Daily Archives: August 22, 2022

Three contenders hoping to succeed Rep. Lee Zeldin are fighting to win the Republican nomination in the First Congressional District in the GOP primary election Aug. 23.

Nick LaLota of Amityville, Michelle Bond of Port Jefferson and Anthony Figliola of East Setauket are the three candidates on the ballot for the seat being vacated by Zeldin, a four-term incumbent. Zeldin is the nominee of the Republican and Conservative parties for governor seeking to unseat Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul this November.

LaLota is the Republican committee endorsed nominee for the seat. He is a former Suffolk County election commissioner, current chief of staff to the Suffolk County Legislature and a Navy veteran.

He has the endorsement of elected officials across Suffolk County, including State Senator Anthony Palumbo, Assembly Member Jodi Giglio and Riverhead Supervisor Yvette Aguiar.

Bond is the CEO of a cryptocurrency trade organization named the Association for Digital Asset Markets, former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and former senior counsel to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to her Linked-In page.

Bond has endorsements from prominent national figures: Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Jr., the son of the former president. She also received the endorsement of the Suffolk County Police Conference and the conservative activist group, the Long Island Loud Majority.

Figliola is a lobbyist and former deputy supervisor of Brookhaven Town. He has the endorsement of Giuliani, a Republican gubernatorial primary candidate who lost against Zeldin and was a special assistant during the Trump administration, according to Figliolas Facebook page. Giuliani is also the son of Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City Mayor and lawyer to Trump who peddled the former presidents false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.

He also has the support of other local conservative groups like the America First Warehouse group and the Suffolk County chapter of Moms for Liberty, according to his Facebook page.

All the candidates present themselves as the America First candidate in the race, echoing the slogan used by former President Donald Trump. The candidates have similar viewpoints on issues including the economy, inflation, taxes, law enforcement, immigration and election integrity.

There is no Democratic primary in the First Congressional District. Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming of Sag Harbor secured the nomination after her last primary opponent dropped out of the race in May.

There are also no primary elections for the Republican or Democratic nominations for State Senate. Democrat Skyler Johnson will attempt to seat one-term incumbent Republican Senator Anthony Palumbo in November.

Novembers election will decide control of a U.S. Congress narrowly held by Democrats in both the House of Representatives and Senate. This is also the first election held after reapportionment, which resulted in New York losing one congressional seat.

Reapportionment also resulted in a newly drawn First Congressional district, which is set to be a swing district split 50-50 between voters for Biden and Trump in the 2020 election, according to the website redistrictingandyou.org, developed by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The final redistricting map for the First Congressional District was drawn by a court-appointed special master after a lawsuit successfully challenged Democrat-drawn maps earlier this year.

Polls are open Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Voters can check the location of their polling place using the New York State Board of Elections website.

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In Tuesday's primary, three Republican candidates fight to be Zeldin's successor - RiverheadLOCAL

Republicans who support former President Trump more than they support the GOP climbed to 41 percent in August, up 7 points from May when 34 percent said they supported Trump more than the party, according to an NBC News poll released Sunday.

A slim majority of Republicans, or 50 percent, say they support the party more than they do Trump, the poll finds. But thats down from 58 percent in May.

The former president continues to wield immense influence over the Republican Party. He has heavily influenced the defeat of eight out of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, either by pressuring them to resign or backing primary challengers.

The most high-profile loss came last week, when Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), arguably his fiercest critic in the GOP, was defeated by more than 40 points from a Trump-endorsed challenger.

Trump saw Republicans rally behind him this month yet again after the FBI searched his home in connection to an investigation into whether he violated the Espionage Act, among other statutes, by taking classified documents home with him upon leaving the White House.

Republicans decried the unprecedented search of a former presidents home, calling it a politically motivated witch hunt.

Trump is also fending off a congressional investigation into the Capitol riot, which the panel of lawmakers has claimed was incited by the former president after he failed to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Most Americans, or 57 percent, say the investigations into Trump should continue, according to the NBC News poll.

Updated at 8:23 a.m.

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Number of Republicans who say they support Trump over GOP rises: poll - The Hill

Its basically from political gadfly within the Republican caucus to potentially the number two person in the state of Arizona, says Arizona Republican Sen. T.J. Shope. Its a meteoric rise.

Never in a million years would Paul Boyer, a fellow GOP state legislator, have imagined that Finchem would crush a field of qualified candidates and win a nomination to statewide office.

Mark is known as the guy thats probably the dumbest well, theres a long list, but one of the dumbest legislators in the state House, he says. (Finchems retort: Boyer is an utter disgrace.)

But Finchems rise makes sense in light of the broader shift within the Arizona Republican Party. Trumps slate of political insurgents swept the GOP nomination for every state office in which he offered his blessing, from the U.S. Senate down to state Senate races.

