Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez Is The Progressive In The Texas Senate Race Who Can Win The Primary And Beat John Cornyn

Blue America hasn't waded into too many Senate races this cycle. That's because our top concern is not replacing horrendous Republicans with somewhat less horrendous Democrats. Take my word for it, I feel confident that more-or-less-Democrat Mark Kelly will beat Trump-hugging incumbent Martha McSally in Arizona-- and go on to be almost as bad in the Senate as Schumer's last pick for Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema, if you haven't been paying close attention, is the Senate's worst Democrat, worst even than Joe Manchin. This is her voting record score at ProgressivePunch:

FiveThirtyEight shows her tied with Joe Manchin with the highest Trump Score of any Senate Democrat-- 52.4%. Can I be sure Kelly will be as bad? Sure; I always get these things right. Ditto for other Schumer conservative picks he's trying to ram through: Frackenlooper (CO), Theresa Greenfield (IA), Sara Gideon (ME), Cal Cunningham (NC) and M.J. (TX) Hegar. Any of these candidates would likely be better than the Republicans they're challenging, but not one of them would be a what I would call a "good Democrat"! All sub-par... every single one of them. Click the 2020 ActBlue Senate thermometer on the right. Those are the candidates Blue America has endorsed this cycle, each of whom I think would be someone who would make the Senate better. The Schumer candidates are all likely to work to block Bernie's platform. The candidate we've endorsed are running largely on that platform.

Yesterday, Jenna Johnson's article on Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez was published by the Washington Post. "After a career of organizing construction workers and young voters of color in Texas," wrote Johnson, "she was recruited to run for Senate last summer by fellow Democratic activists who worked on the 2018 Senate campaign of former state Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who lost but came close enough to show that the state’s politics are quickly changing. At first she laughed off the idea-- she had never run before and had no desire to do so-- but they reminded her of the need for more Latina voices in politics." We endorsed Cristina in December and feel sure she would be, not just better than John Cornyn, but better than anyone else vying for the chance run against him.

“There are many moments when I still doubt myself, that I think maybe I’m not smart enough, maybe I’m not the right person to be doing this,” Tzintzún Ramirez said at the brunch.

“I am the right person to be doing this. If we don’t step up, then maybe no one else will. We as Latinas are the right people at the right moment in the right state to actually step up.”

This year’s Texas Senate race-- which has attracted a dozen Democratic candidates looking to unseat incumbent John Cornyn (R) and who will face off in the state’s March 3 primary-- displays the tension playing out in the Democratic Party as its leaders and activists try to figure out what the party stands for, who leads it and, most importantly, which voters it prioritizes.

Calls for more candidates who look and think like the party’s emerging base of young, nonwhite and more liberal voters are inevitably colliding with a desire to win seats and states that have long been held by Republicans but are seen as gettable if candidates appeal to more moderate-- and often more white-- voters.

Those collisions are particularly difficult in places like Texas, where voters of color are crucial to any Democratic victory but diverse candidates have struggled to raise the money and attention needed to become the nominee.

The party’s presidential race has also shown the limits of identity politics. The field was once the most diverse in history-- yet all but one of the remaining candidates, and all of the top tier, are white and many have had difficulty connecting with diverse Democratic constituencies. Adding more complexity, many nonwhite voters have backed white candidates over candidates of color, either due to policy positions or perceptions of which candidate could compete more strongly with President Trump.

“Let’s go make history for Latinas,” Tzintzún Ramirez said in an Instragram video on the first day of early voting.

The front-runner in the race is MJ Hegar, a tattooed 43-year-old combat veteran who lost a congressional race in 2018 in the heavily Republican Austin suburbs but garnered national attention for a campaign ad about her boundary-breaking military career. Hegar, a former Republican who is white, has been more cautious in her positions and supports a public health insurance option, banning assault weapons and not allowing “aggressive action on climate change to get overly politicized.” She has focused on winning over independent voters and former Republicans-- and late last year received the endorsement of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is led by Masto [a 100% Schumer puppet].

That endorsement angered Tzintzún Ramirez and other candidates of color. Royce West, a longtime state senator from Dallas, called it a “slap in the face” to black Texans and his spokesman accused the national Democratic leaders of “trying to lock African Americans out of the process.” Amanda Edwards, a former Houston city council member, accused the committee of attempting to “put a thumb on the scale.”

