The Words, the Attitude, the Hat -- But Is It a Winning Look for 2018?

So far, the Republican candidates trying to out-Trump Trump have not been doing so well with voters. Roy Moore in Alabama wanted to be the Bama Basher in the style of his hero in the White House. Rick Saccone liked to say "I was Trump before Trump was Trump" in his Pennsylvania race for the US House, but he lost badly to Conor Lamb.

They're often Trump's parrots (see below), and often decked out in that scarlet hat and claiming to be more like Twitterman than their Republican opponents. Ex-Massey Energy Co. boss Don Blankenship, once he got out of prison and decided he wanted to be US Senator from West Virginia, became a Twitter sensation himself, emulating his idol (who's endorsed not one but both of the Republicans running against Blankenship in the primary. There's no end to irony).

Todd Rokita (pictured above in his MAGA hat) is running as the trumpster who wants to represent Indiana in the US Senate. "Not to be outdone, one of Mr. Rokita’s opponents, Luke Messer, tarred Mr. Rokita as 'Lyin’ Todd,' an echo of Mr. Trump’s epithet for Senator Ted Cruz, 'Lyin’ Ted.' Mr. Messer’s gripe? Mr. Rokita falsely claimed to have received the president’s endorsement" (Jeremy W. Peters). Rokita got the endorsement not of Corporal Bonespurs but of the corporal's head Indiana campaign persons back in 2016.

The poker bluff of 2018: "I see your strut, and I raise you a fuss."

“We don’t need to investigate our president. We need to arrest Hillary,” thunders Don Blankenship in a campaign ad in West Virginia.

“I proudly stand with our president and Mike Pence to drain the swamp,” declares Rokita in his own TV spot in Indiana.

"Let’s get this ‘@#$% thing’ done,” Martha McSally, candidate for US Senate from Arizona, said at a campaign rally about The Wall, and was quoted in the press.

“Someone told me the other day that I was the first Trump, the Trump for Mississippi,” said Chris McDaniel, a candidate for Senate in Mississippi.

The obvious question: Is any of this strut and fuss playing well beyond his base? And what's his base, anyway? Maybe 35% of the voting public, which is only a fraction of the whole public which can and might actually vote.

Like Twitterman likes to say on all occasions, "We'll see what happens."

Maverick and Unpredictable Republican Candidates Embroil Senate Races

The US Chamber of Commerce has entered the fight in the Mississippi special election in November: Will the appointed woman with no pizzazz keep the seat, or will the more charismatic but extremely conservative upstart push her aside?



We profiled Cindy Hyde-Smith's Republican upstart opponent, Chris McDaniel, back on March 1, when he was thought to be a likely Trumpian primary opponent to Sen. Roger Wicker this year, but then Cochran resigned and Cindy Hyde-Smith got appointed, and well, opportunity smells.

Anyway, the US Chamber of Commerce seems worried enough about the rise of McDaniel, and the loss of the seat to Democrat Mike Espy, that they're spending millions on that 30-second TV ad.

In West Virginia, something similar is happening, with the scary upstart being a recent felon who presided over a coal company that lied about the deaths of 29 coal miners, one Don Blankenship, who's notorious in West Virginia without necessarily being electable. So the Republican funding base is rallying against Blankenship, while state polls show Rep. Evan Jenkins in the lead and with Twitterman on stage in the state appearing to endorse both Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, while very publicly dissing Blankenship. Everyone thinks Blankenship would be a disaster running against Democrat Manchin, who might otherwise be uniquely vulnerable this year.

Mississippi Gets More Interesting

Back on March 1st, we wrote about the Mississippi Republican Chris McDaniel, who wants very badly to be a US senator and who was at that time planning a primary battle against incumbent Republican Senator Roger Wicker. In some Republican camps, McDaniel is considered as unelectable as Roy Moore turned out to be in Alabama.

Since March 1st other interesting things have happened in Mississippi and in Washington:

1. The other Republican senator, Thad Cochran, suddenly retired because of ill health. Chris McDaniel ran a primary against Cochran in 2014 and almost beat him. Chris McDaniel naturally decided that he'd rather run for Cochran's seat in the special election this November to complete Cochran's term.

2. The governor of Mississippi gets to replace Cochran by appointment on an interim basis until the special election in November. The governor,  Phil Bryant (R), was lobbied by Republican Majority

Cindy Hyde-Smith

Leader Mitch McConnell to appoint himself. McConnell reckoned that Bryant would be the strongest Republican for the November ballot.

3. Governor Bryant did not appoint himself. He appointed his Commissioner of Commerce and Agriculture, Cindy Hyde-Smith, a former Democrat not that well known in Mississippi and totally unknown in Washington, DC.

