Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
All these bogus investigations they want to do, with the slimmest of majorities, will not have the kind of political effect they think they will.
And every witness should just tell them to go fuck themselves and refuse to show up. Documents? You want documents? I think they’re at Mar-I-Lieo. Go get them. STFU.
All these bogus investigations they want to do, with the slimmest of majorities, will not have the kind of political effect they think they will.
And every witness should just tell them to go fuck themselves and refuse to show up. Documents? You want documents? I think they’re at Mar-I-Lieo. Go get them. STFU.
Republican Boebert's lead narrows to within recount zone
By JESSE BEDAYN
1 hour ago
DENVER (AP) — Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s lead has decreased against Democrat Adam Frisch, putting the tight race for a U.S. House seat representing a largely rural swath of Colorado into the automatic recount zone Thursday with some votes still left to count.
Boebert, a conservative firebrand, saw her lead fall to about 550 votes with new results Thursday in a race that’s being closely watched across the country as Republicans try to bolster their advantage in the U.S. House after clinching a narrow majority Wednesday night.
Boebert’s margin puts the race within the threshold that would trigger a mandatory recount in the district. In Colorado, an automatic recount is triggered when the margin of votes between the top two candidates is at or below 0.5% of the leading candidate’s vote total. On Thursday, that margin was around 0.34%.
The updated results follow a hectic few days for both campaigns as they scrambled to “cure” ballots — the process of confirming voters' choices if their ballots had been rejected in the initial count. Both the Republican and Democratic national campaign committees had boots on the ground in Colorado to support the efforts.
Boebert is a Trump loyalist who gained widespread notoriety and a spot on the so-called “MAGA Squad” with her combative style. She had been favored to win reelection in the sprawling 3rd Congressional District after redistricting made the conservative district more Republican.
Frisch, a businessman who served on the City Council in the posh ski town of Aspen, tried to lure Republican voters by downplaying his Democratic Party affiliation and tapping into GOP disillusionment with Boebert’s polarizing rhetoric and what he called her brand of “angertainment.”
To Frisch, his unanticipated support among voters points to that disillusionment. Whether win or lose, he said, “I think 99% of the story is here." Frisch said he had expected a close race and wouldn't be surprised if he won. But the candidate, who attended the congressional orientation in Washington, D.C., this week for newly minted representatives, added: "We obviously can’t be surprised if we lose. We’re not that whacko.”
A spokesperson for Boebert did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on Thursday.
___
Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington D.C.
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,428
Judge rules Hawley-led agency broke record laws on purpose
By SUMMER BALLENTINE
15 Nov 2022
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri judge ruled that a state agency previously led by Republican Josh Hawley broke public record laws on purpose to help his U.S. Senate campaign.
Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem on Monday fined the Attorney General's Office $12,000 and attorney fees, the maximum penalty for violating what's known as the Sunshine Law.
Open record laws are aimed at making sure the public can access documents related to how taxpayer dollars are spent and how government is being run.
At issue are Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee records requests from 2017 and 2018, when Republican Hawley was serving as state attorney general and campaigning for former Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill's seat.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee requested emails and other communications between Attorney General's Office staff and politicos tied to Hawley's campaign, claiming that official staffers were being directed by campaigners in order to help Hawley's Senate bid.
In one instance, the Attorney General's Office found responsive records three days after receiving the Democratic request but did not release the documents until forced to as part of the lawsuit more than a year later.
Other responsive records were provided to the Secretary of State's Office within days after that office launched an investigation into whether Attorney General's Office resources were improperly used to help Hawley's Senate Campaign. But the Attorney General's Office never handed those documents over to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The Secretary of State's Office, led by Republican Jay Ashcroft, found no wrongdoing in terms of misuse of public resources.
“The decision to withhold documents responsive to the DSCC’s Sunshine requests was made by public officials who had personal and professional stakes in the documents not being released and in the success of then-candidate Hawley’s campaign," Beetem wrote in his ruling.
Beetem ruled that the deception was intentional, pointing to the fact that Attorney General's Office staffers would switch to private email accounts to message political consultants.
In Missouri, all government records are open to the public, even if officials use private email accounts.
“Attorney General Hawley’s office illegally concealed public documents immediately prior to a U.S. Senate election against Senator Claire McCaskill for the sole purpose of preventing damage to Hawley’s campaign and affecting the outcome of the election,” DSCC lawyer Mark Pedroli tweeted Tuesday. “Concealing public records in order to prevent damage to your campaign is cheating, it deprives competing candidates of a level playing field, and it’s illegal.”