“Democrats talk about diversity in their party, yet this latest move proves they are all talk and no action,” Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey said in a statement, seizing on the division. “Last we checked, there was an African American State Senator, African American City Councilwoman, and a Latina liberal activist running.”

Soon after Tzintzún Ramirez entered the race last summer, she traveled to Washington to meet with the committee’s executive director and Texas organizer and urged them not to endorse before the primary.

“I let them know that in Texas, we are hungry and desperate for representation,” Tzintzún Ramirez said. “I let them know that if they did endorse [Hegar], I would hate for it to backfire on her in the general election to voters of color who had already felt underrepresented and ignored and were actually the majority of the Democratic Party in Texas.”

DSCC officials said that the decision was based on which candidate had the best shot at beating Cornyn, who has held the seat since 2002 yet is not well known in the state, especially compared to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Hegar got into the race months before the other major candidates and has raised $3.8 million-- more than all of the other candidates combined. Tzintzún Ramirez has raised more than $988,000, while West has raised $1.1 million and Edwards more than $935,000.

Tzintzún Ramirez has been tapping donors who gave to O’Rourke and those who helped support her organizing work over the years. She has been aided by actor Alec Baldwin, an enthusiastic supporter whom she first met in 2013 when she was the executive director of the Workers Defense Project in Austin. She has been surprised that some donors who long supported her organizing work were hesitant to support her running for office.

“So many donors ask: ‘How do we get out more Latino voters?’ Then some of those same donors say: ‘Oh, I don’t think a Latina can win [in Texas],’ ” she said. “You can’t want our votes and not our voices.”

Tzintzún Ramirez’s identity is at the center of her campaign. She opens her stump speech with her story: Her mother, Ana Tzintzún, is the oldest of nine children from a poor farm-working family in southern Mexico. Her father, Tom Costello, is “a white American hippie” who met her mother while traveling through Mexico in the 1970s.

...In trying to win over voters, Tzintzún Ramirez urges Texans to think ahead to the general election and the stark contrast that she could provide if put up against Cornyn. Tzintzún Ramirez often campaigns with her 3-year-old, Santiago, whom she calls “Santi” and talks openly about struggling to pay bills and piecing together child care when she became a single mother. She recently showed her staff members one of Cornyn’s 2008 campaign videos, titled “Big John,” that featured him in a cowboy hat and a leather coat with fringe.

“I do not think John Cornyn reflects the Texas of today. And I think that there is no better way to show that than me being the candidate,” she said. “Trump is going to run his campaign villainizing, targeting people that look like and have last names just like me. This race is going to get heated real fast, and I think it’s going to become the race that really is reflective of who we are becoming as a country and who we’re making space for.”

O’Rourke opted not to join the Senate race despite widespread calls for him to do so. His advisers believed that running against Cornyn in a presidential year would be more difficult than running against Cruz in 2018-- plus, O’Rourke had a strong working relationship with Cornyn and would struggle to cast him as a villain as he did with Cruz. O’Rourke has made clear that he will not endorse ahead of the primary, and he regularly talks with several of the candidates, including Hegar and Tzintzún Ramirez.

Tzintzún Ramirez wrote O’Rourke’s Latino outreach strategy in 2018-- and then watched in frustration as he waited for voters to come to him instead of sending paid canvassers into Latino neighborhoods, diversifying his staff and campaigning more heavily in urban areas. She credits him with listening to her and making last-minute changes. Many of those who worked on the campaign said that O’Rourke would have had a better shot at winning had he courted diverse communities sooner in his race.

In her own campaign, Tzintzún Ramirez’s staffers are nearly all women and people of color, and she has focused on campaigning in Texas’s major cities, especially those with large Latino populations. If she were to become the Democratic nominee, Tzintzún Ramirez said, she would invest much more heavily in voter registration and mobilizing communities of color than O’Rourke did. Hegar’s campaign says that it plans to amplify and build on voter registration efforts of nonprofit groups.

