Mediaboss Marketing

Texas Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke at a January town hall meeting in Alice, Texas. In his long-shot bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, O'Rourke has campaigned in at least 226 of the state's 254 counties. Eric Gay/AP hide caption

Texas Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke at a January town hall meeting in Alice, Texas. In his long-shot bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, O'Rourke has campaigned in at least 226 of the state's 254 counties.

The rain's coming in sheets as folks file into the Douglas Community Center in Pittsburg, Texas, population 4,707.

The organizers of an event for Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke have set out 50 chairs, but they're worried now that's going to be too many. But by the time the candidate bounces through the door, they're unfolding dozens more chairs as the crowd zooms past 100.

O'Rourke, who currently represents the El Paso area in the U.S. House, is running for the chance to unseat the Republican incumbent, Ted Cruz. No Democrat has represented the Lone Star State in the Senate since 1993, but O'Rourke believes he can beat the odds, in part by campaigning aggressively in every part of this sprawling state.

"Of the 254 counties [in Texas], we've visited 226 so far. This is 226 today," O'Rourke tells the crowd, who have been chanting, "Beto, Beto!"

Rep. Beto O'Rourke, the Texas Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz's re-election bid this year, speaks to voter Mike Nichols at an event in Pittsburg, Texas. More than 100 people showed up to the event, in a town of just over 4,700. Wade Goodwyn /NPR hide caption

Rep. Beto O'Rourke, the Texas Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz's re-election bid this year, speaks to voter Mike Nichols at an event in Pittsburg, Texas. More than 100 people showed up to the event, in a town of just over 4,700.

O'Rourke has his work cut out for him. A recent Texas Politics Project poll showed nearly 40 percent of Texas voters have no idea who he is.

But county by county, O'Rourke is slowly getting his name out with crowded, grass-roots events like the one in Pittsburg.

"I love Beto, I came out to see him. I've probably seen him eight times. He stands for everything that Ted Cruz doesn't and I think he's the real deal," said retired teacher Barbara Rosel.

O'Rourke's substantial fundraising has also drawn notice.

"In the first 45 days of this year we raised $2.3 million with an average online contribution of 25 bucks," said O'Rourke as he spoke to NPR while sitting down for lunch at a Pittsburg restaurant called Hot Links. Cruz raised about $800,000 during the same period. "I just haven't seen this kind of excitement and energy and willingness to do what it takes in Texas in my life," O'Rourke added.

That fundraising may help him make up for the lack of awareness Texas voters have of the Democrat, according to Texas Tribune executive editor and political analyst Ross Ramsey. "I think he'll have enough money, whether they vote red or blue in November, Texans will know who Beto O'Rourke really is," Ramsey told NPR.

Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, campaigns in Pittsburg, Texas. In his race against Sen. Ted Cruz, the congressman has been seeing momentum in crowds and small dollar donations. Wade Goodwyn/NPR hide caption

Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, campaigns in Pittsburg, Texas. In his race against Sen. Ted Cruz, the congressman has been seeing momentum in crowds and small dollar donations.

O'Rourke is capitalizing on an extremely restive Democratic electorate. Although Texas Democrats have been largely shut out of statewide office for the past two decades, they've been closing the gap with Republicans. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 600,000 more votes in Texas than Barack Obama did just four years earlier. President Trump won the state by about 9 percent.

O'Rourke says the president has a lot to do with the energy among Democrats.

"They're coming out because they don't want a wall [with Mexico]. People are coming out because they don't want to hear the president refer to the countries of Africa as 's***hole' nations," said O'Rourke. "People are coming out because they don't think the press is the enemy of the people, they think they're the best defense against tyranny. People are coming out because they want women to be treated with dignity and respect."

The tall, thin 45-year-old sometimes gets described as a West Texas version of John F. Kennedy. But it's O'Rourke's unabashed liberalism and earnest delivery that makes Democrats swoon.

At the Pittsburg event, O'Rourke criticized the state's decision to shut down family planning clinics, arguing it has resulted in sky-high maternal mortality rates. In a state where guns are sometimes seen as a birthright, he argues for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.

O'Rourke has two challengers in this Tuesday's Democratic primary, but had a 50 point lead in the latest polling.