An Attorney General’s Office spokesman said the agency is reviewing the ruling but declined to comment further.
“These allegations are based on Democrat campaign attacks,” Hawley's campaign spokesman Kyle Plotkin said in a statement. “They have been investigated multiple times, and no wrongdoing has been found, including by a Democrat State Auditor.”
Republican Eric Schmitt is now serving as state attorney general, although voters in November also elected him to the U.S. Senate.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,428
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trailing badly in his Arizona Senate race as votes poured in, Republican Blake Masters went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program and assigned blame to one person: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“You know what else is incompetent, Tucker? The establishment. The people who control the purse strings,” Masters said before accusing the long-serving GOP leader and the super PAC aligned with him of not spending enough on TV advertising. “Had he chosen to spend money in Arizona, this race would be over. We’d be celebrating a Senate majority right now.”
Masters not only lost his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. He trailed every other Republican running for statewide office in Arizona. But there’s another problem Masters didn’t acknowledge: He failed to raise significant money on his own.
He was hardly alone.
As both parties sift through the results of Democrats' stronger-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, Republicans are engaged in a round of finger-pointing, including a failed attempt by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who led the Senate GOP's campaign arm, to challenge McConnell for his leadership post.
But the recriminations obscure a much deeper dilemma for the party. Many of their nominees — a significant number of whom were first-time candidates who adopted far-right positions — failed to raise the money needed to mount competitive campaigns. That forced party leaders, particularly in the Senate, to make hard choices and triage resources to races where they thought they had the best chance at winning, often paying exorbitant rates to TV stations that, by law, would have been required to sell the same advertising time to candidates for far less.
The lackluster fundraising allowed Democrats to get their message out to voters early and unchallenged, while GOP contenders lacked the resources to do the same.
“This has become an existential and systemic problem for our party and it’s something that needs to get addressed if we hope to be competitive,” said Steven Law, a former McConnell chief of staff who now leads Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that spent at least $232 million on advertising to elect Republicans to the Senate this year.
“Our (donors) have grown increasingly alarmed that they are being put in the position of subsidizing weak fundraising performances by candidates in critical races. And something has got to give. It’s just not sustainable," Law said.
In key Senate and House battlegrounds, Democratic candidates outraised their Republican counterparts by a factor of nearly 2-to-1, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance data.
Consider the handful of races that helped Democrats retain their Senate majority.
In Arizona, Masters was outraised nearly 8-to-1 by Kelly, who poured at least $32 million into TV advertising from August until Election Day, records show. Masters spent a little over $3 million on advertising during the same period after Senate Leadership Fund pulled out of the race
Meanwhile, in Nevada, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto raised $52.8 million compared to Republican Adam Laxalt's $15.5 million. And in Pennsylvania, Democratic Sen.-elect John Fetterman took in $16 million more than his GOP opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz. That's despite the celebrity TV doctor lending $22 million to his campaign, records show.
Similar disparities emerged in crucial House races, including in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia, helping to limit House Republicans to a surprisingly narrow majority.
When it came to purchasing TV ad time, Democrats' fundraising advantage yielded considerable upside. Ad sellers are required, by law, to offer candidates the cheapest rate. That same advantage doesn't apply to super PACs, which Republican candidates relied on to close their fundraising gap — often at a premium.
In Las Vegas, for example, a candidate could buy a unit of TV advertising for $598, according to advertising figures provided to the AP. That same segment cost a super PAC $4,500. In North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham media market, a $342 spot cost a super PAC $1,270. And a $580 candidate segment in the Philadelphia area cost a super PAC nearly $2,000, the advertising figures show.
Republicans also found themselves playing defense in states that weren't ultimately competitive.
J.D. Vance, who won his Ohio Senate race by more than 6 percentage points, was outraised nearly 4-to-1 by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan. To shore him up, Senate Leadership Fund poured $28 million into the state. The group's advertising ultimately accounted for about 70% of all Republican media spending from August until Election Day.
A similar situation played out in North Carolina, where the McConnell-aligned super PAC was responsible for 82% of the Republican advertising spending during the same period. GOP Rep. Ted Budd won by over 3% of the vote.
But money woes weren't the only complicating factor.