Tzintzún Ramirez said she has long been frustrated that the Democratic Party has failed to fully engage Latino voters. Following Trump’s election, she founded Jolt, a nonprofit focused on helping young Latinos and other voters of color become activists on issues that matter to them. Jolt couples politics with culture, setting up photo booths at quinceañera celebrations and pushing young women to see voting as another way to honor their commitments to their family and their communities. Jolt became a gathering place for young Latinas, especially those who are of mixed ancestry, like Tzintzún Ramirez.

It does not base its decisions solely on race, however. During the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, Jolt endorsed Andrew White, who owned a company that developed border security technology, over Lupe Valdez, the former sheriff of Dallas County who had cooperated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and allowed undocumented immigrants to be detained in her jail.

“Representation matters and lived experience will often lead you to a different result... but above all, it matters where you stand on the issues that matter to people’s everyday life,” Tzintzún Ramirez said.

For months, Tzintzún Ramirez has bounced around the state with a small group of young female staffers. A recent weekend took her from a county party meeting in the Fort Worth area where she waited more than an hour to speak to the group for just a few minutes, to the Latina networking brunch where all of the women wore nametags labeled with their super power (Tzintzún Ramirez’s superpower was helping others to see their power) to a meet-and-greet in a Fort Worth bar that attracted dozens of former O’Rourke volunteers, and eventually to an intimate gathering with black and Afro-Latino voters at a coffee shop in Houston, where tears flowed amid a discussion of systemic racism and poverty.

“For so long we have had politicians that don’t represent us at all, especially in Texas. I know people like to say that Latinos are a minority but in Texas they’re not, they’re the majority,” said Krissia Palomo, 19, a college student who brought two friends to the Fort Worth meet-and-greet. “This might be a little bit of identity politics, but I do like seeing myself in somebody that’s running for such an important office.”

There will be a runoff after the March 3rd primary, likely between Hegar  representing the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- she is a so-called "ex"-Republican herself-- and Cristina representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Cristina founded Our Revolution Texas, while Hegar was voting for Carly Fiorina in the Republican primary. (Yes, she switched parties after that 2016 election so she could run for Congress.) Right now the RealClearPolitics Texas polling average looks good for progressives among Democratic primary voters:

• Bernie- 22.3%
• Status Quo Joe- 20.7%
• Elizabeth- 15.3%
• Bloomers- 13.3%
• Mayo Pete- 8.3%
• Klobuchar- 6.3%
• Tulsi- 3%

MJ Hegar Is Taking On John Cornyn For Senate This Time, Not John Carter In TX-31

As the lady says, Texans don't give up easy. Yesterday MJ Hegar, the former Air Force helicopter pilot who ran a strong race against John Carter in 2018, is taking on bigger game in 2020-- Texas senior Senator John Cornyn. The was the seat everyone wanted Beto to run for before launching is ill-advised presidential run. First a note: it's still possible that other strong Democratic candidate will get into the race-- San Antonio congressman Joaquín Castro has been hinting he'll run and former state Rep. Mark Strama could run. But, no matter what happens, MJ will be a contender. On paper, the state of Texas is an easier target for someone like her than TX-31 was. The PVI of TX-31 is a pretty prohibitive R+10. The state's PVI-- slightly less prohibitive, is R+8. Trump beat Hillary statewide 52.23% to 43.24%. He beat her in the 31st 53.5% to 40.8%.

Last year Hegar did a lot better than Clinton did in the district. The final score was 144,680 (50.6%) for Carter and 136,362 (47.7%) for Hegar. In fact, she won the bigger of the two counties in the district, Williamson, but not by enough (D+2) to overcome the powerful red-lean of Bell County (R+15).

So what about the 31st? It's certainly a DCCC target but with Hegar running for Senate, is there an obvious candidate? In fact, Carter is 78 and doddering and may decide too not even run again. One thing we can be certain of-- if the new DCCC regional vice chair, Marc Veasey is charged with recruiting a candidate, Carter will be able to go to sleep now and wake up reelected in 2020. One Williamson County progressive, Mike Clark, still not officially in the race, told me just moments ago that he plans to run for the Democratic nomination and that he expects several others to do likewise. We'll be hearing more from him soon but I can tell you that he supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, supports Pramila Jayapal's new and improved Medicare-For-All Act and backs the Green New Deal framework resolution as way to get busy tackling the climate change crisis.

