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Florida's primaries could have huge implications for national politics

If she wins the primary, Rep. Val Demings is poised to have a tight race against Senator Marco Rubio in a race that could have national implications.

Anthony Jackson and Claire Hardwick, USA TODAY

Michael Waltz, the first Green Beret in Congress, won the Republican primary to keep his seat, while another combat veteran took Volusia County's other U.S. House of Representatives GOP primary on Tuesday.

Cory Mills, a veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo who started a company that manufactures riot-control munitions for law enforcement, won his bid over seven competitors for a new seat covering southern Volusia and Seminole counties. In the general election, he'll face Democrat Karen Green, who won her own primary over three challengers.

Waltz and Mills stood arm in arm at a victory celebration at the Hard Rock Hotel in Daytona Beach on Tuesday night.

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"I've said time and time again, I need reinforcements in Washington. We gotta fire Nancy Pelosi and the more veterans the better," Waltz said in a message posted on Twitter Tuesday night. "We're willing to die for that flag and we're willing to take the tough votes and fight for you."

Mills wasn't the only veteran among the eight Republicans seeking the nod, but he turned out to be the best equipped to survive a barrage of attacks from his chief rival in the race, state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who finished second.

Just how nasty did it get? Sabatini called Mills "sub-human trash," while Mills supporters reported receiving text messages urging them to vote for Sabatini whileattackingMills' wife, Rana al-Saadi, a Catholic woman from Iraq, as "anti-Christian."

Mills, in the Twitter video, said: "I'm honored to be able to be in the fight. … We're going to secure our borders. We're gonna take America back. We're going to rid the communism and socialism from our schools and from our military."

He also vowed to "get rid of Fauci," i.e. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has announced his retirement in December.

Mills won with 38% of the vote; Sabatini got just shy of 24%, while Navy SEAL veteran Brady Dukewho had raised the most money of the GOP candidates got just over 15%.

Millsserved in the U.S. Army in the 82nd Airborne Division and as a member of Joint Special Operations Command Combined Joint Task Force 20 in Iraq, where he served for seven years.In 2006, while serving in Iraq, he was twice injured by explosive devices. He was later awarded a Bronze Star.

One major campaign battle that helped Mills was landing the Volusia County Republican Executive Committee's endorsement in a vote in early July.

Mills recently moved to New Smyrna Beach after running his defense-law enforcement firm from Virginia.

On the Democratic side, Green will attempt to be the first Jamaican immigrant to win election to Congress. She hopes to fill the void being left by Democrat Stephanie Murphy, who's retiring from the House after three terms. The newly redistricted 7th is considered by politicos to be a safe Republican seat.

Green is an Apopka political consultant and longtime member of the Florida Democratic Party who serves as a minister in a non-denominational church.

Green won with 45%, easily topping Al Krulick, Tatiana Fernandez and Allek Pastrana.

Meanwhile,Waltz easily won the Republican nomination for his third term in Congress, defeating the Florida Republican Assembly-endorsed Charles Davis. Waltz, a regular commentator on military and foreign affairs on Fox News,got 78% of the vote.

Libertarian Joe Hannoush will challenge Waltzon Nov. 8.

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2 Army veterans win Republican nominations for Congress, 6th and 7th - Daytona Beach News-Journal

A Republican candidate running for a seat in Oklahoma's state House once said it is "totally just" to kill gay people in comments that have resurfaced amid his campaign.

Scott Esk is running to represent Oklahoma's 87th House District, which includes parts of Oklahoma City. He is set to face another Republican Gloria Banister in a Tuesday runoff, but his campaign has faced scrutiny in recent days over the resurfaced comments, which began nearly a decade earlier. The comments resurfaced last year in a Facebook comment thread as many in the LGBTQ community have warned about a rise in homophobic rhetoric in politics.

In 2013, when Esk was running in a different race, the candidate commented on an article about the Pope asking "who I am to judge?" about gay people. According to MSNBC, Esk responded with Bible verses condemning homosexuality, prompting another user to ask if he believes "we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?"

"I think we would be totally in the right to do it," he said, according to MSNBC. "That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I'm largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss."

Local news outlet TheMooreDaily.com also pressed him on the remarks, to which he responded that it was "totally just" to kill gay people in the Bible's Old Testament.

