Plutocrat For Congress?

Recently Eric, a longtime Blue America supporter in Mandeville Canyon, contributed $500, over ten times the average Blue America contribution. He divided it evenly between 15 candidates and each candidate got $33.33, except Mary Ellen Balchunis, Doug Applegate, Paul Clements and DuWayne Gregory, who got $33.34 each. The same day, another long-time supporter, Susan in Swarthmore sent in $5,000 and each candidate got $333.33. Everyone was really happy to see hefty contributions like those. That's because none of our candidates are like Florida New Dem Randy Perkins. He needed some money for his flailing campaign on Florida's Treasure Coast recently too. So he wrote himself another $1,000,000 check.

Randy wants to be a congressman. So Randy's buying himself a seat. Randy has nothing to offer working families in Florida's 18th congressional district-- but the folks there don't seem to mind. Randy, if he wins, would be replacing another worse-than-zero rich, spoiled congressman, Patrick Murphy. As of the September 30 FEC filing deadline, Perkins had spent $6,236,582 of which $5,802,029 had been self-funded. So the new million makes $6,802,029. I guess he wants that seat bad.

Previously, the only other federal contributions Randy Perkins had ever made were a $2,500 check to Mitt Romney in the hope of defeating Barack Obama, a $28,000 check to the NRCC and checks to conservatives of both parties, like McCain, Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani and to corrupt Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Alcee Hastings, and Patrick Murphy (of course)... as well as to the the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the Colorado Republican Campaign Committee. Now he calls himself a Democrat-- he switched his party ID a few weeks before registering as a candidate-- and I don't have the slightest doubt that even if he decides to stay a Democrat after being elected-- a 50/50 proposition-- he'd vote with the Republicans even more than Patrick Murphy did. And before he declared for the Senate, and started pretending to be a Democrat, Murphy voters with the GOP more than any Democrat in the House except 3 of the worst Blue Dogs of all time.

Aside from Perkins, these are the multimillionaires trying to buy House seats by spending a million dollars or more each:

• Paul Mitchell (R-MI)- $3,577,287
• Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN)- $2,582,150
• Martin Babinec (I-NY)- $2,200,000
• Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX)- $1,850,000

All the other multimillionaires who spent over a million dollars lost their primaries, like Maryland Democrat David Trone ($13,414,225), Tennessee Republican George Flinn ($2,795,000), Florida Republican Mark Freeman ($1,627,756), and Texas Republican Glen Robertson ($1,636,459).

Blue America doesn't have any million dollar donors (not even one). Our average contribution is about $45, although far more people give $20 than $200. If you can afford it, please consider contributing to one or more of the progressive House candidates who need some Get Out the Vote dontions this week and next week, by tapping on the Blue America thermometer below:

GOP Crackpot Candidate of the Week-- Two Violent Nuts, One In Florida And One In Georgia

The first week of our new feature and I can't even choose between the two finalists, a pair of extremist House candidates from the Southeast. The guy in the video up top, Rick Kozell, is running to replace fake Democrat Patrick Murphy on Florida's Treasure Coast. We thought the DCCC found the perfect clone of Murphy for the job, crooked multimillionaire-- and not a Democrat-- Randy Perkins. He's already self-funded $3,017,688. He has a primary battle against Jonathan Chane, but feels confident he can buy the nomination and, needless to say, the DCCC is helping him do just that. There must be half a dozen Republicans running in the red-leaning district (R+3) where Romney beat Obama 52-48%. Perennial candidate Carl Domino, an ex-state Rep., is probably best known, but his reputation took a major hit when as weak a candidate as Patrick Murphy kicked his ass in 2014-- 60-40%-- in a strong Republican year. Mark Freeman, a rich doctor, has self-funded $1,207,756 into his campaign-- most of which has already been spent-- and the other Republicans with considerable cash-on-hand for the August 30 primary are Rebecca Negron ($635,739), Kozell ($360,327), Brian Mast ($332,441) and Domino ($232,105).

As you can probably guess from the video, Kozell is the most extreme of the FL-18 candidates. But we found someone even more extreme up in Georgia, where there's a runoff election today to fill the seat of retiring nincompoop Lynn Westmoreland in GA-03, a deep red swath of territory southwest of Atlanta from the suburbs of Fayette, Coweta and Henry counties all the way down to Columbus. The Republican primary yielded up two right-wing maniacs-- state Senator Mike Crane and dentist and former West Point Mayor Drew Ferguson. Crane was ahead in the primary, 15,343 (26.9%) to 15,277 (26.8%), just 66 votes. I would have bet on Crane today but then he stepped in it big time. Formerly best known as a "religious liberty" bigot-- something they love in backward districts like GA-03-- he's now best known for advocating shooting policemen. No, really, he did. The idiot actually managed to wind up far to the left of #BlackLivesMatter by raising the old GOP trope about how your home is your castle and that if a cop comes on your property-- even with a search warrant-- you can shoot him. And he said he would and told his supporters they should too! State Senator Crane apparently doesn't think white people need to respect the police, only blacks.



