AZ-SEN: Mark Kelly raised $4.2 million during his second quarter, exceeding first quarter haul

Democrat Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut who is hoping to unseat Republican Sen. Martha McSally in Arizona’s 2020 Senate race, raised $4.2 million during April, May and June, exceeding his first-quarter fundraising.

All told, he has raised $8.3 million since announcing his candidacy in February, and he has nearly $6 million cash on hand, according to his campaign.

More than 85,000 contributors have donated to Kelly's campaign, and more than 90% of his second-quarter donations were less than $100, highlighting his display of strength among small donors, his campaign said.

Kelly's performance likely gives him a financial advantage over McSally, the Republican incumbent who was appointed to the seat once held by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“We have a tradition of independent leadership here in Arizona and this outpouring of support shows that people are fed up and pitching in to elect a leader who will stand up for our state and what's right," Kelly's campaign manager, Jen Cox, said in a written statement toThe Arizona Republic.

McSally's campaign will release her second-quarter fundraising numbers next week. During the first quarter, she raised $2.1 million.



https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2019/07/02/mark-kelly-arizona-democratic-senate-hopeful-raised-4-2-million-during-2nd-quarter/1631551001/

OH-01: Air Force pilot, daughter of immigrants launches campaign against Steve Chabot

Nikki Foster flew more than 200 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan refueling planes for the Air Force.

She also bears scars from her time as an All-American rugby player at the Air Force Academy.

The 37-year-old Warren County resident now feels ready for another scrum, this time in politics.

Foster launched her campaign on Monday to take on Republican Congressman Steve Chabot in Ohio's 1st Congressional District.

So far, she's one of two Democrats who hope to face the veteran congressman, the other being Clifton's Kate Schroder.


https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/01/nikki-foster-air-force-pilo-0-t-daughter-immigrants-hopes-unseat-rep-steve-chabot/1616366001/

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KS-SEN: FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY TO RUN FOR U.S. SENATE IN KANSAS

A former federal prosecutor who’s been an executive in a company that invests in medical marijuana has launched his campaign as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kansas.

Kansas City-area attorney Barry Grissom entered the race Monday after months of hinting that he would run. Four-term Republican Senator Pat Roberts is not seeking re-election in 2020.

Grissom served as U.S. attorney for Kansas from 2010 to 2016 as an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama. He has since served as corporate counsel and a vice president for Nevada-based Electrum Partners.

Grissom jumped into the race after state senator Barbara Bollier said she may seek the Democratic nomination. Bollier won her Kansas City-area district as a moderate Republican and switched parties last year.


https://www.kfdi.com/2019/07/01/former-u-s-attorney-to-run-for-u-s-senate-in-kansas/

ME-SEN: Democrats Found A Major Recruit To Take On Susan Collins in 2020

If Maine continues to go blue in 2020, Collins is likely to be in real danger. While the state is not overwhelmingly Democratic, it has consistently voted for the party’s presidential candidate in every race going back to 1992. And nowadays, states usually back the same party for president and Senate.

Collins is also a more polarizing figure now than she once was, especially after her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year. While Collins has built a moderate profile with one of the most centrist voting records in the Senate, her support for Kavanaugh shifted views of her job performance along partisan lines, with sharp increases in approval among Republicans and, conversely, disapproval among Democrats. The former makes it less likely that Collins will get a primary challenge, but the latter suggests Collins could be in trouble in a general election. Gideon’s introductory video specifically referenced the vote, saying it put women’s health choices in “extreme jeopardy.”

While Gideon’s entry probably makes her the leading Democratic Senate candidate, she will have to get through a primary. Betsy Sweet, a progressive who finished third in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, is already running, and others could join, such as Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap. In Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, a large number of competitive candidates could create unpredictable scenarios for winning the party’s nomination. Still, Gideon has had a strong start, receiving endorsements from major Democratic groups, including EMILY’s List, a group that works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, as well as NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the party’s Senate campaign arm.