After decades of civil war, the Arizona primaries mark a decisive swing in the state GOPs balance of power. The center-right, pro-business wing of the party led by the late Sen. John McCain and Gov. Doug Ducey has been defeated, at least for now. Finchem and other far-right outsiders the original tea party activists and the new Trumpist hard-liners have taken over.

We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine, Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake bragged, while making a stabbing motion, at a CPAC event following the primary. We threw together a rag-tag team of nonpolitical people to run the most exciting campaign in the country. And we won.

Lake, a former TV news anchor, fended off more than $20 million in spending against her to narrowly capture the nomination, despite her opponents backing from Ducey, former GOP Gov. Jan Brewer and former Vice President Mike Pence.

We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine, Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake bragged at a recent CPAC event.|LM Otero/AP Photo

Blake Masters, a 36-year-old acolyte of billionaire tech entrepreneur and Trump donor Peter Thiel, surged from behind in the U.S. Senate primary after earning Trumps nod. Abraham Hamadeh, a 31-year-old lawyer who has spent fewer days in a courtroom than many petty criminals, was rocketed out of obscurity to win the primary for state attorney general after snagging Trumps endorsement.

None have any political experience. But they have the main qualification that matters to the former president: They repeat the lie that the Arizona election was rigged against him. Every winning Republican candidate said they wouldnt have certified the 2020 election. That means that as Trump gears up for a possible third run for the presidency, Arizona is facing the prospect of a slate of statewide officials who could steal the election for him. (Indeed, another victim of a Trump-backed primary was Rusty Bowers, the soft-spoken leader of the Arizona House who rebuffed Trumps pressure campaign to overturn the states 2020 election results and testified to the January 6 committee.)

For his part, Finchem defeated three other candidates for the secretary of state nomination: Beau Lane, an advertising executive who had backing from the business community and Duceys full-throated endorsement; state Rep. Shawnna Bolick who had sponsored legislation to let lawmakers toss out the results of presidential elections they dont like and had tried to capture the Trump vote; and state Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who has been the architect of every major election integrity bill that has been signed into law for the past decade, but who refused to regurgitate the lie that Arizonas election was stolen from Trump. Finchem beat them all by wide margins.

Its not an overstatement to say Finchem remains a bit of a joke to his soon-to-be old colleagues.

Boyer, who served eight years in the Arizona Legislature alongside Finchem, cackled while recalling Finchems doomed 2020 run for speaker against Bowers. Finchem wrote a seven-page memo outlining his vision for the job, including his top priority: using viral content to take the messaging power back from the media. And he did prove that he knew how to go viral.

The use of mimes [SIC] is an emerging means of harnessing rhetoric and sarcasm with a purpose, Finchem declared with a repeated typo of the word meme, which became a local meme itself. The regular use of mimes to build brand identity and establish solid differentiation will serve us well.

Less than a third of the Republican caucus ultimately backed Finchem to become the speaker, but it cemented his status as the leader of the far right at the state Capitol.

Finchem has always been something of an underdog and outcast at the state Capitol. In his eight years as a lawmaker, he has only once been granted a committee chairmanship; typically, even junior Republican lawmakers get prime posts. He had just one bill signed into law this year fewer than many Democrats who sit in the minority and he hasnt fared much better in past years.

How can he go from that, to the Republican nominee for secretary of state? I mean, its simple. He won the Arizona Apprentice for secretary of state, Boyer says. Abe Hamadeh for AG? Kari Lake for governor? Its very simple. If you can fog up a mirror and win the Arizona Apprentice, youre good.

Abe Hamadeh for AG? Kari Lake for governor? Its very simple. If you can fog up a mirror and win the Arizona Apprentice, youre good.

Paul Boyer, Arizona state legislator

Boyer, meanwhile, chose not to run for reelection after receiving death threats for refusing to go along with his partys election lies. So just two years after his failed run for leadership, Finchem is on top. And those who laughed at his vision have been purged from Arizonas political landscape.

In many ways, Finchem is a man made for the times. Hes a longtime leader of the legislatures far-right Liberty Caucus, and is revered in conservative grassroots circles as one of the few good lawmakers.

He refused to do a phone interview for this article, but he did send a few text messages, saying if hes having a moment in the sun, its because like him, the people are no longer afraid to be bullied by the establishment.

I am but a humble servant who took the time to listen to his constituents and has been vilified for it, he wrote. Perhaps thats why they view me as their champion.

Originally from the Detroit area, Finchem moved to Arizona in 1999 and began a career as a realtor. (He had previously been a cop in Kalamazoo, Mich., where his final evaluation reads poor rating, would not rehire.) He later became vice president of business development for Clean Power Technologies LLC, an Idaho-based company that claimed on its now-defunct website that it can generate and deliver clean energy without wires, anywhere around the world.