This fall, it's likely O'Rourke will face Ted Cruz in the general election. Although Cruz's reputation with Republican voters suffered when he refused to endorse Donald Trump's nomination at the 2016 Republican National Convention, he is an accomplished fundraiser and formidable opponent.

Cruz's campaign did not respond to requests for comment, but Cruz is taking the race seriously.

He recently warned Houston-area Republicans: "The left is going to show up. They will crawl over broken glass in November to vote."

Early voting numbers in Tuesday's Texas primaries show that Democrats have more than doubled their numbers from the same point in the 2014 midterms, while Republicans are up only 15 percent, according to David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Ramsey warns that it's easy to read too much into early vote totals, since they may just indicate Democrats are taking advantage of the convenience of early voting. The final turnout on Tuesday will be a better indication of where things sit.

"It's still a Republican state. It would take a lot of things to fall in place, but that said, up to this date O'Rourke has a lot of things going for him," Ramsey said.

He added that many Texas political observers are reminding themselves that they saw the rise of another long-shot Senate candidate six years ago.

His name was Ted Cruz.

View post:
Texas Democrat's Underdog Bid To Unseat Ted Cruz Picks Up ...

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, now says that the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will be determined by the upcoming midterm elections. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, now says that the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will be determined by the upcoming midterm elections.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has long led the push to provide a permanent legal status for "DREAMers" young adults in the United States illegally who were brought to the country as children.

Durbin was in the mix on multiple bipartisan deals in recent months, as the clock ticked toward a March 5 expiration of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Trump decided in September 2017 to end.

But with Congress still gridlocked on DACA and the Supreme Court refusing to intervene in two federal cases negating that deadline, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat seems to be throwing in the towel.

"This election, the election of new members to the House and Senate, will decide the fate of this issue," Durbin told NPR's All Things Considered on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected a Trump administration request that it take up DACA. Two lower courts have blocked the government from ending the DACA program. With the cases likely to take months, if not more than a year, to possibly make their way back to the highest court, DACA will remain in place for the extended future.

Until the lower courts had blocked DACA's expiration, Congress had been working to make DACA permanent by the March 5 deadline. While the program itself enjoys broad support among Democrats and Republicans, Trump and GOP leaders had insisted that any measure making it permanent also include money for a border wall, as well as restrictions on future legal immigration.

Two weeks ago, multiple immigration measures were brought to the Senate floor for votes, but all failed to earn the 60 votes needed to stay alive. Two narrow measures came close, but President Trump tanked their chances by threatening to veto any immigration measure that did not include his legal immigration demands.

Trump's preferred measure got less support than anything else the Senate voted on that week.

"We learned something during the course of this [debate], and it was unsettling," Durbin told NPR. "We learned what the president's real priorities were. The president said, 'Let's help these young people. We need to do something to fix DACA.' And yet given that opportunity, he rejected it. It turns out this debate wasn't about a wall, it was about a new immigration policy in America; it was about rejecting the notion that we are a nation of immigrants."

Durbin was one of the lawmakers in the Oval Office when Trump used vulgar language to refer to African countries during a meeting about a bipartisan DACA fix. Anger over that statement and over Trump's refusal to consider a narrow DACA bill led to a brief partial federal government shutdown, when Democrats voted down a short-term spending bill.

"Who knew when we got into Trump presidency that we would reach a point where Sen. McConnell would feel compelled to bring this matter to the floor and give us a week's time," Durbin said of the promise the majority leader made to Democrats to end the stalemate. "We managed to reach that point and so we had our chance we came close but not close enough to win."

Read the original here:
Top Democrat Says Election Will Decide DACA's Fate

Seattle, Washington, is a charter city, with a mayorcouncil form of government, unlike many of its neighbors that use the councilmanager form. The mayor of Seattle and two of the nine members of the Seattle City Council are elected at large, rather than by geographic subdivisions. The remaining seven council positions are elected based on the city's seven council districts. The only other elected offices are the city attorney and Municipal Court judges. All offices are non-partisan. Seattle is a predominantly liberal city and tends to elect left-leaning politicians to office. Jenny Durkan was elected as Mayor of Seattle in a municipal election on November 7, 2017, becoming the second woman to hold the office.[1]

The city government provides more utilities than many cities; either running the whole operation, such as the water and electricity services, or handling the, but contracting out the rest of the operations, like trash and recycling collections.