Donald Trump elevated a series of untested, first-time candidates. They included Masters, Vance and former NFL star Herschel Walker, whose complicated backstory includes threats of violence against his ex-wife, false claims of business success and allegations that he twice pressured a girlfriend to get an abortion, which Walker denies. Then there was Oz, who moved to Pennsylvania to seek the seat and also secured Trump's endorsement, but was pilloried by Democrats as an out-of-touch carpetbagger.
The former president gave them his endorsement, but he was parsimonious when it came to sharing some of the more than $100 million he's amassed in a committee designed to help other candidates. He ended up spending about $15 million on ads across five Senate races, records show.
Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, led by Scott, often worked at cross-purposes with McConnell's political operation.
Early on, Scott ruled out getting involved in primaries, which he saw as inappropriate meddling. McConnell's allies, meanwhile, moved to fend off candidates they saw as poor general-election contenders, like Don Bolduc, a far-right conservative who lost his New Hampshire race last week by nearly 10 percentage points. McConnell forces also defended Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a GOP moderate, against a conservative challenger.
“Senate races are just different,” McConnell said in August. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome."
In response, Scott took a shot at McConnell without mentioning him by name, suggesting in an opinion article published in the Washington Examiner that any “trash-talking” of Republican candidates was an “act of cowardice” that was “treasonous to the conservative cause.”
But his committee also struggled after making a series of bad bets, including a costly investment to boost the committee's online fundraising.
An internal document obtained by the AP, which was previously reported by The New York Times, shows the committee invested $23.3 million to build out their digital fundraising program between June and January of 2021. But the NRSC raised just $6.1 million during that time — a deficit. Then, as inflation soared, the stream of cash from online donors slowed to a trickle.
That prevented the NRSC from spending as much on TV ads as in years past, even as Scott made bullish predictions of picking up as many as five Senate seats. The digital fundraising effort was a boon, however, for consultants, who collected at least $31 million in payments, disclosures show.
Some Republican senators are now clamoring for an audit of the committee. In an at-times heated Senate GOP lunch at the Capitol last week, Maine Sen. Susan Collins questioned Scott's management of the NRSC.
Scott's aides dismissed suggestions of financial impropriety and instead have accused McConnell of undercutting the committee.
During a Senate GOP lunch in August, Scott asked senators for donations to the NRSC, which is now at least $20 million in debt. Then McConnell addressed the room and told the senators to instead prioritize giving to Senate Leadership Fund, according to two people familiar with the discussion; they requested anonymity to describe it.
The interaction was part of a broader pattern by McConnell to sabotage the NRSC, said committee spokesman Chris Hartline.
“There was a very clear implication to donors that they should not give to the NRSC," Hartline said. "And the result is it hurt our ability to boost our candidates and get their message out.”
McConnell allies, however, believe it was Scott who was using his post to burnish his own image at the expense of the party, potentially working to set himself up for a presidential bid, according to senior Republicans strategists. They were not authorized to discuss the McConnell allies’ conclusions and did so on condition of anonymity.
The gambit failed, as did Scott's challenge of McConnell's leadership position last week.
Faced with the prospect of solidifying their majority with another seat during a December runoff election in Georgia, Democrats were happy to offer unsolicited guidance to Republicans.
“My advice is to keep on doing what they are doing,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who led Senate Democrats' campaign arm this year.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
You don't have to be a House member to be speaker.
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
You don't have to be a House member to be speaker.
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
You don't have to be a House member to be speaker.
Yeah, but I'd think Vegas would set the over/under on GOP votes shed get at about five.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
You don't have to be a House member to be speaker.
Yeah, but I'd think Vegas would set the over/under on GOP votes shed get at about five.
I'm not sure about that. I think 2023 is going to be revenge of the moderates for the GOP. McCarthy is playing footsie with the psychos now because he needs speaker votes. But once that is done, they will flex their muscles and the leverage coming out of the midterms.
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
You don't have to be a House member to be speaker.
that's interesting. I thought she was done too since she lost her race.
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
Put Liz Cheney up for Speaker. She could get almost all of the D's and if you can knock out 10 or so R's, she is speaker. Let her give R the committee chairs and high ranking positions to people who flip for her. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes, this would be so sweet.
Liz is kaput. She lost her primary. Relegated to the dustbin of history.
You don't have to be a House member to be speaker.
Yeah, but I'd think Vegas would set the over/under on GOP votes shed get at about five.
I'm not sure about that. I think 2023 is going to be revenge of the moderates for the GOP. McCarthy is playing footsie with the psychos now because he needs speaker votes. But once that is done, they will flex their muscles and the leverage coming out of the midterms.