Finchem was an early adopter of fringe politics in Arizona. He was touting state sovereignty issues long before phrases like plenary powers and the independent state legislature doctrine entered the mainstream political lexicon. Armed not with a law degree, but a masters in legal studies from the University of Arizonas freedom school, Finchem became the thought leader of the movement to decertify the 2020 election in Arizona.

After losing his head-to-head contest with Bowers for the speakership in late 2020, Finchem held an unauthorized, unofficial hearing with Rudy Giuliani and other members of Trumps legal team to air falsehoods about how the election was rigged. That hearing cemented his status as one of the key ringleaders of Arizonas Stop the Steal movement and helped earn him the Trump endorsement that rocketed him to national stardom on the right.

Just a few weeks later, Finchem was outside the U.S. Capitol at the Jan. 6 riot. Though he maintains he never entered the building, video footage shows he was much closer than he originally claimed. Ali Alexander, the organizer of the rally that helped fuel the deadly mayhem, declared there wouldnt have been a Stop the Steal movement in Arizona without Finchem.

CNN reported this week that Finchem previously shared posts on social media about stockpiling ammunition and touted his membership in the Oath Keepers anti-government extremist group, which is under scrutiny for its role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Finchem is still pushing baseless theories about how the election was rigged, texting a link to a conservative activist project that he claims shows the Chinese Communist Party now has operational control over many elections across the United States because they control the servers where all of the electronic data sits.

What boggles my mind is reporters and journalists are sitting on the story of the century but nobody has the balls to write about it, he wrote in a text.

The 2022 primaries underscored just how tight Trumps grip is over Arizona Republicans, and that his 2020 loss is still fresh on these voters minds as he considers another run for the presidency.

How could it not be? In Arizona, it feels like the 2020 election is still ongoing.

Republicans in this state, perhaps more than any other, have followed Trumps election conspiracies down the rabbit hole.

First there was the Cyber Ninjas audit authorized by the state Senate, which ultimately confirmed through a hand count of ballots that President Joe Biden won, but which offered up a host of other debunkable conspiracies about how maybe he didnt win. Then theres the still-ongoing investigation by the Arizona attorney general about alleged improprieties in the election, which uncovered a handful of record-keeping issues, but no proof of any widespread fraud, including from dead people voting.

Meanwhile, Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward not only continues to spout Trumps fantasies about the election; she broke with the chairs long-standing tradition of neutrality to throw her full weight behind the MAGA candidates in the primary, calling the Trump-opposed candidates RINOs and worse. The sycophantic pro-Trump student group Turning Point USA also is based in Arizona and deeply intertwined with the party infrastructure.

Trump himself has seen Arizona as key to keeping his political future alive. Hes traveled to the state twice since losing the 2020 election. In January of this year, he came to promote his candidates and spin election yarns. And during the first weeks of early voting, he returned with pillow salesman and conspiracy-slinger Mike Lindell, who warmed up the crowd by claiming, once again, that the election was rigged and that the state is poised to do away with defective vote tabulating machines.

But just as important, Arizonas mainstream conservatives have cowered to the lie that the election was stolen from Trump. While some, including Ducey, have attempted to tamp down on the rhetoric, none have forcefully confronted Trumps disinformation.

On the same day as Trumps latest rally for his candidates, Pence and Ducey stumped for their pick in the gubernatorial primary: Karrin Taylor Robson. Robson criticized Lake for saying the primary election was rigged against her before votes had even been cast, but Robson refused to say that the 2020 election was free and fair, saying she wasnt sure if she would have certified Arizonas 2020 election if she were governor.

We have the wrong guy in the White House, she said, while repeatedly refusing to clarify whether Biden was wrongfully elected or simply the wrong guy for the job.

Lane, Finchems business-backed opponent, would say the election wasnt stolen when asked. But he never made it a central point of his campaign in an overt way. Instead, he took to the airwaves with criticism of Finchem for having supported a National Popular Vote bill, saying if Finchem had his way, Hillary Clinton would have been president.

In a state where even the mainstream conservative candidate for the top election official doesnt forcefully articulate a message that the 2020 election was safe, secure and legitimate, it shouldnt be a shock that Republican voters backed a slate of candidates thats likely to be willing to throw out the results of the 2024 election.

Whether Finchem and his fellow Trumpists will find success in November is less clear.

In Arizonas purple political landscape, Democrats and even many Republicans here say GOP primary voters went too far that theyve undermined the partys chances of holding the states top offices in an otherwise great year for Republicans. Perhaps that could break the fever, as Barack Obama once predicted, before the party went even further to the right under Trump.

