Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category

Meet the Right-Wing Trolls Behind Stop The Steal Mother Jones – Mother Jones

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Right-wing Stop The Count protests that have sprung up in the last 72 hours to attempt to manipulate the vote-counting process in favor of Donald Trump appear to be at least partially artificially bolstered by paid Republican operatives. But unlike previous coordinated protests that have been revealed to be supported well-funded and organized conservative interests, the demonstrations have been organized largely by a collection of disgraced right-wing internet figures. Some have been all but discarded from mainstream Republican circles for being too extreme, too inept, or some combination of the two. Despite this, theyve been good at one thing: figuring out how to spin never-ending mishaps into continued careers.

The protests have grown since Election Day, with FreedomWorks and Trumps 2020 digital director getting involved in the events, according to The Guardian and Washington Post. Heres a smattering of some of the more compelling characters involved:

After one of the first 2020 primary debates, Alexander went viral claiming that Kamala Harris wasnt an American Black, because she was of Jamaican and Indian heritage, instead of descending from African-Americans who had been forced into Antebellum-era slavery.Alexander was convicted of two felonies in 2007 and 2008, and has a track record of publicly noting people for are Jewish. He made a sensationalist video with right-wing snafu generator Jacob Wohl and Laura Loomer, the Islamaphobic failed Congressional candidate, wherein Wohl seemingly fakes the group receiving death threats during filming.

Alexander appears to be involved with Stop The Steal both through his tweets promoting it and through his links to one of the websites boosting it. Stopthesteal.uss domain is registered to Vice and Victory, a possibly defunct political consultancy hes affiliated with. After clicking the sites donate button, visitors are prompted with the option to donate money to one of several cryptocurrency addresses associated with Alexander, or given links to his Paypal, CashApp, and Amazon wishlist.

Its brazen, but thats typical for Alexander. On his website, he sells various tiers of access to himself, ranging from $25 a month, which gets you a spot on conference calls, all the way up to $250 a month which not only comes with the raw analysis of his private notes, but gave subscribers the ability to spend an extra $50 for an election night cheat sheeta product unavailable to most lower tier users.

Despite building a large internet profile (he has over 700,000 followers on Twitter), Mike Cernovich is avoided by mainstream conservatives, potentially because of his history of advocating for various criminal acts of sexual harassment. In one now-deleted 2012 post on his blog, he encouraged his readers to When in Doubt, Whip it Out, in a Louis C.K. manner. Cernovich has also posted tweets that make proclamations like date rape doesnt exist. In 2017 when he seemingly worked with alt-right figure Charles Johnson to boost a forged document falsely accusing Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of sexual assault.

Cernovich also boosted Pizzagate, the thoroughly debunked prequel to QAnon, a conspiracy which claimed that children were being kept in the basement of a local pizza restaurant in D.C. as part a pedophile ring being run by liberal elites.

Cernovich took the chance to use the post-election period to raise his flagging profile by doing a seven-hour road trip to Arizona, where he claimed to lead a protest to monitor the election, from which he proceeded to film the unrest he helped aggravate. Alexander also on Twitter praised Cernovichs trolling work in Stop The Steal protests.

Kremer, a former Tea Party organizer, has more substantial links to the Republican power apparatus, and a history of showing up toright-wing protests with heels on. The former Delta flight attendant came on the scene in 2009, and has flitted from one political action committee to another, trying to replicate the grassroots conservative heyday of the Tea partyand its money-minting fundraising appeal.

Kremer was an early Trump supporter in 2016, starting a political action committee called TrumPAC to support his insurgent campaign. The PAC ran afoul of campaign finance rules for using the name of a candidate without their permission. It was rebranded the Great America PAC, which she left after a falling out, after which she went on to join with the ex-wife of Trump adviser Roger Stone to launch yet another pro-Trump super PAC, Women Vote Trump, that pledged to raise $30 million to support Trumps 2016 ampaign for president. The group came up $29,973,187 short of that goal, went into debt, and also got in trouble with the FEC for the unauthorized use of a candidates name.

