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In an otherwise quiet election, there was one surprise Tuesday: the outcome of the Democratic primary for state treasurer.

Erin McClelland, an Allegheny County native, beat the state partys endorsed candidate who outraised her 5-1. McClelland won by 8 percentage points and will take on Republican incumbent Stacy Garrity in November.

The treasurer holds a low-profile state row office position, but has a lot of power over the states investments and makes sure the states bills are paid.

And in this years treasurers race, several Democratic insiders and experts said McClellands native county, name, and gender likely played a decisive role for voters who knew little about the office or the candidates.

A female with Allegheny County next to her name on the ballot in these lower-profile statewide races, geography matters a lot. That right there put her in the ball game, said Mike Mikus, a Democratic consultant in Pittsburgh who is working this year for State Rep. Malcolm Kenyattas campaign for auditor general. And Ive watched her, shes tireless. Shes willing to do the hard work.

McClelland beat State Rep. Ryan Bizzarro (D., Erie), who received the partys nod and dozens of other endorsements. He is a member of House Democratic leadership, where as the policy chair hes in charge of determining which issues House Democrats should advance.

In addition to few endorsements, McClelland raised and spent very little money spending only $14,000 of the $100,000 she raised, according to her latest campaign finance filing. Bizzarro, on the other hand, raised more than $500,000, and spent about half of it.

McClelland said she won by putting miles on the tires, driving around the state to talk about her vision for the office. And her gender played an advantage for her, which McClelland herself pointed out on election night.

This is a really important statement from the voters about the voice of women, McClelland said Tuesday. We talk about how we want their votes, but its really important to have their voice.

By winning on Tuesday, McClelland became the only woman on the Democratic statewide ballot in November.

The partys endorsement isnt always a determining factor on whether a candidate will win, experts and insiders said.

Voters in primaries tend to be more independent and less reliant on endorsements to vote, Mikus said. Thirty, 40 years ago, it was a much more powerful endorsement. Voters dont look to a party or an elected official or an organization who theyre going to vote for.

J.J. Balaban, a Philadelphia-based Democratic consultant who worked on former Treasurer Joe Torsellas two statewide campaigns as well as treasurers races in other states, said Bizzarro likely thought the partys endorsement would help him win, leading him not to spend more of his campaign contributions.

I imagine, in hindsight, the strategy of relying on [the Democratic partys endorsement] to carry him to victory does not seem to be the right one, Balaban said. Some candidates make it their peril in confusing elites with voters.

Balaban said the candidates names themselves may have played a part in voters choices: McClelland has an obviously Irish female name that might be attractive to many voters.

Its unfair to an accomplished state representative, but the value of being an accomplished state representative is only if people know you are an accomplished state representative, Balaban added.

When you put it as A woman of Irish descent from Allegheny County versus a man with an odd-sounding last name from Erie County, it doesnt sound so strange, he said.

There is little research on how voters treat female candidates for state treasurer, but, overall, women need to prove their competence much more than men, said Dana Brown, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University. While Bizzarro campaigned on attacking Garrity, the Republican incumbent, McClelland put out an eight-page prospectus with her ideas for how shed run the treasurers office.

McClelland will likely have a hard time against Garrity in November, Brown said, because voters often think female candidates are more liberal than they actually are. For example, a far-right female candidate would be seen by a voter as more moderate, while a moderate Democratic candidate would be seen further left. Garrity is a staunch conservative, and McClelland is a moderate Democrat.

McClelland has run twice unsuccessfully for Congress, and has also launched campaigns in two other races but dropped out before the election. This was her first time running statewide.

In a statement on election night, Garritys campaign called McClelland a perennial candidate in search of a spot on the public payroll and said her ideas for the treasurers office are weird, at best.

While McClellands gender, name, and county may have helped her pick up low-information voters, Chuck Pascal, McClellands campaign manager, said her commitment to traveling the state to campaign helped her win.

We didnt have the money or the endorsements that Ryan did, but Erin went out and talked to real people and went everywhere in the state, said Pascal, who also chairs the Armstrong County Democrats. She just works hard. And she will continue to work hard, and well work hard for the entire ticket now.

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How Erin McClelland's treasurer campaign bucked the Democratic party establishment - The Philadelphia Inquirer

If Donald Trump loses the election this November, why would he not once again try to subvert that loss?

