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WICHITA Mike McCorkle relies heavily on three key issues in his run to knock House Speaker Daniel Hawkins out of office: protecting womens reproductive rights, expanding Medicaid and especially how McCorkle thinks Hawkins has failed to listen to his constituents.

McCorkle, a Democrat running for a seat in the Kansas Houses 100th District, is focusing his campaign on grassroots tactics. Since his initial run against Hawkins in 2022, hes garnered support from local politicians, members of Women for Kansas and John Carlin, Kansas 40th governor from 1979-1987 and archivist of the United States from 1995-2005.

McCorkle said its hard to believe Hawkins has been reelected five times since he first won the 100th District seat in 2012.

Winning House 100 means removing your current speaker, which would be good for most Kansans since he supports extreme minority agendas, McCorkle said during a meet and greet campaign event Saturday in Wichita. Hes out of touch with House 100 and a majority of Kansas in general.

McCorkle referenced Hawkins unwillingness to hold a hearing on Medicaid expansion for years and said that, when Hawkins did, it was a joke.

Hes a friendly guy on a personal level, but hes just some kind of bipolar person who can be friendly person (to) person but yet still say its OK that 150,000 people dont have adequate health care, which is wrong, McCorkle said.

Vowing to protect womens reproductive freedom, McCorkle criticized Hawkins pro-life stance.

I expect House 100 voters to confirm their disappointment with his actions against women by voting for change, he said.

McCorkle also pointed to Hawkins 99% corporate donor list.

During the 2022 cycle, Hawkins received thousands of dollars in support from various companies and entities, notably Koch Industries, the NRA and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors of Kansas.

Which begs the question: Who does he really represent? McCorkle said.

Hawkins spokeswoman did not respond to email and phone requests seeking comment for this story.

In McCorkles first run for the 100th District in 2022, he received 3,808 or 40% of votes, while Hawkins secured 5,641 votes.

McCorkle also ran for Kansas 27th District in the Kansas State Senate in 2020. Republican opponent Gene Suellentrop beat McCorkle with double the votes 26,296 to McCorkles 13,143.

Despite the losses, McCorkle said these past races elevate his 2024 attempt at unseating Hawkins. He cited his increased name recognition, experience and amount of volunteers.

More than 60 supporters congregated Saturday in downtown Wichita at the fundraiser for McCorkle including Carlin.

Now retired and in his mid-80s, Carlin resides in northern Kansas, but he said he drove to Wichita to support McCorkle.

The fact that Im coming ought to say something in itself because I dont travel very much, Carlin said.

Carlin, who served as House speaker from 1977 to 1979, said he knows exactly what power the speaker has.

Mike is not running against somebody that voted wrong: (Hawkins) engineered all this crap, Carlin said. Seriously, the speaker of the House makes all the appointments, the committees, the chairs, controls the agenda. Nothing comes up on the floor unless the speaker (allows it).

Carlin said the turnout for the constitutional amendment on abortion in August 2022 could work in favor of McCorkles campaign.

(The issue of abortion) motivates a lot of people. I mean, you look at campaigns across the country right now, not just in Kansas, that issue motivates and wins a lot of elections, Carlin said.

McCorkle and other supporters said they think the energy of this election cycle is different.

Its a much broader support and much, much better-coordinated community, McCorkle said. And so we just have a really good synergy.

Jonathan Jones, deputy executive director of the Kansas Democratic Party, said electing moderate candidates like McCorkle is one step to breaking up Kansas Republican supermajority, which produces legislation that Gov. Laura Kelly vetoes.

I feel lucky at the end of the veto session that we succeeded in sustaining those deals, Jones said. Im tired of feeling lucky. I want to do everything we can to make sure we know whats going to happen, that we can give the governor as much power as we possibly can for her last two years in the cycle.

Born and raised in Wichita, McCorkle said he enjoyed a safe secure childhood near Seneca and Harry. He attended public schools throughout his youth and, in his senior year of high school, enlisted in the Army in 1976.

