Qualcomm's Irwin Jacobs (R) is spending $9 million to try to buy his granddaughter Sara (D-ish) a House seatMost of 2018's self fund-funders lost their elections. The ones who won-- both Republicans and Democrats-- have all turned out to be horrible members of Congress, all with F rated voting records. All save the interests of their class; none serve the interests of working families:
Did you get inundated with requests for contributions on Friday? The DCCC and DSCC-- and the lame consultants they work with-- encourage their candidates to flood everyone's mailboxes with desperate, hollow pleas for donations for the bullshit "end of the month deadline." It used to be all about the end of the quarter deadline.
The last time Sara Jacobs ran for Congress, it was in the Orange County/San Diego County district that Darrell Issa had abandoned as "too blue." It also turned out to be "too blue" for the Qualcomm heiress. She spent gigantically in the primary-- $2,714,931, of which $2,125,798 (78%) came out of personal money her family gave her. The biggest single candidate expenditure-- by FAR (like nearly by a factor of 10!)-- that EMILY's List made-- $2,362,544-- in 2018 was for Jacobs.
When Elizabeth Warren did her first interview after announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, she chose Rachel Maddow. You can safely skip another typically exciting 5 full minute Maddow windup. The point I would like to get to was Warren's call-- at around the 9:40 moment on the video-- for Democrats to eschew campaign money from what Bernie calls "the billionaire class," including self-funders (Tom Steyer and, especially, on-again/off-again Republican Michael Bloomberg). "Just think about this upcoming Democratic primary," said Warren.
Many of the most egregious self-funders this cycle lost their primaries, like Democrats Herbert Lee (CA- $1,057,942), Alison Friedman (VA- $1,080,365), Hans Keirstead (CA- $1,080,400), David Kim (GA- $1,164,689), Jerome Segal (MD- $1,271,189), Tahir Javed (TX- $1,333,416), Sara Jacobs (CA- $2,117,987), Andy Thorburn (CA- $2,832,018) and Paul Kerr (CA- $5,912,728), as well as Republicans Troy Downing (MT- $1,100,000),
Republicans Darrell Issa (CA), David Trott (MI), Diane Black (TN), Tom Rooney (FL), James Renacci (OH) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ) will not be returning to Congress next year. The only one worth less than $30 million is Frelinghuysen but altogether this half dozen anti-healthcare fanatics are worth quite a bit over half a billion dollars. Among the Democrats not returning to the House next year are Jared Polis (New Dem-CO- $122.6 million) and John Delaney (New Dem-MD- $92.6 million).Don't worry about millionaires and their interests not being represented in Congress next year.
What a waste of time this morning! I called a couple of dozen campaign managers all over the country, almost entirely campaign managers for candidates who had already won their primaries. And I had an identical simple question for each one: "Have you talked to your DCCC Regional Vice Chair?" Except for the ones in California, I got the same answer from every campaign manager. "Who's that?" or "What's that?" No one knew.
Gil Cisneros, the DCCC's staff's idea of a candidateThere were a lot of candidates willing to spend over $500,000 of their own money to buy a place in the general election run-off. None of the big spenders came in first and most of them failed to come in second, which is what they would have needed to get into the general election. These are the 3 districts, all in Orange County, where multimillionaires spent over half a million in the effort.
No matter how shady you are, if you pay enough you get a photo with POTUSLast cycle Maryland crackpot David Trone spent $13,414,225 of his own money trying to buy a seat in Congress. He lost. This year's trying in another district and as of March 31 he had already put $5,281,939 of his own into the race. Most big self-funders lose.
Nancy Pelosi's Democratic Party, not oursCan we all agree not to vote for anyone trying to buy House seats with their own money? Trump claims to have been spending his own fortune to by the White House-- mostly a lie-- and now he feels entitled to steal whatever isn't nailed down. Many of these congressional self-funders are incredibly like Trump, especially in terms of overwhelming feelings of entitlement.