As of 2 weeks ago Ferguson had raised $782,044 and Crane has raised $417,072. Both went into the final 2 weeks with approximately the same amount in their campaign war chests, just under $200,000. Club for Growth has spent $813,981 for Crane. (The ad just above is what they've been running to smear Ferguson, a right-wing nut but not as much of a right-wing nut as Crane.) The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Ending Spending Action Fund and the American Dental Association spent, respectively, $650,150, $493,049 and $170,359 bolstering Ferguson and attacking Crane.

This weekend, a clueless and still-dazed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was in Atlanta campaigning for Crane, proof if anyone needed it that Crane was the more extreme of the two candidates. Wait 'til someone tells Trump that Cruz was campaign for the cop-killer! This ad from Drew Ferguson should end Crane's political career permanently-- unless Georgia Republicans are even crazier than I thought they were! Yes-- and of course Crane is being heavily backed by the NRA and the Tea Party.

What's Worse, Stinking Rich Self-Funders Or Candidates Who Sell Their Souls For Contributions?

Florida politics is a case study in campaign finance corruption

If you like conservative spoiled rich kid Patrick Murphy-- and apparently voters along Florida's Treasure Coast do-- there's no reason why you wouldn't like conservative spoiled rich kid Randy Perkins, the newly-minted "Democrat" who's running for the congressional seat Murphy is giving up as he runs for the open Senate seat against progressive Democrat Alan Grayson. The DCCC certainly loves him as much as they love any corrupt conservative self-funder. Today, Murphy is mired in multiple fundraising scandals-- from a Steve Israel scheme that is sending Ami Bera's father to prison and is about to come down hard on Murphy's corrupt parents, Thomas and Leslie, to a PayDay lender bribery situation and an operation that funneled over $100,000 in Saudi money-- perhaps many hundreds of thousands of dollars-- into Murphy's shady political career. Oops... I almost forgot the massive bribes Murphy has been taking from EB-5 visa crook Nick Mastroianni.

Randy Perkins, who maxed out to both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in recent cycles, and (along with his wife) has given at least $1.7 million to Republicans and about $840,000 to Democrats, including a huge bribe he gave to Chris Christie to get a contract for Hurricane Sandy cleanup work in New Jersey) is self-funding his bid to buy a congressional seat. Last FEC report we saw showed him having taken just over $2 million from his own bank account and put it into his campaign (which was back on March 31).

Yesterday, Randy was featured by Politico calling campaign fundraising too disgusting and appalling for him to continue doing it. "Whether you’re running as a Democrat or a Republican," said the stinking rich and corrupt Perkins, "the expectation is you’ve got to raise, raise, raise, raise. It’s not something I’m willing to do. It’s disgusting and appalling."



"Fundraising," wrote Marc Caputo, "takes a considerable amount of time. And it’s awkward to ask others for $2,700 checks per election if you’re a self-made man worth as much as $200 million from working in the blue-collar field of disaster recovery."

Just down the road from the district Perkins is pretending to live in, campaign finance reform champion Tim Canova-- who is running against corrupt campaign fundraising vacuum-cleaner Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- is not asking for $2,700 checks. As of yesterday, Canova's very grassroots campaign had raised $1,017,632 from 53,155 individual contributions-- no money from corporate PACs and just 9 maxed out contributions. His average contribution is $18.55 and 98% of his donors have given less than $200. Like campaigns by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson, that's as close to a publicly-funded campaign as I've ever seen! "When elected," he told me this morning, "I will not owe a single favor to any corporate interests." Amazing when a candidate has something to say about policy ideas and voters get that the race isn't just about a careerist move, the way Wasserman Schultz's and Perkins' races are.

Caputo reported that Perkins "was ready to spend at least $3.5 million of his own fortune before he even entered the race. Now he’s on the hook for millions more."

Jonathan Chane, Perkins' main Democratic opponent told us that "When I'm elected to Congress I'm committed to overturning Citizens United and fighting for real campaign finance reform that will take the corrosive influence of money out of politics." The DCCC has been discouraging Democratic donors from helping Chane's campaign and have put Perkins on a list they give out to donors, primarily of the most corrupt and unscrupulous candidates running for Congress-- the Red to Blue list. Caputo interviewed Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics watchdog group, for his piece and she explained that "there are benefits and drawbacks to having independently wealthy candidates and politicians."

“The good news bad news is most people who self-fund lose. And that’s good because we don’t want Congress just made up of rich people,” she said. “But that’s bad because if they don’t self-fund, candidates and members need to spend all their time fundraising.”

You can contribute to make Florida congressional politics slightly less of a stinking cesspool by helping elect clean-government reformers like Tim Canova and Alan Grayson on this ActBlue page:

Electing A Better Congress-- Part Of Bernie's Revolution Hillary And Bernie Should Embrace

I've never seen as many self-funders running for House seats with million dollar checks from their own accounts as I'm seeing this year. We looked into it a couple weeks ago and I'm sure everyone knows by now that David Trone's $12 million didn't buy him anything but second place. As of the April 6 FEC deadlines, he had spent $9,026,748 of the $9,968,000 he had self-funded. He's announced he was putting in around 3 million since then. In the same race, Chris Matthews ran his lobbyist wife and she put up $500,000 from her piggy bank and raised a fortune from people who wanted to be on MSNBC with Tweety. But she came in third, despite being EMILY's List top House priority and despite spending around $2.5 million, much of it from fellow lobbyists and from her corrupt, conservative New Dem allies. The biggest third party expenditure in the race was the $291,393 that EMILY's List wasted on their wretched conservative candidate. The leader of that Maryland race, though, was Jamie Raskin, one of the most accomplished and promising progressive leaders running for Congress anywhere. He wrote himself a modest $2,700 check and spent $1,243,114, most of it from small donors. He took no superPAC money and owes no one anything except Maryland voters.

