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RandySF's JournalGiuliani Sought Help for Client in Meeting With Ukrainian Official
KYIV, Ukraine — When Rudolph W. Giuliani met with a top aide to Ukraine’s president last summer, he discussed the prospect of a coveted White House meeting for the president while seeking Ukraine’s commitment to certain investigations that could benefit President Trump politically.
Mr. Giuliani also threw in a request of his own: help the mayor of Kyiv keep his job.
The mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, a professional boxer turned politician and longtime friend and former client of Mr. Giuliani’s, was on the verge of being fired from his duties overseeing Kyiv’s $2 billion budget.
Firing Mr. Klitschko would have fit with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign promise to fight Ukraine’s entrenched interests and allowed him to replace a political adversary with a loyalist in one of the country’s most important posts.
But despite the fact that Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet approved Mr. Klitschko’s removal, he remains there today, leaving his adversaries in the murky and lucrative world of Ukrainian municipal politics to wonder whether Mr. Trump’s personal attorney may have tipped the scales in his favor.
“The coincidence in timing between Klitschko’s meeting with Giuliani and the developments in the governance of Kyiv was striking,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament whom Mr. Zelensky had been expected to nominate as Mr. Klitschko’s replacement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/world/europe/giuliani-ukraine-klitschko-trump.html
Amy Klobuchar was kicked out of the hospital 24 hours after giving birth. Outrage fueled her rise.
Amy Klobuchar was exhausted, exhilarated, shaken by a dizzying mindstorm of joy and pain. She’d been in labor for 18 hours, hadn’t slept in two nights, and now she’d given birth to Abigail and life was everything it could ever be. The baby “had all her fingers and toes and seemed quite healthy, except for some mucus in her throat,” Klobuchar recalled.
The new mother called her parents, filled out forms and finally dozed off.
Before long, someone woke her up: “Suddenly the nurse comes in and says ‘She can’t swallow. Everything comes out her nose,’” said Klobuchar, then a 35-year-old lawyer in Minneapolis, now a 59-year-old senator running for president. “And so from that moment on, it was like a disaster."
The pediatrician on-call had news: “We think she needs emergency surgery."
In her first day of life, Abigail was rushed into intensive care, subjected to a battery of scans and tests, and put under anesthesia so doctors could peer down her throat.
As that first day ended, though, a nurse plopped Klobuchar into a wheelchair and her husband, John, rolled her out of the building.
“Your time is up,” a nurse told her.
“And I go, ‘What?’” Klobuchar recalled. “And they said, ‘There’s just no way we can waive it.’”
In 1995, many American mothers faced that same arbitrary deadline: Insurance companies and hospitals, eager to trim costs, were sending women home after a maximum 24-hour stay, even when their babies required further treatment. Opponents of the practice called them “drive-through deliveries."
Twenty-five years later, Klobuchar traces her political awakening to that moment, when the most fundamental fear any parent can face transformed her into a determined activist.
“I was obsessed with it, reading up on it,” she recalled. “I saw it as injustice for moms. I thought if men had babies, this would never happen. It was one of those one-size-fits-all policies that just didn’t allow for any humanity. You’ve been up for 48 hours, you’re a brand-new mom and you have no idea what you’re doing, and they kick you out. You don’t know if your child’s going to live."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/31/klobuchar-birth-baby-political-rise/?arc404=true
It's on! Florida presidential primary ballots already going out
hough the official Florida presidential preference primary date isn’t until March 17, thousands of Florida primary ballots already are in the mail.
Yet Florida Democratic voters have barely had any sightings of any of the 12 Democratic presidential candidates who are officially running in Florida.
Saturday, 45 days out from primary election day, is the statewide deadline for county Supervisors of Elections offices to mail the first round of ballots to absent military or overseas voters. Some counties, such as Orange County, have comfortably beaten the deadline, mailing out the ballots earlier this week. Hillsborough plans to mail and email out about 2,000 Friday.
Supervisors won’t tally how many ballots are going out in this first wave until next week. In the 2018 general election, Florida Supervisors mailed approximately 75,000 ballots to absent military and oveseas voters, but that was an election in which all registered voters were eligible. This time, independent and third-party voters are not eligible and will not get ballots, unless they reside in cities that are having municipal elections on March 17.
Ordinary mail ballots can go out as early as next Thursday, and many will go out immediately on that date. For the 2016 presidential primaries, more than 1.8 million mail ballots were sent out.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/317598-its-on-florida-presidential-primary-ballots-already-going-out
Fort Bend's special election was first battle of the 2020 war between Texas Democrats and GOP
he day before Texas Democrats wrapped up their Don Quixote adventure in Fort Bend County this week, party members released a list of almost two dozen state House districts they think they might be able to wrest away from Republican incumbents in November.
And in spite of the Democrats’ comeuppance in House District 28, where Republican Gary Gates beat Eliz Markowitz by 16 percentage points, there are good reasons to keep paying attention to the partisan competition ahead.
The lists of competitive races are similar no matter who is pulling them together and range from 20 to 30 seats, depending on the list-maker. Journalists, political scientists, consultants, donors and the parties use many of the same tricks: past election results, mostly, seasoned with turnout forecasts, polling, assessments of the political environment and of the popularity or lack of it at the top of the major tickets. The Democrats, for example, had 22 House races on the list they released Monday.
Contests where the results in 2018 were tight — under 5 or 10 percentage points, for instance — make the lists. Districts where otherwise safe incumbents have made dire political mistakes are open to conjecture. Incumbents in districts where the other party’s candidates won the last presidential or U.S. Senate races, or both, rank high.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/01/31/fort-bend-was-just-first-battle-2020-texas-elections/
NH-GOV: Bernie Sanders endorses Volinsky for governor
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky in the New Hampshire governor’s race, the Sanders campaign announced Thursday.
