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Symbolic solution in search of an actual problem
Support of 9 Southern Republicans for Respect for Marriage Act shows why Supreme Court isn’t about to ban same-sex marriage ♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor…
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West Virginia stubborn, or playing hard to get
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin pisses off his party yet again … to what end? ♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor Also in this report: Atlanta DA…
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2 Mississippi Republican U.S. House members forced into runoffs after weak primary showings
Michael Guest narrowly trails challenger in 3rd District; Steven Palazzo clears just 32% in 4th District ♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor JACKSON, Mississippi (CFP) –…
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Mississippi Republican U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo facing Tuesday primary fight amid ethics investigation
6 opponents hitting “No-Show Palazzo” over inattention to district, ethics problems ♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor GULFPORT (CFP) — Mississippi U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo —…
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Primary Wrap: Kemp, Raffensperger survive Trump’s ire; Brooks makes Alabama U.S. Senate runoff
Texas Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar survives challenge from the left; George P. Bush gets blown out by Attorney General Ken Paxton ♦By Rich Shumate,…
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U.S. House’s last pro-life Democrat, Texas’s Henry Cuellar, fighting to keep seat in Tuesday primary runoff
Challenger Jessica Cisneros wanted House Democratic leaders to rescind Cuellar endorsement; they refused ♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor LAREDO, Texas (CFP) — Amid the newly…
Alabama U.S. House candidate takes aim at Obamacare — literally
GOP hopeful Will Brooke posts a video in which he shoots guns at a copy of the Obamacare bill
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (CFP) — Taking literal aim at Obamacare, Will Brooke, a Republican candidate for Alabama’s 6th District U.S. House seat, has posted a video in which he shoots at a copy of the 2,000-page bill.
The video, posted on YouTube, is entitled “Let’s Do Some Damage.” With bluegrass music playing in the background, Brooke drives his pickup truck out into the country. puts a copy of the bill in a wooden frame and then shoots at it with handgun, a rifle and, finally, an automatic weapon.
U.S. House candidate Will Brooke
“We’re down here to have a little fun today and to talk about two serious subjects — the Second Amendment and see how much damage we can do to this copy of Obamacare,” Brooke says.
Not satisfied with the damage he is able to inflict on the bill, Brooke finally feeds it into a wood chipper.
Brooke is head of a Birmingham-based venture capital firm and served as chairman of the Business Council of Alabama. He is making his first run for political office
The 6th District takes in most of suburban Birmingham, along with a four rural counties to the South. It is one of most heavily Republican districts in the country, giving Mitt Romney 74 percent of the vote in 2012.
Brook is one of six Republicans running for the seat, which opened up after U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus announced his retirement last year.
The other Republicans in the race are State Senator Scott Beason, State Rep. Paul DeMarco,Chad Mathis, Gary Palmer, Rob Shattuck and Tom Vigneulle.
Here is the video Brooke posted on YouTube:
Edwin Edwards running for U.S. House seat in Louisiana
The former governor, who served eight years in prison for corruption, is attempting a comeback at age 86
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CFP) — Edwin Edwards, the colorful and controversial former Louisiana governor, will attempt a political comeback by seeking the state’s 6th District U.S. House seat.
Edwards, 86, a Democrat who served eight years in federal prison on corruption charges, announced his run March 17 during an appearance at the Baton Rouge Press Club.
House hopeful Edwin Edwards
“I’m positive I can run, and I’m confident I can win,” said Edwards, who was accompanied by his wife, Trina — 51 years his junior — and their 1-year-old son.
Edwards said he did not think his run would be an embarrassment to Louisiana.
“It might be something the state should be proud of because forgiveness, understanding and second chances are important in life and in politics,” he said.
Edwards is seeking the House seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, who is challenging Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu. The district takes in parts of nine parishes in and around Baton Rouge.
Edwards told reporters that he had considered challenging Landrieu before deciding on the House race. As a convicted felon, Louisiana law bars him for running for a statewide office.
The district is heavily Republican, giving Mitt Romney 67 percent of the vote in 2012. However, with 10 Republicans in the race, Edwards has a good shot at making it through the state’s jungle primary, where candidates from all parties run in the same race and the two top vote getters advance to a runoff.
Edwards served a record four terms as Louisiana’s governor between 1972 and 1996. In 1991, after being acquitted of federal corruption charges, he won a runoff against white supremacist David Duke. During that campaign, a popular bumper sticker urged Louisianians to “Vote For the Crook. It’s Important.”
In 2001, Edwards was convicted on 17 counts of bribery, extortion, fraud and racketeering stemming from his last term as governor. Among the charges was that he took $400,000 from former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo for help him secure a casino license.
Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Edwards was released in 2011 after serving eight years. Less than a month later, he married Trina Edwards, who had been a prison pen pal. The couple starred in a reality television show, The Governor’s Wife, which aired on the A&E cable network in 2013.
David Jolly keeps Florida U.S. House seat in GOP hands
Jolly, a Washington lobbyist and former House aide, defeats Democrat Alex Sink in 13th District special election
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpoiltics.com editor
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (CFP) — Republican David Jolly has won a special election for Florida’s vacant 13th U.S. House District, narrowly beating Democrat Alex Sink and dashing Democratic hopes of taking away what had been seen as a vulnerable GOP seat.
U.S. Rep-elect David Jolly
Jolly won 48.5 percent in the March 11 race, compared to 46.6 percent for Sink, a margin of less than 3,500 votes. Libertarian Lucas Overby carried 4.8 percent.
National Democratic officials had pulled out all the stops for Sink, including visits by Vice President Joe Biden and Bill Clinton. The main fault line in the campaign was Obamacare, which Sink embraced and Jolly opposed.
