RandySF
RandySF's JournalVA: DLCC President Jessica Post Joins Senator Cory Booker at Hala Ayala Canvass Launch this Saturday
DLCC President Jessica Post Joins Senator Cory Booker at Hala Ayala Canvass Launch this Saturday
What:
Senator Cory Booker and DLCC President Jessica Post, alongside representatives from partner groups including the Brady Campaign and CASA, will launch a canvas for Delegate Hala Ayala’s reelection bid in the 51st district.
Who:
Senator Cory Booker
DLCC President Jessica Post
Delegate Hala Ayala
When:
Saturday, September 28 at 2:45pm
Where: Ayala for Delegate Headquarters
5557 Mapledale Plaza, Woodbridge, Virginia, 22193
Spearheaded by Post, the DLCC has spent more than $1 million to flip the General Assembly blue. The massive investment has enabled Virginia Democrats to hire experienced staff, recruit a record number of candidates and build campaign infrastructure across the state. It’s also sent a clear signal to partner organizations that Democrats could flip both chambers of the General Assembly, leading to the record donations and support seen so far this year.
Delegate Hala Ayala is running for reelection in the Prince William County-based 51st district. She was first elected in the 2017 blue wave by six points, defeating a four-term incumbent Republican and becoming one of the first Latinas elected to the Virginia General Assembly. This year, she faces a rematch with her 2017 opponent in a critical hold race as Democrats seek to flip control of the House of Delegates for the first time in two decades.
TAGSCORY BOOKERDLCCHALA AYALA
https://bluevirginia.us/2019/09/dlcc-president-jessica-post-joins-senator-cory-booker-at-hala-ayala-canvass-launch-this-saturday
Republican group to run online ads targeting Reps. Spanberger and Luria over impeachment
A national Republican committee will begin running digital ads next week that challenge Reps. Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria’s support for an impeachment inquiry and paint the Virginia Democrats as too liberal for their districts.
Facebook ads purchased by the National Republican Congressional Committee will begin appearing Monday in 16 districts, and more may be added, spokeswoman Camille Gallo said.
The buy includes some but not all “Trump districts” that the president won in 2016, such as the ones Spanberger and Luria represent.
The congresswomen, who were part of a wave of Democrats who flipped red districts blue, ran on their backgrounds in national security and promised to vote independent of the Democratic Party. The ads seek to energize independent and Republican voters opposed to impeachment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/republican-group-to-run-online-ads-targeting-reps-spanberger-and-luria-over-impeachment/2019/09/27/a1ed9934-e153-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
SC-01: NRCC mocks Democratic congressman and wife for going to marriage counseling
House Republicans’ campaign arm mocked a Democratic congressman on Twitter for getting marriage counseling with his wife, asking whether the couple’s seemingly divergent views on impeachment will be a topic of their sessions.
On Friday, Rep. Joe Cunningham (S.C.) shot back.
“Amanda is my rock — and the @NRCC just hit rock bottom,” he tweeted, referring to the National Republican Congressional Committee. “I respect my wife and all women, y’all should give it a try. Let’s show them there’s a price for living in the gutter.” He added a link to donate to his reelection campaign.
Cunningham, a freshman representing a moderate district, is one of the remaining House Democrats who have not backed an impeachment inquiry into President Trump after revelations stemming from an intelligence official’s whistleblower complaint. But his wife, Amanda, this week shared an Instagram post from presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke advocating impeachment.
That prompted the NRCC to take a screenshot of her post and tweet it out, adding: “Looks like Mrs. Cunningham likes a man who supports baseless impeachment … wonder if this will come up in @RepCunningham‘s marriage counseling?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nrcc-mocks-democratic-congressman-and-wife-for-going-to-marriage-counseling/2019/09/27/da8c7d8c-e13a-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
Whistleblower raises new questions for appeals court nominee
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee want to know whether one of President Donald Trump’s appeals court nominees played a role in any of the events surrounding his controversial call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Steven Menashi works in the White House counsel’s office and is up for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, based in New York. In a letter Friday, the ten Democratic senators demanded to know if he knew or was involved in the July 25 call now at the center of an impeachment inquiry in the House.