During his 13 years of service, he worked on 14 photo and intelligence analyst assignments, including volunteering for Desert Storm.

Following his military service, McCorkle lived and worked abroad. The candidate has done various work from being a manager to a machinist. In 2019, he returned to his home city to take care of his parents.

Id been watching these elections from abroad for years, and I kept thinking, Man, we just got a crisis of citizenship, McCorkle said. And so, I resolved that when I came back I would just get involved.

McCorkle said he initially wanted to help a candidate, not be a candidate.

And, of course, no one would run, and so I ended up being the name on the ballot against Suellentrop, which was a steep learning curve, McCorkle said. Nonetheless, (I) made some allies, and this third time, we got a good group of strong allies, people that want to work together, and I believe were gonna get it right.

Correction: Mike McCorkle served in the military for 13 years. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated his years of military service.

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Democrat hopes to unseat Kansas House speaker with focus on reproductive rights, Medicaid expansion Kansas ... - Kansas Reflector

After eight years leading the Oregon State Treasury, Tobias Read says hes ready to bring a steady hand to the Secretary of States Office.

With two political scandals that led to then-Secretary of State Kate Brown becoming governor after John Kitzhaber resigned in 2015, and Secretary of State Shemia Fagan stepping down last year, and the death of former Republican Secretary of State Dennis Richardson in 2019, Oregon has had six secretaries of state and two acting secretaries over the past decade. Read, a Beaverton Democrat who is term-limited as treasurer, contends hes the states best choice as an experienced administrator to run the office that oversees Oregons elections, audits state government and administers state archives.

Weve gotten to a spot where the office I think has suffered from turnover, and theres really important stuff coming campaign finance reform, to potential ranked choice voting, to just the misinformation and violence that we see in other places and to some extent in Oregon, he said. We can step right in and restore some confidence and capacity in that office and Im well-prepared to do that.

Read will face four other Democratic candidates in the primary: state Sen. James Manning of Eugene, retired attorney Jim Crary, inventor Dave Stauffer and retired electrical engineer Paul D. Wells. The Capital Chronicle is profiling frontrunners Read and Manning and running answers to written questions from the candidates who responded.

Read represented Beaverton in the state House from 2007 until 2017, when he began his first term as treasurer. He ran for governor in 2022, coming in second to now-Gov. Tina Kotek in the Democratic primary.

The secretary of state is first in the line of succession if the governor leaves office which is how Brown initially became governor. Read said he doesnt view the office as a stepping stone and that he hopes to serve two full terms as secretary of state because hes driven by a desire to contribute to making the state a better place.

While the treasurer and secretary of state have different responsibilities, he said the offices are ultimately quite similar. Both involve overseeing large teams 213 full-time employees at the Treasury and 242 at the Secretary of States Office in the current two-year budget cycle and both roles are regulators and administrators.

It is about how to lead an agency and set a culture and make sure that were hiring the kinds of people who are committed to that mission and holding them accountable, and thats what Ive done for seven-plus years, Read said. At the risk of being a little bit flip about it, people have good data on me and my performance and my approach, and I dont imagine that changing, even as the office I hold hopefully does change.

As of early April, he had visited 24 of the 36 county clerks in Oregon and planned to visit the remainder to learn more about how elections are run on the ground and the challenges theyre facing. Throughout Oregon, and the rest of the U.S., local election officials have spent the past several years pushing back against unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and misinformation about elections, spurred on by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Read thinks there are relatively inexpensive ways to help voters who have lost trust in elections feel more confident. Washington County, where he lives, is one of several Oregon counties that use BallotTrax to send text messages to voters who opt in, letting them know when their ballots are in the mail, when theyve been received by the clerks office and when election workers have verified the signatures and prepared their ballot to be counted. Not all counties use the system because of its cost, and Read said that would be a good investment for the state to make.

Hes also interested in adopting the ballot ridealong program run in Californias San Benito County. The program, modeled off police ridealongs, allows residents to join election workers as they collect ballots from ballot boxes and return them to election offices.