But even if Gideon wins the primary, Collins will be a formidable opponent. In March, the first — and so far only — poll testing the Collins-Gideon matchup found Collins leading 51 percent to 29 percent. Gideon’s position will almost certainly improve now that she’s actually in the race — 41 percent had no opinion of her in that survey — but the early gap shows why it’s so hard to challenge an incumbent. Collins has seen her approval slide in recent years, going from 67 percent in early 2017 to 52 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to Morning Consult, but her standing is much better than Maine’s partisan lean would predict.



https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-found-a-major-recruit-to-take-on-susan-collins-in-2020/?ex_cid=538twitter

Virginia Republican Candidate Jokes "Install Your Very Own Concentration Camp"

The following is from the Stafford County Democrats, about Republican/right-wingnut HD28 nominee Paul Milde joking about migrant children “separated from their parents and locked in cages like animals…warehoused in squalid conditions, sick and dying.” Yep, that’s right, this self-proclaimed, 100% “pro-life” Republican is not, actually, supportive of life as soon as it leaves the womb – let alone if the life we’re talking about happens to be an immigrant and/or a person of color. As the Stafford County Dems put it: “This man is unfit to be the next Delegate for the 28th House District. Join us in voting for Joshua Cole for Delegate this November.”

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Reverend Irene Monroe: The story of Stonewall has been bleached. I know because I was there.

African American and Latinx patrons frequented the Stonewall Inn heavily and thus comprised the largest percentage of protestors on the first night of the riots. For homeless youth and young adults who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn was a stable domicile – and its being raided was nothing new.

In the 1960s, gay bars in the Village were routinely raided. As one commenter on T-VOX, an LGBTQ+ support forum, noted, “Race is said to have been another factor. The decision by the police to raid the bar in the manner they did may have been influenced by the fact that most of the ‘homosexuals’ they would encounter were of color, and therefore even more objectionable.”

In the ’60s, riots between white police officers and black citizens took place in our neighborhoods, just as they still do today: Ferguson, 2014 (Michael Brown); Baltimore, 2015 (Freddie Gray); Louisiana, 2016 (Alton Sterling); Minnesota, 2016 (Philando Castile), to name a few.

On the first night of Stonewall, many of us who went to the Village did so to retrieve our loved ones and leave. It takes white privilege to fight the police, expect to walk away alive, and create a hagiographical narrative of white heroism.

Roland Emmerich’s 2015 film “Stonewall” spurred both shock and disappointment in moviegoers, historians, and LGBTQ activists, including myself. The film failed to depict an accurate story, and in its place presented a revisionist history. Emmerich apparently felt a more captivating narrative should center around a blond, blue-eyed, “straight-acting” Midwestern protagonist, likely in order to appeal to mainstream audiences.

“I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people,” Emmerich told Buzzfeed. “As a director, you have to put yourself in your movies, and I’m white and gay.”

In doing so, Emmerich’s doppelganger, Danny, reinscribes the trope of the white savior and action hero. Danny throws the first brick, setting off the riots while shouting “GAY POWER!”. Even though in real life, the shakers, movers, and brick throwers were poor and working-class black and Latinx LGBTQs.

I was disturbed by Emmerich’s “Stonewall”—not only because of its whitewashing, but also because of the enduring nature of this revisionist history.

Still today, trans communities of color are relegated to the margins of Greenwich Village. Nonetheless, many force their way in to become a visible and influential presence in our lives, leaving indelible imprints despite being confronted with transphobia and “trans-amnesia.”

The white-dominant control of the Stonewall narrative, meanwhile, must relinquish its hold to give way to a broader truth.



https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/06/story-stonewall-bleached-know/

The Working Families Party has narrowed its list of potential 2020 endorsements.

The Working Families Party, a collective of progressive grassroots organizations and union activists, is launching its national endorsement process early on in the Democratic Party’s presidential primary.

Working Families Party leadership alerted its members in a call Sunday evening that they were opening the endorsement process and have narrowed the field down to six of the 24 candidates — Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Cory Booker, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and former Obama administration secretary Julián Castro. The list of considered candidates was determined after campaigns submitted answers to WFP about their visions for the future, how they’d achieve them, and their history with Working Families Party affiliates.

In 2015, the Working Families Party made its first national political endorsement when its membership voted to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders’ underdog campaign against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary. But the group left open the possibility of endorsements in the 2020 primary.

“Bottom line, we’re looking for the best candidate who can look who can defeat Donald Trump and also the best candidate, upon the defeat Donald Trump, to be able to layout and execute a broad agenda that will transform the lives of everyday people,” Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party told BuzzFeed News. “For us, it’s two things: electability and the ability to transform our country and we think those two things are aligned.”



https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryancbrooks/working-families-party-endorsement-2020-democrats

Kamala Speaks at SF Pride!!! 2019