Kremers own political career hasnt fared much better. In 2017, she jumped into a Georgia Republican congressional primary; two months before the special election, her staff quit en masse, claiming that she couldnt pay them.

Money problems have been a consistent theme with her efforts. In October 2018, Kremer started a new nonprofit, Women for America Firstthe organization formally behind http://www.stolenelection.us, the website emblazoned on posters at Stop the Steal protests. Donations through that website are directed to Kremers nonprofit. The group also appears to have been involved in the Stop the Steal Facebook page. Last year, the same group organized a Stop the Coup anti-impeachment rally in DC that might have been a much bigger affairif the buses scheduled to bring hundreds of activists from other states had actually departed. Instead, two hours before the busses were slated to leave, the tour company cancelled the trips because Kremers groups credit card had been declined.

Posobiec, who Alexander has said has a role in the protests, has also been tweeting in support of them, and personally showed up at the groups Harrisburg, Pennsylvania demonstration.

Posbiecs biggest claim to fame is being one of the highest-profile pushers of the Pizzagate conspiracy:

[Posobiec] once conducted a livestream investigation of the restaurant where the [Pizzagate] hoax pedophile ring was said to be occurring, during which he waltzed into a childs birthday party being held in a back room. Since then, he acts as though hes been locked in a John Wooden-esque competition with himself to outdo his greatest disinformation achievement.

Since Pizzagate, instead of amplifying other already existing conspiracies, Posobiec has usually been focused on his own, artisanally crafted solo concoctions. He once stopped a performance of Shakespeares Julius Caesar mid-production in New York because he was offended the centuries-old work had been staged with elements that seemed to reference Trump. I once witnessed him dash around the lawn of the Capitol telling Democratic Senators that supporting net neutrality would mean that they were supporting Satanic porn.

Some of his most repugnant hits include trying to plant Rape Melania signs at an anti-Trump rally, falsely tweeting that Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch had called for blood in the streets, a made-up claim that Star Wars Rogue One was being rewritten to include scenes calling Trump racist, and, after Republican congressman Steve Scalise was shot at baseball practice, that Bernie Sanders had told his followers to take down Trump.

None of rose to Pizzagate levels of fame, but not for lack effort on Posobiecs part. He has also tweeted in support of a white nationalist conspiracy which holds that immigration and other trends are part of a secret plot to commit white genocide.

As a member of Alexanders Twitter crew, Coudrey promoted and seemingly helped organize a Stop The Steal rally in in Las Vegas,

Coudrey used to go by Mike Tokes on Twitter, but has rebranded as a more serious, GOP insider. That has not stopped him from putting out a steady stream of falsehoods. Lately his disinformation has focused on the election, but he has a broader history.During the 2019 California wildfires, he pushed the claim that the damage showed something more nefarious than a simple forest fire, feeding into a larger theory about direct energy beams. Earlier that year, he spread disinformation falesly claiming that Twitter had censored news of a coronavirus treatment to make Trump look bad, and made up fantastically untrue stories about Antifa disguising themselves in MAGA hats and NRA shirts to incite violence.

Since Tuesday, amid his roll in the protests hes been busy spreading wholly unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in Wisconsin.

Presler helped arrange the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Stop The Steal event, but hes best known for his 2017 March Against Sharia, which ended up being about Islmaphobic as the name suggested. Presler worked with Joey Gibson, leader of the violent, far-right group Patriot Prayer, on the eventually cancelled Portland edition of the event.

Since then, he hasnt managed to make much of a splash, aside from an elaborate concern trolling campaigns in which he travels to various cities staging trash clean up events or asking homeless people whether the government should prioritize their needs over immigrants, as the local San Francisco publication Mission Local put it.

Stephanie Mencimer contributed to this story.

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Meet the Right-Wing Trolls Behind Stop The Steal Mother Jones - Mother Jones

The Disney Princess Dinnerware Collection Gets New Royal Additions – Red Tricycle

This collection is fit for a queen. Toynk has officially announced two new additions to its Disney Princess Collection. Get ready to dine like royalty with the Disney Princess 16-Piece Ceramic Dinnerware Collection #3 and the Disney Princess 13-Piece Ceramic Tea Set.

