Free Republic

The Green New Deal has emerged as a key litmus test for prospective 2020 presidential candidates, with high-profile candidates jumping on board to back the progressive environmental pitch. On Sunday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) entered the 2020 race after supporting the proposal. Four other senators who have declared presidential bids have co-sponsored the resolution, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is mulling a 2020 campaign and has previously supported the concept, will back the plan. Their support highlights one of the progressive ideas at the center of the Democratic race, while the Republican National Committee dismissed the proposal as a...

The time is short - please list here candidates who are worthy of our last minute support - financial if at all possible. I will start: Dean Heller for Senate from Nevada: https://www.deanheller.com/ Corey Stewart for Senate in VA: (against the vile Tim Kaine) https://www.coreystewart.com/home Ted Budd for Congress in NC: Incumbent Repub against highly financed Dem. Lawyer. https://tedbudd.com/

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said in an interview with CBS This Morning that he feels “pretty good” about the Republicans hanging on to the majority in the House. “Are Republicans going to keep the House?” Host John Dickerson asked Ryan. “I think we are,” Ryan said. “I feel pretty good about it.” The interview came after Ryan, who is leaving Congress at the end of this session, joined Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) at a campaign stop at a defense manufacturing plant in her New York district. Dickerson asked Ryan why he is optimistic about the midterms’ outcome. “I think...

In a sign of how heated the fall campaign has become, two Minnesota Republicans say they were attacked and punched in separate incidents over the weekend. State Representative Sarah Anderson of Plymouth said she had confronted a man for kicking her campaign sign when he charged at her. First-time candidate Shane Mekeland of Becker said he suffered a concussion after a man punched him in the face at a Benton County restaurant.

Hoping we can get a thread going listing candidates for November who are worthy of financial and other support. Some areas have already started early voting. The time is short.

A long, thoughtful article on the 2018 battle for Congress got me thinking. Is it possible for the good folks at Free Republic to whip up a few short, punchy scripts for election commercials aimed at television and webcasting audiences? Perhaps excerpting the aforementioned article would be helpful: How Republicans Could Still Win A forthcoming poll suggests ways they can persuade voters in swing districts. This was a week of gloomy midterm polls for the Republican Party, with a wave of results projecting a Democratic takeover of the House and maybe even the Senate. But not all polls are created...

We're now just four months, practically speaking, from the effective launch of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season. As soon as the 2018 midterm election is in the books — win or lose — you'll probably see a handful of the dozens of prospective candidates making moves or even launching campaigns to challenge President Donald Trump. Each quarter, the Washington Post handicaps potential candidates. Here is its latest ranking of possible contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020: Worth watching: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, California Gov. Jerry Brown, Colorado Gov....

Everywhere is a bellwether in American politics these days. And every race allegedly tells you much of what might happen in the midterm elections on Nov. 6.In California, that just may be true in today’s primaries.The Republican Party remains a sad-sack affair statewide in the country’s most populous state.But it does currently hold potentially the critical balance that could keep the House for the GOP or swing it to the Nancy Pelosi crowd. She only needs 23 more House seats to regain the Speaker’s gavel from retiring Paul Ryan.In California, the GOP presently holds seven seats in House districts...

With the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference now in its second year, Democratic pollsters are offering the party a way to hone a persuasive counterargument to President Trump's revved up rhetoric against Robert Mueller: talk less about the 2016 election and more about indictments handed down thus far. A new survey by Navigator Research, a group of top Democratic strategists and public opinion experts, finds that while 97 percent of Americans have heard about the Mueller probe, nearly 60 percent don't believe it has uncovered any crimes. The ongoing investigation has so far resulted in two dozen indictments,...

For Tara Gaston, it was being repeatedly told “that’s not the way things have been done” on the Saratoga County, N.Y., board of supervisors, to which she had just been elected. For Haya Ayala, it was watching her bill calling for pay parity get “killed before it could get anywhere near the floor” of the Virginia House of Delegates, which she joined as one of an influx of newcomers last year. And for Deborah Gonzalez, it was taking her first meeting with the other candidate who had flipped a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives during a special election...