Oregon has been a national leader in voting access and election turnout for decades, including being the first state in the nation to adopt automatic voter registration in 2015 and universal mail voting in 1998. But its been dinged in recent years for keeping closed partisan primaries and requiring voters to register three weeks before an election, while neighboring Washington and California have primaries that allow voters to choose anyone in a race and allow same-day voter registration.

Same-day registration was allowed in Oregon for a decade, but voters amended the state constitution to ban it after followers of the controversial Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh tried to register in droves to take over Wasco County government in 1984. Read said he doesnt see a chance at changing that law any time soon, but he is interested in a proposal he heard from one county clerk that would extend the statutory deadline to change party affiliation for a primary.

Making it easier for people to vote as they wish I think gives people, particularly people who are newly registered, newly arrived in Oregon, a positive experience, Read said. It means its much more likely theyre going to continue to vote.

Read also wants to speed up the offices investigations of election complaints, saying his work handling unclaimed property at the Treasury is a model for efficiency. The Legislature moved control of the states unclaimed property program from the Department of State Lands to the Treasury in 2019, and Read convinced lawmakers to give him more resources so that state workers could proactively return peoples unclaimed money to them without waiting for Oregonians, who in many cases didnt know they had uncashed checks, security deposits or forgotten bank accounts, to make a claim.

He said he has proven during his years as treasurer that he can advocate for department needs, including hiring more employees at the Treasury. That experience could prove critical as the Secretary of States Office oversees a transition to campaign finance limits ahead of the 2028 election.

When I got to Treasury, we joked that we were emaciated looking up at skinny, Read said. So we convinced the Legislature to give us the authority to do a pretty massive and historic expansion of the capacity of the investment division. They did that because we built a solid case and it has saved money for the entire state.

Read doesnt have specific programs he wants to audit, though he said everyone he talks to has an audit to recommend. What the state really needs, he said, is a clear plan for the Audits Division that avoids politics to focus on assessing risks and vulnerability, especially when it comes to programs that cost the state a lot of money and where lives are at stake.

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Democratic Oregon Treasurer Tobias Read wants to bring stability to Secretary of State's Office Oregon Capital ... - Oregon Capital Chronicle

A former senior official in President Joe Bidens administration and wife of the current U.S. national security adviser is launching a bid for Congress in New Hampshire, where she was born and raised.

Maggie Goodlander, the wife of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and a former top lawyer in Bidens administration who served as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, on Thursday morning announced her candidacy for the open seat in New Hampshires Second Congressional District.

I know how to get things done and deliver for New Hampshire, Goodlander said in a statement. Ill be a workhorse for the people of the Second District and Ill never stop fighting for a freer and more just Granite State.

While not as well known nationally as her high-profile husband, Goodlander hails from a prominent New Hampshire family.

Her grandfather, Sam Tamposi, was a major player in state Republican politics. Her mother, Betty Tamposi, ran for the House in 1988 in the Second Congressional District but lost in the GOP primary.

The announcement is likely to elevate an already high-profile race to succeed longtime Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster in a blue-leaning, but competitive, district in a key general election battleground state.

Goodlander joins a burgeoning field of candidates aiming to succeed the six-term Kuster, who announced in late March that she would retire from Congress rather than seek re-election.

She could face plenty of scrutiny over Biden administration policies both domestic and international over her ties to Republicans, and over her residency. Goodlanders congressional campaign will also likely draw national attention to the New Hampshire race and possibly garner high-profile endorsements.

Goodlander joins a Democratic primary field that includes Colin Van Ostern, of Concord, and state Sen. Becky Whitley, of Hopkinton.

Whitley, a progressive Democrat who represents the Concord area in the State House, has served in the state Senate since 2020 and has pushed back on attempts to limit abortion rights in the state.

Van Ostern, who worked as Kusters campaign manager in 2010 during her first run for Congress, and who later won two terms as a New Hampshire executive councilor before losing in 2016 to Republican Chris Sununu in a race for governor.

