Have You Voted Today?

Hundreds of thousands of dollars-- certainly well over a million by this morning-- have gushed into the FL-09 Democratic primary from conservative billionaires-- primary from the Murdoch family and assorted Wall Street banksters. The money is laundered through a network of slimy SuperPACs controlled by Nancy Jacobson's No Labels and has gone entirely to smear progressive icon Alan Grayson. The goal is to keep conservative New Dem, Darren Soto, in Congress. Why? Watch the video up top? That's the big prize for No Labels and their financiers... phasing out Social Security and Medicare. The other primary today where No Labels is financing attacks against a progressive to bolster a right wing Democrat is in Tucson (AZ-02), where conservatives are trying to get another New Dem, Ann Kirkpatrick, back into Congress. So the smear machine-- operated by both No Labels and EMILY's List-- has been working overtime against progressive Democrat Matt Heinz.

With that much right-wing interest in Democratic primaries, you've got to think those are the two most important congressional races in the country today. And they are:

• FL-09- Alan Grayson
• AZ-02- Matt Heinz

Are there other races important for progressives today? Oh yes. Let's start in Florida and work our way west. The biggest news story in Florida is the gubernatorial race. On the Republican side 2 conservatives are battling it out-- establishment Howdy Doody character, Adam Putnam, who was the front-runner, and a neo-fascist, Trump-backed congressman: Ron DeSantis, the current front-runner after multiple Trump endorsements. DeSantis would probably be a gift for Democrats since he is so far right that independent voters will probably not vote for him in November-- and independents decide who wins in Florida statewide races.

On the Democratic side, we've endorsed Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, the progressive in the race. His two right-of-center opponents, an ex-governor's daughter and failed one-term Blue Dog congresswoman Gwen Graham and wealthy former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine, are favored by the Democratic establishment. Although insipid Republican-lite candidates like Graham and Levine keep losing in Florida, the hope of the establishment is that the wave would drag either of these worthless candidates to victory. With Jeff Greene all but withdrawn from the race, Gillum is the only candidate representing the Eleanor and Franklin wing of the party-- or what you could call, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Graham and Levine are the kind of careerist characters who define the Republican wing of the party.

Aside from the Grayson-Soto race, progressives should be looking at the open seat in FL-15, where Dennis Ross is retiring. The district includes Tampa suburbs and agricultural parts of Polk County. Trump beat Hillary there by 10 points (53-43%) and the PVI is R+6. There are two Democrats running today, a conservative EMILY's List attorney, Kristen Carlson, a real nothing-burger, and a progressive Navy Vet, Andrew Learned, who backs Medicare-For-All. Carlson is Republican-lite candidate who doesn't.

With Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retiring, FL-27 in Miami is another open seat and a near-certain Democratic pick-up. Hillary trounced Trump by 20 points-- 59-39% and the PVI is listed as D+5 by is effectively D+7 (Cook is slow). Of the 3 top candidates, the front-runner is elderly establishment status quo rich person, Donna Shalala, terrible candidate. There are two progressives, state Rep. David Richardson and former Miami Herald reporter Matt Haggman. Haggman would make the best member if Congress of the three. Yesterday, the Tampa Bay Times reported that "fired-up Democrats flocked to early voting sites over the weekend to give the party an early voting advantage over Republicans and close the gap in turnout between the parties two days before election day." Today, polls in Florida are open from 7am 'til 7pm.

In Oklahoma there's a run-off in the 5th district (Oklahoma City) between a pointless establishment hack, Kendra Horn, and a dedicated progressive and Berniecrat, Tom Guild (endorsed by Blue America). The winner faces far right congressman Steve Russell in November. Electing Republican-lite Horn is the same as handing Russell reelection.

And now Arizona. Republican Doug Ducey is seeking reelection. There are 3 Democrats vying for a chance to defeat him-- former Department of Education official David Garcia, the progressive in the race, plus state Sen. Steve Farley and a YMCA employee named Kelly Fryer. Garcia is polling well and is the only chance the Democrats have to take out Ducey.

The race to replace Jeff Flake in the Senate will be between very right-wing Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema, a corrupt, pretend Democrat who is ahead in the polls, and one of 3 Republicans, mainstream conservative congresswoman Martha McSally, the establishment pick and two extremist lunatics, Kelli Ward, and controversial ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio. McConnell has persuaded Trump not to endorse either of the two Trumpists and just keep his mouth shut so McSally can win the primary since she's seen as the only chance the GOP will have to defeat Sinema.

There are really no exciting House primaries in Arizona other than the one in Tucson pitting the very conservative carpetbagger Kirkpatrick against local progressive doctor, Matt Heinz. Aside from the GOP billionaires and EMILY's List pumping money into the race smearing Heinz, the DCCC is also backing Kirkpatrick. Polling shows Heinz ahead, in large part because of Kirkpatrick's record as a die-hard NRA supporter, an opponent of Wall Street reform-- she voted with the GOP against Dodd-Frank-- and because of her support, along with the Republicans, to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

Conservative Billionaires Think They Can Buy Democratic Primaries-- Can They?

The day after the New York congressional primaries, geniuses in the mass media, including in New York City, were running around asking how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spells her name. They missed the boat on that one-- missed it entirely. Now they're missing the boat on another big story-- that Republican billionaires are spending heavily in Democratic primaries. They want to pick the Democratic nominees, just the way they pick the Republican nominees. I sent one of the smartest mainstream media guys a tip-off about it. His response was "hey man, will def take a look and give it some thought! maybe not today, buried. but this week. will be in touch." Let's see, that was on August 8 so it's no longer "this week," nor even the week after.

The money is being funneled into Democratic primaries by one of the shadiest conservative operatives in American politics, Nancy Jacobson who controls a network of SuperPACs through her No Labels/Problem Solvers outfits. I first noticed when she was up to when she dumped a ton of last minute sewer money into the IL-03 race pitting progressive Marie Newman against right-wing Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. Marie was winning the race when a tidal wave of Jacobson slime flooded the district, one smear after another. In the end all the No Labels garbage ads saved Lipinski's neck. He beat Newman 48,675 (51.1%) to 46,530 (48.9%). Who put up the millions of dollars for a Democratic primary? Republicans and conservative Democrats. One name I noticed today was in a letter from progressive candidate for Rhode Island Lt. Governor, Aaron Regunberg, running against a conservative Republican with a "D" next to his name, Dan McKee (who took $150,000 from the Walton family and from Jonathan Sackler, the big Bobby Jindal and Joe Lieberman financial backer and the pharmaceutical billionaire behind the nation’s OxyContin crisis. The name I recognized from the Wall Sreet billionaire campaign to save Lipinski was Tony Davis, a Rahm Emanuel ally who founded and is president of Linden Capital Partners. He just dumped $50,000 into the relatively low-profile Rhode Island race.