Hasn’t it been quite some time since moderates ran the GOP?
Which I believe would put him #3 in the presidential sequence. Then they'll legitimately try to impeach/remove Biden followed by impeaching/removing Harris.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,547
The chances of Trump or Cheney becoming speaker are less than 0%.
The chances of Trump or Cheney becoming speaker are less than 0%.
Cheney: probably about the same likelihood as me. Trump: I'd say non-zero chance but probably less than 5%. Margie will probably bring it up and a few others will jump on the wagon but I think even today's GOP understands the optics with the middle-of-the road voters would be bad. That said, the party has proven me (and sanity) wrong before in regards to this man-baby.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,547
The chances of Trump or Cheney becoming speaker are less than 0%.
Cheney: probably about the same likelihood as me. Trump: I'd say non-zero chance but probably less than 5%. Margie will probably bring it up and a few others will jump on the wagon but I think even today's GOP understands the optics with the middle-of-the road voters would be bad. That said, the party has proven me (and sanity) wrong before in regards to this man-baby.
Absolutely no shot he wants the responsibility of being speaker of the house. Come on guys!
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,547
While Warnock is bringing in Obama, Herschel's bringing in two people that nobody fucking likes.
This has to be good for Warnock.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Comments
the joys of unserious people
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
www.headstonesband.com
DENVER (AP) — Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s lead has decreased against Democrat Adam Frisch, putting the tight race for a U.S. House seat representing a largely rural swath of Colorado into the automatic recount zone Thursday with some votes still left to count.
Boebert, a conservative firebrand, saw her lead fall to about 550 votes with new results Thursday in a race that’s being closely watched across the country as Republicans try to bolster their advantage in the U.S. House after clinching a narrow majority Wednesday night.
Boebert’s margin puts the race within the threshold that would trigger a mandatory recount in the district. In Colorado, an automatic recount is triggered when the margin of votes between the top two candidates is at or below 0.5% of the leading candidate’s vote total. On Thursday, that margin was around 0.34%.
The updated results follow a hectic few days for both campaigns as they scrambled to “cure” ballots — the process of confirming voters' choices if their ballots had been rejected in the initial count. Both the Republican and Democratic national campaign committees had boots on the ground in Colorado to support the efforts.
Boebert is a Trump loyalist who gained widespread notoriety and a spot on the so-called “MAGA Squad” with her combative style. She had been favored to win reelection in the sprawling 3rd Congressional District after redistricting made the conservative district more Republican.
EXPLAINING THE ELECTIONS
Why AP has called control of the US House for Republicans
Why the AP hasn't called control of the House yet
Why AP called Nevada Senate race for Catherine Cortez Masto
Why the AP called control of the US Senate for the Democrats
Frisch, a businessman who served on the City Council in the posh ski town of Aspen, tried to lure Republican voters by downplaying his Democratic Party affiliation and tapping into GOP disillusionment with Boebert’s polarizing rhetoric and what he called her brand of “angertainment.”
To Frisch, his unanticipated support among voters points to that disillusionment. Whether win or lose, he said, “I think 99% of the story is here." Frisch said he had expected a close race and wouldn't be surprised if he won. But the candidate, who attended the congressional orientation in Washington, D.C., this week for newly minted representatives, added: "We obviously can’t be surprised if we lose. We’re not that whacko.”
A spokesperson for Boebert did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on Thursday.
___
Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington D.C.
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri judge ruled that a state agency previously led by Republican Josh Hawley broke public record laws on purpose to help his U.S. Senate campaign.
Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem on Monday fined the Attorney General's Office $12,000 and attorney fees, the maximum penalty for violating what's known as the Sunshine Law.
Open record laws are aimed at making sure the public can access documents related to how taxpayer dollars are spent and how government is being run.
At issue are Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee records requests from 2017 and 2018, when Republican Hawley was serving as state attorney general and campaigning for former Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill's seat.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee requested emails and other communications between Attorney General's Office staff and politicos tied to Hawley's campaign, claiming that official staffers were being directed by campaigners in order to help Hawley's Senate bid.
In one instance, the Attorney General's Office found responsive records three days after receiving the Democratic request but did not release the documents until forced to as part of the lawsuit more than a year later.