This is not a baseless question, certainly. Both Trumps critics and his supporters agree that Trump tried to prevent Joe Biden from taking office; they just disagree on the validity of that effort. Most Republicans 62 percent in a December Washington Post-University of Maryland poll believe there is solid evidence that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud, which is false. This belief undergirds the idea that Trumps post-2020-election efforts were rooted in his fighting against an illegal effort to influence the presidency rather than being such an illegal effort.

That view still holds. The Pew Research Center published data Wednesday showing that about half of Republicans (and independents who lean Republican) think Trump did nothing wrong in trying to overturn his 2020 loss, with a fifth indicating they were not sure if he did anything wrong. Thats more than two-thirds of the party, claiming innocence or uncertainty. Americans overall (and Democrats/Democratic leaners overwhelmingly) think that Trump did something wrong or broke the law.

That Trumps post-2020 actions are not seen by many in his base as a subversion of democracy is reflected in another question asked by Pew. Respondents were presented with a number of characteristics that might apply to Biden or Trump and asked how confident they were that the characteristics applied to the candidates.

Just more than a third of respondents said they were extremely or very confident that Biden respects Americas democratic values. Only a slightly lower percentage said the same of Trump. Among Biden supporters, confidence was higher: Three-quarters said they were confident in Bidens respect for democracy. Among Trump supporters, two-thirds had similar confidence in their candidate.

Theres a level of abstraction here thats important to recognize. Asking if a candidate you support respects democracy is a bit like asking if he is a good dude; youre going to be inclined to say yes. Overlay the willingness of Republicans and Trump supporters to dismiss the idea that he did anything wrong after the 2020 election and you get equivalence with Biden who has shown no similar inclination to set aside democratic determinations.

Pew asked another question that gets at the democracy issue more obliquely. How important is it, they asked respondents, for losing candidates to concede an election? Both supporters of Biden and Trump largely said that it was very or somewhat important. But while 77 percent of Biden supporters said it was very important (as did 60 percent of all respondents), fewer than half of Trump supporters agreed.

Pew compared those responses to previous polling on the same question. In November 2016, just before the election that Trump was expected to lose, even fewer of his supporters 31 percent said a concession was important. At every point, at least about 6 in 10 supporters of the Democrat have said that its very important for losing candidates to concede. (The losing candidate in 2016, Hillary Clinton, quickly conceded to Trump.)

The situation in 2024 is different from 2020 in that Trump is no longer president. That means that some of the tactics he deployed then might not be possible, such as trying to get his vice president to undercut the electors being counted by Congress. But many others still are, from pressuring state and local officials to introducing alternate slates of electors. Such efforts would be trickier, given the backlash to them over the past several years, including this week. But there is nothing preventing Trump from once again alleging impropriety or illegality in an effort to undermine any potential loss.

Of course, the Pew poll also showed that he and Biden are tied nationally, leaving him in a better position now than during the 2020 election. He may not need to subvert his election loss in November because he may just win.

The rest is here:
Analysis | Anti-democratic warning signs are blinking in current polling - The Washington Post

Palm Beach County Democratic Party Chair Mindy Koch may be back in office after being removed by Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, but many of the issues that caused her to be removed in the first place remain.

As depicted in a recent Sun Sentinel editorial, there are valid issues that have been cast aside relative to non-compliance on party bylaws by Koch. And for many people active in the county party, the Zoom meetings that Koch wanted to get away from were preferable. The Zoom meetings were popular as a result of COVID. Then, the party higher-ups moved around some individuals that had been dedicated to technical support, and the next thing you saw, unsurprisingly, were inept, incoherent Zoom meetings. After that, members were practically ordered to appear in person.

Koch was insistent about people showing up in person versus on Zoom, despite the fact that it would be inconvenient for many people, while others were still hesitant about returning to in-person meetings after the COVID epidemic. After the lack of Zoom participation that was a fiasco over the last year or so, there is little left to wonder how Koch was able to take back her seat. Out of the 122 members of the Florida Democratic Party committee voting whether to reinstate her, only 103 even bothered to vote in the 67-36 result that got her reinstated.

However, in order for Democrats to begin to recover from the defeat that has been handed to them by the opposition for at least the last 30 years, there are more vital concerns that need to be addressed. An opportunity to incorporate more voters from the western area of Palm Beach County has been completely bypassed. COVID brought a merciless pandemic, but it also brought the opportunity to incorporate more individuals through the advent of the Zoom platform that Koch is turning us away from.