The next mega-self-funder among fake Democrats running for Congress is the DCCC's repulsive recruit to replace another self-funder, Patrick Murphy in South Florida. The new version of Murphy is the vile recent party-switcher Randy Perkins, who has already written his campaign a check for $2,006,274. (One of the rich Republicans in the race, Mark Freeman, has also written himself a check for over a million dollars.) One of the grassroots Democrats taking on Perkins is Jonathan Chane, who has raised $505,230 so far. He's looking forward to beating both of the conservative multimillionaires running, the DCCC shill Perkins and the Republican Freeman.

Wednesday he let FL-18 voters know about how Trone had fallen on his face. "Last night in Maryland's 8th District," he wrote, "self-funder David Trone spent over $12 Million of his own money and still lost the Democratic Primary. Unlike Randy Perkins, he didn't even have a record of giving almost $2,000,000 to Republicans, including $200,000 to Rick Scott! How much is Perkins going to spend to lose? He's said up to $5 Million."

He asks Florida voters to "say no to mega-millionaires who try to buy themselves seats in Congress," a solid idea and a good campaign strategy. The DCCC is actively recruiting these kinds of garbage candidates all over the country-- and blackballing middle class and working class candidates who don't have the money to self-fund. Hopefully this will stop when Pelosi's and Hoyer's ancient hands are pried off the levers of power at the DCCC and the catastrophically failed committee is reworked to make it a more effective organization.

Chris Haas published a piece at In These Times highlighting some of the top progressive challengers running this cycle and trying them to Bernie's political revolution, something Bernie himself has been reluctant to do so far other than in 3 cases involving House seats, his 3 candidates being Jamila Jayapal (WA), Zephyr Teachout (NY) and Lucy Flores (NV), each of whom Blue America has been raising money for even before Bernie decided to get involved. Bernie, though, seems reluctant to help any Senate candidates-- after being specifically threatened with dire reprisals from Chuck Schumer-- or to help any reformers, Tim Canova, Alex Law and David McTeague are good examples, running against heinous incumbents, in those 3 examples, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Donald Norcross (NJ) and Kurt Schrader (OR). Haas, I'm afraid, avoided discussing some of these ugly realities and went straight for the susperficial.

"These challengers," wrote Haas in his intro, "range from first-time candidates to experienced lawmakers, from community organizers to law professors. Each is balancing the individual concerns of the voters they seek to represent alongside the larger mood of the nation. None of them is running because of Bernie Sanders, but they clearly benefit from the enthusiasm and sense of progressive possibility his campaign has created." And he does point out that "[some of the candidates] have endorsed Sanders, others remain neutral or even back Hillary Clinton. But they are coalescing around a set of progressive policies familiar to anyone who has heard Sanders speak, including single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage and breaking up the big banks. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic platform more at odds with Bill Clinton’s centrist Third Way of the 1990s... Many of these candidates believe that voters are fed up with how the corporate capture of the party has pulled it to the right." Haas highlights 10 candidates, 2 of whom lost Tuesday in Maryland, Donna Edwards and Joseline Pena-Melnyk. The remianing 8 are:

• Tim Canova (FL)
• Tom Fiegen (IA)
• Lucy Flores (NV)
• Alan Grayson (FL)
• Eric Kingson (NY)
• Pramila Jayapal (WA)
• Susannah Randolph (FL)
• Jamie Raskin (MD)

Jamie won his Maryland primary Tuesday and his deep blue district will be sending him to Congress next year. The other 7 have tougher races ahead of them and 3-- Grayson, Kingson and Jayapal-- are top Blue America priorities. "It would be a mistake," wrote Haas, "to overlook the fact that this year's election is playing out in a moment when protest movements have interjected themselves into the national conversation in a way we haven’t seen in a long time. Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, the climate movement and more have demonstrated the value of setting uncompromising demands and pushing the boundaries of what is politically possible.

It’s no surprise then that some of these progressive challengers come directly out of protest movements. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state senator running for the 7th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, has a long history of activism and advocacy in Seattle. She founded the post-9/11 immigrant rights group Hate Free Zone (now OneAmerica), which has held massive voter registration drives.

“The only reason I got into politics was because I believed it was another platform for organizing,” she says, “and that’s what I want to do with my congressional campaign. We’ve brought in thousands of leaders, young people and people of color and women who never saw themselves as part of democracy.”

... The establishment, however, is not going quietly. In Florida, where Tim Canova is challenging Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her congressional seat, news got out in March that the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) had denied Canova’s campaign access to the party’s voter file. His supporters created an uproar; the file is crucial to any campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts. The FDP eventually backed down in order to avoid, in the words of the state party executive director, the “appearance of favoritism,” but the policy remains in place for all other Democratic primary challengers in Florida. And not just Florida-- Democratic challengers in other states are routinely denied access to this data or charged extra for it.

