How the California Governor’s Race May Be a Boon for House Democrats
A controversial Republican gubernatorial candidate in California could cause the GOP headaches in down-ballot House races in a state crucial to the party’s hopes of increasing its House majority.
State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly led Neel Kashkari, a former U.S. Treasury official and the establishment-preferred candidate, by 5 points in a poll this month from the Public Policy Institute of California. That has top Republican operatives in California and Washington, D.C., concerned that Donnelly’s controversial comments and ties to the California Minutemen, which fights illegal immigration on the border, could mobilize Hispanic and other Democratic base voters who otherwise might fall off in this midterm year.
Their fear is that the increased turnout to oppose Donnelly could in turn boost the re-election hopes of vulnerable House Democrats and even improve the party’s chances to add to its ranks in the already Democrat-heavy delegation. A consultant with ties to Kashkari is among the Republicans sounding the alarm.
“It would be a fucking disaster,” said Jason Roe, a San Diego-based consultant who has worked with numerous congressional campaigns and whose firm is consulting for Kashkari.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to finish way ahead of both Republicans in the June 3 top-two primary, and is favored to win re-election in November. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, who has led the party’s efforts at the congressional level in the state, noted in a brief interview Thursday that the GOP always has difficulty running statewide, so Republican House candidates must work to individualize their races.
“Neither of them are polling really well,” McCarthy said. “I always think people run in their own districts. Statewide it’s tough.”
Still, the party’s concern has been voiced over national airwaves. Karl Rove, founder of the GOP-aligned super PAC American Crossroads, which is spending on congressional races, said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show this month that the “outrageous things” Donnelly has said and done “will be used to tarnish” the state party and Republican candidates.
http://atr.rollcall.com/california-governor-race-boon-house-democrats/
= new reply since forum marked as read
by Juliet Williams - May 8, 2014
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa on Thursday strongly condemned comments by GOP gubernatorial front-runner Tim Donnelly, in which the state lawmaker has tried to tie his Indian-American rival to fundamentalist Islamic law, calling his statements "hateful and ignorant garbage."
Donnelly, a state assemblyman who is popular with the tea party, has repeatedly said this week that Neel Kashkari supported Shariah banking code when he was a senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department in 2008. On Facebook, Donnelly posted a link to a banking seminar hosted by the department during which Kashkari, a Hindu, delivered opening remarks...
It is not the first time Donnelly has come under fire for topics related to race and ethnicity. He was elected to his conservative San Bernardino County district in 2010 after founding a branch of the Minuteman border patrol, which scours the U.S.-Mexico border in search of people attempting to enter the country illegally.
In March he posted a Twitter message comparing President Barack Obama's gun control policies with those of dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and North Korea's Kim Jong Il.
Earlier this week, he was the lone vote in the state Assembly against a bill that prohibits state government departments from selling or displaying items with an image of the Confederate flag. Donnelly's vote prompted the Assembly Republican caucus to respond with a statement saying the flag "is a symbol of racism, violence, and oppression for many in our state...
http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2014/5/8/darrell_issa_tim_donnelly_unfit_for.htm
I'm sure Issa's just being the opportunist as usual, but it's pretty bad when the GOP slams one of their own that broadly. Found the GOP comment on the Confederate flag issue of interest, since they seem to love seeing it flown in other places like this:
Palin And Confederate Flag Rally Tea Party Vandals Piling ‘Barrycades’ At White House
by David Badash on October 13, 2013
Was the Tea Party’s anti-Obama protest - which featured the confederate flag, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Larry Klayman and Sarah Palin - racism?
Neither Sarah Palin nor Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee ever served one day in our nation’s armed forces, yet they all decided to lead a group of “hundreds” of self-proclaimed veterans — mostly Tea Party members, military service not verified — in a “Million Vet March” today that was anything but a million. Armed by and motivated with the Confederate flag, Tea Partiers vandalized our nation’s monuments and national landmarks, because they had been closed as a result of the federal government shutdown — an act which all three not only supported, but which the two Senators actually created.
Their hypocrisy is stunning.
A few protestors took the metal barricades — dubbed “barrycades,” because in their minds the President is responsible for the GOP-led shutdown and for personally closing the national monuments and parks — and piled them, in what could be called an act of vandalism, five feet high in front of the White House gates.
The crowd of Tea Party members was so raucous and potentially violent that the National Park’s SWAT and riot police had to be called in.
**Announcing the “liberation” of the national parks** — opening them up to further vandalism by removing the protective barricades — former Alaska governor Sarah Palin labeled it “a matter of shutdown priorities.”
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/palin-and-confederate-flag-rally-tea-party-vandals-piling-barrycades-at-white-house/politics/2013/10/13/76802#.Uls084Ln_ip
** Sounds like something the Bundy militia people would do as part of the organzied conspiracy paid by Koch dollars.
