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With just a week left to campaign before the May 25 election, Rob Quist is counting on college-age voters to provide the sliver of ballots he needs to prevail in a nationally watched election for Montana's open congressional seat.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) In the weeks leading up to Montanas special congressional election, Democrat Rob Quist and his surrogates fanned out across college campuses throughout the state, hoping to tap into a trove of progressive votes in a place where conservative values are as sturdy as the nearby Rocky Mountains.

With just a week left to campaign before the May 25 election, Quist is counting on college-age voters to provide the sliver of ballots he needs to prevail in a nationally watched election for Montanas open congressional seat, vacant since Ryan Zinke resigned to become U.S. interior secretary.

Quist is running against Republican Greg Gianforte, a wealthy technology entrepreneur who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year. The high-stakes election has drawn big money, and big names, to the state.

For any Democrat to win Montana, they have to go after every vote regardless of where they are. And Democrats can usually find lots on college campuses, although the challenge is in getting students to the polls.

This weekend, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will fly in to campaign for Quist in Bozeman and Missoula, home to the states largest college campuses.

Montana Democrats hope Sanders will fire up his huge following of Berners to rally behind Quist, a banjo-playing cowboy poet who is trying to become Montanas first Democrat to serve in the U.S. House in two decades.

Sanders also plans stops in the union town of Butte and the states largest city, Billings. Sanders won Montana in last years Democratic primary, a victory partly fueled by his popularity among millennials.

Despite its image among outsiders as solidly GOP territory, Montana has fiercely independent denizens who regularly elect Democrats to statewide races, although those Democrats usually pledge allegiance to the rural creed of supporting gun rights and a willingness to buck the national party. While Donald Trump won the state by a 20 percent margin, Montana voters also re-elected their Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, who beat Gianforte by 4 percentage points.

Quist is running as a populist and political outsider who supports strengthening President Barack Obamas health care law, not repealing it. He backs abortion rights, same-sex marriage, pay equity for women and lower interest rates for college loans themes that resonate with younger voters.

Earlier this month, Quist enlisted actress Alyssa Milano and a scene-stealing pet goat, both of whom were unleashed upon the grounds of one of the states largest college campuses to help get out the vote. Milano, whose erstwhile TV show Charmed is a cult favorite among some college students, roamed dorm halls to register students for absentee ballots and shuttled some to the county elections office to cast ballots ahead of the special election.

In Gallatin County, home to Montana State University in Bozeman, elections officials reported long lines of mostly young people waiting to cast votes after Milanos visit.

When Bullock chose May 25 to hold the special election the earliest date possible he likely had the college vote in mind, so early absentee voting would overlap with the final weeks of the school year. That gave his fellow Democrat a window, albeit a narrow one, to rally college students before they dispersed into Montanas hinterlands for the summer.

Democrats know they have to swing a lot of those middle or independent voters, so young voters are incredibly important. It should be a pretty coveted group of people because they arent always decided, said Rachel Huff-Doria, executive director of Forward Montana, which helps get out the vote on college campuses across the state.

As he did in his bid for governor, Gianforte has largely ignored college campuses. His campaign has focused on rallying older, established voters to cast ballots.

Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. have visited Montana on behalf of the Republican candidate, who has campaigned to help the president drain the Washington swamp. Gianforte has embraced the Trump administration, even amid the seemingly unending turmoil that has roiled Washington in recent weeks over the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the presidents alleged ties to Russia.

Libertarian Mark Wicks also is in the race.

Kurt Secrest, who graduated Saturday from the University of Montana in Missoula, cast an absentee ballot for Quist three weeks ago, ahead of hitting the road for a job out of state. He said his decision was influenced by how the countrys direction portends for his future.

At the moment, my hope has been a little diminished, said Secrest, who hails from a tiny town 200 miles east of campus that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. He wants a representative in Congress who shares his world view. He doesnt want a military buildup. He wants wider access to affordable health care and stronger safeguards for the environment, which he believes wont happen under Republican rule.