By the way, in 2018 Hegar spent $4,998,676 to Carter's $1,943,447. There wasn't any big outside spending, although Pelosi's PAC put in $138,738 and the DCCC spent $15,000. It won't be easy for anyone to outraise what Hegar accomplished, but this time the DCCC is paying attention and, at least in theory, someone probably woke up EMILY's List.

Trump Is Too Dangerous-- It's Time For Party Unity... So Why Are Conservative Democrats Still Undermining Progressive Candidates? Really, Why?

Lets keep our eye on the ball

Writing yesterday for Vanity Fair, David Drucker: reported that GOP insiders consider the House already lost. "Inside the swamp," he wrote, "Republican operatives have already made their peace with losing the House. But the coming Democratic wave won’t affect all Republicans equally, purging moderates and leaving only Trump loyalists behind. The result could be a divided Congress in which Trump, ironically, is more powerful than ever." For Republicans, widely viewed as Trump enablers and rubber-stamps, the wave "could be especially savage this year, given the sharp dissatisfaction with Trump in America’s usually Republican-leaning suburbs... Said one GOP lobbyist: 'Downtown, there is a sense that the House is already lost for Republicans. There is a hiring spree for plugged-in House Democrats who want to lobby. So, downtown is already planning on the Democratic takeover; the bets are on how big the flip will be.'"

Let's hope they scoop up lots of congressional New Dems who have been just waiting for the opportunity. I could easily see Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Anthony Brown (MD), Darren Soto (FL), Vicente Gonzalez (TX) and Gregory Meeks (NY)-- all headed nowhere in Congress-- carefully considering a career that fits them better. The House Democratic caucus would be better off without any of them.

On Monday, David Sirota, writing for The Guardian had some words for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. He reported that "insurgent progressives are not limiting themselves to dethroning Republicans: they are taking aim at corporate-friendly Democrats within their own party, too. Amid an upsurge of populist energy that has alarmed the Democratic establishment, a new wave of left-leaning insurgents have been using Democratic primaries to wage a fierce war on the party’s corporate wing. And, as in past presidential primary battles, many Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits have insisted that the party must prioritize unity and resist grassroots pressure to support a more forceful progressive agenda."

Today is our last federal primary-- in Rhode Island-- where there are no contested primaries. Tomorrow New York has a boatload of progressives challenging vile conservatives from top to bottom in state races. But after that, what happens? Will Democrats draw together to defeat Trump and his enablers? I hope so. Trump is too much of an existential threat to take on the Republican wing of the Democratic Party now. I hate picking between the lesser of two evils and I usually refuse to. But now... Trump. I'm prepared to hold my nose and back anyone (except Kyrsten Sinema, a dangerous sociopath, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has a progressive independent opponent, Tim Canova, running against her) with a "D" next to their name. I may vomit in the process.

But will the establishment back progressives who won their primaries? The DCCC says it wants unity and asks progressive voters to back its shit conservative candidates like Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ), Jason Crow (New Dem-CO), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ) and Anthony Brindisi (NY). Meanwhile the DCCC is still undermining progressives who won their primaries, like J.D. Scholten (IA), James Thompson (KS), Ammar Campa-Najjar (CA)... the list of the ones endorsed by Blue America is available by tapping on this year's Abandoned By The DCCC ActBlue thermometer on the right. Unity is a two-way street, isn't it? I can understand why Sirota wrote that "Dislodging those corporate Democrats, then, is not some counterproductive distraction-- it is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again." He pointed out that "liberal America’s pattern of electing corporate Democrats-- rather than progressives-- has been a big part of the problem that led to Trump and that continues to make America’s economic and political system a neo-feudal dystopia."

"[L]iberal America," he wrote, "has often produced something much different and less appealing: Democratic politicians who constantly echo courageous populist themes in speeches, news releases and election ads, and then often uses the party’s governmental power to protect the status quo and serve corporate donors in their interminable class war." He's right.

Less than a decade ago, with Democratic majorities controlling both the House and Senate, it was the administration led by Obama and Emanuel that bailed out Wall Street, enshrined a too-big-to-jail doctrine for megabanks and-- by its own admission-- designed the Affordable Care Act to preclude Medicare for All. Obama’s administration did this while Democrats controlled both the House and Senate. It was Democratic lawmakers’ like Delaware’s Tom Carper and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman who helped insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists make sure the ACA also excluded any public healthcare option that could compete with private insurers.

