Ralph Abraham is the ultimate politician scumbag. An anti-immigrant fanatic, his grandparents immigration to the U.S. from Lebanon. He studied to be a veterinarian, although he claims to be a people doctor now. He's also a Republican gubernatorial candidate who started serving in Congress in 2015, representing the very red (R+15) 5th district-- where Trump beat Hillary 63.5% to 34.1%.
Monday, the Cook Report listed 50 interesting facts about last month's midterm elections.
Florida is in the news— and at least it isn’t a hurricane. I think the first time we rang an alarm bell about Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s crooked crony, Broward County elections chief Brenda Snipes, we were picking up on a Politico report by Marc Caputo. In the 2016 cycle, she worked to steal the election for DWS, as sure as DWS worked to steal the presidential primary for Hillary. Snipes broke the law by destroying ballots cast in the tight primary election between Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova after Canova sued to get access to the ballots.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley again last nightThe NY Times defines what happened as a wave. It didn't feel like a wave to me last night-- not with Beto, @IronStache, Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams losing-- not to mention all those Senate races. But the Democrats did take back the House-- pretty substantially, and appear to have defeated Putin's favorite congressman, Dana Rohrabacher.
Donna! Donna! Donna!Democratic performance was up... but not by enough. There was a little good news. In Miami-Dade, two red seats flipped blue, although both are fairly strong blue districts. FL-27, where Ileana Ros Lehtinen retired, has a PVI of D+5. Hillary beat Trump there by TWENTY points-- 58.5% to 38.9%, so you wouldn't think it would take a wave.
Politico: "The general consensus among Republicans is that they will lose the House, and end up in at least a five-seat minority-- that would correspond to a 28-seat loss. Senior Republicans tell us that even in a worst-case scenario, they do not expect to lose 40 seats.
Mike Dunleavy-- does he also have a thing for drag queens?Last week I went to two Ted Lieu fundraising events for California candidates. And he mentioned Alaska with times, asserting that Independent Alyse Galvin was starting to close the gap between herself and forever Congressman Don Young. 538 gives her a 29.3% chance to win (2 in 7) and there are no polls showing her ahead.
One of my friends is a total worry-wart. He spends his days before elections calling voters for progressive candidates and trying to persuade them to get out and vote. Today he e-mailed me: "I’ve been making calls for Andrew Gillum. Did 75 mins last night. Afraid he’ll lose. Especially with trump going to rally in Fort Myers next week (It’s not official yet, but there are reports from CNN).