Seattle's politics lean famously to the left compared to the U.S. as a whole. In this regard, it sits with a small set of similar U.S. cities (such as Madison, Wisconsin, Berkeley, California, and Cambridge and Boston in Massachusetts) where the dominant politics tend to range from center-left to social democratic. Seattle politics are generally dominated by the liberal wing (in the U.S. sense of the word "liberal") of the Democratic Party; in some local elections, Greens (and even, on at least one occasion, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party) have fared better than Republicans. There exist pockets of conservatism, especially in the north and in affluent neighborhoods such as Broadmoor, as well as scattered libertarians, but for the most part Seattle is primarily a Democratic city. While local elections are officially nonpartisan, most of the city's elected officials are known to be Democrats.

Democratic dominance is no less pronounced at the state and federal level. The Democrats hold all of the seats in the Washington State Legislature covering a significant portion of the city. At the federal level, for years Seattle was entirely within Washington's 7th congressional district, the most Democratic white-majority district in the nation. Jim McDermott, who held the district from 1989 to 2017, consistently won reelection with margins of well over 70 percent of the vote. He was succeeded by another progressive Democrat, Pramila Jayapal. After the 2010 census, part of southwest Seattle was drawn into the 9th District, represented by Democrat Adam Smith.

As with most U.S. cities, the county judicial system handles felony crimes the Seattle Municipal Court deals with parking tickets, traffic infractions, and misdemeanors. Seattle does not have its own jail, contracting out inmates it convicts to either the King County Jail (which is located downtown), the Yakima County Jail, or (for short-term holdings) the Renton City Jail.[5] After reaching its highest murder rate in 1994 with 69 homicides, Seattle's murder rate declined to a 40-year low with 24 homicides in 2004.[6] By 2006, Seattle's murder rate had increased, with thirty murders that year.[7] Auto theft is another matter: Seattle has until recently ranked in the top ten "hot spots" for auto theft; the Seattle Police Department has responded by nearly doubling the number of auto theft detail detectives, and started a "bait car" program in 2004.[8]

Seattle has suffered two mass-murders in recent history: the 1983 Wah Mee massacre (13 people killed in the Wah Mee gambling club)[9] and the March 25, 2006 Capitol Hill massacre when 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff killed six at a rave afterparty.[10] Later in 2006, an attempted spree killing by Naveed Afzal Haq left one dead at the Jewish Federation building.[11]

In 2016, a prostitution scandal involving Seattle City Councilors was uncovered by the King County investigators.[citation needed]

In 1981, Seattle held a contest to come up with a new official nickname to replace "the Queen City." "Queen City" had been devised by real estate promoters and used since 1869,[12] but was also the nickname of: Cincinnati;[13] Denver;[14] Regina, Saskatchewan;[15] Buffalo;[16] Bangor, Maine;[17] Helena, Montana;[18] Burlington, Vermont,[19] Charlotte,[20] and several other cities.The winner of this contest, selected in 1982, was "the Emerald City". Submitted by Californian Sarah Sterling-Franklin, it referred to the lush, thickly forested surroundings of Seattle that were the result of frequent rain.[21] Seattle has also been known in the past as "the Jet City"though this nickname, related to Boeing, was entirely unofficial.[21] It has also been known as the "Portal to the Pacific", a phrase enscribed on the arches of the tunnel leading westward into the city from the Interstate 90 floating bridge over Lake Washington.

