All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Godzilla2099]

He’s an aspiring rapper with videos on YouTube which should give an indication of what he’s into, etc. Apparently has a long criminal record.

I just read this guy's rap sheet...who in their right mind lets somebody like that walk?

[Tami]

The problem is, for me, then it becomes a giant echo chamber, and I really don't want that.

Balance is achievable, as long as you can juggle having an open mind with the understanding that some of what you read or hear is likely to have no basis in facts.

It's good to hear from both sides, however, these days the other side often doesn't even make any sense.

I have access to a wide variety of news sources, including international publications. I just stay away from 'news' sources that are NOT news sources.

[achilles]

I just read this guy's rap sheet...who in their right mind lets somebody like that walk?

Highlights of said rap sheet?

[babyblob]

I just read this guy's rap sheet...who in their right mind lets somebody like that walk?

I heard he was out on bail at the time. So he has a long criminal record, was out on bail and fleeing from another crime. Yikes!

[Godzilla2099]

Highlights of said rap sheet?

All starts in 1999. It's pages and pages to go through. Majority of it are drug charges, concealed weapons/firearms, domestic battery/assault (intent on great harm), bail jumping/parole violations

Highlights I found was another felony of Reckless Endangering the Safety of others last year in 2020, resisting/obstructing an officer, and finally a tier 2 sex offender in the state of Nevada

I heard he was out on bail at the time. So he has a long criminal record, was out on bail and fleeing from another crime. Yikes!

Yeah, I read that too.

[babyblob]

All starts in 1999. It's pages and pages to go through. Majority of it are drug charges, concealed weapons/firearms, domestic battery/assault (intent on great harm), bail jumping/parole violations

Highlights I found was another felony of Reckless Endangering the Safety of others last year in 2020, resisting/obstructing an officer, and finally a tier 2 sex offender in the state of Nevada



Yeah, I read that too.

I heard he has a history of Bail jumping. So that gives the question why was he out on bail again. NBC said something about 3 bail jumps in the past. So why give him a chance to do it a 4th time? Things keep coming in so I dont know how accurate it is. But if it is true he should have been in jail and not on bail.

[Gray Lensman]

In other news, the last statewide Republican elected official on the west coast stepped down today - and they were a Never Trumper.

[Tami]

In other news, the last statewide Republican elected official on the west coast stepped down today - and they were a Never Trumper.

Who is it?

List of U.S. Congress incumbents who are not running for re-election in 2022

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled of Mark Souder, who was a big proponent of abstinence-only sex education, who just so happened to have been caught sleeping with the wife of a Republican County Commissioner. The same wife who he once went on a local Indiana talk show to promote... you guessed it, abstinence. Further adding to his hypocrisy is the fact that he was in office long enough to have voted for the impeachment of Bill Clinton for... lying about being unfaithful to his spouse. Souder's hypocrisy goes even deeper, when you also include the fact that he filed legal challenges to stop same sex marriages from taking place in Washington, D.C. to "protect the sanctity of marriage" when he wasn't even protecting the sanctity of his own. The fact that Souder was also a big ally of Rick Santorum, with both claiming they were victims of discrimination for believing in intelligent design and creationism while denying the science of evolution.


In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted profiles of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who in our first profile, we discussed his three terms as Texas Attorney General where he worked with Gov. Rick Perry, serving as one of the front line soldiers in the sorts of Fundamentalist conservative culture wars the state of Texas has fought against equality, and frankly, facts over the past decade and a half, including filing 27 separate lawsuits against the federal government in the first five years of the Obama presidency alone, once joking that his daily routine is "I go into the office in the morning. I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.”. The great majority of those legal challenges were obviously doomed to fail upon review by judges at some level, but that didn't stop Abbott from filing them anyway to prolong a constitutional battle at of partisan spite at a cost of millions of dollars to Texas taxpayers. No ridiculous legal statute passed in Texas is beneath him, including his obsessive quest to make sure that dildos cannot be sold in the Lone Star State, but fighting tooth and nail to make sure that firearms can be purchased without a background check. In 2007, The Washington Post reported Attorney General Abbott declined to pursue charges against employees of a Texas youth prison who were sexually abusing underage inmates after a Texas ranger had sent e-mails to him with evidence and asking him to put a stop to the abuses for TWO YEARS. Greg Abbott is a man who violated the tenets of our very democracy to suit partisan ends by gerrymandering in his own state, and then sued when the Department of Justice tried blocking the racist policy by arguing it wasn’t racist, by pointing out it was just wholly partisan based on party affiliation, writing, ”DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats.” Prior to the 2012 elections, Abbott threatened to arrest poll watchers from Europe, who were monitoring the ethics of American elections, and claiming there were “closely affiliated with ACORN” which was amazing because ACORN ceased to exist three years prior to the election. In 2016, he sued the federal government (and lost) because he didn’t want Texas to resettle any refugees fleeing Syria, and threatened to sue any Christian organizations that would, y’know, follow the Bible and take in refugees like it preaches.

