.S.  Here is revised map of my idea for a post-United States North America.  I decided to put West Virginia into the Middle Atlantic republic of Lenapia instead of the Midwestern republic of Heartland, because it would be awkward to have a state of the Midwestern republic on the opposite side of the Ohio River.  I added to Heartland Montana, Wyoming and Colorado and cleaved off the western ends of the latter two state by setting the border between Heartland and the State of Deseret along the Continental Divide through the Rocky Mountains.  Gran Colorado has been eliminated; Arizona and New Mexico became a Republic of New Mexico.  The original New Mexico Territory that was established in 1850 then included the bulk of both the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona.  Click on the map for a better look.)

Mikie Makes a Move

Gavin Newsom has floated the idea of California withholding tax payments to the federal government as a way of protesting Trump's regime.  Now it looks like New Jersey's incoming governor might beat Newsom to the punch.

Politico has reported that Mikie Sherrill is seriously looking into having New Jersey withholding federal tax dollars from Washington, telling native New Jerseyan Jon Stewart on his podcast that she has thought about it all time, calling it a "great idea. "If they’re not gonna run the programs, then what are we paying them for?" she said. "It’s like, you know, 'you’re paying us for a service,' and they're not delivering. So let's stop paying for it."

You know whom they are delivering services for with New Jersey's - and California's - federal tax dollars?  Republican states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, and Nebraska, among others, as well as Wyoming, North Dakota - you know, the states Jimmy Stewart once called "the rectangular ones."  

The Democratic states are repeatedly paying for services poorer, more conservative states get more of, and they have to raise state taxes to provide the programs and amenities their constituents expect with less and less help from the federal government - and no state and local tax (SALT) deductions anymore, thanks to Trump.  Sherrill - and, hopefully, Newsom - are ready to rub SALT deductions in Trump's wounds.

Upon hearing of Governor-elect Sherrill's commetns, a White House spokesperson repsonded,"Wow, a Democrat encouraging lawbreaking. What else is new?"

She who refuses to submit federal taxes to a national administration run by a megalomaniacal tyrant violates no laws.

And this could be the first act of New Jersey seceding from the Union.  Theoretically speaking, of course.  😉  

I can't wait to see what Virginia's new incoming female govenror, Abigail Spanberger, does when she takes office.  And is she wants to take her state out of the Union - hey, the state's motto is Sic semper tyrannis - she can always dust off Virginia's 1861 ordinance of secession.

Of course, the Virginia legislature will have to rewrite and amend the part about the federal government "having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States."

Trump Trumped

Abigail Spanberger, as expected, won the Virginia governorship by a comfortable margin.  Zohran Mandami was easily (again, as expected) elected the first Muslim mayor of New York City, defeating Andrew Cuomo decisively.

But the biggest surprise was - you guessed it - Mikie Sherrill winning the governorship of New Jersey. 

By thirteen percentage points.

Wow, how did she do it?

I mean, seriously, the pundits agreed that Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor, ran a campaign that was lackluster, and her Republican opponent was everything a Jersey guy is supposed to be, while she, just as assuredly, was nothing a Jersey girl is supposed to be.  Her opponent was in no danger of being unable to attract the typical New Jersey voter with big hair and gold chains.

Not to mention their girlfriends and wives.

I really thought Sherrill was going to lose because the polls were so close and the polls showing her ahead by an average of 5.5 points probably underestimated the number of voters casting ballots for her Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli.  What happened?  My guess is that pollsters and pundits were basing their polling and projections, respectively, on the New Jersey electorate in 2021, in which Ciattarelli was far behind Governor Phil Murphy in the polls but ended up losing by only three points.  Also, Sherrill was a woman and a Democrat.  But the electorate in this state today is not the one that existed four years ago, and the 2021 election didn't have the specter of Donald Trump hanging over it like the sword of Damocles. 

And no, I don't regret not joining her campaign.  I mean, she clearly didn't need me except for my vote. 

