Trump Will Lose Tomorrow-- And It Won't Be Close

 

Red America by Nancy Ohanian

The foundation to any Republican presidential victory is Texas. Bottom line: if Trump loses Texas and its 38 electoral votes tomorrow, game over. But he's not likely to lose the state. It's still just too red. But the fact that Trump looks so weak in recent polls-- ahead of a nothing like Biden by just 2.3 points according to the most recent Real Clear Politics average-- is a testament to what a disastrous presidency he's presided over. And while those weak numbers may not deny Trump Texas' 38 electoral votes, they may well presage half a dozen or more GOP congressional losses in "safe" red districts. It's likely that TX-10 (McCaul), TX-21 (Roy), TX-22 (Olson), TX-23 (Hurd), TX-24 (Marchant), TX-25 (Williams) could all flip blue tomorrow.

Over the weekend, one of the Mike Siegel campaigners told me that 366,000 people had already voted early in TX-10, more people than had ever voted in an election in that district totally. Black voters, Asian voters, first-time voters and young voters all set new participation records. (301,200 voters participated in the TX-10 congressional race in 2018.) Siegel is expecting a big turnout tomorrow as well. Big turnouts are not what Republicans encourage. And those new voters and young voters and voters of color are not who Trump is trying to appeal to now.

In fact, Toluse Olorunnipa and Josh Dawsey reported for the Washington Post that Trump's madcap super-spreader rallies are focusing exclusively on his base of uneducated white racists. They wrote about episodes likely to turn off swing voters but enthuse his beloved "poorly educated," noting that in a frenzied burst of campaigning in the last days of the presidential race, Señor Trumpanzee has "accused doctors of fabricating coronavirus deaths for money, pantomimed a physical fight with Democratic rival Joe Biden, mocked a Fox News host for wearing a mask and celebrated his supporters for using pickup trucks to ambush a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway... [H]is closing message is a classic display of the kind of red meat tailored specifically to animate his most faithful supporters. Convinced that it’s too late to change the minds of voters who are not yet sold on Trump, the president’s advisers are intensely focused on turning out those who are. Trump’s decision to forgo a broad, unifying closing message and instead double down on appealing to a narrow but enthusiastic slice of the electorate is a gamble. Whether it pays off or becomes a cautionary tale will not be known until the polls close Tuesday and the votes are counted."

It doesn't look good for Trump. His polling numbers are falling and COVID-19 infections are rising, particularly ones that are tied specifically to his super-spreader rallies, which caused at least 700 deaths, not counting Herman Cain. Yesterday 71,321 new cases were reported, bringing the U.S. total to 9,473,911-- as well as 399 new reported deaths for a total of 236,471. Swing states, many with Republican governors and or legislatures who have followed Trump's anti-science line, are being hammered. Yesterday's swing state new cases (with number of cases per million residents):

• Texas +4,193 (33,140 cases per million residents)
• Florida +4,865 (37,593 cases per million residents)
• Wisconsin +3,493 (39,307 cases per million residents)
• Ohio +3,319 (18,738 cases per million residents)
• Iowa +2,394 (41,320 cases per million residents)
• Minnesota +2,200 (26,717 cases per million residents)
• North Carolina +2,057 (26,382 cases per million residents)
• Pennsylvania +1,684 (16,755 cases per million residents)
• Arizona +1,527 (34,000 cases per million residents)
• Georgia +1,192 (34,093 cases per million residents)

Trump is in his own fantasy world though, gaslighting his rallies 'til the very end. He spread COVID to his Pennsylvania supporters in 4 rallies on Saturday. The first was on Newton where he told the crowd, "A great red wave is forming. As sure as we’re here together, that wave is forming. And they see it, they see it on all sides and there’s not a thing they can do about it."

In front of large crowds that defied public health guidelines in the middle of a pandemic, Trump offered a defiant closing message about the forces he battled during his first term, claiming that his willingness to fight them is one reason he deserves a second term.

“We did not come this far and fight this hard only to surrender our country back to the Washington swamp,” Trump said Friday in Waterford Township, Mich.

That event kicked off a four-day stretch of rallies taking him to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Wisconsin. By the time he holds his final rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Monday night, Trump will have given his stump speech to tens of thousands of potential voters.

The president’s allies say he is smart to make a bet on rallying his troops at this stage of the campaign, with few undecided voters left and more to be gained from juicing turnout than from winning converts.

“The weekend before election, you’re not changing minds,” said Bryan Lanza, an adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition. “You’re not IDing supporters, you’re just turning them out. That’s where we are. Persuasion is done. He’s got to turn out what’s there.”

Trump is under more pressure to turn out his base voters in the last days of the race due to the unprecedented partisan split between Americans who vote early and those voting on Election Day.

More than 90 million Americans have already voted early or by absentee ballot, according to data maintained by the U.S. Elections Project, a nonpartisan early-voting tracker. Democrats have an edge over Republicans in several swing states, and Trump has explicitly told his supporters to cast their votes in person on Tuesday.