Seattle's official flower has been the dahlia since 1913. Its official song has been "Seattle the Peerless City" since 1909. In 1942, its official slogan was "The City of Flowers"; 48 years later, in 1990, it was "The City of Goodwill", for the Goodwill Games held that year in Seattle.[22] On October 20, 2006, the Space Needle was adorned with the new slogan "Metronatural." The slogan is a result of a 16-month, $200,000 effort by the Seattle Convention and Visitor's Bureau.[23] The official bird of Seattle is the great blue heron, named by the City Council in 2003.[24]

Seattle, Washington, USA, has 21 sister cities through Sister Cities International.[29]

Read the rest here:
Government and politics of Seattle - Wikipedia

The term Democrat Party is an epithet for the Democratic Party of the United States,[3][4][5] used disparagingly by the party's opponents.[6] The following appeared in The New York Times in 1984:

The term 'Democrat Party' has been used in recent years by some right-wing Republicans on the ground that the term used by Democrats implies that they are the only true adherents of democracy.[7]

Language expert Roy Copperud said it was used by Republicans who disliked the implication that Democratic Party implied to listeners that Democrats "are somehow the anointed custodians of the concept of democracy". According to Oxford Dictionaries, the use of Democrat rather than the adjective Democratic

is in keeping with a longstanding tradition among Republicans of dropping the ic in order to maintain a distinction from the broader, positive associations of the adjective democratic with democracy and egalitarianism.[9]

Political commentator William Safire wrote in 1993 that the Democrat of Democrat Party "does conveniently rhyme with autocrat, plutocrat, and worst of all, bureaucrat".[10] Hendrik Hertzberg writes in The New Yorker:

Theres no great mystery about the motives behind this deliberate misnaming. 'Democrat Party' is a slur, or intended to bea handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but 'Democrat Party' is jarring verging on ugly. It fairly screams 'rat'.[11]

Pollster Frank Luntz tested the phrase with a focus group in 2001, and concluded that the only people who really disliked the epithet were highly partisan Democrats.[12] Political analyst Charlie Cook attributed modern use of the term to force of habit rather than a deliberate epithet by Republicans.[13] Journalist Ruth Marcus stated that Republicans likely only continue to employ the term because Democrats dislike it,[3] and Hertzberg calls use of the term "a minor irritation" and also "the partisan equivalent of flashing a gang sign".[11]

Among authors of dictionaries and usage guides who state that the use of Democrat as an adjective is ungrammatical are Roy H. Copperud, Bergen Evans, and William and Mary Morris. Morris and Morris argue, "it is the idiotic creation of some of the least responsible members of the Republican Party."[15]

Ruth Walker, the long-time language columnist for the Christian Science Monitor,[16] while stating that Democratic is the correct term in most instances, places the adjectival use of Democrat within a broader trend:

We're losing our inflectionsthe special endings we use to distinguish between adjectives and nouns, for instance. There's a tendency to modify a noun with another noun rather than an adjective. Some may speak of 'the Ukraine election' rather than 'the Ukrainian election' or 'the election in Ukraine', for instance. It's 'the Iraq war' rather than 'the Iraqi war', to give another example.[17]

According to the British newspaper The Economist,

The real reason 'Democrat Party' is wrong is not because it's ungrammatical, but because it's incorrect in another waythe party is simply not named the Democrat Party, but the Democratic Party. Calling it anything else is discourteous.[18]

The Oxford English Dictionary says the term was used by the London press as a synonym for the more common Democratic Party in 1890: "Whether a little farmer from South Carolina named Tillman is going to rule the Democrat Party in Americayet it is this, and not output, on which the proximate value of silver depends."[19] In American history, many parties were named by their opponents (Federalists, Loco-Focos, Know Nothings, Populists, Dixiecrats), including the Democrats themselves, as the Federalists in the 1790s used Democratic Party as a term of ridicule. Addressing a gathering of Michigan Republicans in 1889, New Hampshire Republican Congressman Jacob H. Gallinger said:

The great Democrat party, laying down the sceptre of power in 1860, after ruling this country under free trade for a quarter of a century, left our treasury bankrupt, and gave as a legacy to the Republican party, a gigantic rebellion and a treasury without a single dollar of money in it.[21]

The 1919 New Teachers' and Pupils' Cyclopaedia entry for Woodrow Wilson states that "In 1912, Wilson was the Democrat Party nominee for President..."[22] In July 14, 1922, a newspaper in Keytesville, Missouri, posted an advertisement for its primary elections with the Democratic candidates identified as "Representing: Democrat Party".[23]

