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Voters in Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas and Texas will decide primary contests Tuesday

May 21, 2018 9:00 pm / Leave a comment

Wide open race for governor featured in Georgia; legislative races take center stage in Kentucky

♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor

ATLANTA (CFP) — Voters in four Southern states will decide primary contests on Tuesday, with a wide-open race for Georgia’s governorship topping the list of closely watched contests.

Georgia, Arkansas and Kentucky are holding primaries, while in Texas, runoffs will be held for 15 U.S. House seats that were not decided in the initial round of voting back in March, including four targeted by Democrats as pickup opportunities.

In Georgia, all eyes are on the race to succeed term-limited Republican Governor Nathan Deal, with competitive races among both Republicans and Democrats. In Kentucky, much of the attention will be on races for the state legislature, in the wake of teacher protests that have battered GOP Governor Matt Bevin’s popularity. And in Arkansas, the hottest race is a Supreme Court contest in which the incumbent sued an outside conservative group for defamation over controversial TV ads.

In Georgia, seven Republicans are running for governor, including Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle from Gainesville and Secretary of State Brian Kemp from Athens, who pre-election polls indicate will likely face off in a July 24 runoff. Their departures have also created wide-open races for the GOP nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, where runoffs are also expected.

But it is the Democratic race for governor that is drawing national attention with the candidacy of former State House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams from Atlanta, who is trying to become the first African American women ever elected as governor of a U.S. state. Pre-election polls showed Abrams with a wide lead over former State Rep. Stacey Evans from Smyrna, although a large number of voters were still undecided.

In the Democratic race for secretary of state, former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, who lost his seat in 2014, is trying to make a political comeback against three challengers

Among U.S. House races in the Peach State, most of the attention is on the 6th and 7th districts, where Republican incumbents are seen as possibly vulnerable in districts that President Donald Trump won by a narrow margin in 2016.

In the 6th District, in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, four Democrats are vying to take on U.S. Rep. Karen Handel, who won her seat in 2017 after a hard-fought and hugely expensive special election against Democrat Jon Ossoff. Handel’s chances of keeping the seat — in a district Trump only carried by just 1.5 points — improved when Ossoff decided against a rematch.

In the 7th District, in northwest metro Atlanta, six Democrats are competing to take on U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall. While Woodall took 60 percent of the vote in 2016, Trump only won by 6 points, putting the seat within the realm of possibility for Democrats.

In Kentucky, with no statewide races on the ballot, much of the focus has been on state legislative seats, where Democrats are hoping Bevin’s role in a fight over teacher pensions, which led to statewide protests by teachers, might translate into progress at the ballot box.

The standoff over pensions, which ended when the Republican-controlled legislature approved controversial changes after overriding Bevin’s vetoes, has roiled the Bluegrass State for months, particularly Bevin’s assertion that teacher protests might have led to abuse of children after schools had to be closed when teachers didn’t show up for work.

Bevin, who isn’t up for re-election until 2019, later apologized, but a poll from Western Kentucky University’s Social Science Research Center showed that disapproval of Bevin’s job performance spiked to 60 percent after those remarks.

While the GOP has controlled the Kentucky Senate since 2000, Democrats held the House until 2016, when Republicans finally took control for the first time in 95 years. The Kentucky House was the last legislative chamber anywhere in the South controlled by Democrats.

Republicans hold a 63 to 37 advantage in the House, which means Democrats will have to flip 14 seats to take control. While that is a tall order, those numbers are very similar to the situation in neighboring Virginia, where Democrats flipped 15 seats to come within one seat of winning control in2017

Among Kentucky’s six U.S. House seats, party nominees will be picked Tuesday in two that could become competitive in the fall, the 6th and 3rd districts.

In the 6th District, which includes Lexington and Frankfort, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray and State Senator Reggie Thomas, also from Lexington, are among a field of six Democrats vying to take on GOP U.S. Rep. Andy Barr in November. As Kentucky does not have runoffs, the top vote-getter Tuesday will face Barr in November.

Gray was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 2016, losing by 14 points to Republican US. Senator Rand Paul. However, in that race he carried Fayette County, the most populous in the 6th District.

In the neighboring 3rd District, which takes in metro Louisville, Republicans are making a play for the seat held by U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, an unabashed liberal who has introduced articles of impeachment against Trump. Vickie Glisson, a Louisville attorney who headed the state health department in the Bevin administration, is favored over two Republican primary challengers.