Greg Abbott is also an opponent of all kinds of immigration, be it legal or otherwise, fights back against equal pay for women, is a gay reparative therapy supporter, and a climate change denier who is beyond “hands off” with giants of industry, arguing that the government should not regulate chemical giants and that if citizens wanted to be aware of what chemical agents were being used by them, they should just “drive around and ask”, and the companies would simply acquiesce. Gov. Abbott is hyperpartisan enough that he has been quoted saying that “Democrats are a more dangerous threat than North Korea” and has thanked supporters for referring to his opponent in the 2014 elections, Wendy Davis, as “Retard Barbie”.

Perhaps the most egregious example of Greg Abbott being a paranoid lunatic, though, was over the summer of 2014, when several radical conspiracy theorists, the kind who are avid fans of Alex Jones and InfoWars, were frothing at the mouth in fear of routine military exercises known as Jade Helm 15 that they, as kooks are wont to do, imagined to be a government invasion coming to take their guns away, ship them off to work as slave labor in WalMarts (as if WalMart needed any help with that) and impose Sharia Law upon the imprisoned populace. Abbott actually sent the Texas State Guard to “monitor” the activities of the joint exercise between the Green Berets and Navy Seals, our own armed forces, just in case they really were going to swoop in when no one was looking and conquer poor Texas (which is still already a part of our country). Unbelievably, Gov. Abbott decided to waste taxpayer money to keep a watchful eye on American troops to make sure they didn’t come for us all in the night, rather than just dismiss an insane conspiracy theory, that he seemingly also fell for (or exploited). Fast forward a few weeks, though, and after Texas had a series of storms that left the state flooded, Greg Abbott’s mistrust of the federal government was gone when he started asking for relief aid funding to be sent to his state. Because apparently, he also has the memory of a goldfish.

Gov. Abbott won re-election in 2018, and he’s already hitting the fear-mongering hits by sending out fund-raising letters to drum up fears of an “immigration coup” and warning about how gun control will just lead to Hitler, when people asked about maybe changing Texas gun laws after a lunatic murdered a couple dozen people in a Sutherland Springs church, which maybe shows you his priorities are a bit f***ed up. It was only after another mass shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, that Abbott finally started to make noise about doing something about mass shootings in his state, all that he really accomplished was postponing his campaign giving away a shotgun at a campaign rally. That brief flirtation with even moving in any way towards a stance of being a human being ended pretty quick, though, as Abbott shortly thereafter made news by trying to insert himself into a custody hearing about a transgender youth to grant custody to the father who wants to deny hormone blocking treatments and prevent his son from having a sex change. Classic Republican hypocrisy… they’re “smaller government” unless it involves someone’s genitals.

In 2020, the threat of Covid-19 saw the White House lead a disastrous response plan that led many governors around the country to take matters into their own hands. And while the governors in many blue states did all they could to take measures to attempt to set limits on public gatherings and close restaurants and bars to avoid the spread of the disease… Greg Abbott only wanted to close the abortion clinics, but keep everything else running. His irrational desire to reopen his state as early as April based on false statistics (lies) had the predictable result of Texas becoming one of the hottest hot-spots for coronavirus in the nation. Texas alone had one million positive cases eight months into the pandemic. That is not a typo. The state has 29 million people, and one million were infected in eight months.

Oh, and not for nothing, but Greg Abbott also made it clear what his feelings are about American democracy, as his October 2020 attempt at yanking all but one of the ballot collection sites per Texas county to make sure there would be no way Texas might turn blue reeked of desperation.