Disney Princess Dinnerware Collection #3 features the same ornate gold flourishes as collections one and two. The complete 16-piece set includes four 12-ounce mugs, four 2-cup capacity bowls, four 10.75-inch dinner plates, and four 7-inch dessert plates.

The new collection is inspired by four new Disney Princesses in a beautiful pastel color palette:

Make all your childhood tea party dreams come true with the 13-Piece Disney Princess Ceramic Tea Set. Tea Set Pieces: 34oz Teapot, Sugar Bowl with lid, Creamer, four 7-oz Teacups, and four 6-in Saucers.

Elegantly decorated in a pastel color palette with gold filigree, each teacup and saucer features a unique Disney Princess theme, including chic designs inspired by Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, and Jasmine. The teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl feature exquisite designs based on Aurora from Sleeping Beauty.

Both sets are made of durable ceramic material, and perfect for everyday use. Previous installments in the Disney Princess Dinnerware Collection have sold out multiple times, making this set a must-have gift for the Disney Princess in your life. All products are officially licensed and Toynk.com exclusives.

The Disney Princess Collection Dinnerware and Tea Set will enchant your guests for years to come. Both are now available for pre-order for $119.99.

Jennifer Swartvagher

All photos courtesy of Toynk

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The Disney Princess Dinnerware Collection Gets New Royal Additions - Red Tricycle

The MAGA Movement Is Splintering Between Those Preparing For A Future Without Trump And Those Refusing To Imagine One – BuzzFeed News

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty

Four years ago, Steve Bannon watched Donald Trump declare victory in the small hours of election night in 2016, a victory for which Bannon assigned himself much of the credit and which he thought would make him historically powerful.

I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors, Bannon notoriously told the journalist Michael Wolff in an interview after Trumps win.

Cromwell, Henry VIIIs adviser who played a key role in the English state in the 1500s, eventually fell out of favor with the king and was beheaded, the 16th-century version of Bannons banishment from the White House and Trumps good graces in the summer of 2017. Four years later, as Trump loses the presidency while clinging desperately to false claims of a stolen election, it is Bannon who wants to do the beheading. Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci, Bannon said on his livestream web show Thursday of the current FBI director and top infectious diseases official. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I'd put the heads on pikes, right. I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. Bannons cohost mused about how traitors used to be hung, and Bannon remarked, That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. (Twitter swiftly imposed a permanent ban on Bannons shows account, and YouTube removed the video.)

Bannons call for the execution of federal officials deemed insufficiently supportive of Trump was certainly an escalation for him though not much of one, coming the day after he urged the attorney general to send federal agents to arrest Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. But hes far from alone among certain segments of the MAGA hardcore who have been crossing new rhetorical lines in their desperation to keep Trump in office.

An important divide has arrived on the right in the immediate aftermath of the election over how far to go in following Donald Trump, and how far people are willing to go to destroy others who dont follow along. At the heart of the divide is a gap between those triangulating for a future without Trump and those who are refusing to imagine one.

Those that were important before Trump like Fox News and certain elected Republicans have walked a fine line, softly entertaining Trumps wild lies about rigging while focusing more on the need for further transparency or proof and making loaded remarks about the elections processes in Democratic cities like Philadelphia.

Those that owe their influence to Trump the network of far-right Internet personalities, websites, and independent TV channels that gained popularity by riding his coattails, or figures who remodeled themselves in Trumps image have hewed to or exceeded Trumps claims.

As the days dragged on and it became increasingly clear that Trumps path had closed, influential figures such as the members of the Fox News primetime lineup began to shift their emphasis, testing out attacks on the incoming Biden administration and offering glowing praise of Trumps tenure in office. Trumps attempt to contest the results continued, but true hope that it would be successful had waned on all but the fringe.