It may take a drubbing at the polls this year to get Republican voters off the Trump train, says Arizona Republican consultant Barrett Marson. Or maybe theyll just double down.

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'Never in a Million Years': Arizona Republicans Grapple with the Rising Fringe - POLITICO

Roger Roth,a senator in the state Legislature, emerged from a crowded field of eight candidates to become the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.

Roth joins construction executive Tim Michels on the GOP ticket to challenge incumbent Gov. Tony Evers.

Here is what to know about Roth, a Republican from Appleton, as voters head into the general election.

Roth, 44, was first elected to the Legislature in 2006 after mounting a successful bid to represent the 56th Assembly District. Heserved two terms before running for the 8th Congressional District in 2010. He was defeated in the Republican primary by former Rep. Reid Ribble.

Roth ran for state Senate in 2014 and won his race in the 19th District by more than 10,000 votes and has represented the district in Madison since.

Roth served aspresident of the Senate from 2017-21. The senate president is elected by fellow senators and presides over daily proceedings in the upper house of the Legislature.

As a college student, he became involved in Republican politics working for then-Gov.Tommy Thompsons campaign.

Roth was a homebuilder and Air National Guard veteran who served multiple tours in Iraq.

Roth is from Appleton where he currently lives with his wife and five sons. He attended high school in Neenah and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Roth is a fiscal and social conservative who has been a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act. Roth spearheaded numerous lawsuits aimed at curtailing Evers' COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and mandates. Roth oversaw efforts to restrict Evers powers during the lame duck session between the election of Evers and his inauguration.

Roth blocked multiple nominees put forth by Evers for technical college board positionsand has been a party to efforts designed to limit the Department of Natural Resources regulatory powers.

Roth also led efforts to force a vote on firing former Parole Commission Chairman John Tate and presided over the rejection of Brad Pfaff for agriculture secretary.

Roth supported calls to break up the Milwaukee public school district, has advocated for eliminating the state income tax, signaled an openness to legalizing recreational marijuana,and is in favor of placing restrictions on abortion access.

During his campaign launch, Roth said he believes Wisconsinites "want a change in direction," and added he believes his candidacy "will help empower whomever wins the Republican governor's race to help move Wisconsin forward."

Party spokesperson Anna Kelly said: "With his Fox Valley roots, military background, legislative accomplishments, and business experience, Roger Roth is an excellent complement to Tim Michels on the Republican ticket. Roth would bring a record of cutting taxes, creating jobs and promoting school choice to Madison, and we look forward to getting him across the finish line in November."

In his most recent reelection campaign for the state Senate, Roth won by roughly 5,000 votes and a margin of 53.2%. He enjoyed a dominant performance over his primary opponents for lieutenant governor, netting 30.1% of the vote and defeating the runner-up by about 69,000 votes.

Roths Madison office can be reached by calling 608-266-0718 or emailing sen.roth@legis.wisconsin.gov.

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What you need to know about Roger Roth, the lieutenant governor nominee running with Tim Michels - Post-Crescent

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Photo via Dr. Oz/Twitter

Dr. Oz, who is running one of the most dogshit Senate campaigns in history.

When Specter realized that he would lose the Republican primary to Pat Toomey, the head of Club for Growth, he switched parties, hoping to find succor among Democrats. Though the party establishment lined up behind him, Specter lost the Democratic primary to Joe Sestak, who lost the general election to Toomey, who took office on the vanguard of the conservative right.

Twelve years later, Toomey isnt seeking a third Senate term. If he did, he almost certainly would have lost in the Republican primary. He, too, was labeled a RINO for not wholeheartedly embracing President Donald Trump.

And that was before he voted to convict Trump following the second impeachment. The state GOP publicly rebuked him. Instead, Pennsylvania Republicans have backed the Trump-selected Dr. Oz, who is running one of the most dogshit Senate campaigns in history. They also supported Doug Mastriano, another Trump-backed, far-right election denier who pals around with antisemites and appears likely to lose a winnable election for governor in November.

Thats become a common refrain this year: Trumps preferred candidates have dominated Republican primaries but struggled to build mass appeal. Oz looks hapless. In Georgia, Herschel Walker cant string together a coherent sentence. JD Vances snide populism is turning a safe bet in Ohio into an actual horserace. Blake Masters, a subsidiary of right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, is the Democrats best friend in Arizona. Even Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, whos been huffing the MAGA glue like a fiend, is behind.

Republicans are starting to recognize their vulnerability. Having amateur candidates whove never run for office before carrying the banner for the Republican Party in critical Senate races is a risky maneuver, a Republican pollster told The Washington Post.

Last week, Mitch McConnell came close to admitting that the Senate was slipping from his grasp. I think theres probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate, he said. Senate races are just differentthey're statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.