Van Ostern launched his bid the day after Kusters retirement announcement and was endorsed by the incumbent a couple of weeks later.

Goodlanders entry into the race could potentially shift the landscape.

Eight Republicans, including 2022 Senate candidate Vikram Mansharamani and Lily Tang Williams, whos making her second straight bid for the congressional nomination, are running.

Goodlanders campaign announcement highlighted her roots in Nashua, the city her family has called home for over 100 years.

A video announcing her campaign also spotlights those roots, with Goodlanders mother explaining that she gave birth to Maggie after voting in Nashua on Election Day.

But for years, Goodlander and Sullivan have spent much of their time in the nations capital because of work.

The couple owns a home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. While the port city on the New Hampshire Seacoast is located in the states First Congressional District, the geography wont prevent Goodlander from running in the Second District. The U.S. Constitution only mandates that a candidate must reside in the state in which they are running in, not the specific congressional district.

The most recent high-profile example of a Democratic congressional candidate in New Hampshire campaigning in a district outside their residence was six years ago, when Levi Sanders the son of Sen. Bernie Sanders ran in the First District even though he lived in the Second District.

Goodlanders campaign confirmed that the candidate is currently renting a home in Nashua.

In some ways, Goodlanders story mirrors that of Kuster, the woman shes trying to succeed in Congress. Kusters parents were prominent Republicans in New Hampshire, but she ran as a Democrat.

Goodlander, a Yale University and Yale Law School graduate, served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and worked as an adviser to late Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

She also served as a law clerk to Attorney General Merrick Garland during his tenure as chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Goodlander married Sullivan nearly nine years ago when he was working as a foreign policy advisor to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. The couples wedding, attended by prominent political figures including Clinton, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, was a snapshot of the couples long history in Democratic politics.

Sullivan worked as Klobuchars chief counsel before serving as an adviser on Hillary Clintons 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign and later on former President Barack Obamas general election presidential campaign.

He served as deputy chief of staff to Clinton during her years as Secretary of State in the Obama administration. After Clinton departed the administration, Sullivan became then-Vice President Bidens top security aide.

Sullivan then served as a top adviser on Clintons 2016 presidential campaign. Four years later, he was one of Bidens first appointments following the 2020 presidential election.

See more here:
On the Trail: Democrat Maggie Goodlander jumps into race to succeed Kuster - Concord Monitor

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry (R., Pa.) is facing criticism after he reportedly called the Ku Klux Klan the military wing of the Democratic Party in a closed-door briefing for lawmakers on antisemitism Tuesday, according to CNN.

Perry also appeared to defend the so-called great replacement theory the racist, white nationalist belief that white people are being purposely replaced by minorities and immigrants in the United States and Europe, CNN reported. Perry added that migrants entering the country have no interest in being Americans.

Audio of the comments, which Perry reportedly made during a House Oversight Committee members briefing about The Origins and Implications of Rising Antisemitism in Higher Education were obtained by CNN.

Perry, an ally of former President Donald Trump and the former leader of the House Freedom Caucus, is running for reelection in Pennsylvanias 10th Congressional District, which includes Dauphin County and parts of Cumberland and York counties. Democrat Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor, is challenging him in the November general election.

Asked for comment Wednesday about the leaked audio, Perrys office released a statement:

Once again, the radical Left twists facts in order to silence conversation about its own crimes and Bidens intentional failures to enforce laws and close or regulate our borders, Perry said. My point is proven yet again: when the Left loses an argument, it debases and smears instead of engaging in debate on merits.

According to the audio as reported by CNN, Perry said, The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow its a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party. Decidedly, unabashedly, racist and antisemitic.

Although the KKK was founded by Democrats in 1865, it became an extra-legal terror organization that was never the wing of any political party, said Matt Jordan, director of the Pennsylvania State University News Literacy Initiative, which helps students and citizens distinguish reliable journalism from the noise that often overwhelms and divides us, according to its website.

