Primary Election FlanK

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oops see other w/ -D

node and tag (flanked tag) neither related to this?

IT IS RETALIATION ENFORCEMENT FOR GOP

9 26 3rd way mandel DEMS

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AN 7 25

President Donald Trump has openly declared war on Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been a consistent thorn in his side throughout his second term. Now, the billionaires funding Trump's primary campaign against Massie are being unmasked.

In a Thursday report for Politico, journalist Jessica Piper identified the three Republican megadonors behind the effort to oust Massie out of his northern Kentucky congressional district. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer (known for taking Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on a luxury fishing trip) has so far contributed $1 million to the MAGA KY Political Action Committee (PAC), making him the leading funder of the anti-Massie effort.

In addition to Singer, hedge fund manager John Paulson has ponied up $250,000 to MAGA KY. And a super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson — the widow of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — has so far donated $750,000 to the effort. Singer, Paulson and Adelson have net worths of $6.2 billion, $3.8 billion and $33.5 billion, respectively.

The $2 million from Singer, Paulson and Adelson has so far more than paid for the $1.2 million that MAGA KY has spent so far on the 2026 race in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, which Massie has represented since 2012. But the Kentucky Republican has a sizable war chest of his own, with Politico reporting that he ended June with $1.7 million in his campaign account.

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Trump singled out Massie after the six-term lawmaker joined all Democrats in voting against his "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" this summer. While Democrats opposed the legislation over its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and more than $100 billion in cuts to food stamps, Massie railed against the bill for its gargantuan deficit spending — most of which went toward extending Trump's tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Even though Trump has significant financial resources at his disposal to deploy against Massie, the Kentuckian is not likely to be an easy opponent for the president. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called himself a "big supporter" of Massie, and said he would be campaigning with him across the Bluegrass State in 10 different cities across Massie's district. And anti-Massie Republicans have yet to coalesce around a single challenger. According to Ballotpedia, the only Republican who has formally declared her candidacy in the district is Nicole Lee Ethington, who is a registered nurse with no prior experience in elected office.

"They are wasting millions of dollars against me, and they are gonna lose the [House] majority because of that," Massie told NBC earlier this month.

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Charlie Kirk: “For any Republican senator out there, if you vote against Bobby Kennedy, there will be primaries”

01/29/25 3:34 PM EST

### Benny Johnson: “Senators must confirm RFK or face the absolute whirlwind of some very, very powerful forces of MAHA and MAGA that will absolutely torch them”

01/29/25

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texas primary: Climate hawk Casar wins big, Cisneros forces runoff with PetroDem Cuellar

Published on March 2nd, 2022 | by Jake Johnson

Former Austin City Council member Greg Casar handily won the Democratic primary for an open seat in Texas’ 35th Congressional District on Tuesday while progressive immigration attorneyJessica Cisneros forced Rep. Henry Cuellar—a corporate-funded Democrat under FBI investigation—into a runoff contest in the state’s 28th district. By Jake Johnson Common Dreams Casar, a democratic socialist endorsed by Rep. Alexandria […]

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an 2 22

As the 2022 midterm elections approach, Republican lawmakers across the country are scrambling to redraw congressional district maps in hopes of making them more uncompetitive and, subsequently, safer for the party's candidates. So, how can they achieve this goal?

According to HuffPost's Travis Waldron, veering further to the right will likely do the trick. Waldron pointed to Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and the political battle unfolding in Texas as a prime example of what is transpiring in many areas of the United States. While the Republican lawmaker appeared to seamlessly breeze through his first campaign two years ago, Waldron notes that things aren't as simple this time around.

Although Crenshaw is widely considered to be one of the most conservative lawmakers in the House, the Republican candidates looking to unseat him have more radicalized far-right belief systems. In short, Crenshaw is being depicted as the type of Republican lawmaker to straddle the fence; a moderate-centrist perspective the radicalized far-right has no tolerance for.

Waldron wrote:

"To hear his opponents tell it, Crenshaw is the personification of Republican heresy: Although he supported a Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the election in late 2020, Crenshaw has since denounced conspiracy theorists who said that the election was 'stolen' from Trump. He’s also criticized the idea that sham audits, like those the Arizona GOP and Republicans elsewhere have conducted, will lead to Trump’s imminent return to the White House. 'Republicans like Dan Crenshaw,' one of his right-wing challengers told The Texas Tribune recently, are 'why we allowed ... the election to be stolen.'"