“The DNC and state Democratic parties must stop favoring incumbents over insurgents in Democratic primaries,” Canova says. “We need to recruit activists committed to our progressive agenda to run for office, and that includes challenging incumbent Democrats.”

Given that these candidates want to rid the party of corporate influence, it’s no surprise that many are going head-to-head with big money. In Maryland, Jamie Raskin’s two biggest challengers in the Democratic primary are a wine mogul named David Trone, who has already spent more than $5 million of his fortune on the race, and Kathleen Matthews, who once oversaw the Marriott political action committee and is now herself the recipient of more lobbyist money than any Democrat running for the House in 2016.
“My [two] major opponents here have no real history of involvement in Democratic Party politics,” Raskin says. “They are creatures of the big money politics that have overtaken our country.” He’s won the endorsement of both liberal groups and a number of Democratic state lawmakers, and-- borrowing a page from Sanders’ playbook-- has relied on a surge of small-dollar donations to remain competitive. “Progressives are fired up here for a victory against big money,” Raskin says.

It worked for Jamie, let's help make sure it works for Grayson, Jayapal, Kingson, Canova and the others on this list:

If You Were A Candidate, Would You Want A Gaggle Of Corrupt DC Lobbyists Like Haley Barbour Raising Money For You?

Why is our government such a mess? Follow the money

By 2008, no one considered reactionary Georgia Blue Dog John Barrow an actual Democrat. He was voting for the toxic Republican agenda more consistently than a dozen Republicans were! That year progressives in Georgia felt they had finally found a candidate who could beat him in a primary, highly respected and accomplished state Sen. Regina Thomas, once Deputy Majority Whip of the Georgia House and in synch-- unlike Barrow-- with every issue Obama was presenting to the American people. When Obama stabbed her in the back and endorsed Barrow, recording a radio spot for black radio stations heralding the Republican-lite Barrow as a hero of working families, it pretty much ended any chance for Regina to win the primary-- the ultimate betrayal. Of course, no one who remembered Obama's fulsome endorsement of Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont could have been that surprised.


Aside from the radio spot that was played exclusively on black radio, Barrow's spots from the primary were all repetitions of GOP talking points scapegoating immigrants, railing against the "death tax," boosterism for the Bush/McCain perspective on wars in the Middle East... Obama's ad said "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track." Back in Washington, Barrow voted against virtually every proposal Obama made to Congress. By the way, Hillary Clinton endorsed him too-- the NRA's top Democratic shill in Congress, against the African-American woman state senator who was campaigning on gun safety. Because of Obama and the Democratic establishment's support for the faithless Barrow, the Democratic Party lost the seat, not to a progressive Democrat but to a rabidly right-wing Republican.

Today one of the most loathed Democrats in Congress, #DebtTrapDebbie Wasserman Schultz, is being primaried by one of the best candidates for Congress anywhere. Once again, Obama stepped into the fray on behalf of the symbol of all that is worst and most hated about the Democratic Party; he endorsed Wasserman Schultz Monday-- and, as he did when he backed Barrow against Regina Thomas and backed Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy against proven progressive champion Alan Grayson, he just flat-out lied to low-info voters: "Debbie has been a strong, progressive leader in Congress and a hardworking, committed Chair of our national Party since I proudly nominated her to the role in 2011. She always stands up and fights for what is right for her district while passionately supporting middle class families."

In fact Debbie is progressive the way John Barrow was progressive-- not. And the families she always stands up and fights for are families like the notorious sugar barons, the Fanjuls, who have financed her rise to power. It is a tribute to Tim Canova that he has Wasserman Schultz so precariously on the ropes that she had to call in Obama for help in a primary! And it's just like Obama to back a slime-bag like Wasserman Schultz, the same way he backed John Barrow and Patrick Murphy and the same way he is sure to back Hillary and every right-of-center Democrat who needs help against a progressive. (He's got a presidential library in Chicago to build and money doesn't grow on trees; it comes from rich donors like Patrick Murphy's parents and like Debbie Wasserman Schultz's career-long backers/investors.)

Just up the I-95 from FL-23, the Broward/Miami-Dade County, district Wasserman Schultz occupies, is FL-18, the district Patrick Murphy is abandoning in pursuit of the open U.S. Senate seat. The Democratic Party establishment insists on corrupt big money plutocrat Randy Perkins over the progressive candidate in the race, Jonathan Chane. Standard DCCC operating procedure.

Many of K Street's sleaziest and most criminal lobbyists-- led by Haley Barbour's BRG Group, the shadiest of all the DC lobbyist firms-- threw a big bash for their boy Perkins a few days ago.

One logo is Romney's and one is Perkins'-- same difference

BRG lobbyists like Jonathan Mantz, Maya Seiden and Josh Lamel were yucking it up about it being a "Red to Blue" event, since, at least in theory, Murphy is no longer a Republican-- so the district is "blue" not "red," and they all know very well that Perkins is anything but "blue." Other of Washington's most corrupt lobbyists in attendance were Libby Greer of Forbes-Tate, John Michael Gonzalez of Peck Madigan Jones, and Tom O’Donnell of Gephardt Government Affairs. And 5 of the most corrupt, in-the-pocket-of-the-Wall-Street/K-Street-Axis Democrats were in attendance: Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Alcee Hastings, Jim Himes, and Denny Heck. That should give any progressive an idea about what kind of "Democrat" Randy Perkins hopes to be.