Meanwhile, California voters endorsed Proposition 50, allowing the state to redistrict U.S. House seats to counteract redistricting in other states (*cough cough*, Texas, *cough cough*) to give a partisan advantage to one side (*cough cough*, the GOP, *cough cough*) and possibly saving the 2026 midterm elections for Democrats.  Two Democrats were elected to the state public utilities commission in Georgia.  Three liberal state Supreme Court justices were retained in Pennsylvania, and conservatives lost ground significantly.  The right-wing white ring of Stepford Wives Moms For Liberty, also known as Klan Karenhood, targeted 31 local elections in the country; they won all but 31 of them. 😆

Donald Trump is ticked off.  His hope of expanding his power through, say, a Ciattarelli administration in New Jersey or a more conservative Pennsylvania Supreme Court has been dashed, and his efforts to retard Democratic progress toward taking back the House have itself been stymied.  Right now he's thinking anew about how to dissolve the Constitution and outlaw the Democratic Party so he can make sure that the Republicans can win the 2026 elections simply by having no opposition on the ballots.  Because whenever the voters reject Trump, Trump rejects them.    

Oh yeah, in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is the first gubernatorial candidate to win a third straight election for her party since 1961, when the biggest sports story was Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth's season home run record.  Her victory, and several electoral victories this past Tuesday, have made it clear that the old guard in American politics, still trying to practice politics as usual, is on borrowed time.

And may I make an observation regarding Andrew Cuomo and his quixotic effort at a comeback in the New York City mayoral campaign?

Can anyone imagine a man so desperate for a political comeback that, not only does he run to be chief executive of five counties in New York - the five boroughs of NYC - when he had previously been a chief executive of all of the 62 counties of New York, he has to resort to Islamophobia against his opponent, even though his own father had to deal with virulent anti-Italian prejudice? This gentleman needs an enema.

Election Day

I never put in any work for the Mikie Sherrill gubernatorial campaign here in New Jersey.  I never knocked on doors for her, did phone banks for her, or even stuffed envelopes for her, and I never even made the coffee at campaign headquarters.  All I did was vote for her.  Perhaps I should have joined the campaign, as it turns out she needed all of the help she could get.  It's appropriate that she, my congresswoman, is a lawyer by trade, because her campaign for governor of New Jersey has been as exciting as a deposition.  It's been the standard boilerplate campaign of Democratic issues and talking points, apparently based on the strategy that all the moderate Sherrill has to do is repeat the same Democratic bromides to look more progressive than she is in comparison to her MAGA Republican opponent.

But like I said, I was preoccupied with other things, most notably my life.  While the Sherrill campaign was gearing up over the summer for the autumn season, I was in Paris, Berlin and Munich on my first European trip ever.  When the Sherrill campaign got underway in earnest after Labor Day, I was walking through my neighborhood, going cycling once in awhile, and playing with my cats - but mostly taking care of my house.  And as it entered the home stretch, I continued removing burning bushes from the community park in my neighborhood and preparing the park for spring.  And now, with still more cuttings that need to be thrown out and collected this coming Thursday . . . there is the threat of a windstorm that could blow my garbage cans across town if I try to put the bush branches out that morning.  Among other things.

I hope Mikie Sherrill wins tonight.  But I've already been trying to condition myself to receive the news that her MAGA Republican opponent ekes out a victory.  And my sixtieth birthday is tomorrow.  Bummer . . . I took John Mellencamp's advice back in the day and tried to hold on to sixteen as long as I could, but I was only able to hold onto that age for a year.

And if our life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, you must be in a terminal coma.

Right.  As Sherrill could lose her bid for the New Jersey governorship tonight and I could lose my electricity tomorrow night, I'd better be prepared for anything.   I'll be back later.

Garden State Mess - The Sequel

Democrat Mikie Sherrill appeared to be buckling to fierce competition from Republican Jack Ciattarelli in the New jersey gubernatorial campaign, but Ciattarelli may have given her an issue.  Donald Trump flat-out canceled funding for the in-progress Gateway project connecting New York and New Jersey with a new and badly needed rail tunnel.  Despite pledging his support for Gateway, Ciattarelli has been complacent toward Trump throughout the campaign, and his support for Trump has hurt him with regard to Gateway.

The only trouble is, the campaign is still close and Jack's still got a shot.