...The president’s strategy carries risks. His embrace of the conspiracy theories spread by his most ardent supporters about the coronavirus pandemic has driven away potential supporters, according to polls.

Trump has increasingly used his rallies to promote misinformation about the deadly virus, downplaying it and bemoaning the fact that it continues to dominate news coverage. He has told supporters that the country was “rounding the turn” on the virus even as the case count soars to record levels, and claimed without evidence that a vaccine has been held up until after the election due to politics. On Friday, he mocked Fox News host Laura Ingraham for wearing a mask to his crowded Michigan rally.

“No way!” he said from the stage. “She’s wearing a mask? She’s being very politically correct!”

During the same rally, Trump made the baseless accusation that doctors are inflating the number of patients who died of covid-19 to “get more money.”

“Now they’ll say, ‘Oh that’s terrible what he said,’ but that’s true,” Trump said of his false allegation. “It’s like $2,000 more, so you get more money.”

The American Medical Association called the claim “malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided” in a statement Friday, without naming Trump.

Trump’s conspiratorial approach to the pandemic comes as the number of Americans dying each day has begun to increase, along with the rising caseload and hospitalizations.

More than 230,000 Americans have died of covid-19, and more than 9 million have been infected.

...[H]e has veered away from his prepared remarks to offer controversial running commentary to his supporters. He has fed off crowds chanting “Lock him up!” about Biden and “Superman!” about him. Shortly before his fourth rally of the day in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump tweeted a video of several of his supporters forming an intimidating vehicle caravan around a Biden campaign bus as it attempted to drive down a Texas highway.

“I LOVE TEXAS!” the president wrote.

On Saturday, Keith Collins, Trip Gabriel and Stephanie Saul took NY Times readers on a trip into the 20 Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin counties across the country where they claim, inaccurately, that the battle for their states' electoral votes are fiercest. Let's follow along anyway:

Miami-Dade, FL-- A Democratic stronghold, it is not a county Mr. Trump would hope to win. But this majority-Hispanic county was a disappointment for Democrats in 2018, especially in heavily Cuban-American precincts. Younger Cuban voters have started identifying as Trump Republican here.

Disappointment in 2018? The Democrats targeted 2 congressional seats in Miami-Dade and won both. Gillum won with 59.9% and Nelson won with 60.6%

Pinellas County, FL-- Perhaps the biggest swing county in the state, which backed Mr. Trump after twice backing Barack Obama, it is a Florida microcosm: solid Democrats in St. Petersburg and Midwestern retirees elsewhere.

2018 was good for Dems in Pinellas-- Gillum won with 50.7%, Nelson won with 52.6% and Charlie Crist was reelected with 57.6%

Osceola County, FL-- Part of the greater Orlando area, it is increasingly Hispanic. Conservative retirees have been joined by hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, who did not register in expected numbers to give Democrats an advantage in 2018, and so far, are lagging behind other groups in early voting.

Osceola was another good county for Dems in 2018-- Gillum 58.4%, Nelson 59.7%, and it performed for mediocre Rep. Darren Soto D+26. It would have been way more interesting to include Polk County  

Union County, NC-- In 2016, Mr. Trump easily won this suburban Republican bastion near Charlotte. Republicans remain dominant, but signs of disaffection with the president, along with an upswing in “unaffiliated” voters, give Democrats hope they can trim Mr. Trump’s margin.

Union is one of those counties where Republicans routinely steal votes

Wake County, NC-- One of the nation’s fastest-growing counties, Wake has shifted steadily leftward over the past 20 years, supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 by more than 100,000 votes. An influx of out-of-staters since then stands to boost the Democrats even more, potentially offsetting high Republican numbers in rural areas.

Robeson County, NC-- A former Democratic stronghold, this economically depressed county went for Mr. Trump in 2016. The prize will likely go to the candidate most popular among the Lumbee Indians, the county’s largest group. Mr. Trump held a rally here in October, and both campaigns pledged to support the tribe’s quest for federal recognition.

Robeson delivered for Democrat Dan McCready in 2018 (D+15)

Westmoreland County, PA-- Typical of other counties where Mr. Trump outperformed with white working-class voters four years ago, this area near Pittsburgh is where he must win even bigger margins to counter a likely Democratic surge in the suburbs.

Hillary screwed the pooch but 2 years later Tom Wolf took 46.4% and Bob Casey took 43.9%-- which is all Biden needs to do there and in places like it to be sure of winning Pennsylvania

Chester County, PA-- Democrats must continue their 2018 midterm surge in this suburban Philadelphia county, especially with college-educated women, or Mr. Trump could carry Pennsylvania again.