Barbour, who was the longtime Chair of the RNC, and was always thrilled by the hundreds of thousands of dollars Perkins gave Republican candidates, had been hired by Perkins as his company's lobbyist. Barbour engineered $100 mlion+ in no bid contracts for Perkins from Chris Christie after Hurricane Sandy. The dirty money goes round and round-- it's what keeps the two corrupt parties in power-- Perkins hires Barbour to be AshBritt's lobbyist (AshBritt is Perkins' company), Barbour gets Perkins millions and millions of dollars in no bid contracts from Christie and Rick Scott, Perkins makes a hefty contribution to the Republican Governors Association (while Christie is chair-- more than $761,000), and gives Rick Scott $200,000 for his campaign against Democrat Alex Sink and Barbour hosts a fundraiser for Perkins' Congressional campaign... and so it goes.

Like Trump, Perkins calls buying corrupt politicians "just business." Business very much encouraged by the most corrupt of politicians, like... Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Alcee Hastings, Jim Himes and Denny Heck. Not to mention Wasserman Schultz. Suggestion: step up to the plate for the progressives running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Patrick Murphy, Tim Canova and Alan Grayson... here at the thermometer; let's beat the bosses:

Can A Middle Class Grassroots Candidate Still Win A Race Against Multimillionaires?

A lot of Democratic coalition Beltway organizations are reluctant to endorse in primaries, a terrible tactical error. But in the case of Maryland's 8th district, the choices are starkly clear... and so is the danger and organizations that would rather not, are stepping up to the plate. If the proven progressive grassroots candidate, Jamie Raskin, doesn't win, the seat is going to be bought by one of the establishment multimillionaires with their self-centered agendas-- careerist in the case of Chris Matthews' lobbyist wife and ego-driven in the case of the Trump-like Trone. This week, People for the American Way endorsed Jamie Raskin, one of their only primary endorsements of 2016. Sierra Club, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the National Education Association did as well, as did DFA, PCCC, and PDA. (Blue America, of course, has no problem with endorsing in primaries-- quite the opposite-- and we endorsed Jamie as soon as he announced he was running. You can contribute to his campaign here.)

Matthews' wife and the rich beer and wine seller, David Trone, have nothing to offer anyone, so instead they've both devised strategies to buy the seat. Polls show it isn't working but at the rate the two of them are spending-- $5.2 million on an unprecedented blizzard of TV and radio ads so far-- they will spend over $15 million, making it the most expensive Democratic primary in the country. Even after all that spending from the two plutocrats, Jamie is still polling at the top of the 9 person primary! And his first TV ad (up top) ran this week for the first time. As he said, "If we win as the grassroots campaign promoting actual progressive results and leadership, this race will be historic and nationally significant. For 11 months we have run the most aggressive grassroots campaign for Congress in America, knocking on tens of thousands of doors, organizing 124 parties, discussions and events in people’s homes, and collecting a remarkable 9,313 contributions, overwhelmingly in amounts of $100 or less."

As we've been pointing out, the Democratic power establishment in DC has all but given up on Roosevelt Democrats like Raskin. The DCCC and DSCC aren't interested in working class and middle class candidates. They want wealthy, conservative self-funders like Kathleen Matthews and David Trone, not independent-minded, values-driven public servants like Jamie Raskin. Last weekend, Bill Turque did a story for the Washington Post on Trone and his bid to buy the seat. Trump has reinvigorated the spirit of rich ego-driven conservatives seeking offices to buy. The week before, we saw how a politically engaged rich person, Vincente Gonzalez, wrote himself a million dollar check to try to do exactly that in South Texas. Trone looks to be spending 10 times what Gonzalez has spent!

He has hired top-of-the-line consultants, launched a major television and radio ad blitz, and is landing glossy multi-page mailings on the doorsteps of likely primary voters almost daily.


...Little known in the district less than two months ago, Trone now appears competitive with the two front-runners: Jamie Raskin, a liberal law professor and state senator, and Kathleen Matthews, a former television anchor and Marriott executive who says she is willing to dip into her own fortune, if necessary, to keep up.


...The willingness of candidates such as Trone to pay their own way raises questions about whether they are undermining a foundational idea in U.S. politics-- that those who want to represent the people must first earn enough of their trust to win their donations. And it is an uphill path; between 2002 and 2014, House candidates who spent at least $1 million of their own money won office only 20 percent of the time.


Trone says taking money from others makes politicians vulnerable to pressure from lobbyists, PACs and other special interests. A graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he says it’s also a matter of time management, noting that members of Congress spend up to half of their time raising funds.


...That approach could resonate with voters in this unusually angry campaign season, in which Republican mogul Donald Trump has elevated the can’t-be-bought narrative into a dominant theme of his self-funded run for president.