The noun-as-adjective has been used by Republican leaders since the 1940s, and in most GOP national platforms since 1948.[citation needed] By the early 1950s the term was in widespread use among Republicans of all factions.[24] When Senator Thruston Ballard Morton became chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1959, he indicated that he had always said Democratic Party and would continue to do so, which contrasted with his predecessor, Meade Alcorn and National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Barry Goldwater, both of whom used Democrat Party.[25] According to Congressional Quarterly, at the 1968 Republican National Convention "the GOP did revert to the epithet of 'Democrat' party. The phrase had been used in 1952 and 1956 but not in 1960 and 1964".[5]

According to William Safire, Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, campaign manager to Republican Wendell Willkie during the 1940 presidential campaign, explained that because the Democratic Party was at that time partly controlled by undemocratic city bosses, "by [Frank] Hague in New Jersey, [Tom] Pendergast in Missouri and [Edward Joseph] Kelly-Nash in Chicago, [it] should not be called a 'Democratic Party.' It should be called the 'Democrat Party.'"

Columnist Russell Baker wrote in 1976:

The origin of this illiterate phrase, goes back, I believe to the era of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. [...] The chief trouble with 'the Democrat party' is that it makes the Republicans saying it sound both illiterate and coy, and, so, is like a shotgun that is all kick and no fire. [...] A party whose membership is down to 22 percent of the electorate, as the Republican party is, hardly needs ways to irritate voters from the opposing party whom it must seduce if it is to succeed.[27]

During the 1984 Republican National Convention, use of the term was a point of contention among the delegates.[28] when a member of the Republican platform committee asked unanimous consent to change the phrasing of a platform amendment to read Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party, New York Representative Jack Kemp objected, saying that would be "an insult to our Democratic friends" and the committee dropped the proposal.[7]

Newt Gingrich, in a campaign in the 1980s and 1990s to produce a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives, relied heavily on words and phrases that cast Democrats in a negative light.[29] The phrase Democrat Party gained new currency when the Republican Party, led by Gingrich, gained control of the House of Representatives in 1994.[4]

In 1996, the wording throughout the Republican Party platform was changed from Democratic Party to Democrat Party: Republican leaders "explained they wanted to make the subtle point that the Democratic Party had become elitist".[30] During that same period, bumper stickers for the Democratic presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and Al Gore sometimes used the phrase "Vote Democrat".[10] A proposal to use the term in the August 2008 Republican platform for similar reasons was voted down, with leaders choosing to use Democratic Party. "We probably should use what the actual name is," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the panel's chairman. "At least in writing."[30]

Following his inauguration in 2001, President George W. Bush often used the noun-as-adjective when referring to the Democratic party.[31] Ruth Marcus, an opinion writer and columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in 2006, "The derisive use of 'Democrat' in this way was a Bush staple during the recent campaign".[3]

Bush spoke of the "Democrat majority" in his 2007 State of the Union Address, although the advance copy that was given to members of Congress read "Democratic majority".[13][32] Democrats complained about the use of Democrat as an adjective in the address: John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff for Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton, argued that it was "like nails on a chalkboard," although Congressional historian Julian E. Zelizer argued that "It's hard to disentangle whether that's an intentional slight".[13] Political analyst Charlie Cook doubted it was a deliberate attempt to offend Democrats, saying Republicans "have been [using the term] so long that they probably don't even realize they're doing it".[13]

Bush joked about the issue in a February 4, 2007 speech to House Democrats, stating "Now look, my diction isn't all that good. I have been accused of occasionally mangling the English language. And so I appreciate you inviting the head of the Republic Party."[33][34]

Donald Trump has used the phrase repeatedly, both during his presidential campaign and as president.[35]

According to Media Matters for America, the "ungrammatical" and "partisan" use of the phrase Democrat Party has been replicated by the Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune.[36]

National Public Radio (NPR) directed its staff in 2010 to use the adjective Democratic rather than Democrat. According to Ron Elving, NPR's senior Washington editor, it was the organization's policy to call parties by the name that they use to refer to themselves, saying: "We should not refer to Democrat ideas or Democrat votes. Any deviation from that by NPR reporters on air or on line should be corrected".[38]