Today, it is House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, from deeply liberal San Francisco, insisting that Medicare for All will not be any kind of litmus test for her party and promising that budget-cutting austerity will govern Democrats’ legislative agenda should they retake Congress.

It is 16 Senate Democrats voting to help Wall Street lobbyists gut post-financial-crisis banking regulations. Those include blue-staters like Colorado’s Michael Bennet and Delaware’s Chris Coons, the latter of which then went on to make national headlines slamming progressives for supposedly pushing the party too far to the left.

It is 13 Senate Democrats, including 2020 presidential prospect Cory Booker of Democratic New Jersey, beholding skyrocketing drug prices--and then voting to help pharmaceutical lobbyists defeat Bernie Sanders’ initiative to let Americans purchase lower-priced medicine from Canada.

It is most of the Democratic Senate caucus recently voting to confirm 15 of Trump’s judicial appointees, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, from Democratic New York, vowing there will be no punishment for Democratic lawmakers who vote to confirm Trump’s supreme court nominees.

Recounting this sordid record is not to dispute Democrats’ occasional successes. Some blue locales continue to periodically pass progressive initiatives, most recently on climate change, net neutrality and minimum wages. These are undoubtedly important, but they have for the most part been incremental at a time when the economic and ecological crises we face demand far more radical action.

The current iteration of the Democratic party has proven time and again that it is not merely uninterested in that kind of radicalism, but actively opposed to it. Party powerbrokers and multimillion-dollar MSNBC pundits would prefer an election focused exclusively on the palace dramas surrounding Trump’s boorish outbursts and outrageous personal behavior. They don’t want an election focused on the bipartisan neoliberalism that has wrought the desperation and mayhem unfolding outside the palace walls.

...[P]rogressive challengers and others like them have each run unique campaigns, but all have embodied the core belief that anti-Trump rhetoric alone is not an adequate response to the emergencies at hand. Democrats’ record in liberal states and liberal cities over the last decade makes a strong case that they are correct-- and so now the revolution is on.

That may bewilder the Democrats’ permanent political class that has gotten used to steamrolling the public, losing elections and still remaining in charge of the party-- but, really, the only confusing thing about this uprising is that it took this long to finally ignite.

Back to that unity thing one more time. Henry Cuellar is a very, very right wing Blue Dog in a very blue Texas district (from Laredo and the McAllen suburbs up to San Antonio). Hillary beat Trump in his district 58.3% to 38.5% and Obama won it both times he ran. The PVI is D+9. But Cuellar consistently votes with the Republicans in Congress and sports an "F" from ProgressivePunch. It gets worse. With control of the House in play... Cuellar invited his supporters to a breakfast fundraiser for vulnerable Texas Republican John Carter yesterday in San Antonio. The invitation links to a "John Carter Conservative for Congress" contribution page with donor levels up to $2,700. I called the DCCC to ask about this-- since they have endorsed M.J. Hegar, the conservative Democrat running against Carter-- but couldn't get any kind of response. Of course.

Democratic Women Who Served In The Military And Now Want To Serve In Congress

Unless this is the first time you've landed at DWT, you probably know I hate identity group politics. Women belong in electoral office! OK, we need more women in Congress-- excellent ones, like the House's single best member, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)-- but not crap ones-- like the House's single worst Democratic member, Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ). Congress needs more Hispanics, right? Absolutely-- great Hispanics like Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), but not right-wing shitheads like Henry Cuellar. (Blue Dog-TX) How about some more LGBTQ congressmembers? Yeah! But solid progressives like Mark Pocan (D-WI), not nightmares like Sinema and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY). You name an identity group and I'll tell you an outstanding member of Congress from that group... and a POS from that group. Identity group politics is no way to pick candidates, but people use it all the time.

And the newest subgroup is... women from the military. The DCCC invented the category is strategy sessions before the cycle began. They thought recruiting a bunch of centrist female corporate lawyers who had once served in the military would be a good idea. They went out and looked for them and came back with some absolutely mediocre candidates to reinvent as heroines of the Republic, like Mikie Sherrill from New Jersey and Chrissy Houlahan from Pennsylvania.