...Raskin and Matthews have raised well over $1 million each and continue to seek donations large and small. But they are denouncing Trone’s Trump-like approach. Raskin ends virtually every candidates forum-- and there are many in a primary electorate replete with PhDs, think tankers, congressional staffers and other members of the political class-- by declaring that public office “isn’t bought, it is earned.”


In an interview, Raskin said people are “deeply disturbed about the levels of money being spent.”


Matthews, who is also very wealthy, said she might put her own money into the race if she thinks it will make a difference. “My plan is to raise the money,” Matthews said. “But I certainly believe enough in my own campaign that if it comes down to the wire I think it would be reasonable to put my own money in.”


Right now, a substantial piece of her campaign is being financed by MSNBC through her husband's TV show, Hardball where tens of thousands of dollars from guests of the show make their way into her campaign coffers. MSNBC denies they are breaking any laws.



As flawed and tattered as our democracy is in its present state, it's worth saving and fighting for the kinds of reforms Jamie has fought for in the Maryland legislature. Plutocracy-- where people like Donald Trump and David Trone and Kathleen Matthews think they are entitled to public office because they're rich-- is the last thing America needs. And a DCCC that encourages that system is the last thing the Democratic Party needs. In fact, it has since Rahm Emanuel codified it and embedded it into the DCCC's DNA in 2006, accounted for the Republican Party's ability to decimate the Democratic majority in the House and capture unprecedented majorities that will stretch on into the future until the current House Democratic leadership itself is removed or dies off. Meanwhile... one district at a time. One progressive reformer at a time in the House. Resist the Republicans and resist the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: And Speaking Of Plutocracy...

Maryland, of course, isn't the only place where the very rich are trying to buy themselves congressional seats. One of the worst examples this cycle is the DCCC recruit for the Florida Treasure Coast district being given up by "ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy. Randy Perkins, who never lived a day in the district and whose only "qualification" is that he's rich and swims in the same waters of corruption that the congressional leaders swim in, is the DCCC pick against progressive candidate Jonathan Chane. Perkins, who has spent as much as $2 million on Republican politicians, re-registered as a Democrat a few days before he announced he was running. Notice the $1,000,000 check to himself to get the ball rolling. More about Perkins soon; promise.

One of the worst cases of plutocracy soiling the Democratic Party from within, is how unaccomplished son-of-a-billionaire Chris Abele, is using daddy's money to smear progressive state Sen. Chris Larson. Though outspent 20-1 in the primary, Larson still beat Abele and in the runoff (a week from Tuesday) Abele has deployed over $5 million in an ugly campaign of liars and typical conservative personal destruction tactics against Larson, one of the most promising your political leaders in Wisconsin and across America. This is today's Democratic Party establishment-- corrupt to its very core and celebratory of its corruption, the party of Rahm Emanuel, Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Clintons, George and Donald Norcross, Randy Perkins, Steve Israel, Patrick Murphy, Robert Menendez, Chuck Schumer...

Do You Back Plutocracy? Meet Randy Perkins, The DCCC's Worst Florida Pick Of 2016

DCCC found another rich crook to shove down Democrats' throats

We've been writing a lot about Thomas Frank's thesis that the Democratic Party, institutionally-speaking, has abandoned the working class and transmogrified itself into a Republican-lite party that represents the interests of the professional class--as he calls it, "the top 10%." We've been making the point for almost a decade that the DCCC-- starting with Rahm Emanuel but accelerating under economic royalists Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel (as well as under Israel's pathetic current sock puppet)-- has disqualified working class candidates and forced wealthy candidates down Democrats' throats. And it isn't just the top 10%. More often than not, the DCCC goes into all out war against union members running for office on behalf of wealthy conservatives. They're doing that right now in districts all across the country and there is an especially ugly jihad led by Ben Ray Lujan and Zoe Lofgren against Lou Vince (CA-25) on behalf of some rich Orange County guy they dug up and are trying to impose on the district's Democrats. We've written a lot about that. Today, let's meet a new character, a Republican recently disguised as a Democrat; disaster capitalist and junior Donald Trump crook, Randy Perkins, re-registered as a Democrat a few days before announcing he was now ready to be a congressman from a district he had never lived in and for a party he had had nothing to do with. He promised the DCCC he'd put as much as $5 million of his own into the race.

Notice the candidate self-financing line: plutocracy anyone?

Florida Democrats who know anything about him-- and few do-- know him as a major Rick Scott contributor. Although, like Trump, Perkins claims he buys off politicians on both sides of the aisle, he wrote two checks of $100,000 each for Rick Scott in his last race and no checks whatsoever for Democrat Alex Sink. So... yes, he does give to both parties-- but a lot to conservative Republicans and a much smaller amount to corrupt conservative Democrats like Hillary Clinton. Soon after he entered the race, George Bennett of the Palm Beach Post wrote that the ratio was 2 to 1 in favor of Republicans. The only federal contribution I found was a maxed out donation to Mitt Romney against Barack Obama. This cycle he was a principle of Rick Perry's SuperPAC. Bennett was able to find over $1.6 million in contributions to Republican politicians since 2001.

Perkins has personally given $309,275 to Republicans and $141,250 to Democrats since 2001, according to a review by The Palm Beach Post of online state records and federal data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Perkins said he also approves all contributions by AshBritt, which has given $1.3 million to Republicans and $667,025 to Democrats around the country.

