Tag: gop
Mark Harris

Alleged 2018 Election Fraudster Wins GOP Primary In North Carolina

Pastor Mark Harris — whose previous primary election win in 2018 was tossed out after an alleged election fraud scheme — has once again won the Republican nomination for a newly drawn US House district deemed as safely Republican.

FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich tweeted that Harris officially won the Republican primary to replace outgoing Rep. Dan Bishop (R-North Carolina), who is now the GOP nominee for Attorney General in the Tar Heel state. Harris won the competitive primary in spite of a controversy from 2018 that resulted in the bipartisan North Carolina State Board of Elections calling a new election the following year.

In 2018, Harris narrowly won the general election in the Ninth Congressional District by a little more than 900 total votes against Democrat Dan McCready. However, Leslie McCrae Dowless — a consultant who worked for his campaign — was alleged to have illegally handled absentee ballots, which is a felony. Dowless was described as a "shady character" by Harris' son, John, amid allegations that he engaged in similar underhanded practices with absentee ballots in 2016.

"Witnesses told state officials that Dowless, with help of his assistants, gathered hundreds of absentee ballots from Bladen County in 2018," the AP reported. "Those workers testified they were directed to collect blank or incomplete ballots, forge signatures on them and even fill in votes for local candidates."

After investigators compiled a mountain of evidence suggesting Dowless was engaging in underhanded efforts to compromise absentee ballot voting, Harris pivoted from urging election officials to certify his victory to calling for a new election. He ultimately avoided criminal charges in the investigation.

"Through the testimony I've listened to over the past three days, I believe a new election should be called," Harris said at the time. "It's become clear to me that the public's confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted."

But now, with his primary victory on Tuesday night, Harris is poised to cruise to a general election victory in the new district in spite of the scandal that rocked his political career six years ago. This is especially true given how GOP-friendly the district has become after the North Carolina Supreme Court adopted a map regarded as one of the most biased redistricting efforts in recent memory.

In late 2023, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that the Tar Heel State's highest court reversed a prior 2022 decision rejecting maps that were deemed unfair to voters of color. That decision notably came after a 2022 election in which two conservatives won two additional seats on the court, granted in response to a request from Republican state lawmakers. The new, more conservative court concluded that gerrymandering was a "political" question and that the judiciary didn't need to involve itself.

While the old maps each had seven predominantly Republican districts and seven Democratic districts, the new maps effectively erased four of those Democratic seats.

"The new map easily ranks, along with Texas’s, as one of the two most extreme congressional maps currently in place," the Brennan Center wrote. "Indeed, the Republicans’ new North Carolina gerrymander is so durable that even an exceptionally strong Democratic wave year (think 2018) would not dislodge it. Even under the rosiest of foreseeable scenarios, Democrats win at most four of 14 seats. Put another way, Democrats could win a solid majority of the ballots cast for Congress, but their candidates would win less than 30 percent of seats thanks to Republicans’ carefully engineered gerrymander."

In addition to Harris' victory, Republican Mark Robinson's victory in the GOP gubernatorial primary also made headlines on Tuesday night. Robinson has called the LGBTQ+ community "filth," and likened them to "maggots" and "flies." He also said the Covid-19 pandemic was a "globalist" plot to oust Donald Trump from the White House.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Rep. Michelle Steel

Democrats Focus IVF Fire On Vulnerable GOP House Incumbents

Republicans continue to flounder when it comes to protecting access to IVF, and Democrats are intent on making it even worse for them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign organization designed to elect House Democrats, released a scathing memo Monday, blasting “so-called moderate House Republicans” who seek “political cover by backing non-binding House resolutions that do nothing to actually protect access to this vital health care.”

“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is poised to make House Republicans’ blatant disrespect for women and families a defining campaign issue,” the memo continues. They’re taking particular aim at members of the Biden 17—the 17 House Republicans who occupy districts that Joe Biden won in 2020—who have rushed out competing House resolutions to say how much they love IVF, but have refused to actually protect the treatment. They are empty promises, and Democrats won’t let them get away with it.

Democratic contender Derek Tran is using the DCCC’s message and running hard at GOP Rep. Michelle Steel in California’s 45th District, which Biden won by 6 percentage points in 2020. Steel is cosponsoring one of the nonbinding resolutions expressing support for IVF, but she is still a cosponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which declares that fertilized eggs have all the protections of actual human beings.

Steel is a “fraud,” Tran told NBC News. “She continues to spill out lies,” Tran said. “Just three weeks ago, she signed on to the Life at Conception bill. This is the second time she’s done that. And now she’s saying that she’s pro-IVF when the Life at Conception bill is anything but. So she still is just spilling out lies in order to get voters.”

Those vulnerable House Republicans sure aren’t going to get any guidance from their leadership. Here’s mushy Speaker Mike Johnson trying to have it all ways: “Look, I believe in the sanctity of every human life. Always have,” he told NBC. “And because of that I support IVF and its availability.” Oh, and he has “many close friends” who have used IVF.

“It needs to be readily available. It needs to be something that every American supports. And it needs to be handled in an ethical manner,” he said, complaining that there is “a lot of misunderstanding” about where Republicans stand on it. That’s no misunderstanding at all—that’s Republicans refusing to say whether they believe IVF needs to be statutorily protected.

This is a potent issue for Democrats, and they know it—from the Biden-Harris reelection team down to the DCCC. In a new CBS News/YouGov poll, a whopping 86 percent of Americans said IVF should be legal. The message from Democrats is simple: “House Republicans are flagrant hypocrites who have spent their entire tenure in the majority attacking reproductive rights at every turn,” Courtney Rice, a spokesperson for the DCCC, told HuffPost. “Now, they are hiding behind toothless resolutions and empty public statements because they know their relentless attacks on reproductive freedoms will cost them at the ballot box.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Donald Trump

Trump Calls GOP's Most Toxic Candidate 'Martin Luther King Times Two'

It’s hard to imagine a Republican Party candidate being even more offensive than Donald Trump, but North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is pulling out all the stops.

Over the years, the so-called pastor has called the Holocaust “hogwash” while defending Adolf Hitler. He’s posted Hitler quotes to his social media, accused actresses involved in the #MeToo movement of soliciting sex, called survivors of school shootings “media prosti-tots,” declared Barack Obama’s presidential portrait a reflection of “Marxist Socialism,” and told a nonbinary activist that they should only be allowed to go to the bathroom “outside with the dog.” Naturally, he has joined in delusional right-wing claims that Michelle Obama is a man.

This past Saturday, Trump endorsed Robinson and had something equally powerful to say about the man who has been consistently antisemitic, anti-gay, Islamaphobic, and simply disgusting.

“This is Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump told a rally crowd in North Carolina. “I told that to Mark. I said, ‘I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.’”

Trump went on to say that he was not sure Robinson liked the comparison.

“He looked at me,” said Trump, “and I wasn’t sure he was angry, because that’s a terrible thing to say or was he complimented? I have never figured it out.”

Robinson is currently running for governor of North Carolina and has a big lead in the polls going into the primary on Tuesday.

As Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer noted on “The Downballot,” Robinson may skate through the Republican primary but is expected to face a much tougher fight in the fall.

“So pretty much from the beginning, everyone's been expecting this to be a race pitting the Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson against the Democrat, Attorney General Josh Stein,” said Singer. “And it looks almost certainly like that's going to happen. Republicans have fretted for a long time that Robinson is going to be just a toxic nominee because he just has a long history of bigoted writings against, well, pretty much everyone. Again, antisemitic writings, Islamophobic writings, anti-trans writings, and just the statements he said about abortion. And just weird things he's written about, well, Beyoncé, about the moon landing. He's testing whether, even in the Trump era, some Republicans are just too toxic.”

Stein is Jewish, which can’t help but direct attention toward Robinson’s Hitler quotes, Holocaust denial, and years of antisemitism. His likely opponent’s religion probably plays into why Robinson has been making an effort in recent weeks to walk that part of his hate speech back, though he doesn’t seem alarmed enough to clean up his social media.

Despite the widespread visibility of Robinson’s remarks, supporters, including Republican Party officials, claim that reports of Robinson’s statements are “fake news.”

“I can’t help but think that that’s been manufactured by some opposition,” said Ed Broyhill, a national committeeman for the North Carolina Republican Party.