But the idea took on a life of it's own, and women who had served in the military were encouraged by that idea and decided they could run too. Two campaign intro ads this cycle were from that identity group. First we had the electrifying ad from Amy McGrath of Kentucky (up top), an ad, made by a skilled ad-maker, that was better than the novice candidate. The DCCC may have been committed to centrist women who had serviced in the military but they already were committed to recruiting another candidate from KY-06 from their very favorite identity group: multimillionaires and they through their weight behind very rich Lexington mayor (who is also an extremely conservative Blue Dog-- always a plus for the DCCC-- and they endorsed him during the primary and urged donors to not fund McGrath). Over the course of the primary, McGrath, the novice candidate, got better and better and in the end, she shoved the DCCC's Blue Dog multimillionaire up their ass. In a 6-person race, she made the DCCC sad:

• Amy McGrath- 48,860 (48.7%)
• Jim Gray- 40,684 (40.5%)
• Reggie Thomas- 7,226 (7.2%)

Mayor Gray spent $1,437,206 on the primary (including $250,000 out of his own bank account) but it is Amy McGrath who is now duking it out-- a much better candidate than she was when she started-- with Republican Andy Barr, in Kentucky's only swing district. After the primary, the DCCC took another look at her and seeing she isn't too progressive for them, endorsed her and added her to their Red-to-Blue page. Though the district went to Trump 54.7% to 39.4% and has a PVI of R+9, the race is neck-and-neck and if the anti-red wave holds, McGrath has an good chance to win.

The second wildly inspiring video (below)-- that seemingly came out of nowhere-- was from MJ (Mary Jennings) Hegar in a Texas backwater that no one was considering flippable, TX-31. She's running against right-wing Trump-enabler John Carter in a district north of Austin that stretches through Williamson and Bell counties, from Round Rock to Killeen and Temple. Bell County includes Fort Hood, the largest military base in the world. The district PVI is R+10 and Trump beat Hillary there 53.5% to 40.8%. Her policy platform looks decent. As of the June 30 filing deadline she had outraised Carter significantly-- $1,612,439 to $996,707 and had about $300,000 more than he did on hand. If the wave is big enough...



Yesterday, AP ran a story by Laurie Kellman and Bill Barrow, Next mission for women with military service: Run for office, as though the election cycle had just started and someone just came up with the idea. "Hegar," they wrote, "is part of a crop of female veterans running for Congress in this year’s midterm elections. Almost all Democrats and many of them mothers, they are shaped by the Sept. 11 attacks and overseas wars, including the longest war in American history. Many are retiring from the military and looking for another way to serve the country. They’re part of a record number of women running for seats in Congress, but in certain ways, they are a class apart. The female veterans claim expertise in national security and veterans issues, with a track record of thriving in institutions dominated by men. Regardless of party, they cast themselves as the antidote to bitterly partisan politics-- describing themselves as 'mission-driven' and trained by the military to work toward a common goal." Most are right of center within the Democratic Party and are being pushed by right-of-center Democrats with ambitious personal agendas for higher office, like Seth Moulton (D-MA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Joe Biden and Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL).

The increase in candidates with military experience is no accident, and the hopefuls are expected to be propelled by Democratic luminaries. Former Vice President Joe Biden, for example, is expected to campaign for McGrath, among others, according to officials close to them who spoke on condition of anonymity because the schedule is not set.

Two Democrats-- Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a retired Marine Corps captain and Bronze Star recipient, and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs and partial use of an arm when her helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq-- have been instrumental in recruiting veterans to run for office.

Moulton said female veterans in his party carry a particular authority when talking to voters concerned about President Donald Trump’s leadership.

“It’s the year of the woman, but it’s also the year of yearning for bringing integrity and honor back to politics,” Moulton said. “We need Democrats with the credibility to tell people what’s really going on.”

The women are hardly the first to use their military service to their political advantage-- men have been doing it for decades.

One of the traditional knocks against female candidates is “they aren’t tough enough, they aren’t strong enough, and they might not have the leadership skills,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Not female candidates who are veterans, particularly of combat.

“They kind of automatically get that kind of respect as leaders; it’s well-earned,” Walsh said. “It’s such a logical next step for people who are committed to this country and are committed to service.”

