Wagner To Enter Crowded Democrat Primary Race For Governor

Via – Pittsburgh Post Gazette

This is the surprise event that I had thought might happen after Jack Wagner’s loss in his primary bid for mayor of Pittsburgh to eventual election winner Bill Peduto.  Though some had thought that he would not enter after just losing a primary race.

Looking at the bigger picture of the Democrat primary race, Jack Wagner has much to gain.  Out of the whole crowded field of 7 candidates, he is the only one the resides in the western half of the state.  Which creates a headache for candidates like Cong. Allyson Schwartz and State Treasurer Rob McCord, both of whom are native to Montgomery County, needed to make a big push out west where they are not known, to get enough votes to overcome the wide field of eastern Pennsylvania candidates.

The top candidate to beat in the primary thus far, appears to be Cong. Allyson Schwartz, who made her intentions of running for the bid for governor widely known early last year.  Rob McCord’s chances are good as he has run for statewide office before and will not be a total stranger to Democratic voters.

Jack Wagner, former Auditor General, State Senator and Pittsburgh City Council President, presents a challenge as I’ve outlined.  Democrat voters will be more familiar with his name across the state, especially in the west where he could solidly win in.  He just has to put together the right team to get his campaign for governor out there as he is coming late to the game.

The biggest issue, for Jack Wagner, and the rest of the Democratic candidates.  Will be Tom Wolf.

Wolf is a successful multi-millionaire businessman from York County, who also served as the State Revenue Secretary under Gov. Ed Rendell.  And he did something this month that I did not expect.  He started putting out ad’s in all the Pennsylvania airways, except for Erie.  The ad he put out is light-hearted and he presents himself well.  I found myself intrigued after watching the ad, and I realized something.  This ad can be a game changer.  After the nasty slew of negative campaign ads Pennsylvanians have had to deal with, this is a welcome sight, and from talking to voters in my area (Northern Allegheny County), light-hearted, message driven ads are what is preferred over the smearing attack ads.

With that said, this will be an interesting primary.  This could potentially be a nail biter for the Democrats.

Wendy Davis Testified in Federal Trial That “I Got Divorced By the Time I Was 19.”

Breitbart reported this morning on testimony that Texas State Senator and Gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis gave back on January 20th, 2012.  After an article came out this weekend in which the candidate admitted to fabricating parts of her life.  The Dallas Morning News reported on Sunday that she did not file for divorce from her first husband, Frank Underwood, until December, 1983, when she was 20 years and six months old. The divorce was finalized on May 22, 1984, just a week after her 21st birthday.

The case in which Senator Davis testified, State of Texas, plaintiff, vs. United States of America and Eric H. Holder, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the United States, defendants, and Wendy Davis, et al., intervenor-defenders, was tried in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Senator Davis testified for more than an hour, beginning at 8:15 on the morning of January 20, 2012. She was led through her direct testimony in questions posed by her attorney, election law expert J. Gerald Hebert.

Here is a verbatim transcript taken from the start of her testimony that day:

DEFENDANT-INTERVENOR WENDY R.DAVIS SWORN DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. HEBERT:

Q. Good morning, Senator Davis?

A. Good morning.

Q. I’d like to start by asking you to state your full name?

A. My name is Wendy Russell Davis.

Q. Where do you reside?

A. I reside in Fort Worth, Texas.

Q. If you would introduce yourself to the Court, tell them who you are?

A. I’m a State Senator representing a large portion of Tarrant County, Senate District 10. I was elected in 2008. I’m in the first term of the Texas Senate.

Q. It’s a four year term?

A. Correct.

Q. So you are up for reelection this year?

Q. Where were you born?

A. I was born in Rhode Island, West Warwick, Rhode Island.

Q. When did you move to Texas?

A. When I was 11 years old. So I’ve lived there for 37 years.

Q. Have you lived in Tarrant County for 37 years?

A. Yes, I have.

Q. Did you attend school in Tarrant County?

A. I did.

Q. What high school did you attend?

A. I went to Richland High School in Richland Hills. It’s kind of a blue collar suburb of Fort Worth.

Q. Tell the Court after you graduated from high school did you go on to college immediately?

A. No, I did not.

Q. What did you do?

A. When I was only 18 I got married. I had a baby, I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old. [emphasis added]

And I had started working, I actually started working when I was 14.