Among the questions the Democrats want Menashi to answer: Did he work or advise on whether the whistleblower complaint could be turned over to Congress, and was he involved in any conversations about how to handle the complaint?
And the Democrats also want to know whether Menashi was involved in the decision, according to the whistleblower, to “lock down” a record of the call on a computer system usually reserved for sensitive national security information.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/whistleblower-raises-new-questions-appeals-court-nominee
MI-13: Rep. Rashida Tlaib selling 'Impeach the mf' shirts for reelection campaign
Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s 2020 reelection campaign is looking to cash in this week on the recent wave of Democratic support for an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump by selling T-shirts with the slogan “Impeach the mf.”
The shirts cost $29, come in a variety of styles with a black or white backdrop, and take one to two weeks to ship to their destination.
“You’ve asked for ’em. And now we’ve got ’em: ‘Impeach the MF’ t-shirts!” the ActBlue fundraising page selling the shirts for the Michigan Democrat reads.
“We are at the most critical moment in our movement to impeach Donald Trump,” the message continues. “We need to keep up the momentum and get even louder to make sure Congress acts swiftly and passes articles of impeachment against this lawless president.”
On the first day of her first House term in January, Tlaib sent shockwaves through Washington with the phrase that has come to define her national political image.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/campaigns/rep-rashida-tlaib-selling-impeach-motherf-shirts-reelection-campaign
Volker schedules depositions with the House
U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker resigned from his position Friday after his name appeared in the whistleblower complaint that precipitated the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry into President Trump, CBS News confirms, according to two sources familiar with his decision.
The complaint alleges that Volker went to Kiev in late July and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian political figures and "reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to 'navigate' the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy."
Three House committees have scheduled a deposition with Volker regarding the whistleblower complaint.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whistleblower-complaint-us-special-envoy-to-ukraine-steps-down-today-after-whistleblower-complaint-released/
MS-GOV: Race Moves to Lean Republican
Mississippi is the second governor's race in the Deep South that is surprisingly competitive for Democrats in 2019 — though they have a much tougher climb than next door in Louisiana.
Popular GOP Gov. Phil Bryant is term-limited. His No. 2, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, survived a Republican primary and subsequent runoff to capture the GOP nomination. Democrats have one of their strongest statewide candidates in years with Attorney General Jim Hood, but in a state President Trump carried by 18 points, it won't be easy.
The two men couldn't be more different stylistically. Hood is just the type of Democrat who could win in deep, deep red Mississippi — his ads portray him as a good 'ole boy who drives his pickup to church on Sundays, cleans his guns and fixes his tractor. The bespectacled Reeves comes off as more wonkish and serious. Both men have been looming figures in their parties for years, with each being on the ballot — and winning — every four years, dating back to 2003. In a way, this matchup has felt inevitable for years.
"If it's about policy, Jim's in trouble. If it's about personality, Tate's in trouble," said one Republican strategist in the state.
Reeves had a setback after being forced into a bitter runoff with Bill Waller Jr., a former state supreme court chief justice whose father had been a Democratic governor in the 1970s. Waller amassed support from several former Mississippi Republican Party chairs, and he declined to endorse Reeves after he won.
Republicans say the good thing is that at least Waller — who, like Hood, also called for Medicaid expansion and higher teacher pay — didn't endorse the Democratic nominee, a scenario that remains unlikely. Democrats' polling shows Hood is narrowly ahead overall — and the Democrat is making key inroads with former Waller voters, especially more moderate suburban Mississippians. They believe he could get over 40 percent of Waller's voters. Republicans say their polling doesn't worry them, arguing that August primary will be far enough removed from the minds of voters and Republican base voters will come home. While even some in the acknowledge that Reeves is sometimes stilted at retail politicking, many say he's getting better on the stump.
https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/governors/mississippi-governor/mississippi-governors-race-moves-lean-republican
Trump Meets With NRA on Impeachment Defense
President Trump met on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, to discuss how the NRA could provide financial support for the president’s defense as he faces political headwinds, including impeachment,” the New York Times reports.