4. Robert Costa et al. report that Hyde-Smith "received a frosty reception in the West Wing." They don't think she can beat McDaniel, and they think McDaniel could become another Roy Moore type embarrassment. Governor Bryant pushed the White House for a quick endorsement of Hyde-Smith. President Trump has withheld his endorsement.

5. The White House's political director, Bill Stephen, scheduled a secret visit with Hyde-Smith yesterday. "It was unclear whether the gathering would forge a thaw in the troubled relationship or move the president any closer to endorsing Hyde-Smith" (Costa et al.).

6. In November, if no one receives a majority of the vote in the special election, the top two finishers

Mike Espy

will advance to a runoff, regardless of party affiliation. "Party strategists worry about a runoff that could include McDaniel and a Democrat, giving them two undesirable choices."

7. The Democrat who might arise to challenge McDaniel: Mike Espy, formerly Mississippi's first black congressman since Reconstruction and Secretary of Agriculture under President Bill Clinton. He is currently and since 2008 an attorney with the mega-firm Morgan and Morgan in Jackson, Miss., and also runs his own consulting firm specializing in governmental relations, rural development, food and nutrition, and international agricultural development issues.

Mississippi Thunderdome: Two Republicans Enter

Incumbent Republican US Senator Roger Wicker will face State Senator Chris McDaniel in a

Chris McDaniel
Jackson Free Press

Republican primary on June 5th that may shake the Southern world again. Wicker represents the Republican establishment, with $4 million in the bank already. McDaniel, a Roy Moore type -- only younger and not as creepy -- can light a fire with a word, and he must be good at it -- he almost beat the other incumbent Senator from Mississippi, Thad Cochran, in the Republican primary of 2014.

Wanna know the funniest thing? McDaniel yells that he's Trump's America all the way and will especially relish joining in the bar, ban, and deport-brown-people vision of the Trump administration. McDaniel lurvs Trump. "Mississippi needs a conservative to help move President Donald Trump’s agenda forward," is his mantra. Meanwhile, on Wednesday -- yesterday -- Trump's campaign arm said he was backing Wicker. D'oh! “I am with him in his reelection all the way!” the president wrote on Twitter.

So McDaniel, the new Southern Rebel who attended a tea party, sez, “I’m tired of the way things are being done in Washington. Donald Trump told us he wanted to drain the swamp. I’m going to go there to help him drain the swamp.”

Uh, excuse me, Mr. McDaniel, the president is golfing with your worst enemy.

Oh 2018, you're so alive with ironies and hazards!


The Democrats, goddamn it:

Sean Sullivan and Adam Ganucheau wrote a nice primer on the Mississippi Republican primary race in this morning's WashPost, and there was not one word in it about any Democrat who might also be running in November. And, depending on the outcome of the Republican battle, how would the likely -- or surprise -- winner of a Democratic primary do against the likely -- or surprise -- winner of Republican trial-by-combat on June 5th?

Here are the candidates, in the order of their arrival:

Jensen Bohren, 34-year-old self-proclaimed "nerd," who like many millennials has lived a

Jensen Bohren

peripatetic, scrambling life, working a plethora of odd-end jobs in a video store, at an agricultural research facility, in a recording studio, at a comic store, restaurants, and a public school. Bohren says he knows the “demoralizing trot around town with a stack of resumes, hoping for a callback.”

He's a Bernie Sanders Democrat. He wants to reform the voting system. He would rather see a ranked-choice system, in which voters rank the candidates on the ballot instead of voting for just one candidate. Bohren thinks this would help “break up the duopoly the two parties have on our government” and allow more diversity on ballots.

Bohren says "progressive Mississippians" are underrepresented by their government. “We didn’t expand Medicaid with the Affordable Care Act. We don’t fully fund our education system. For the most part, the representatives are about what you’d expect from a gerrymandered Mississippi.”

David Baria, state house minority leader, 56, a rising member of the Mississippi House since 2011. Interesting thing: he was first elected to the Mississippi Senate (District 46) in 2007 and held that seat until 2011. When redistricting made his Senate seat unwinnable for a Democrat, he ran very successfully in 2011 for the Mississippi House District 122 and then won reelection in 2015 (albeit by a margin of just 100 votes). (Mississippi legislative elections are for 4-year terms and occur in odd-numbered years.)

Baria lives in Bay St. Louis which is in both senate and house districts.

According to Sam Hall and Geoff Pendell, "National Democrats" started recruiting Baria after Democrat Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore in Alabama. Which national Democrats? The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)? According to Politico, the DSCC did not comment on Baria’s entry into the race. And Sen. Chuck Schumer "and other national Democrats" (?) originally tried to recruit Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley to challenge Wicker. No dice. Baria became the favorite and had a conversation with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the DSCC.