While liberals dominate some college campuses, there are pockets of conservative resistance. Mariah Schell, a Carroll College student, described herself as a social conservative who would be voting for Gianforte.

Gianforte has more of the kind of experience Im looking for, as opposed to Rob Quist, whos just a musician, she said.

Philosophy major Branan Mull, another Carroll College student, considered his options while waiting for the cafeteria to open. He saw the special election as an opportunity for disruptive politics and plans to vote for Quist to restore the political equilibrium that he said is missing now that Republicans control the national agenda.

The more political power Trump has senators and congressmen the more dangerous he becomes, Mull said. But again, maybe its nothing more than the neo-liberal propaganda Ive bought into.

See more here:
Democrat looks to college voters for edge in US House race - The Seattle Times

Janet Sterman was voted out of office following a Democratic party hearing at Newton City Hall.

NEWTON A local Newton Democratic official was ousted from her post Tuesday night, after city party leaders complained that she supported Republican candidates for office and posted racially insensitive social media posts during her tenure.

Janet Sterman, who had served as chairwoman of Newtons Ward 1 Democratic Committee since 2009, was voted out of office and removed as a member of the city committee following a party hearing at City Hall.

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In an interview prior to the vote, Sterman said she is an outspoken bold personality who voices opinions that can differ from the citys local party leadership.

They are telling me that I cant speak out, said Sterman.

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But Shawn Fitzgibbons, chairman of the Newton City Democratic Committee, said some of Stermans social media posts showed her supporting Republicans over Democrats, including 2016 GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson.

Fitzgibbons said other posts were racially insensitive or offensive to minority groups, including comments on Islam and the transgender community.

He contended that Sterman was unable to serve as a representative of the party because of her public positions.

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She can run a meeting okay, Fitzgibbons said, but otherwise, she is doing the opposite of [being] the ward chair in the Democratic party.

The local Democratic party includes a citywide organization, plus groups based in each of the citys eight wards. Members are elected for four-year terms on the citys presidential primary ballot, and work to drum up support for Democratic candidates and causes.

Over the past year, Fitzgibbons said, some committee members have been collecting Stermans social media posts, and created a file of about 50 comments they said violated the organizations rules.

There has been significant extended effort to address this problem with Janet, Fitzgibbons said.

Sterman criticized members of the Newton City Democratic Committee who saved copies of her posts, including from her personal Facebook page.

It is unbelievable the length they will go to go after one person, Sterman said.

Those posts were the focus of much of Tuesday nights hearing, which drew a crowd of about 30 people, including 19 from Stermans ward, to a room at City Hall.

During the hearing, Fitzgibbons pointed to posts he said showed Sterman either didnt support Clinton, backed Trump, or were things youd see on Fox News. In one post taken from the citys Republican party Facebook, Sterman could be seen seated at a table with members of the GOP organization and a Trump campaign sign in the background.

She is a mouthpiece of Republican causes and a supporter of Republican candidates, Fitzgibbons said during the hearing.

He also criticized posts that threaten peoples civil rights and were insensitive toward Muslims, blacks, and Hispanics.

Sterman didnt attend Tuesdays hearing, but her attorney, Guive Mirfendereski, criticized the venue and said voters should make the decision on whether Sterman serves as a committee member. He said Stermans public comments do not contradict the requirements of her office.

He said Sterman should be able to socialize with others, regardless of their party affiliation, and criticized efforts to remove her.

What is going on here tonight is the Democratic party eating its young, he said during the hearing.

Following a nearly two-hour hearing, Ward 1 committee members who were present voted 15-4 to remove Sterman from her ward chairwoman post. The same vote also removed her as a member of the city Democratic committee.

The hearings moderator, Margaret Mardee Xifaras, a New Bedford attorney who has been active in Democratic party circles, said Sterman has 30 days to appeal the vote to the states party committee.

In a phone interview Wednesday, Sterman said she will change her party affiliation from Democrat to unenrolled, but has not decided if she will appeal.

She said the proper rules werent followed in calling the hearing or conducting the vote, and called the partys decision stupid. She said she will be difficult to replace because she worked diligently to build up interest in political issues within Ward 1.