[worstblogever]

Just… just look at this timeline from the past year:

• February 16th, 2021: Texas is hit by a winter storm that causes massive blackouts due to Abbott’s failure to winterize equipment in the Texas power grid. The same thing happened ten years prior, and nothing had been done to fix the problem during his tenure. 210 people end up dying as a result of the storm.
• February 17th, 2021: Gov. Abbott lies and claims the winter storm’s power outages were due to “wind turbines”, when the real reason is his state refused to join any national power grid to avoid federal oversight upon the energy industry there, and his failure to require power companies to winterize their equipment to keep it running in the cold. Critics note all the stupid culture war battles Abbott and his Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have waged over the decade since, rather than address this very real concern in his state that could be handled with basic regulations.
• March 2nd, 2021: Against the advice of health officials, Greg Abbott lifts all mask mandates in the state of Texas when his state still has ICUs overwhelmed with positive Covid-19 cases.
• April 26th, 2021: Abbott boldly claims that Texas is “approaching herd immunity” during the pandemic. Follow-up questions indicate he has no idea what statistical goalposts the state would need to pass in terms of population percentage to achieve such a thing.
• May 19th, 2021: Greg Abbott signs a ban on abortion at six weeks, aimed at overturning the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The completely insane and almost certain to be overturned law (if the Supreme Court ever gets around to hearing the case) , deputizes and incentivizes private citizens ― even those who aren’t Texas residents ― to sue individuals involved in “aiding or abetting” an abortion. That could be a doctor, a friend or even the driver who dropped the pregnant person off at the clinic.
• May 31st, 2021: Texas Democrats in the state legislature stage a walk-out to prevent the passage of a voter suppression bill Abbott favors. Abbott responds by getting on Twitter and threatening to defund the state legislature, in a fascist attack upon the checks and balances in American government.
• June 9th, 2021: Greg Abbott is so threatened by the existence of the New York Times’ 1619 project to teach American children about systematic racism and the part it played in our country’s history that he signs a bill to create Texas’ “1836 project” that teaches about the state’s “patriotic” ways and “Christian heritage”. (*cough*white-nationalism*cough*)
• June 15th, 2021: Gov. Abbott signs a bill to forbid public school teachers from discussing racism in any way in the classroom, a decidedly white nationalist policy move.
• June 18th, 2021: Greg Abbott makes good on his earlier threat to Texas Democrats and vetoes a state budget bill so that the legislature is defunded.
• June 23rd, 2021: Abbott calls for a special session of the state legislature to try and take a second crack at passing his voter suppression bill.
• July 12th, 2021: Texas Democrats in the state legislature leave the state en masse in a move to prevent the passage of Abbott’s voter suppression bill by denying Texas Republicans a quorum to do so.
• August 4th, 2021: Gov. Abbott signs an executive order to again, ban mask mandates.
• August 5th, 2021: Greg Abbott calls for a second special session of the state legislature to try to get a voter suppression bill passed.
• September 7th, 2021: Abbott finally gets his voter suppression bill signed, with obvious legal challenges to whether or not it is even constitutional to follow.
• September 7th, 2021: Gov. Abbott, while touting his six week abortion ban, is asked if it leaves enough time for victims of sexual assault to even know if they’re pregnant and then get an abortion, and claims he will “eliminate all rapists”. (Texas has the highest rape rate in the nation, incidentally.)
• September 24th, 2021: Greg Abbott caves to pressure from Donald Trump and promises to waste taxpayer dollars in the millions to do an “audit” of the 2020 election results in his state. A state… which Trump won.
• October 11th, 2021: As many Texas businesses begin issuing vaccine mandates to their employees, suddenly Greg Abbott’s “hands off” approach to letting businesses run things their own way is put on hold, and he issues an executive order to try to forbid them to do so. Most just ignore his flailing attempt to continue to worsen the death toll from the pandemic.
• October 18th, 2021: Gov. Abbott goes on Fox News to whine to Maria Bartiromo about Covid-19 vaccine mandates saying, “WHERE DOES IT END?” Critics respond, “After they get the shot”.
• October 30th, 2021: Rather than spending money to fix Texas’ power grid after the failures that killed 210 people only nine months earlier, Abbott announces that he will work towards building a useless physical wall along the U.S./Mexico border in his state.
• November 1st, 2021: As his poll numbers slide, Greg Abbott tries to fan the flames of the culture wars more, declaring that many books in school libraries contain “pornography” and begins trying to eliminate anything with any kind of LGBTQ content or titles by LGBTQ authors.
• November 10th, 2021: A judge overturns Abbott’s executive order to ban mask mandates in public schools.

Greg Abbott’s up for re-election in 2022, and trails in prospective polls against either former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, or actor Matthew McConaughey, currently. We have to hold out hope that his systematic attempts at voter suppression don’t guarantee him a victory he truly doesn’t deserve next November, because Texas has no chance of crawling out of the darkness under his twisted rule.

[Mister Mets]

Who is it?

List of U.S. Congress incumbents who are not running for re-election in 2022

The Secretary of State of Washington is resigning to serve as the Senior Election Security Lead for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency/

https://www.q13fox.com/news/washingt...n-security-job

[Tami]

The Secretary of State of Washington is resigning to serve as the Senior Election Security Lead for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency/

https://www.q13fox.com/news/washingt...n-security-job

Oh yeah. She's being replaced by a Democrat appointed by the Governor. Seems like it's working out for her, she's getting a promotion to D.C.

[Malvolio]

Just… just look at this timeline from the past year:

• February 16th, 2021: Texas is hit by a winter storm that causes massive blackouts due to Abbott’s failure to winterize equipment in the Texas power grid. The same thing happened ten years prior, and nothing had been done to fix the problem during his tenure. 210 people end up dying as a result of the storm.
• February 17th, 2021: Gov. Abbott lies and claims the winter storm’s power outages were due to “wind turbines”, when the real reason is his state refused to join any national power grid to avoid federal oversight upon the energy industry there, and his failure to require power companies to winterize their equipment to keep it running in the cold. Critics note all the stupid culture war battles Abbott and his Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have waged over the decade since, rather than address this very real concern in his state that could be handled with basic regulations.
• March 2nd, 2021: Against the advice of health officials, Greg Abbott lifts all mask mandates in the state of Texas when his state still has ICUs overwhelmed with positive Covid-19 cases.
• April 26th, 2021: Abbott boldly claims that Texas is “approaching herd immunity” during the pandemic. Follow-up questions indicate he has no idea what statistical goalposts the state would need to pass in terms of population percentage to achieve such a thing.
• May 19th, 2021: Greg Abbott signs a ban on abortion at six weeks, aimed at overturning the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The completely insane and almost certain to be overturned law (if the Supreme Court ever gets around to hearing the case) , deputizes and incentivizes private citizens ― even those who aren’t Texas residents ― to sue individuals involved in “aiding or abetting” an abortion. That could be a doctor, a friend or even the driver who dropped the pregnant person off at the clinic.
• May 31st, 2021: Texas Democrats in the state legislature stage a walk-out to prevent the passage of a voter suppression bill Abbott favors. Abbott responds by getting on Twitter and threatening to defund the state legislature, in a fascist attack upon the checks and balances in American government.
• June 9th, 2021: Greg Abbott is so threatened by the existence of the New York Times’ 1619 project to teach American children about systematic racism and the part it played in our country’s history that he signs a bill to create Texas’ “1836 project” that teaches about the state’s “patriotic” ways and “Christian heritage”. (*cough*white-nationalism*cough*)
• June 15th, 2021: Gov. Abbott signs a bill to forbid public school teachers from discussing racism in any way in the classroom, a decidedly white nationalist policy move.
• June 18th, 2021: Greg Abbott makes good on his earlier threat to Texas Democrats and vetoes a state budget bill so that the legislature is defunded.
• June 23rd, 2021: Abbott calls for a special session of the state legislature to try and take a second crack at passing his voter suppression bill.
• July 12th, 2021: Texas Democrats in the state legislature leave the state en masse in a move to prevent the passage of Abbott’s voter suppression bill by denying Texas Republicans a quorum to do so.
• August 4th, 2021: Gov. Abbott signs an executive order to again, ban mask mandates.
• August 5th, 2021: Greg Abbott calls for a second special session of the state legislature to try to get a voter suppression bill passed.
• September 7th, 2021: Abbott finally gets his voter suppression bill signed, with obvious legal challenges to whether or not it is even constitutional to follow.
• September 7th, 2021: Gov. Abbott, while touting his six week abortion ban, is asked if it leaves enough time for victims of sexual assault to even know if they’re pregnant and then get an abortion, and claims he will “eliminate all rapists”. (Texas has the highest rape rate in the nation, incidentally.)
• September 24th, 2021: Greg Abbott caves to pressure from Donald Trump and promises to waste taxpayer dollars in the millions to do an “audit” of the 2020 election results in his state. A state… which Trump won.
• October 11th, 2021: As many Texas businesses begin issuing vaccine mandates to their employees, suddenly Greg Abbott’s “hands off” approach to letting businesses run things their own way is put on hold, and he issues an executive order to try to forbid them to do so. Most just ignore his flailing attempt to continue to worsen the death toll from the pandemic.
• October 18th, 2021: Gov. Abbott goes on Fox News to whine to Maria Bartiromo about Covid-19 vaccine mandates saying, “WHERE DOES IT END?” Critics respond, “After they get the shot”.
• October 30th, 2021: Rather than spending money to fix Texas’ power grid after the failures that killed 210 people only nine months earlier, Abbott announces that he will work towards building a useless physical wall along the U.S./Mexico border in his state.
• November 1st, 2021: As his poll numbers slide, Greg Abbott tries to fan the flames of the culture wars more, declaring that many books in school libraries contain “pornography” and begins trying to eliminate anything with any kind of LGBTQ content or titles by LGBTQ authors.
• November 10th, 2021: A judge overturns Abbott’s executive order to ban mask mandates in public schools.

Greg Abbott’s up for re-election in 2022, and trails in prospective polls against either former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, or actor Matthew McConaughey, currently. We have to hold out hope that his systematic attempts at voter suppression don’t guarantee him a victory he truly doesn’t deserve next November, because Texas has no chance of crawling out of the darkness under his twisted rule.

Is Matthew McConaughey really running? Or is this just a campaign to draft a politically minded celebrity, like when they tried to draft Ashley Judd to run against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky?

[worstblogever]

Is Matthew McConaughey really running? Or is this just a campaign to draft a politically minded celebrity, like when they tried to draft Ashley Judd to run against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky?

He's not announced, and I hope he doesn't.

Pretty sure I know his stance on legalizing weed in Texas, though.

[Mister Mets]

Just… just look at this timeline from the past year:

• February 16th, 2021: Texas is hit by a winter storm that causes massive blackouts due to Abbott’s failure to winterize equipment in the Texas power grid. The same thing happened ten years prior, and nothing had been done to fix the problem during his tenure. 210 people end up dying as a result of the storm.
• February 17th, 2021: Gov. Abbott lies and claims the winter storm’s power outages were due to “wind turbines”, when the real reason is his state refused to join any national power grid to avoid federal oversight upon the energy industry there, and his failure to require power companies to winterize their equipment to keep it running in the cold. Critics note all the stupid culture war battles Abbott and his Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have waged over the decade since, rather than address this very real concern in his state that could be handled with basic regulations.
• March 2nd, 2021: Against the advice of health officials, Greg Abbott lifts all mask mandates in the state of Texas when his state still has ICUs overwhelmed with positive Covid-19 cases.
• April 26th, 2021: Abbott boldly claims that Texas is “approaching herd immunity” during the pandemic. Follow-up questions indicate he has no idea what statistical goalposts the state would need to pass in terms of population percentage to achieve such a thing.
• May 19th, 2021: Greg Abbott signs a ban on abortion at six weeks, aimed at overturning the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The completely insane and almost certain to be overturned law (if the Supreme Court ever gets around to hearing the case) , deputizes and incentivizes private citizens ― even those who aren’t Texas residents ― to sue individuals involved in “aiding or abetting” an abortion. That could be a doctor, a friend or even the driver who dropped the pregnant person off at the clinic.
• May 31st, 2021: Texas Democrats in the state legislature stage a walk-out to prevent the passage of a voter suppression bill Abbott favors. Abbott responds by getting on Twitter and threatening to defund the state legislature, in a fascist attack upon the checks and balances in American government.
• June 9th, 2021: Greg Abbott is so threatened by the existence of the New York Times’ 1619 project to teach American children about systematic racism and the part it played in our country’s history that he signs a bill to create Texas’ “1836 project” that teaches about the state’s “patriotic” ways and “Christian heritage”. (*cough*white-nationalism*cough*)
• June 15th, 2021: Gov. Abbott signs a bill to forbid public school teachers from discussing racism in any way in the classroom, a decidedly white nationalist policy move.
• June 18th, 2021: Greg Abbott makes good on his earlier threat to Texas Democrats and vetoes a state budget bill so that the legislature is defunded.
• June 23rd, 2021: Abbott calls for a special session of the state legislature to try and take a second crack at passing his voter suppression bill.
