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President Donald Trump stumps for U.S. Rep. Andy Barr in Kentucky
President calls Barr’s opponent in 6th U.S. House District an “extreme liberal” chosen by “Democrat mob”
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
RICHMOND, Kentucky (CFP) — President Donald Trump traveled to central Kentucky to excite his followers with a Make America Great Again rally in the commonwealth’s 6th U.S. House District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Barr is in a political dogfight with his Democratic challenger, political newcomer Amy McGrath.
At an October 13 rally at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Trump said re-electing Barr “could make the difference between unbelievable continued success and frankly failure where we fight for two more years with these people, with these obstructionists.”
He also blasted McGrath as an “extreme liberal” who was “chosen by Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters — that’s a real beauty — and the radical Democrat mob.”
“Amy supports a socialist takeover of your health care,” he said. “She supports open borders. She needs the tax hikes to cover the through-the-roof garbage that you want no part of.”
For his part, Barr lauded the president, calling him “a man of action.”
“Other people resist, but this president gets results,” he said. “Mr. President, I’m with you to fight for the American people.”
In addition to Barr, the Richmond rally drew all three of Kentucky’s top elected Republicans, U.S. Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and Governor Matt Bevin, who faces what is likely to be a touch battle for re-election in 2019.
In response to Trump’s characterizations of her, McGrath released a one-sentence statement to the media: “Mr. President, you clearly don’t know me. Yet.”
According to McGrath’s website, she supports reforms of the existing Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, rather than its repeal, which Barr has voted for. She also supports the so-called “public option,” a government-run health insurance agency to provide an option for people who cannot get access through the ACA.
McGrath opposes Trump’s plan to build a physical wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, which Barr also supports, and has also criticized the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.
A day before Trump came to Richmond, former Vice President Joe Biden came to the district to campaign with McGrath.
McGrath, 43, who grew up in the Cincinnati suburbs of Northern Kentucky, is a retired Marine fighter pilot making her first bid for the political office against Barr in the 6th District, which includes Lexington, Frankfort, Richmond and adjacent portions of the Kentucky Bluegrass.
Barr, 45, has represented the 6th District since 2012. Prior to being elected to Congress, he was an attorney in Lexington.
McGrath has raised more than $3 million for the campaign, more than any other Democratic challenger in the South in 2018.
The race is rated as a toss-up by political analysts, although public polling has been sparse.
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Taylor Swift sends bad blood Blackburn’s way in Tennessee U.S. Senate race; GOP shakes it off
Pop star and longtime Tennessee resident endorses Marsha Blackburn’s Democratic rival, says her record “appalls and terrifies me”
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
NASHVILLE (CFP) — Pop icon and Tennessee resident Taylor Swift has taken to Instagram to offer a rare political endorsement of two Democratic congressional candidates — and send a bit of bad blood in the direction of Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who is seeking an open U.S. Senate seat.
Taylor Swift
“Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me,” Swift wrote of Blackburn in an October 7 Instagram post. “She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape.”
“She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.”
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee
While Blackburn’s campaign did not offer immediate reaction to Swift’s broadside, the National Republican Senatorial Committee characterized her in a statement as a “multimillionaire pop star” who “came down from her ivory tower to tell hardworking Tennesseans” how to vote.
President Donald Trump reacted to her Instagram post by telling reporters, “Let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?”
“I’m sure Taylor Swift has nothing or doesn’t know anything about (Blackburn),” he said.
Swift, 28, has lived in Tennessee for the past 14 years, after moving to the Nashville area with her parents at age 14 to pursue a music career.
Criticized in the past for refusing to get involved politically, she directly endorsed two candidates — Blackburn’s Democratic opponent, former Governor Phil Bredesen, and U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, who holds a safely Democratic seat in metro Nashville.
She did not mention the Democratic candidate for governor, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, who is running against Republican businessman Bill Lee.
Bredensen took to Twitter to say he was “honored” to get Swift’s support — and taunt Blackburn using the title of one of Swift’s recent hits: “@VoteMarsha, look what you made her do. @taylorswift13 doesn’t like your little games and she wants Tennesseans to know that you’ve been in the swamp long enough. It’s time for some fresh air up in Washington.”