The Democrats in the city are not nice to me. They are nasty people, Sterman said.

Sterman first got involved with Newton politics in 2007, when she ran unsuccessfully for Ward 1 alderman-at-large as an independent. The run led to her recruitment into the city Democratic party two years later, she said.

Sterman described herself as a moderate Democrat who staked out her own positions, including support of Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, although she voted for Clinton over Donald Trump in November. She also opposed Newtons sanctuary pledge for immigrants, which had the backing of the citys Democratic committee.

On her personal Facebook and other social media sites, Sterman posts and makes comments on news stories, including a range of issues, including Israel, Muslims, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the transgender community.

Sterman said her posts are made as a private individual, and not a representative of the ward or city Democrats. She said she posts about issues she thinks are important and deserve broader discussion.

Barbara John, the Ward 6 chairwoman, said in an interview that Stermans comments, including those about Islam, made her unsuited to serve the interests of the citys Democrats.

She cant represent my beliefs as a fair-minded person, John said of Sterman.

But Sterman argues she has been a loyal Democrat. In an email she sent Monday night, Sterman wrote she actively supported Democrats, including gubernatorial runs by Steve Grossman and Martha Coakley, state representative campaigns for Kay Khan and John Lawn, along with candidates for local offices.

She said she has grown the Ward 1 committee from 18 elected members in 2009 to 30 this year, plus organized the wards Democratic Caucus for the party state convention from 2010 through 2016, and again for the upcoming party convention in June.

A fellow ward chairwoman, Larissa Hordynsky, who leads the Democrats Ward 3 committee, said shes worked with Sterman on public forums on health care, housing, and other issues.

Hordynsky said she doesnt share Stermans views, but credited Sterman with increasing the visibility of Ward 1s committee.

She has been a very good and very active chair, Hordynsky said.

Continued here:
'Outspoken' Democratic official ousted from Newton party committee - The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi welcomed the appointment of a special counsel in the Russia probe involving President Donald Trump but said on Thursday an independent commission was still needed to guard against political pressure from the White House.

She said the counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, would still be subject to supervision by Trump's Justice Department. "A special prosecutor cannot take the place of a truly independent outside commission," Pelosi told reporters.

"If the president has nothing to hide, then he and Republicans in Congress should welcome independent investigations to remove all doubt of a coverup," she said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

WASHINGTON Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trumps campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters.

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON More than a dozen Democratic attorneys general on Thursday sought to intervene to defend a key part of the Obamacare healthcare law - subsidy payments to insurance companies - which is under threat in a court case.

The head of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee introduced legislation on Thursday to cut cost overruns at the Pentagon by overhauling the way it buys everything from common off-the-shelf goods to services and intellectual property.

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Top House Democrat Pelosi says independent Russia probe still needed - Reuters

CHARLESTON, W.Va. Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat, blasted Senate Democrats for their vote against a key part of a state budget plan he supports.

The governor also urged Democrats in the House of Delegates to not repeat that vote.

Heres my problem. We are doing too many things for the sake of politics, Justice said. Yesterday you saw something happen that was terribly, terribly disappointing and unbelievable to me. Unbelievable. You saw the Senate Dems vote unanimouslyagainst a proposal that had been put forth in big part by me.

Well, that feeling of you turn around and feel like youve carried the flag, youve done all you can do. You are all alone. Its not any good. It really wasnt a vote against me. It was petty politics. But Ive said many, many times on the other side of petty politics is a name, a family, a school, a university and on and on and on.

Justice made his remarks from a table at the front of the House of Delegates, where he has been at odds in recent weeks with the Republican majority over its resistance to a budget package the governor has been negotiating with the Republican majority in the state Senate.

The state Legislature is five days into a special session to try to determine a budget for the coming fiscal year. The governor vetoed a budget passed during the regular session, objecting to cuts to state programs. The special session costs an estimated $35,000 a day.