The western area, including Democrat-heavy towns like Belle Glade, South Bay and Pahokee, has been consigned to oblivion. The party that is supposed to stand up for Black citizens is excluding a majority of people of color from the voting pool. Its no coincidence that local Black community leaders are appalled at the actions of the Democratic Party, when it comes to inclusion, decision-making and leadership. Look closely at county party leadership. The lack of minority representation is overwhelming. Continued Zoom meetings could have brought Black voters in the distant, western part of the county into the fold. Instead, the insistence on in-person meetings has told them, Sorry, youre not wanted.

Were not saying the Republican Party is a viable alternative. The Democratic Party, with all of its twists and turns, is supposed to be the party of the people especially at this particular juncture. Whoever holds the reins of leadership should, by all intention, have a presence in the Black community, countywide. Instead, many people of color are not aware of who the leadership even is. Im left to ask the question: Does the leadership even care?

Carlton Cartwright is vice chair of the Palm Beach County Democratic Veterans Caucus and vice chair and media chair of the Florida Democratic Veterans Caucus. He served as first chair in Palm Beach County for a decade and is a U.S. veteran. He lives in West Palm Beach.

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To be inclusive, Palm Beach County Democrats should stick with Zoom meetings | Opinion - South Florida Sun Sentinel

Todays college students are protected from the most insignificant microagression, but at Columbia University anti-Israel activists are allowed to shout vile epithets at Jewish students in the name of free speech.

These activists have created such an intimidating environment for Jewish students, students have been given the option to attend classes virtually to protect them from the hate that surrounds them everyday.

One activist at Columbia proudly declared, Oct. 7 will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, but 10,000 times.

The Hill reports New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has had enough of the hateful rhetoric being hurled at Jewish students on city campuses.

I am horrified and disgusted, Adams said, with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus, like the example of a young woman holding a sign with an arrow pointing to Jewish students stating Al-Qasams Next Target, or another where a woman is literally yelling We are Hamas, or another where groups of students are chanting We dont want no Zionists here.

The progressive movement bred this hate by teaching our children to view everything from an oppressed/oppressor point of view to the exclusion of all other perspectives.

Its this one-dimensional view of the world that allows progressives to be willfully blind to the obvious moral bankruptcy of supporting a terrorist group like Hamas that butchers people and then celebrates having done so.

No one should be surprised this sort of thing is happening at American universities. Its been decades in the making.

Where is the Office of Civil Rights? Where is the Department of Justice? Where is the Department of Education? Waiting for the White House to give them permission to do their jobs.

They might have to wait a while. President Joe Biden has his progressive base to placate and that base doesnt seem very placated at the moment.

Progressive have had an enormous impact on the Democratic Party. Some would argue theyve destroyed it.

Today, Democrats are the champions of illegal immigration. Seven million migrants have crossed the southern border during Bidens time in the White House, and we have no idea who they are.

Its progressives who run our sanctuary cities and who wont allow their police departments to cooperate with ICE.

Democrats have become the party of abortion. The party favors giving a woman the right to end the life of her unborn child anytime she pleases 10 weeks, 15 weeks, 40 weeks it doesnt matter.

They can cloak abortion in as many high-sounding phrases as they like. Womans healthcare. Reproductive rights. The hard reality is, with each abortion a baby is killed, which is true no matter what language Democrats use to obfuscate that fact.

Democrats have become the party of gender affirmation care. Genital mutilation and mastectomies for minors. Pumping kids full of hormones and puberty-blocking drugs, and taking children from their homes if their parents resist.

It is the party that demands biological men be allowed to compete in womans sports simply because they say theyre a woman.

Democrats are the party who nominated a Supreme Court justice to the bench who is unable to define what a woman is, because, she said, she is not a biologist.

Its progressives who are destroying our public schools, using them to indoctrinate the next generation of leftist activists rather than focusing on academic achievement. Its progressives who stand in the way of any public school innovation (i.e. school choice) that strays from the current failing model schools have used for far too long.

Its progressives who have destroyed American cities. Today, lawlessness, homelessness and a general decay of civic order characterizes most American cities.

And its progressives who teach our children every white person in America is a racist.

Despite their radicalism, progressives have made for a very comfortable home for themselves in the Democratic Party. In fact, theyre now setting the partys agenda. Theyre driving the Democratic train.

If youre a passenger on that train, you might want to consider where its taking you.

Which brings to mind something liberal commentator Bill Maher said during an appearance on the The Joe Rogan Experience.