In her Instagram post, Swift said she decided to get involved in the campaign “due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years.”
“I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” she said. “I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love.”
Recent public polls show the Senate race between Blackburn and Bredesen within the margin of error, a surprisingly competitive race in a state where Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in 12 years or a Senate seat in 28 years.
Cooper is considered a prohibitive favorite in the 5th District U.S. House race over Republican Jody Ball. He has represented the district, which includes Davidson, Dickson and Cheatham counties, since 2003.
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Insight: Republicans find themselves playing defense in Southern U.S. House races
Across the region, at least 30 House seats are potentially competitive, all of them now in GOP hands
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
A month away from the 2018 midterm election, Republicans in the South are finding themselves in a situation they haven’t faced in several election cycles.
Namely, playing defense in U.S. House races.
Currently, at least 30 seats are either highly or potentially competitive across the 14 Southern states. And not one of those seats is now held by a Democrat.
Of course, this disparity is to be expected, given that Republicans hold 114 Southern House seats to just 40 for Democrats. With such a dominant majority, the GOP has more of the field to defend.
However, the fluid situation in 2018 stands in stark contrast to 2016, when Democrats managed to take away just two seats anywhere in the South, and in 2014, when Democrats suffered a net loss of three seats.
Democratic opportunities have opened up across the region, including a few isolated districts in states such as Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky and South Carolina, where President Donald Trump won massive victories in 2016.
But the Democrats’ biggest hopes of trying to chip away at the Republicans’ Southern hegemony lie in suburban swing districts in the largest Southern states, including Florida, Texas, Virginia and North Carolina.
Of the 11 highly competitive districts, three are in Virginia and two each are in Florida, Texas and North Carolina. There are also two seats in metro Atlanta where Republicans are currently favored but Democrats are within striking distance.
Of the six Republican-held seats that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, the Republican candidate is currently ahead in just one, U.S. Rep. Will Hurd’s seat in West Texas.
Those five seats are perhaps the most endangered. But Democrats also have a decent shot at seats in the Kentucky Bluegrass, metro Little Rock and the coalfields of southern West Virginia.
And in Texas, which has been a wasteland for Democrats for the better part of three decades, at least eight House seats are competitive in 2018.
What has made the difference for Democrats in this election cycle as opposed to 2014 and 2016? Part of the answer may be money.
According to Federal Election Commission reports, 16 Democratic House nominees have raised more than $1 million, led by Amy McGrath in Kentucky’s 6th District, who raised more than $3 million. Another nominee, Clarke Tucker in Arkansas’s 2nd District, is likely to break the million dollar barrier before all is said and done.
Money does not, by itself, make a seat competitive. But anyone who has a million dollars to spend on a House race has to be taken seriously, no matter the traditional partisan lean of the district.
Having to play defense in the South also has significant implications for Republican chances of keeping control of the House.
The region has been the GOP’s big red wall, supplying nearly 60 percent of its House majority. So any erosion in that wall is an unwelcome development, particularly in an election where polls show Democrats with a lead in the generic congressional ballot.
Still, one should be careful not to overstate Democratic prospects in the South in 2018. If Democrats take half of the current seats that are toss-ups and Republicans hold all the seats where they are now ahead, the net Democratic gain across the region would only be six seats.
However, given that Democrats only need to shift a net of 24 seats nationally to take control of the House, the loss of six seats in the GOP heartland could prove problematic. A blue wave in Texas or Virginia — the states where Democratic hopes are highest — could be catastrophic.
The one thing we can be sure of is that on election night, the political class will be paying more attention to the results of House races in the South than has been paid in quite some time.
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Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman criticized for joke about Ruth Bader Ginsburg getting groped by Abe Lincoln
Comment sets off a Twitter tit-for-tat with Norman’s Democratic opponent, Archie Parnell
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com
ROCK HILL, South Carolina (CFP) — Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman’s attempt to riff off of the current controversy over allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brent Kavanaugh is causing a fresh round of criticism in a race in which treatment of women has taken center stage.