The governor went into the Senate on Tuesday afternoon to encourage lawmakers to vote for the plan he favors, which would raise some taxes, including the state sales tax, while lowering the personal income tax with the goal of eliminating it over time.

Senatorsvoted 19-11 to approve The Tax Reform Act of 2017, the main plank ofstate budget plan of $4.35 billion. All the Democrats present voted against it.

A similar bill passed the Senate almost two weeks ago, 32-1, with Justice and Senate President Mitch Carmichael then extolling the bipartisan nature of the vote.

Democrats in the Senate couldnt vote for The Tax Reform Act of 2017 this time because too much uncertainty remains over its contents, said Senate Minority Leader Roman Prezioso, D-Marion.

Instead, Democrats offered an amendment that would have taken out reductions in the personal income tax and substituted an exemption to taxes on Social Security.

One concern for Democrats is the effect of the bill on lower and middle wage earners. The bill would raise the state sales tax to 6.95 percent and raise and establish other new taxes while lowering the personal income tax over time.

The Democrats are concerned that the tax increases would swamp any breaks on the personal income tax for the middle and lower brackets.

Democrats also note that the revenue bill has changed repeatedly during behind-the-scenes negotiations without clear estimates of the fiscal impacts.

The bills have been designed to balance the budget for the coming fiscal year by raising the sales tax six months prior to lowering the income tax. But after that, the income tax continues to lower, triggered by the states economic performance.

The worry is holes being blown in the state budget in future years, but no one, including Democrats, has seen a recent estimate because of the frequent changes to the bill.

Finally, the Democrats felt left out of discussions during the 10 days the Legislature took a hiatus on the special session. Discussions continued among Republican majority leaders and the governor during that time, but Democrats only returned to the table late last Friday.

After Justices remarks Wednesday evening, Prezioso expressed his own disappointment.

I heard the speech, he said. It was very disheartening to hear that. The only thing weve tried to do is create an atmosphere of cooperation and working together. Obviously we were elected by our constituentsto bring their concerns to Charleston.

Our Democratic caucus was the most solidified Ive ever seen in the last five years. We want to make sure that if theres any relief as far as taxes are concerned that the lower- to middle-income people get the tax relief. Theyre the ones who if they get the money wholl put it back into the economy.

Prezioso said Democrats did not have a problem with the governor but did have serious reservations about the legislation.

Weve gone along with the governor throughout the entire session, going along mostly with what he wanted to do, he said. Our problem is with the income tax reduction. Were just concerned about getting tax breaks for the rich at the expense of passing along the burden to middle and lower income people.

Justice had been a registered Republican but switched his party affiliation to Democrat when he decided to run for governor last year, a decision he referenced Wednesday.

During his talk, he saidhe felt alone and then said the Democrats in the Senate abandoned vulnerable people who would have benefited from his budget package.

Yesterday was unbelievable. Unbelievable, the governor said. When youve given everything youve got in the world and your friends desert you, it bothers you.

They walked away from the common everyday person. They basically said doop on yall. All they cared about was some political nothing. The bizarre thing of all is the least they would have done is someone tell me what they were going to do. Not a word.

Justice addressed Democrats directly, saying he hopes he can count on their vote.

So to you House Dems that are here, I want you to know that as this thing progresses, its not perfect. Its never perfect. Yesterday was a black eye in many ways. Unbelievable. And Im talking to the House Dems. Open your eyes and dont follow the leader just to be following the leader.

Minority Leader Tim Miley, D-Harrison, was not in the session Wednesday. He had earlier said he had a trip out of town that could not be rescheduled. Another top Democrat in the House, Mike Caputo, also has not been at the special session so far this week.

Longtime Democratic Delegate Brent Boggs said the caucus has not yet made up its mind about what it will do.

We havent caucused in the last couple of days simply because we dont know what the Republican response is going to be from the bill that came over from the Senate, said Boggs, D-Braxton.

But right now were waiting to see whats going to come out of the Finance Committee with what came up from the Senate.

Boggs did say the Democrats in the House have concerns about the longer-term effects of the Tax Reform Act of 2017.