In 2018 Dems all did better than Hillary had-- Casey drew 59.2%, Wolf took 61.3% and the county performed as a D+18 for Democrat Chrissy Houlahan 

Erie County, PA-- One of three counties in the state that Mr. Trump flipped in 2016, its mix of a working-class post-industrial economy and rural towns makes it “the oracle of Pennsylvania,” in the words of a Democratic strategist.

Erie Co. regretted going for Trump in 2016 and made up for it 2 years later-- Bob Casey 55.7%, Tom Wolf 59.8 and the county is the biggest one in PA-16 and performed at a D+20 level for Democrat Ron DiNicola

Philadelphia County, PA-- The big question here is whether Mr. Biden can re-energize Black voters-- Democrats’ core supporters-- after Hillary Clinton’s lackluster showing in 2016. Mr. Biden will have to boost the numbers to counter Mr. Trump’s margins with rural white voters. The Trump campaign has taken on aggressive tactics, like videotaping voters at ballot drop boxes.

Macomb County, MI-- Heavily unionized and mostly white, the state’s third largest county has picked the statewide winner in the last seven elections for governor and president.

In 2018 Stabenow did 8 points better than Hillary and Whitmer did slightly better than Stabenow. The county performed at a D+19 level for Andy Levin

Oakland County, MI-- Once solidly Republican, it is a more affluent neighbor of Macomb County and has been trending Democratic. It is a prime example of the changes that are taking place in many of the nation’s suburbs. In 2018, it gave Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the biggest margin for a Democrat in 20 years.

Oakland was good for all the Dems running in 2018 and will be for Biden tomorrow

Kent County, MI-- This traditional Republican stronghold-- home to Grand Rapids, where President Gerald Ford was raised-- has moved away from the Republican Party in the Trump era.

Mentioning Ford is the most hawkish possible thing to say about Kent. He served from 1949 to 1973-- 100% irrelevant. Maybe they should have mentioned current Rep. Justin Amash. Stabenow and Whitmer both won the county in 2018

Brown County, WI-- Among the top counties that will decide the state’s winner is the home of vote-rich Green Bay. It’s a swing county that in 2018 voted for the Republican candidate for governor, Scott Walker, and the Democrat for Senate, Tammy Baldwin. Mr. Trump won blowout margins here compared with Mitt Romney in 2012.

Waukesha County, WI-- It is the largest of Milwaukee’s suburban counties. Long a Republican stronghold, the county underperformed for Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden has forged inroads here, but it’s not clear how deep they are.

Don't get excited; Biden has not forged any inroads in Waukesha. The writers had nothing so say so they made it up

Dane County, WI-- This is home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it’s where Democrats surged in an April 2020 race for the State Supreme Court. Nearly as many votes were cast here as in Milwaukee County, even though Dane has less than 60 percent of Milwaukee’s population. Heavy turnout in early voting suggests Mr. Biden is claiming those votes.

Grant County, WI-- Emblematic of southwest Wisconsin, it is one of the state’s swingiest regions, where weak partisan identity saw voters shift from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump.

In 2018 it swung back blue-- Tony Evers beat Scott Walker by about a point and Tammy Baldwin beta her GOP opponent by 9 points

Maricopa County, AZ-- Home to Phoenix and more than 60 percent of the state’s electorate, it is Arizona’s most important county. It went narrowly for Mr. Trump in 2016, but two years later supported a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, for senator. The question is whether the county’s changing demographics will tip the state to a Democratic president for the first time since 1996.

Pima County, AZ-- The home of Tucson, Democrats typically run up the score here.

Pinal County, AZ-- The state’s third-largest county is a Republican redoubt. Mr. Trump will have to turn out enough rural white voters to help protect the 3.5-point margin he won the state with in 2016.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

A week ago, I posted about a Republican nuthouse in Pennsylvania. Here's one from the apparent American Taliban stronghold of the 83rd District of North Carolina. This home just screams Proud Boy Clubhouse! By my count, I see 8 Confederate flags, each one a little waving monument to treason, placed next to Old Glory along the curb. More treason-loving pro-slavery heritage Confederate flags appear elsewhere on the lawn and on the house. I'm surprised there isn't a lawn jockey or two and you have to assume that these homeowners at least thought better of displaying swastika flags and decided to be a bit coy by just putting out all of those modern day equivalent blue Trump flags. The pro-white supremacy/pro-homicidal police flag mounted on the upper left of the house is a nice touch. It's the flag Trump's "very fine people" carried with their tiki-torches in Charlottesville. Solidarity. Despite any bogus oh so cute statements about the "original" meaning of the flag, the black and blue flag is a desecration of the real American flag and has come to symbolize the classic Republican "Us vs. 'Others'" mentality, especially when combined with all of those Confederate and blue Trump Nazi 2020 flags.

