The 2018 Congressional Races Are Starting To Take Shape: Oklahoma City

Will Tom Guild Be Our Revolution's First Big Red State Congressional Win?

Good news and bad news to start the day. Let's get the bad news over with first. Congressional voting patterns are starting to indicate trends. When you examine the crucial vote scores for the 115th Congress so far, there aren't many surprises. Seeing members like Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Ruben Kihuen (D-NV), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Judy Chu (D-CA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Luis Guttierrez (D-IL) with 100% scores should come as no surprise. They have been loud, clear voices for The Resistance inside Congress. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are the "Democrats" from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party voting consistently with the Republicans. They are primarily Blue Dogs and New Dems are Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy put great value on them, since they use their votes to brag to the media-- and to their own constituents-- that the ghastly, destructive legislation they're passing is "bipartisan." These are the worst of the worst, each of whom is earning primary challenges as we speak:

• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog chairman-OR)- 25%
• Charlie Crist (FL)- 25%
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)- 25%
• Jim Himes (New Dem chairman-CT)- 20%
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- 20%
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)- 20%
• Dutch Ruppersberger (MD)- 20%
• Julia Brownley (CA)- 20%
• Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL)- 20%
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- 20%
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 20%
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL- 20%
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)- 0
• Tim Walz (MN)- 0
• Tom Suozzi (NY)- 0
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- 0
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- 0
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 0
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)- 0
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA)- 0
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 0
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 0
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 0
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 0

Painful! A zero, by the way, means just want you probably fear it means: these Democrats have voted with the GOP on every single important roll call so far. Michigan Republican Justin Amash scored a 40-- significantly better than any "Democrat" on the list above. We're not trying to recruit a candidate against him. I wonder if that right-wing, bigoted schlemiel, Steve Pestka, who the Michigan Democratic Party thinks is such a stand-up guy, will run again. Last time he ran against Amash (2012, from the right on many issues) he outspent Amash $2,076,680 to $1,193,611 but Amash beat him anyway, 53-44%. And that brings us to the good news: congressional recruiting.

I have to admit, it was getting me down. Potential candidate after potential candidate was telling me the same thing everywhere in the country: it just wasn't worth the effort of running just to be eventually rat-fucked by the DCCC. Local Democrats hate them even more than I ever imagined-- and for good reason... over a decade of good reasons. But-- and this may be important-- executive director Kelly Ward was finally fired, and is now running some doomed-to-fail initiative for Obama and Holder-- and there's a new executive director with a decent reputation, Dan Sena. Although he started out in politics working strictly for sewer-dwelling garbage candidates like Blue Dog (now Republican) Joe Baca, Jane Harmon and Wendy Greuel, he went on to run progressive Senator Tom Udall's successful reelection campaign in 2014 and sources at the DCCC are telling me he isn't driven by the kind of all-encompassing and self-destructive hatred of progressives that drove his predecessors and D-Trip chairmen Rahm Emanuel and Steve Israel.

New PPP survey released yesterday

In any case, word is getting out that Sena isn't going to treat progressives the way Kelly Ward and Steve Israel did and-- lo and behold!-- people are changing their minds about running-- from coast to coast... and in between. It looks like Ed Royce (CA), Peter King (NY), Steve Knight (CA), Lamar Smith (TX) are all about to get excellent opponents who can be backed by a wide array of Democrats from progressives to mainstream party types and even the DCCC. Of course, ether will always been the Cheri Bustos types who are desperately trying to recruit horrible Blue Dogs (like herself) to screw things up, but after her spate of horrible failures in 2016, the DCCC may be listening less seriously to her Emanuel-channelling bullshit. Thursday, Oklahoma progressive Tom Guild let his supporters know that after consulting with family, friends, and supporters, he "decided to start organizing and raising money to run against Tea Party extremist Steve Russell (R-Choctaw) in 2018. Russell is the Tea-publican incumbent from Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District. Russell 'isn’t sure' if we should have a minimum wage. I support raising the minimum wage to a living wage, and indexing it to inflation, so that in the future hard working Americans who work full-time won’t be at or below the poverty level." He went on contrasting his own stands with the policies Russell and the Republicans have been espousing.

Russell opposes additional infrastructure spending to repair, create, and rebuild America’s roads, bridges, highways, high speed internet access, and schools. I favor $600 billion in additional spending over ten years to invest in our country and fix our crumbling infrastructure. The additional spending will also create millions of good-paying jobs for Americans.

There are many crucial issues where Mr. Russell and I have opposing views. As the campaign progresses, these differences will be made crystal clear to folks in the fifth district."

If Tom pulls this off with the help of Our Revolution Oklahoma, expect him to stand up for OK-05 working families against Trump and the destructive Trumpist agenda. This morning he told us that "Trump is dangerous to American democracy and our constitutional system of government. He rejects our system of checks and balances and is a bully attempting to run rough shod over due process and equal protection. Trump and his approach must be resisted, rejected, and turned back before he goes too far and we are no longer able to enjoy our precious and revered Republic, and exercise our historic democratic rights."

This isn't going to be an easy race. OK-05 (which as a PVI of R+12), is the Oklahoma City district and was Trump's weakest in the state but he still won with 53.2%. That was 6 points weaker than Mitt Romney had done. The Democrats ran a worthless corporate conservative, Al McAffrey, and Russell beat him 160,012 (57.1%) to 103,122 (36.8%). Russell spent $847,193 and McAffrey insulted the district by ignoring fundraising entirely and spending exactly $687. Guild expects to raise $300,000 to fund a fully grassroots campaign. If you'd like to help Tom get started, please tap the thermometer below.