We do, and I think the House Republicans do as well, and I think thats one of the reasons weve been talking about the bills up in committee the last couple of days. The more information we get out, the easier it is to make an informed decision than a rash decision.

The House of Delegates is to reconvene at 11 a.m. Thursday with the Finance Committee meeting at 9. House leaders have indicated theyll rework the proposal that was passed over by the Senate, but havent been clear about whether that will take place in committee or as a floor amendment.

Meanwhile, the Senate agreed to send almost everyone home, designating two senators to convene at 6 p.m. each day until the House takes some action.

During the first two days of the special session, the House majority twice voted down versions of the bill negotiated between the governor and the Senate majority. House leaders said their concern is the taxes that would have to be raised to offset the income tax reductions.

Justice on Wednesday afternoon directly addressed Republican delegates and asked them to please vote. His pitch included promises to save the states role in greyhound racing handles and funding of the state Womens Commission, two things the House voted to kill in the regular session.

And as Im talking to the House Republicans, I would say this, weve tried, he said. Weve tried to compromise. Weve tried in many ways to do a lot of the things Ive tried to write down.

Weve broadened the base, weve listened to everybody. Weve listened to the House, weve listened to the Senate, weve listened to everybody. Weve broadened the base because your speaker wants to broaden the base.

We got rid of the CAT tax, we got rid of the wealthy West Virginians tax, we helped the coal companies with the severance. We even took care of the the dogs. We tried to take care of the Womens Commission. We tried to take care of the teachers. We tried to take care of this while taking care of the DHHR or higher ed.

Justice concluded his speech with a plea that included a compliment to Speaker Tim Armstead, a metaphor that compared the states financial situation to a crocodile and a quick reference to a male appendage. He said delegates should trust him and believe in the plan.

Maybe it works, and if it works we go straight to the roof. We do wonderful. If it doesnt work and weve got our foot in the crocodiles mouth in 2021 or 2022. But right now weve got our whole leg in the crocodiles mouth. And if youre men and he gets ready to bite, its going to hurt more than your leg. If you hear what I said.

I really respect your Speaker. We throw mud back and forth. I really respect your leadership and all of you. I want nothing but goodness here.

But most of all, he said, he did not want a repeat of the prior days vote in the Senate.

This is just a plan. If you tweak, well listen. I want you not to do the crazy ploys of what happened yesterday with the Democrats because it hurt us all. It hurt me and it hurt us all, and I thought it was despicable, the governor said. So I want you to vote and I want you to do goodness and I want us to go home and quit sitting here on the taxpayer dollars.

Continued here:
Governor Justice, a Democrat, blasts Senate Democrats over vote - West Virginia MetroNews

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FRAZIER MOORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS | May 18, 2017, 6:37AM

| Updated 4 hours ago.

NEW YORK Roger Ailes, the communication maestro who transformed TV news by creating Fox News Channel only to be ousted from his media empire at the height of his reign for alleged sexual harassment, died Thursday, according to his wife, Elizabeth Ailes. He was 77.

A former GOP operative to candidates including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump, Ailes also created a TV network that changed the face of 24-hour news. In early 1996, he accepted a challenge from media titan Rupert Murdoch to build a news network from scratch to compete with CNN and other TV outlets they deemed left-leaning.

That October, Ailes flipped the switch on Fox News Channel, which within a few years became the audience leader in cable news. It also emerged as a powerful force on the political scene while the feisty, hard-charging Ailes swatted off criticism that the network he branded as "Fair and Balanced" had a conservative tilt, declaring he had left the political world behind.

By mid-2016 Ailes still ruled supreme as he prepared to celebrate Fox News' 20th anniversary.

But in little more than two weeks, both his legacy and job unraveled following allegations by a former anchor that he had forced her out of Fox News after she spurned his sexual advances. The lawsuit filed on July 6 by Gretchen Carlson quickly triggered accounts from more than 20 women with similar stories of alleged harassment by Ailes either against themselves or someone they knew.