Jolly, 41, is a Washington lobbyist and former aide to the late U.S. Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, who held the St. Petersburg-based seat for more than 42 years before his death in October.
Sink, 65, is the state’s former chief financial officer. She was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2010, narrowly losing to Gov. Rick Scott.
Democratic nominee Alex Sink
Sink does not live in the district. But after she was recruited to run by national party officials, other Democrats in Pinellas County stepped aside.
Outside Democratic and Republican groups had poured more than $9 million into the race, which was seen as a bellweather of their political prospects heading into November’s mid-term election.
While Republicans hold a lead in party registration in the 13th District, President Barack Obama narrowly carried it in both 2008 and 2012. The district is one of only three Republican-held seats in the South that went for Obama in 2012.
Jolly will have to defend the seat in November, and he told Fox News that he expects Democrats to come at him just as hard.
“This will be just as close of a race,” he said.
In her concession speech, Sink did not say if she plans to seek the seat again in November.
Analysis: Tea Party Senate challengers can take comfort from Texas
U.S. Senator John Cornyn’s weak margin of victory shows other incumbents might be vulnerable
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
The good news for the other four Republican U.S. senators facing Tea Party challenges this year is that Senator John Cornyn won in Texas.
The bad news? Cornyn’s win was hardly impressive.
Facing a primary field that was, to be charitable, less than viable, Cornyn failed to clear 60 percent of the vote. More than four in 10 Texas voters in his own party wanted somebody — anybody — else.
Compare that result with the Republican primary race for governor, where Attorney General Greg Abbott swept almost 92 percent of the vote against three challengers.
Cornyn’s chief Tea Party challenger, U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, jumped in at the last minute and ran an erratic campaign. That allowed Cornyn to survive.
But imagine what might have happened if a stronger Tea Party competitor had run. No doubt some Texas conservatives who passed on this race are now kicking themselves over what might have been.
Cornyn was a Tea Party target because he is the minority whip in the Senate. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is also facing a primary challenge from Louisville businessman Matt Bevin, who, unlike Stockman, is raising money and has the backing of outside conservative groups.
If the unhappiness with Cornyn seen in Texas is duplicated in Kentucky, McConnell could be in trouble.
Likewise, Senators Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Lamar Alexander in Tennessee and Thad Cochran in Mississippi all face Tea Party challengers.
Alexander and Graham seem to be holding their own. Cochran, on the other hand, faces State Senator Chris McDaniel, who is also getting a boost from outside conservative groups, which sat on the sidelines in Texas.
And in addition to races with incumbents, the preferred GOP establishment candidates for seats in North Carolina, Louisiana and West Virginia are also battling Tea Party challengers. In Georgia, there’s a free-for-all among five major candidates, at least two of whom are expected to draw from the Tea Party part of the party.
Now that he’s survived the primary, Cornyn is the prohibitive favorite to win the general election. But if Tea Party challengers win in any of the other states where they have a shot, Democrats will be waiting in the wings.
That is causing heartburn in the GOP establishment. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said as much when he opined recently that a McDaniel win in the Magnolia State could open the door for a Democrat.
Cornyn’s tepid showing in Texas isn’t making that heartburn any better.
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor drawing fire for remarks about opponent’s military service
Pryor says U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton gives off ‘sense of entitlement’ because of his Army service
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
LITTLE ROCK (CFP) – Arkansas Republicans are demanding an apology from U.S. Senator Mark Pryor for saying in a television interview that his GOP opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, has exhibited a “sense of entitlement” because he served in the U.S. Army.
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor
In an interview with MSNBC on March 5, Pryor was asked whether Cotton’s military service, which is prominently mentioned in his campaign, should be a qualification to become a senator.
“No, there’s are a lot of people in the Senate who didn’t serve in the military,” Pryor said. “In the Senate, we have all kinds of different people, all kinds of different folks that have come from all kinds of different backgrounds.”
“And I think that’s part of this sense of entitlement that (Cotton) gives off, is that almost it’s like, ‘I served my country, therefore elect me to the Senate.’ That’s not how it works in Arkansas.”
However, Pryor also said he has “total respect” for Cotton’s two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and thanked him for his service.
But the Arkansas Republican Party pounced on what it called Pryor’s “outrageous” comments.
“To suggest, as Senator Pryor has, that military service is not a qualification to run for office is an affront to every man and woman who has put on the uniform to serve this country,” State GOP Chairman Doyle Webb said in a statement.. “He should immediately apologize to them and to Congressman Tom Cotton.”
U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton
Responding to Pryor’s comments on the Fox News Channel, Cotton, who graduated from Harvard Law School before joining the Army, said, “I didn’t leave a good law job to join the Army out of a sense of entitlement. I left because I wanted to serve my country.”
“I’m not like Mark Pryor. I haven’t spent 25 years in politics, but I can tell you this — you learn a lot more about leadership at officer candidate’s school and Ranger school at Ft. Benning and leading troops in the streets of Baghdad than you learn in the halls of Congress.
Cotton also said he was “surprised that Mark Pryor doesn’t think we need more veterans in Congress. Frankly, I think if we had more people in the Congress who were veterans, Congress might be a little more respected, just like our military is.”
So far, Pryor has not apologized. His campaign did release a statement saying that while the senator is “grateful” for Cotton’s military service, the campaign should be a contrast between their records in Congress.
“Cotton has said himself that military experience shouldn’t be the sole or primary qualification for political office,” the statement said.
Watch Pryor’s comments on Cotton’s military service:
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