In Arkansas, six state executive offices, including governor, are up in 2018. However, Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson faces only token opposition in the primary, with two little-known Democrats vying to take him on in November. The only race with a competitive GOP primary is for secretary of state, where incumbent Republican Mark Martin is term-limited.

Among the Natural State’s four U.S. House seats, the race drawing the most attention is the 2nd District in metro Little Rock, where Democrats believe they might have a shot at ousting GOP U.S. Rep. French Hill if a national Democratic wave develops. Four Democrats are vying for the nomination to replace him, a field that includes State Rep. Clarke Tucker of Little Rock.

While Hill won re-election by 11 points in 2016, the 2nd District is the least Republican district in the state, anchored by Pulaski County, which Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. Trump won the district by less than 10 points.

The most contentious race in Arkansas is a non-partisan battle for a seat on the Arkansas Supreme Court, where incumbent Justice Courtney Hudson Goodson is being challenged by Court of Appeals Judge Ken Hixson and David Sterling, who was appointed by Hutchinson as chief counsel for the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

A week before the election, Goodson filed a defamation lawsuit against the Judicial Crisis Network, a Washington-based conservative legal group, over ads it was running against her on Arkansas TV stations which alleged she accepted gifts for donors and sought a pay raise. She also asked judges in three jurisdictions to enjoin stations from airing the ads, triggering protests from media organizations, although some of them voluntarily agreed to stop running the ads.

The JCN ads have targeted both Goodson and Hixson, although Hixson has so far not brought any legal action. Sterling has insisted that he has no connection to the group. JCN spent more than $500,000 in 2016 to defeat Goodson in a race for chief justice.

If none of the candidates captures a majority on Tuesday, the top two vote-getters will face off during the general election in November, which would drag out the contentious race for five more months.

In Texas, Democrats will pick nominees in four targeted U.S. House seats now in Republican hands that Democrats have hopes of flipping in the fall:

Also in Texas, the fields will be set in four other open GOP-held districts that Republicans will be favored to keep in November:

Barton decided not to seek re-election after after a nude selfie he had exchanged with a woman with whom he was having a consensual extramarital relationship wound up on social media.

Farenthold resigned after news reports that $84,000 in taxpayer dollars had been used to pay a settlement to a former female staffer who alleged that she suffered sexual harassment from Farenthold and another male staffer. The congressman denied the harassment allegations, while conceding that a lax management style in his Washington office created a “decidedly unprofessional” work environment.

Texas primaries narrow crowded fields in U.S. House races

March 7, 2018 5:13 pm / Leave a comment

Valdez, White face off in Democratic governor’s primary; Cruz, O’Rourke in U.S. Senate race

♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor

AUSTIN — Texas primary voters have narrowed crowded fields vying for 11 open or potentially competitive U.S. House seats and the U.S. Senate, while the Democratic race for governor is heading to a May runoff to pick a nominee for an uphill climb against Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

And while Democrats have high hopes of riding a wave of enthusiasm to put a dent into the GOP’s 25-to-11 advantage in the Texas U.S. House delegation, more than 530,000 more voters chose the Republican over the Democratic ballot in the March 6 primaries, although that was a better showing by Democrats than in the last midterm primary in 2014.

O’Rourke

Cruz

In the U.S. Senate race, as expected, Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke both easily won their primaries, setting up a November race likely to draw national attention. O’Rourke took 62 percent, and Cruz, 85 percent.

In the governor’s race, Abbott, seeking a second term, won outright with 90 percent of the vote. The Democratic runoff will be between former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez and Andrew White, a Houston investment banker and son of the late former Governor Mark White. Valdez had a strong lead in the race, 43 percent to 27 percent, over White.

George P. Bush

Republican incumbents also won in six other statewide races, including Land Commissioner George P. Bush, son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who took 58 percent of the vote to beat back three challengers.

In the U.S. House races, Democrats’ top targets in November are three GOP incumbents who represent districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016:  John Culberson in the 7th District in Houston; Pete Sessions in the 32nd District in Dallas; and William Hurd, who represents the 23rd District in West Texas stretching from the suburbs of San Antonio over to El Paso. All three easily won their primaries.

In the 7th District, the two Democrats who qualified for the runoff are Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a Houston lawyer, and Laura Moser, a journalist who carried the endorsement of Our Revolution, a liberal group that sprang from Bernie Sanders’ failed presidential campaign.