Perkins’ wife Saily, who often contributes to the same candidates at the same time as her husband, has given $144,800 to Republicans and $29,350 to Democrats.

Perkins said his contribution history shows he can bridge the partisan divide in Congress.

...Perkins’ ability to self-finance has drawn the attention of national Democrats and has already pushed one rival out of the race. Perkins also turned heads by announcing that, on top of his personal money, he raised $420,000 from contributors during the fourth quarter of 2015.

...“It’s going to take a lot more than $1 million of his own money for Randy Perkins to make Democratic primary voters forget that he’s given nearly $2 million to get Republicans, including Rick Scott, elected to office across the country,” said Brian Weeks, the campaign manager for rival Democratic candidate Jonathan Chane.

“These contributions, whether they enriched Randy Perkins personally or not, hurt real people. We’ve seen what Rick Scott has done here in the state of Florida,” Weeks said.

In August 2010, while Scott was nearing the end of a tough Republican gubernatorial primary against establishment favorite Bill McCollum, AshBritt gave $100,000 to Let’s Get To Work, the committee supporting Scott.

During the 2010 general election, AshBritt gave $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association’s Florida political action committee to boost Scott. AshBritt also gave $75,000 to the Democratic Governors Association, saying that contribution was intended to help Sink. And the company gave $5,000 in October 2010 to the Florida Democratic Party.

Then in September 2014, AshBritt gave $100,000 to the RGA with the intent of helping Scott’s re-election bid, Perkins said.

“Personally I like Gov. Scott…We clearly do not align on our views as political people,” Perkins said.

Perkins said he’s also “close friends” with Perry, the conservative former Texas governor and two-time Republican presidential candidate.

“I support my friends. But let me be very clear. We disagree on a whole host of social issues, political issues,” Perkins said of Perry.

As Perry neared the launch of his 2016 presidential campaign last year, Perkins was one of about 80 donors named to an advisory board for a pro-Perry PAC. Perkins said he never participated in any meetings and “99 percent of the people on that advisory council didn’t care for the way I think.”

Perkins and his wife gave $2,500 apiece to Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign. The husband and wife also made $2,500 contributions in 2011 to Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. During the 2008 presidential race, Randy and Saily Perkins gave to Republicans John McCain and Rudy Giuliani as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson.

Perkins also raised $98,000 from other contributors for Clinton’s 2008 campaign, said Ben Pollara, who was Clinton’s Florida finance director then and is now the general consultant for Perkins’ congressional campaign. Perkins and his wife have each made $2,700 contributions to Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and AshBritt gave $5,000 to the pro-Clinton Ready For Hillary PAC in 2013.

Corrupt and transactional, right-of-center Democrats like Steny Hoyer and Ben Ray Lujan-- as well as Florida's most corrupt Democrat, Alcee Hastings-- are all vouching for Perkins. But who vouches for Hoyer, Lujan and Hastings? I'll answer that: mostly lobbyists, the base of their political strength. A very different kind of Democrat-- not the Perkins kind:

Why Does Steve Israel And The DCCC Keep Recruiting Conservative Republicans To Run For Congress As Democrats?

Almost a decade ago, Blue America was toiling away on behalf of school teacher and union member Dave Lutrin, running for Congress in the Palm Beach area of Florida, pretty red district then represented by hypocritical Republican closet case Mark Foley. We knew that sooner or later Foley would slip up-- they always do-- and expose himself and become very defeatable. But suddenly Lutrin was getting all this pressure from Rahm Emanuel, then head of the DCCC, and Steny Hoyer to withdraw from the race. It made no sense. Florida's 16th congressional district was pretty red and not a district that the DCCC paid any attention to. It turns out though that my hunch about Foley was more than a hunch for Emanuel. Foley's alcoholism and closeted homosexuality were widely known Inside-the-Beltway but it was not widely known that those two factors had combined to create a very sick yen for being caught molesting underage boys. And he was. But congressional leadership, primarily Republican congressional leadership, covered up for him. Rahm Emanuel saw Mark Foley's crumbling world as an opportunity to pick up a House seat they weren't counting on. So he kept his mouth shut too-- complicit in allowing Foley to have his way with young congressional pages (primarily the sons of big GOP donors). Long story, short: Emanuel with Steny Hoyer, froze Lutrin, the legitimate Democratic candidate, out of the race and enticed a wealthy lifelong, conservative Republican, Tim Mahoney, into the race (delivering on their promise of an uncontested primary and a "special circumstance" for the general). The special circumstance was how the media exploded into an orgy of Mark Foley Caught With His Pants Down (in a boys dorm).

Although Foley resigned and checked into a posh clinic for naughty Republicans, it was conveniently too late to get his toxic name off the ballot and Mahoney was elected-- though just barely (49-48%). Mahoney immediately joined the Blue Dogs and reverted to voting with his fellow-Republicans... and to chase women all over town. His one term ended in scandal, amid sexual escapades, payoffs, hush money and all sorts of things normally associated with Republicans (which, of course, he was, despite the deceptive blue jersey). He lost his seat to a Republican. The district was soon redrawn and re-numbered and came to be represented by war criminal and right-wing extremist Allen West who was eventually beaten by yet another DCCC-recruited Republican, Patrick Murphy.