Steve Bannon exits the Manhattan Federal Court on August 20 in New York City.

The MAGA diehards efforts to throw out the election will be futile. But their influence on the Trump-supporting base is important, and affects both the future of the conservative media and the way the Republican Party will handle Trumps most adoring fans going forward. Trumps supporters have spent the last four years being told that the president is the victim of a huge conspiracy to undermine him, and many will never believe that this election was legitimate a fact that hasnt been lost on Republicans deciding how to react to this crisis. The closest parallel could be to the Tea Party a decade ago, a movement fueled by hard-right conservative media that demanded ideological purity from establishment Republicans and threatened their seats in Congress.

The fragmentation of conservative media has empowered the loudest voices calling to stop the steal and weakened any possibility that reality will intrude on those who are consuming their news through the hodgepodge of fringe sources popular on the Trump right these days.

On the final weekend of the campaign, I asked voters at Trump rallies where they got their news. Some did mention Fox News, but I was surprised that nearly everyone I talked to emphasized other sources just as much or more. The Parrishes, a retired couple who went to Trumps rally in Hickory, North Carolina, told me they didnt like Fox News apart from Tucker Carlson, finding the hosts too egotistical and arrogant, said Mary Ellen Parrish, and that theres a lot of deception, her husband Chuck said. The couple mostly get their information online: Mary Ellen from Twitter and Chuck from YouTube, where he has discovered the "flat Earth" conspiracy theory, to which he ascribes.

Jerry Senn, 82, at Trumps rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, mentioned One America News Network and Newsmax as his favorites, though he likes Fox too. He goes online to read Bill OReilly and Dennis Pragers websites. Jennifer Justice, 34, at the same rally, said, I don't watch mainstream news. I follow a lot of people on YouTube and on alternative media, but I don't watch Fox. I don't watch MSNBC. I dont watch CNN. Some of her favorites include Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, and Candace Owens. Multiple voters mentioned how much news they get from Facebook.

Already, Trump family members and some of the new wave of Trump-like politicians are using Trumps popularity with the base to threaten any Republican who doesnt publicly agree with the fraud allegations. The total lack of action from virtually all of the 2024 GOP hopefuls is pretty amazing. They have a perfect platform to show that theyre willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. Dont worry @realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual! Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Thursday. The implicit threat of Trumps wrath worked, kind of: Shortly after Trump Jrs tweet, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton weighed in, tweeting, All votes that are *legally* cast should be counted. There is NO excuse not to allow poll watchers to observe counting, and including a link to donate to Trumps campaign to support its legal challenges in various states.

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who served as Trumps ambassador to the United Nations, struck a more cautious note on Twitter, emphasizing Republican wins in the House and Senate. We all owe @realDonaldTrump for his leadership of conservative victories for Senate, House, & state legislatures. He and the American people deserve transparency & fairness as the votes are counted. The law must be followed. We have to keep the faith that the truth will prevail. This was not enough for Trump purists. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, an archetypal member of the MAGA wave, sniped at Haley, accusing her of eulogizing Trump.

Bannons maximalist position is shared by other former Trump officials, including those of the populist intellectual variety who had been part of the effort to reframe Trumpism as a movement with a clear ideological basis. Former White House speechwriter Darren Beattie who lost his job after it was revealed that he had spoken at a white nationalist conference tweeted on Thursday, Screw Biden... if they take this from Trump it's war on the GOP that has sabotaged Trump from the beginning even as they rode his coat tails and kissed his ass. While lacking the eloquence that perhaps was exhibited in Beatties speechwriting work, the language and the message is the same: This is a war, which must be won at any cost.

Michael Anton, Trumps former National Security Council spokesperson who had gained notoriety as the author of the incendiary Flight 93 Election essay in 2016, wrote for the pro-Trump website American Greatness casting the situation as a coup.

Anton appeared on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show on Thursday to discuss the situation. Carlson like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, the other two hosts who command huge audiences during Fox News primetime has devoted his show to openly sowing doubt in the legitimacy of the election, giving valuable airtime to the misinformation spreading through the right about the validity of the counting process. While none of the three have matched Trumps stolen language, they have heavily implied it.

