Needed: A Candidate To Run Against Devin Nunes

OK-02 is right-wing crackpot country; it's one of the most backward congressional districts in the country. Trump won there 72.9- 22.8%. Aside from a couple of rural former slave-holding backwaters in Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, it's where Trump did best (although his state campaign chairman, then-Senator Ralph Shortey was arrested for having sex with a teenage boy within 1,000 feet of a church and won't be working to promote Trump in the Sooner State). Anyway OK-02-- the eastern part of the state that borders on Arkansas and Missouri and includes the outer suburbs of Tulsa and some small towns like Muskogee-- has a PVI of R+20. I the Republican vote collapses in 2018 on the same level by which it collapsed in Kansas Tuesday (just over 20 points down), it still won't matter for the lunatic right congressman, Markwayne Mullin, who was reelected last year 70.6% to 23.2%.

A drop-off of 20 points would mean nothing to him. And that's how he treated his constituents at a town hall meeting in Jay this week. When they said they pay his salary, Mullin a former plumber and handyman who flunked out of college, cursed at them and said "I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go." He's a backbencher and generally considered one of the most unpleasant members of Congress. No one likes him and he has no friends. He was a member of the Natural Resources Committee until a couple months ago and when he left the celebration was... bipartisan.

Kevin Nunes has been even more disrespectful to his constituents in CA-22 than Markwayne Mullin has been to his. Mullin at least held a town hall meeting-- which is more than Nunes has done. His constituents have taken to following him around, booing him and waving Putin signs in his face. A general 20 point GOP collapse of the Kansas magnitude would sweep Nunes out of office. Trump won his Central Valley district 52.1% to 42.6%. Nunes has never had a serious opponent before and although the DCCC is dragging its feel, several members of Congress aren't-- and are very actively looking for an opponent and ignoring the DCCC.

Wednesday a neighbor came to my door and offered a $100,000 check to Blue America to use in an Independent Expenditure campaign against Nunes. "As a downpayment," he added. I explained that the kind of candidate we need in CA-22-- part of Fresno plus Clovis, Visalia, Tulare, Dinuba-- is an issues-driven populist willing to commit to a 2-cycle strategy.

Central Valley Indivisible, Together We Will Fresno/Central Valley and Health Access California are organizing a town hall for Nunes' constituents for next Wednesday evening, April 19 (6pm) at the Ponderosa lecture hall of the College of the Sequoias in Visalia. I guess I should make my way up there-- it's just a 3 hour drive. Nunes has already announced he's not going and won't be sending one of his staffers.

Wednesday the NY Times reported that suburban voters across the nation are growing even more sour on the GOP. "While the next nationwide elections are not until 2018, Republicans have grown fearful that these voters are recoiling from what they see as lamentable conditions in Washington: a government entirely in Republican hands that has failed to deliver on fundamental goals like overhauling the health care system. Early missteps by President Trump and congressional leaders have weighed heavily on voters from the party’s more affluent wing, anchored in right-of-center suburbs around major cities in the South and Midwest. Never beloved in these precincts, Mr. Trump appears to be struggling to maintain support from certain voters who backed him last year mainly as a way of defeating Hillary Clinton... It remains to be seen if Democrats can fully exploit the turbulent environment. They hoped last fall that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity would drag down suburban-based Republican candidates across the country, but the party won full control of government. And Democrats may face a tricky balancing act if the explosion of energy on the left collides with the native sensitivities of the moderate-to-conservative districts they aim to win."

CA-22 would be an excellent testing ground. Trump is bad enough, but Nunes has made himself into a cartoon-character villain with his willfully botched investigation into Putin-Gate in which he is widely seen as having been trying to help the Trump Regime cover up their activities rather than get to the bottom of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.