David Baria and his family

Baria is smacking his lips a little at the prospect of Republican rebel Chris McDaniel's winning the June 5th primary, but he choses his words very carefully: “In a vacuum, Chris McDaniel's getting in against Wicker creates the kind of dynamic that leads me to believe that might be achievable ... a path of victory for a Democrat in a U.S. Senate race in Mississippi.”

Baria has apparently been plenty feisty as leader of the Democratic minority in a House that is ruled rudely by a Republican supermajority, generating "intense drama, infighting and even legal battles" (Mississippi Today). Baria has been particularly loud about Republican give-aways and sweetheart legislation for corporations. In 2015 Baria introduced a bill to require that 80% of the funds from the BP Oil Spill Settlement be sent back to the Gulf Coast, but the Republican majority had another plan: put all the money into the state's general fund.

Baria has been a champion for insurance reform (especially throwing out "concurrent causation" clauses in homeowner's insurance that allowed companies to deny claims if a home was destroyed by both wind and by water -- during a hurricane, say -- and not just by one or the other forces of nature acting separately, for which the insurance company would have been pleased to honor your claim).

Baria's been a champion for solar power and industrial hemp. He penned an op-ed after the 2017 murder of a protestor during the notorious white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, calling for the state to remove the Confederate imagery from the Mississippi state flag. (The mere suggestion of which sends Republican Chris McDaniel into stomping fits.)

If Baria has a web presence, it ain't easy to find. And he better get cracking, building that campaign infrastructure.

Howard Sherman, husband of actress Sela Ward, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who's lived mainly in California and New York, a newcomer to politics with an economics degree from Claremont McKenna College, where he studied under Peter Drucker, and an MBA in New Venture Management from Harvard Business School. He is CEO of Inventure Holdings, LLC.

Howard Sherman, Sela Ward
and their two children

Sherman is claiming Meridian, Mississippi, as his residence, where Ward grew up and where the couple owns a summer home. Sherman styles himself as a "serial entrepreneur." He’s into everything, from manufacturing medical devices to consumer products like CD cases. In 2000, the couple founded Hope Village for Children, a children’s home "with a vision to lead each child to a place where hope is born" (whatever that means in practice). Inventure Holdings founded Against All Odds Productions, a "market-focused" film company that produces high-quality documentary features, like the "A Day in the Life of ______" (insert name of country) series. So far, no fiction features, but Sherman has ambitions in that direction. He's partnered with his actress wife, and they're looking for the right star script.

In 2015, the couple put their California estate on the market for $39 million (they ended up taking $28 million) and moved to New York City.

This is a puzzling candidate. Like Baria, he has no web presence whatsoever, no campaign website, but unlike Baria he also has no public platform, no discussion of issues whatsoever.

After Thunderdome: So it looks like it could be Baria in November, though Sherman has the money to create a ready-for-prime-time senator from thin cloth. If it's Baria against Wicker, it'll be tough sledding, given the comforts of seniority. If it's Baria against McDaniel, could it lead to another miracle in Dixie? No real sign of that yet.

A Credible Democrat Needs To Announce in Mississippi

There's one announced Democrat in the 2018 US Senate race in Mississippi -- Jensen Bohren -- but his biography (as well as any photograph) seems to be missing from the Net. He does have a website, but it looks underfunded and hence under-developed. He hits the right notes -- calls himself a "Berniecrat," supports Medicare for all, opposes the Citizens United Supreme Court case that opened up political campaigns to billionaire donors, and sees the assault on voting rights as our clearest and most present danger.

But who is he and where does he comes from? What's his history? His work experience and political allies (other than Bernie)? Hard to say.

We're interested because if Steve Bannon backs another fringe Republican whack-job against incumbent Republican Senator Roger Wicker in next June's Mississippi Republican primary, there needs to be a credible Democratic senatorial candidate cued up and ready to run like Doug Jones did in Alabama.

Roger Wicker v. Chris McDaniel?
Steve Bannon has pushed Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel to challenge Wicker, so we might see another insurgent Trumpist against a man seen as part of the "party establishment."

McDaniel already has a following among Mississippi conservatives. He ran as a Tea Party insurgent and came close to defeating Republican Senator Thad Cochran in the 2014 Republican primary. Cochran ended up beating McDaniel because of Mississippi's "open" primary rules which allowed Democrats to vote in that close run-off election, and Cochran courted the African American vote to good effect. McDaniel has a history of Trumpian utterances about race and gender.

McDaniel's defeat in that 2014 run-off against Cochran was climaxed by his refusal to concede the race on election night (video below). Yes, he looks like just the guy Steve Bannon would want to support.




Several "ifs" here: If McDaniel gets into the primary race against Wicker next year (he says he'll announce his decision in January) and if he defeats Wicker in that primary, Mississippi Democrats and moderate Republicans are going to need a presentable Democrat on the ballot. The Deep South seems ready for more awakening.