One of the tough DCCC races tomorrow is in Colorado’s 8th district, between Fort Collins and Denver, where they’re fighting to hold onto a district that was purposely drawn to have an even PVI, although the Democrats have a 3% registration advantage. The incumbent, New Dem Yadira Caraveo, is a mediocre backbencher who should go back to being a pediatrician. Timothy Gabriel Joseph Evans, her opponent, is far worse no matter how you measure it.
Being a corporate shill, like all New Dems, she managed to out-raise him $7.2 million to $1.2 million. Musk has been spending big on Evans’ behalf, nearly a million dollars and the Koch network has spent about $1.4 on Evans’ behalf but what makes him competitive is the $6.6 million MAGA Mike’s Congressional Leadership Fund spent smearing Caraveo, along with a $3 million independent expenditure from the NRCC. Hakeem Jeffries’ House Majority PAC has spent $6million attacking Evans and the DCCC has spent about $2 million in the district as well. Caraveo is also a shill for the crypto-criminals, wormed her way onto the Agriculture Committee’s subcommittee working with them on “regulation,” and was rewarded with a $2,270,929 independent expenditure on her behalf. In all, about $30 million of outside money has been spent in the district!
Anyway, she’s the lesser evil and last week Evans’ aunt, Jennifer Chavez, penned an OpEd for the Colorado Times Recorder, Don’t Vote for My Nephew Gabe Evans for Congress. She says she loves him but that he doesn’t belong in Congress because, she believes “in freedom, rights, fairness, and opportunity. I believe in the right to love who you want to love. The right to make your own health care decisions, especially when it comes to starting a family. I believe in democracy and protecting our free and fair elections.” In other words, her nephew is a Republican so doesn’t share any of those beliefs.
Her nephew, she wrote “holds an extreme, far-right ideology that is, simply put, scary. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I’m terrified of what his agenda could do to my rights. He believes in, and has called for, banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. He has threatened the fabric of our democracy by questioning the results of a free and fair election, joining extremists like Lauren Boebert. He believes in, and has called for, banning gay marriage; he even called gay marriage ‘bestiality.’”
He has tried to claim his views have changed over time but the truth is, I’ve seen firsthand that they haven’t. He has long held the deeply rooted belief that gay marriage is wrong and unacceptable.
Gabe has worked with the Convention of States— a group that seeks to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to put in place a far-right government. The group is backed by the most extreme leaders, including the authors of Project 2025, extreme Republicans’ policy proposals that would go into effect in 2025 if Trump is elected President.
Gabe hasn’t just attended events held by the Convention of States; he’s actively worked to implement their agenda by pushing a resolution in the Colorado state Legislature that word-for-word copied their proposals and would put their goal of overturning the Constitution into place.
Gabe already has an extreme record. But now, it’s clear that he is laying the groundwork for the Project 2025 agenda. If Gabe and his fellow far-right extremists are in control, they will implement Project 2025, and this should deeply concern all of us.
Project 2025 would strip away our rights and freedoms by monitoring women’s pregnancies, restricting access to birth control, and moving us toward a national abortion ban. It would hurt our pocketbooks, education, and access to health care.
It would raise costs on middle-class families while shuttering public schools and dismantling the Department of Education. The list goes on and on.
The hardest part to watch is that Gabe is exploiting my father’s legacy for political gain. Gabe touts his Mexican heritage, which comes from my father. But my father, who earned his U.S. citizenship fighting for this country in World War II, was kind, respectful, and selfless. He would be disgusted by the hateful platform Gabe is running on.
With this much at stake, I couldn’t remain silent. I understand my nephew well enough to know that he will push a far-right agenda that is simply too dangerous.
OK, so one grim lesser of two evils story… How about an inspirational one to close the post? This is one we’ve been writing about since December: Nebraska independent populist Dan Osborn. On Saturday, The Nation ran a story by John Nichols about why Shawn Fain is so excited about Osborn’s Senate run and why he’s been in Nebraska campaigning for him. Let’s start by acknowledging that “the Senate is a millionaire’s club, which neglects the interests of working American in order to meet the demands of billionaire campaign donors and Wall Street insiders. The senators who bow to the billionaire class come from both parties. Indeed, while Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support unions and proposals for minimum-wage hikes, many Democrats have joined with Republicans to advance trade policies that have shuttered tens of thousands of factories, and more than a few shy away from populist calls to “tax the rich”— perhaps because so many are, themselves, wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most Americans.”