• July 12th, 2021: Texas Democrats in the state legislature leave the state en masse in a move to prevent the passage of Abbott’s voter suppression bill by denying Texas Republicans a quorum to do so.
• August 4th, 2021: Gov. Abbott signs an executive order to again, ban mask mandates.
• August 5th, 2021: Greg Abbott calls for a second special session of the state legislature to try to get a voter suppression bill passed.
• September 7th, 2021: Abbott finally gets his voter suppression bill signed, with obvious legal challenges to whether or not it is even constitutional to follow.
• September 7th, 2021: Gov. Abbott, while touting his six week abortion ban, is asked if it leaves enough time for victims of sexual assault to even know if they’re pregnant and then get an abortion, and claims he will “eliminate all rapists”. (Texas has the highest rape rate in the nation, incidentally.)
• September 24th, 2021: Greg Abbott caves to pressure from Donald Trump and promises to waste taxpayer dollars in the millions to do an “audit” of the 2020 election results in his state. A state… which Trump won.
• October 11th, 2021: As many Texas businesses begin issuing vaccine mandates to their employees, suddenly Greg Abbott’s “hands off” approach to letting businesses run things their own way is put on hold, and he issues an executive order to try to forbid them to do so. Most just ignore his flailing attempt to continue to worsen the death toll from the pandemic.
• October 18th, 2021: Gov. Abbott goes on Fox News to whine to Maria Bartiromo about Covid-19 vaccine mandates saying, “WHERE DOES IT END?” Critics respond, “After they get the shot”.
• October 30th, 2021: Rather than spending money to fix Texas’ power grid after the failures that killed 210 people only nine months earlier, Abbott announces that he will work towards building a useless physical wall along the U.S./Mexico border in his state.
• November 1st, 2021: As his poll numbers slide, Greg Abbott tries to fan the flames of the culture wars more, declaring that many books in school libraries contain “pornography” and begins trying to eliminate anything with any kind of LGBTQ content or titles by LGBTQ authors.
• November 10th, 2021: A judge overturns Abbott’s executive order to ban mask mandates in public schools.

Greg Abbott’s up for re-election in 2022, and trails in prospective polls against either former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, or actor Matthew McConaughey, currently. We have to hold out hope that his systematic attempts at voter suppression don’t guarantee him a victory he truly doesn’t deserve next November, because Texas has no chance of crawling out of the darkness under his twisted rule.

According to your link, Abbott leads Beto by about five points.

The poll also found that 37% of those surveyed said they would vote for O’Rourke if he ran against Abbott in 2022. That puts O’Rourke in a striking distance of just 5 percentage points behind Abbott. He was 12 points behind Abbott two months ago.

Oh yeah. She's being replaced by a Democrat appointed by the Governor. Seems like it's working out for her, she's getting a promotion to D.C.

It works for everyone. She gets a promotion. Democrats get rid of the one Republican official with a proven record of winning in the state. Biden's election reform initiative gets bipartisan credibility.

Though there may be weird stuff going on in Washington state.

Seattle recently recently elected a Republican city manager.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...r-ann-davison/

In that case, the Democratic nominee was really weak.

Thomas-Kennedy said she is not advocating for the immediate abolition of police, calling it a process. Abolition does not mean a “lawless dystopian … future,” she wrote. “If we build healthy communities … where de-escalation and violence interruption are common skills … we won’t need cops, courts, and lawyers.”

Seattle, Washington state’s most populous city, has not had a Republican mayor since 1969. But Davison had the endorsement of several prominent Democrats in the state, including former governors Christine Gregoire and Gary Locke.