Politics: 2020 General Governor Races

While the world has slowly become a stranger place, some may have to remember that there are still elections going on in some states if they haven’t happened already. Just because they have covered the presidential primary doesn’t mean that they’ve yet done the races for this or other offices yet. But I figured that I might as well cover what I can of this after talking about the biggest news story of the year thus far.

The craziest thing that has happened in the world since 2000 wasn’t the election of Trump or 9/11, but it was the covid19 pandemic. The virus has already delayed the election in Ohio where they defied a court order and pushed their primary dates back. Other things to note regarding the elections for governor would be how each governor handled the virus in question or even if they lasted beyond it as they could have died or at least be affected between now and then. Did they go too far? Did they not go far enough? What affects will this have? We’ll see.

I forgot to write down some things like party affiliation of those in control of each state or who was running for reelection versus who couldn’t. What I know is that there will be elections for the office of governor in the states of Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.

Now I’m going to write what I feel are some interesting facts about some of the races and those who are in office. Mike Parsons of Missouri ascended to the office after his predecessor resigned. Gary Hart of Utah also ascended to the office. I know that Mike benefited from a scandal which brought forth his predecessor’s resignation. I don’t know why Gary’s predecessor resigned from office.

One of the most potentially interesting races this cycle is the one in West Virginia. The last Republican governor of West Virginia elected was in 1996 and left office in 2001. And yet, they have a Republican governor now. Did this person ascended to the office? The answer is now. Jim Justice of West Virginia was elected as a Democrat and switched to being a Republican at about six months into his term. There are multiple Republicans and Democrats in the race. It will be as much a referendum on Jim Justice as the Republicans will be making it a vote as to who of them is the real conservative in the race and what Democrat wants to reclaim what they feel is rightfully theirs.

I won’t know right away which races I’ll want to cover in the future. In my mind, the main ones that I care most about are Indiana and Missouri since they both border Illinois. Eric Holcomb had endorsed my state’s former governor and so was the Missouri governor who has since resigned from office. (Wisconsin’s governor at the time also did this and has also left office, losing reelection like my state’s old governor.) I plan to donate to the Indiana Democrat in the governor race. With me having no beef with the current Missouri governor, I might pay attention to one of the other governor races and West Virginia might fit this bill. I can’t be sure that there will be a post of that in this blog, but do hope that it will happen in the future.

Here is where the post ends. I would include a schedule of primary dates, but don’t see a point in that as I don’t know them, the dates could be subject to change, and I’m sure that some of them might have already happened at some point anyways. So keep in touch as the general election is still set for November 3, 2020 this year and I hope to be back with more soon.

Politics: 2020 General Class Two Senate Races

With the presidential election happening this year, I might as well explain two other important races that are going on. One is the governor races. The other is the senate races. Not only are all of the class two seats up this cycle, we are also having two special elections for two class three seats. I might as well do a general run through of some of what’s going on in this post and include a schedule of what dates certain races are. I can’t promise that I will get into more of the specific ones that I want to as the year goes on, but will try as things go on.

States with a senate election this year: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona (special), Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia (regular and special), Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico. North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The last time the class two senate seats were up for election was in 2014. That was a was boon for Republicans as they took the senate by winning a lot of seats then. The previous time the class two seats were up were in 2008 and that was a boon for Democrats then. In case you are wondering, the Republicans last made gains senate elections in 2018. The Democrats last made gains in senate races in 2016.

What is the set up for the elections this year? Well, the Republicans are defending 23 seats and that includes the 2 special elections. The Democrats are defending 12 seats. If Democrats win all the elections or all but one of the elections, they will have at least 67 people in the senate. There are 53 Republicans in office right now. There are 45 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. If Republicans will all the seats this cycle, they will have 62 seats. It is highly unlikely that either party gets a filibuster proof majority after the election. It would be more likely for the Democrats to get it than Republicans.

The way polling is going right now, some seats in Republican hands are constantly ranked as toss-up, meaning it could go either way. The only one of either party currently ranked as flip is Doug Jones. Current polling suggests that it is unlikely Democrats retake a majority at the moment. But polling could change and be wrong entirely.

Now let’s get to the people in the races. On the Democratic side, Tom Udall of New Mexico is retiring from office. Every other Democrat is running for reelection. I realize that I did not keep track of which party has control of each state’s class two seat. On the Republican side, there are three Republicans are retiring: Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Pat Roberts of Kansas. As of yet, the only incumbent that we don’t know whether or not he is running from either party is Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. He hasn’t decided yet and another Republican is in the race. The other Republican seats all have the incumbents running.