But something else began happening on Fox News. During the daytime, the news division hasnt indulged Trumps election claims as much as might have been expected; another News Corp property, the New York Post, has run articles mocking the Trump familys reaction to the election.

And in the evenings, the primetime opinion hosts have also provided potential rhetorical pathways for Trump to back off.

On Wednesday night, Ingraham made a point of praising Trumps accomplishments and casting him as a martyr whose influence would only increase if the Democrats win. If they manage to succeed, how powerful is Donald Trump in the next two- and four-year period? she said. People arent going to take it. Trump and his movement, she said, would be made much more powerful, and Democrats were making a huge mistake. He will be bigger, agreed her guest Newt Gingrich. By Friday, Ingraham was all but admitting that Trump had lost. During an opening monologue that seemed designed to cheer up Trump himself, Ingraham warmly listed his first-term accomplishments and assured viewers that If there is no path for Donald Trump's second term, it doesn't mean the end of the America First movement."

Fox News host Tucker Carlson

The same night, Carlson also acknowledged that Trump might lose and focused his show on an attack on Biden as a lackey of Big Tech and a hologram who is merely a cutout for corporate interests. Carlson also previewed the kind of intra-Republican infighting that could be on the agenda, attacking Sen. Lindsey Graham despite Graham groveling to Trump for years, and pledging to give $500,000 in support of his postelection litigation for saying he is open to compromising with Democrats on immigration.

These lines signal a path forward for the right, and for Trump supporters, that is absent in the rhetoric of the dead-enders like Bannon. If you insist that Trump has won, period, and will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, period, theres nowhere to go from there.

But where is there to go for people like Bannon without Trump?

On election night, Bannons War Room show hosted a livestream atop a building across from the Capitol.

Four broadcasts were taking place from a large white tent on the rooftop: his show, Americas Voice News, The John Fredericks Show, and GTV, a Chinese-language media company owned by the Chinese dissident billionaire Guo Wengui, for whom Bannon has worked since shortly after leaving the White House. The big, brightly lit tent contained a few rows of tables, technical equipment for the livestreams, catered food and drinks, and couches arranged in front of TVs showing Bannons broadcast. Bannon and his cohosts, Jack Maxey and former Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam, sat side by side at a table with the Capitol dome in the back of the shot. GTV was in a separate area, broadcasting in Chinese.

Two years ago, Bannon had hosted a similar event as midterm results came in; that time, his gathering had attracted bigger names in MAGA world and a clutch of reporters. This year, I hardly recognized anyone in the large white tent housing the event; the real VIPs were at the White Houses election night party, and the tier below at least got an invite to a gathering hosted by the campaign at the Trump International Hotel.

That these were not the MAGA A-list didnt reduce their enthusiasm. With my friend and former colleague who was also there to write about the event, the Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, I spoke with Harlan Hill, a right-wing personality who had carved out a niche for himself as a Bernie Sanders supporter who had switched to Trump. Hill, like nearly all of the guests, wore no mask, and when we introduced ourselves he shook our hands jovially. He was fully confident in Trumps reelection and eager to discuss it. Oh, he's gonna win, Hill declared. A hundred percent. He added, If it goes the other way, Ill eat my shoe."

Outside the tent, we encountered Kassam on a break from the livestream. Kassam had left Breitbart News in 2018 and had gone on to work for Bannon during Bannons failed effort to influence European politics. Upon seeing us, he demanded that Coppins leave, insisting that he wouldnt be fair, without being able to provide a single example of why that would be when pressed. Kassam unleashed a string of insults on the dark rooftop. We were psychopaths, he said, who actually make shit up. Though his ire was initially directed towards Coppins, he turned on me as soon as I argued with him, demanding that I leave too. I told him I found his behavior unnerving, to which he remarked cryptically that there were cameras around thus, I supposed, no reason to be unnerved. (I still dont know what he was implying might have happened in the absence of cameras.)