I was raised by a single mother. My mother only had a 6th grade education. My parents divorced when I was 11 years old.

So my mother raised four children with no child support with a 6th grade education, having never worked in her life.

She went to work at Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Store, that’s where she worked the entire time that I was growing up.

You can read the full court testimony HERE.

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Wendy Davis Testimony In Federal Trial: ‘I Got Divorced By the Time I Was 19’

Republican Establishment Preparing To Lose In 2014; Tea Party Preparing for Victory

2014 has arrived, and with it the primaries of the 6 year itch.  Most of which have been talked about starting mid 2013 when potential candidates started jumping into races to get a jump on the incumbents, or to help with their name recognition.

In the coming months leading up to the primaries around the country and eventually the big election in November, I foresee a bloody race, not amongst Republicans and Democrats.  But fights within the Republican party itself.  It started in 2010 when the Tea Party movement rose up and elected many good representatives and senators.  And the Republican establishment and others within the beltway figured that it was a one time surge and would not be repeated in as great a force as they had done in 2010.  As it was attempted in 2012 when Richard Mourdock unseated Republican incumbent Sen. Richard Luger in a major upset.  But went on to lose the race, in part because he was unable to defend himself against what was a defensible statement on rape.  The establishment was so hurt because of Lugers loss, that they chose to sit on their hands and lose a senate seat instead of keeping it by putting effort into to clean up Mourdock.

This is the same scenario that we will face this year, in the primaries and beyond.  For example, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is facing a formidable rival in businessman Matt Bevin, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is currently facing four challengers in his primary.  Most likely McConnell will barely make it out alive, but Graham faces a bigger challenge with South Carolina’s electoral law that stipulates for a candidate to move on from the primary, they have to receive at least 50% of the vote, and if not it goes into a runoff which is a bad situation for Sen. Graham, just as it was for David Dewhurst when he was forced into a runoff against now Sen. Ted Cruz.  It is easy to see a loss for Graham, and pick up a conservative candidate while retaining the senate seat in S.C.

Along with the senate races, there are also a good number of governors races as well, which this year include the ones that got elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave.  Focus has been placed on states like Pennsylvania where sitting Republican Governor Tom Corbett appears extremely vulnerable against the field of Democrat candidates vying for their party’s nomination.  My picks of races to watch are in Texas, where current Gov. Rick Perry has chosen not to seek another term.  The Democratic nominee will be the new liberal darling, State Rep. Wendy Davis who rose to fame after ‘standing’ against a pro-life bill, and the Republicans gunning for the nomination are AG Greg Abbott, Larry Kilgore, Miriam Martinez and Tom Pauken (my pick for the primary is Greg Abbott).  Also, a state that has come to shock us, Michigan, where Gov. Rick Snyder is eligible for re-election but as of yet has not announced a plan for running for another term.

But the real races to watch will be the senate races.  There will still be some focus on House races, but it looks like the GOP will have no problem in keeping their majority in the House, so the main focus will be elsewhere.

Back to the talk of the potential infighting.  It comes at a time when the Speaker of the House and other GOP leaders have shown open hostility to the Tea Party ‘faction’ of their party, that they have come to blame for their shortcomings and slip-up’s.  Below is a clip showing the speakers open dislike for the most conservative members of his party, as he tries to cover himself and call himself a conservative.

 

 

After a rough year, with a government shutdown, and a not so great election, the GOP establishment has chosen to throw their Tea Party congressman under the bus to save their own hide.  This in effect has drawn the line in the sand between the Tea Party and the Establishment.  A line that many saw coming as discussion grew tense over the last year, when Senators McCain and Graham both reportedly were upset and shared some words behind closed-door meetings against Sen. Mike Lee and Sen. Ted Cruz for their insistence to keep up the filibuster that lead into the government shutdown.

This will certainly make the races this year more interesting than in years past.  I’m very certain that we will see another Tea Party wave as we witnessed back in 2010.  Enough people are standing up to fight and make their voices heard, as passionate and conservative candidates step up to the plate.