You can be woke, he said, with all the nonsense that that now implies, but dont say that somehow its an extension of liberalism. Because its most often actually an undoing of liberalism.

He went on to say, the goal is to not see race at all, anywhere for any reason. Thats what liberals always believed all the way through Obama, going back to Kennedy, everybody, Martin Luther King. Thats not what the woke believe.

They believe race is first and foremost the thing you should always see everywhere, which I find interesting because that used to be the position of the Ku Klux Klan.

Liberals first started referring to themselves as progressives when the term liberal gained too much of a negative connotation.

But as Maher points out, since then the left has metastasized into something completely different than it was when liberals ran the Democratic Party.

Today, progressives are taking the party to the very edge of reality.

Chris Roemer is a retired banker and educator who resides in Finksburg. He can be contacted at chrisroemer1960@gmail.com.

Read more:
Chris Roemer: Progressives are driving the Democratic Party, and destroying America | COMMENTARY - Baltimore Sun

In the nearly four years since former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder was indicted, a cascade of stories have come to light illustrating the influence public utilities have in state politics. In just the last week, Ohioans have learned FirstEnergy funneled money to dark money groups backing Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Senate President Matt Huffman.

State Rep. Lauren McNally, D-Youngstown, is trying to put up guardrails. Shes sponsoring legislation prohibiting utilities from recouping the money they spend on politics through rates or riders. If a utility gets caught circumventing those restrictions theyd have to refund customers with interest and pay a fine. Those fines would be placed in a fund meant to help cover past due utility expenses.

The bill, known as HB 444, also requires utilities to publicize their political spending on an annual basis through the Public Utility Commission of Ohio website.

The measure would give legislative backing to what is already standard practice. The PUCO relies on federal accounting standards that prohibit calculating political spending when setting rates, but McNally argued that hasnt been good enough.

So if this system, she said, as it is today, just this quote-unquote long standing practice, worked as an efficient deterrent for utilities rate recovery of political expenditures, then FirstEnergy really could not have amassed $61 million in revenues to bribe public officials.

In committee, McNally described a familiar parental complaint. Shes a mother of four and explained, my kids seem to never be able to keep the front door closed.

Theyre constantly letting the air conditioning out, the heat out. They never shut a light off, she said. So Im always following them around closing doors, turning lights off, sounding like my parents saying money doesnt grow on trees.

For many families, McNally explained, the utility costs that come with those open doors and lights left on, can really add up. She described regularly chatting with other parents about utility costs and how hot we should let it get before turning our air conditioner on.

Ohios electricity rates fall near the middle of the pack among U.S. states, but McNally noted theyre rising quickly. In 2022, the 14.3% increase in electricity bills was more than double the rate of annual inflation.

McNally allowed paying fees to improve a service or maintain infrastructure might be reasonable, but being forced to cover a utilitys political efforts, even indirectly, is not. She compared it to grocery stores asking customers to round up their bill to support a local food pantry. The latter is fine she argued because its voluntary and transparent.

But what if they asked me to give a few dollars to support their corporate, political agenda? she asked. What if they wouldnt tell us what that agenda is, how it improves the product, or makes our costs go down? What if they didnt ask at all, and paying for it was mandatory?

To bar utilities from taking those steps, she said, HB 444 combines rules, disclosure and enforcement. In addition to codifying the prohibition on including political spending in rate setting calculations, the bill explicitly defines what spending falls under the umbrella.

Contributions to political candidates and political parties obviously count. Lobbying expenses, too. But the measure also includes industry association dues, public relations expenditures or donations to the non-profit, dark money organizations politicians often rely on to obscure fundraising.

To help Ohioans follow what political spending utilities are engaging in, the bill requires them to report the previous years expenditures on Jan. 1. That report must include the recipient, the amount and the purpose of the expenditure. The PUCO would then combine those disclosures into a single report to be submitted to the general assembly by Feb. 1.

If a utility circumvented the law requirements, the punishment would be costly. McNally explained the utility would be on the hook for 20 times what it charged customers. Part of the money would reimburse rate payers with interest, and the excess would go to a fund meant to help people who are behind on their bills.

It sends a clear message on the cost of corruption here in Ohio and who will pay for it, McNally said. The world is watching, and the time to send this message is now.

Follow OCJ ReporterNick Evans on Twitter.

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Ohio Democrat wants to ensure utilities' political spending doesn't wind up on consumers' bills Ohio Capital Journal - Ohio Capital Journal