And Republicans can no longer bank on President Joe Bidens unpopularity tanking his party this fall. The Supreme Courts abortion decision rattled not just the Democratic base but also suburban and young voters. In addition, gas prices are falling, and Biden has racked up a series of legislative wins, over blanket Republican opposition, on issues like veteran health care and Medicare drug pricing that poll in the stratosphere. (Meanwhile, under Sen. Rick Scott, who ran one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes in American history, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is lighting money on fire.)

Not coincidentally, Democrats have regained the (very narrow) lead on the generic ballot for the first time since November.

Due to gerrymandering, that lead probably isnt strong enough to keep the House in Democratic hands, and it might prove ephemeral anyway. Biden remains less popular than Trump was at this point in his presidency, and Republicans got smashed in 2018. And the axiom that the general public doesnt tune in until after Labor Day isnt wrong.

But think about what regular people will see when they start paying attention: a crop of candidates so infected by Fox News Brain that they wont pivot to the general election. They denied the 2020 election results, committed to banning abortion, and backed Trump like drones prostrating before a cult leader during the primary; now they wonder why that strategy doesnt have mass appeal.

As Trump and his acolytes celebrate Rep. Liz Cheneys 37-point loss in the Wyoming primary last week, they fail to imagine what everyone else sees: a party rejecting a conservative apostate whose only crime was prizing democracy over Donald Trump. As they attack the FBIone congressional candidate called for Attorney General Merrick Garlands executionfor recovering stolen classified documents from Trumps house, they fail to realize that beyond their base, the public believes the Mar-a-Lago search was justified.

Trump, for example, believes the Mar-a-Lago search helps him politically. In a way, it does. By playing martyr-in-chief, he raised a ton of money that might have otherwise gone to Jim Bakers apocalypse buckets. He also got a huge bump in the polls against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantiswho was just in Pennsylvania campaigning for the antisemite-curious Mastriano.

I dont think him being behind bars would stop him from winning the Republican nomination, a Republican consultant told NBC News, quite accurately.

But winning a nomination and winning an election are different things. Even in a polarized era, in which most voters care more about the party than the candidate, extremists and idiots lose votes. The more extreme and idiotic the candidate, the more votes they lose. The far-right positions and jackass bellicosity required for a candidate to win a Republican nomination are going to cost the party seats this year.

I cant help but wonder if Ron DeSantis and Doug Mastriano will be 2034s Pat Toomeycandidates who redefined extremism, only to have someone else redefine it later. A party on this trajectory should have trouble competing outside of the reddest districts in the reddest states. Of course, I said the same thing in 2010.

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The Republican propaganda machine is eating its own - Creative Loafing Tampa

Just a few weeks ago, Republicans thought the 2022 midterms were going to be an easy march to victory. Runaway inflation, ongoing supply chain shortages and a string of unfulfilled promises made for the perfect plan of attack against Democrats.

Now it looks like the GOP is on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Thanks to a combination of Democratic successes and Republican incompetence, Democrats seem well positioned not only to hold onto the Senate but to actually increase their margin there. While the House is still likely to fall to the Republicans thanks to gerrymandering that favors the party, victory doesnt look like the blowout that pundits had once predicted.

The biggest boost to the Democrats has been the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The massive legislation tackles climate change, increases taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and offers relief from rising drug prices for seniors on Medicare. Every one of these measures is exactly what the vast majority of American voters want, giving Democrats a potent platform on which to run this fall. That the bill appeared to be dead only to be resurrected and swiftly passed only added to the sense of Democratic momentum.

While Republicans are still pinning their hopes on messages about inflation, they are finding them counterbalanced by the Supreme Courts decision to allow bans on abortion. That decision, overturning nearly 50 years of womens right to choose, has electrified Democratic voters and has emerged as a powerful rallying tool for candidates.

Meantime, Republicans have proven themselves to be inept, to put it politely.

To begin with, in their unyielding fealty to Donald Trump, the party faithful has put forth a string of MAGA warriors who are also really lousy candidates. That doesnt matter in deep red states, but in swing states, its a recipe for failure.

In Pennsylvania, GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano is almost the perfect prototype for the candidate least likely to appeal to suburban voters. An unabashed Christian nationalist, Mastriano is a hardliner on abortion (although hes tried downplaying that since the Supreme Court ruling). The Congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection wants to talk to him about his participation in the event; Mastriano was there, but says he didnt enter the Capitol.

The GOP nominee for governor in Maryland is a QAnon whack jobaccording to the departing Republican governor, Larry Hogan. The Republicans choice for governor in Illinois, Darren Bailey, wants to remove Chicago from the state. Tudor Dixon, the GOP candidate for governor in Michigan, says that rape victims who become pregnant shouldnt be able to have abortions because they find healing in giving birth.