"We think," wrote Regunberg, "this is just the beginning of the corporate dark money coming into our state to support Dan McKee... I’m proud to run a campaign that doesn’t take money from Wall Street, corporate PACs, fossil fuel interests, drug manufacturers or the gun lobby. We don’t have out-of-state millionaires and billionaires, because we have something more powerful-- the people. And in a fight with Big Money, the people can win."

I hope he's right because billionaire Republicans are spending big to defeat progressive Democrats in every part of the country. And that trend is accelerating right now. James Rupert Murdoch-- yeah, the Fox guy-- gave Jacobson SuperPACs to support conservative Democrat Darren Soto against Alan Grayson in their primary. Jacobson is also spending dark money in favor of Arizona conservative Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick in her primary against Matt Heinz. Sad Horrifying that the DCCC and EMILY's List and the Republican billionaires-- including James Murdoch-- behind the Progress Tomorrow right-wing PAC, are all spending money against the progressive in the Tucson primary, Matt Heinz, and trying to bolster Kirkpatrick. So far they've spent half a million dollars to make sure the Democratic nominee is a conservative. Ironically, the ugliest and most vicious and untruthful of all the ads are from EMILY's List, a group that never used to but now absolutely hates progressive men even more than the DCCC or the GOP does.

Jacobson's web of sleazoid SuperPACs include innocuous-sounding outfits like United for Progress, United Together, Forward Not Back, Progress Tomorrow, Patriotic Americans PAC, Citizens for a Strong America, etc, but they are entirely funded by contributions from 5 and 6-figure right wing donors, such as Rupert Murdoch and his son, Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan Selig and Wheels Inc. executive Jim Frank. As of Friday they had poured almost $600,000 into the smear campaign against Grayson. Jacobson has already lost in primary races for right-wing Democrats John Morganelli (PA) against Susan Wild (PA) and against Debra Haaland for No Labels DINO, Damon Martinez in Albuquerque.

Darren Soto is exactly the kind of fake Democrat Jacobson, the Murdochs and other GOP billionaires want to see beat progressives like Grayson. Soto voted to prosecute all abortions as murder and voted to force women who want an abortion to undergo a humiliating procedure called "transvaginal ultrasound." Since being primaried by Grayson he's been apologizing for those votes, saying he "made a mistake." He hasn't apologized for the votes that earned him "A" ratings from the NRA-- twice. And because of those hair-raising votes, the NRA endorsed him. He voted for Trump-sponsored laws 58 times in Congress and both times impeaching Trump came up in Congress, Soto voted NO. The reason No Labels is so enthusiastic about him is because he has said that he is "open-minded" about phasing out Social Security benefits or eliminating them altogether, No Labels' top issue.

Meanwhile, Soto is one of Congress' most corrupt Democrats, well known for partying with lobbyists, spending taxpayer money and campaign money illegally on personal items for himself and his wife. He has even accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign support from Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her charter school allies. Generally speaking he's been a big waste of a solidly blue seat in Congress, accomplishing nothing for anyone... but himself. That compares badly with Grayson's record:

During a debate with Grayson two weeks ago, Soto claimed "to be a great champion of women’s rights," a lie Grayson directly challenged, bringing up the specifics of Soto's shameful voting record-- like voting twice to criminalize abortion so that doctors could be charged with murder for performing one. Soto had no answer... except to say he regrets those votes. He doesn't regret them enough to turn down the help he's getting now from the anti-Choice extremists who are flooding central Florida with lies against Grayson and nonsensical assertions of Soto's grandeur.

Blue America members have been helping Grayson with his election campaigns since 2006. And he's never let us down-- always one of the 2 or 3 best members of Congress and living up to his promises. He needs us again now. The primary is August 28 and he really needs to get on the air and respond to the lies Jacobson and Murdock are flooding TV and radio with. Please consider contributing what you can by clicking on the Blue America 2018 congressional elections thermometer on the right. As of yesterday another dark money PAC had bought ads on one of the big Spanish language radio stations-- one ad every hour until election day! That's called brain-washing. It's what fascists do; it's what Republicans do. Republican billionaires know their party is going to lose control of Congress in November. So they are working to defeat progressives and make certain friendly conservative DINOs become the nominees of the Democratic Party. We can't let this happen. It's our party, not theirs.

If Conservatives Can Buy Both Parties, They Won't Need To Worry Who Wins Those Bothersome Elections

Jacobson- Rabid fox in the hen house

On Sunday we looked at a relatively new phenomenon happening in American politics right now: conservative-- usually Republican-- billionaires investing huge sums of money in Democratic primaries. We spoke specifically about how the web of shady SuperPACs that prop up the Republican-lite organization, No Labels, is pouring hundreds of thousands of last minute dollars into the Orlando-area seat that progressive Alan Grayson is trying to reclaim from right-of-center New Dem Darren Soto.

It's a district too blue for a Republican so big right wing money wants to make sure it's at least represented by a DINO with GOP tendencies-- like Soto. And certainly not by a skilled and effective progressive warrior like Grayson. Last week, for example, James Rupert Murdoch put another half million dollars into the battle through the No Labels web. And he isn't only only right-wing billionaire doing the same thing this cycle-- nor is the Grayson v Soto fight the only one where wealthy Republicans are testing out their ability to take over the Democratic Party with cash.

As I mentioned, No Labels head honcho, Nancy Jacobson, who is widely considered one of the most vicious and destructive players in American politics, runs a dark web of 8 of the most pernicious and sleazy SuperPACs in the country, United for Progress, United Together, Forward Not Back, Progress Tomorrow, Patriotic Americans PAC, Citizens for a Strong America, etc, entirely funded by contributions from 5 and 6-figure right wing donors, such as Rupert Murdoch, his son James Murdoch, Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan Selig and Wheels Inc. executive Jim Frank. Jacobson, failed in her bid to insert right-wing faux-Dems John Morgantelli (PA) and Damon Martinez (NM) in their races against progressives Susan Wild and Debra Haaland. But she was very successful in rescuing the failed campaign of right-wing Blue Dog Dan Lipinksi in Chicago.

A young progressive businesswoman, Marie Newman had been steadily gaining on Lipinski-- a Republican-lite fake Dem-- and by the week before the election it looked like she had the win in the bag. Suddenly a Republican SuperPAC in South Carolina that funds No Labels with cash from conservative donors like Jerry Reinsfeld and Dick Duchissois, started pouring money for a wave of false ads into the district. Newman's grassroots campaign was swamped with a flood of cash and she lost the election, albeit closely:

• Dan Lipinski (No Labels Blue Dog)- 48,675 (51.1%)
• Marie Newman (D)- 46,530 (48.9%)

Yesterday I asked her what had happened. "No Labels," she told me, "is widely known as a true PAC-bully for conservatives. To be clear, they are not centrist in any way. No Labels only supports conservatives. During my campaign they made up ridiculous lies-saturated ads and executed horrifying things on the ground to beat me. I am incredibly proud of all of my partner Non-profit PAC supporters. My campaign and supporters were honest, fair and ethical. No Labels was the opposite in every way."