U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-South Carolina
Norman, addressing the crowd at the beginning at a September 20 debate for 5th District candidates in Rock Hill, said, “Did y’all hear the latest, late-breaking news from the Kavanaugh hearings? Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out that she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.”
The joke echoes a meme ricocheting around the internet in which Ginsburg, 85, is shown alleging that she was groped by Lincoln in 1862.
The crowd laughed. While Norman’s Democratic opponent, Archie Parnell, did not address the remark at the time, he later blasted Norman on Twitter: “My opponent apparently thinks sexual assault is a joke. It is not. But I guess that’s the best we can expect from someone who pulled a loaded gun on his own constituents.”
The latter comment was a reference to an incident in April in which Norman pulled out a loaded gun during a meeting with gun control opponents at a local diner, less than two months after the massacre of students at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Norman defended his actions, saying he was “tired of guns being demonized.”
Norman responded in kind: “Perhaps we should have a debate about your own abuse and harassment of women, Parnell.”
Archie Parnell, D-Congressional candidate
Parnell’s campaign was rocked in May after divorce records revealed that he had been accused of domestic violence against his then-wife in the 1970s. He admitted that he had been “violent” but insisted that he had changed in the intervening years.
Democratic leaders had called on Parnell to quit the race, but he refused and won the Democratic primary in June.
The 5th District has historically been solidly Republican. However, Parnell came within 2 points of beating Norman in a 2017 special election to fill the seat, which became vacant when Mick Mulvaney was picked as President Donald Trump’s budget director.
Given the closeness of the special election, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had added the seat to its 2018 target list but later dumped Parnell after the abuse revelations surfaced.
The 5th District includes a stretch of upstate South Carolina from near Columbia to the Charlotte suburbs.
Judges won’t impose redraw of North Carolina U.S. House map before November vote
Decision sidesteps chaos that might have resulted from a new last-minute map
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) — Less than a week after threatening to throw North Carolina’s congressional election into chaos by redrawing its electoral map, a panel of three federal judges has reversed course and decided not to move forward with a redraw before November.
In a September 4 order, the judges decided that there was not enough time to draw a new map and that altering the current election schedule “unduly disturbs the state’s electoral machinery and would probably confuse voters and reduce voter turnout.”
The order puts on hold a August 27 decision striking down the map drawn by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature as an unconstitutional gerrymander designed to disadvantage Democrats. However, if that decision is upheld, a new map will have to be redrawn before the 2020 elections.
That decision ordering the lines to be redrawn came just 70 days before the November election and three months after primaries were held using the current lines.
Republican legislative leaders had vowed to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had issued a stay earlier this year to stop a similar decision by the same panel of judges.
In the majority opinion for the three-judge panel, Judge James Wynn of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that by favoring Republicans, “the redistricting plan passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature amounted to “invidious partisanship” that that “runs contrary to the Constitution’s vesting of the power to elect Representatives in ‘the People.'”
Although North Carolina is fairly evenly divided in statewide and presidential elections, Republicans hold a 10-to-3 advantage in the House delegation. Two of those Democrats are African Americans who represent majority-minority districts drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
In January, the same three-judge panel ruled against the state’s map, the first time a federal court had ever struck down a congressional map for being gerrymandered to favor one party.
But in June, the Supreme Court vacated the order and returned the case to the judges in Greensboro to reconsider their ruling in light of its own ruling in a different case.
In their second decision, the judges said their reconsideration of the case did not change their view that the map was unconstitutional.
Since the first ruling was vacated by the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy has retired and his replacement hasn’t been confirmed, leaving the court with a 4-to-4 split between conservative and liberal factions.
If the issue of staying the new map had gone to the Supreme Court, North Carolina legislators would have needed to persuade five justices to stay the ruling, or the lower court decision would have stood.
Wynn, who previously served on the North Carolina Supreme Court, was appointed to the appeals court by President Barack Obama and was joined in his majority opinion by U.S. District Court Judge William Britt, a senior-status judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter.
The third judge on the panel, U.S. District Court Judge William Osteen Jr., was appointed by President George W. Bush; he dissented from part of the majority’s reasoning in ruling, although he concurred with the remedy of redrawing congressional lines.
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