In the Senate, things are so bad that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has all but said that he expects to remain Minority Leader. In large part, thats because Trump-endorsed candidates are turning out to be disastrous. In Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, the television doctor who lives in New Jersey, painted a target on his back with his tone-deaf ad about the high price of crudit.In Georgia, Herschel Walker has been such an erratic candidate that he cant seem to recall how many children he has in addition to the flamboyantly non-gay one.

And then there are the acolytes of gay billionaire Peter Thiel: Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio. Both are underperforming. Masters is behind incumbent Mark Kelly in the polls. While Ohio is more Republican-leaning than Arizona, Vance is struggling to raise money, pulling in a paltry $2.3 million in the last reporting, less than a quarter of what his Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, raised.

Surprisingly, money is turning out to be a big problem for Republicans this year. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has canceled $10 million worth of television ads, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona due to lack of money. The Committee raised more than $173 million this election cycle, but somehow managed to burn through all but $28 million of it, infuriating Republicans demanding to know where the money went.

If the Democrats manage to hold onto the Senate and even increase their margin, they will have been incredibly lucky. But that doesnt mean everything will run smoothly. A Republican-controlled House will engage in all kinds of nonsense, right up to and probably including impeachment proceedings against Biden. That will just be a preview of what to expect in the big battle of 2024.

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Republicans had all the advantages in the midterms. They've blown every one of them - LGBTQ Nation

Rusty Bowers is headed for the exit. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the states house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party.

Last month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had not only been stolen from Trump, he said, it was satanically snatched by the devil himself.

Bowers was ousted as punishment. The Trump acolytes who over the past two years have gained control of the states Republican party wanted revenge for the powerful testimony he gave in June to the January 6 hearings in which he revealed the pressure he was put under to overturn Arizonas election result.

This is a very Arizonan story. But it is also an American story that carries an ominous warning for the entire nation.

Six hours after the Guardian interviewed Bowers, Liz Cheney was similarly ousted in a primary for her congressional seat in Wyoming. The formerly third most powerful Republican leader in the US Congress had been punished too.

In Bowerss case, his assailants in the Arizona Republican party wanted to punish him because he had steadfastly refused to do their, and Trumps, bidding. He had declined to use his power as leader of the house to invoke an arcane Arizonan law whose text has never been found that would allow the legislature to cast out the will of 3.4 million voters who had handed victory to Joe Biden and switch the outcome unilaterally to Trump.

Bowers has a word for that kind of thinking. The thought that if you dont do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves that to me is fascism.

Come January, Bowers will no longer be an Arizona politician. He can now speak his mind. He did just that, for more than two hours in an interview with the Guardian this week.

He spoke his mind about the phone conversations he had with Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the height of the stolen election mayhem in 2020. He spoke about the clown circus of Trump loyalists who tried to bully him into subverting the election, and about the emotional violence that has been embraced by increasingly powerful sections of the Republican party in Arizona and nationally.

He spoke his mind too about the very real danger facing democracy in America today to his astonishment, at the hands of his own party.

The constitution is hanging by a thread, he told me. The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And its my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.

Bowers will talk about all that, and much more. But first, he wants to show me around his spiritual home. He arranged to meet me at his familys ranch, so you can see a bit of why I think the way I do.

The ranch is nestled in a hollow among desert hills about 90 minutes drive east of Phoenix, at the end of five miles of dramatically snaking dirt road. Fifteen months ago a wildfire swept through the area, destroying majestic cottonwoods and sycamores and sending flames high up above the hills. The main house came within 10 feet of being destroyed and his art studio, replete with many of his landscape paintings and a large portion of his legislative papers, was burnt to ashes.

I ask him what this extraordinarily beautiful and harsh landscape reveals about his political character. Well, Im not a man of means, he said. We pay for things as we go. We are compelled to work, to do things with our hands. That gives you a different appreciation of life. Things have a bigger meaning.

Bowers said that his core values were instilled in him as a child growing up within a conservative Republican tradition. He is the father of seven children, one of whom, Kacey, died last year. Family, faith, community these are values at a very core level. You dont survive out here, on land like this, alone.

A fourth-generation Arizonan, Bowers, 69, grew up within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon church. His faith, along with his other great passion for art he is a painter and sculptor is visible all around. The front of the main house is lined with three large bronzes depicting the epic 1,100-mile journey across America that the Mormons undertook in 1846-47.

From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.

He identifies as pro-life, sees the US constitution as being inspired by God, and voted for Trump in the 2020 election. I campaigned for Trump, I went to his rallies, I stood up on the stage with him, he said.