No Labels and its affiliated PACs smeared her with $987,742 worth of ads, primarily with a contribution from United For Progress, Inc ($975,894), which gets it's money from the same kind of right-wing criminal types trying to take down Grayson and bolster Soto in Florida:

• Louis Bacon (Moore Capital Management)- $500,000
• Howard Marks (Oaktree Capital)- $375,000
• Christopher Stadler (CVC Stadler)- $250,000
• Jerry Reinsdorf (Chicago White Sox)- $200,000
• Michael Sonnenfeldt (Tiger 21 LLC)- $125,000
• Carl Ferenbach (High Meadows)- $125,000
• Craig Duchossois (Duchossois Group)- $100,000
• Jim Frank (Wheels)- $100,000

Should these plutocrats, primarily corrupt Wall Street banksters, get away with taking over the Democratic Party nominating process? They've already taken over the GOP but with the rise of Trump, conservative Republicans are looking for an alternative and they see No Labels as exactly that-- a viable alternative and an opportunity to insert more Wall Street-friendly "Democrats" into Congress in blue districts where the GOP would have no chance to win anyway. Please consider helping Alan Grayson stop them in Orlando by clicking on the Blue America 2018 congressional thermometer on the right. Grayson was the most effective member of Congress while he served. Soto is an inept, ineffective, backbencher party boy who votes the way he's told to vote-- a complete waste of a blue seat. His record is anti-Choice, pro-NRA and "neutral" on protecting Social Security from the Republicans and the greedy Wall Street monsters who want to "privatize" it.

Although it isn't the exact same thing, it's worth mentioning that Paul Ryan couldn't bear the idea of being defeated by a union construction worker, Randy Bryce... so he announced an early retirement and fled from the battlefield. Yesterday Mark Leibovich of the New York Times Magazine blamed it all-- somewhat brutally-- on Trump, not Bryce. "Ambitious 48-year-old politicians at the peak of their powers don’t suddenly just decide to quit because they’ve discovered that their teenage children are growing up fast back in Wisconsin. Ryan should, by rights, be riding out of town at the pinnacle of his starlit Washington career. Yet he remains a distinctly awkward match to a moment-- and president-- that seem certain to define much of his legacy." I've seen the same internal polls and focus group results Ryan has. Independent voters are done with him. He knew, Trump or no Trump, he has no chance against Bryce. The GOP isn't prepared to give up the southeast Wisconsin seat without a fight, so they have been pumping large amounts of money into the Democratic primary campaign to defeat Bryce and replace him with a pretend-- or vanity-- candidate that would be incredibly easy for them to defeat. It isn't working but it is forcing Bryce to put some attention into a primary he shouldn't have to think about instead of concentrating all his resources and firepower against the Paul Ryan clone that Ryan chose as the November candidate. So far No Labels hasn't weighed in on this one yet.

Should Republican Billionaires Be Picking Democratic Candidates The Way They Already Pick GOP Candidates?

Let's start with some news: Last week, Fox News' James Rupert Murdoch, a British billionaire, put half a million dollars into one of Nancy Jacobson's shady No Labels SuperPACs that aims to fill Congress with candidates from the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party. Their current goal is a smear campaign against Alan Grayson. Most recently, Jacobson pulled off the same filth against Marie Newman in Illinois’ 3rd District House primary, spending $931,600 to spread absolute lies against Newman while bolstering anti-Choice Blue Dog Dan Lipinski.

Jacobson, widely considered one of the most vicious and destructive players in American politics, runs a dark web of 8 of the most pernicious and sleazy SuperPACs in the country, United for Progress, United Together, Forward Not Back, Progress Tomorrow, Patriotic Americans PAC, Citizens for a Strong America, etc, entirely funded by contributions from 5 and 6-figure right wing donors, such as Rupert Murdoch, his son James Murdoch, Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan Selig and Wheels Inc. executive Jim Frank.

By Friday they had spent $138,401 on mail and digital ads trying to bolster Grayson's worthless right-of-center New Dem opponent, Darren Soto, and attacking Grayson.

This cycle, Jacobson has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from Republican contributors trying to win Democratic nominations for far right candidates running against progressives. Recently she failed in Pennsylvania, where Susan Wild beat No Labels DINO John Morganelli and she failed in Albuquerque, where Debra Haaland beat the No Labels DINO, Damon Martinez.

Darren Soto is exactly the kind of fake Democrat Jacobson, the Murdochs and other GOP billionaires want to see beat progressives like Grayson. Soto voted to prosecute all abortions as murder and voted to force women who want an abortion to undergo a humiliating procedure called "transvaginal ultrasound." Since being primaried by Grayson he's been apologizing for those votes, saying he "made a mistake." He hasn't apologized for the votes that earned him "A" ratings from the NRA-- twice. And because of those hair-raising votes, the NRA endorsed him. He voted for Trump-sponsored laws 58 times in Congress and both times impeaching Trump came up in Congress, Soto voted NO. The reason No Labels is so enthusiastic about him is because he has said that he is "open-minded" about phasing out Social Security benefits or eliminating them altogether, No Labels' top issue.

Meanwhile, Soto is one of Congress' most corrupt Democrats, well known for partying with lobbyists, spending taxpayer money and campaign money illegally on personal items for himself and his wife. He has even accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign support from Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her charter school allies. Generally speaking he's been a big waste of a solidly blue seat in Congress, accomplishing nothing for anyone... but himself. That compares badly with Grayson's record:

During a debate with Grayson last week, Soto claimed "to be a great champion of women’s rights," a lie Grayson directly challenged, bringing up the specifics of Soto's shameful voting record. Soto had no answer... except to say he regrets those votes. He doesn't regret them enough to turn down the help he's getting now from the anti-Choice extremists who are flooding central Florida with lies against Grayson and nonsensical assertions of Soto's grandeur.

Blue America members have been helping Grayson with his election campaigns since 2006. And he's never let us down-- always one of the 2 or 3 best members of Congress and living up to his promises. He needs us again now. The primary is August 28 and he really needs to get on the air and respond to the lies Jacobson and Murdock are flooding TV and radio with. Please consider contributing what you can by clicking on the Blue America 2018 congressional elections thermometer on the right. As of yesterday another dark money PAC had bought ads on one of the big Spanish language radio stations-- one ad every hour until election day! That's called brain-washing. It's what fascists do; it's what Republicans do. Republican billionaires know their party is going to lose control of Congress in November. So they are working to defeat progressives and make certain friendly conservative DINOs become the nominees of the Democratic Party. We can't let this happen. It's our party, not theirs.

