Primary News

I never got back to this story before now, but as you likely already know, Analilia Mejia is my congresswoman.  She won the April 16 special election.

A Latina progressive who used to work for Bernie Sanders is now representing a centrist Republican-leaning district in the U.S. House of Representatives - whod'a thunk?

But the show's not over yet, this one's a double feature.  Representative Mejia has to go through another Democratic primary a week ago from today against, as far as I know, three competitors to stand in November for the full two-year term that starts in January.  And in November, is she wins the primary next week, she'll face the persistent Joe Hathaway on the Republican side once again, meaning I'll have to deal with more racist GOP flyers in the mail.

Meanwhile, the Texas Republican primary runoff to decide the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate is today, in which Republican voters have to choose between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and the Trump-backed, wholly corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton.  The winner faces James Talarico, who's competing to be the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since . . . 1988.

Wake me when it's over.   

More Primary Concerns

A slew of primary elections held yesterday produced mixed results.

In Colorado, progressives were dealt another setback when their preferred candidate Andrew Romanoff lost his Senate bid to incumbent appointed junior senator Michael Bennet, who got the support of the White House. Romanoff pushed a decisively liberal agenda, and he even had the support of former President Bill Clinton, but the former Colorado House speaker couldn't overcome Bennet in yesterday's voting. President Obama was able to claim a victory, but progressives who wanted to push a more bold Democratic agenda were hit with a Rocky Mountain low. Unlike Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Bennet will probably prevail with the Democratic base, if only because he has a staunchly conservative opponent in the general election - Republican Ken Buck, who claims not to be a member of the Tea Party movement but is a favorite of the TP crowd. It's hard to tell whether Bennet can win outright. The gubernatorial contest pits Republican Dan Maes agianst popular Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, with ex-Republican congressman and noted immigrant basher Tom Tancredo running as a third-party candidate and possibly splitting the Republican vote.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, wrestling mogul Linda McMahon cruised to victory in a Senate primary necessitated by an inconclusive spring state Republican convention. Spending her way past once-favored GOP candidate Rob Simmons, she now plans to spend $50 million against the Democratic nominee, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. As it became apparent before the votes were counted that McMahon was going to be the nominee, the press began to take note of her record of peddling violence and sadism to children, and it won't be long before they start looking at the abuse of steroids in her "sport" that led to murder and suicide in the Benoit family case mentioned earlier on this blog. People are afraid of McMahon's deep pockets, but Blumenthal has the brand name and the record of service; his opponent's strategy is to drive up her poll numbers with her financial numbers and hope he slips up. But Blumenthal already did slip up, with poorly chosen words on his Vietnam War-era service that were blown out of proportion and lowered his ratings in the polls only temporarily. I can't imagine McMahon getting that lucky again.

I'll have more on McMahon later. For the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Connecticut, where Republican governor Jodi Rell is retiring, Tom Foley was nominated to run in November. Ned Lamont, who won the Democratic senate nomination in 2006 but lost the general election to Joseph Lieberman, couldn't even get the Democratic nomination for governor this time, losing to former Stanford mayor Dan Malloy. In Minnesota, where Governor Tim Pawlenty is retiring, Mark Dayton, a department store scion (the Minneapolis-based Dayton's chain was taken over by Federated Stores and given the corporate Macy's name) and one-term U.S. senator who was practically asked to leave Washington, narrowly won the Democratic nomination for governor; conservative state representative Tom Emmer won the Republican nomination, the easy winner of the GOP line on the ballot. Neither Connecticut nor Minnesota, so-called blue states, have elected a Democratic governor since 1986.

Now it's onto Georgia, where former governor Roy Barnes won the Democratic nomination for his old office, with the results for the Republican gubernatorial nomination still too close to call between former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel and former U.S. Representative (and former Democrat) Nathan Deal. While other states may not like incumbent officeholders, the trend in Georgia seems to be in favor of former officeholders.

Carolina In My Mind

History was made in South Carolina yesterday as the Republicans nominated Indian-American state representative Nikki Haley to run for governor and voters in the palmetto State's First Congressional District nominated Tim Scott, who is black, to be the Republican candidate for that seat in the fall. Scott would be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction and the first black Republican congressman since 2003. Both are likely to win in November.

As much as I want to praise South Carolina Republicans for looking beyond race, gender, and ethnicity in these primary elections, I choose to damn them instead. Haley and Scott won largely out of right-wing anger with Washington and the Obama administration. Haley, a wealthy businesswoman, and Scott, who had the backing of the anti-tax, Wall Street-friendly Club For Growth, both represent a philosophy that promotes an unfettered market and a limited role for government - the same ideology that got this country in trouble in the first place. To give you an idea of how toxic Haley and Scott could be, both were endorsed by noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin. The end.

The Republican party in South Carolina has been redeemed by the star quality of its nominees, though, after the embarrassing revelations of last year involving Mark Sanford. It's now the state Democratic party - which somehow nominated a loser named Alvin Greene to take on the horrible incumbent Republican senator Jim DeMint and has less than zero chance of unseating him - that's the joke, and the less said about that, the better.