Somewhere along the line, though, things started to come unstuck. A rift opened up between his old-school Republican values and those of a new cadre of activists who were energized by Trump and his embrace of conspiracy theories and strongman politics.

In hindsight, Bowers now recognizes that the opening shots of the conflict were fired not around the 2020 presidential election but earlier in the year, in the initial days of Covid. Trump-fanatical Republicans in the Arizona house displayed in their anti-mask antics the same disdain for the rules, the same bullying style, that was later to erupt in the stolen election furor.

It was like a prep show, he said.

Then came the first signs of Trumps refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. Bowers himself always expected that the presidential race in Arizona would be close. We were very much aware that a demographic of women, 18 to 40, college-educated, professional, with small children, were not voting for Donald Trump, he said.

When the results were confirmed, and Biden had won by 10,457 votes, the slimmest margin of any state, Bowers was unsurprised. But such was the brouhaha as armed Trump supporters protested outside counting centers in Maricopa county demanding audits that he decided to take a look for himself.

He gathered a group of trusted lawyers and went to investigate the counting process close up. I saw incredible amounts of protocols that were followed and signed off by volunteers Democrats, Republicans, independents. Yes, Republicans for crying out loud! And they did it by the book.

On 22 November 2020, two weeks after Biden had been declared the next president of the United States, Bowers received a call from the White House. Trump and Giuliani were on the line.

After exchanging niceties, they got down to business. Giuliani said they had found 200,000 illegal immigrants and 6,000 dead people who had voted in Arizona. We need to fix that, Giuliani told him, cajoling him to call a special committee of the Arizona legislature to look into the supposed fraud.

Bowers remembers vividly how Trump and Giuliani played good cop and bad cop on that call. Trump, you know, he wasnt angry. He wasnt threatening. He never said to me, Im going to get you if you dont do this. Giuliani, he was the bulldog.

In return, Bowers was polite but firm. He told the duo that they had to provide hard evidence. I said, Im not doing anything like this until you bring me something. Lets see it. Im not going to have circus time at the house of representatives.

Thats when Trump and Giuliani unveiled their second, even more incendiary, proposal. They had heard that there was an arcane Arizona law that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature under Bowers to throw out Bidens electors and send Trump alternatives to Congress in their place.

It took a moment for the penny to drop. Bowers was being asked to overturn the election through diktat.

Im not a professor of constitutional law, but I get the idea. They want me to throw out the vote of my own people, he recalls thinking. I said, Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. So now, youre asking me to overthrow the vote of the people of Arizona?

Bowerss response to the good cop, bad cop routine was categoric. He told them: I took an oath to the American constitution, the state constitution and its laws. Which one of those am I supposed to break?

It didnt stop there. Bowers was pounded by wave after wave of demands that he subvert the election, some coming from the White House, some from America First politicians closer to home.

The speaker continued to be lobbied right up to the eve of January 6 when John Eastman, the conservative law professor advising Trump on his attempted electoral coup, rang him and exhorted him to decertify the electors. Just do it and let the courts figure it all out, Eastman said.

Bowers was direct on that occasion too. No, he said.

As January 6 approached, and the cries of stolen election reached fever pitch, the attacks on Bowers became personal. A Trump train of angry fanatics blaring their horns in pickup trucks festooned with Maga flags turned up at his home in Mesa, some bearing digital boards proclaiming him to be a pedophile.

To protect his family, he would step outside the house and confront the protesters. One man had three bars on his chest, signalling he was a member of the far-right militia group the Three Percenters. The man was screaming obscenities and carrying a pistol. I had to get as close to him as I could to defend myself if he went for the gun.

The worst of it was that during several of these menacing protests, his daughter Kacey was inside the house mortally ill in bed with liver failure. She would say, What are they doing out there? She was emotional. She told me, Im going to die. I said, Honey, youre not going to die. So she had feelings, we were trying to keep her positive.

Kacey Bowers did die, on 28 January, three weeks after the insurrection at the US Capitol.

I asked Bowers whether, through all this, he had ever doubted his strength to stand up to the onslaught. Were his values tested?

I never had the thought of giving up, he said. No way. I dont like bullies. Thats one constant in my life: I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.

In July, the executive committee of the Arizona Republican party censured Bowers. Its chairwoman, Kelli Ward, a Trump devotee, said that he was no longer a Republican in good standing.

Then on 28 July, Bowers was effectively turfed out of the Arizona legislature when he was defeated in the primary by the Satan-evoking Farnsworth. That same night, the slate of election deniers standing for statewide positions won a clean sweep.

Republican nominations for governor, a US Senate seat, state attorney general and secretary of state all went to enthusiastic backers of Trump and his 2020 attempted coup. They included Mark Finchem, who was present at the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 and who continues to try to decertify Bidens presidency to this day.