I've Been A Miner For A Heart Of Gold-- Contest

The Blue America contest for Alan Grayson is still going strong. It ends Saturday. We're giving away a very rare gorgeous RIAA-ceritfied double platinum award for Neil Young's HARVEST, his 4th studio album (1972). Just contribute any amount to Alan Grayson's congressional campaign on this ActBlue page. That makes you eligible to win, regardless of how much you give. All the arcane FEC rules are here, if you have the mind of a lawyer. There were very few of these plaques ever made-- just to band members, people who work for Neil a few people at Reprise Records who helped promote Neil's music. You can be as rich as Trump and not be able to buy it. It's not commercially available. But you can win one. Someone will.

Alan is a big Neil Young fan but Alan's wife, Dena, is the real Neil aficionado, even singing his songs to Alan. She's the one who can tell you anything you want to know about every song on HARVEST. Alan's the one who can't stop talking about "Let's Impeach The President" from Neil's Living With War album. This is what he told his own supporters a few days ago:

At a slightly earlier moment in the space-time continuum, Neil Young wrote a song that seems very apt at this moment. The song is called "Let’s Impeach the President." He wrote it regarding an earlier awful President, not the current awful President. But most people whom I know think that this one is more awful than that one-- by a wide margin. Read the lyrics, listen to the case that Neil Young made for impeachment, and ask yourself: Doesn’t Donald Trump deserve it even more?



Let's impeach the President for lying
And misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

Who's the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
They bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let's impeach the President for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop

Let's impeach the president for hijacking
Our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Yes, let’s impeach the President. Please contribute to our Dump Trump campaign fund, and earn a chance to win a platinum record award from Neil Young, the singer who said it first

This one's from HARVEST:



The contest ends Saturday. And, like Neil, Alan is a real superstar, not a reality show superstar. And... contest or no contest, we need this guy (Alan Grayson, not Neil) back in Congress. While other candidates-- lots and lots of them, and not just Republicans-- hide under their beds when someone asks them if they'll back impeaching Trump, Grayson makes it clear to voters in the Orlando area that he'll not just back it, he'll lead that movement. His district is covered with these billboards:

One more thing, if you've become used to click on a fundraising thermometer to make your contributions, we have a Blue America Harvest thermometer for you too. Please think for a second about how this isn't just about a contest... it's also electing someone to Congress who's shown us what he can do. Remember Alan in the well of the House, Republicans going absolutely nuts on the floor: "The Republican healthcare plan: Don't Get Sick... If You Get Sick... Die Quickly!" They yelled and screamed he should retract that and apologize. There were even establishment Democrats who asked him to do what the Republicans asked for. You know, he never did, right? That's not Alan Grayson. He'll apologize when he makes a mistake; that was no mistake! It wasn't then... and it isn't now.

CONTEST! Neil Young, Alan Grayson, Harvest!

Florida has a late primary, August 28-- a couple weeks before this year's harvest moon (September 14). If you win this contest you'll have your own harvest moon in time to celebrate. Blue America is doing a contest/give-away to benefit Alan Grayson' campaign for Congress in Orlando. The winner gets a very rare and very beautiful RIAA-certified double platinum award for Neil Young's release of Harvest. You can't buy one of these in a story, no matter how rich you are. A limited number were produced for Neil and his band, his staff and a few help who helped promote the album. If you're a Neil fan-- or if you know a Neil fan... this is completely primo. And for Grayson, Neil's music is very personal. Alan: "Every once in a while, Neil Young makes a special appearance in my bedroom. Not personally; just his music. My wife is a huge Neil Young fan, she has a spectacular voice, and every once in a while, she treats me to a Neil Young lullaby. "The Needle and the Damage Done," "Ohio," "Down by the River," "Rockin’ in the Free World"... whatever it is, she makes it sound magical. Thank you, Neil Young, for inspiring her to inspire me."



Meanwhile, helping Grayson-- a lifelong fan of Neil's music, by the way-- get back into the House is something that will be good for our country and for working families everywhere. I can't think of anyone-- and I mean anyone-- who will be a more effective bulwark against Trump and Trumpsim than Grayson. 

So this is how it works: This is the page. And like we wrote there, there is no minimum to be eligible to be entered into the random drawing to win the plaque. A $20.18 contribution has just as much chance to be selected as a $1,000 contribution. The contest ends at 9 in the evening (PT) on Saturday, July 21. if you don't have the cash to give and you want the award, you can enter too-- just send a note to us at Blue America, P.O. Box 27201. Los Angeles, CA 90027 and you'll have the same chance as everyone else. There's an excruciating FEC rules diatribe here which I doubt anyone has ever read besides a couple of lawyers. Easiest way of all to get to the page: the Act Blue Neil/Alan thermometer on the right. This is a win-win for everybody-- except Trump and except Putin.

Congress Has A Chance To Get Alan Grayson Back Again

The House has 435 seats and there aren't many members who really ever make a positive difference for their constituents. But there are some. Alan Grayson has been one of them.

Darren Soto hasn't been. He's just a bump on a log New Dem who slithered out of the state legislature with an A+ from his pals at the NRA and votes against women's right to Choice. Needless to say, the DCCC loves him; he's their kind of nothing congressman. On hearing that Grayson is running for his old seat, DCCC chair Ben Ray Luján-- notorious for never fighting Republicans and always holding his fire for fellow Democrats-- immediately chimed in with some delusional nonsense about how the little known Soto has "built a robust base of support at home in Central Florida... I’m confident Darren will run a winning campaign and continue to serve the good people of Florida’s 9th District, thanks to his record of supporting hurricane survivors in Florida and Puerto Rico, protecting DREAMers and all hard-working immigrants, and standing up for women’s equality in the workplace and their access to quality, affordable healthcare." Utter Beltway nonsense.

I wish Grayson was running against Luján, a closet case from deep blue New Mexico district (PVI D+8), who has never had an serious opposition and who the NRCC has never challenged. This cycle he has no primary challenger and his Republican "opponent," Steve McFall, hasn't raised the $5,000 that would trigger an FEC report while Luján has already raised $1,077,784.

And speaking of campaign contributions, over in Orlando's FL-09, Soto has raised $570,463 and even before officially announcing Tuesday, Grayson had raised $402,775 and had $694,967 cash-on-hand.