I did a quick check to see who of what party was in these races. A lot of them have third party candidates in them. What is notable is that there are no Democrats currently in the Alaska or Arkansas races. Every other race has both major parties in it. With Alaska’s senate race, there is still time for Democrats to file for it. With the Arkansas race, the filing deadline has past and the one Democrat who was in the race dropped out mere hours after the filing deadline was over. I don’t know if the Democrats can have a candidate in that race right now. It may still be possible or it may not be. What I do know is that there are third party candidates in both of these races, although there is no guarantee that they caucus with the Democrats.

The senate races are considered very important this year, as they always are. This could be an issue for a Democratic president if the senate remains in Republican hands and they continue to thwart his or her efforts like they did with Obama’s last two years in office. What could be quite good is if somehow Trump wins reelection and the senate is blue, making many of his efforts impossible to achieve without executive orders and court wins. The unlikely situation of 67 or 68 seats being in Democrats hands after this election would not happen with Trump winning again. Also at play, possibly, is the US House of Representatives. But I won’t be doing a post about that and hope that you can do your own research about that.

I will be talking about the schedule of all the senate races this year. Note that I don’t know if the primary for president will also be for certain states just because they have senate election at the same time. I know that for at least two of these states, they have already had their primaries for president. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out when your state’s primary or primaries are outside of this schedule. I don’t know what could potentially change with dates. Also note that all of the states are having primaries of some sort for all sorts of various offices. I leave it up for you in order to figure out when you should be voting. Now I’m going to end this post with the schedule of all the senate elections this year. I’ll go into more detail with some of them if I can in the future in later months’ posts.

Schedule (all are Tuesdays unless otherwise noted, in 2020 unless otherwise noted, and primaries outside of November 3 or where otherwise noted)

March 3- Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Texas

March 10- Mississippi

March 17- Illinois

March 31- Alabama run-off (if needed), Arkansas run-off (if needed), Mississippi run-off (if needed)

May 12- Nebraska, North Carolina run-off (if needed), West Virginia

May 19- Georgia (regular election for class two seat), Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon

May 26- Texas run-off (if needed)

June 2- Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota

June 9- Maine, South Carolina, Virginia

June 23- South Carolina run-off (if needed)

June 30- Colorado, Oklahoma

July 21- Georgia run-off (if needed for regular class two seat)

August 4- Arizona, Kansas, Michigan

August 6 (Thursday)- Tennessee

August 11- Minnesota, South Dakota run-off (if needed)

August 18- Alaska, Wyoming

August 25- Oklahoma run-off (if needed)

September 1- Massachusetts

September 8- New Hampshire, Rhode Island

September 15- Colorado

November 3- general election, jungle primary for Louisiana senate race and Georgia special election for class three seat, regular election for Georgia’s class two seat

December 5 (Saturday)- Louisiana general senate election (if needed)

January 5, 2021- Georgia general special senate election (if needed)

Politics: 2019 Gubernatorial Election Results

Before I get to doing the general elections to keep track of in 2020, I might as well do a recap of the general governor elections that happened in 2019. I won’t keep track of any of the other races that happened that year, even if they were important.

In Kentucky, Republican’t incumbent Matt Bevin lost reelection to Democrat Andy Beshear. Matt was the most unpopular governor in the country at the time. I don’t know who replaced him as that in the present. Matt caused controversy with all the pardons he issued on the way out that people in his state are going to investigate. Matt and Trump had close connections so it was kind of refreshing to see someone embrace Trump in a red state and lose.

In Mississippi, the incumbent governor, Republican Phil Bryant, was not able to run again. The Republican candidate who won the primary was Tate Reeves. I was concerned through a news story that there could have been voter fraud in the Republican primary, but this idea is unproven at the time and was probably more of a voter machine glitch. Jim Hood was the Democrat who won the primary. Tate won the election in the end.

In Louisiana, the incumbent governor was Democrat John Bel Edwards. The Republican who ended up challenging him turned out to be Eddie Rispone. Louisiana has a crazy way of how they do primaries. After the election was done, John Bel Edwards won reelection.

That’s about it for this post. Due to lack of views when I talked about the general gubernatorial election last year, I might be possibly discontinuing posts like these in the future. There’s not much else to say so I will end this post here.

Politics: 2019 Kentucky Election Results

With the 2019 elections already a thing of the past, I might as well write this and one other blog post about it before looking ahead to more of 2020 elections. I had written my thoughts on what was going on with Kentucky governor election before it happened. Well, now I’m going to post some of what’s happened since regarding it.

The Democrat, Andy Beshear, won the election against incumbent Republican’t Matt Bevin. It would seem that Matt wasn’t wanting to go down easily as, instead of conceding his loss, he claimed that there were voting irregularities. There was no evidence to back this up. Well, there could have been, but Matt didn’t bring any up or try to fabricate it.