How is this possible?  Because even though many commuters in northern New Jersey rely on passenger rail to get to Manhattan, many more drive cars on the area's multi-lane highways.  And obviously, this issue doesn't affect anyone in southern New Jersey, where Sherrill needs to shore up support in an area where Jack has a lot of backing.  Even if many people's jobs are affected by the termination of the funding for Gateway, it has no relevance to the bulk of New Jersey voters. 

Sherrill still has leads ranging from five to eight percentage points in polls, but some private polls forecast a much closer outcome - which should surprise no one, given that Jack almost unseated Governor Phil Murphy in 2021.   Many Democrats, particularly minority voters, have doubts about Mikie's bona fides as a leader because of her centrist positions, and some Hispanics are interested in what Jack has to say.  To be fair and honest, not every poll should be taken seriously, such as a poll from KAC showing Sherrill barely ahead of Ciattarelli - by two or three points.  That's KAC - K (as in Kelly) A (as in anne) C (as in Conway).  That's right, it's a polling firm founded and run by Kellyanne Conway, the New Jerseyan who got Trump elected to the White House in 2016.  

Speaking of Trump, Sherrill has made him, or tried to make him, an issue in this gubernatorial campaign.  The only problem with that is that Trump doesn't have as big an effect on New Jerseyans' lives as one might think.  He certainly has an effect on New Jerseyans' ability to afford food and shelter, thanks to his tariffs, but Ciattarelli has been pounding away on the affordability issue as something that has nothing to do with Trump - smart, considering that affordability has been a problem in New Jersey for years, during Democratic presidential administrations and Republican presidential administrations, and a problem that Governor Murphy, like any of his recent predecessors, hasn't been able to solve.  As for Trump's various desecrations of the White House or his bombing of fishing boats in the Caribbean, none of that has an effect on property taxes in this state.

This election will be decided for good in two weeks.  As a Republican, Ciattarelli has been persistent in his desire to be governor.  This is his third try, a testament to the GOP's tolerance for its failed candidates to try again if they want to, and the third time may be the charm.  But if he wins, we lose.  He'll take New Jersey out of the northeastern states' health cooperative, he'll end clean-energy programs, and he could make New Jersey the first state to ban same-sex marriages since they became legal nationwide in 2013.  If Mikie Sherrill wins, she'll do none of that, and she'll concentrate on expanding educational opportunities for children and meet the crisis of unaffordable electrical power head-on.  But don't expect her to make another try for the governorship in 2029 if she loses two weeks from today.  Democrats, as noted here repeatedly, don't let losing nominees get a second try, and not only will she be denied another try for the New Jersey governorship - she'll likely be primaried in June or defeated next November if she stands for a fifth term for the U.S. House of Representatives.   She'll politically be a dead woman walking.  I'm not one of those people who will, if she loses to Jack, look on the so-called bright side by saying she'll still be my congresswoman.  In this political climate, there is no bright side to losing.

Again - New Jersey will lose if Sherrill does.  Vote for her on November 4 - or during early voting, which starts this Saturday, October 25.

Garden State Mess

The election for governor of New Jersey was supposed to an easy win for the Democratic candidate, U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill, against Republican former state Assemblyman and 2021 Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli.  But you may recall that I noted that Ciattarelli is a lifelong New Jersey and an Italian-American - two qualities that are potent assets in a state populated by lifelong residents who wear their Jerseyness on their sleeves and heavily populated by Italians, who have largely defined what it means to be from New Jersey.  Sherrill is neither of those things, and on top of all that, she represents a party that still hasn't gotten its act together on issues such as law enforcement and immigration while still - still - relying on consultants and party elders on how to deal with the economy, despite the fact that these consultants and party elders are usually wrong.

Now Jack is turning on the heat with a relentless campaign attacking Sherrill on pursuing policies in Washington that inhibit affordability in the cost of living while being supportive of outgoing Democratic governor Phil Murphy's more unpopular policies on energy and the like.  Sherrill, despite her reputation in Washington as a bad-ass, is acting less like the Jersey girl she isn't and more like the nice lady that she appears to be.  That's not what you want in hardball New Jersey politics, which as rough and tumble as local politics can possibly get except for out on Long Island.  Also, she lives in Montclair, a genteel suburb known for its restaurants and its performing arts festivals, while Jack - as I shall refer to him because I'm part Italian and I'm trying to forget he's Italian - comes from Raritan, a working-class town so tough, its local hero, Marine Corps Sergeant John Basilone, who took on a numerically superior Japanese force in the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II and survived (he perished at Iwo Jima), has a bridge named after him.  A bridge over the Raritan River?  No - a bridge over a traffic circle!  Now that's tough! 