MISSOURI TIGERS MEN'S BASKETBALL
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New Mexico State brings winning streak to Missouri
Other responsive records were provided to the Secretary of State's Office within days after that office launched an investigation into whether Attorney General's Office resources were improperly used to help Hawley's Senate Campaign. But the Attorney General's Office never handed those documents over to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The Secretary of State's Office, led by Republican Jay Ashcroft, found no wrongdoing in terms of misuse of public resources.
“The decision to withhold documents responsive to the DSCC’s Sunshine requests was made by public officials who had personal and professional stakes in the documents not being released and in the success of then-candidate Hawley’s campaign," Beetem wrote in his ruling.
Beetem ruled that the deception was intentional, pointing to the fact that Attorney General's Office staffers would switch to private email accounts to message political consultants.
In Missouri, all government records are open to the public, even if officials use private email accounts.
“Attorney General Hawley’s office illegally concealed public documents immediately prior to a U.S. Senate election against Senator Claire McCaskill for the sole purpose of preventing damage to Hawley’s campaign and affecting the outcome of the election,” DSCC lawyer Mark Pedroli tweeted Tuesday. “Concealing public records in order to prevent damage to your campaign is cheating, it deprives competing candidates of a level playing field, and it’s illegal.”
An Attorney General’s Office spokesman said the agency is reviewing the ruling but declined to comment further.
“These allegations are based on Democrat campaign attacks,” Hawley's campaign spokesman Kyle Plotkin said in a statement. “They have been investigated multiple times, and no wrongdoing has been found, including by a Democrat State Auditor.”
Republican Eric Schmitt is now serving as state attorney general, although voters in November also elected him to the U.S. Senate.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trailing badly in his Arizona Senate race as votes poured in, Republican Blake Masters went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program and assigned blame to one person: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“You know what else is incompetent, Tucker? The establishment. The people who control the purse strings,” Masters said before accusing the long-serving GOP leader and the super PAC aligned with him of not spending enough on TV advertising. “Had he chosen to spend money in Arizona, this race would be over. We’d be celebrating a Senate majority right now.”
Masters not only lost his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. He trailed every other Republican running for statewide office in Arizona. But there’s another problem Masters didn’t acknowledge: He failed to raise significant money on his own.
He was hardly alone.
As both parties sift through the results of Democrats' stronger-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, Republicans are engaged in a round of finger-pointing, including a failed attempt by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who led the Senate GOP's campaign arm, to challenge McConnell for his leadership post.
But the recriminations obscure a much deeper dilemma for the party. Many of their nominees — a significant number of whom were first-time candidates who adopted far-right positions — failed to raise the money needed to mount competitive campaigns. That forced party leaders, particularly in the Senate, to make hard choices and triage resources to races where they thought they had the best chance at winning, often paying exorbitant rates to TV stations that, by law, would have been required to sell the same advertising time to candidates for far less.
The lackluster fundraising allowed Democrats to get their message out to voters early and unchallenged, while GOP contenders lacked the resources to do the same.
“This has become an existential and systemic problem for our party and it’s something that needs to get addressed if we hope to be competitive,” said Steven Law, a former McConnell chief of staff who now leads Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that spent at least $232 million on advertising to elect Republicans to the Senate this year.
“Our (donors) have grown increasingly alarmed that they are being put in the position of subsidizing weak fundraising performances by candidates in critical races. And something has got to give. It’s just not sustainable," Law said.
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In key Senate and House battlegrounds, Democratic candidates outraised their Republican counterparts by a factor of nearly 2-to-1, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance data.
Consider the handful of races that helped Democrats retain their Senate majority.
In Arizona, Masters was outraised nearly 8-to-1 by Kelly, who poured at least $32 million into TV advertising from August until Election Day, records show. Masters spent a little over $3 million on advertising during the same period after Senate Leadership Fund pulled out of the race
Meanwhile, in Nevada, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto raised $52.8 million compared to Republican Adam Laxalt's $15.5 million. And in Pennsylvania, Democratic Sen.-elect John Fetterman took in $16 million more than his GOP opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz. That's despite the celebrity TV doctor lending $22 million to his campaign, records show.
Similar disparities emerged in crucial House races, including in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia, helping to limit House Republicans to a surprisingly narrow majority.
When it came to purchasing TV ad time, Democrats' fundraising advantage yielded considerable upside. Ad sellers are required, by law, to offer candidates the cheapest rate. That same advantage doesn't apply to super PACs, which Republican candidates relied on to close their fundraising gap — often at a premium.