So, how are far-right radicals tapping in to steer elections in their favor? By incorporating what Waldron describes as "suburban gerrymandering." Waldron explained how this works:

"Throughout the current redistricting cycle, Republicans have largely sought to shore up seats they already hold, by increasing the proportion of Republican voters in those districts, instead of creating new ones. And in Texas and elsewhere, their main targets have been seats like Crenshaw’s — districts that include substantial suburban areas that have trended, both demographically and politically, in favor of Democrats over the last decade. As in past rounds of redistricting, that approach is almost certain to dilute the votes of Black, Hispanic and other minority voters who have driven suburban population booms in Texas and other states."

Michael Li, an expert on gerrymandering and congressional redistricting at Brennan Center for Justice, shed light on the Republican perspective and the goal they are trying to reach.

“In places like Texas, Republicans drew maps like they felt they had to neutralize the suburbs,” said Li. “That’s what Republicans did across the country: They created a lot of rural-suburban districts. They broke up the suburbs, and that’s going to affect the kinds of people that are elected."

While these types of practices raise ethical questions and concerns, the problem, according to Alex Keena, —a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who researches the impact of gerrymandering— is that they are legal.

“This is just the obvious consequence,” said Keena. “It’s basically legal now."

As the political population of suburban Republicans continues to diminish, Republican lawmakers like Crenshaw will be left with limited platform options. The obvious alternative: lean further to the far right or jeopardize the possibility of re-election.

“You can see a world in which they become a little bit more conservative,” Li said. “Because they have to win the primary, and the primary electorates in these newly drawn districts are much more conservative."

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aha threa usedto be KKoch CFG tea partiers freedom caucus, with the odd talk show jock but now soc med quanon wackos gohmert a kind to bridge to Anglo-saxon qnaon caucus??

yikes omg sys ampl fdbk? lack of diversity? not possible w/o SOC MED

an 10 21

Ron Watkins, the guy most QAnon experts believe is on half of the duo — with his father Jim Watkins — to be the infamous Q of QAnon (He denies it) is now running for Congress. Watkins has relocated to Arizona from Japan, where he was believed by most QAnon researchers to have written the "Q drops" — along with his father — by pretending to be a high-placed D.C. official in the Donald Trump administration. He's planning to run as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran.

Watkins didn't pick Arizona's 1st district out of any real connection to the area, or even the state. The district has become a hot commodity because, after a robust bout of gerrymanderingby the GOP-controlled state legislature, it's believed that that the congressional seat will likely turn over to a Republican.Subsequently, the race is a magnet for a lot of Republicans with congressional dreams and a better base of donors than the denies-he-is-Q guy.

GOP political consultants are quick to downplay the possibility that Watkins could win. Arizona Republican political consultant Stan Barnes told Will Sommer of the Daily Beast that a guy "who's allegedly related to the QAnon phenomenon has no chance of winning." But as Sommer pointed out, "QAnon connections haven't proved disqualifying" for Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.Indeed, Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol that was manned heavily by QAnoners, and he is the current favorite to win the 2024 election. Watkins is squirrelly, will likely be outspent, and his sleazy history includes giving an interview in a brothel — so I wouldn't bet in his favor. Still, he's not crazy to think that he's got a shot.

Blame gerrymandering.

Across the country, Republicans — who already control the majority of state legislatures — are working swiftly to redraw election maps to marginalize Democratic voters and create as many non-competitive Republican seats as possible. Most of the political coverage of this, for understandable reasons, is focused on how this will further enshrine the Republican power, giving them what could very well be permanent control of the federal government, despite the fact that most voters actually cast their ballots for Democrats.

But another, less intended consequence of gerrymandering is that it will speed up the Republican race to the bottom.

GOP gerrymandering empowers an ever-larger cast of idiots, conspiracy theorists, con artists, and open white nationalists to win national office. The situation is bad now, with Congress home to characters like Taylor Green, Boebert and Florida's Rep. Matt Gaetz, currently under federal investigation for sex trafficking of minors.But it's about to get much worse. Very soon the clown car will unload its passengers into primary campaigns for all of these newly safe Republican seats created by gerrymandering.

Here's how it happens: In districts with safe seats for one party or another, the election that counts is not the general, but the dominant party's primary election. This lack of general election competition creates all sorts of problems, but it's less of an issue in Democratic districts, where the diversity of the coalition at least creates real ideological debate in primaries. For Republican candidates, however, the incentives are completely skewed.