Some say this election as Kentuckians rejecting the ways of Trump. But it wasn’t that, not really. Matt was the most unpopular governor of any state at that time. He was widely hated among the people in his state and own party. Plus, of all the elections that took place in Kentucky in 2019, Matt was the only Republican who lost the race they competed in.

Sadly, before Andy could take over, the Republicans in the state continued their terrible ways of doing power grabs and limited a newly elected Democrat of any power that they would have had otherwise. That’s a huge problem for this country as a whole and should be banned.

Something that might be worth pointing out relating to this post are the ads. It seemed that the way Matt tried to promote himself failed him. He tried to align himself with Trump, but that did not convince others to vote for him. He did some racist attacks, but that didn’t help this time. And he never really made much of a case for himself.

When Bill Clinton was a lame duck, he gained controversy for the last minute pardons that he had done on his way out. Matt is now facing similar backlash. Only he pardoned more and some worse people, some of whom had political connections to him. Sadly, our only hope for justice in this case is hoping that they will be caught with a new crime or one they weren’t charged with before. Matt must not have cared how much worse he would look as a result of this.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/12/1905160/-Ky-Gov-Bevin-rushed-to-pardon-fund-raiser-s-killer-brother-child-rapist-and-guy-who-hired-hitman

I don’t know if pardons can be undone and I also don’t know what issues they might have in terms of why they are even a law. People in Kentucky, prominent Republicans, it should be added as well, are not liking what Matt did and calling him out on it. Even Mitch McConnell is saying just how bad Matt is. If Mitch thinks you messed up, then you done messed up.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/13/1905525/-Kentucky-Republican-Senate-President-Calls-On-Feds-To-Investigate-Bevin-s-Pardons?detail=emaildkre

I don’t think there is much else to say. You are more than welcome to find out what Matt said about the pardons himself. I was going to include an article, but it wouldn’t load and I couldn’t read what it said as a result. The first Bush also caused controversy when he pardoned I think all of the people related to the Iran Contra Affair.

To sum up this post, the most unpopular governor of the country lost reelection, there were some issues with changing the rules on their way out, there were controversial pardons that were not all without personal bias, and Democrat Andy Beshear is now governor of Kentucky.

Politics: 2020 Republican Presidential Primary Thoughts

Sorry for any potential confusion about when political posts in this blog would appear. I have a certain thing as to when I can do certain blog posts. Anyways, since I talked about the primary that the Democrats are having for president, I might as well talk about the one that Republicans are having. There are other Republicans besides Trump in the election. I’m kind of saddened by how little focus any of them are getting in the news. People should know that Trump is not the only Republican running for president next year. But that’s not the only issue.

The RNC is meddling in their own election process. The same people who thought that Bernie Sanders was rigged to lose are making it harder for anyone other than Trump to win the primary next year. For one, they are refusing to hold any official debates. Secondly, they are cancelling the primaries in various states. I have no idea if this means that the states that aren’t cancelling primaries get more delegates or not. While you may hear Republicans correctly state that the Democrats did this in 2012 and 1996, you can quickly point out that there were no others in the race then to make it matter. Republicans also cancelled primaries in 1992 when Bush I had a challenger in the Republican primary.

To date, the states that I know for sure are cancelling primaries are Kansas, South Carolina, Nevada, Alaska, and Arizona. Minnesota did something similar by putting only Trump’s name on the ballot on their state. Now some of these people running have to make sure that they are on all the ballots in the states that will do primaries. There have already been mistakes made.

It is interesting and oddly appropriate how the Republican Party is being undemocratic about how the voting process works. Of course, Democratic and democratic are actually different in some ways. But I might as well get to who is in the primary.

Donald Trump had been an absolute failure as president. In my mind, only very few people have been worse presidents. His strange cult of followers insists that he is great or that it doesn’t quite matter if he’s racist as long as his supposed greatness is intact. Of course, not all of his fans admit that he is racist. But it doesn’t matter. His term is going to end sooner rather than later and I don’t see a path to him winning in 2020. But his primary opponents aren’t much better in terms of if they are good.

Bill Weld was the first person besides Trump to enter the race. According to some timelines, he was in the race longer than Trump. Bill is very moderate, but doesn’t seem to have any strong ways with the Republican Party. His liberal side is the worst of it. He was once a Libertarian and was their candidate for vice-president in 2016. I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss him, but what he thinks seems to be all over the place.

