Tuesday night Jimmy Gomez became the first Democrat to win a House seat since Trump was elected president. He won pretty overwhelmingly-- 60-40%-- in a deep blue Los Angeles district. Generally Republicans don't even try in districts like CA-34. The jungle primary, in fact, resulted in 2 candidates with "D" next to their names facing off this week in the general election.
Kim Weaver is the chairman of the O'Brien County Democratic Party in the northwest corner of Iowa, close to where Minnesota, South Dakota and Nebraska abut her state. In 2016 she took on the thankless tasking of running against her notoriously bigoted congressman, Steve King. And she's working towards a re-match for 2018. Trump won the district last November-- 60.9% to 33.5%. In 2012 it was the only Iowa district Obama didn't win.
After losing all that weight during chemo, I'm gaining it back-- and then some-- again. I blame it on the 2018 congressional midterms. I keep going out for dinners with candidates! A couple of nights ago a mutual friend introduced me to Katie Hill, a young woman from Agua Dulce, halfway between Santa Clarita and Palmdale, the two main towns in CA-25.
When we think about the 2018 congressional elections, we usually think about the chances of the Democrats netting the 24 seats they need to take back control of the incredibly unpopular House. But... there are also Democrats in the House who are very nervous, primarily because, though they were reelected in November Trump won their districts. This week the DCCC named 19 incumbents to their Frontline Program.
-by Jeffrey HearnI finished writing the following post when there was about a week left in the 2016 Democratic primary campaign in Maryland’s Eighth congressional district. I was then working for Jamie Raskin, the progressive front-runner for the nomination whose chief rival throughout the primary had been Beltway insider Kathleen Matthews.
Friday, life-long opportunist Darrell Issa was on Bill Maher's show, Real Time, and declared himself one of the first House Republicans willing to stab Señor Trumpanzee in the back over Putin-Gate. "You cannot have somebody, a friend of mine Jeff Sessions, who was on the campaign and who is an appointee," he told Maher in regard to the question about investigating the Trump campaign. "You're going to need to use the special prosecutor's statute and office to take-- not just to recuse. You can't just give it to your deputy.
A few days ago we looked at why South Carolina Congressman Mark Sanford has the political leeway to publicly denigrate Trump. For one thing, his coastal district is npt Trump territory. Rubio beat Trump in the primary there and Hillary won the largest county in the district (Charleston).
I was a 2016 Democratic Party candidate for Congress. I ran against thirty-year Republican incumbent, Lamar Smith who is the climate change-denying chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Even though I am an independent voter (by that I mean I have voted for Greens, Republicans, Libertarians and Democrats) Bernie Sanders drew me into filing to run as a Democrat. I figured if he could do it, so could I.