Meanwhile, next door in North Carolina, U.S. Senate hopeful Elaine Marshall, a favorite among progressives, defeated establishment candidate Cal Cunningham for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. This should be a big deal. Marshall did what Bill Halter couldn't do in Arkansas - defeat a Senate candidate backed by the White House. She's running in November against Richard Burr, a rather unpopular fellow, though probably not as unlikable as Jim DeMint, and one who holds a Senate seat that is a political graveyard for those who have held it in the past thirty-five years.

No one cares. No liberal commentators at MSNBC are celebrating this victory over establishment Democrats within the party. Even Ed Schultz hasn't mentioned it. As noted, Chuck Todd considers it such a long shot for the Democrats he'd rather not talk about it. But it proves that progressives are getting energized and are ready to put forward more of their own candidates. They've not only nominated Marshall to run for the Senate, in North Carolina, they've nominated Joe Sestak to do so in Pennsylvania. Two out of three ain't bad. And they pulled off their latest coup in a state where voters lean Republican but have shown a willingness to hear out Democrats. Ask Kay Hagan, North Carolina's Democratic senator. If this primary is any indication, the left is not going to let Tea Partiers suck up all the political oxygen.

Liberal Leanings

It appears that, after tonight, Arkansas will no longer be the Land of Lincoln. U.S. Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln, a Democrat who's undoubtedly one of Stephen Colbert's favorite Republicans, is running scared and running scarred in her runoff primary against Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, whose insurgent campaign has been fueled by anger against Senator Lincoln for opposing the public health insurance option in the new health care reform law. Although she is an establishment Democrat running as a moderate in a rightward-leaning state with the backing of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the left has had enough of her and is ready to send Halter to the Senate so he can deliver the change we can believe in.

But he has to get past Republican nominee John Boozman in November first. On November second. ;-)

Speaking of liberal leanings, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is proving to be a reliable liberal vote on the Court. She supported requiring police to obtain a waiver in relation to reading a suspect his Miranda rights, where she was on the losing side of a 5-4 decision, and she was on the winning side of a 5-4 opinion holding that it is cruel and unusual punishment to impose a life prison term without possible parole on an juvenile offender who did not commit murder. these are just two examples. More are available in this article from the Los Angeles Times.

While Sotomayor is making her presence felt on the Court, she can only go so far with a conservative majority to deal with. I noted with interest Sotomayor's recent return to the Bronx, where she visited her old Catholic elementary school, visited a housing project renamed in her honor (wouldn't it have been better to name a courthouse for her?), and spoke at the commencement ceremonies of Hostos Community College, fresh from dissenting against the Supreme Court decision that gutted Miranda rights.

"We celebrate with you today," Sotomayor said to the Hostos graduates, "with a full understanding of what you have achieved and we are filled with joy in your success. You will breathe life into the dreams of the next generation. You're the generation that followed me and your children will follow us. And together we're going to make this a better world."

Make a better world? Not going to happen, so long as this wise Latina has to deal with those dumb goombahs from Jersey.

Primary Concerns

Several primary elections to nominate candidates for public office are being held in several states tomorrow, but the two biggest primaries gaining attention are the Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and Arkansas.

In Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Specter is in a dead heat with Delaware County congressman Joe Sestak for the right to run for Senate against Republican Pat Toomey in November. Specter, who became a Democrat last year, is one of the last two Republican senators elected on Ronald Reagan's coattails in 1980 (Iowa's Charles Grassley is the other) that gave the GOP its first Senate majority since 1954. Now Specter is running with the support of President Obama and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell to preserve the Democratic majority.

Sestak is claiming that Specter changed parties for political expediency and doesn't share the core values of Pennsylvania Democrats, though Specter has union support and also provide a necessary vote for health care reform. But Specter did vote for Clarence Thomas's confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991 - about as popular with rank-and-file Democrats as hot cocoa in Ecuador. Though Specter was the most liberal member of the Senate Republican caucus until he switched parties, he was still a Republican, and he supported other judicial nominees from Presidents named Bush. Though Obama has thrown his support to Specter, he has wisely eschewed the opportunity to campaign for him. Which makes sense, considering what a huge asset he was for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts.

Specter is slipping a bit but he can't be counted out, especially when the polls show a huge groups of undecided voters making the election to close to call. Although progressives are excited by and eager to support Sestak, polls show that Specter would have a better chance of defeating Toomey, a Tea Party darling. I'm not endorsing either candidate. If I were a Pennsylvania resident today, and if I were voting in the primary, I'd toss a coin in the voting booth.

In Arkansas, the case is more clear-cut. Incumbent senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln, a conservative Democrat who has taken campaign money from big business and helped kill the government insurance option in the health care bill, has angered Bill Halter, the state's lieutenant governor, Bill Halter, to run against her in the primary and claim (with considerable justification) that she doesn't speak for and vote in favor of ordinary Arkansans. So I endorse Halter. Halter is running behind, and Lincoln has the support of Obama and former President (and former Arkansan) Bill Clinton, both of whom clearly prefer to stick with the devil they know rather than the devil they don't know. But the undecided share of likely voters could also swing tomorrow's result either way, and it promises to make for as spirited a primary there tomorrow as in Pennsylvania.

But how much enthusiasm on the left will translate to victories tomorrow? And would Sestak or Halter, if nominated, be mainstream enough for general election voters in November? That's my worry.