The message of the display is clear. It's as obvious as can be, even more so when you see the signs for the 83rd District's NC Assembly goon Larry G. Pittman, a so-called Christian "pastor" who supports the right of North Carolina to secede from the United States, supports legislation to outlaw marriage equality, and compares Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler, ironic since you would think such a man adored Hitler and prayed for his return on some sort of day of glorious Nazi rapture. Pittman has also called those who protested the wanton police murder of George Flyod "thugs" and "vermin" who should be shot by police if they resist being swept off the streets and arrested or worse. No doubt, he fully represents the feelings of those who live in his district every bit as much as the arrogantly repugnant display shown above.

You Know Who Madison Cawthorn Is-- Now Meet The Democrat Who Is Going To Save North Carolina And The U.S.A. From ThisNeo-Fascist Little Goon

North Carolina’s 11th district on the western edge of the state includes the stunning Blue Ridge Mountains, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and some of the most beautiful forests, waterfalls and vistas in the country. It also includes Asheville, a small, artsy, craft beer-loving liberal city that anchors this district … but hardly defines it. Asheville and some of Buncombe County are a bright blue dot in a sea of deep red conservative voters. Despite redrawn lines that ended the gerrymander and Republican stranglehold on the 11th, there remains a highly divided electorate in this still red-leaning district that makes challenging it challenging for a Democrat.

This year though, NC-11 has a really exception candidate, Moe Davis, former Chief Prosecutor at Guantanamo, who retired over the government's use of torture. An Air Force colonel (ret.) and former Director of the Air Force Judiciary, Davis is up against the GOP's "it boy," Madison Cawthorn who isn't even in office yet and has been caught lying about:

• the Naval Academy, which he says was going to take him but in reality rejected him before his accident.
• being a CEO of a real estate investment firm
• being a motivational speaker. (Cawthorn has not held any job since 2016, when he worked part-time answering phones and reading news clips for then Rep. Mark Meadows, and has never held a full-time adult job.)
• being accepted at Harvard-- where he never really applied
• being in the military, allowing Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo to say he had served his country, when he never did, pretending his tragic car accident was related to battlefield valor

Instead, Madison Cawthorn has been credibly accused by numerous women of sexual misconduct, is a semi-closeted white nationalist, neo-Nazi and admirer of Adolph Hitler, a shameless COVID-denier, host of numerous super-spreader events and a crackpot conspiracy-theory nut. He's very ambitious and sees the NC-11 House seat as a stepping stone to a Senate race [presumably against Cal Cunningham in 2026]. I invited Moe Davis to introduce himself to DWT readers by way of a guest post on the broadband problem in western North Carolina. Please hear him out and consider contributing to his campaign here or by tapping on the Blue America 2020 Trump District Democrats thermometer on the right.


Digital Divide In Western North Carolina
-by Moe Davis

Broadband internet is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity for business, education, medicine and service in the 21st Century. But in some counties of rural Western North Carolina, as many as 50 percent or more lack access to broadband.

That has to change.

I support Rep. Jim Clyburn’s Accessible, Affordable Internet for All bill that will provide $80 billion to help extend broadband to rural areas throughout Western North Carolina.

Homework Gap

Covid-19 has greatly exacerbated the long-standing digital divide that disadvantages rural students. Students without access to broadband have had difficulties doing homework that requires the internet for quite some time now. Distance learning due to the pandemic has made this issue critical and urgent. We cannot allow our children to fall behind. Seeing students sitting in cars with their parents in the parking lots of local libraries and schools doing schoolwork has become common place throughout WNC. It is unacceptable.

Telehealth

Telemedicine has been growing in popularity even before the pandemic, and has seen a boon in the last 6 months. We can expect this pattern to continue even after the pandemic is over as we have entered a new era in medicine. Doctors are monitoring their patients with biofeedback software that requires high speed internet connection. Diabetics can measure their blood sugars with an app, if they have connectivity, cancer patients can receive treatments without going to the doctor’s office or hospital. We can expect a more efficient and cost effective medical care system but every patient needs access to it for cost reductions to be optimum. We can close the gap in health outcomes between rural and urban citizens when we close the digital gap.

Public Safety

Rural communities have a disadvantage when first responders cannot access patient information such as allergies, recent medical procedures and more when responding to unconscious patients. When folks cannot get “Silver Alerts” or “Amber Alerts” when children or the elderly go missing, we delay finding the vulnerable. Our elderly need life alert systems also. Our citizens need home protection systems that require broadband connection. Law enforcement officers need access to personal background information while responding to dangerous situations like domestic violence calls.

Economic Development

Now that we know so many folks can work from home, I expect that trend to continue. This means that many more people who love our mountains can move here regardless of who they work for. Entrepreneurs and other companies can be free to open business here, stimulating and growing our economy. Green jobs can explode as farmers turn to growing hemp for the production of plant based “plastics”. Those plastics can be produced right here in Dist 11 also. This vision for a green economy in WNC is only possible if we ensure 100% broadband access throughout the district. Broadband access is a right and should be considered a utility much like electricity. NC H129 needs to be overturned allowing local municipalities to offer broadband.