Delegates to the Democratic National Committee once proposed using "Publican Party" instead of "Republican Party". The committee failed to accept the proposal "explaining that Republican is the name by which the our opponents' product is known and mistrusted". Sherman Yellen suggested "The Republicants" as suitably comparable in terms of negative connotation in an April 29, 2007 Huffington Post commentary.[40] Other progressive blogs such as Daily Kos use the term "Republicon", to suggest Republicans "are con artists, evil, and after your money".[41][bettersourceneeded]

On the February 26, 2009 edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews, Republican Representative Darrell Issa referred to "a Democrat Congress". The host, Chris Matthews, responded by saying:

Well, I think the Democratic Party calls itself the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party. Do we have to do this every night? Why do people talk like this? Is this just fighting words to get the name on?[42]

Issa denied that he intended to use "fighting words", to which Matthews replied, "They call themselves the Democratic Party. Let's just call people what they call themselves and stop the Mickey Mouse heresave that for the stump."[42]

In March 2009, after Representative Jeb Hensarling (RTexas) repeatedly used the phrase Democrat Party when questioning U.S. Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, Representative Marcy Kaptur (DOhio) responded, saying:

Id like to begin by saying to my colleague from Texas that there isnt a single member on this side of the aisle that belongs to the 'Democrat Party'. We belong to the Democratic Party. So the party you were referring to doesnt even exist. And I would just appreciate the courtesy when youre referring to our party to refer to it as such.[43]

Originally posted here:
Democrat Party (epithet) - Wikipedia

The Florida Democrat who criticized President Donald Trump this week for being "insensitive" toward the widow of a U.S. soldier slain in Africa might be facing similar criticism herself.

It turns out that U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson has frequently voted against measures intended to help veterans and their families, according to VoteSmart.org, a vote-tracking site whose founding board members included former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

The measures that Wilson opposed included a bill that could have ensured that families of four soldiers slain in Afghanistan in 2013 received death and burial benefits.

In fact, Wilsons voting record on veterans issues may call into question the sincerity of her recent defense of U.S. service members and their families.

Despite Wilson's claim to be committed to honoring our service members, not only with words but with deeds, she has voted against most bills ensuring continued funding for veteran benefits, including payments to widows of fallen soldiers, the vote-tracking site shows.

She has also opposed measures designed to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In March 2013, Wilson opposed the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, which prevented a government shutdown and provided funds for the U.S. military and the VA.

The bill, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law by the Obama administration, provided funding to the military and the VA until the next government shutdown showdown.

U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., stands by her statement that President Donald Trump was "insensitive" toward the widow of a U.S. service member who was slain in Africa. Wilson is seen in Miami Gardens, Fla., Oct. 18, 2017.(Associated Press)

Later in the year, Wilson again voted against a resolution aimed at ensuring benefits paid to the veterans and their families would not be affected by the government shutdown in October that year.

The motion was particularly important in the wake of reports that the families of four soldiers slain in Afghanistan in 2013 had been deprived of benefits due to the shutdown in Washington.

The families of slain soldiers were denied burial benefits and up to $100,000 to each family, among other benefits, the New York Times reported.Wilson voted against the resolution ensuring that the benefits reached the families.

Defense Department spokesman Carl Woog said the department did not have the authority to pay death gratuities and other key benefits for the survivors of service members killed in action due to the government shutdown.

The congresswoman also opposed numerous bills aimed at improving VA services provided the veterans and their families.

Wilson's office has not responded to a Fox News request for a comment.

The former elementary school principal, who first came to Congress in 2011, has been portrayed this week as a staunch defender of the military and military families after accusing the president of being insensitive toward Myeshia Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four service members who were killed last week in the African nation of Niger.

According to Wilson, Trump told the grieving widow that her husband knew what he signed up for ... but when it happens, it hurts anyway. But Trump, in a response on Twitter, said Wilson had totally fabricated what I said.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Wilsons attack on the president using the soldiers widow was appalling and disgusting.

The congresswoman has stood by her account of the call.

Lukas Mikelionis is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter@LukasMikelionis.

Continue reading here:
Florida Democrat Wilson no friend of veterans, vote record ...