In 2018 an old friend of mine from the music business, Dayna Steele, ran for Congress in east Texas. She ran a really good campaign and raised $878,940 with no help on any kind from the DCCC. Many people see TX-36 as a hopelessly red district. Hillary only got 25.2% of the vote and the PVI is a daunting R+26.
GOP congressional crooks Hunter and StockmanWe were sorry to see our pal Dayna Steele lose her race in TX-36 on Tuesday but proud of how strongly she and her team fought in her R+26 district where few Democrats would even try. She won just over a quarter of the votes there-- 60,486 (27.4%)-- her efforts turning out voters for Beto and other Democrats as well.
You know how gung-ho we've been about the Houston-area race pitting progressive Dayna Steele against right-wing ideologue Brian Babin. He's a Freedom Caucus extremist. Dayna's someone who wants to make life better from people in southeast Texas. Big difference. Anyway, Imagination Worldwide has been working on a document-series for Amazon-Prime and Google Play that will premiere September 4, with a new episode airing every 2 weeks until election day. Above you can watch the trailer for the first episode.
The Oklahoma Republican Party knew that putting Question 788 on the general election ballot could be very bad for them. It was expected to turn out an inordinately large number of people who don't usually vote-- and those people would not be conservatives. So they put Question 788 on the primary ballot on June 26.
Everyone at Blue America thought that the longest long shot we were taking this cycle was backing Alexandria Ocasio. "That's impossible," people told us. "If you couldn't take a nobody like Dan Lipinsky down, how you going to take down Joe Crowley?!?!" Well, to start, we didn't take down Joe Crowley. Alexandria did. The voters in the southwest Bronx and north Queens saw the contrast between the two candidates and made the easy choice.
If Dayna Steele, who won her primary, 72% to 28%, and will now move on to face far right incumbent, Brian Babin, was just another garden variety Democrat there would be little reason to talk about their November contest. But she isn't. Dayna is an icon in the district, once the music director for KLOL, Houston's top rock station. Everyone knows her as the person who introduced them to their favorite artists.
The Texas primaries are less than a month away-- March 6. And the races are crowded. Or at least the seats that look the most flippable are crowded, even after lots of candidates have dropped out. Texas has 36 congressional districts. The very last one, TX-36, southeast Texas in the Houston area, is so red, that the DCCC isn't even contesting it.
Most people in the Houston area know Dayna Steele, former KLOL radio host, as "the First Lady of Rock'n'Roll." The first time they heard every great song and every great band-- from U2 , Nirvana, Joan Jett and The Police to Van Halen, Heart and Bon Jovi-- that jolted their lives-- in a way few politicians ever can-- it was intimately, just them, their radio... and Dayna.