Responding to Luján's negativity, Grayson, in an interview on WFTV, said "I don’t need anyone’s permission to run for office. What I’ve done is ask the people. I can run anywhere in the state." When he was making up his mind about running again, he was approached by a Soto staffer who told him Soto surrogates would open the gates of hell on him and that would you every false attack that Republicans and right-wing Democrats had ever used against Grayson. Yesterday ABC News reported that Soto had told them that he expected Grayson to go negative in the primary campaign but says he'll seek to avoid that kind of race. "We expect him to be negative but I have always and will continue to run a positive campaign about how to improve the lives of our constituents. To quote former first lady Michelle Obama, 'when they go low, we go high.'" And then immediately launched into a typically negative attack: "Grayson has never considered what's wise for Democratic unity when considering his actions. He could have helped build a Democratic majority running in one of several open seats, but chose not to do so," Soto said.

78-year-old Nancy Pelosi stands for eight hours on four-inch heels on the floor of the House, begging Democrats to vote against the Budget Act the next day because it wipes out the last vestiges of hope for the DREAMers. Puerto Rican Congressmembers Gutierrez, Serrano and Velasquez-- and virtually every other member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus-- heed her call, and vote "No." Despite Luján's bullcrap about Soto protecting DREAMers, Darren Soto votes "yes." His excuse is that the bill somehow is good for Puerto Rico, although Gutierrez, Serrano and Velasquez didn’t see it that way.

Soto has accomplished exactly nothing in his one term in Congress. He's the ultimate do-nothing backbencher, the polar opposite of Alan Grayson, who was renowned for working across the aisle to pass the most legislation of any member of Congress-- even when the House was controlled by Republicans! You would think the DCCC would be excited to get him back-- if you knew nothing at all about the DCCC.

This morning, Grayson let his supporters know he's running for the seat in his old district. "I’m running for Congress," he wrote, "because our progressive goals-- justice, equality and peace-- need a champion in Congress. Think about it.  Who can you think of, in the U.S. House of Representatives, whom you would call a champion for progress?  On a good day, one or two or three of them.  On a bad day, none. We need someone in Congress who actually knows how to get things done.  And I passed 121 pieces of legislation-- more than anyone else-- even when the Republicans were in charge."

We need someone in Congress who won’t be cowed by Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.

We need someone in Congress who lays the foundation for future progress. Like my Seniors Deserve a Raise Act, for the first increase in Social Security benefits in 43 years. Like my Seniors Have Eyes, Ears and Teeth Act, to expand Medicare to cover eyeglasses, hearing aids and dental care. Like my Freedom From Fear Act, to reinstate the assault weapons ban. Like my College for All Act, introducing the Bernie Sanders free public college law in the House.

Because it’s not enough just to win. You have to make people’s lives better.

And, ultimately, that's exactly what makes Grayson better than your garden variety bump on a long congressmember-- making people's lives better, not just a career in self-service. That Act Blue congressional thermometer above is a way you can contribute to Grayson's campaign. Please click on it and donate what you can.

If We Don't Stop Billionaires From Buying Up The Political System, We Will All Soon Be Their Slaves

I first ran across Houston hedge fund billionaire John Arnold and his wife Laura when I noticed them spending millions of dollars supporting California fake Democrat Ro Khanna, school privatization and charter school advocacy, of the kind John Oliver discusses in the video above. The vile Arnolds have made their fortune through fracking and charter schools and they happily push their greedy agenda by financing right-wing candidates, some Republicans but primarily Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like, besides Khanna (their biggest candidate investment), corrupt characters Darren Soto (FL), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Ami Bera (CA), and repulsive and power-hungry Rahm Emanuel protégée, Illinois Blue Dog Cheri Bustos.

This cycle they teamed up with a Marco Rubio operative, a dip-shit named Thomas Datwyler, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in FL-09 in order to bolster Darren Soto-- a right-wing NRA-poster boy masquerading as a Democrat and running for Alan Grayson's old congressional seat in the Orlando area. The Common Sense Leadership PAC is running a barrage of independent expenditures against Dena Grayson and in favor of Soto-- over $200,000 so far, but with expenditures accelerating by the day. Ironically, their vicious attacks on Grayson have been augmented by the sleaziest and least trustworthy of all Democratic groups, EMILY's List, which has, over the last decade, become expert at spreading lies and distortions. Hedge fund criminal Donald Sussman has given EMILY's List $2 million to spend against Grayson and Michael Bloomberg gave EMILY's List another million, some of which is being used against Soto and some against Grayson. It's ironic that EMILY's List is spending their donors' money to smear a pro-choice woman doctor in such a way that could well result in the election of a virulently anti-choice, right-wing tool like Soto who has been publicly endorsed by the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dems.

The Arnolds, vampires

Although some of the Arnold's money ($44,917) has gone into pro-Soto efforts, the big money is all being spent tp smear Grayson, smearing being a John and Laura Arnold trademark whenever it comes to progressives. This is how predatory billionaires like the Arnolds seeks to advance their political agenda, by helping elect puppet candidates like Darren Soto who will support their bid to destroy public education, one of the long-term goals of these people. As Jeff Bryant wrote for CommonDreams yesterday, "[John] Oliver focused much of his attention on Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, three states with especially depressing charter track records-- including negligence in the approval process and school executives embezzling funds."

None of Oliver’s critics seriously refuted the crux of his argument that there might be something fundamentally wrong by design, rather than by implementation or intent, with the idea that  a “free market” of privately operated and essentially unregulated schools is a surefire way to improve education opportunities for all students.

Indeed, charter schools are “here to stay” has become a refrain among advocates for these schools, even though there’s no doubt the controversy caused by this new parallel school system is just beginning, and no one can predict what the ongoing conflict will lead to.

The charter industry is currently responsible for educating a small percentage of students-- just 6–7 percent nationally and barely measurable in many communities, especially more well-to-do metropolitan and rural areas. A minority of Americans and relatively few politicians completely understand what charter schools are. And most experts have mixed views on the purpose of the schools.

However, what charter advocates generally won’t admit is that many of the problems these schools cause are reflective of what inevitably seems to happen when an essential public service is privatized.

The charter industry claims its schools are “public” institutions because they get tax dollars, but that’s like saying a defense contractor is a public business because it takes in revenues from the federal government.

Numerous experts point out charter schools blur the line from what it means to be a public institution providing a public good and that, by their very design, they expand opportunities to profiteer from public tax dollars and privatize public assets.

People in communities affected by these schools are just beginning to see the conflicts these institutions cause, and it’s just a matter of time before government officials at all levels are forced to respond to the increasing concerns with these schools.

Just consider recent actions taken by the Department of Justice to curtail the expansion of the private prison industry-- a privatization trend that generally predates the rise of the charter industry.

As Mother Jones reports, after “a damning report on the safety, security, and oversight of private prisons,” DOJ announced it would stop contracting with these institutions.