How Badly Will Trump Hurt Republican Candidates In North Carolina And Wisconsin?

Trump Snowball Effect by Nancy Ohanian

New polling from CNN shows Trump losing among likely voters in both Wisconsin and North Carolina. Trump is down 3 points in North Carolina and 10 points in Wisconsin. Although Trump won both states in 2016, Wisconsin had a statewide election since then which was disastrous for the GOP. Bernie/Biden-backed Jill Karofsky ousted Trump-backed state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly by an astonishingly wide margin-- 855,573 (55.21%) to 693,134 (44.73%). In North Carolina, Trump's 50.5% to 46.7% win over Hillary was marred when Democrat Roy Cooper defeated Trump ally Pat McCrory 2,281,155 (49.0%) to 2,276,383 (48.9%).

Wisconsin

CNN reported that among likely Wisconsin voters, Biden is widely viewed as more apt to unite the country (55% to 36%) and handle racial inequality in the US (55% to 38%). He is more trusted by a 13-point margin on the coronavirus outbreak (54% to 41%). He is more often seen as having a clear plan to solve the country's problems (49% to 43%) and has the edge on keeping Americans safe from harm (50% to 45%). Wisconsin likely voters split evenly on who would better handle the economy (49% Trump to 48% Biden) and who has the stamina and sharpness to be president (47% Trump to 44% Biden)." Trump's job approval is underwater in both states, by 8 points in North Carolina and 15 points in Wisconsin.

About a third of likely voters in each state "express deep worry about the coronavirus outbreak in their community." Yesterday, North Carolina reported 1,106 new COVID cases, bringing the state total to 186,887 (17,819 cases per million residents). Wisconsin reported 1,348 new cases, bringing their total to 91,304 (15,681 cases per million residents). Both states are in the midst of harsh spikes.

North Carolina

The North Carolina U.S. Senate race is a toss-up in the poll, with 47% of likely voters saying they back the Democrat Cal Cunningham and 46% for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has a lead in his bid for reelection, 53% support him, 44% his Republican challenger Dan Forest.

A majority of Wisconsin likely voters (53%) say they plan to cast their ballots in-person on Election Day, while 27% say they want to vote by mail and 19% by using an in-person absentee ballot. North Carolina's likely voters, however, are far more likely to plan to vote early or absentee, with just 38% saying they aim to vote on Election Day. A plurality, 42%, say they will vote early in-person, and 18% say they aim to vote by mail.

In both states, however, preferences on how to cast one's ballot are politicized. Less than a third of Biden supporters plan to vote on Election Day in either state (28% in Wisconsin, 22% in North Carolina), while among Trump backers, majorities in both places say they will vote on November 3 (83% in Wisconsin, 57% in North Carolina). The overall share saying they plan to vote on Election Day in North Carolina is larger than the share who voted that way in 2016, and that's mostly because of Trump's supporters. In 2016, about a third of votes in the state were cast on Election Day. Of all the votes Trump received, 37% came from in-person voting on Election Day.

New Wisconsin polling from Morning Consult was released at the end of the day yesterday. It shows Trump lagging Biden by 9 points: 51% to 42%, Trump with downward momentum.

I asked both Blue America-endorsed Wisconsin state Assembly candidates, Jacob Malinowski in the Milwaukee suburbs (next to beet red Waukesha) and Emily Voight (south of Green Bay on the northeast shore of Lake Winnebago) if Trump's loss of support statewide is resonating in their own races. Emily reminded us that "Wisconsin is a deeply gerrymandered state, one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. Even though my district, Assembly District 3, is heavily gerrymandered in favor of a Republican, our campaign is getting a lot of positive responses. I've had moderate Republicans and Independents contacting me, telling me they will vote for me because they do not like how the Republicans have been mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic. They have praised me on calling out my opponent's indiscriminate covert racism on his personal FaceBook posts. Wisconsin is truly a swing state, and when we feel that the administration in DC has gone too far one way, we tend to vote the opposite. And while it was an uncontested primary in August, our campaign received 108 more votes than the incumbent. I think Wisconsin is ready for a change!"

Malinowski noted that Trump's "apparent underperformance in Wisconsin will directly help down-ballot candidates like me all across the Milwaukee suburbs. Sen. Baldwin and Justice Karofsky both way over-performed Hilary Clinton's margins, which means that plenty of folks are willing to vote for left-leaning candidates. If President Trump loses Wisconsin by the 6ish points he's at now, we've got a real chance to flip some of these state legislative seats."

For some valuable context, we'll wrap this up with a few words from our old friend state Senator Chris Larson, the guy I know who knows the most about Wisconsin electoral politics:

Wisconsin Republicans are stuck in a bind. Many had hoped their party would have turned the page on Donald Trump after his much-anticipated, never-arriving loss of 2016. Then, they could have pretended the xenophobic, racist, mysogninistic views he expressed were unique only to him and not reflected in years of policies that whispered just as much.

