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Writer's pictureHowie Klein

Worst MAGAt Candidates who Lost In 2022, Will Lose In 2024... Unless Dems Give Them An Opening

Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez Vote Against Student Loan Relief Just Elected Joe Kent



There’s probably no 2022 candidate the NRCC wishes would just go away than George Santos. Because the Democrats nominated such a nothing opponent, Santos won his open swing district race 53.8% to 46.2%— and in a district Biden won with close to the same proportions— 53.6% to 45.4%. A fairly low-info suburban district on Long Island, NY-03 is sorry now— and has no intention of reelecting Santos. The local Republican Party in Nassau County has announced they will not back him, nor will the state Republican Party. But— whether part of a potential plea bargain or not— he says he’s running again. The Democrats certainly hope so. The Republican establishment choice, state Sen. Jack Martins, would likely beat Santos in a primary.


An NBC News report yesterday, Republicans Brace For 2022 Losers To Take Another Crack At Winning, didn’t discuss Santos, just MAGAt losers like Kari Lake, who lost the gubernatorial race and is now probably going to lose the 2024 Senate race as her next act. In a discussion of these MAGAts with former Marco Rubio campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, he noted that “while many candidates do improve during a second run, there were ‘a lot of really crappy candidates last time. And if you’re just a fundamentally flawed candidate the first time you run, you’re still a fundamentally flawed candidate the second time you run,’ he said, adding, ‘You’ve always had the weirdo candidates that run no matter what. And the difference now is, they’re kind of given more oxygen than they ever did in the past, and they’re actually winning primaries.’”


NBC covered 2 House races First was the GOP-gerrymandered OH-09, where the MAGAt, J.R. Majewski was seen as so awful and so implausible that Democrat Marcy Kaptur was reelected in a district with an R+3 PVI, an R+6 partisan lean and where Trump beat Biden 50.6% to 47.7%. Majewski was also a poor fundraiser and brought injustice a third of what Kaptur raised.


The second district was WA-03, an open red seat with an R+5 PVI, a partisan lean of R+11 and where Trump beat Biden 50.8% to 46.6%. MAGAt crackpot Joe Kent beat mainstream conservative Jamie Herrera Buetler in the primary and was then beaten by political novice Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez in one of the closest races in the country— 160,323 (50.4%) to 157,690 (49.6%). Kent was also a weak fundraiser and Pérez outspent Kent $3,828,592 to $3,649,156, aa quarter million coming from Kent’s own bank account.


NBC reporters Allan Smith and Henry Gomez wrote that Majewski, “best known for painting a Trump banner on his lawn— lost to Kaptur by 13 points, his campaign scuttled by an Associated Press report that he had misrepresented his military service. Others on the ground in the district complained about what they saw as a lazy and undisciplined campaign that failed to activate grassroots voters and take advantage of Kaptur’s weaknesses. Undeterred, Majewski is angling for a rematch in 2024. GOP leaders in Ohio and nationally worry about a scenario in which his recent familiarity with voters carries him out of a crowded primary and prevents them from picking up a winnable seat. ‘I can stomach a MAGA candidate that can win if they do something right, if they bring something to the table to help them get elected,’ said one unaffiliated Republican official in the Ohio 9th District who requested anonymity to speak candidly. This person added a Majewski nomination ‘unquestionably’ locks in a GOP loss. Another Republican operative involved in races across Ohio quipped that it’s time for Majewski to ‘repaint the lawn, not re-announce a campaign.’”


They reported that in southwest Washington, “Kent, who promoted Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and suggested without evidence that his own defeat may have been illegitimate, thinks 2024 will prove much more favorable for him than did his last bid… In a recent memo provided to NBC News, Kent’s campaign argued that his 2022 loss was due to him being widely outspent during the primary and because his general election opponent did not yet have a record in Congress he could run against. This time, he has no incumbent to face in a primary and can go on the offense against a Democratic rival who has a record ‘to expose,’ the memo said.”


Ironically the worst part of the Pérez voting record came this week when she broke with the Democratic Party and joined fellow Blue Dog Jared Golden of Maine to back the Republican Party efforts to overturn Biden’s modest efforts to aid student debt borrowers. Pérez, whose parents sent her to elite Reed College— and who never paid back her nearly $100,000 PPP government loan— rationalized her service to big money donors at the expense of working class students, through the kind of fake blue collar populism that Trump uses. If Kent figures out a way to use that against her, she’ll have no chance to be reelected. She may not anyway— since tens of thousands of her constituents owe student loan money.


NBC News didn’t mention that North Carolina MAGAt Sandy Smith is running against Don Davis again. He’s the only Democratic freshman in Congress with an even worse voting record than Pérez. And next year Smith will almost surely beat Davis. Ditto for another shitty conservative North Carolina Dem, Wiley Nickel, who's going to face MAGAt Bo Hines again— this time in a district the Republicans are busy gerrymandering right now to give Hines an even greater advantage than he had 2022.

1 Comment


Guest
May 27, 2023

to be fair, a vote to scuttle biden's only useful move (a tiny bit of student loan relief) will help your shitty democraps in those districts. it would be a bald-faced lie if the nazi says he'd have voted FOR any biden initiative. and those nazi voters are NOT so stupid as to believe or support that lie.


the elections will be won or lost based on pain inflicted by a default, even a temporary one, OR massive austerity imposed to avoid the default.


just as the midterms were weighted in favor of the hapless worthless feckless corrupt neoliberal fascist pussy democraps by Dobbs, the presidential cycle will be decided by what your pussy party refuses to do to fix…


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