MD-07: Maryland governor sets special election date for Cummings' seat

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has set a special election date for the race to replace the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, who died earlier this month. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has set a Feb. 4 special election primary to replace the late Elijah E. Cummings in the 7th District.

Hogan issued the proclamation Monday after the late congressman, who died earlier this month at the age of 68, was memorialized on Capitol Hill and in Baltimore last week.

In a solid Democratic district that Hillary Clinton carried by 53 points in 2016, the most competitive race in the Baltimore-area district will be the primary. The general election to fill the remainder of Cummings’ term will be April 28, which is the same day as Maryland’s regularly scheduled 2020 primaries. Another general election for a two-year term would take place in November.

All eyes will be on Maryland Democratic Party chairwoman Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the wife of the late congressman, to see if she runs for the nomination. If she does, she could clear the field. Rockeymoore Cummings briefly ran for governor last cycle and was elected state party chair in December.







https://www.rollcall.com/news/campaigns/maryland-governor-sets-special-election-date-cummings-seat

CA-25: California state lawmaker Christy Smith launches bid for Katie Hill's seat

A Democrat in the California State Assembly launched her bid Monday for the House seat Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) is vacating amid allegations that the first-term congresswoman engaged in improper relationships with a campaign staffer and a legislative aide.

Assemblywoman Christy Smith, who entered the race just one day after Hill announced her resignation, said she’d been considering the run for days.

After much encouragement from community members, neighborhood leaders, activists, parents, veterans and working people across this district, over the last several days, it’s been made clear to me that the people of the 25th Congressional District want and need a new voice to fight for them in Washington,” Smith said in a statement.
Hill, who flipped a seat from Republican Rep. Steve Knight in 2018, had already drawn several Republican challengers in the 2020 election.

Smith appears to be the first Democrat to formally enter the race.

“I would like to commend Congresswoman Katie Hill for her service on behalf of the 25th District as well as her willingness to put country first by stepping down from office,” Smith said.



https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/467734-california-state-lawmaker-christy-smith-launches-bid-for-katie-hills-seat

White House aide will testify that he considered Ukraine call 'damaging'.

Florida GOP postpones annual fundraiser due to lack of interest

ALLAHASSEE — The Republican Party of Florida on Tuesday postponed its biggest annual fundraiser, a move that some officials blamed on lackluster interest from donors.

Planners were having difficulty selling table sponsorships to the Statesman’s Dinner, and money that Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged to raise for the event has yet to arrive. Event planners also couldn't land a keynote speaker for the dinner, which was scheduled for Nov. 9 in Orlando.

he postponement is a significant setback to the state Republican Party and potentially President Donald Trump, who will need to win Florida to secure his reelection in 2020. The annual dinner, which last year netted the party $500,000, is as much a pep rally as it is a fundraiser, serving to gin up excitement in a state where elections are decided on slim margins and voter turnout is critical. The snafu adds to the woes of a party already gripped by infighting over its leadership.

“Someone dropped the ball, it is unprecedented to cancel such a high-profile dinner,” said one member of the state executive committee. “Announcing the cancellation without even giving a notice to the committee is even worse.”



https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2019/10/28/unprecedented-florida-gop-postpones-biggest-annual-fundraiser-1226046

Trump's Public Lands Chief Wrote For A Cult Extremist's Magazine

William Perry Pendley, a top Trump administration official in charge of managing one-tenth of all land in the United States, is a past contributor to 21st Century Science & Technology, a fringe magazine of the late cult leader, convicted fraudster and paranoid conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

Documents also indicate that Pendley attended a conference in 1994 where two of LaRouche’s associates called on anti-environmental groups to help kill Senate support for an international biodiversity treaty.

Pendley wrote two pieces for 21st Century Science & Technology in the early 1990s when he was president of the right-wing nonprofit Mountain States Legal Foundation. The magazine was part of a network of LaRouche publications and chock full of pseudoscience, climate change denial and wild conspiracy theories. Its website, which is still live, features sections on “Global Warming Fraud” and calls for bringing back DDT, a banned toxic insecticide. LaRouche embraced a frenzy of conspiracy theories, contending that Queen Elizabeth is an international drug trafficker, that AIDS is spread by mosquitos, that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a Soviet agent, and that the rock band The Beatles was “a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications.”

The magazine was also a go-to platform for the so-called “Wise-Use movement,” a group of anti-government organizations pushing to boost mining, drilling and logging on federal lands while deriding environmentalists as domestic terrorists. Pendley, a conservative lawyer with extreme anti-government and anti-environmentalism views, was a key figure in that movement as it gained momentum in the 1980s.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-perry-pendley-lyndon-larouche-environment_n_5db34813e4b079eb95a33d3e

Iowa woman killed by explosion at gender reveal party

An Iowa woman was killed by debris from an explosion at a gender reveal party on Saturday, police said.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call at around 4 p.m. on Saturday reporting that a woman, 56, had been seriously injured in an explosion in rural Knoxville, Iowa, according to a press release from the sheriff's office. The woman, whose name has not been released, was pronounced dead on the scene.

An investigation concluded that a gender reveal announcement created an explosion, from which a flying piece of debris struck the woman.

No further information has been released at this time. The Marion County Sheriff's Office could not immediately be reached for comment.



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/iowa-woman-killed-explosion-gender-reveal-party-n1072576?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

CA-25: Assemblywoman Christy Smith likley to run to succeed Katie Hill

Bonus Tweet of the Day

Election 2019: Virginia absentee returns more than double the rate of 2015.

Katie Hill was slut shamed for being a revenge porn victim

That's the last I have to say about this.