Instead, Trump won. While the country has had to pay the biggest price for his self-serving malfeasance, the Republican Party has had to pay the political cost. Paul Ryan cashed in his spine to Trump and refused to stand up to him. Ryan was rewarded for with outcry from Wisconsin and was forced to abandon his once-safe congressional seat, announcing his retirement just days after it was disclosed $4.75 million was already raised by Randy Bryce, the blue-collar, cancer-surviving, union-card-holding veteran running against him.

Former Governor Scott Walker is now remembered as the guy who dropped out of the presidential race in an attempt to rally other institutional Republicans to rally against Trump. Instead, he whiplashed back into line for Trump after the primary. As a reward, Walker was tossed from office in the ensuing backlash against the party that surrendered all authority to a morally and financially bankrupt reality star.

The Republican Party is more strained in Wisconsin than it's been in the last decade. While Trump continues to implode and be his own worst enemy on the campaign trail, he leaves no choice for Republicans but to also tie themselves to the mass of the sinking ship.

America is worse off than it was 4 years ago in terms of a crashed economy, record job losses, a heating planet, and the worst response to the pandemic on the planet. Each of these have been amplified in my home state and Republicans incumbents are being called to atone for 6 months of inaction in the fact of mounting crises. Wisconsinites demand more than echoing FoxNews and trying to "trigger the libs." We've seen family farms close at a rate of two per day and the response from Trump's Ag Secretary was to spike the ball in their face as they continued to favor corporate farms and trade policies that hurt the dairy industry.

While smarter Republicans try to pretend they haven't seen Trump's latest tweets/interviews/speeches, some of the newer candidates have found themselves unbound to hold back on their racism.

Every state Rep is up and the ballot with Trump and Democrats have momentum going into the final stretch. With the census around the corner, there is a genuine opportunity to make lasting change to finally address our biggest problems with bold, progressive policies.

It's Almost Like The GOP Is Committed To Making The Pandemic Worse!

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is as far right as the typical Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham show. Not the news coverage, the editorial page. Yesterday, the editors asked about a Trump comeback and noted that Biden wants to make the campaign a referendum on Trump. He’s succeeding with Trump’s help. The story of this election will be how Biden won because he succeeded in not getting in the way of it being a referendum on Señor Trumpanzee. In conservative circle, there is still hope-- despite the polls-- that Trump is "going to stage a comeback, and not become only the fourth incumbent in a century to be denied a second term" but to do that, warns the editors, "he will have to make the race about policy differences and Mr. Biden’s indulgence to the Democratic left." In other words, he has to paint a picture of Biden-- a career-long conservative-- that makes him into a socialist!!!! and a puppet of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Nancy Pelosi, 4 of the Democratic women the far right media has worked so hard to demonize with only the most modest success outside their own bubble.

The editors admit that "If the race comes down to a character contest, Mr. Trump will lose. This isn’t a repeat of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was almost as disliked as Mr. Trump. Voters may have doubts about Mr. Biden’s capacity, but they don’t dislike him. Americans have also seen Mr. Trump in office for 42 months, and even millions of his supporters dislike the way he conducts himself. This isn’t merely a normative judgment. It’s a political fact as measured in the polls. Mr. Trump’s job approval rating rests at about 43%-44%, and his personal approval is lower. [These jerks need to take off their right-wing blinders; Trump's job approval average is actually 44.2% approval, 53.0% disapproval-- and that is even with averages that include fake GOP polls by Rasmussen and Trafalgar.] He hasn’t been able to sustain his job approval above what it was on Inauguration Day. Unlike Richard Nixon or George W. Bush, who won with pluralities the first time but majorities the next, Mr. Trump has failed to expand his coalition."

Wringing their hands because in reinforcing "the intensity of his core support," the Orange Menace "has shed support in the suburbs, especially among college-educated voters and women. This has been the case in nearly every election since Mr. Trump’s narrow victory in 2016. The Trump GOP is a smaller but more intensely loyal coalition."

Trump’s Labor Day press conference... was intended to play off the strong August jobs report to drive the theme of economic recovery. Mr. Trump started out on message by citing the facts, but soon he was careening from grievance to attack or anything that popped into his head.

• “His [Joe Biden’s] son, “Where is Hunter?”-- Where is Hunter?-- I call him ‘Where is Hunter?’-- walked away with one and a half billion dollars to manage, even though he never did that before.”
• “And Biden is a stupid person. You know that.”
• “I was never a fan of John McCain because he wanted the endless wars, and I didn’t.”
• “They spied on my campaign. And if they were Democrats, they would have been in jail two years ago. They would have been in jail-- literally, if this side were the Democrat side, they would have been in jail two years ago for 50-year terms for treason and other things.”
• “And the dirtiest fight of all is the issuance of 80 million ballots, unrequested. They’re not requested; they’re just sending 80 million ballots all over the country. Eighty million ballots, non-requested. I call them unsolicited ballots. That’s going to be the dirtiest fight of all.”
• “But I watched Kamala’s poll numbers drop from 15 to almost zero, and then drop out even before she ran in Iowa because people didn’t like her, and I understand why. She will never be President-- although I have to be careful, because Obama used to say that about me. So I have to be a little bit careful.”