The only thing that may be more offensive than Robinson’s tirades are Trump’s statements comparing Robinson to Martin Luther King Jr. And this isn’t even the first time that Trump has told a similar story. The likely Republican presidential nominee first mentioned making this outrageous comparison in December.

Following a baseless claim that 20% of the mail-in vote was rigged, Trump reassured his supporters that Robinson would have things under control as governor.

”You know, I swear you’re better than Dr. Martin Luther King,” said Trump at that appearance, “And I wasn’t sure if he was happy about that comparison. Because Dr. Martin Luther King was great, and I think he didn’t like that comparison, but he accepted it.”

Why is Trump drawing a line between Robinson and King? It certainly wasn’t prompted by anything that Robinson said or any shared policy with the beloved civil rights leader.

It’s genuinely difficult to convey just how consistently horrible Robinson’s comments have been. His language is insensitive, sneering, vindictive, and ugly. But Robinson is Black, and he supports Trump. For a guy who believes Black people like him because he’s been indicted, treating all Black men as interchangeable seems perfectly in character for Trump.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

GOP Senate Candidate's 'Healer' Rhetoric May Backfire With MAGA Voters

GOP Senate Candidate's 'Healer' Rhetoric May Backfire With MAGA Voters

A multi-millionaire California bank owner aiming to oust US Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) this fall believes his campaign message of unity will win over voters, but according to a Daily Beast report, the feat may not be so easy for the GOP hedge fund manager.

Per the report, "despite all his calls for togetherness—and what some observers have deemed a 'meh' or 'weirdly lackluster' campaign kickoff—Hovde has long aligned himself with and donated to some of the most divisive and extreme Republicans."

Eric Hovde is set to be "a guest speaker alongside Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) at a Republican Party of Brown County dinner," next month, according to the Beast. "He already spoke at an event last fall with a Moms for Liberty activist and spent at least $8,000 as a sponsor of a conservative think-tank’s evening with Tucker Carlson, who used his air time to spout election fraud claims."

During his US Senate campaign launch last week, Hovde asked the audience gathered at one of his real estate company's properties, "Are you ready to be uniters and healers for your country? Are you ready to restore the American dream?"

In a similarly worded message via X (formerly Twitter), the 59-year-old wrote, "I don’t believe in the politics of destruction. That’s what has gotten us to where we are today. The worst problem facing our nation is the division. We are ripping apart our friendships and our families over politics. I’m in this fight to usher in a new brand of leadership and end politics as usual."

Supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the Beast notes, Hovde will soon need "to kiss the Donald’s ring, especially at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee," University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political science professor Kathleen Dolan told the news outlet.

"For him to generate interest, and for him to help generate that turnout, I think he’s got to be more of what the Republican voters here are going to expect," Dolan said. "He doesn’t want Trump to think that he isn’t as loyal as he can be. He doesn’t want Trump to question him at all. His best chance of getting elected is to ride on Trump’s coattails and ride on any Republican wave here in Wisconsin if it appears, and he can’t do that as successfully by taking this middle road."

Dolan also raised the question, "Is it just about his own sort of self-aggrandizement, or does he really want to be Senator from Wisconsin?" Noting that Hovde "'isn’t a visible person' and has the 'carpetbagger problem,' so Democrats will be working hard to shape his introduction to potential voters."

The Beast reports Hovde first launched his bid to enter Wisconsin politics in 2012, campaigning on the message of repealing "former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. He also shared his support for overturning Roe v. Wade, saying he was 'totally opposed' to legalized abortion. His former campaign website declared, 'We must defend and protect all human life from conception to natural death.' (The site also announced he believes 'that marriage is between one man and one woman.')"

His Senate campaign over a decade later, according to the report, notes that the multi-millionaire changed his abortion stance to "saying he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the mother’s life."

Despite his efforts, Democratic Party of Wisconsin rapid response director Arik Wolk told the news outlet, "Eric Hovde will push a divisive out-of-touch agenda that bans abortion nationwide and repeals the Affordable Care Act. From bankrolling anti-choice politicians to standing with extremist figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Wisconsinites know Hovde is out of step with Wisconsin values."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.