My local PBS affiliate just aired a 20-minute debate between two Democratic candidates for governor. The chances of Missouri having a Democratic governor are slim to none, but I was interested since I’ll be voting in the Democratic primary1 early next month.
Two candidates for the nomination showed up for the debate:
Crystal Quade, a young woman who grew up poor in Southwest Missouri (the Bible belt), worked multiple jobs as a waitress, worked her way through college, and all the way to becoming the Minority Leader of the Missouri House of Representatives.
Mike Hamra, a businessman with no political experience; but he has some detailed plans for what he wants to do as governor.
I couldn’t really tell them apart wrt policies. Both hit all the progressive talking points: abortion rights, racial discrepancies in law enforcement, etc. I expect to vote for Quade since she’s the experienced politician and knows how best to get stuff done.
From the TV ads I’ve seen, there’s only one really contentious Democratic primary race with a good bit of vitriol coming from both sides, the one for U.S. Representative from the First Congressional District2; and since I live in the Second District3, I won’t get a vote. The incumbent, Cori Bush, currently associated with the “squad” in the U.S. House, is being challenged by Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County Prosecutor. Bush is screaming that Bell is really a Republican, and Bell is screaming that Bush “has her own agenda”. It’s not pretty.
Although there’s a rational argument that, in heavily gerrymandered places like Missouri, the only election that actually matters is the favored party’s primary, I won’t be voting in the Republican primary because all the candidates are screaming that the other is insufficiently MAGA. I couldn’t possibly vote for any of them, and I can’t tell them apart.
1Missouri has different elections for presidential primaries and state/local primaries; and it has open primaries: you just tell the election official which ballot you want when to get to the polling place. It’s that simple.
2The City of St. Louis and much of northern St. Louis County where there’s still a good bit of poverty and defacto racial segregation.
3I’m not to blame for Ann Wagner, I promise.
“Bell is screaming that Bush “has her own agenda”.”
Why would you become a politician if you didn’t have an agenda? Makes me wonder what Bell’s agenda is…
Funny how that’s the only criteria among Republicans–it seems to be the same everywhere.
dangerousbeans: I couldn’t figure out how to say that more fully without generating a wall of text. A shorter version, perhaps somewhat over-simplified, is that Bell’s principal complaint is that Bush once voted with the “squad”, and so against Biden, on (IIRC) the infrastructure bill, in order to make the point that it lacked one particular progressive feature, a vote that she could safely take knowing that it would have no effect since she’d be in a tiny minority.
Bush’s complaints seem to be that Bell, when he was in private practice, once had a Republican client, and that he has accepted contributions from folks who have donated to both Democrats and Republicans. She infers from that that Bell is against abortion, a point almost trivially refuted.
If I lived in the First Congressional District, I’d probably vote for Bell, guessing that he’d be a reliable Democratic vote, imperfect, but way better that almost all the alternatives I can think of.
Katydid: for the better part of the last decade, Republicans arguing about who’s the most MAGA candidate is just “film at eleven” in Missouri. IIRC, the Republican state/local primary four years ago was all about guns for Jesus, “critical race theory”, and “protecting girls’ sports”. A candidate in western Missouri gave as evidence of impending crisis the fact that one trans woman got a bronze medal in one collegiate swimming meet. (Yes, really.)
I am often mystified at the things Republicans get themselves all worked up about. Trans athletes is one of them, particularly in elementary and middle school, when biological-based differences are very small. But even at the collegiate level–what percentage of the population is trans? Of that percentage, what percentage of trans people are desperate to do competitive sports? Of THAT tiny percentage, how many are better-than-average?
I love sports and participated in several different ones as a kid and teen. I was middle-of-the-pack at best. I married a man who wasn’t into playing sports. I had kids who were also middle-of-the-pack at their own sports. I think that’s most people, cis or trans.
To summarize: with all the very-real issues we’re facing, I find it amazing the non-issues Republicans get worked up about.