And Jack is showing his mettle.  He's pretty much running the sort of campaign that Trump has run, and Trump most likely taught him everything he knows.  Sherrill has been coming across as a lackluster candidate, drawing comparisons to the lackluster presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris, and we all know how that turned out!

Even Sherrill's attempt to play up her status as a Naval Air Force veteran has fallen flat, with too many people complaining about how she spends too much time talking up her military service and not enough time on the state's current issues - and when she does talk about the issues, it's in the same milquetoast manner of recent one-hit-wonder and fly-by-night failed Democratic candidates for office ("I'm working on my to-do list!" - Kamala Harris).  Jack is running as a change candidate after an eight-year Democratic administration in an effort - which, from all accounts, is working - to neutralize Sherrill's efforts to tie Jack to Trump.  That may explain why Jack's internal polling and an Emerson College poll show the campaign to be a dead heat.

However, things just got messy.  As if to undermine Sherrill's military service and turn an asset into a liability, the Trump regime has released U.S. Naval Academy records showing that Sherrill was not allowed to take part in the graduation ceremony for the class of 1994 at the U.S. Naval Academy because she knew that some of her classmates cheated on final examinations and did not report them.  Sherrill supporters are quick to point out that she herself didn't cheat and showed honor by not reporting, or "ratting on," her peers.  Huh?  It's the U.S. Naval Academy, not a Mafia organization like the Nassau County Republican Committee!  As someone who is expected to be true to the virtues of honesty and integrity, she had every right and every obligation to report her peers for something that could get one court-martialed in the service. 

But get this.  Jack and Trump also doled out personal information about Sherrill, including her home address, her Social Security number, her parents, her life insurance policy, and possibly her dental records, her car payments, her credit card number, and maybe even secret, classified evidence that she and Olympic swimming icon Janet Evans are twins separated at birth.

And just to underscore how vicious this campaign is getting, New Jersey MAGA voters are beginning to refer to Sherrill as "Rebecca Hedberg," Rebecca being her given name (she gets her nickname from her middle name, Michelle) and Hedberg being her husband's surname, the suggestion being that Mikie Sherrill is an inauthentic character being played by one Rebecca Hedberg.  (There is a Rebecca Hedberg on Instagram, but it has nothing to do with my congresswoman.  This Rebecca Hedberg is a mom in Sweden.)   And on top of that, American Principles Project, a conservative political action committee, American Principles Project, is going to flood our airwaves with an ad to scare voters about transsexuals.

The Sherrill campaign is also trying to fight back against Jack for his comments about the need to desegregate New Jersey public schools during their debate last weekend, in which he said we're only debating desegregation because black-majority schools are faring worse than white-majority schools and we would not be having this conversation were it the other way around. Jack could have stopped there, but he went on to say that if you desegregated Newark schools tomorrow, the Newark district's test scores wouldn't go up.  Well, he's right about that, mainly because there are no white kids in Newark to integrate with the black kids in the first place.  And sadly, those quips might help him more than hurt him.  Nothing scares white New Jersey voters - not even transsexuals - except for the prospect of racially integrating schools.  Why do you think white folks moved out of Newark to begin with?

Jack is the latest in a series of New Jersey goombah politicians who use race as a weapon to mobilize white voters and general and white ethnic voters in particular.  It was the modus operandi of Anthony Imperiale, a Newark councilman and state legislator, who ran a vigilante group in the North Ward of Newark and urged white residents to arm themselves to protect their homes from blacks.  Imperiale famously led the fight against a black-oriented affordable-housing project in the city and had many a tumble with black activist Amiri Baraka, the father of the current mayor, over it.  (It was quashed but Mayor Ras Baraka revived the plan.)  More recent Republican governors have had their own embarrassments over race - Christine Todd Whitman,  the whitest governor New Jersey has had in the past thirty years, was once photographed patting down a black man in a photo opportunity during a police arrest - but Jack is a MAGA Republican, a Republican who would allow Trump to send state militiamen from Southern states to patrol New Jersey's black-and-brown-majority cities to restore "law and order" (one of Imperiale's slogans), a Republican who would restrict abortion access (like his fellow New Jersey paysan Sam Alito), and a Republican who would likely get rid of DEI programs in this, one of the most diverse states in the Union.  The trouble is, too many white folks in New jersey like what he's selling.