Joe Walsh was an Illinois state representative who didn’t last that long in office. He seems to have a rivalry with Tammy Duckworth, the junior US senator from Illinois. She has pointed out a lot of the controversy he has caused, such as when he claimed he would grab his musket if Trump would lose the presidency. Why is he running against Trump? Apparently, Joe has seen the light and knows what a terrible person Trump is. There could be hope for him thus far. He is not a candidate I would abandon the Democratic primary to vote for. But he might be a good enough person if you were going to do that.

Mark Stanford is quite an immoral person. Unlike Trump, he has experience as he was a US Congressman before becoming governor of North Carolina. He then disappeared for a while and it turned out that it was to have an affair. He doesn’t seem to have done anything illegal to do that, as far as I know, which I could be wrong about. He then returned to Congress where he voted against Trump 11% of the time, earning his ire and causing Mark to lose the next primary. This makes me wonder if his run is simply about revenge. But he might be the challenger in the race with the most experience.

There are more candidates in the race, including a white supremacist and Holocaust denier. Of the main people, there are no truly good or outstanding candidates. It doesn’t seem like any of them should be president ever, especially Trump. But if I had to pick one that I think that people should vote for that I’d actually want to see as president, it would be Joe Walsh. If you want to vote for someone in the Republican primary that you would actually want to see a president, then vote for him. And do not vote for a candidate you want to lose. That might be part of the reason of how we wound up with Trump in the first place.

Politics: 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary Thoughts

I may start doing recurring posts in this blog about the two party’s primaries until after both of them have been decided. Since a Republican is president now, the Democrats get to go first this year and I hope to be able to do recurring updates sometimes when I can. I will mention some of the candidates as far too many aren’t important even if they are in the race.

Michael Bennet is a Colorado senator. He could be good, but hasn’t made a mark yet in the race. I don’t think that we should vote for people who don’t really make a mark, although we could try to prove the media wrong and say that he would be a good person. I’d say that he is a good person with good values, but might not work without a notable good boost. Strangely, him being a white man might actually help.

Joe Biden is not the good choice for president that many people think he is. He might have even hurt Obama’s chances of winning the presidency. He’s not a safe choice. The scandals with him regarding women aren’t too bad, but they are bad enough that we won’t ever hear the end of them. He’s known for blunders and not admitting when he’s wrong. He is almost like Trump in some ways that make me think he shouldn’t be trying to replace him. In 2012, people might have voted for Obama as they didn’t see Mitt Romney as being much different. We could have that same issue with Joe Biden against Trump.

Cory Booker is a New Jersey senator and a largely good candidate. But I don’t know if he has done much to stand out in this large race. Still, if SNL can get Keegan Michael Key to show up and do Cory Booker impersonations, that would be something I’d like to see at least once. And I do think that he’s different enough from Obama that he’ll avoid any potential pratfalls there. He does have possible personality issues, but that might be common where he’s from.

Steve Bullock is the governor of Montana. He is a Democrat is a red state. He could be good, but hasn’t made a mark in the race. He might be one of the candidates who would be better off running for senate instead. (Does Montana have a class two senate seat?) If he can win in red places, he might be a better choice than others.

Pete Buttigieg is a gay mayor in Indiana. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with him due to him being gay. But that might be his only claim to fame right now. He could be questionable in terms of quality and whether or not he should last in the race. He’s also really young. And it would be very interesting if it were him against Mike Pence in 2020. I do like the fact that Pete is a Christian. I’d put him at the better end of the spectrum, but not at the top.

Julián Castro is a former Obama cabinet member. He’s a good candidate, but hasn’t made a mark on the race yet. Maybe he will work. I think that he’s Hispanic so that could be a good pro in the race since Trump has done a lot of negative things regarding the Hispanic community. I guess that we’ll see what kind of mark he’ll leave on the race and if he’ll stay in long or not.

John Delaney is a current US representative. It is too hard to tell if he’s a good candidate or not. He might be one. He’s a possible moderate, which might be good for attracting independents and Republicans who don’t want to vote for Trump. Maybe he’s a better choice that we realize, but he hasn’t made much of a mark just yet.

Tulsi Gabbard is a current US representative and it is too hard to tell if she will have a major impact on the race in the end. Maybe she will work, or maybe she won’t. I don’t think that she has much impact on the race right now, but isn’t a bad candidate at all.

Kamala Harris is a California senator. Maybe she would work. It is kind of complicated, her place in the senate right now. But she could work. She is kind of in a similar place where Obama was when he first ran for president in 2008. I think that she is too new and can be a bit of a loud person who can be mean or at least come off that way at times.

