On this date in both 2018, and 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Georgia State Senator Michael E. Williams, who was elected to his first term in office back in 2014. After being the first Republican politician in Georgia to endorse uber-racist presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 elections, in the 2018 elections, Williams has opted to not run for a second term in the Georgia State Senate, instead opting to aim much higher early in his career, thinking he had a crack at becoming the Governor of Georgia in 2018. Williams drew headlines four times Michael Williams during his campaign for governor. The first time he distinguished himself as being a concern was in June of 2017, when he appeared at an anti-Sharia Law rally being held in the name of paranoid Islamophobia by the anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, where he was more than willing to pose with the Georgia Security Force 3% Militia, who just so happen to be a hate group with dual interests, intersecting as not just rabid anti-Islamic nuts who infamously protested a mosque being built in Newton County, and also were not long prior holding a in defense of Confederate monuments. They’re a nice intersection of hate, and Williams was more than happy to pose with them for a photo where they were flashing white supremacist signs. It was only after the Southern Poverty Law Center and the media took note of their friendly little meeting that Williams’ spokesman gave the meager defense that he thought the militant racists were just “pro-gun supporters”. So Williams went to an Anti-Islam rally and hung out with Neo-Confederates… but it’s not like he’s staunchly defending Confederate monuments himself or anyth- oh, whoops, he has, on live television, such as in August of 2017 when he was outraged at the thought of monuments being defaced, blaming it on Antifa, and falling all over himself in outrage that anyone would want to blast the face off of Stone Mountain Georgia. Enough so that only a few weeks after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, that was carried out by way of using bump stocks to make the guns used fully automatic, that Michael Williams announced that he would be raffling off bump stocks at one of his campaign rallies. And then Williams went on CNN to defend his criticisms of Delta Airlines, after it decided to end a discount partnership with the NRA following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Williams began outright lying around this time to say that Delta was still clearly acting on partisan lines because it offered discounts to employees of Planned Parenthood. On air, anchor Brianna Keilar called him out for making an untrue statement, and he doubled down, defending his lie because he and other GOP State Senators in Georgia “looked it up on Google” and then spent a couple days arguing with Keilar on Twitter, claiming that he’d defended his statement. He then began touting his idea to solve our immigration crisis with a “deportation bus” that would catch, per the painted on sign on its windows, “murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molestors, and other criminals”. Yes, because this bigot also can’t spell. The end result of the ad was… Williams got banned from Youtube for violating their terms of service because he was sharing super racist views. Michael Williams ended up finishing fourth on the GOP Primary in his quest to become the next Governor of Georgia. But it was what happened AFTER the election that we found far more satisfying… it seems that Williams fell victim to a break-in at his own campaign offices, and then filed a fraudulent insurance claim that estimated the value of the computers stolen at almost thirty times their actual worth. Williams ended up giving a guilty plea to a lesser charge and got four years of probation for the crime.
On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Ted Crockett, the former Shelby County Commissioner who was a 2018 candidate for the Alabama House of Representatives from District 45. Ted Crockett is the former spokesman for Roy Mooreduring his ill-fated attempt to get elected to the Senate, Crockett defended the worst of Moore’s racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and yes, all the accusations of him spending his 30s sexually pursuing underage girls. In the process, Crockett taught us all a lot about him, as well, including his belief that homosexuality should be a crime. Only a year later, Ted Crockett was running for the Alabama House of Representatives, and continued being a theocratic loon, including insisting that Muslims should not be allowed to run for public office, because they refuse to swear on a Bible… which Jake Tapper had to point out to him that the law does not necessitate the book in question being a Bible, and it is chosen by the political figure. Upon learning this fact, Crockett was just completely befuddled. Alarmingly, Crockett only missed being elected in the GOP Primary by about 700 votes, even after showing himself to be some sort of younger clone of Roy Moore so we will set aside his profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 989-50, since this was established in July 2014.
Jo Rae Perkins
Welcome to what is the 989th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling
Jo Rae Perkins, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. House of Representatives in Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in 2014, 2016, and 2018, losing each time to the also bats*** Republican
Art Robinson in the GOP Primary for that seat. She has run afoul of the law before, having been
charged with harassment and hindering prosecution in 2005, and
twice filed for personal bankruptcy, in 1997 and 2009. But recently, she was a 2020 Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Oregon candidate who yes, is the latest in a far too line of folks we’ve profiled who
ran for office while being supporters of the Qanon Conspiracy theory.
Just in case you think she might not actually believe in something so stupid, and was just milking the hype for potential votes,
she swore an oath to Qanon online, promising to be a “digital soldier” for them, and specifically mentioned them in her victory speech after the GOP Primary:
When CNN went to interview her about her reprehensible belief in it,
she was bewildered to see the reporters who showed up were wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic and let them know they “didn’t work”:
Joe Rae Perkins got a far too high total of
39% of the vote in the 2020 election. She since has announced she will run for U.S. Senate again in 2022, looking to unseat Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, but her path to victory looks pretty much blocked given that
she has posted video of herself in attendance at the January 6th rally that devolved into a violent coup attempt being carried out on behalf of Donald Trump.
To give you an idea of how extremely conservative the eastern portion of a blue state like Oregon is, they still voted for her in 2020, and she one a third of the counties in the state. Should she win the GOP Primary somehow in 2022, we would expect a repeat of her performance, if not a worse showing.