Donald Cohen, who leads In the Public Interest, an organization that researches problems posed by privatizing public services, writes for Huffington Post, privately operated prisons are fundamentally flawed because the business model they must follow encourages the companies to “actively seek new prisoners to fill facilities they own.”

As ITPI has previously reported, “in an effort to provide the service with fewer resources while also maximizing profits, [private prison] companies often cut corners, reducing the quality, effectiveness, and accessibility of the service.”

“The more contractors can cut costs on running their facilities, the wider their profit margins,” writes Aman Banerji for the Roosevelt Institute. “No wonder … private prisons contracted by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) contain one or more security deficiencies, health service deficiencies, and a greater number of food grievances.”

This clear and obvious conflict of interest-- between serving the public and rewarding private enterprise-- led to a misalignment with DOJ’s mission to hold an essential function of government to the high standards the public demands.

If the charter school industry believes it can avoid this conflict, it’s kidding itself.

More than one attentive blogger has noticed the striking similarities between charter schools and the private prison industry. In one of these posts, Mitchell Robinson notes that charters, like private prisons, differ from the public counterparts by not being locally managed or controlled, not providing the same level of services and programs, and not answering to the same level or degree of regulation and oversight.

Over the years, the US Department of Education has rewarded charter schools with over $3.3 billion in federal funds, and with passage of the most recent federal education law, the every Student Succeeds Act, USDoE will send $333 million more to these schools before the current fiscal year is over.

Remarking on the actions DOJ took to end tax dollars going to the private prison industry, Banerji concludes, “It offers an opportunity to contest the privatization of state services beyond the prison system.”

Let’s hope reexamining the role of charter schools is the next step.

Why Are There Blue America Billboards Up All Over Polk County?

The Blue America billboard up top went up on Tuesday on U.S. Highway 27 in Polk County, in Haines City to be more specific. We put a few different boards up on Winter Haven, Lake Wales, and Davenport. It wasn't something we were planning. In fact, our plan for FL-09 was to hold our collective breath and hope one of two excellent progressives, Dena Grayson and Susannah Randolph, would beat Florida's biggest NRA shill, conservative state Senator Darren Soto. Then Soto was endorsed by the New Dems. As of the August 10 FEC reporting deadline he had raised the most of anyone in the race-- $733,132-- and spent the most-- $676,176. But the two progressives, Susannah and Dena were competitive, with, respectively $693,663 and $535,036 raised. The only outside spending I detected was from a shadowy group called True Blue Florida that, I believe, is associated with Susannah and that spent $55,948 smearing Soto. There's no record of who put up the money.

My fear all along was that Susannah and Dena would split the progressive vote and Soto would win up winning the race. I was hoping one of them would put to the new district next door and challenge a right-wing fossil, John Mica, who could get swept away in an anti-Trump tsunami. Instead, the DCCC invented some candidate and inserted her into the Mica race. But then two things happened. Dena started consistently pulling ahead in polling so that it appears she would have the best chance to beat Soto. And then Holly Fussell, a friend of Susannah's had a pretty horrifying experience. I first heard about it from Lucy Flores, the Nevada Berniecrat. Yesterday I asked Holly and she sent me this and told me to share it with DWT readers.

The Hardest Part of Being a Working Woman
-by Holly Fussell

I’ve heard that the hardest part of being a working woman today is choosing between success in your career or your family. I don’t have kids-- but I’m still pretty sure that even if I did, this wouldn’t be true for me. The hardest part for me, being a working woman, is having to choose between success in my career and reporting sexual harassment and sexual assault.

During my time working with Susannah Randolph, candidate for Congress in FL-09, she told me that my many complaints of sexual harassment weren’t valid-- that they should be excused because the man had been drinking. After witnessing this same man threaten my career because I refused his advances, Susannah promoted him, and once again, encouraged me to forgive and forget because he had been drinking.

I recognize now that I should have told someone else I worked with-- but at that time, Susannah was the most senior female staffer, and she had also been my longtime friend and mentor. I trusted her judgment. I convinced myself that she was just looking out for my best interests. But she wasn’t. When this same man suggested that I increase our online fundraising numbers by sending a picture of my breasts to our email list, Susannah laughed right along with him.

After over a year of sexually harassing me without consequence, he raped me. I didn’t have the courage to report it at the time. I was terrified it would ruin my career, and doubted I would get any kind of justice anyway. I struggled to accept that this horrible thing had happened to me, and felt that I had nobody to go to who could give me advice, since the one woman I had always gone to for career advice had ignored my complaints.

I don’t blame Susannah for my sexual assault-- not in the slightest. That is the sole fault of the rapist himself. But I remain deeply disturbed that she ignored my very serious complaints for so long, and that she would promote a man she had witnessed sexually harass me. Perhaps even worse, although she knows I accused this man of rape, she continues to maintain a relationship with him (he was fired when I eventually told another supervisor about the situation, so I no longer have to work with him). You can find him on her campaign’s current FEC report over a dozen times.

It took me a long time to work up the courage to tell this story. I hoped that my post earlier this week, which didn’t include the graphic details, would be enough. But since posting that, I have received a number of complaints, mostly from progressive female activists, disgustingly enough, denying that these awful things happened to me, complaining of the timing of my post, and criticizing me for using Facebook to share my concerns.

But you know what? I tried to use different mediums, many different times over the past few years, and none of them have worked. I tried for so long to work this issue out privately. But that is no longer an option. I cannot sit by silently and watch Susannah Randolph be placed in a position of power, where she can continue to deny her employees’ accusations of sexual harassment, especially considering her continued relationship with my rapist. I can’t have that on my conscience.

I am not working for any of the candidates running against her, nor have I worked for any of their campaigns. Sharing my story has already cost me many of the people I believed were my friends, as well as my relationships with several progressive organizations that I’ve worked so hard to build. For the rest of my life now, when I apply for a job, people will know that I have complained of sexual harassment, and while that shouldn’t make me less employable, realistically, we all know it will hurt my future career prospects. But if I can stop her from doing this again, if I can stop this from happening to another girl, it will have all been worth it.

I’m not encouraging you to vote for anyone in particular. I’m simply encouraging to consider my story before you vote for Susannah.

I think that story getting around is horrifying and also liable to make it even more difficult for Susannah to beat Soto, which is my main concern for this primary. So we put this billboard up too. This one is on the I-4 west of exit 55 in Davenport.

