Tag: virginia
Bob Good (R-VA)

Bob Good Suggests 'Election  Fraud' By Trump-Backed Rival In GOP Primary

A week after Virginia’s primaries, the race between Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good and state Sen. John McGuire remains too close to call, but Good isn’t waiting for the final results to yell fraud. Turns out, election denial works even worse if you’re not convicted felon Donald Trump. It also doesn’t garner you much support when Trump endorsed the other guy.

Good is demanding a revote in the city of Lynchburg, where he is leading in the count, and he is saying that if the revote doesn’t happen, he’ll block certification of the city’s results because, of course, conspiracy theories of fraud.

“They did not secure their drop boxes. There’s no accountability for when those boxes were open. They were apparently left to be stuffed for two or three days after the election,” Good said Monday on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “There’s no accountability for who opened those, how many ballots came out.”

In the case that the ballot-stuffing and/or -stealing allegations don’t pan out, Good is also pushing a conspiracy theory about fire alarms that went off in some precincts.

“We had 3 ‘fires’ on election day in 3 precincts, all requiring the precincts to be evacuated for 20 minutes. Albemarle County, Hanover County, and Lynchburg City,” he tweeted last Thursday. “What is the probability? Does anyone recall even 1 fire at a precinct on election day?”

There were no fires, and no one was prevented from voting in any of the incidents, election officials in each county told USA Today.

All of this is being met by ridicule and worse from Good’s Republican colleagues in the House. That might have something to do with the fact that Trump has already declared McGuire the winner.

"[Of] course Bob is claiming election fraud. He is grasping at straws to help save his political career," Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin told Axios. "If Bob had spent more time working for America and less time trying to dictate to other members of Congress how we could vote for our constituents, we would not be having this conversation. He is a bully and it is time for him to go,” he added.

"F**k Bob Good. Bob Good is a sore loser. His defeat strengthens our majority," one House Republican anonymously told Axios, while another said, "I assume Bob Good is full of s**t."

"What a loser,” Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said, noting that Good won Lynchburg but is still declaring fraud there.

Who knew that House Republicans would ridicule election denial? It seems that because Trump endorsed the other guy, the MAGA crowd just won’t back Good on this one. If Good somehow manages to eke out the win, however, all bets are off on whether they believe fraud happened.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Bob Good (R-VA)

Probing Contradictions In 'Freedom Caucus' Chair's Financial Disclosure

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is competing in a tough primary race against a Republican state senator endorsed by former President Donald Trump. And now he's facing additional scrutiny over financial disclosure reports that are raising more questions than they're answering.

According to a Friday report in NOTUS, the Virginia Republican has been cagey in his answers about what he did with his significant amounts of money invested in various stocks and mutual funds. The publication reported that previously, Good had anywhere between $200,000 and $1.7 million (financial disclosure forms only require a range, not an exact number) in roughly 100 different stocks and mutual funds. But in his most recently available financial disclosure forms, all that he has listed is an IRA and a Roth IRA, with anywhere between $275,000 and $550,000 entirely held in cash.

In a statement, Good said that he transitioned his investments to a single mutual fund for simplicity's sake.

"Before being sworn into office, I moved my assets to a mutual fund which does not require reporting of individual stock trades," he stated. "Not only is this less cumbersome for financial reports, but it also avoids any appearance of impropriety of trading stocks based on insider information."

However, NOTUS' Katherine Swartz noted that Good's net worth remains "mysterious," and that his explanation "contradicts multiple years of financial disclosures, which only show two retirement funds held in cash." She also wrote that he ended up contracting himself in a separate follow-up statement that omitted any mention of a mutual fund.

"Before being sworn into office, I moved my assets to avoid any appearance of impropriety with stock trades," the congressman stated on Thursday. "I have submitted my required financial disclosure reports for 2021 and 2022, and to the best of my knowledge am in full compliance with the reporting requirements."

In the period between January of 2018 and December of 2019, Good had an 11-page filing showing all of his stocks valued between $1 and $1,000, $1,000 and $15,000 and a mutual fund $15,00 and $50,000. And since then, he hasn't publicly disclosed the sale of any stocks, despite his 2022 filing — which is the most recently available — showing just the two IRAs.

Jodan Libowitz, who is a spokesperson for the anti-corruption watchdog group Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told NOTUS that Good's explanation effectively posits two separate realities.

"“He has to tell you what the mutual fund is. But if what he says on his filing is true, there are no mutual funds,” Libowitz said. “So his office is telling you, ‘he moved it all into mutual funds.’ And he’s saying, ‘I didn’t, I got rid of everything from mutual funds.’ These two things cannot both be true."

Good is battling for his political life in Tuesday's primary, in which Virginians will choose whether they want Good on the general election ballot or Republican state senator John McGuire. Trump has endorsed McGuire, and is even participating in a virtual town hall for McGuire on Monday, right before Republicans in the Old Dominion State cast their ballots.

The embattled Freedom Caucus chairman's rift with Trump stems from his early endorsement of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential primary, before DeSantis even officially declared his candidacy. Good has since endorsed Trump, and even traveled to Manhattan to praise him outside of the courthouse where he stood trial, but Trump has still not relented in his attacks on the congressman. In fact, Trump attacked him on his Truth Social platform just last month.

""Bob Good is BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA,” Trump wrote. “He turned his back on our incredible movement, and was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently, when he gave a warm and ‘loving’ Endorsement – But really, it was too late. The damage had been done!”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Glenn Youngkin

Youngkin And Virginia GOP Now Promote Early Voting They Tried To Repeal (VIDEO)

The blog Blue Virginia reports that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and other Republican leaders have launched a campaign to urge Republican voters to take advantage of easy-voting laws they pushed to repeal.

The Republican Party of Virginia shared a video on Tuesday in which Youngkin encourages his supporters to vote early in the November 2023 legislative elections. With every seat in the Legislature up for election, voters will decide whether to give the GOP majorities in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates and enable them to roll back reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, climate protections, gun safety, and voting rights.

“We’re making Virginia the best place to live, work, and raise a family, and to take us to the next level, I need your early vote this year,” he says. “We can’t go into our elections down thousands of votes, and you can secure your vote before Election Day. Join the permanent absentee list or make a plan to vote early by mail or in person.”

Youngkin directs voters to a website paid for by the Republican Party of Virginia with links for early voting options.

Between 2020 and 2021, when Democrats held majorities in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and the governorship, they enacted more than a dozen laws aimed at expanding voting rights and making it easier for all citizens to vote. These included changes to allow voting by mail without an excuse and without a postage stamp on the envelope, increasing the number of sites for early voting, and permitting voters to sign up for an annual automatic vote-by-mail list, all passed over strong GOP opposition.

After Youngkin and a narrow GOP majority in the House of Delegates were elected in 2021, they quickly moved to repeal the laws and make it harder to vote. In the 2023 legislative session, they passed bills along party lines to prohibit drop boxes for ballots, reduce the period for in-person early voting to just two weeks, and do away with the automatic vote-by-mail list. Those bills each died in the Democratic-led Senate.

Former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Youngkin in 2021, has made opposition to easy voting a key part of the GOP agenda. In 2020, Trump falsely claimed that voting by mail causes fraud and chaos in American elections. Like Trump, Youngkin has also cast doubt on the integrity of elections.

“It’s blatant hypocrisy,” House Democratic Leader Don Scott said in a statement shared with the American Independent Foundation. “This is a party that is on the record against early voting. They are doing this whole push to pull the wool over our constituents’ eyes and hide from the fact that they’ve worked to make it harder for Virginians to vote at every turn. They’ve undermined our democratic systems for years and if allowed the majority, they will vote to restrict voting access.”

Democratic Delegate Cia Price told the American Independent Foundation on Tuesday that Republicans should apologize for their hypocrisy:

I would be more thrilled if the MAGA Republican Extremists decided to stop proliferating dangerous and wildly false claims about our free and fair elections systems. Their actions have put lives at risk and undermined the confidence in our entire democracy. I demand alongside their calls for GOP members to utilize the early voting and vote-by-mail options, that Democrats have instituted, apologies for the previous falsehoods. We also need apologies for and cooperation in undoing the damage of racially and politically gerrymandered districts across the nation. We need their votes for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. We need them to halt their court cases to invalidate valid voters from voting roles. We need their votes to help end prison gerrymandering and for automatic voter rights restoration. And so much more. Until then, this is nothing more than political games from people only focused on using any means available to grab power from people with whom they disagree or devalue.

The Democratic Party of Virginia also called out Republicans for their “change of heart (or cynical political stunt).”