But their campaigns highlight a set of political concerns specific to female veterans.

The candidates acknowledge that their extraordinary stories of trailblazing military careers could make it difficult for some voters to relate to them. Will they come off as too tough or hawkish? Is it possible for any candidate, male or female, to overemphasize his or her military background in the post-9/11 era?

McGrath, who retired as a lieutenant colonel, opened her campaign with an online video in which she wears a bomber jacket, a fighter jet in the background.

McGrath sees herself as a bridge to male voters who “sort of see women as being weaker,” she said in a telephone interview. “But yeah, I have to make an effort to reach out to women and make sure that they’re not scared, or think that I’m too militant.”

Out came a 30-second spot that mentioned the 89 combat missions-- but focused on McGrath taking her three children to the pediatrician.

“I’m Amy McGrath and I approved this ad,” she says, as her young son takes off down a hallway with his pants down. “Because I’d like to see the other guys running deal with this.”

She upset popular Lexington Mayor Jim Gray in the Democratic primary and will take on Republican Rep. Andy Barr in November, a closely watched race considered competitive in a district Barr won by 22 points in 2016. Poised for the different calculus of the general election, Barr last week released an ad quoting McGrath saying of herself, “Hell yeah, I’m a feminist” and calling herself “a progressive.”

“Seriously? Is that all you got?” McGrath retorted in a video response, sharing the screen once again with a fighter jet. But this time, she traded her bomber jacket for a denim one.

Much of Hegar’s story was already public by the time she decided to challenge Republican Rep. John Carter in the Austin-area district, so she went for the full reveal-- tattoos and all.

Her video, “Doors,” features the door of the helicopter in which she was shot down on her third tour of Afghanistan as a combat search and rescue pilot. Her medals, including a Purple Heart, play a role, as does Hegar’s 2012 lawsuit against the federal government that forced it to repeal the ban on women in combat.

The spot also features an intimate detail: One of Hegar’s first memories was of her father throwing her mother through a glass door.

“That’s been one of the most difficult transitions for me, is talking about myself more,” Hegar said. “I hope that they take away that we have to start putting our faith in people who have a history of putting other people first, fighting against intimidation and bullying, and trying to do the right thing.”

Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones, the Democratic nominee for a House seat in West Texas, hopes her active military duty and intelligence work will “neutralize this perceived strength” of Republicans as strong on security issues.

That could be important in the race for the San Antonio-area seat, currently held by Republican Rep. Will Hurd, a former CIA operative. Ortiz Jones supports single-payer health insurance, a position that could be considered too liberal for the district.

“‘Liberal’ isn’t a word that is normally used to describe my work in national security,” she said.

Trump is an existential danger to America-- if not the world. I'd vote for any of these candidates if I lived in their districts, but we might as well do it with our eyes open and our expectations realistic. And I can say with confidence that none of them are going to be on par with women like Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis, Alexandria Cortez of NYC, Pramila Jayapal of Seattle, Judy Chu of Los Angeles, Katherine Clark of suburban Boston, Jan Schakowsky of Chicagoland, Kara Eastman of Omaha or Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, the women I expect to be the tip of the spear when it comes to pushing a strong progressive policy agenda in 2019. I hope some of these miltary women get on board. We'll see.

Not military-- but a fighter and a leader for working families

Private Prisons Want Trump's Zero Tolerance Agenda-- Can You Guess Why?

What a video! MJ Hegar is running for the Texas congressional seat that covers Williamson and Bell counties, TX-31, between Waco and Austin. It runs from Killeen in the north and Round Rock in the south. The PVI is a daunting R+10. Romney won it 59.6% to 38.3% and Trump won it 53.5% to 40.8%. Bell County includes part of Fort Hood, the largest American military base in the world. It's a traditionally Democratic district but Carter, can ultra-conservative Republican, has been in office since 2002. He never deviates from a hardline GOP approach. For example, on Thursday he voted for the extreme anti-immigration bill and for the far right Agriculture bill.