Rather than ask you to contribute to the Blue America PAC's independent expenditure committee that pays for these kinds of things, I want to ask you to make a contribution to Dena Grayson's campaign instead. You can do that by tapping on the thermometer below:

Endorsement Motivations

Every wonder how endorsers decide who to endorse? Let's look at a race in Florida, the one for the U.S. Senate seat. The most valuable endorsement you can get in a Democratic primary is Obama's. So how did he pick between Patrick Murphy and Alan Grayson? Murphy consistently voted with the Republicans on almost everything Obama claimed was important to him-- even direct attacks. I mean there were a whole contingent of corrupt conservative Democrats like Murphy who voted with the GOP on Keystone Pipeline XL every time it came up. But almost none of them went along with the GOP when they proposed a bill to remove Obama from the decision-making process. But Murphy did. Grayson opposed Keystone XL, of course, and proposed a resolution challenging the constitutionality of the GOP bill Murphy backed. Of the 7 right-wing Democrats to vote for the Republican witch hunt against Hillary-- their so-called Benghazi Committee-- only 3 are still in Congress... and one of them is Murphy. So why did Obama endorse him and lie in ads to Democratic voters by claiming the reactionary Murphy is "a progressive" and a defender of Social Security (even though Murphy offered to support legislation to lower benefits as part of a compromise with his pals the Republicans?



It's not much of a mystery. Aside from being hounded by Chuck Schumer and his Wall Street allies to get Murphy into the Senate to "balance out" Elizabeth Warren, we were told by a high up staffer who works for Joe Biden that Obama did it to get contributions to his uber-expensive presidential library, ostensibly from Murphy's rich, crooked father, from the super-wealthy Saudi family that sponsors Murphy (the notorious Al-Rashids) and from Schumer's Wall Street patrons. Our Obama would do something like that? Something that disgusting? Yeah... he's from the Chicago Democratic Machine; it's what they do.

Yesterday there were a conflicting endorsement stories in central Florida. The Brady anti-gun campaign looked at FL-09 and feared that NRA poster child Darren Soto could get the Democratic nomination. But instead of endorsing Dena Grayson, an avid supporter of gun safety regulations, who is best positioned to beat Soto, they clumsily backed Susannah Randolph, a candidate who might take away enough support from Grayson to allow Soto to slip in. But the Randolph campaign's celebrations over the endorsement today might be dampened by the fact that DFA (Democracy for America) seems to have unendorsed her. They pulled their phone-banking out of the district and removed her from the list of candidates on their website. Why? [When I asked a DFA executive, she responded by e-mail, "Hi Howie- thanks for flagging - she's back on the website now." And, sure enough, she was back on the website, or at least on one list of candidates, albeit not the list on their site's front page. Odd.] A couple of weeks ago I saw a tweet from Lucy Flores, which alerted me to a problem for Susannah's campaign. It led to this statement which has been circulating in the progressive blogosphere ever since:

I know Susannah for years and she's a decent person and a committed activist. Blue America announced early on we wouldn't endorse in this race because both Susannah and Dena are both great candidates, while Soto is a typical nightmarish conservaDem (endorsed by the New Dems, Congress' Republican wing of the Democratic Party). But polling-- and now this whole flap over sexual harassment-- has made us worry that a vote for Susannah just weakens Dena's chance to defeat Soto. So we endorsed Dena. (Please consider contributing to her campaign here.)

In another Orlando area district, the DCCC got clueless anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, to unload half a million dollars in ads for weak puppet candidate, Val Demings, even though the more independent-minded and progressive candidate in the race, Bob Poe, has been running all his TV spots about banning automatic weapons and taking an even stronger and more relatable anti-violence stand than Bloomberg's own anti-gun organization!



How about newspapers... how do they do their endorsements? Tangent: there was one in the Salt Lake Tribune last week by David Irvine explaining why he, a lifelong Republican, is voting for Hillary. Irvine was a member of the state House of Representatives and used to be the chairman of the Davis County Republican Party, in the very red suburbs between Salt Lake City and Ogden. It's notTrump country. Cruz won the primary with 68.4% and Kasich came in second with 20.3%. Trump brought up the rear with 11.3% (with just over half the votes Bernie Sanders got in Davis Co.) Irvine wasn't really so much as endorsing Hillary as he was denouncing Trumpanzee-- and the Republican leaders, like Paul Ryan, who back him. "It is unfortunate that so many of those who claim to be leaders of the congressional and presidential wings of the Republican Party have long since made their Faustian bargains and are actively endorsing a totally self-centered know-nothing who behaves like the caricature of a banana-republic dictator," he wrote... "There's a point where this failure to withdraw an endorsement becomes a self-indicting embrace of a demagogue's values. Trump is riding astride the Four Horsemen of Calumny he has resurrected from an earlier and equally dismal Republican playbook: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear... It's entirely possible that this election could turn on Utah's electoral votes. Recognizing that reality, every Clinton vote is crucially important. A nonvote or a Johnson vote is a vote for Trump."

But endorsements or not, and with a new poll showing that half of the voters won't consider casting a voter from the Trumpanzee, thinks are looking more dire by the day for the GOP. Politico, though, thinks they've found a silver-lining in the Republican cloud. Although Latinos rushing the register to vote in time for the November election have swelled Democratic Party ranks in California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, the opposite is happening in states where large numbers of voters have keep their Democratic Party registrations but have long ago stopped voting for Democrats. Red counties in Florida, North Carolina and backward areas of Pennsylvania (primarily in the southwestern part of the state) are seeing lot of voters re-registering as Republicans, in line with how they've actually been voting. Writing for Politico Monday, Ben Schreckinger reported that "registration numbers in Eastern and Midwestern battleground states offer a rare piece of welcome news to Republicans bracing for the possibility of a November massacre." Clearly this is part of a partisan realignment that is coming into focus this year as Trump courts white, alienated blue color workers abandoned by Wall Street Democrats and Hillary courts traditional suburban professional that have been the mainstay of the GOP. And these numbers are very real.

In Pennsylvania-- where Democrats’ registration advantage has fallen by a fifth since the 2012 election to 915,000 voters-- more than 85,000 former Democrats have become Republicans this year, almost three times the number of voters who made the opposite switch.

The party-switching has been especially lopsided in Pennsylvania counties in the southwest region, coal country, and the northeast, which includes Scranton. Megan Sweeney, the communications director for the state Republican Party, and Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist based in Harrisburg, said the party-switching was a mix of push and pull factors. “Certainly part of it is Trump-motivated,” Gerow said. My view is that a lot more of it is motivated by the disgust that many Democrats have for the administration.”

In North Carolina, Democrats’ voter registration advantage shrunk by 44,000 between last June and this May, more than twice the rate it fell at it during that period last cycle. As of August 13, the Democratic advantage had dwindled to 641,000.

The picture in North Carolina is complicated by the rise of unaffiliated voters. Even more striking than Democrats’ shrinking registration advantage over Republicans is the influx of new residents into the state who do not register with either party but tend to be less tied than longtime residents to the white Southern culture that has taken a shine to Trump. The number of independents has surged almost 40 percent since 2008, from roughly 1.4 million to more than 1.9 million. During that period, the Republican rolls have remained essentially static and Democrats have lost about 200,000 voters.