This tower of babbling is entertaining in its Trumpian way, but his economic point was washed away like an irrelevance. The press barely reported it.

Voters have heard this riffing for three years, and one campaign question is whether there are enough undecided voters who are still listening. The country deserves a debate over policy because Mr. Biden is proposing the most left-wing agenda of any major party candidate in our lifetime. The Democratic strategy is to keep Mr. Trump talking about Donald J. Trump.

And in the midst of a deadly pandemic the Trump regime and it's allies are trying to deny exists-- even if it means killing people-- Trump's raucous campaign style doesn't read well outside of his low-IQ base. Yesterday, Josh Dawsey, Michael Scherer and Annie Linskey, writing for the Washington Post that the morons who support Trump think being anti-mask = being pro-Trump. When an announcer at a recent Trumpanzee rally in an airplane hanger New Hampshire "urged a packed airplane hangar of supporters to don their masks, a cacophonous round of boos erupted, followed by defiance. No matter that the attendees’ chairs were inches apart, their temperatures had not been taken and masks were required by the state." The contrast with Biden's campaign style couldn't be starker. His small, outdoor events are all social-distanced and, unlike Trump's, none his voters are going to be too sick-- or dead-- to vote on election day. "These are more than just competing messages for a country riven by a pandemic less than two months before an election," wrote The Post trio. "The two sides don’t even agree on what constitutes campaigning. And Republicans and Democrats each say their opponents are making a fatal error-- with the Trump campaign attempting to cast life as largely normal, while Biden and his campaign largely stay at home... If Trump is showcasing his brand of defiant individualism, Biden is seeking to demonstrate his rationality and willingness to heed experts. Democrats say Trump is scaring away swing voters alarmed by the pandemic while appealing to a core base that sees public health measures as going too far." What pity!

In North Carolina-- a must-win swing state for Trump-- he was running around campaigning live in Winston-Salem, endangering his supporters and himself and staffers. Dave Plyler, the Republican chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, told him to wear a mask in North Carolina, where a second spike is going badly. On Tuesday, when Trump was in his county, the state reported 651 new cases, bringing North Carolina's total caseload to 179,068, or 17,073 cases per million residents. On top of that-- 9 new deaths to mark Trump's visit with a total of 2,937 for the state.

Instead of wearing a mask, Trump decided to use the occasion to mock pandemic restrictions, a popular position among his moron-base, but not with normal people. "But when the president emerged Tuesday evening to address a cheering group of supporters, his face was fully exposed, a likely violation of the state’s coronavirus rules.”

“The same was true of many of the supporters behind his podium, especially those high up in the stands and out of view. And in fact, the whole event appears to have defied restrictions from North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), who has limited outdoor mass gatherings at 50 people under the state’s current phase of reopening."

Two super-spreaders, Donald and Shannon

And, obviously, this Republican rebellion against public health isn't just a problem in North Carolina. In every state with Republicans, this has been a problem, a problem that prolongs and worsens the pandemic. Take California. The minority leader of the state Senate, Trumpist crackpot Shannon Grove of Kern County is supposed to be in quarantine because of her close contacts with another lunatic fringe Republican state senator, Brian Jones, who has COVID. "Instead," reported the Washington Post Grove took the stage on Sunday and spoke at length-- maskless-- to thousands of religionists "packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the Capitol "and promised the huge church event would have a real impact. But state leaders are warning the event’s impact could actually be a mass coronavirus outbreak. Although Grove’s permit allowed 1,000 people and required social distancing, the California Highway Patrol said three times as many showed up; videos showed virtually no social distancing or masks in the crowd."

If Gavin Newsom had any balls-- he doesn't-- Grove would be sitting in a jail cell right now. California reported 3,409 new cases yesterday, bringing the state's total to 744,895 highest in the nation-- along with 13,835 deaths. There are 18,852 cases per million Californians. Grove's own area is a COVID-shotspot with 30,202 cases across Kern County (6th worst in the state), 16,546 of those cases active (4th worst in the state). And up in Sacramento County, where Grove was doing her super-spreader event on Sunday there were 114 new cases reported, bringing the county's total to 19,460.

