Here's an update on the CA-34 top-two Congressional race mentioned on this blog a few days ago. The turnout is a little less appalling, up over 100,000 total votes at this point. Green candidate Kenneth Mejia's count is at 25.98% and rising as the absentee tally continues.
In case anyone needs reminding, to most of the voting world, a 74-26 margin looks like a slaughter. For a minor-party apparatchik, a 26% showing against a corporate-party incumbent is pretty damn impressive.
As a bonus, a little ways down the San Diego Freeway, the Blue Wave appears to have wiped out Republican former surfer Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48. Once upon a time back in the 1990s, Rohrabacher was something of a moderate, at least on social issues, but he has moved rightward with the rest of his party. Apparently his Orange County district hasn't kept pace with that rightward migration. In 2016, he won re-election by a comfortable 58-42 margin, even while Hillary Clinton won it with 48% to 46% for What's-His-Face.
Arizona
While the Democratic Hate Brigade has been raining toxic Tweets upon Angela Green for "spoiling" the Senate race in Arizona, they may be missing the real story. Late vote tallies now put Democrat Kyrsten Sinema ahead by 9,000 votes, 0.5%. Green, the Democrat-turned-Green, a week before Election Day, halfway through early voting and after she had already bagged about 30,000 votes. Sinema, the Green-turned-Democrat, may just hang on to flip John McCain's long-held Senate seat. Meanwhile, AZ Central has posted another article about Green's not-entirely-by-the-book run, from her switching party affiliation last year to her write-in primary campaign to the headline-grabbing belated withdrawal and endorsement of Sinema. It contains a little more detail than last week's piece. Colorado Green activist Gary Swing, now the avatar of the Boiling Frog Party, has posted a lengthy Facebook status about the Angela Green kerfuffle, with a link to a lengthier blog post of his from 2015. This morning's news from Arizona sure was a waker-upper: several sources reporting that US Senate nominee Angela Green had abruptly dropped out of the race and thrown her support behind Democrat Krysten Sinema.
Aw, hell no! Bad call, Ms. Green. Given that the sources on the first page of Duck Duck Go results are almost all right-leaning outlets—Fox News, Daily Caller, Politicus USA, NewMax—I wasn't sure whether to believe it. (Not gonna link to those.) The Hill (center-right pretending to be objective) also posted an item. I had to see this video clip on an interview with Green, from Phoenix's NBC affiliate, before I was convinced. As of this writing, neither Green's website nor that of the Arizona Green Party have any news about her withdrawing from the race. In fact, Green's home page specifically mentions that she has resisted calls from "those who have requested, asked, demanded, harassed, and bullied me to remove myself from the ballot in order for their major party candidate to win." Thus quoth the prophet Kermit: "It's not easy being Green." Certainly, to be marginalized or persecuted for things you can't help—ethnicity, gender, orientation, age—is a far heavier burden. But, as with atheism, what with atheists' poll numbers lower than used car salespeople, persecution on matters of conscience or philosophical orientation is still persecution. It's un-American, but it still happens in America.
This year in Texas, for the first time since 2008, we of the Green persuasion have no candidates politically aligned with us. There may be a few Democrats with progressive reputations and policy positions, except for those one or two positions that are deal-breakers. It's difficult to find anyone on the ballot, at any level, who explicitly favors
Yeah, most of these are issues that candidates for Land Commissioner or Justice of the Peace would find outside their purview. Candidates for any office in Texas can still take a soundly progressive position on matters germane to that office. Whether they can expect to win the nomination in a Democratic Party with those positions is another matter. Speaking of positions on issues, this would be a good time to remind folks heading to the polls the peek at the League of Women Voters guide, available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Ho-hum. Kayleen and I have lost another friend, both on Facebook and in real life, due to his advanced Trump Derangement Syndrome. He wasn't a close friend, but I'll miss his humor-laden political posts and his keen insight on soccer for someone who's relatively new to the game. I wish him well in the new, improved life he is currently undertaking. His occasional post-midnight drunken rants, however, I shall not miss.
In this man's mind, all of us who voted for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in 2016 are responsible for throwing the presidential race to the Republicans. We purposefully ignored Democrats' warnings about how a Trump presidency would alter the Supreme Court irreparably, now giving us Justice Brett "Devil's Triangle" Kavanaugh and possible lifetime appointments for more accused pussy-grabbers. When reminded that a) those votes weren't stolen from Hillary Clinton because they didn't belong to her in the first place, and b) third-party votes in Texas did not affect who won the state's 38 electoral votes, this fellow busted out some hyperbole about Stein "getting the 0.000001% of the vote that she deserved" or words to that effect, thus defeating his own argument. It's rather startling how this little episode has brought certain things into sharper focus:
More on both of these later in this post.
Wow. I'm kinda conflicted about this, and not for the reasons you might think.
Through Arlington school board candidate Hunter Crow's post on the GPTX Facebook page, I learned this morning that apparently Jesse Ventura wants to run for president as a Green. The key word is "apparently," because it isn't self-evident that Ventura had anything to do with the creation of the website. Still, The Governing Body has recently spoken in speculative terms about a presidential run. As of now, the Jesse Ventura 2020 site is a bit rudimentary:
This Facebook page looks even less legitimate. This is all I have left to say about last week's WTF—I hope. (In this case, WTF stands for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.)
Anybody, regardless of political affinity or physical location, can sign up on the GPTX website to get email updates, to volunteer, or to donate. When you sign up, your name and any contact information you share go into the database. Being listed in the database does not make you a member; according to the GPTX Bylaws, you have to show up and participate in your local county party's meetings and activities, and attest that you are in general agreement with the Ten Key Values to be considered a member. Voting Green also does not make one a member of any Green Party organization. Hundreds of thousands of Texas residents have voted for Green candidates just in the past few election cycles; however, are actual membership statewide runs in the low three digits. I'm not vouching for the accuracy of either of these sources. I merely present them for your consideration, and to illustrate how acting on incomplete or unverified information can be destructive.
Right now, I'm really glad that I did not publish the damage-control article that I wrote for txgreens.org after my blog post from earlier today, because I did not have all the necessary facts. More information may yet spill out on this matter. If it's true that Harris County Green Party Secretary Gavino Zárate spoke to Heavy on behalf of the entire state party, he committed a grievous no-no that can get him removed from office. Zarate. Per by-laws, only co-chairs are permitted to speak for the party as a whole. If it's true that Kino Jiménez was responding angrily to some ugly racist talk about celebrating Independence Day with lynchings, as Raw Story reports, and it wasn't just some kid wearing an inflammatory ball cap, I can certainly understand his motivation without condoning his actions. Dueling narratives and big-big drama. Regardless of who's right, Jiménez's name has been removed from the GPTX contact list. All he gave when he signed (or when he was signed up) was his name and a bogus email address, according to GPTX co-chair Wes Gaige. This was my unofficial heads-up/statement on Facebook about the Kino Jiménez kerfuffle. Some FB accounts (I'd say "some people" but I can't verify whether they are actual people or bots) are lighting up the Green Party of Texas page with accusatory comments about an incident at San Antonio Whataburger. A guy whose name appears in a GPTX NationBuilder contact list allegedly beat up a teenager & stole the young man's MAGA cap. I thought about including this information in the previous post, because it is tangentially related to it, but decided that it needed its own entry. This is mostly copied and pasted from my Facebook post: California is a "jungle primary" state, in which multiple candidates from all parties (and No Party Preference) compete in the first round, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election. See full results from California's jungle primaries here. If you are a Progressive living in Greater LA—especially Greater East LA—I urge you to do what you can to help these young Greens. If you live elsewhere, send them what disposable cash you can.
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Blogging Sporadically since 2014Here you will find political campaign-related entries, as well as some about my literature, Houston underground arts, peace & justice, urban cycling, soccer, alt-religion, and other topics. Categories
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