Amy Klobuchar is a Minnesota senator and she seems good, but hasn’t made much of a dent yet in the race. Apparently, she might be ill tempered according to people who have worked with her. Buzzfeed made it seem like a bunch of people who worked for her suffered emotional abuse and she has an unusually high turnover rate of those people. While I don’t know for sure if this is accurate, I have the feeling that she might not be as good a choice as I first thought that she was as you might have seen in my Madam Secretary blog.

Wayne Messam is a Florida mayor and might not even be considered a real candidate. I don’t think that he has been invited to any debates just yet. He is black, not that it matters much. He should probably be avoided when it comes time for the election.

Beto O’Rourke is a former representative and maybe he would work, but he is probably running for the wrong office. He should run for the US senate again instead of president as he had a better chance of flipping a Texas seat blue than he does of winning the presidency.

Tim Ryan is a current US representative. He is possibly good, but fails to make a mark yet. I’d have to say that since he hasn’t stood out in any way, he might be good just to ignore unless he makes more of a mark in the future.

Bernie Sanders is a Vermont senator who is a good, but I think he’s not someone to vote for this time around. He might just be going for the next in line for the presidency and that hasn’t been a good thing. It failed Democrats in 2016 going with who they felt was next in line to run and it also failed Republicans in both 2008 and 2012. Plus, his health problems are worrisome as well and he should just stay where he is in the senate.

Joe Sestak is a former representative and he might be the worst candidate in the race out of all of them with experience simply because Democrats don’t like him. They have supported others before him and you shouldn’t go with someone that their own party doesn’t like.

Tom Steyer has no political experience and I can’t remember much else about him such as who he is or how he made such an important enough dent in the race to be important enough to be considered a major candidate. Like all candidates without experience, he should be avoided as we’ve seen what lack of experience translates to in terms of no things done.

Elizabeth Warren is a Massachusetts senator and she might be the best choice for who out of the Democrats should be the next president. I think that it is more likely her winning than anyone else. We’ll see what happens for sure later. If all conservatives have against her are racist attacks and name calling, maybe she’ll turn the phrase “nevertheless, she persisted,” into “nevertheless, she was elected.”

I’m going to combine the last two people into one section. Neither Marianne Williamson nor Andrew Yang have political experience. Andrew says that he wants to give every American $1,000. It sounds like it would work as incentive to vote for him, but that money is better spent elsewhere outside of just random handouts. I don’t even know much about Marianne Williamson in terms of who she is or what she does. Would the fact that they are minorities help them or hurt them against Trump? I have no idea, but I think that good candidates should have experience and while we can get good people without it, why take that risk?

There are others in the race, but they aren’t important in terms of whether or not they should be voted for or even have an influence on the race. Do people even know offhand about all of the other candidates in the race? They aren’t really serious at all.

Now I get to my endorsement of who people should vote for in the election: Elizabeth Warren. She is the best candidate in my mind and she will keep persisting until she wins. I hope that she is as good a candidate as I think she is, although I don’t think that she’s flawed like some others might think either.

I’m going to wrap up this post around here. I might do more of these in the future as more of the candidates change and we’ll see what all happens with that. I hope to have a post on the DNC convention next year and will continue to post on the presidential election until after it’s over and I have the final results. We’ll see what else I’ll talk about in terms of the elections.

Politics: Kentucky Governor Election 2019

This will be the only post about a governor election this year that I will be going into any huge detail about by doing a post like this specifically about this state’s governor election and not the other two. But I live close enough to the state that it makes sense for me to cover the incumbent governor, the main challenger, other challengers, and who I think you should vote for if you can vote in this state. Let’s get to it.

The incumbent who is running for reelection is Republican Matt Bevin. He is actually the lowest rated of all the current governors in terms of approval rating. Thinking about his policies, he was in favor of exposing his kids to chicken pox. That might have been okay at one point, but now there are vaccines against it that should be used instead. He is in favor of the right to work legislation that is poorly named and a bad idea. He’s also against refugees.

Now let’s get to the Democratic candidate in the race. Andy Beshear is in favor of universal health care. Based on the political commercials that I’ve seen, he’s in favor of a lot of good things that are bad things according to the other party. What’s funny is that a lot of commercials that Republicans do are meant to make one vote against Democrats and they have the exact opposite effect on me.

There are some third party candidates in the race as well. John Hicks is a libertarian and Amy Husk is from the Socialist Workers Party. Neither of them have political experience. Both of them should be avoided as a result.

To end this post, I’ll get to who I think Kentuckians should vote for on November 5^th of this year. Matt is a terrible governor in my opinion and shouldn’t be reelected. Thus, Andy Beshear is who you should vote for. His liberal policies probably aren’t as bad like Matt would have you believe. That is why I think that Andy is the best candidate in the race.