But maybe not enough of them.  It turns out that that Emerson College poll has skewed rightward over the years, and Sherrill has consistently led Jack in polling averages.  The caveat is that Jack was way behind Governor Murphy when he ran against him in 2021 and ended up almost defeating him.  Also, in Jack's favor, neither party has won at least three gubernatorial elections in a row in New Jersey since the 1960s.  Up to now, the campaign has been uncharacteristically civil in a state known for expressions like, "Fuhgeddaboutdit!" and "If ya not from the ghetto, stay the f**k outta the ghetto!"  But with recent developments - yo, the gloves are really off now.

Ugh.

New Jersey: On To November

Well, the suspense is long since over.  Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill won the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nomination after breaking through among Democratic voters in the final days of the primary campaign.  And, as expected, Giachino "Jack" Ciattarelli won the Republican gubernatorial election going away.

One thing is for certain: New Jersey's 57th governor will be known primarily by a nickname.

But who will it be?  Many people assume that Sherrill should have an easy time in the general election campaign because of Trump and Ciattarelli's association with him.  But Jack's got a shot.  As I noted before, he's a lifelong New Jersey resident and an Italian-American, while Sherrill is neither.  Also, many people are tired of Democratic machine politics and the high cost of living, which would give any Republican gubernatorial candidate an advantage.  Sherrill can present herself as a Trenton outsider who can bring some fresh thinking to state government, which was the angle of the campaign of former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Gottheimer - like Sherrill, a U.S. House member - but the irony is that she's a Virginia native who has likely never eaten a calzone in her life, which means she's enough of a cultural outsider to turn off many a New Jersey voter.

Trump, of course, remains an albatross around Ciattarelli's neck, and Sherrill, one of those middle-aged Democratic women in the U.S. House known as the Bad-Asses, has the chops to make sure it stays there.  But first she has to make sure her Democratic base is united.  Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop came in second and third, respectively, and they as progressives got more votes combined than Sherrill did as a moderate.  However, if Gottheimer and former state senator Steve Sweeney, both moderates, hadn't been in the primary campaign, Sherrill would likely have won those votes and outpolled both progressives.

To be fair, being a Jersey boy in the truest sense of the term might not be enough for Ciattarelli to pull out a win.  Part of the reason he's the Republican nominee for governor of New Jersey yet again is because of how close he came to defeating Governor Phil Murphy.  Mikie Sherrill is a politician of a less genial and more vicious nature than Murphy is.  She knows how Ciattarelli is weak on many issues by having stands on them that are unpopular with New Jersey voters.  All of this means one thing - this election can go either way.

Out Of the Gate

If the opening of the 116th Congress is any indication, the next two years are going to be as unbearable as the previous two.  Maybe more so.

Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York signaled the tone of the new Democratic House of Representatives by officially nominating Nancy Pelosi for Speaker by declaring that he was "down with NDP" - a reference to Pelosi's initials and a hip-hop record from the early nineties that I'm trying to forget.  He tried to cast the Democrats as the with-it, cool, hip-hop party in which classic-rock-lovin' middle-aged white people need not apply.  Let the record show that Pelosi is old enough to remember Elvis Presley.  Anyway, such a pop-culture attitude is why so many people still vote Republican.

Meanwhile, newly minted Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) didn't get the memo from Democratic leadership about waiting for the committees to investigate Trump's dastardly dealings thoroughly before calling for his impeachment, vowing at a rally to say that Democrats would "impeach the mother f--ker" while a smartphone camera caught her every word.  Including that one.  A female Muslim using a vulgarity to call for political jihad against an opponent . . . There's another reason why so many people still vote Republican.