And that’s where Osborn comes in— potentially a senator “who rejected party ties and simply represented workers?” A machinist who had served as a union leader and led an epic strike against corporate greed? Fain told Nichols “it would be huge, and I think it would send notice to both parties that they better get on board with working-class people.”
In October, the UAW head, traveled to Nebraska to stump in union halls for Osborn who’s “the highest-profile independent candidate for the Senate— an outsider who is stirring things up in a suddenly competitive red-state contest.”
Since getting into politics— as a result of the strike he led— he has seen “a political class that too frequently failed workers, and a US senator from Nebraska, Republican Deb Fischer, with a long record of opposing worker rights and doing the bidding of Wall Street. Osborn could have run as a Democrat, or as a Republican primary challenger to Fischer. But he decided to campaign as an independent because that’s where his political instincts are. ‘I’m not going to change who I am,’ he says. ‘I have to stay true to myself. If I don’t do that, then why am I doing this?’ What he’s doing instead is running a grassroots campaign that, as he put it, says, ‘Washington, DC, is broken, and we need somebody to fix it.’ Partisans aren’t likely to do the job, he argues, ‘because they just have to get in line. I don’t want to get in line with anybody. I’ve never been good at that.’”
Osborn tells crowds gathered in union halls and community centers that he wants to go to the Senate as a champion for stronger unions, higher wages, trade policies that favor workers and their communities, a better deal for working farmers and a pushback against corporate greed that will lead to “closing loopholes used by multi-nationals to avoid paying taxes.” That populist message has attracted Democrats and at least some Republicans. Both Bernie Sanders supporters and Donald Trump fans now show up at Osborn’s events. And he has been climbing in the polls. A late October survey for the New York Times put Fisher at 48 and Osborn at 46.
For observers of the brutal battle for control of the US Senate, which Democrats and their allies now hold by a narrow 51–49 margin, the prospect that Nebraska— a very red state that is all but certain to vote for Trump— might oust a Republican senator is big news. As Politico noted on Friday, “If Dan Osborn, a populist independent, wins an upset victory in the Senate race here, it will be a humiliating blow to Republicans.” With Democrats all but certain to lose a seat in West Virginia, and in serious danger of losing one in Montana, Osborn could end up being the only senator standing in the way of a Republican majority. But the candidate, who is both pro-choice and a critic of at least some Democratic approaches to budgeting, says he’s not in a hurry to join the caucus of either party.
That makes a lot of political insiders nervous. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is not helping Osborn because the committee’s head, Michigan Senator Gary Peters, says the Nebraskan is “not a Democrat.” But Fain has no qualms about campaigning for Osborn. He views the Nebraska campaign as one of the most exciting political developments of 2024.
“Working-class people are what makes this country move, and what makes the world move. So we need to start electing people that come from those ranks, that understand what it means to live paycheck to paycheck, or to not have money at the end of the week, or to not have adequate health or retirement security,” says the UAW leader. “The majority of Americans are living that. So if we’re going to change things in this country, we have to elect people at all levels of government that understand those issues and are going to fight for those things.”
What delights Fain in particular is the prospect of sending a mechanic to fix what’s broken in Washington. “He’s a working-class person. That’s what this is all about,” the UAW president says. “It’s ironic that, over the years, because of this capitalist system, you always hear people talking about how, ‘Oh, this [candidate] is a businessperson.’ We’re always electing business people, and we see where that puts us. It puts us in a system of government where everything’s for sale, and where working-class people are left behind.”
So, argues Fain, why not elect a former union leader?
“When you are a union leader at a local level, national level, whatever it is, you are answering to people. You are representing a membership,” he says. “It’s no different from a congressperson, who is representing constituents. It’s the same thing, the same concept. Running a local union or a national union, you have so much money to work with, you have a budget. You manage people. You have to know the business end of those things. So, obviously, there are a lot of similarities. But, to me, the difference is that, when you’re a union leader, your fight is about bringing justice to working-class people and having decent wages, having healthcare, having retirement security, and getting more of your time for yourself— so that you don’t have to work all your time to live.”
That, says Fain, is exactly the sort of experience that’s needed in the Senate.
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