Reportedly, a key witness was Megyn Kelly, the network's superstar personality, whose voice was conspicuously missing in the chorus of women and men at Fox News who spoke up on behalf of Ailes. Their defense did little to staunch the widening scandal. Despite Ailes' staunch denials, 21st Century Fox corporate head Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, determined that Ailes had to go. The announcement was made on July 21.

Rumors of sexual improprieties at Fox News and by Ailes in particular weren't new. Gabriel Sherman's 2014 Ailes biography, "The Loudest Voice in the Room," reported numerous unflattering anecdotes, including an allegation (denied by Ailes) that he offered one female employee extra money if she would have sex with him.

Before Carlson's bombshell legal action, Fox's roaring success and enormous earnings (with some estimates that it accounted for nearly a quarter of the parent company's profits) insulated Ailes from any suspicion as well as from his past scrapes with the Murdoch sons over who he would report to.

His dismissal was a headspinning downfall and a breathtaking defeat for Ailes, a man who all his life seemed to be spoiling for a fight and was used to winning them.

Ailes was a brawler. And even when he was on the winning side of a battle, he positioned himself as the defiant outsider going toe-to-toe with his bullying nemeses. Brash, heavyset and bombastic, he was renowned for never giving in, for being ever confrontational with a chip on his shoulder and a blistering outburst at the ready.

When he founded Fox News Network, Ailes' stated mission was to correct for the sins of a media universe that was overwhelmingly liberal. Pledging fairness from his employees shortly before the network launched, he was typically tough talking: "Will they hit it every time? Hell, no. Will they try? Hell, yes. Will we be criticized? Hell, yes. Do I care? Hell, no."

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As usual, he had defined the enemy (in this case, his media critics and other presumed foes) before they could define themselves. It was his crowning principle.

This attack-dog style served him well when, at 27, Ailes wangled a job with Nixon, then vying for a political comeback in the 1968 presidential race.

"Mr. Nixon, you need a media adviser," Ailes declared (according to Sherman's biography).

"What's a media adviser?" asked Nixon.

"I am," replied Ailes, having fashioned the job on the spot.

Nixon, whose run for the White House had been dealt a blow eight years earlier in a televised debate against his camera-ready rival John F. Kennedy, was a challenge Ailes eagerly accepted at a moment when, as he realized better than most, TV could make or break a candidate. Concluding that viewers would never warm to Nixon, nor would the media establishment, Ailes struck a winning formula by packaging him in comfortably staged TV town-hall meetings as a man whose intelligence the audience would respect.

The remainder of Ailes' career would draw on various blends of showmanship, ruthless politics and an unmatched skill for recognizing TV's raw communication power before his opponents did, and harnessing it better.

Born in Warren, Ohio, on May 15, 1940, Roger Eugene Ailes described his working-class upbringing with three words: "God, country, family."

Afflicted with hemophilia, he spent much of his early years housebound in front of, and fascinated with, television, and after graduation from Ohio University landed an entry-level position at a TV station in Cleveland that had just started a local talk and entertainment program starring a has-been former big-band singer named Mike Douglas.

Ailes went to work as a production assistant on "The Mike Douglas Show" and rose in its ranks (at 26, he was named its executive producer) along with its rising fortunes as it went into national syndication and moved to Philadelphia.

It was there in 1967 that he and Nixon crossed paths in a meeting that changed both their lives.

After jumping ship from the "Douglas" show to help steer Nixon to the White House, Ailes spent more than a decade as a communications consultant to corporations and Republican candidates. And as a sign of his versatility, he also became a theater producer, with a hit off-Broadway musical, "The Hot L Baltimore," in the early 1970s, and a network boss, helping start Television News Incorporated, a short-lived right-wing TV service funded by conservative brewing magnate Joseph Coors, that seemed to presage Fox News by a quarter-century.

Ailes returned to presidential politics in 1984 by helping President Reagan recover from his disastrous opening debate with Democratic opponent Walter Mondale.

And in 1988, he orchestrated the media campaign for Vice President George H.W. Bush's presidential bid. It was a campaign widely seen as being no less nasty than it was successful.