Perrys statements repeated tropes about the KKK and replacement theory that are sticky narratives, according to Jordan widely circulated, debunked ideas that politicians use to garner media attention and to rile their base.

Replacement theory is real Perry said, according to CNN. They added white to it to stop everybody from talking about it.

While Perry said during the briefing he is happy to accept people that are here legally, pointing to his ancestors who migrated to the United States, he has an issue with migrants that are un-American, according to the audio recording.

What is happening now is were importing people into the country that want to be in America but have no interest in being Americans, and thats very different and to disparage the comments is to chill the conversation so that we can continue to bring in more people that we never met that are un-American, Perry said, according to the recording.

The great replacement theory is misinformation with fascist resonance, Jordan said. You replace white voters with brown-skinned immigrants to denigrate and corrupt the blood of our country, is how people think, he added. Tucker Carlson and others use it. Its deployed with great effect in the right-wing media echo system.

And, Jordan said, theres not a shred of evidence that migrants here without documentation can vote, though Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson recently have promoted a bill to prevent non-citizens from voting.

The briefing for lawmakers this week was intended set up to discuss the District of Columbias response to the pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on college campuses. House Republicans have advocated for racking down on the demonstrations and have attempted to unify against antisemitism, according to CNN.

Perrys remarks this week werent the first controversial comments hes made recently.

At the conservative Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in Camp Hill last month, Perry referenced transgender students in school locker rooms and said, If you say something about it, the FBI will likely list you as a domestic extremist.

Thats a common talking point among conservatives. Jordan, of Penn State, said that amplifying the anti-trans moral panic is a feature of far-right politicians worldwide. To say the FBI will violate your First Amendment rights and put you on a list of extremists is pure paranoid fantasy.

Perry also claimed that the Biden administration is out to grab up peoples gas stoves. Thats an inaccurate assessment of health and climate concerns about gas appliances thats nonetheless repeated endlessly on conservative talk radio, experts say.

When Perry recycles these well-worn, culture-war talking points, hes attempting to use moral panic to fire up conservative Republicans enough to make sure they vote, Jordan said.

Its when the strategic use of misinformation becomes disinformation, Jordan said. Rhetoric used to knowingly fool people.

Read more:
Scott Perry links the KKK to the Democratic Party - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Two political consultants agreed to plead guilty to charges that they conspired with U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar to launder more than $200,000 in bribes from a Mexican bank, according to recently unsealed court documents that show the consultants are cooperating with the Justice Department in its case against the Laredo Democrat.

Cuellar, a powerful South Texas Democrat, was indicted with his wife Imelda on charges of accepting almost $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican commercial bank, Banco Azteca. The indictment, unsealed last week, accuses Cuellar of taking money from the bank in exchange for influencing the Treasury Department to work around an anti-money laundering policy that threatened the banks interests. Cuellar allegedly recruited his former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and another consultant, Florencio "Lencho" Rendon, to facilitate the payments, according to court records.

Rendon and Strother both struck plea deals with the Justice Department in March, in which they agreed to cooperate in the agencys investigation of the Cuellars. They each face up to 20 years in prison and six-figure fines for charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The plea deals, which were first reported by the San Antonio Express-News, allege that Cuellar first asked Strother to meet with Rendon in February 2016 to participate in a project to test and certify a fuel additive made by a Mexican company so that it could be sold in the United States. Rendon told Strother he would pay him $11,000 a month for the project, $10,000 of which Strother would pass on to Imelda Cuellar, according to the plea agreements.

Rendon paid Strother a total of $261,000 from March 2016 through June 2019, more than $236,000 of which Strother then paid to Imelda Cuellar, the documents allege. Strother concluded the project was a sham, according to his plea deal, because neither Rendon nor Imelda Cuellar did any legitimate work. Strother understood that the true purpose of the payments was to funnel money to Henry Cuellar without the Laredo Democrat having to reveal it in his annual financial disclosures.

Cuellar has asserted his innocence, releasing a statement Friday in which he said his actions were consistent with the actions of many of my colleagues and in the interest of the American people. He faces charges of bribery, money laundering and working on behalf of a foreign government.