Finchem is now the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Should he win in November, he would be in charge of Arizonas election administration through the 2024 presidential contest, in which Trump has indicated he is likely to be competing.

The ascent of election deniers across the board marks the final transformation of the Republican party in the state. Trumps grip is now complete; the strain of constitutional conservatism epitomized by Bowers is in the wilderness.

I think its a shame, was his rueful reflection on that transition. The suite of candidates that we now have representing what used to be a principled party is just like, wow Its like being the first colonizer on Jupiter.

In February, a mega election integrity bill was introduced into the Arizona legislature that was the culmination of the anti-democratic drift of the party. House bill 2596 would have given the Republican-controlled legislature the power to reject any election result that the majority group didnt like.

Bowers resoundingly killed off that bill by sending it to languish not in just one house committee, but in all 12 of them. I was trying to send a definitive message: this is hogwash. Taking away the fundamental right to vote, the idea that the legislature could nullify your election, thats not conservative. Thats fascist. And Im not a fascist.

Bowers said he remains optimistic that the party will one day find its way back on to the rails. He draws succor from the many people who have come up to him since his defeat telling him quietly, so that nobody can hear that they admire him and back him.

Its not like Im alone in the wilderness. Theres a lot of people from all over the United States thanking me.

But for now, he accepts that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. I ask him, at this moment, is the Republican party in Arizona lost?

Yeah, he said. Theyve invented a new way. Its a party that doesnt have any thought. Its all emotional, its all revenge. Its all anger. Thats all it is.

He held the thumb and digit finger of his right hand so close together that they were almost touching. The veneer of civilization is this thin, he said. It still exists I havent been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.

More here:

Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: The place has lost its mind - The Guardian US

Eric Trump said on Wednesday that his father, former President Donald Trump, is the key defining feature of the GOP and that the Republican party should be known as the "Trump party."

He made the comments while speaking with Eric Bolling on Newsmax as they discussed Rep. Liz Cheney's recent loss in the Wyoming GOP primary election to Trump-backed lawyer Harriet Hageman.

"Any question, Eric, that the Republican party is the party of Trump?" Bolling asked him.

"There's no question. I mean, it's not even the Republican party, I'd say it's actually the Trump party," Trump said, referencing his father's endorsement record. Per Ballotpedia, the elder Trump's endorsement record stands at 92%, with 183 victories and 17 defeats.

"My father has really redefined what the party is, how the party speaks to its constituents," Eric Trump told Newsmax.

He said that his father had "literally brought in a whole new party that stands for something totally different than the RINO class of the Republican party ever stood for."

RINO, which stands for "Republican in name only," is a term commonly used in Trumpworld as an insult to GOP lawmakers who do not support Trump.

Trump also gloated over the margin by which Cheney the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney lost the Wyoming Republican primary, saying that his father had "killed another political dynasty."

"He first killed the Bushes and then he killed the Clintons. Last night, he killed the Cheneys. He's been RINO-hunting ever since he got into politics," he said.

Hageman's win over Cheney on Tuesday, in which the lawyer received 66.3% of the vote, marked the largest victory margin that a Trump-backed candidate has earned.

The former president's endorsement has been key to helping several candidates, such as J.D. Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz, win their respective GOP primaries.

However, The New York Times reported that the elder Trump also has a track record of supporting candidates who run unopposed or against poorly-funded opponents. The former president sometimes also waits to choose a candidate only after they begin emerging as the likely winner, per the outlet.

Some Trump-backed candidates have also been defeated by large margins, such as gubernatorial hopeful David Perdue, who lost his Georgia primary to the incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also fended off his Trump-endorsed opponent, Rep. Jody Hice, by ahealthy margin.

The resounding losses of some of Donald Trump's favored candidates have caused some to question the true power of his endorsements. Moreover, Trump's popularity amongst those thought to be his loyal supporters also appears to be dwindling amid a bevy of lawsuits and investigations.

For instance, former Vice President Mike Pence has increasingly voiced differing opinions from those circulating in Trumpworld. He recently condemned the far-right's calls to defund the FBI following the agency's raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence last Monday.

Similarly, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan claimed last month that the former president's influence has "decreased dramatically" and pointed to five GOP governors who have withstood Trump's attacks.

Even Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist once loyal to the former president, has said he would no longer "pigheadedly" support Trump and is now backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis instead.

Despite this turnaround, Trump continues to chart high in polls. One recent survey by Politico found that 57% of registered voters would choose the former president if he were to run for re-election in 2024. Another poll by CBS in March found that 52% of polled Republicans wanted their midterm candidates to talk about being loyal to Trump.

Originally posted here:

Eric Trump claims the Republican Party is 'actually the Trump party' - Business Insider