Last year Kevin McCarthy was reelected to an 8th term in Congress with 64.3% of the vote (better than Trump's 57.1% in the district) against an uninspiring and pointless Democratic vanity candidate, who managed to get 37.9% (not as well as Biden's 40.5%). As you know, this year Blue America has endorsed Bruno Amato as the replacement for McCarthy and we've been asking our members to contribute to his campaign. The question I get most is... he sounds great, but can he win?
With the worst PVI of any California district-- R+12-- it's not an easy climb for any Democrat. Nor is it an impossible one. Aside from Amato being the most credible and compelling candidate to take him on, McCarthy has been in the news a lot lately-- more so than any other time in his long, long, long political career-- and most of his media attention is very unlikely to endear him to anyone outside his hard right Republican base. And that actually matters, even in Kern County centered CA-23. The most recent 2021 count of voters in McCarthy's congressional district shows that 417,759 people have registered to vote. This is how it breaks down politically:
Republicans- 173,058 (41.4%)
Democrats- 125,655 (30.1%)
No Party Preference- 88,114 (21.1%)
The Republicans certainly have a big head start, but one that could be narrowed considerably if the Democratic Party made an effective effort in registering more Latinos (who make up 38.6% of the population but a much smaller percentage of the voters) and in offering clear alternative to McCarthy, especially on issues that matter most to voters: healthcare, education, healthcare, jobs and-- did I mention?-- healthcare.
This afternoon, when I asked Amato to sum up why he's running, he told me that "Kevin McCarthy is a 'do nothing" representative for the majority of his district and the problems that everyday working class people deal with. While continuing to support the fossil fuel cartels, Kevin has ignored unemployment, rising crime, drug addiction and behavioral health. For over a decade the lack of helping veterans with something tangible, like the modern clinic he promised have been glossed over with empty words and photo ops. Kevin is now more concerned with salvaging his unethical career than actually doing the hard work that his district is in desperate need of."
Today the strictly non-partisan good government organization CREW-- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington-- filed a complaint against McCarthy, and his train wreck of a crony Marjorie Traitor Greene, with the Office of Congressional Ethics for their blatant violation of House rules by "threatening to retaliate against companies that comply with legal requests for documents from the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol."
In response to their request that companies preserve phone records and other information regarding Trump's January 6 coup attempt and the attack on the Capitol, "McCarthy issued a statement threatening that 'a Republican majority will not forget' and will hold the companies 'fully accountable under the law' if they comply with the requests. Greene stated in a television interview that if the companies 'go along with this, they will be shut down and that’s a promise.'" Greene's threat was aimed at Google, AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and dozens of other major American companies. She's obviously off her rocker and speaking out of her ass, part of the reason so many congressional Republicans voted to kick her off her committees. McCarthy, however, is more strategic and more manipulative than the QAnon crackpot from the Georgia woods.
“On January 6, we saw the gravest domestic attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said. “Blatant obstruction of the investigation could leave our nation even more vulnerable to a future attack.”
House rules require members to uphold the laws of the United States and to conduct themselves at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House. The threats of McCarthy and Greene do neither. Threatening retaliation for complying with legally valid document demands and preservation requests appears to violate 18 U.S.C. § 1505, which prohibits obstructing congressional investigations, and does not reflect creditably on the House.
“McCarthy and Greene are transparently trying to thwart the Select Committee by illegally threatening companies with reprisals if they comply with the committee’s proper and lawful requests-- quite possibly to protect themselves,” Bookbinder said. “This dangerous and unprecedented conduct must not be allowed to stand. OCE should investigate immediately.”
Yesterday, it was reported that McCarthy is among the lawmakers whose phone records the Select Committee is interested in, leading to speculation that this is an attempt to prevent damning information about himself from coming out. It had previously been reported that the requests covered Greene’s phone records.
Please consider clicking on the Blue America "Bluer California" thermometer on the left, a hot link, to access a page with the California progressive congressional candidates endorsed by Blue America so far this cycle. Why? So you can consider contributing-- any amount of course-- to Bruno's campaign and help with the hard work of ridding our state and our nation of the festering sore that is Kevin McCarthy, the man who sees himself-- and who Trump sees-- as the next speaker of the House. (God forbid.)
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