However, there has been reason for not to get too much into despair. . . a video of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), fast becoming America's political sweetheart, dancing to techno music when she was in school has surfaced.  Released by a Republican on Twitter as an attempt to embarrass her, the video instead shows just how adorable and ebullient she really is, and now people love her even more than before.  She then recorded a new video of herself dancing . . . outside her office!  Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the reason many people don't vote Republican! :-D

And my own congresswoman, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, has already shown what a great legislator she'll be going forward.  She is the sort of mature politician House Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi need of they're going to effectively battle Trump.  Ironically, Sherrill voted against Pelosi for Speaker (voting for Illinois congresswoman Cheri Bustos instead).  But then she promised to vote against Pelosi, so now we know she keeps her word.  And, she is now forgoing her pay as a U.S. Representative until the partial government shutdown ends. 

Now that's integrity.

Election Endorsements 2018

Oh, great, is it election endorsement time again?

I should just tell you all to vote Democratic no matter what, except vote Green when the Democratic candidate is a woman named Hillary or Oprah.  And yes, I'm going to do that.  Vote Democratic, exceptions noted.  But I'm also going to single out candidates for office in campaigns where I especially want to see the Republican candidate lose and lose big time.  That's how much I dislike them. And in the case of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, I literally hate him.  So here goes:

For U.S. Senate, Texas:  This blog enthusiastically endorses Democrat Beto O'Rourke.  Not only is he the most ardently progressive candidate for statewide office in Texas in a long time, he has the energy and the commitment to help Democrats running for office throughout the state and to inspire them throughout the country.  Also, his opponent is incumbent Republican senator Ted Cruz, a man even arch-conservative Republicans don't like.  Time for some Cruz control in the Lone Star State.

For governor of Wisconsin:  This blog endorses Democrat Tony Evers. Evers, the Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction, wants to improve education in the state - and a whole lot of other things.  Education is one of the many institutions in Wisconsin that der Führer WalKKKer has laid waste to in the past eight years.

For governor of Georgia:  This blog endorses Democrat Stacey Abrams.  She's committed to making a Georgia a fairer and better place for all of its residents, and she's also living proof of Zerlina Maxwell's comment that it's going to take a black woman to save America - or at least Georgia - from itself.  Also, her white male Republican opponent, Georgia Secretary of State and noted vote suppressor Brian Kemp, has all the charm and compassion of an electric eel. 

For U.S. Senate, Arizona: This blog endorses Democrat Krysten Sinema. She's talking about issues people care about, like making sure that pre-existing sanctions are covered by health insurance, while her Republican opponent Martha McSally (who, being a woman from the Southwest and because of her name, would have made a great running mate for Martin O'Malley - get it? - in 2020 if she were a Democrat) keeps trying to change the subject to that stupid caravan issue - which isn't an issue at all.  

For U.S. Senate, New Jersey:  This blog, ho hum, endorses Democrat and incumbent Bob Menendez.  Because when you have two ethically dubious 64-year-old guys from Union City, New Jersey named Bob running for Senate, you should always go for the one with the D after his name.  

For governor of Florida:  This blog wholeheartedly endorses Andrew Gillum, who, if he wins, will make Florida the largest state in population with a black governor, but also the second-largest state in population (after California, which is a gimme for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom) with a progressive governor.  Florida needs bold, new, energized liberal leadership that it's been lacking since, oh I don't know, Reubin Askew was governor in the seventies?  Now's the time for the Sunshine State to come of out the darkness of Republicanism and Democratic centrism. 

For U.S. House, New Jersey, Eleventh District: This blog endorses Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill.  Republican Jay Webber supported that federal tax reform law that screws New Jersey, he doesn't believe that women have any rights, and he gets a good rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Mikie Sherrill will fight to restore federal tax deductions for New Jersey homeowners, support equal rights for both sexes, and fight the NRA.  You can trust her.  She has an honest face.

See?

Oh, mercy me, where is my head?  That's actually a picture of my Olympic heartthrob, champion swimmer Janet Evans. This is Mikie Sherrill.

They do look alike, don't they? :-D 

Right.  Those are all of my endorsements.  You know the drill - vote on November 6.