Tag: Bill Posey

This is probably old news to all of you, but it is rather rare that a story about a House member gets reported on the half-hour evening news.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/…

The most important question for us horse-race analysts is probably, “What does this mean for whether he’s gonna be running at all, and for which seat?”.  The guy, who’s both a moderate Republican and a veteran member of Congress, is obviously aware of these shenanigans, but does he want to have to deal with them?

In other news, please say hi to Bill “Quarter Alligator” Posey on your way out.

• FL-Sen: Here’s a pretty serious repudiation of Charlie Crist by the GOP party faithful. At a county party straw poll in Pasco County (Tampa exurbs, one county removed from Crist’s Pinellas County home), Marco Rubio beat Crist 73 to 9. Luckily for Crist, the primary electorate includes a much broader sample than the party’s diehard activist base who actually show up for meetings… but this shows just how badly things are for him with the base.

• IL-Sen: Bad news for AG Lisa Madigan, whose list of demands for a Senate race include an Obama endorsement, a cleared field, and no brown M&Ms at the catering table: Barack Obama announced that he wouldn’t be endorsing anyone in the Senate race. Good news for Roland Burris, on the other hand: a state prosecutor has decided that Burris won’t face perjury charges over his vague statements to the state legislature about his appointment to the Senate by disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich.

• KY-Sen: SoS Trey Grayson has decided to start fundraising like a madman in the coming weeks, scheduling eight more events before the end of the fundraising quarter in June. Grayson opened his exploratory committee on May 6, so he has had only half-a-quarter in which to try to top Jim Bunning.

• MN-Sen: The FEC released two draft opinions that, if enacted by the full commission, will prevent Norm Coleman from tapping his campaign funds for his legal defense fees associated with his FBI investigation. (This doesn’t affect the costs of paying for the recount, which are paid in part by the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee instead.)

• CA-Gov: Has anyone noticed that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who everyone assumes is running for Governor, hasn’t taken any steps toward running for Governor? The folks at Calitics have noticed, and the fact that Villaraigosa (whose popularity in LA seems to be faltering) just took over the 2nd VP role for the US Conference of Mayors (which puts him on track to become the organization’s president in 2011) is another tea leaf that he won’t run. If he doesn’t run, that just leaves an all-Bay Area clash between old (Jerry Brown) and new (Gavin Newsom) for the Dem nod.

• MN-Gov: GOP state Rep. Paul Kohls from Minneapolis’s western exurbs has announced his candidacy for the Minnesota governor’s race. He joins former GOP state Rep. Bill Haas as official candidates, but at least a dozen more people seem intent on entering the race.

• FL-15: Rep. Bill Posey got nothing but scorn when he aligned himself with the most tinfoil elements of the GOP in introducing his birther legislation, but he’s just ratcheting up the crazy. Posey picked up four more co-sponsors (Culberson, Carter, Neugebauer, and Campbell). Also, while being interviewed on WorldNetDaily’s radio show about the bill, Posey outright accused Barack Obama of hiding something and, for good measure, tried launching a feud with Rachel Maddow.

• NM-01: Jon Barela, a former vice-chair of the New Mexico GOP and former head of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce, officially announced his candidacy against Rep. Martin Heinrich. He did so with the endorsement of 2008 candidate Sheriff Darren White. While it’s now a D+5 district, it’s almost half Latino, so Barela could make some noise if he gets some traction in the Latino community.

• OH-08: Speaker Minority leader John Boehner got a break: his would-be primary challenger, iconoclastic Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, has opted not to get in the race. This frees Boehner up to spend more of summer of 2010 fundraising for other House candidates, or at least working on his tan.

• VA-05: Very little has been happening in VA-05 while everyone waits to see whether ex-Rep. Virgil Goode will try to get his old job back from Rep. Tom Perriello in this GOP-leaning district in rural Virginia. One GOPer isn’t waiting, though: Cordel Faulk is publicly considering the race. Faulk hasn’t held office, but he has an interesting job; he’s the spokesman for Charlottesville-based professor and pundit Larry Sabato.

• NY-St. Senate: With the New York State Senate collapsed into a 31-31 tie, turncoat Dem (and, for now, Senate president and thus acting Lt. Gov.) Pedro Espada Jr. has come up with a rather novel legal theory in the absence of any constitutional clarification: he gets two votes, one ordinary vote as Senator and one tie-breaker vote as LG. Of course, nobody else seems to think this, and other theories are popping up as to who might get a tie-breaking vote (Former LG and current Gov. David Paterson? Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver?) if the Senators can’t figure out how to break the deadlock themselves. Meanwhile, a likely primary challenger to Espada has already popped up: Haile Rivera, an activist and ally of city councilor Eric Gioia who had previously been planning his own city council run this year.

Oh boy, the wingnut is strong in these folks.  Dave Weigel reports that Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), (in)famous for his birther bill requiring documentation that a candidate for President was born in the U.S., has picked up four more co-sponsors, all Republicans (of course).  They are:

John R. Carter (TX-31)

John Culberson (TX-07)

Randy Neugebauer (TX-19)

John Campbell (CA-48)

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA-06) had already signed on last month.  More after the fold….

Posey says those Congressmen came to him to co-sponsor the bill, that it wasn’t him begging them to do so.  And then he launched into an invective against Rachel Maddow.

You may recall that [Stephen] Colbert used the “F” word to describe on national TV a relationship my grandmother, bless her heart, deceased grandmother, must have had with an alligator to come up with the likes of me. [Keith] Olbermann named me the Worst Person in the World and angry woman Rachel Maddow has just trashed me on every show, and asked me to come on her show. You know, I won’t do it cause she’s got a lousy, low rated show, and I don’t want to give her the ratings, quite frankly. I’d love to go on and debate her and set the record straight.