Of four candidates seeking the republican nomination to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, Senator Scott Wagner of York has lead in all but one of the straw polls in party caucuses across the state. The northwest and southwest caucuses met on Saturday morning. They were the last two to weigh in. In a close vote 30 to 28, the southwest supported Senator Wagner over House Speaker Mike Turzai. Turzai who is from the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley, was edged out in his home region. The northwest caucus, meeting in Clarion, turned out to be the outlier for the state. Their...

SOUTHINGTON, CT — In alphabetical order, a majority of Democratic and one unaffiliated candidates for governor endorsed the idea of installing electronic tolls on Connecticut’s highways and received applause for it. The nine candidates participated in a forum Friday sponsored by the Connecticut Construction Industries Association. The same group sponsored a similar forum in December for the Republican gubernatorial candidates as well. None of the candidates who are still in the “exploratory” phase of their campaigns for governor were invited to either forum — only the declared candidates. The problem: Connecticut’s special transportation fund will start running a deficit in...

Southington — Oz Griebel, a petitioning candidate for governor who once led the state Transportation Strategy Board, told an audience of construction executives and union members Friday that Connecticut must embrace electronic tolling and higher gasoline taxes to preserve and improve its transportation infrastructure.At a transportation forum for Democratic and unaffiliated candidates, Griebel offered the broadest prescription for how to stabilize and grow a special transportation fund now projected to hit insolvency by 2022, leaving the state unable to borrow money to address a growing backlog of transportation needs.Many of the Democrats, unlike the Republican field at a similar event...

A rally in support of a replacement option for a stretch of Interstate 81 served as a platform for city mayoral candidates and local politicians to rail against New York state officials Tuesday. The rally, held in Hanover Square, was organized by ReThink81, a local group that supports a $1.3 billion replacement option for the “viaduct,” a raised section of I-81 that bisects Syracuse. At one point during the event, Common Council President Van Robinson hefted a sledgehammer into the air, saying he wanted to tear down the highway: “I hated it from the first time I came to this...

As the 2018 campaign for control of the U.S. Senate takes shape, a bevy of populist-nationalist candidates are competing for the primary endorsement of a pro-Donald Trump super PAC. “Great America PAC is building the ‘Trump Ticket’ for 2018 and we are proud to support these candidates who have answered the call of their fellow citizens,” Ed Rollins, chief strategist of Great America PAC, said in a Tuesday press release. Great America PAC and its sister 501(c)(4) “Great America Alliance” are confident they will come to define the anti-establishment wing of the developing Republican Party civil war. “We will be the...

At least 20 transgender candidates are currently running for office across the United States, NBC News reports. “We are making 2017 the year of the trans candidate," said Victory Fund President Aisha C. Moodie-Mills, whose organization has endorsed trans candidate Danica Roem for a seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates. "We have more transgender people running this cycle than almost all other cycles combined.”

ATLANTA (AP) -- Democrats hope to enlist military veterans in another type of fight - for majority control of the House. Looking ahead to next year's elections, Democrats are trying to recruit at least two dozen military veterans to challenge Republican incumbents. Democrats say candidates with military on their resumes appeal to independent voters and can help the party break the GOP grip on Washington.

Democrats grappling with the shock of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump are also beginning to turn their attention to 2020, and pondering who could defeat Trump as he vies for reelection. Here are The Hill’s initial rankings of where the potential candidates stand. 1. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) How would the 2016 election have panned out had Warren challenged Clinton in the primary? That’s one of the great unknowables of Democratic politics. But now, there is little doubt that the Massachusetts senator is the leading contender for the 2020 nomination. Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, has been...

Trump's branding acumen may have been crucial to his upset victory on Tuesday. From July to September, Gallup asked Americans what they had heard, read, or seen about presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. A few obvious trends emerged in the word clouds published by Gallup in September and formed from 30,000 interviews. .....