"What I will tell you right now is that was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God. And in that time, it was totally justit came directly from God. I have no plans to reinstitute that in Oklahoma law. I do have very big moral misgivings about those kinds of sins, and I think that those kinds of sins will not do our country any good and certainly doesn't do anything to preserve the family," he said.

He responded to criticism in a YouTube video on July 15, when a local news station reported on his old comments. In the video, he asked if having "an opinion against homosexuality" makes him "a homophobe." However, he added that he believes it "simply makes me a Christian."

In the video, he said that he is "not for expanding the death penalty for homosexuality," but still denounced what he views as the "obscene things homosexuals do."

Newsweek reached out to the Esk campaign for comment. In remarks to The Oklahoman, Esk dismissed previous coverage of his comments as a "hit piece."

Esk is not the only prominent conservative figure in the United States to push anti-gay, and at times violent, rhetoric in recent months.

Pastor Mark Burns, who ran and lost a primary challenge for a South Carolina House seat, also called for the execution of gay people. He said that parents and teachers who discuss the LGBTQ community with children should be found guilty of "treason."

"We need to hold people for treason; start having some public hearings and start executing people who are found guilty for their treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United States of America. Just like they did back in 1776," he said.

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GOP Candidate Saying it's 'Totally Just' to Kill Gay People Resurfaces - Newsweek

It's hard to imagine the MBTA of the 1980s as described by Fred Salvucci.

"The service was really customer-oriented," said Salvucci, who served as secretary of transportation in both Dukakis administrations. "The infrastructure was in very good shape because we put a lot of money into rebuilding. It was in great shape."

Salvucci says ridership opinion surveys were at 92% favorable by the late 1980s. And the policies of growth and investment were slated to continue.So what happened?

"What happened is the new governor," Salvucci said, referring to Michael Dukakis' successor, Bill Weld. "He zeroed out the investment program for the MBTA in the budget."

Weld, a popular two-term governor through the 1990s, now lives in Canton.

"I get to work every day by going to the Readville station near Hyde Park and hopping on the Fairmont line and 18 minutes to South Station," Weld said.

The former Republican governor, who ran for vice president on Gary Johnson's Libertarian ticket in 2016, says he always regarded the essential aspect of the MBTA as a workforce issue.

"You know, I don't remember cutting the budget a huge amount," Weld said. "I do remember the deferred maintenance was a problem that persisted even when I was an office."

"The tricky thing with infrastructure is you can screw it up and it won't be visible for 10 or 15 years," Salvucci said.

Salvucci is also critical of Weld's push for privatization, including, he says, firing all the top-level managers.

"I still think that privatization is the way to make things more efficient," Weld said.

Significant investment may have stopped in the 90s, but no governor or legislature since then has been able to make the kind of investment so desperately needed to update the century-old system.

"Nobody holds accountable the guy who was there in 1995. It's whoever the poor sap is that's stuck with vehicles that don't work today," Salvucci said.

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What Led to MBTA's Decline? Weld Defends Against Criticism of Administration - NBC10 Boston

After the Cook County GOP put up one of its biggest slates in years for positions in the November election, seven candidates have either been knocked off the ballot or withdrew on their own.

These candidates didnt run in the June primary, but were submitted by the party to fill ballot vacancies. The failure of those hopefuls to make the ballot including for assessor, Cook County Board and the Board of Review mean the Democratic nominees will largely go unchallenged. Higher-profile candidates such as former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti and former county Commissioner Tony Peraica are still in the running.

Among those kicked off by the countys electoral board: Todd Thielmann, who until recently worked for Tammy Wendt, a Democratic commissioner on the Board of Review. Wendt and Thielmann are cousins she eventually fired him after the countys board of ethics sued and fined her for violating the countys ban on nepotism. Wendt herself lost her Democratic primary bid for reelection to Chicago 12th Ward Ald. George Cardenas.

Thielmann did not want to stay out of the property tax world, however. He submitted petitions to run as a Republican for assessor, but faced multiple objections to his candidacy, in part, because he chose a Democratic ballot when he voted in the primary in June.

While most candidates are removed from the ballot for having improperly filed petitions, or not enough signatures, some are disqualified for switching parties: State law bars a person who voted on the ballot of an established political party on primary day from running as a candidate of a different established political party for the election immediately following.