Carter is a backbencher you rarely hear about outside of his own district. He doesn't do anything except for for extreme right-wing proposals. His Trump adhesion score is 98.8%, the second highest in Congress after whip Steve Scalise. He's a member of the Tea Party Caucus. He's also a bit of a crook

On Thursday the Dallas Morning News revealed that Carter, along with John Culberson (R-TX) and Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX) have taken massive bribes from GEO and it's executives, the private prison company that stands to gain the most from Trump's "zero tolerance" policy that locks up huge numbers of border crossers and their children. GEO operates the private immigration detention facilities in Karnes City, Laredo, Pearsall and Conroe.

Culberson is facing a tough re-election race against Democrat Lizzie Fletcher. The race has been rated a ‘toss up’ by nonpartisan analyst Cook Political Report.

Culberson received the most funding from GEO out of Texas members of Congress, but GEO is also the top donor this cycle for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who received $32,400, and Round Rock Republican Rep. John Carter, who received $31,600.

Both Culberson and Cuellar serve on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, which funds private immigration detention centers. Culberson is also the chairman of and Carter serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which oversees funding for private prisons.

Cuellar’s campaign manager Colin Strother said that GEO is one of the largest employers in Cuellar’s district, and that Cuellar has not allowed campaign contributions to influence his decisions.

“If you live in a district in the state of Washington, you get boating money. If you live in a district in Nebraska, you get agriculture money. We have a district with lots of jail facilities that employ lots of people,” Strother said.

Culberson’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Henry Cuéllar and Vicente Gonzalez were 2 of the 3 Democrats-- the other was another Blue Dog, Fireman Vela-- who refused to sign a bipartisan discharge petition to allow a DACA debate, killing it. Now we know why.

Another one of the largest groups that runs private immigration detention centers in the United States is CoreCivic. The company runs facilities in Houston, Laredo, Dilley and Taylor.

CoreCivic PACs have given less money to candidates than GEO, but still contributed to three Texans, according to OpenSecrets.org: Culberson with $11,000, McCaul with $3,500 and Cuellar with $1,500.

Thursday, the Houston Chronicle reported on the fate of the more than 2,400 children who are under 12 years old that the Trump regime separated from their parents and locked up in Texas.

“It’s chaos,” said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group. “Everything is just moving really fast … I am not convinced they have a plan for reunifying those they have separated.”

...Under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, parents usually served just a few days of prison time for illegally crossing the border before going to immigration detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security. From there, they can be quickly deported without their children. In one case, a Guatemalan father was deported and had no idea where his 18-month-old toddler was for five months until they were reunited in December.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement has said it is not routinely informed about how or when parents and children were separated and where the adults may be.

“You’re talking about 2,000-plus children scattered across America,” said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat. “What a difficult challenge and our fear is that we lose one child.”

The sudden influx of so many very young children has overwhelmed the federal government, which has put out emergency calls for contractors across the nation to provide more bed space and recruit more foster parents. It has meant some children are not put in a foster home with a family, as has generally been the goal for “tender age” kids, but instead may stay for weeks and even months in a residential shelter intended for older children. Most child advocates believe this is not in the best interests of the children.

“Kids, particularly young kids, should be in a smaller, more community-based setting, as opposed to the larger scale institutional-like settings,” said Kathryn Kuennen, associate director of children's services with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which cares for unaccompanied minors.

I haven't talked to a Democratic congressional candidate who isn't concerned about this. Yesterday Randy Bryce, for one, was majorly pissed off. This is what he told his own supporters:

Yesterday, Melania Trump boarded a plane to visit the US-Mexico border, where over 2300 children have been separated from their parents, wearing a jacket that read on the back, "I really don't care. Do u?"

Yeah Melania, I really freaking care.

I care about everyday Americans. I care about hardworking families in Wisconsin and at the border. And millions of Americans, all across the country, stood up and showed that they care too.

But that isn't enough. While Trump may have signed an executive order, if you read the fine print, it doesn't solve the problem. All this order does is turn family separation into family incarceration. And to make matters worse, Donald Trump is still refusing to reunite the children the US has already separated from their parents under his watch.

We have to keep the pressure up because we have to make sure these families are released and reunited immediately. To do that, we need to demand an end to Trump's zero tolerance immigration policy.

Call your representatives now and demand they support an end to Trump's zero tolerance immigration policy. Dial (202) 224-3121 to reach the Capitol Switchboard and speak with your representative.

...We have to keep up the fight, because when we fight, we win.