Cuellar, a member of Congress since 2005, has considerable influence in Washington thanks to his long tenure and his spot on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He was the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees funding for homeland security, a position he automatically forfeited under a House Democratic rule that requires a committee chair to step down if they are indicted on a crime carrying a possible prison sentence of more than two years.

As part of their plea agreements, Rendon and Strother agreed to testify before a grand jury or in any other judicial or administrative proceeding when called upon to do so by the United States. Each also agreed to turn over all documents in his possession or under his control relating to all areas of inquiry and investigation.

Rendons plea agreement also outlines the origins of the alleged bribery scheme, citing a series of 2015 meetings allegedly orchestrated by Cuellar at which Rendon and Banco Azteca executives discussed U.S. regulatory issues that were hampering the banks efforts to facilitate remittances, or the transfer of money from Mexican workers in the United States to their relatives in Mexico.

Soon after, Rendon allegedly signed a contract that would pay him $15,000 a month to provide strategic consulting and advising services for an unnamed U.S.-based media and television company that shared common ownership under a Mexican conglomerate with Banco Azteca, according to Rendons plea documents.

Rendon would then send Strother $11,000 of the monthly payments, keeping $4,000 for his own consulting firm, with the understanding that Strother would keep $1,000 for himself and forward the remaining $10,000 to Imelda Cuellars company, according to the court records. Rendon and Henry Cuellar allegedly never discussed having Rendon, Strother or Imelda Cuellar perform any work in relation to the contract, according to the plea agreement, which led Rendon to conclude that the contract was a sham and part of a scheme devised to funnel money from the bank to Henry Cuellar.

In its indictment of Henry Cuellar, the Justice Department alleged that the Laredo Democrat in exchange for accepting bribes agreed to advise and pressure officials in the executive branch to set up mechanisms that would help cross-border transactions crucial to Banco Aztecas business.

He also allegedly tipped off the banks vice chairman about a bill that would temporarily bar the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from making new regulations on the payday lending industry. Cuellar then coordinated with a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Mexican bank on language in defense of the bill, according to the indictment. The subsidiary was a payday lending company.

The indictment said Cuellar and his wife used the bribe money to cover credit card payments, taxes, car payments, dining and shopping, including $12,000 on a custom gown. It also said one of the Cuellars adult children assisted in the creation of the sham shell companies used to launder funds. The Cuellars have two adult children: Christy and Catie.

The Cuellars allegedly negotiated the agreement with Banco Azteca around the same time they were setting up a scheme to accept payments from Azerbaijans state-run oil and gas company, which were also laundered through fake consulting contracts to shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, according to the indictment.

In exchange, Henry Cuellar allegedly pushed U.S. policy that favored Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet country that borders Iran and Russia on the Caspian Sea. That included adding language to defense spending legislation to prioritize ties to countries in the region, including with Azerbaijan, and working to kill legislation prioritized by members who supported Armenian interests, the indictment alleges.

Azerbaijan had been engaged in a long-running border dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave made up of largely ethnic Armenians, until Azerbaijan forcibly retook control of the territory last year. Cuellar coordinated with Azerbaijani diplomats to eliminate legislation that would finance land mine clearing in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2017, according to the indictment, which cited text messages between Cuellar and a diplomat.

After news of the indictment landed, Cuellar affirmed that he still plans to seek reelection in November. Two Republicans, Navy veteran Jay Furman and rancher Lazaro Garza Jr., are facing off in a May 28 runoff to decide the GOP nominee in Cuellars district, which stretches from the border to the San Antonio suburbs.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecasting site, updated its rating for the district from likely Democratic to lean Democratic in response to Cuellars indictment. Cuellar, often ranked ideologically as the most conservative Democrat in the U.S. House, won reelection in 2022 by 13 percentage points, though Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto ORourke carried the district by a narrower 5-point margin.

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Two political consultants plead guilty in Henry Cuellar bribery case - The Texas Tribune