Volinsky, a Concord Democrat, represents an executive council district that includes Keene and other Monadnock Region communities. He is running against N.H. Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes to be the Democratic nominee who will face Republican Gov. Chris Sununu in the fall. The state primary is Sept. 8.
Sanders, a progressive Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, is running for the party's presidential nomination. His endorsement comes less than two weeks before New Hampshire’s presidential primary, on Feb. 11.
https://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/bernie-sanders-endorses-volinsky-for-governor/article_5665f89d-60c2-54d4-b13d-fac14d3423fe.html
House Majority Forward is extending its ad buy in six House battlegrounds
House Majority Forward is extending its ad buy in six House battlegrounds with additional $700,000, Campaign Pro’s Ally Mutnick writes in. The Democratic nonprofit will air spots touting Democrats’ work to lower prescription drug prices in seats held by Reps. Abby Finkenauer (IA-01); Jared Golden (ME-02); Susie Lee (NV-03); Max Rose (NY-11); Anthony Brindisi (NY-22) and Kendra Horn (OK-05). It is also booking air time during the State of the Union — and buying a full page ad in The New York Times — to run an ad urging the Senate to pass bipartisan bills.
https://www.politico.com/morningscore/
Parkland survivor featured in Bloomberg campaign ad in Florida
A survivor of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., is featured in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The digital ad, which will air in the Sunshine State, is one of several the campaign is rolling out focused on gun control, a top issue for Bloomberg’s campaign. The former mayor, who has invested heavily in gun control advocacy groups, is dropping millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad featuring a Houston mother whose son was shot and killed.
The Florida video features Sari Kaufman, who is now a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which was the site where a gunman shot and killed 17 people in February 2018, an event that helped revive a national conversation on gun control.
Kaufman, who has since become a gun control activist, said she was encouraged by Bloomberg’s focus on the issue.
“A lot of politicians run away from the issue of gun violence, and Mike runs toward it,” Kaufman says in the Bloomberg ad.
“Thirty years down the road I’m not going to want my kids to go to school and having to experience the same thing that I experienced,” she adds. “I trust Bloomberg to break the cycle of failure and failure, especially with gun violence bills.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/480973-parkland-survivor-featured-in-bloomberg-campaign-ad-in-florida
KY-SEN: McConnell's Democratic rival McGrath endorses Biden for 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat aviator who has raised more than $16 million in her effort to challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell in November’s election, said Friday that she was endorsing Joe Biden for president.
The former vice president campaigned in Kentucky for McGrath in her unsuccessful 2018 race for a U.S. House seat. Now she is trying to win the Democratic Senate nomination and unseat McConnell, one of the most powerful men in Washington.
McGrath said Biden was “respected and beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike” and had the ability to bring the country back together.
Honor and integrity are at the heart of everything Marines do,” McGrath said in a statement. ”It’s why I believe so strongly that Joe Biden is the president who can return honor and integrity to the Oval Office.”
McGrath joins a growing group of centrist-leaning House members who are backing the former vice president as he tries to consolidate enough votes in the moderate wing of his party to secure the Democratic nomination. Among those is Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, who was a classmate of McGrath’s at the Naval Academy.
Biden’s campaign welcomed the endorsement from McGrath.
“We are honored to welcome Amy to Team Joe in the fight for the soul of our nation and look forward to taking down Mitch McConnell and taking back the Senate,” said Greg Schultz, Biden’s campaign manager.
https://apnews.com/b6ceaf61303b181433f945b483d48fe1
Liberal group endorses Democrats in competitive primaries
Five Democrats in competitive House primaries in four states were endorsed Friday by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group pushing for liberal policies including the Green New Deal and expansion of Medicare and Social Security.
The group called the move a “show of progressive energy,” in a news release obtained by CQ Roll Call, and said its endorsements follow those by preferred presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts senator earlier this week endorsed two of the PCCC-backed candidates, Mondaire Jones in New York’s 17th District and Candace Valenzuela in Texas’s 24th. A third, Georgette Gómez in California’s 53rd, was endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Warren’s rival for the progressive mantle in the Democratic presidential primaries.
The PCCC also endorsed Jon Hoadley in Michigan’s 6th District and Mike Siegel in Texas’s 10th.
The two suburban Texas seats are top targets for Democrats in 2020. In the 10th District, Siegel is looking for a rematch against GOP Rep. Michael McCaul after losing to McCaul by 4 points in 2018. The 24th District is an open seat race since GOP Rep. Kenny Marchant is retiring. Valenzuela, a school board member, has the backing of EMILY’s List, but the race also features Air Force veteran Kim Olson, who VoteVets and New Politics have endorsed.
In Michigan, there has been speculation that Rep. Fred Upton, a former Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, would decide not run for an 18th term. Democrats have signaled they’re targeting the seat whether it’s open or not. Hoadley raised $208,000 in the final quarter of 2019, ending the year with $247,000 in the bank. Trump carried the district by about 8 points, and Inside Elections rates it Likely Republican.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/campaigns/liberal-group-endorses-democrats-in-competitive-primaries
Trump Signed Off on McConnell Plan to End Trial
“Before he introduced a resolution laying out the final days of the impeachment trial, Senator Mitch McConnell placed a call to President Trump to run it by him,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, shared the details of the resolution with Mr. Trump, who gave his approval.”
The trial is adjourned until 11am ET, on Monday February 3.
https://politicalwire.com/2020/01/31/trump-signed-off-on-mcconnell-plan-to-end-trial/
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