One indelibly comic image that led to Bush's victory was a commercial that appropriated footage of opponent George Dukakis riding in a military tank looking foolish in a bulbous helmet. Even more explosive anti-Dukakis commercials featured a black felon, Willie Horton. Designed to play on voter fears of Democrats' supposedly soft-on-crime policies, those commercials, while effective, were widely condemned as racist. Ailes denied responsibility for them, though many of his critics were loath to believe him.

Within a few more years, he claimed he had sworn off politics.

In 1993, he joined NBC to run its cable business network, CNBC. He was credited with boosting CNBC's ratings and putting that troubled NBC subsidiary in the black. Meanwhile, he created another network, the talk-and-advice-oriented America's Talking.

"I've gotten over all the cynicism of politics," Ailes told The Associated Press in 1995, although, during that same period, Ailes moonlighted as executive producer of the syndicated TV show that starred right-wing radio sensation Rush Limbaugh.

Then, in January 1996, Ailes resigned from NBC after America's Talking was sacrificed to free up channel capacity for the company's cable-news venture, MSNBC.

Within weeks, Ailes had jumped to what was then known as News Corp., and by fall he launched Fox News Channel against a pair of seemingly indomitable rivals: three-month-old MSNBC, the network with which his former employers replaced his America's Talking channel, and cable-news pioneer CNN.

Even so, by 2002, Fox News had sealed the deal as ratings leader, dominating cable-news competition and tying his rivals in knots in both daytime as well as prime time, where he deployed a murderers' row of hosts led by Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Ailes helped make a hot property out of Glenn Beck, and signed a virtual salon of former-and-future GOP big names who found a welcoming platform for party talking points.

Other hires included Gretchen Carlson, who came to Fox News from CBS News in 2005 and was dismissed when her contract expired on June 23, 2016, and Megyn Kelly, an attorney-turned-TV-journalist who joined the network in 2004 and a decade later was arguably the network's biggest marquee name.

From the start, Ailes steadfastly denied any political bias or agenda on the part of his network, whether in its message or its personnel. Politics, schmolitics: "I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings," he told The AP in 2011.

Propelled by Ailes' "fair and balanced" branding, Fox News successfully targeted viewers who believed the other cable-news networks, and maybe the media overall, displayed a liberal tilt from which Fox News and Fox Business Channel (which he launched in 2006 against his former business network, CNBC) delivered its audience with unvarnished truth. Thus did he leverage the public's distrust for the media while positioning his networks as the anti-media news-media alternative and he their upright overlord.

"My first qualification is I didn't go to Columbia Journalism School," he boasted to The New York Times in January 2010, and added, "There are no parties in this town that I want to go to."

Though ratings continued to soar, in later years Ailes' power was challenged. He seemed incapable of stopping Donald Trump's rise as the GOP's top contender for the 2016 election. In an early televised debate, Fox network moderators, notably Kelly, besieged Trump with sharp interrogation about his experience, his policies and past comments about women. But the real estate mogul's candidacy was undamaged as he lobbed insults at Kelly and her network for what he labeled unfair treatment.

By summer 2016, Ailes and Trump had seemingly reached detente, with Fox News climbing on the Trump bandwagon and vice versa. It was ironic, then, that Ailes was ousted only hours before Trump accepted the GOP nomination for which Fox had helped pave the way.

With Ailes' sacking, Rupert Murdoch, the parent company's executive chairman, became interim boss of Fox News and Fox Business Network until a successor could be found. But Ailes had been so identified with the brand since its inception that many, both insiders and audience members, were left hard-pressed to envision Fox News without him.

In the meantime, the network's talent lineup took a hit as Kelly left for NBC News and Bill O'Reilly was fired amid sexual harassment charges lodged against him.

Ailes is survived by his third wife, Elizabeth, who had worked for him at CNBC as vice president of programming, and their son, Zachary.

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Roger Ailes, former Fox News CEO, dies at 77 - Santa Rosa Press Democrat