Iowa Republicans Will Have To Chose Between 2 Right-Wing Nuts, One Obsessed With Homosexuality And One Obsessed With Racism

Republican homophobic maniac Randy Feenstra may stop thinking about sex with men long enough to run against Steve King

Anthony Brindisi was a worthless New York state senator, beloved by the NRA and never shy about abandoning his own party when they tried passing progressive legislation and crossing the aisle to vote with the GOP. Perfect for the DCCC, right? Absolutely. This year he ran in a little-noted race in upstate New York against a pathetic right-wing, Trump-enthused backbencher, Claudia Tenney. It was a pure lesser of two evils race in a district Obama won twice but where Trump beat Hillary 54.8% to 39.3%. NY-22 is a north-south district that stretches from Lake Ontario through Rome, Utica, Oneida and Cortland to Binghampton and the border with northeast Pennsylvania above Scranton. There are 8 counties and Brindisi won 3 of them, including the only two-- Oneida and Broome-- with sizable populations. This is how close it was:

Brindisi spent $4,528,959 and Tenney spent $3,143,743 but those figures were smaller than the outside spending. The DCCC spent $2,191,416, Pelosi's SuperPAC spent $2,503,046 and DCCC satellite groups spent over a million more-- almost $6 million to elect a worthless Blue Dog who will absolutely be voting with the GOP over and over and over.

None of this really has anything at all to do with Iowa neo-Nazi Steve King, the topic. I just wanted to draw a contrast between how DCCC & Friends spent millions on a dirty NRA-loving Blue Dog and was happy to let Steve King off scott free.

Last week I had a great dinner with King's opponent, JD Scholten, who may run for the Iowa 4th district seat again in 2020 or may-- as I hope-- run for the U.S. Senate seat that Joni Ernst is occupying. JD, a first-time candidate and a strong grassroots progressive, raised an astonishing $3,253,487. Although a few grassroots groups like Blue America, People for the American Way, Ultraviolet, and MoveOn spent some money on JD's behalf, Pelosi's PAC and the DCCC adamantly refused to spend a nickel on the race. Had they, JD would be in Congress and King would be living in Hungary or some other friendly fascist-leaning state. That wouldn't serve the interests of the DCCC, where they hate independent-minded progressives like Scholten and prefer conservatives like Brindisi. And in this case, they like using King as a fundraising bogeyman and have no real interest in seeing him leave Congress, let alone America.

JD held King to a meager 50.3% win. Consider that in 2016, King took 61.2% of the vote, in 2014 he took 61.6% and the only time a Democrat did even close to as well as JD did was when the DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC spent almost $1 million to push the former governor's wife Christie Vilsack, who held King down to 53.0%.

On Wednesday, Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, announced she will not come to King's aid in what promises to be a lively Republican primary for his seat. In 2018 she had chosen him as a co-chair of her reelection bid.

"The last election was a wake-up call for it to be that close," Reynolds said during an interview in her formal office at the Iowa Statehouse, "That indicates that it does open the door for other individuals to take a look at that."

King won re-election in 2018. But despite a nearly 70,000 registered voter advantage that Republicans have over Democrats in the district, King only beat his Democratic challenger, former professional baseball player J.D. Scholten, by three points.

"I will stay out of the primary," the governor said, "I'm not going to weigh in."

The revelation by Reynolds follows critical comments she made about King following the November election when she said, "I think that Steve King needs to make a decision whether he wants to represent the values of the 4th District or he needs to find something else to do."

King has faced criticism in the past for endorsing a white supremacist mayoral candidate in Toronto last year and comments about immigrants.

Tuesday morning, three-term State Senator Randy Feenstra, a Hull Republican, announced that he would run for King's seat in 2020.

"The President needs effective conservative leaders in Congress who will not only support his agenda, but actually get things done,” Feenstra said in a statement. “Today, Iowa’s 4th District doesn’t have a voice in Washington, because our current representative’s caustic nature has left us without a seat at the table. We don’t need any more sideshows or distractions, we need to start winning for Iowa’s families,” the statement also said.

King's son, Jeff, who serves as the Congressman's campaign manager, responded, "Today, misguided political opportunism, fueled by establishment puppeteers, has revealed that Mr. Feenstra is easily swayed by the lies of the Left. Today’s announcement by Feenstra is the third attempt by the establishment in as many primary cycles to take the 4th District out of the hands of grassroots Republicans. Further, it’s an obvious attempt to undermine an effective and leading Congressional ally of the President’s whom Trump frequently refers to as ‘the world’s most conservative human being.’ From his statements, it appears that Mr. Feenstra offers Republican voters nothing but warmed over talking points from liberal blogs and failed Democratic candidates.”

In an interview with the NY Times yesterday, King was embarrassing Iowa again by asking "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization-- how did that language become offensive?"

By the way, Feenstra, 49, serves as assistant majority leader in the Iowa state Senate. He's a mentally disturbed evangelical who graduated from an evangelical high school and got his bachelor's degree from Dordt College. He isn't an actual Nazi like King but he's a 100% Trumpist and an extreme right radical and hysterical homophobe who seems so hung up on men sleeping with each other (he claims to oppose it) that rumors have been whispered that he sleeps with boys on the down low.