We explained to Kassam that Bannon and his spokesperson Alexandra Preate had both said it was fine for us to come, and he promptly turned heel and fetched Preate, who told us she was sorry but she had no choice but to back his insistence that we leave, since it was his party. Before leaving, we reminded the two of them that wed attended the event in a journalistic capacity and had never agreed to any off-the-record ground rules, which prompted Kassam to turn on his phones camera (with flash) and follow us out as we left while filming us and shouting that we were not there as reporters!

Kassams behavior was more surprising than scary. Id never seen him blow up like that in person, and, because of my work covering the right, I have known him for several years. It seemed as though a pressure valve had been released by the bitter election and the prospect of Trumps power slipping away, destroying the normal boundaries between Twitter and real life.

Later this week, both Hill and Kassam were in Philadelphia, agitating against the vote-counting there as Trumps chances of winning the election grew more and more remote. Im going to Philly tomorrow with a team, Hill tweeted on Thursday. This is war.

By Saturday, the war was lost. Along with the other networks, Fox News called the election for Biden.

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The MAGA Movement Is Splintering Between Those Preparing For A Future Without Trump And Those Refusing To Imagine One - BuzzFeed News

What Barack Obama’s memoir reveals about his long battle for health care reform – Utica Observer Dispatch

By Dorany Pineda| Los Angeles Times

The political battle for universal health care within the White House was long, epic and personal.

"Each time I met a parent struggling to come up with the money to get treatment for a sick child, I thought back to the night Michelle and I had to take three-month-old Sasha to the emergency room for what turned out to be viral meningitis," former President Barack Obama recalled in an excerpt from "A Promised Land," the first volume of his memoirs of his time in the White House. The excerpt was published recently in the New Yorker.

"I remembered the terror and the helplessness we felt as the nurses whisked her away for a spinal tap, and the realization that we might never have caught the infection in time had the girls not had a regular pediatrician we felt comfortable calling in the middle of the night," he continued. "Most of all, I thought about my mom, who had died in 1995, of uterine cancer."

The chapter which offers an inside look into the passage of Obamacare at the end of the former president's first year in office comes at a crucial moment for his signature piece of legislation, as its future could be threatened by the confirmationof Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

"In the middle of a pandemic, this administration is trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court," Obama said on Twitter recently while presenting the excerpt. "Here's how Joe and I fought to expand healthcare, protect millions of Americans with preexisting conditions, and actually get it done."

The journey toward passage was messy and prone to second-guessing, particularly from Obama's closest allies: David Axelrod, his adviser, and Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff, who warned him of the political hazards: "[This] can blow up in our faces."

Emanuel warned Obama that the process of getting the bill passed would lead to unpleasant compromises and a potentially huge backlash. "Making sausage isn't pretty, Mr. President," he told his boss. "And you're asking for a really big piece of sausage."

In another passage, Obama writes about the rise of the Tea Party movement, which became harder for him to ignore, especially when it resurrected an old rumor from Obama's campaign days: that he was Muslim and born in Kenya, which would have barred him from serving as president. This lie would eventually be used by Donald Trump to consolidate the base that would help make him Obama's successor.

"At the White House, we made a point of not commenting on any of this and not just because [Axelrod] had reams of data telling us that white voters, including many who supported me, reacted poorly to lectures about race," Obama writes. "As a matter of principle, I didn't believe a President should ever publicly whine about criticism from voters it's what you signed up for in taking the job and I was quick to remind both reporters and friends that my white predecessors had all endured their share of vicious personal attacks and obstructionism."

Obama also writes about how his administration tackled the H1N1 flu outbreak just as they were dealing with two wars, a financial crisis and a push for healthcare reform.

"My instructions to the public-health team were simple: decisions would be made based on the best available science, and we were going to explain to the public each step of our response including detailing what we did and didn't know," he writes.