“It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or if the idea was pitched by the NRA. But in return for the support, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House ‘stop the games’ over gun control legislation.”
https://politicalwire.com/2019/09/27/nra-pledges-support-for-trump-impeachment-defense/
Holder-affiliated group launches new challenge to partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina
A nonprofit organization connected to former Obama attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. is launching a new challenge to partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina, filing a lawsuit in state court seeking to throw out the state’s GOP-drawn congressional districts in time for the 2020 elections.
The suit, being filed Friday by the National Redistricting Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of a political committee led by Holder, aims to capitalize on a recent state ruling that portions of North Carolina’s state legislative districts are unconstitutionally gerrymandered to maximize Republicans’ advantage.
“For nearly a decade, the people of North Carolina have been forced to vote on manipulated electoral maps that were drawn by Republicans in the legislature to create a partisan outcome,” Holder said in a statement. “It’s time for this era of gerrymandering in North Carolina to come to an end.”
The suit quotes a three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court, which wrote that district maps are unconstitutional if they are drawn “with a predominant intent to favor voters aligned with one political party at the expense of other voters.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/holder-affiliated-group-launches-new-challenge-to-partisan-gerrymandering-in-north-carolina/2019/09/26/c7574b5a-e0a1-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html
Nancy Pelosi: An Extremely Stable Genius
Before we begin to grapple with the gravity of the impeachment inquiry that is now upon us, can we acknowledge yet again the extreme weirdness of our times? If, through the distorting mists of time, the heroes and anti-heroes of the Watergate saga seem positively Shakespearean in their stature—Nixon raging on the heath, his cunning satraps devising their poisoned betrayals—what to make of today’s dramatis personae of Kiev and Washington, Presidents Zelensky and Trump, one a comic actor turned fledgling statesman, the other a real-estate grifter turned . . . political grifter? Scholars of the Volodymyr Zelensky filmography will recall his appearances in “Love in the Big City 2” and “Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon.” And they will credit his work in the television show “Servant of the People,” in which he played the President of Ukraine, a role that set him on the path to being the actual President of Ukraine. Zelensky is an expressive comic artist. And so it is not hard to imagine his mask of terrorized bewilderment as he held a telephone to his ear in July and listened to the ex-star of “The Apprentice” deliver an implicit threat to deprive his country of military aid and diplomatic standing if he failed to interfere in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election on Trump’s behalf. This is our reality.
Into this reality has stepped, if belatedly, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, Speaker of the House.
From the start, Pelosi has confronted Trump with a wry fearlessness. When, in a moment of rare self-aggrandizement, Trump referred to himself as an “extremely stable genius,” she replied, “When the ‘extremely stable genius’ starts acting more Presidential, I’ll be happy to work with him on infrastructure, trade, and other issues.” In an Oval Office confrontation last year, she brooked no disrespect from Trump and asked that he please not underestimate “the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats.” When, on another occasion, Trump referred to Pelosi as a “mess,” the Speaker thoughtfully suggested that the President might benefit from an “intervention for the good of the country.”
For months, however, Pelosi avoided the ultimate intervention. She frustrated many members of the Democratic caucus who believed—for myriad reasons, some contained in the Mueller Report, some not—that they should pursue an impeachment inquiry against the President. Pelosi was reluctant, worried that there was not enough evidence to prevent a backfire scenario, in which Trump would emerge from impeachment still safely in office, emboldened, unchallenged by his own party, a martyr with an enhanced prospect at reëlection.
“Remember this,” Pelosi told me, in an interview on Thursday afternoon, as she recalled the Watergate era. “I saw, as a young person, that the Republicans didn’t come around until the tapes. It wasn’t like they were saying, ‘This behavior is not acceptable to us.’ The tapes were dispositive of the issue. There was no vote to impeach, because it was so clear that he had to go. But even Nixon knew of his responsibility to the country. I’m not sure this person does.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/nancy-pelosi-an-extremely-stable-genius
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Gender: MaleHometown: Detroit Area, MI
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Current location: San Francisco, CA
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