This race heated up when Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, intervened by publishing opposition research critical of Moser because of fears she won’t be competitive against Culberson in November. However, she used the DCCC’s memo to raise money and made it past five other Democrats into the runoff with Fletcher.

In the 32nd District, Collin Allred, an attorney and former player for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, topped the Democratic primary with 39 percent and will face Lillian Salerno, who served as a deputy undersecretary on the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Obama administration, who got into the runoff with 18 percent.

In the 23rd District, Gina Oritz Jones, an Iraq war veteran from San Antonio who worked as a U.S. trade representative, led the race with 42 percent and will face Rick Trevino, a high school teacher from San Antonio who served as a Sanders delegate in 2016. The majority Latino 23rd District, where Hurd is seeking a third term, is a perennial swing seat that changed hands in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

In addition to the races that Democrats are targeting, there are also eight other open seats in Texas that drew crowded primaries:

House Ethics Committee expands probe into Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold

December 22, 2017 2:19 pm / Leave a comment

Committee looking into whether Farenthold lied, used government resources in his political campaigns

♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor

WASHINGTON (CFP) — The House Ethics Committee is investigating whether U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas used government resources in his congressional campaigns and lied to the committee during an ongoing investigation into sexual harassment claims by a former staffer.

Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that a former staffer has told House investigators that she was pressured to perform campaign-related tasks during regular work hours in Farenthold’s congressional office, activity that is not allowed under House rules.

U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas

The latest charges are likely to increase pressure on Farenthold, who has already announced that he won’t seek re-election in 2018 after revelations that he used $84,000 of government money to settle a lawsuit by a former staffer who alleged that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer.

In a December 21 news release, the chair and ranking member of the House Ethics Committee — U.S. Reps. Susan Brooks, R-Indiana, and Ted Deutch, D-Florida — announced that their probe of Farenthold had expanded from the original sexual harassment allegations to include allegations that staff resources may have been used on his campaigns, that he or “any person acting on his behalf” may have required staff members to work on his campaigns, and that he “may have made false statements or omissions in testimony to the committee.”

The statement did not give any details to indicate why the probe had expanded.

In response to the Ethics Committee’s statement, Farenthold’s office released a statement to Texas and national media noting that he had previously been cleared of sexual harassment charges by the Office of Congressional Ethics and pledging his full cooperation with the committee’s expanded probe.

CNN reported that former Farenthold staffer Elizabeth Peace told Ethics Committee lawyers that she was pressured to work on Farenthold’s 2016 campaign during regular office hours in her Capitol office, using House-issued computers and her work e-mail account. The network cited a source familiar with Peace’s conversation with the lawyers; she refused comment to CNN, although she did acknowledge talking to committee staff.

Under House rules, congressional staffers are only allowed to work on campaigns on their own time, and they are not allowed to use House resources, such as office space, computers, or email accounts,, to do political work.

In  2014, Farenthold’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, sued for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, alleging that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer. The Office of Congressional Ethics investigated and cleared Farenthold, and he reached a mediated out-of-court settlement with Greene in 2015.

The revelation that $84,000 in taxpayer dollars had been used to pay Greene’s settlement in early December led Farenthold to abandon his 2018 re-election campaign in Texas’s 27th District, which sprawls across the Gulf Coast between Corpus Christi and Houston.

In a statement posted to Facebook on December 14, Farenthold insisted that the sexual harassment charges made against him by Greene were false, but he conceded that a lax management style in his Washington office created a “decidedly unprofessional” work environment — a  situation he blamed on his lack of political experience after being elected in 2010.

“I had no idea how to run a congressional office and, as a result, I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional,” Fahrenthold said. “It accommodated destructive gossip, offhand comments, off-color jokes and behavior that in general that was less than professional.”

“And I allowed the personal stress of the job to manifest itself in angry outbursts and, too often, a failure to treat people with the respect that they deserved,” he said. “Clearly, that was wrong. It is not how I was raised, it’s not who I am, and for that situation, I am profoundly sorry,” he said.

Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold won’t run in 2018 after questions about harassment settlement with employee

December 15, 2017 1:08 pm / Leave a comment

Farenthold denies wrongdoing but blames political inexperience for allowing “unprofessional” work environment

♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor

WASHINGTON (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas has announced he won’t seek re-election in 2018 in the wake of revelations about his use of taxpayer dollars to settle a sexual harassment claim made by a former employee, which he said has become a “political distraction.”