And if conservative politicians won't mislead you about the pandemic, there's a good chance your own brain will. That's what Lia Kvatum reported for the Washington Post yesterday. "More than six months into a pandemic in the United States," she wrote, "we know a few things. We know that the novel coronavirus can be fatal, that it's passed via respiratory droplets, that masks and social distancing help stop its spread. And yet many Americans, weary of lockdowns, seem determined to return to social gatherings and other "normal" activities, even though experts have warned against this. The question is, why? Why do some take the threat of the virus more seriously than others? Your risk of contracting covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, depends on a number of variables: where you live, how old you are, whether you work indoors or out, whether you have high blood pressure or other so-called co-morbidities, how many people in your community have been tested, and so on. But ultimately, the difficulty of grasping the threat of this virus may have less to do with data and more to do with fundamentals: Humans are not that good at it." And especially not if you were stupid enough to buy into Trump's bullshit from the beginning. Those are really the brains in trouble.

Howard Kunreuther, co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania, studies why people tend to be poor judges of whether they will experience a natural disaster and the policy implications of that. In the 2017 book The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters, which he co-wrote, he explains that people often don’t like to think too far in the future; they also misunderstand threats and are influenced by those around them. Kunreuther sees parallels between the way people downplay the threat of natural disasters and the way they dismiss the threat of the coronavirus.

According to scientists, risk assessment involves two basic types of thinking: intuitive and deliberative. The intuitive kind is “thinking without thinking,” explains Ralf Schmälzle, a biological psychologist at Michigan State University, and “is rooted in the evolutionary need to survive.” By contrast, deliberative thinking, he says, is “mostly conscious” and “effortful ... whereby one reflects about reasons and weighs available evidence, perhaps comparable to comparing options in a chess game and deciding which move is best.”

...In the instance of a threat like the coronavirus, information without feeling is largely ineffective. “Knowledge alone is not enough to motivate,” explains Schmälzle. So, even though we hear that hundreds of thousands have died of covid-19, that risk may feel distant if we don’t know anyone who has had it. Our unwillingness to change our minds based on information alone can lead in the opposite direction, too: Many humans remain fearful of flying, even though statistically it’s incredibly safe.

...Our judgments are also shaped by those around us. “The communities that we are a part of play a huge role in how we interpret information. Oftentimes, the things that we believe connect us to certain communities,” says Meghan Moran, an associate professor of health, behavior and society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We are more likely to believe things that fit in with our existing worldview or value system, so information that does that becomes more appealing.” This can contribute to a belief in conspiracy theories or a disdain for expert advice.

Scientists can do only so much to persuade us, and it doesn’t help that they’re frequently hesitant to speak in definitive terms. Schmälzle, for instance, is excited by the findings from his 2013 study but also cautioned against reading too much into them because of the small sample size and other limitations. This is how evidence-based science works. With a new threat like covid, experts’ understanding is rapidly evolving, and so are their recommendations. Take masks. In February, before widespread lockdowns, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said healthy people didn’t need to wear them in public. By April, as multiple studies began to show people can spread the virus without knowing they have it, the CDC reversed that recommendation, angering some and confusing many.

“In general, folks who are not scientists are seeking certainties, so they want to know what’s going to happen, and it will always be that way,” Moran says. “I think we get into trouble when we rely on terms and phrases that are a little more ambiguous than what the public is comfortable with hearing. It can be misinterpreted that scientists don’t know what they are doing. It can result in a lack of trust when it’s not conveyed in a way that’s clear to the public.”

So, what’s the solution? There are no magic bullets. But until there is a vaccine, perhaps recognizing our inherent cognitive limitations is one more way to protect ourselves.

Remember The Swamp? Trump Fished Louis DeJoy Out Of It To Run The Post Office (Into The Ground)

Can this crooked, rich, ugly man with an obscene watch give Trump 4 more years via the USPS?

Louis DeJoy personally contributed over a million dollars to the NRC and to Trump's campaign, $32,300 to the North Carolina Republican Party, tens of thousands more to Republican congressional candidates and thousands to official Republican Party committees in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, Maine, Arkansas and Washington. That's all perfectly legal and he was then hired by Trump to destroy the U.S. Postal Service, which he's been busy doing. Reporters Aaron Davis, Amy Gardner and Jon Swaine of the Washington Post looked into another kind of fundraising De Joy did that is perfectly illegal and which could and should, but won't, send him to prison.

"DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising," they wrote, "which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates-- money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say. Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece. Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful."

That's the illegal part, but widely practiced-- if not quite as systematically-- in the sewer known as corporate America. Politically-engaged CEOs and chairmen do it almost routinely... and, I'm sure you've noticed, no CEOs ever go to prison for funneling illegal cash to politicians. Not all their wives become the ambassador to Estonia and Canada though. Still, funny how that works.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations-- and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from the Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

...A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

...Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it... The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

...As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments-- first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors-- through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Trump insulted Trudeau by selling DeJoy the ambassadorship to Canada for his crazy right-wing wife

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal-- you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

...Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

...Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

...By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give-- and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.





...After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

ACTIVISM!

D.C. organizers figured out where DeJoy lives-- this condo in Kalorama-- so they're holding a "No Joy for DeJoy" noise demonstration at his building and stuffing mock absentee ballots into the gates.