"A Promised Land" will be published Nov. 17, two weeks after the presidential election. The memoir will offer personal accounts of multiple landmark moments that occurred during the first term of Obama's presidency. The first of two planned volumes, it will end with the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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What Barack Obama's memoir reveals about his long battle for health care reform - Utica Observer Dispatch

Democrats Hope 2020 Is the Year They Flip the Texas House – The New York Times

BEDFORD, Texas Deep in the suburbs northeast of Fort Worth, Democrats trying to win the Texas House for the first time in years have been getting help from a surprising source.

Republicans.

For 16 years, until he left office in 2013, Todd A. Smith was a Republican representing these suburbs in the Texas House of Representatives. His district covered a fast-growing hub of middle-class and affluent communities next door to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

When it came time to decide whom he would support for his old seat, Mr. Smith said he had no hesitation he threw his endorsement to the Democrat in the race, Jeff Whitfield.

This is no longer my Republican Party, Mr. Smith said last week while sitting outside his house, which has a Republicans For Biden 2020 sign on the front lawn.

This is the Trump party, he said. If you give me a reasonable Republican and a crazy Democrat, then I will still vote for the Republican. But if you give me a lunatic Republican and a reasonable Democrat, then Im going to vote for the Democrat, and that applies in the presidential race, and it applies in the Whitfield race.

After a generation under unified Republican control, Texas is a battleground at every level of government this year. President Trump and Senator John Cornyn are fighting for their political lives, and five Republican-held congressional seats are in danger of flipping.

But some of the most consequential political battles in Texas are taking place across two dozen contested races for the Texas State House, which Republicans have controlled since 2003. To win a majority, Democrats must flip nine of the chambers 150 seats the same number of Republican-held districts Beto ORourke carried during his 2018 Senate race, when he was the first Texas Democrat to make a competitive run for Senate or governor in a generation.

Mr. ORourke has organized nightly online phone banks that are making about three million phone calls a week to voters during the campaigns final stretch. His organization helped register about 200,000 Texas Democratic voters in an attempt to finish a political transformation of Texas that began with his Senate race.

I actually won more state House districts than Ted Cruz, Mr. ORourke said in an interview last week. Its just that the candidates in nine of those, the Democratic candidates, didnt end up winning.

Control of the Texas House comes with huge implications beyond the states borders. A Democratic state House majority in Texas would give the party one lever of power in the 2021 redistricting process, when the state is expected to receive as many as three new seats in Congress. It would also give them a voice in drawing Texas state legislative lines for the next decade.

Keep up with Election 2020

Officials from both parties said the difference between the current unified Republican control of the Texas state government and Democrats controlling the state House could be as many as five congressional seats when new maps are drawn.

Flipping the Texas House this year can be the key that unlocks a Democratic future in Texas, said John Bisognano, the executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. With fair maps, Democrats will be able to compete all over the state and build a deep bench of candidates who can run and win statewide.

Nowhere in the country has there been a surge of voting to match the one in Texas. Through two weeks of in-person early voting, more than 6.9 million Texans have voted a figure that accounts for more than three-quarters of the entire 2016 turnout.

The turnout is highest in the states biggest metropolitan areas, which are the core state House battlegrounds and are six of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the country. There are five competitive state House seats in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, five more in other Dallas suburbs, and eight in greater Houston.

Ive always been political my whole life, said Gina Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin whose father is the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Now, suddenly, everybody is so political. The last election has had the result of engaging everyday people in our political process.

Texas Republicans have sought to tie Democrats running for the state House, who are campaigning on issues like health care and increasing school funding, to the most liberal proposals in their party. Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday launched a digital advertisement attacking Mr. ORourkes past statements on police funding, gun control, tax policy and the Green New Deal.

This week, the governor and other Republicans jumped on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.s pledge during the presidential debate on Thursday to transition away from the oil industry, a bedrock of the Texas economy, saying that such a move would cost the state hundreds of thousands of jobs and shrink revenues that pay for schools.

He is an albatross around the neck of down-ballot candidates in Texas, said Jared Woodfill, a Houston conservative activist and lawyer who is a former chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Biden just lost Texas.