The kinds of people who vote in Republican primaries are ... well, not America's best. Without having to worry about running candidates who have to compete against Democrats for moderate voters, GOP primary voters can just go with whatever candidate excites them the most. And what speaks to Republican primary voters is sadism, racism, and a deep commitment to wild conspiracy theories. Gerrymandering makes it so that America's worst voters also happen to be the only voters who count at all in an increasing number of districts.

This is how we got Gaetz, who won with nearly 65% of the vote in his staunchly Republican district, Taylor Green, who drew nearly 75% of the vote, and Rep. Paul Gosar, who flaunts his white nationalist yearnings and got nearly 70% of the vote in his deeply conservative Arizona district. Having a heavily Republican district is an open invitation for the worst people to run, secure in the knowledge that as long as they can win over the Newsmax-addled, Facebook-meme-sharing hard right nuts that vote in GOP primaries. After that, it's a red carpet straight to national office.

Gerrymandering is not just a problem on the district level, either.

We can see from statewide offices what happens when Republicans don't feel they need to compete with Democrats in general elections. In both Florida and Texas, the incumbent Republican governors — Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot, respectively – are running on what can be fairly described as a pro-COVID-19 platform. Both have waged all-out war on any effort to stymie the virus's ability to spread to as many bodies as possible, with a doggedness that is indistinguishable from what they'd do if they were trying to get their own constituents killed.

They aren't doing this to win any popularity contests in their states. On the contrary, polling shows repeatedlythat the majority of Americans want leaders to fight the virus, not help it spread. In fact, their actions are causing Abbott and DeSantis to see big dips in their approval numbers. But neither of them cares because both states passed draconian voter suppression laws that shield Republican politicians from having to answer to the majority of their state residents. Having secured what they likely see as an easy GOP win through voter suppression, both Abbott and DeSantis are focused instead on pleasing Republican primary voters. Doing that means maximizing the sadism and the plain old nuttiness. As Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic, Abbott is "too afraid of his own base to act responsibly."

Such fear-based governance will only become more and more the norm as Republicans shut Democrats out of the ability to compete in general elections, meaning that Republican primaries loom ever larger as the only elections that count. The only way to win in many Republican primaries is to show you can out-crazy the other candidate.

So it's no wonder the guy who is alleged to be Q is running for office in Arizona. When all the political incentives favor a race to the bottom, the people who are already living in the sewer have a strong advantage.

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Following the Trump era, Democrats control the White House and both branches of Congress — where they have a narrow majority in the U.S. Senate and a majority that shrunk in the U.S. House of Representatives following the 2020 election. However, many state governments are still controlled by Republicans. And journalist Joan E. Greve, in an article published by The Guardian on June 15, examines the type of damage Republicans are inflicting at the state level.

"In 23 U.S. states, Republicans hold the governorship and the legislature, giving the party near total control to advance its policies," Greve explains. "This year, Republicans have used that power to aggressively push their conservative social agenda — taking aim at abortion access, transgender rights and gun safety, as well as voting laws."

Much has been written about all the voter suppression bills coming from Republicans in state legislatures, but voting rights aren't the only thing far-right Republicans have been going after with a vengeance. Greve notes that in Texas, South Carolina, Idaho and Oklahoma — all red states — Republicans have passed severe anti-abortion bills. The one in Texas bans abortion after about six weeks into a pregnancy.

Greve explains, "This trend of states approving increasingly extreme laws on issues like abortion and trans rights is alarming Democrats, who accuse Republicans of using their legislative power to target vulnerable communities…. Republican legislators' focus on social issues marks a shift from previous decades, when the party was more concentrated on economic priorities like small government and fiscal responsibility."

Under the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, states cannot legally have an outright abortion ban — and the Republican strategy has been to restrict abortion as much as possible at the state level. But with the High Court having moved more and more to the right, it is entirely possible thatRoe v. Wade will be overturned. If Roe is overturned, many red states would no doubt pass statewide abortion bans — creating, for example, a scenario in which abortion might be illegal throughout Texas but legal across the state line in New Mexico, or legal in Illinois but illegal in neighboring Indiana.

One of the things that is encouraging Republicans to move even more to the right, Greve notes, is the fear of primary challenges. Greve points out that far-right Allen West has threatened a Republican gubernatorial primary challenge to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is up for reelection in 2022.