“We welcome the Virginia Republicans’ newly discovered interest in promoting democracy,” press secretary Liam Watson said in a statement. “Of course, we wish they had shown up in support of early voting and vote-by-mail years ago, instead of consistently voting against reforms designed to strengthen democracy in the commonwealth.”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Virginia GOP Nominates Christian Nationalist Preacher For Vacant House Seat

Virginia GOP Nominates Christian Nationalist Preacher For Vacant House Seat

Two-time losing candidate Leon Benjamin will again try to win the seat left open by the death of Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin.

Voters in Virginia's 4th Congressional District will choose a U.S. representative to succeed the late Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin in a special election ending Feb. 21.

On Saturday, Republicans in the district nominated Leon Benjamin, a right-wing theocrat who has twice lost decisively in previous races for the seat.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, and Attorney General Jason Miyares all endorsed Benjamin in his most recent campaign, leading up to his loss to McEachin on Nov. 8. McEachin died on Nov. 28.

The district includes the city of Richmond, some of its suburbs, and areas to its south. Its population is about 16 points more Democratic-leaning than the median U.S. House district, according to the Cook Political Report.

Benjamin, who holds the positions of chief apostle and presiding prelate of New Life Harvest Churches in Richmond, was an informal religious adviser to former President Donald Trump. Benjamin's campaign website calls him the "right choice for a strong Virginia" and emphasizes his "commitment to protect and restore your God-given and Constitutional rights."

That "commitment" has included opposing equal rights for LGBTQ Americans. In 2010, Benjamin participated in a webcast with anti-LGBTQ hate groups to oppose lifting the military's ban on gay and lesbian people serving openly, RightWingWatch reported.

A Christian nationalist, Benjamin has urged the United States to move toward becoming a theocracy. Benjamin subscribes to the "Seven Mountains Mandate," which holds that the Christian Church is meant, as he put it in a speech, to "rule and reign in the Earth."

In the speech, delivered at a right-wing "ReAwaken America" conspiracy rally in July 2021, Benjamin said:

What happens when the Church is not apostolically uniformed? We don't have the true mission of what Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, which was, 'Go ye out into all the world' — go ye into government, go into education, go into economy, go into sports and entertainment, go into media, go into a religion — 'and teach all nations and baptize them.' That means we should be baptizing presidents!

Benjamin has embraced false claims that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election and attended Trump's Jan. 6, 2021, "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington.

He has also baselessly claimed to have been a victim of election fraud.

"I ran for Congress in 2020, and they did steal my election," Benjamin claimed in the July 2021 speech.

He lost that race to McEachin in a 61.6%-38.2% landslide.

In January, he told another ReAwaken America rally that a Christian leader would not encourage people to wear face masks or get vaccinated to curb the spread of COVID-19:

"You have no more chances unless you repent for telling people to take the virus, to take the shots, to shut your churches down, come on, to wear a mask. You are a false prophet. ... The Devil is a liar! God would never cover the mouth of a true prophet!"

Benjamin has dismissed the threat of climate change and has objected to using taxpayer revenue to address the issue, according to the progressive site Blue Virginia.

"Taxing people and corporations into oblivion does NOTHING to mitigate climate change!" Benjamin tweeted in February. "You cannot tax Mother Nature."

On his campaign site, Benjamin calls for increased oil and gas drilling while claiming the nation can achieve "energy independence" by restarting the Keystone XL pipeline project to import tar sands oil from Canada.

On the issue of education, the site calls for the removal of "all CRT teachings" from public schools, while also saying, "We must also teach our history — the good, bad, and the ugly."

Critical race theory is an approach used principally at the college level to examine the history of race and racism in America. Republicans and other conservatives have applied the term to any racism-related teaching they don't like. CRT is generally not used in elementary and high school curriculums.

The campaign website says that taxpayers should pay to send kids to private schools, fund parochial education, and pay for home-schooling: "Whether a parent chooses homeschooling, private school, charter school, or public school, aid and support should not be diminished. If money follows the child, parents have flexibility to select schools based on what is best for their children, and the quality of education everywhere improves."

According to a report published by the website Chalkbeat in 2020, studies have shown that school privatization efforts like voucher programs are linked with lower state test scores.

A campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Benjamin's positions.

Benjamin helped lead a group of right-wing clergy in supporting unsuccessful Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker in his runoff election this month, even after Walker said he was "accountable" for alleged domestic abuse and found to have routinely lied about his credentials.

Democrats will select their nominee to face Benjamin on Tuesday.

"The path to a stronger fourth district does not pass through Leon Benjamin's mire of election denialism and xenophobia," Democratic Party of Virginia spokesperson Liam Watson said in a press statement on Saturday.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

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