Just so y’all remember, here‘s what Colbert had to say about Bill Posey.

And when Posey got upset at Colbert for doing so, he just brought upon more pain to himself with Colbert’s response.

Now, most of these people sit in VERY Republican districts where you probably have a significant chunk of the population that actually believe Obama was not really born here.  Per SSP’s presidential vote by CD, a whopping 72% of Neugebauer’s district voted for McCain, making it the 9th MOST Republican district in the country, in terms of the vote share Obama got.  So forget about defeating Neugebauer at the polls with his co-sponsorship, he might gain support from his constituents for doing this.  Sad, but true.

And Goodlatte (57%), Carter (58%), and Culberson (58%) also come from districts McCain easily won by double digits.  But Bill Posey himself may be in for a world of hurt, and should be.  McCain only beat Obama 51%-48% in Posey’s own FL-15 district.  Posey himself won 53%-42% over underfunded Democrat Dr. Stephen Blythe, outspending him by over an 8:1 margin.  With 48% of the district voting for Obama, I’m sure we could get enough of them upset at Posey for pulling this kind of shit to get them to the polls.  (Anyone know if Blythe wants to run again, or if there’s another Democrat waiting in the wings?)

What’s more, out here in California, Obama narrowly won Campbell’s district, 49.47% to 48.72%.  (Campbell himself easily won against Democrat Steve Young the last three elections.)  Irvine City Councilwoman Beth Krom has announced she’s running against Campbell, as Young is moving over to try his hand at winning the state assembly seat.

Ridicule is well deserved for these Republicans, for now.  But if we want to send a message, the best way would be kicking the vulnerable ones out of Congress at the ballot box in 2010.  Wanna repudiate the birthers?  Send Posey and Campbell packing next year.

From today’s (16 March 2009) Politics1 update:

P2012. Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) introduced legislation requiring future Presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate in order to be eligible to run in future White House races.

Rest of the quote below the fold.

Do we have anyone to deal with this first-term crackpot standing in an R+5-ish central Florida district?  Posey won his first race with 53.1% against Stephen Blythe, who took 42%.

The rest of the paragraph from Politics1:

Conservative conspiracy theorists have accused President Obama of being foreign-born and constitutionally ineligible. Obama last year produced a certified copy of his birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health, but critics argued that it was a fake or possibly altered. Hawaii officials confirmed the original document is in state records. The US Supreme Court has already rejected several lawsuits challenging the President’s citizenship. “Congressman Posey should be focused on creating jobs and jump-starting the economy, but it seems he’s only obsessed with pandering to the right wing,” said Florida Democratic Chair Karen Thurman. “I think we are going to take the president at his word for it, just like we take every other candidate’s word for it,” replied Posey’s spokesman.

PS: Am I getting a hang of making good titles?

I wrote this as a comment a while back but decided to make a dairy to an idea that came to me.

    I’ve lived here my whole life and i’ll admit there are a lot of Republicans in the area but the trend is going our way and for the first time ever I saw more Democratic signs then Republican signs in my area in Brevard county. Granted I haven’t been around that long but the sheer sight of that was pretty inspiring considering how red we are considered.

I’m gonna do my best to perdict what this district looks like now after the presidential race.  

In 2004 the district voted 57-43 for Bush. In 2006 Bob Bowman a 9/11 conspiracy believer won 44% of the vote against incumbent Dave Weldon. In 2008 Dr. Stephen Blythe who I believed raised less then 50k still managed to get 42% of the vote against his Republican opponent.

Now there are 4 counties in Floridas 15th.

Brevard, Indian River, Osecola and Polk

Comparing the two presidential races: Remember FL-15 voted 57-43 for Bush in 04 the 08 data isn’t clear yet but the county data is.

Brevard voted: 55-44 for McCain (in 04: 58-42 Bush) (only part of the county is in the district)

Indian River voted 57-42 McCain (in 04 it voted 60-37 for Bush)

Osceola voted 60-40 for Obama (in 04 it voted 53-47 for Bush)

Polk County voted 53-47 for McCain (in 04 it voted 59-41 for Bush) (only sliver of county in the district).

Here are the county results for the 2008 House election:

Brevard: Posey 55% (R) Blythe 39% (D)

Indian River: Posey 60% (R)   Blythe (36%) (D)

Osceola: Blythe 54% (D) Posey  43% (R)

Polk: Blythe 50% (D) Posey 46% (5,125)

I think the strategy to win here is good turnout in Osceola and the sliver of Polk combined with keeping it close in Brevard and keeping the Republican under 60% in Indian River. I’m not sure how well Obama did in the parts of Polk and Brevard that are in the district but I imagine better then Blythe since he was so underfunded and drowned out. So I can’t imagine the district being any more then 55-45 Republican at this point I imagine it’s even less.

The idea I stumbled was about a candidate that I think may be able to give Posey a serious run for his seat. Former State Representitive Tony Sasso. Tony Sasso won a special election in Feburary to replace scandal plagued republican Bob Allen. Sasso had to run again in november against another republican named Steve Crisafulli who won the seat by a few thousands votes. The reason I think Tony Sasso can win is that the key to this district seems to be Brevard county and he has a strong base of support here in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral which could prove key. Add that to the Democratic leaning area of Melbourne and he might be able to cut away at Poseys hold on Brevard to pull it off.

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts or ideas on the race or Tony Sassos possible candidacy?