...More concerning for Democrats should be Florida, where the party’s registration advantage has shrunk to 259,000 voters-- less than half what it was during the 2012 election.

Florida, like North Carolina, has seen a surge in independent voter registrations in recent years, but in a crucial swing state with a large and growing minority population, the shrinking advantage is nonetheless disappointing.

So far this year, Florida Republicans have added close to 70,000 more voters to their rolls than Democrats have. “That [change], especially when you’re talking about a state that Obama carried by less than 100,000 votes last time, could be significant,” said Cauvillon, the Louisiana pollster.

The strength of Trump’s ground operation in the primaries varied wildly from state to state, but in Florida, under the direction of former Rick Scott aide Karen Giorno, his campaign has taken credit for registering 35,000 new Republicans and bringing 5,000 independents and Democrats into the party.

If Character Matters New Dem Darren Soto Will Never Be A Florida Congressman

Recently, Wall Street's congressional branch, the New Democratic Coalition, a grouping of corrupt right-of-center Democrats called the New Dems, released a list of candidates they have vetted and found Republican-lite enough and prone enough towards the corruption the group thrives on to endorse. No one was in the slightest bit surprised to find Florida state Senator Darren Soto's name on the list. We've been warning Democrats in the Orlando area since back in December that Soto is bad news-- unless you're the NRA, in which case Darren Soto is your kind of candidate.

Oddly, Soto also applied for an endorsement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members were so appalled by his failure to understand progressive issues that they immediately turned around and endorsed Susannah Randolph, a long-time Orlando area activist and Alan Grayson's former district director. There are 4 other Democrats contending for the seat-- including Grayson's fiancée, Dena Minning, and there is a lot of fear that progressives will cannibalize the vote and allow Soto, the definition of a DINO, to slip into a seat occupied by Congress' most dynamic, brilliant and effective progressive. Yesterday, Ashley Feinberg, writing at Gawker chipped away at Soto's already tenuous credibility.

Before he was a star on the rise in the world of Florida politics, State Senator Darren Soto was apparently a member George Washington University Law School’s Law Revue, a “musical and sketch comedy show,” which sounds almost as terrible as the Florida House of Representatives. In 2006, three short years after he authored a Law Revue song in which he lamented, “Back when we were both 1-L’s you were in my section/I spent every day in Con Law hiding my erection,” he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives. The good people of Florida reelected him for several more terms before moving on to the State Senate in 2012 (and for which he was reelected in 2014).

Unless you live in Florida, none of this is your problem, strictly speaking, except that now, Soto is running to replace U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, a longtime congressman who’s currently gunning for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat. But where Grayson maintained a staunchly progressive voting record, Soto leans about as far right as a Democrat can without tumbling into the other side of the aisle. Or as The Sunshine State News, Florida insiders’ conservative outlet of choice, described him, “Soto is about as good as conservatives can hope for from his liberal Democratic district.”

Soto boasts an A-rating from the NRA, has voted in favor of pro-life terminology, is a big supporter of Jeb Bush’s terrible school voucher program, and is beloved by big business interest groups everywhere. All of which helps explain the young politician’s friendly relationship with soon-to-be ex-Senator Marco Rubio. So friendly, in fact, that Rubio even played a bizarre joke on the then-Florida congressman in 2008, in which he hired an actress to send a note to Soto on the House floor and claim to be a secret admirer. When Soto got up to approach his new love interest, according to the Orlando Weekly, Rubio “crashed his gavel down on the podium and announced to all in earshot that a member of the House was seriously out of order. The sergeant-at-arms was sent to retrieve Soto, handcuffing him in the process.”

Soto protested, saying the woman was simply a concerned voter, at which point Rubio revealed that per the Orlando Weekly, “Soto was the victim of both a prank and his notorious libido. Rubio announced the prank, calling poor Soto to the ‘well’” at the main podium to the laughs and applause of his peers.”

That “notorious libido” has been with him since his time as a law student, when he was on the Law Revue. Accompanying the Revue’s performances, at least in Soto’s day, was a short-lived Law Revue Review newsletter, which you can still access on the school’s website. The newsletter is an objectively terrible attempt a law school-oriented Onion ripoff (the site even inexplicably lists The Onion in its sidebar of links), but it’s nothing special; the field of cringeworthy university satire sites is a crowded one. What’s more interesting is the parody lyrics attributed to Darren Soto.

Here’s a song attributed to Soto entitled “2-Luv.”

2-Luv
By Darren Soto

Back when we both were 1-L's you were in my section
I spent everyday in Con Law, hiding my erection
At first you seemed like you were distant
I didn't know what I would do
But I won you that night I held your head While you were puking at the bar review

CHORUS # 1
We have gone too far
No we haven't, we could get much worse
We have gone too far
No we haven't...

Thank you for not filing a grievance for sexual duress
And thanks for granting my motion to get undressed
But then you left me for a 3-L and you called me immature
You were once a crazy 1-L chick, but now you're a 2-L bore

CHORUS #1
Fine, fine, fine, fine...
I want to insert my dicta and give you my full case load
I want to show you the wonders of the penal code
And I still love your oral arguments, they get me weak in the knees
As long as we reach conclusion, I'll give you attorney's fees

CHORUS #2
We've gone too far to go back
We've gone too far into hell
It's too late, we're 2-L's and it's too much
We've gone too far to go back
And we're running out of luck
We're 2-L's and we're too fucked

Soto’s attempts at inserting legal jargon puns are bad (writing the line “I want to show you the wonder of my penal code” should be a criminal offense). The jokes about having sex with a heavily intoxicated woman and thanking her for not “filing a grievance for sexual duress” are much worse.

What’s more, in the Law Revue Review staff bios, Soto’s appears to be only one that A) is not written in complete sentences and B) relates almost everything back to sex:

Darren Michael Soto - Undergraduate: Rutgers School of Goombas and Wiseguys - Place of Origin: Doity Joise - Prior Occupation: Asexual Polygamist - Current Occupation: Wielder of the Shaft - Course of Study: Sex Law - Goal: To become a back-up dancer for Christina Aguilera or die trying - Hobbies: Jealousy, Boredom and Self-Gratification - Favorite Quote: “This junk in my trunk ain’t made for chumps” - Favorite Book: “The BFG” - Favorite Color: Green

...[It] may be excusable for a bunch of idiot kids. But Soto was 26 when he graduated from GW. And judging from his antics in the Florida House, not much has changed. This wasn’t that long ago, after all.

Soto’s office did not return Gawker’s requests for comment.