U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas

In a statement posted to Facebook on December 14, Farenthold insisted that the sexual harassment charges made against him by his former communications director, Lauren Greene, are false, but he conceded that his lax management style in his Washington office created a “decidedly unprofessional” work environment — a  situation he blamed on his lack of political experience after being elected in 2010.

“I had no idea how to run a congressional office and, as a result, I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional,” Fahrenthold said. “It accommodated destructive gossip, offhand comments, off-color jokes and behavior that in general that was less than professional.”

“And I allowed the personal stress of the job to manifest itself in angry outbursts and, too often, a failure to treat people with the respect that they deserved,” he said. “Clearly, that was wrong. It is not how I was raised, it’s not who I am, and for that situation, I am profoundly sorry,” he said.

In  2014, Greene, sued Farenthold for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, alleging that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer. The Office of Congressional Ethics investigated and cleared Farenthold, and he reached a mediated out-of-court settlement with Greene in 2015.

Farenthold’s decision not to seek re-election came two weeks after after Politico reported that the $84,000 paid to settle that case came from the Office of Compliance, a federal agency that handles sexual harassment complaints by congressional staffers. The congressman then announced that he would take out a personal loan to reimburse the government for the settlement.

In his Facebook video, Farenthold said he planned to make “meaningful changes” in the operation of his congressional office.

“I owe that to everyone — my constituents, my family, and this institution,” he said.

Farenthold, 55, was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010 to represent the 27th District, which sprawls across the Texas Gulf Coast between Corpus Christi and Houston. He was already facing a 2018 primary challenge from Michael Cloud, the Republican chairman in Victoria County. After the Politico story was published, Bech Bruun resigned from his post as chairman of the Texas Water Development Board to enter the GOP race.

Farenthold is the eighth member of Texas’s 36-member congressional delegation to forego re-election in 2018, joining Republicans Joe Barton, Ted Poe, Sam Johnson, Jeb Hensarling and Lamar Smith and Democrats Beto O’Rourke and Gene Green.

All except O’Rourke are leaving Congress; he is running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz.

Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold promises to repay taxpayer money used to settle sexual harassment suit

December 4, 2017 4:46 pm / Leave a comment

Report: Former spokeswoman who accused Farenthold of creating a hostile work environment received $84,000

♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas says he will take out a personal loan to repay $84,000 in taxpayer dollars used to settle a claim with a former staffer who sued him for sexual harassment, even though he continues to deny the underlying allegations and insists he only used tax dollars because he was required to do so.

U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas

“I want to be clear that I didn’t do anything wrong, but I also don’t want the taxpayers to be on the hook for this,” Farenthold told Corpus Christi TV station KRIS.

In  2014, Farenthold’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, sued him for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, alleging that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer.

The Office of Congressional Ethics cleared Farenthold, and he reached a mediated out-of-court settlement with Greene in 2015. He was re-elected in 2016 after the charges and the settlement had been publicly disclosed.

However, the settlement came under renewed scrutiny after Politico reported on December 1 that the money paid to Greene came from the Office of Compliance, a federal agency that handles sexual harassment complaints by congressional staffers.

Farenthold had initially issued a statement saying he couldn’t comment on the settlement because of a confidentiality agreement, but he later told KRIS that he believed he was required to pay Greene with Office of Compliance money, although he now says he will “hand a check” to House Speaker Paul Ryan to reimburse the government.

Farenthold, 55, was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010 to represent the 27th District, which sprawls across the Texas Gulf Coast between Corpus Christi and Houston. OpenSecrets.org, which tracks the financial assets of members of Congress based on their financial disclosure reports, estimated Farenthold’s net worth at $6 million in 2016.

The revelations about Farenthold have been an unwelcome distraction for House Republicans, who have been pressing for the resignation of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan for settling a sexual harassment lawsuit with money taken out of his House office budget.

Even before the details surrounding the details of Farenthold’s settlement came to light, he was already being challenged in the GOP primary by Michael Cloud, the Republican chairman in Victoria County. After the Politico story was published, Bech Bruun, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board, told the Texas Tribune that he was also considering challenging Farenthold and that “it is a sad day when an elected official uses taxpayer money to settle a claim of sexual harassment.”

Texas’s unusually early March primary means that the filing deadline for party primaries is December 11. In addition, the 27th is one of three Texas U.S. House districts struck down in March by a panel of federal judges for improper gerrymandering of Latino voters, which could result in changes being made to the district before next year’s congressional elections.

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