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action, told The Guardian, "We know that the GOP is scared of primaries from fringe gun extremists. We're watching the politics play out as opposed to true policy beliefs."

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std boogie man roger stone dirty trick is to run fake/3rd cand to split vote, sometimes pick someoe w/ same name

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-spolier-candidate/?rs=182

ablind veteran who ran for Congress in Minnesota last year under the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party now alleges he was tricked into running by a Republican Party operative to siphon votes from then-Democratic-Farmer-Labor Congressman Collin Peterson in Minnesota's 7th Congressional District, according to local news outlet KMSP.

Kevin Ne Se Shores, said the report, "was surprised by the unsolicited call he got in June of 2020 from a man who encouraged him to run against Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) as a candidate for the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. Shores, who suffers from Gulf War Illness, used cannabis to get off pain killers. He told the FOX 9 Investigators he assumed he was being recruited by a member of the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. 'I was under the impression he was a part of that political party,' Shores said. 'That was my assumption.' He was wrong."

"Unknown to Shores, the man who called encouraging him to run was a Republican strategist, Kip Christianson, who at the time was on the payroll of the Republican National Committee, according to the Federal Election Commission," said the report. Shores also alleges that Christianson paid his $300 candidate filing fee, telling him, "Don't worry about it."

Shores only later became aware that Christianson was an RNC employee and 2016 Donald Trump delegate for Minnesota.

Ultimately, Shores lost the nomination for the third party to Rae Hart Anderson, and the combined 24,000 votes for the Grassroots Legalize Marijuana Party and the Legal Marijuana Now Party would not have been enough to secure re-election for Peterson, who lost to former GOP lieutenant governor Michelle Fischbach by 50,000 votes.

However, in races further down the ballot, GOP covert support for the Minnesota cannabis parties may have spoiled state Senate races, and may have been decisive in helping Republicans retain control of the chamber — which ironically makes cannabis legalization far less likely in the state.

Congressional candidate says he was tricked into running by RNC strategist | FOX 9 KMSP..[vid]

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aha doh gerry is cause and result of polarization, amplifies!? but primary appeals to the more extreme of party, so can push in left of right? but left has no word for flanked?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jim-jordan

ah poster boy on gerry

Among Democrats, liberals, progressives, centrists and Never Trump conservatives, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is one of the most notorious Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. And because of gerrymandering — and because his district is so reliably Republican — the 57-year-old Jordan keeps getting reelected year after year. In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 24, Cleveland-based journalist Keith Osmun examines the effect that the 2020 U.S. Census may have on Jordan in 2022.

Jordan, a founding member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, presently represents Ohio's 4th Congressional District — where he was first elected in 2006 after having served in the Ohio State Senate and the Ohio House of Representatives.

Osmun explains, "Since the 1930s, Ohio's 4th Congressional District has been under Republican control…. It is arguably the safest Republican district in the country. The current occupant of its seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is everyone's favorite Trump sycophant: Jim Jordan."

Ohio has 16 congressional U.S. House districts; 12 of them are presently occupied by Republicans, while four are occupied by Democrats.

Democrat Janet Garrett, who ran against Jordan in 2014, 2016 and 2018, told Osmun, "I knew the odds. I ran because I felt that it was imperative that somebody put up a fight. If he ran unopposed, they would tout him around the district as so wonderful no one wants to reproach him."

Garrett said of Jordan, "He's never introduced any legislation other than a monument to someone. He doesn't introduce legislation; he's just a bomb thrower. He didn't go to Washington to legislate."

What Ohio's new congressional map will look like in 2022 remains to be seen.

Collin Marozzi, an ACLU attorney who has been fighting gerrymandering in Ohio, told Osmun, "Gerrymandering allows Jim Jordan to be the most Jim Jordan he can be: the most bombastic, bomb throwing, partisan person in Congress. He hasn't passed a single piece of legislation in ten years.He has no real incentive to compromise because he only has to worry about a primary challenge."

Following the 2020 U.S. Census, Ohio will be losing a seat in the U.S. House — and it will have 15 U.S. House districts instead of 16. Osmun observes, "One of the happy byproducts of Ohio losing a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 Census is that the districts will be redrawn under more bipartisan rules put in place in the years since the 2010 Census…. If the changes work as intended, the ride 'safe seats' provide legislators like Jim Jordan will be a bumpier one in the midterms."

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