There were some updates from last week from the House of Representatives that were worth commenting on. The recent pressure placed on the lawmakers who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House appears to be mounting as financial resources appear to be lining up behind the primary challengers to two of the prominent names. This comes as polling and fundraising also suggest that two Democratic “Squad” members are at great risk of being primaried from the center of the Democratic Party. Also, a new retirement from the House of Representatives has opened a safe Republican seat in Kansas, and a recent speech from a New Hampshire political candidate has gone viral, Let’s get to the stories.
Starting off with the four Congressmen (and women) that are at risk of being primaried according to polling, fundraising, and pressure, they are Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Bob Good, and Nancy Mace, an even split of Republicans and Democrats. There are others that could be primaried as well, but these names are the most at-risk of being defeated due to the quality of their primary challengers and the circumstances of their primaries. For Bowman, his fire alarm stunt and anti-Semitism haven’t been buoyed by his appeal to the “hip-hop community” for assistance with polling showing him either barely scraping by George Latimer (D-NY) or losing by a large margin. Putting the numbers together, he is probably trailing by a few percentage points. Cori Bush’s open hypocrisy about defunding the police and callousness toward Israel have been compounded by her lackluster fundraising against challenger Wesley Bell (D-MO), leading to a similar situation.
On the Republican side, Bob Good is the most endangered Republican seeking re-election for a variety of reasons, the least of which was supporting the losing side in every primary battle in the past few years to the anger of everyone around him. In addition to voting against McCarthy, he’s also known for voting against even generally popular and consensus proposals in the GOP caucus for the purpose of seeking attention. Thus, he has the attention of primary challenger John McGuire (R-VA) who appears to be a clear favorite to defeat him.
In the case of Nancy Mace, her challenger Catherine Templeton (R-SC) is less well-known but has the massive financial network of McCarthy to back her bid for office. It also doesn’t help that unlike Good who has been consistently against everyone all at once, Mace has never had any governing principles when getting into office having gone from Trump-supporter, Trump critic, Trump supporter, McCarthy critic despite Trump’s backing, and Trump sycophant. I can at least rationalize my decision to back the GOP ticket in 2024 despite my dislike for Donald Trump as a person because I want the party to win, whereas her reasoning has been more similar to Ian Miles Cheong in that she will change stories to adjust to the tides depending on how Congress is turning. This race is less clear cut, but we’ll see what happens.
The one new retirement that has been announced is Congressman Jake LaTurner (R-KS) who represents a Republican district in the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas, opening a safe Republican seat. He originally ran for the seat to keep Steve Watkins (R-KS) from costing the GOP the winnable seat because of residency issues when he ran for office. With his retirement comes the opening of a safe Republican seat for one lucky GOPer that is willing to go after it, raising the question of what branch of the GOP will prevail. While my hope would be that former Attorney General Derek Schmidt (R-KS) would run for the seat owing to his governance mentality and the RRH Elections mention, the bench is large enough to where that may not be certain. Schmidt may also be planning a 2026 gubernatorial run after applying the lessons from the original run in 2022 where it was just a horrible year to be a challenging Republican not named Joe Lombardo (R-NV).
Finally, the last story dealing with Congress is that Lily Tang Williams (R-NH), a gun owner and Chinese immigrant gave an impressive rebuttal to David Hogg, the student who has used the Parkland school shooting to catapult his political activism to divisive reception depending on the individual person’s personal interpretation of his actions. She gave him the question of could he ensure the U.S. government wouldn’t become tyrannical to which he stated he couldn’t to which then she clapped back saying the gun control debate was over and she wasn’t giving up her guns. While New Hampshire may be a difficult sell for Republicans these days, Lily Tang Williams is a blessing for standing on principles and placing pressure on activists like Hogg who have abused tragedy for their own personal exploitation.
Democrats unveil new hip hop task force to tackle racial inequity (yahoo.com)
KS-2: Rep. Jake LaTurner (R) Will not Seek Re-election (rrhelections.com)
Rep. Bowman trails Dem. primary challenger Latimer in fundraising battle (msn.com)
Tlaib, Bush form joint fundraising committee ahead of Bush’s primary (msn.com)
Catherine Templeton’s campaign raises nearly $500K in bid to unseat Rep. Mace (abcnews4.com)
The Conservatarian Millennial 