During a lottery Wednesday to determine ballot order in the November election, Janeen Bass of the Cook County Clerk's office, at right, shows she pulled a Democratic Party label, meaning those candidates will appear first on the ballot. At left is Cook County Clerk attorney James Nally. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

A Cook County clerk voting history report for Thielmann submitted as an exhibit in the challenges to his candidacy shows he voted as a Republican in every primary election between 2012 and 2018, but pulled Democratic ballots in 2020 and 2022. Thielmann also failed to appear in person or by counsel to contest the objection, and was removed by the electoral board in a ruling Thursday.

That leaves incumbent Democratic Assessor Fritz Kaegi and Libertarian candidate Nico Tsatsoulis on the November ballot, unless Thielmann appeals.

Three GOP candidates for the Cook County Board were either booted or opted out, according to electoral board filings: Jennifer Wallace (5th District) and Ramona Bonilla-Anaiel (8th District) were both removed, and Natalian Bolton (7th District) withdrew. Jeff Fiedler, the executive director of the Chicago Republican Party, says Bonilla-Anaiels campaign is considering an appeal.

Democratic primary candidate Samantha Steele is running uncontested for a seat on the Board of Review after a potential Republican challenger, Mary Herrold, withdrew her candidacy, according to electoral board records. Herrold had faced an objection alleging she didnt have a sufficient number of signatures to qualify for the ballot, but the decision was considered moot because Herrold had already withdrawn.

Other Republican hopefuls for Board of Review seats, Robert Cruz and Tim De Young, also withdrew their candidacies. That means all three Democrats Steele, Cardenas and incumbent Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr. are running unopposed.

Steele has another potential complication off her plate: a pay dispute with her campaign strategist has been resolved. The two sides reached an amicable and confidential settlement last month where neither were held at fault, according to a Steele spokeswoman and Rebecca Williams, the strategist who filed suit. In a statement, Steele said, After earning the privilege to serve as the Democratic nominee in this race, I am excited to move forward and put my energy toward engaging voters around creating a fair, transparent and accessible Board of Review for everyone.

Voters have consistently elected folks based on their commitment to reform the property tax assessment and appeals system and there is a tremendous amount of work to do, Williams said.

Fioretti, a former Democrat, and Libertarian Thea Tsatsos will challenge incumbent Toni Preckwinkle for board president in the Nov. 8 election. Peraica is running for county clerk against incumbent Karen Yarbrough and Libertarian Joseph Schreiner. No Republicans currently hold countywide office in Cook County and only two party members sit on the county board.

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated an eighth Republican candidate had withdrawn or been removed from the ballot. Evan Kasal remains on the ballot as the GOP candidate for the Cook County Boards 2nd District.

aquig@chicagotribune.com

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7 GOP candidates in Cook County are off the November ballot - Chicago Tribune

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie examine the current state of the GOP in the wake of last week's primary elections and continue to reprehend the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after it announced lackluster reforms.

1:35: GOP as the "Party of Trump"

12:39: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the "Stop WOKE Act"

24:30 : Weekly Listener Question:

What is the smallest size in which a free market can work? Are three people enough or do you need country-sized populations to reap the benefits? We love free trade, but what about when we trade with slavers and criminal regimes? Why would it not be better to close trade to them and just keep most of our trade internal or with our free-ish pals? Is America's market not big enough to reap the benefits of free trade internally even if nobody could/would send us imports? Would we not just creatively find replacements for all the products that we used to import?

38:20: CDC announces reorganization

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Morris P. Fiorina: Why 'Electoral Chaos' Is Here To Stay," by Nick Gillespie

"Federal Judge Blocks Florida Law Banning 'Woke' Workplace Training," by Scott Shackford

"Make the CDC an Infectious Disease Epidemic Fighter Again," by Ronald Bailey

"Every Day Is 'Buy Nothing Day' in North Koreaand Look Where That's Gotten Them," Nick Gillespie

"'Game of Thrones' Economics: Auburn University's Matthew McCaffrey says it's not all Fantasy'," by Tracy Oppenheimer

"Grover Cleveland, The Last Libertarian President," by Paul Whitfield

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor:

Audio production by Ian Keyser

Assistant production by Hunt Beaty

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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Podcast: The Party of Trump Rages On - Reason