In Las Vegas, for example, a candidate could buy a unit of TV advertising for $598, according to advertising figures provided to the AP. That same segment cost a super PAC $4,500. In North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham media market, a $342 spot cost a super PAC $1,270. And a $580 candidate segment in the Philadelphia area cost a super PAC nearly $2,000, the advertising figures show.
Republicans also found themselves playing defense in states that weren't ultimately competitive.
J.D. Vance, who won his Ohio Senate race by more than 6 percentage points, was outraised nearly 4-to-1 by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan. To shore him up, Senate Leadership Fund poured $28 million into the state. The group's advertising ultimately accounted for about 70% of all Republican media spending from August until Election Day.
A similar situation played out in North Carolina, where the McConnell-aligned super PAC was responsible for 82% of the Republican advertising spending during the same period. GOP Rep. Ted Budd won by over 3% of the vote.
But money woes weren't the only complicating factor.
Donald Trump elevated a series of untested, first-time candidates. They included Masters, Vance and former NFL star Herschel Walker, whose complicated backstory includes threats of violence against his ex-wife, false claims of business success and allegations that he twice pressured a girlfriend to get an abortion, which Walker denies. Then there was Oz, who moved to Pennsylvania to seek the seat and also secured Trump's endorsement, but was pilloried by Democrats as an out-of-touch carpetbagger.
The former president gave them his endorsement, but he was parsimonious when it came to sharing some of the more than $100 million he's amassed in a committee designed to help other candidates. He ended up spending about $15 million on ads across five Senate races, records show.
Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, led by Scott, often worked at cross-purposes with McConnell's political operation.
Early on, Scott ruled out getting involved in primaries, which he saw as inappropriate meddling. McConnell's allies, meanwhile, moved to fend off candidates they saw as poor general-election contenders, like Don Bolduc, a far-right conservative who lost his New Hampshire race last week by nearly 10 percentage points. McConnell forces also defended Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a GOP moderate, against a conservative challenger.
“Senate races are just different,” McConnell said in August. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome."
In response, Scott took a shot at McConnell without mentioning him by name, suggesting in an opinion article published in the Washington Examiner that any “trash-talking” of Republican candidates was an “act of cowardice” that was “treasonous to the conservative cause.”
But his committee also struggled after making a series of bad bets, including a costly investment to boost the committee's online fundraising.
An internal document obtained by the AP, which was previously reported by The New York Times, shows the committee invested $23.3 million to build out their digital fundraising program between June and January of 2021. But the NRSC raised just $6.1 million during that time — a deficit. Then, as inflation soared, the stream of cash from online donors slowed to a trickle.
That prevented the NRSC from spending as much on TV ads as in years past, even as Scott made bullish predictions of picking up as many as five Senate seats. The digital fundraising effort was a boon, however, for consultants, who collected at least $31 million in payments, disclosures show.
Some Republican senators are now clamoring for an audit of the committee. In an at-times heated Senate GOP lunch at the Capitol last week, Maine Sen. Susan Collins questioned Scott's management of the NRSC.
Scott's aides dismissed suggestions of financial impropriety and instead have accused McConnell of undercutting the committee.
During a Senate GOP lunch in August, Scott asked senators for donations to the NRSC, which is now at least $20 million in debt. Then McConnell addressed the room and told the senators to instead prioritize giving to Senate Leadership Fund, according to two people familiar with the discussion; they requested anonymity to describe it.
The interaction was part of a broader pattern by McConnell to sabotage the NRSC, said committee spokesman Chris Hartline.
“There was a very clear implication to donors that they should not give to the NRSC," Hartline said. "And the result is it hurt our ability to boost our candidates and get their message out.”
McConnell allies, however, believe it was Scott who was using his post to burnish his own image at the expense of the party, potentially working to set himself up for a presidential bid, according to senior Republicans strategists. They were not authorized to discuss the McConnell allies’ conclusions and did so on condition of anonymity.
The gambit failed, as did Scott's challenge of McConnell's leadership position last week.
Faced with the prospect of solidifying their majority with another seat during a December runoff election in Georgia, Democrats were happy to offer unsolicited guidance to Republicans.
“My advice is to keep on doing what they are doing,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who led Senate Democrats' campaign arm this year.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Gaetz says McCarthy won't have the votes....going to be great to see this play out.
McCarthy will have to go full magat or meet whatever ridiculous demands they have
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
This has to be good for Warnock.
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin