A House-Flipper’s Guide to the 2018 Congressional Midterm Elections, Part 2
Over the ten weeks between Labor Day and Election Day, as Democrats and Republicans battle it out for control of the House, we're taking a look at 30 of the most competitive races in the 2018 midterm elections: Where are these key districts, and what are they like? Which member is trying to keep their job? Who wants to take it away? And for whom might generous donations of your valuable time and hard-earned money make the greatest difference, if you were so inclined to make them? After all, Democrats need to win only 23 seats to earn the gavel for the next two years, and nothing terrifies Donald Trump and friends more than what they plan to do with it.
You can read part one of this series here, and a complete guide to the 2018 Senate races here.
New York 19th: A Hudson Valley culture war
Rep. John Faso
Bill ClarkThe district: Most of the Hudson Valley, plus the Catskills, an adorable smattering of rolling hills that New Yorkers visit whenever they want to "go to the mountains for a while" but don't feel like leaving the tri-state area. The National Baseball Hall of Fame is here. So is Woodstock. As you might guess based on those two data points, there are a lot of white people. (88.7 percent of the district.)
The incumbent: John Faso, one of only a dozen Republicans who voted against the tax-reform bill, citing its outsize projected impact on New Yorkers. After his offices were besieged by weekly protests over his support for Paul Ryan's failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, perhaps he learned that constituents "don't like it" when you "make everything more expensive for them."
He's picked up the Trumpiness of late, pitching himself as the anti–MS-13 candidate and claiming that food-stamp recipients are drug dealers who want to sell your kids heroin while you pay for their milk.
The challenger: Antonio Delgado, a 41-year-old Schenectady native who graduated from nearby Colgate University, earned a Rhodes Scholarship, and then attended Harvard Law School. He's neck-and-neck with Faso in the fundraising battle and has gone hard after his opponent's health-care vote, calling for a public option while stopping short of endorsing Medicare for all. He's also black, and he once recorded a rap album that criticized capitalism, condemned white supremacy, and used occasional swear words. In news that will shock you, Faso and friends are blowing on their trusty dog whistles as hard as they can. From the Times:
“Mr. Delgado’s lyrics are offensive,” Mr. Faso said in response to questions from the Times. “It’s his responsibility as a candidate to answer for the controversial views he expressed in his lyrics and whether he continues to hold these views today.”
The Congressional Leadership Fund, the conservative political group closely aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan, recently began broadcasting an ad on local radio stations that features a portion of Mr. Delgado’s rap verses, accompanied with ominous background music and a narrator who describes the lyrics as a “sonic blast of hateful rhetoric and anti-American views.”
In case those men didn't scream the subtext loudly enough, here's what Faso's pal Gerald Benjamin—a guy who has almost certainly said, "Why can they use it, but I can't?" before—had to say on the subject.
“Is a guy who makes a rap album the kind of guy who lives here in rural New York and reflects our lifestyle and values?” said Mr. Benjamin, a longtime political science professor, adding that he personally did not consider rap music to be “real music.”
He later apologized for any "unintended distress" his remarks may have caused. He did not apologize for what has become the modern Republican Party's shameful electoral strategy: If constituents don't like your record, kick off the culture wars and hope for the best.
Time for some music: I mean, judge for yourself.
I hear a Gandhi name-drop, a reference to his religious convictions, and multiple shoutouts to upstate New York. I'm going to go ahead and say that anyone who professes to be deeply offended by this brand of hip-hop is a little more focused on the lyricist than the lyrics, if you catch my drift.
(My drift is that they are disingenuous bigots.)
Kansas 2nd: Where Republicans are really rethinking this whole Citizens United thing
GOP Meeting
Tom WilliamsThe district: Eastern Kansas but not Kansas City: Topeka, Lawrence, and the University of Kansas. Mostly white, mostly working-class, pretty flat. Rock Chalk.
The incumbent: Lynn Jenkins, who earned some measure of notoriety in 2009 for urging Republicans to find a "great white hope" to fight President Obama's agenda—she later apologized and said that she was only referring to certain "bright lights" in the party, which is not at all a synonym for the phrase she used, but okay!—is calling it quits after a decade in Congress. Please join me in wishing her the best in her search for a job in which she can put her racist idioms and nonsensical excuses for uttering them to good use.
The contenders: The Democrat is Paul Davis, the former minority leader of the Kansas House of Representatives. He narrowly lost a 2014 bid to unseat Sam Brownback as governor, and he's still running on an anti-Brownback message, both because Brownback's catastrophic state tax cuts were a test case for the wildly unpopular Trump tax bill, and also because even though Brownback left office almost a year ago, Kansans still hate him.
Your Republican is Steve Watkins, whose candidacy is being buoyed almost exclusively by a super-PAC that his dad, a wealthy doctor, controls. This doofus voted for the first time in his life on the day he launched his campaign, and his rivals in the primary despise him for pulling what they see as a shameless, carpetbagging stunt. A representative quote, from The Kansas City Star:
“Clearly, this is the way the affluent get their middle-aged kids out of the basement,” said state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one of Watkins’ primary foes. Later, he added, “He’s a charlatan, a fraud and an opportunist.”
He also won. This is an election in the United States of America, Fitz. Money talks, and bullshit finishes a distant fourth.
Live by the super-PAC, die by the super-PAC: Trump walloped Clinton here by more than 18 points in 2016, but with Trust Fund McGee swiping a spot on the ballot from his more qualified competitors, Democrats are hopeful that low Republican enthusiasm for the unknown Watkins will allow them to flip the seat. Hmmm, it is almost as if a system that allows wealthy donors to engage in unlimited political spending as long as they don't "coordinate" with a campaign is...bad for representative democracy! IMAGINE THAT.
California 25th: A potential political star waits in the wings
California Water
Bill ClarkThe district: A big chunk of northern Los Angeles County, including Palmdale, Lancaster, and parts of the Valley, which means everyone considers the Lakers their home team despite living, at best, a 19-hour drive from Staples Center. It's about 40 percent Hispanic, and 20 percent of constituents were born outside the United States. Hillary Clinton won it by nearly seven points.
The incumbent: Steve Knight, an Air Force veteran and former LAPD officer who is now Los Angeles County's lone Republican in Congress. He was coy during the 2016 campaign, calling the Access Hollywood tapes "deeply disturbing," and he ultimately declined to endorse either Clinton or Trump. After his party's candidate won, though, he of course revealed that he voted for Trump, and has backed the president nearly 99 percent of the time since.
The challenger: Katie Hill, the 30-year-old executive director of a homelessness nonprofit. Despite swearing off corporate and super-PAC money, she'd out-raised Knight as of June 30, $2.4 million to $1.7 million. She's a self-described lifelong gun owner who has nonetheless earned the support of Moms Demand Action, and she's been endorsed by both of her state's senators, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, and a certain former president by the name of Barack Obama. Also, Kristen Bell!
Holy shit, look at this: A good rule of thumb in politics is that if your 30-second ad begins with a "WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT WITHOUT RIGOROUS TRAINING AND PROPER SAFETY EQUIPMENT" disclaimer, you're doing it right.
That's not a voice-over. She's actually reading her lines while free-climbing a giant boulder! Of the many, many reasons there should be more millennials in Washington—we're the country's largest bloc of eligible voters; civic participation is important; the average member of Congress is literally a senior citizen and an alarming number of them are hell-bent on destroying the planet—the coming bumper crop of dope-ass spots like this one cannot be overlooked.