Now, to placate Wall Street banksters angry about Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders disrespecting them, Chuck Schumer promised to put their boy Murphy in the Senate to balance out the "radicals" he (and they) detest. So Schumer is trying to deep-six Alan Grayson's Senate campaign, not unlike the way Hoyer and Emanuel deep-sixed Lutin 9 years ago. And Wall Street is footing the bill. But Grayson is not Dave Lutrin and he may actually beat the DC/NY Axis of Evil. (You can help him do that here.)

It used to surprise me when conservative Democratic leaders like Rahm Emanuel, Steny Hoyer, Chris Van Hollen, Jon Tester and, worst of all, Chuck Schumer, recruited Republicans to run as Democrats. Now it's practically standard operating procedure for the DCCC and DSCC. The worst congressional candidate the DCCC has this cycle is Iowa Republican Monica Vernon, who is running in a blue district against Iowa progressive icon and former state House Speaker Pat Murphy-- nothing like Florida's horrendous Patrick Murphy. But Vernon is far from the only Republican who the DCCC is trying to pass off as a real Democrat. Despite the fact that Obama beat Romney in NY-21 52-46%, Steve Israel has persuaded everyone around him that only corrupt right-wing Democrats like himself can win that district. Bill Owens, the last Democrat to represent it, was, like Israel a wretched and hated Blue Dog. Now Israel has recruited a Republican, Mike Derrick who won't win-- Republicans already have their own real Republican candidate so why vote for a fake Republican/fake Democrat like Derrick? No one will but Steve Israel insists he's the nominee. Period. Israel prowls the country looking for these kinds of Republicans willing to switch parties for DCCC backing, the same way Emanuel did. It never works out because even if they do manage to win in a presidential election year, they immediatelyy start voting with the Republicans and then get defeated in a midterm because grassroots Democrats don't come out to vote for them. It;'s the story of Steve Israel's catastrophic history at the now destroyed and useless DCCC.

That said, let's wander back to the Palm Beach area and to the district Murphy is giving up in the hopes of serving Wall Street in the Senate, FL-18. Like Murphy, Randy Perkins doesn't live in the district and like Murphy he's a wealthy spoiled Republican donor. He personally wrote Mitt Romney a $2,500 check on June 21, 2011 and the company he owns, AshBritt has spent nearly a million dollars on boosting Republican campaigns, although AshBritt has also given some money to conservative Democrats like Joe Lieberman ($46,700) and to Hillary Clinton ($16,100). But generally it's lots of moolah to right wing Republicans like McCain ($18,400), Mel Martinez ($28,000), Tom Rooney ($13,800), Susan Collins ($20,900), Ruddy Guiliani ($11,500), Mark Foley ($11,500), etc.

In the crowded race to replace Murphy in Congress, there are 5 Democrats and as many as a dozen Republicans in or talking about getting in! Among them Perkins decided to try it as a Democrat, where the primary competition won't be as tough. According to Isadora Rangel at TCPalm, Perkins "is expected to spend more than $1 million to win U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy's open seat as a Democrat, but his past as a prolific Republican donor could serve as ammunition for his opponents."

Perkins of Delray Beach, the founder and CEO of disaster-recovery company AshBritt Inc. in Deerfield Beach, was registered to vote with no party affiliation for 21 years and became a Democrat days before he filed to run for District 18 this month.

Although he has also contributed to Democrats, his closeness to the GOP could be used against him in the highly-contested race much like Democrat Murphy has been criticized for being once a Republican and for giving money to the GOP... It is difficult to determine exactly how much Perkins has given in races across country and to groups that don't disclose their donors. An analysis of $925,300 donated by him and AshBritt since 2002 to federal and Florida candidates, as well as political committees, show 70 percent went to Republicans.

...Perkins' candidacy sent shock waves in the Democratic Party. Potential front-runner Melissa McKinlay dropped out less than a week later, saying having a well-funded opponent would force her to forego some of her duties as a Palm Beach County commissioner to dedicate herself more to campaigning.

Candidate Jonathan Chane, of Palm Beach Gardens, went on the offense, sending out a news release the day after Perkins entered the race questioning whether he would protect Democratic values in Congress.

Another Democratic candidate, Palm Beach County Commissioner Priscilla Taylor, said Perkins' money doesn't guarantee he's going to win. She doesn't plan to leave the race as McKinlay did, despite having raised less money than McKinlay and Chane.

...Murphy has faced similar scrutiny for being wealthy and from switching his party registration to Democrat just before he filed to run for Congress in 2011. Murphy's Senate opponent, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, has gone after him for giving to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign in 2007. Murphy's father, the owner of a construction company, also has donated to several Republicans and Democrats.

Perkins and Murphy also share another similarity: neither lived in District 18-- Martin, St. Lucie and northern Palm Beach counties-- until they filed to represent it. Murphy moved from South Florida to Jupiter and Perkins is moving from Delray Beach soon, probably to Martin County, his campaign said. The race to replace Murphy has attracted other outsiders from both parties.

Everyone knows Murphy never really moved into to his Jupiter condo and actually lives in South Beach and on his daddy's yacht, Cocktails, on Fisher Island.