2022 House Elections

[bolverk 29402]

51 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

what *should* the AL map distribution have been?

There *should* have been two Black-majority districts to better reflect their percentage of Alabama's population. Redistricting took them down to just one.

[Bama Chick 28596]

Yep. Should have been 5-2 with the 2 being majority Black districts in Montgomery and Birmingham.

Now the 1 covers BOTH Montgomery and Birmingham.

See District 7? How it creeps into Jefferson County (Birmingham) and Montgomery County (Montgomery)? And it splits Tuscaloosa County.

EVERY other district sticks to county lines. But this map? Carves up three of our largest cities and splits counties.

It’s crap.

[babysdaddy 2718]

[gmr548 16517]

1 hour ago, babysdaddy said:

 

That's amazing, because Congress is not responsible for anything when it comes to mask or vaccine requirements, decisions on in-person work/school... Nothing. They literally just signed the checks on both Trump's and Biden's relief packages; the former being passed by a Republican Senate. 

I'm not trying spin for House Democrats - I think everyone sees the writing on the wall at this point, just like 2018 - but the answers to the poll on COVID, the border, culture war items... What they all have in common is they're all things Congress basically hasn't touched or has no domain over. It just tells you American voters are stupid.

[Gil Bang 25898]

Interesting race in Orange County

 

GOP Rep. Michelle Steel is Korean American. Democrat Jay Chen is Taiwanese American. Both are trying to woo voters in the new CA-45, a House district now centered around the largest Vietnamese American community in the United States.

And with three months until the primary, the topic that’s become maybe the biggest point of contention between the two campaigns is China.

Much like former President Donald Trump during his tenure, Steel regularly criticizes China and paints it as the biggest threat to the United States. Such talk has proved popular among many local Vietnamese American voters, who cited China as a key reason they broke with other Asian American communities and supported Trump in 2020. And it’s taken on new urgency in light of Russia invading Ukraine, with Steel and others raising flags about the potential for China to invade Taiwan.

Chen insists that he, too, is “very clear-eyed about the threats and challenges China poses for us.” He notes that as an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves he’s regularly briefed superiors on the subject, and recently returned from a mission in the Indo-Pacific. But he’s also raising concerns about how broad, anti-China rhetoric might help to fuel the rise in violent, anti-Asian hate crimes, insisting that leaders here need to “stand up to China without also demonizing Chinese Americans and Asian Americans here at home.”

 

Those tensions recently took an ugly turn. Steel’s campaign and local Republican party officials are accusing Chen of “trying to instill communism into young minds” — based on a 2010 vote he took while on a school board — while Chen’s campaign accused Steel of “red-baiting” that reflects “her brand of far-right racism.”

As this battle heats up, Long Bui, an international studies professor at UC Irvine who studies generational differences around homeland politics, said the campaign is helping to illustrate not only the diversity of the Asian American population but also its “political fissures and cultural divides.”

How the anti-China campaign rhetoric might play out with such diverse voters in this new 45th District is far from clear, with forecasters so far labeling the contest a complete toss-up.

New district targeted

Steel currently represents the coastal 48th district, where voter registration leaned Republican by 5 percentage points when she won the seat from Democratic incumbent Harley Rouda in November 2020. But after California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission in December approved new boundaries for political districts, and Democratic Rep. Katie Porter said she was running for the redesigned coastal seat, Steel announced she was shifting to run for the new 45th District.

The new CA-45 is a C-shaped district that goes from Brea west to Cerritos, then curves south to sweep up most of Little Saigon and end with Fountain Valley. Democrats have a nearly 5-point advantage in voter registration there, according to figures from Political Data Inc. White voters are the largest bloc, at 45.7%. Asian voters are second at 32.8%, with half of that group, or 71,948 voters, identifying as Vietnamese American. Another 13,609 voters in the district are Chinese American, while PDI reports 6,295 voters in the new CA-45 were born in Taiwan.

Before redistricting, Chen, who owns a local real estate firm, was running against Rep. Young Kim in the current 39th District. But after new lines were announced, he pivoted to run in the new 45th District against Steel.

Both candidates are promising to work to lower healthcare costs, boost jobs, address homelessness and support veterans. Chen’s campaign also focuses on boosting infrastructure, protecting voting and reproductive rights, better funding public schools and standing with international allies, while Steel discusses securing the U.S./Mexico border, lowering taxes, COVID-19 recovery and ending sanctuary states and cities.

Anti-China vs. anti-Asian

Steel also has tweeted about China far more than any other local House member so far this session.

It’s not new. During her 2020 campaign against Rouda, Steel tapped into Little Saigon voters’ anti-China sentiment, and related Vietnamese fears around communism.

Residents in Little Saigon reported they were flooded with mailers in Vietnamese that falsely implied Rouda was cheering China’s attempts to gain power in the South China Sea. One flier also mentioned Confucius Institutes, a topic that, in this cycle, has become a focus of Steel’s attacks against Chen.

Confucius Institutes are educational centers offering lessons in Chinese languages and culture. The centers have been located in more than 100 American universities over the past two decades. Confucius Classrooms, programs aimed at younger students, have offered similar programs in more than 500 public K-12 students across the country.

But the Confucius centers are partially funded by the Chinese government, and some academics have been raising concerns since 2014 about how China might use that leverage to influence content.

Amid its tough-on-China talk, the Trump administration led a drive to shut down Confucius Institutes and Classrooms. While a 2019 Senate report said it found “no evidence that these institutes are a center for Chinese espionage efforts or any other illegal activity,” the committee recommended eliminating Confucius centers unless there could be more transparency about how they function and if similar American exchange programs could be allowed in China. In 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote a memo calling these programs a “foreign mission” of the Chinese government.

The Senate in March 2021 opted to cut off federal funding to colleges with Confucius Institutes. Though that bill stalled in the House, a clause in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act restricts a university’s access to Defense department research funding if that school hosts such a Chinese-sponsored program. Given those threats and the negative attention, universities have been quietly closing down their Confucius Institutes over the past two years.

Twelve years ago, when Chen was serving on the board of education for the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, he and three fellow board members voted to bring a Confucius Classroom program to the district. Some parents pushed back, and the board agreed not to accept funds from China for the program. Still, parents threatened to recall Chen and his colleagues over the move.

The controversy made it all the way to “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” where host Aasif Mandvi mocked critics by satirically accusing Chen of being part of a communist Chinese “sleeper cell.”

In early February, Steel’s campaign started to imply that joke might actually be true. Her campaign spokesman, Lance Trover, said Chen’s position on Confucius Classrooms “raises serious questions about his ties to China” and accused him of “standing with the Chinese Communist Party over California parents and families.”

When asked if she actually thinks Chen — who’s been deployed to the Middle East, where he helped lead an intelligence team fighting ISIS, and has joined military exercises on the Korean peninsula  — is trying to indoctrinate American students with communism, Steel said:

“I believe that he did (a) few interviews, and he wrote articles about this. And yes, uh, he — no — I don’t know what he was thinking when he was supporting Confucius Institutes…. You have to ask him (about) that. But for me… we cannot pitch Chinese propaganda in our higher education system. So that’s why I came out against (it).”

Chen, who was born in Michigan after his parents immigrated from Taiwan, called it “really sad” that Steel would question his patriotism.

“Steel does not have a record of delivering for this district, so she’s going to try to tap into fear to try to win votes,” Chen said.

Steel insisted she’s calling out the Chinese Communist Party and that it has “nothing to do with anti-Asian.”

“I am just against China, because I am a — I am anti-communism. And I am against communist propaganda,” said Steel, who immigrated to the United States when she was a young woman after her parents fled communism in North Korea. She also pointed out that the first legislation she introduced in Congress was a resolution condemning hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Still, amid this line of attack on Chen, online commenters have started responding to his posts with slams such as “okay commie.”

But Chen also pointed a finger back at Steel, recalling a 2020 story that linked her husband, who’s a Republican National Committee member, with an effort by Chinese foreign nationals to influence the Trump administration.

Asked about that controversy during a call Thursday, Steel said, “It’s not Chinese people we brought it in. It was Chinese Americans were doing fundraising and my husband was there.” She said she had “nothing to do” with it.

That story has led to Steel also getting branded as a “communist” and a “Chinese spy” by online commenters.

While such attacks might influence older Vietnamese Americans, who escaped communism themselves, Bui said most younger voters won’t “fall for such red-baiting, since they are much more concerned with a range of social issues.” Plus, he said, “Many recognize the deep connection between anti-Chinese rhetoric and anti-Asian racism.”

In the new political landscape, Bui said Vietnamese American voters more than ever are “looking beyond politicians’ image and words, and deeper into their record and actions.”

Policies on China

In terms of Steel’s record on China, she regularly pitches and supports legislation to condemn China’s human rights violations, including opposition to holding the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Last month, Steel introduced a resolution “condemning China for continuing to hold its ‘developing-nation’ status in the World Trade Organization” and for ongoing issues with human rights and misinformation. The resolution hasn’t yet attracted any cosponsors.

Steel also is cosponsoring a bill to block federal funds from any university that has programs tied to China. Meanwhile, she’s supporting a bill called Crucial Communism Teaching Act, which would develop curriculum for schools that teaches students to “understand the dangers of communism and similar political ideologies.”

Steel also has signed on to a bill that expresses support for the United States resuming normal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Experts have expressed concerns about particulars in the bill, and no Democrats have yet to sign on.

Congress did recently pass the Competes Act, which aims to boost U.S. competitiveness with China by dedicating $52 billion to manufacture and research semiconductors domestically and authorizing $45 billion to strengthen the supply chain. Steel called for an amendment demanding that China, which produces more greenhouse gasses than all other developed nations combined, match the emission reduction targets established by the United States. Her amendment was included in the bill.

But when the Competes Act came up for a vote, Steel joined virtually every other GOP House member to vote against it

 

When asked why she voted against a bill she’d worked to improve, Steel said it wasn’t “strong enough against China.” And when asked if some progress is better than nothing, she said, “it’s progress, but we have to do better.”

Chen said he would have supported the Competes Act. He argued that Steel’s opposition illustrates she’s “a lot of talk, but no action” when it comes to actually trying to “counteract the unfair trade practices of China.”

Given what’s happening in Ukraine — and with so many eyes also on the prospect of China doing something similar in Taiwan, where his grandfather still lives — Chen said he believes voters will want someone with his military experience to weigh in on China and other foreign policy issues.

A lot could happen between now and the November election. And with the international crisis in Ukraine once again putting a spotlight on “militarism and foreign aggression,” Bui said China is sure to remain an important topic this election season.

 

 

---

[Sawbonz 27436]

Whoever the Dem is in this race needs to just run this on a loop

[Biff Tannen 45499]

2 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Whoever the Dem is in this race needs to just run this on a loop

We already got that with Clayton Williams ya fuckin unoriginal bastard.

[henrygandorf 29177]

he spends the next minute talking about not sitting back and letting it happen.

it's almost like he went out of his way to get his rape line in there.  his daughters are probably tired of hearing about it.

[Voldemort86 2259]

8 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

Whoever the Dem is in this race needs to just run this on a loop

MAGA people are so messed up they will vote for him anyway.

[wildcat09 29258]

13 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

Whoever the Dem is in this race needs to just run this on a loop

There’s a problem with that. Because simply running that clip on a loop might help hide the fact that Regan is a fucking nazi:

 

[Longhorn Fever 267]

On 3/7/2022 at 6:57 PM, Sawbonz said:

Whoever the Dem is in this race needs to just run this on a loop

 

On 3/7/2022 at 7:01 PM, Biff Tannen said:

We already got that with Clayton Williams ya fuckin unoriginal bastard.

Makes one wonder if he is Clayton Williams' illegitimate son. Did ol' Claytie rape RJ's mom? One wonders if RJ thinks his mom enjoyed it?

[Voldemort86 2259]

Ohio map struck down again. When are these republicans going to learn that they can’t rig it with a Supreme Court in Ohio who actually cares about having a fair map?

Edited March 17, 2022 by Voldemort86

[Captainant 27465]

3 minutes ago, Voldemort86 said:

Ohio map struck down again. When are these republicans going to learn that they can’t rig it with a Supreme Court in Ohio who actually cares about having a fair map?

Goddamn the consistency in which the Roberts courts decisions come back to materially undermine our democracy is astounding. Within a decade of his gutting of the voting rights act were disenfranchising people like it's the 50s again

[Tuco 5076]

NE-1 Congressman Jeff Fortenberry was convicted on 3 counts today for lying to FBI agents about illegal foreign campaign contributions. Doesn’t matter in the larger scheme, as another Republican will take his place. But it’s nice to see, considering he has a history of trying to get activists charged for things like putting googly eyes on his campaign signs.

https://images.app.goo.gl/JCounswnKZQbF21F6

[Longhorn_Fan68 33843]

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33843]

On 3/24/2022 at 11:47 PM, Tuco said:

NE-1 Congressman Jeff Fortenberry was convicted on 3 counts today for lying to FBI agents about illegal foreign campaign contributions. Doesn’t matter in the larger scheme, as another Republican will take his place. But it’s nice to see, considering he has a history of trying to get activists charged for things like putting googly eyes on his campaign signs.

https://images.app.goo.gl/JCounswnKZQbF21F6

what a fucking pussy

[Voldemort86 2259]

Apparently Sarah plain could be coming to congress.  She could join Marjorie Taylor Greene and boobert  in the looney bin.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Voldemort86

[Voldemort86 2259]

I know we’re likely to lose the house but bumping this thread anyway.