Democrats said they were not worried, calling the outcry over Mr. Bidens remarks an attempt to distract voters from more pressing issues, including the continued spread of the coronavirus in Texas.

Oct. 24, 2020, 10:30 p.m. ET

Suburban voters do not appear to be buying Republican arguments during the Trump era that Democrats will turn their communities socialist. Polling in 10 targeted Texas state House districts shows Mr. Biden gaining an average of 8.6 percentage points, while Democratic state House candidates have gained 6.5 points since March in surveys conducted by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has invested more than $1 million in Texas over the last two years.

The suburban voters of 2020, said Steve Munisteri, a former Republican Party of Texas chairman who worked in Mr. Trumps White House, have far more in common with urbanites than they do with the more conservative voters who used to populate the outer edges of Texas metropolitan areas.

Because of urban growth, many of what are considered traditional suburbs in Texas metropolitan areas really are just extensions of the urban areas, Mr. Munisteri said.

Collin County, a suburban area 20 miles north of Dallas, has two competitive state House districts that Mr. ORourke carried in 2018. In six years, the county has added 200,000 people. It now has a population of more than 1 million people and has gone from a Democratic wasteland to one teeming with liberal volunteers.

In 2014, when John Shanks moved to Collin County, there were about 20 dedicated Democratic Party volunteers. Now Mr. Shanks, the executive director of the countys Democratic Party, has several hundred so many that he has trouble finding work for them all.

Weve had about four years of people getting used to the idea that their vote really can matter, Mr. Shanks said. Weve grown into realizing that you can make a difference. And as they realize that and wake up, things become more competitive.

Bedford sits in a part of the Dallas-Fort Worth region that has been deeply conservative for decades. Republicans have held the regions state House seat since 1985, and the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party was one of the most influential Tea Party groups during the Obama era.

The outgoing state representative, Jonathan Stickland, is a bearded Cruz-style firebrand who supported gun rights and wore his .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol at the Texas Capitol. In 2015, The Texas Tribune called him the chambers antagonist-in-chief.

Mr. Stickland apologized in 2016 after an online posting he made in 2008, before he ran for elected office, was unearthed by a political opponent. In the posting on a fantasy football site, he responded to a mans request for sex advice by writing: Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!

Yet after years of sending conservatives to Austin, the district has changed. In just two years, the Republican advantage shrunk from 9,100 votes for Mr. Trump in 2016 to 1,167 when Senator Ted Cruz defeated Mr. ORourke in 2018.

When youre hearing people whove spent a lifetime voting Republican and they say, The party has left me, I dont know that weve ever heard that before, Mr. Whitfield, the Democratic state House candidate, said as he stood in a parking lot outside the Bedford Public Library, an early-voting site.

Steps away in the same parking lot, Mr. Whitfields Republican opponent, Jeff Cason, disputed any notion of a widespread Republican defection.

Im a man of faith, and I just believe the doors are opening for us, and if the Lord wants us in Austin, well be there, Mr. Cason said. Im not getting any sense of Republicans leaving our camp.

Julie McCarty, who was the president of the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party and is now the chief executive of the group it transformed into, the True Texas Project, attributed the Democratic gains in the region to Republicans not being conservative enough.

Republicans want to be left alone. We want smaller government. When we cant get that, we move where we can, she said. Therein lies the answer to what causes Tarrant to turn purple.

For Mr. Smith, the former Republican legislator, 2020 has been a year to split his ballot. In addition to the Biden sign and his support for Mr. Whitfield, he has a yard sign for Jane Nelson, a Republican state senator running for re-election. And he voted for Senator John Cornyn, the Trump ally locked in a tough re-election fight with M.J. Hegar, a Democrat and former Air Force helicopter pilot. Years ago, Mr. Smith threw Mr. Cornyn a fund-raiser at his house.

I have mixed feelings about it, he said of his vote for Mr. Cornyn. But I trust what I believe to be his honest convictions.

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Democrats Hope 2020 Is the Year They Flip the Texas House - The New York Times