Michigan’s 10th district, north of Detroit, saw one of the closest races of 2022— and one the national parties and national media paid no attention to. It was an open seat in a newly created district with an R+6 partisan lean. Republican John James was the presumed front runner. His campaign spent $6,091,441 to little known Democrat Carl Marlinga’s $1,049,817. McCarthy and his allies kicked in another $2.5 million for James. The DCCC spent— let me re-check those figures…yes, zero on Marlinga. And yet… Marlinga outperformed dozens of shitty conservative GOP-lite candidates the DCCC spent millions of dollars on. After the dust settled and the votes were all counted, James had 159,202 votes (48.8%) and Marlinga hd 157,602 (48.3%). A Democratic strategist told me that had the DCCC spent $70,000 targeting get-out-the-vote efforts in Macomb County— which Marlinga lost by 585 votes— he would have won the district. Marlinga is running agin this cycle, as are Democrats Emily Busch, Brian Jaye, ANil Kumar and Diane Young. Many Democrats in the district are trying to persuade former Congressman Andy Levin to run, but he hasn’t made up his mind, or at least hasn’t announced that he has.
Meanwhile James has built up a prohibitive warchest nearing $3 million and run up a garden variety conservative voting record in Congress, while sitting in the backbenches keeping his mouth shut and staying out of the limelight— until yesterday.
Yesterday, James had had his fill of Ron DeSantis, the most blatantly racist serving as governor since George “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” Wallace finally left office in 1987. And by then, Wallace had repented and said the racism was a mistake and that he was sorry. DeSantis is unlikely to ever repent for his own racism… or even admit he is a racist… After all, he insists, slaves were lucky to have had all that free job training.
John Dorman reported that James went on Twitter, or whatever it’s called now, to blast Meatball Ron, saying he had gone too far with his pro-slavery campaign and his aggression towards two Black Republicans— Florida MAGAt Byron Donalds and Senator Tim Scott— is over the line. Maybe James feels that being seen to be publicly opposing Meatball Ron will help him win reelection in Michigan.
DeSantis has been working frantically to gin up a battle between himself and Kamala Harris and flips out when anyone tries to talk him down from his slavery-was-no-big-deal position. Even though DeSantis has tried to distance himself from the actual decision to teach Florida school kids that there were benefits to slavery, all the members of the board were carefully selected DeSantis puppets. Even some conservatives haven’t been able to stomach DeSantis’ over-the-top racism.
DeSantis, furious at Donalds for daring to get uppity with him said “At the end of the day, you got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida? I think it's very clear that these guys did a good job on those standards. It wasn't anything politically motivated.”
DeSantis climbed back up on his high horse— you know the one that has lost him about 2 points a week in the GOP polls since he announced his candidacy: Washington Republicans, he said, “all too often accept false narratives [and] accept lies that are perpetrated by the left. The way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth. So I'm here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies, and we're going to continue to speak the truth.”
Even Floridians seem sick of him. "If a GOP primary were to be held today," reported Lori Rozsa, "multiple polls show DeSantis would resoundingly lose to former president Donald Trump in the state both men call home... [A] recent poll by Florida Atlantic University found that of more than 900 Republican voters questioned, 54 percent would vote for Trump if a primary were held immediately, compared with 37 percent for the governor in a one-on-one matchup." All his culture war woke nonsense has turned off voters. And his war against Disney is a disaster for him in Florida. "A lobbyist in Tallahassee who mostly works with GOP clients said the Disney imbroglio— and DeSantis’s zeal for publicly chastising the company that many consider to be the keystone to Florida’s $102 billion tourism industry— has alarmed CEOs and tarnished the governor’s brand. He said a number of business leaders are no longer on 'Team DeSantis,' but won’t admit it publicly, for fear of reprisals from the governor."
Alan Pincus, a Palm Beach County Republican who is running for Congress, said DeSantis, if he loses, may not have a political future in Florida, with some voters so turned off by his decision to take on Trump that they won’t vote for him again.
“DeSantis has no chance of winning,” said Pincus, who voted for DeSantis for governor. “He really hurt himself, maybe permanently.”
DeSantis hasn’t attacked James yet. But he will. He attacks everyone but Trump— even when Trump savages him to his face, as he did in Des Moines on Friday evening. Former RNC chair Michael Steele took a look at DeSantis' ugly racism on TV over the weekend: