Crooksy and the Election Deniers

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is running to be the Democratic nominee for Congress in PA-7. He even filmed a commercial with Pete Buttigieg this week in a cigar bar to give you the sense he’s a middle class guy (It’s a great cigar bar, I recommend it). One has to wonder though, does Crooksy even like Buttigieg? We know he doesn’t like President Obama. Brooks personally announced the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association was not endorsing Kamala Harris. I wonder why? Crooksy really doesn’t seem to like other Democrats, unless they’re endorsing him.

Maybe Crooksy is running in the wrong primary. He loves religious radicals and gun nuts. He really doesn’t think Democrats know how to talk to working class people. Most importantly though, Crooksy loves election denying Republicans. He made sure to personally repost social media posts from his union praising Republican State Senators Mike Regan and Camera Bartolotta. Regan was named in a report for spreading election denial conspiracies. Bartolotta signed a letter to Senator Mitch McConnell and Congressman Kevin McCarthy asking them to delay certification of the 2020 Election. Bartolotta currently sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee in Harrisburg, as well as the Rules & Executive Nominations Committee. She is an election denier when it’s convenient for her. Crooksy is fine with this.

Look, I know most of these GOP legislators are just doing this to keep their jobs. Adherence to “Dear Leader” is a requirement in that party, and both of these folks probably pushed this shit to stay on the right side of the local MAGA Juntas, or local GOP committees (didn’t work for Bartolotta). The problem here is the hypocrisy of Crooksy. He personally made it a point to not endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris as leader of his union, which is certainly his choice, but he’s giving cover from that same post to people who were giving cover to people in the nut house, denying the 2020 election. Now he wants to run and claim he’s some leftist that will take back the working man. Crooksy is just the new John Fetterman, right down to the hoodie. What a shame that Buttigieg is covering for this fraud.

Thoughts on Texas and the First Big Primary Night

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Well thank God that is over…

Before I go all in depth about a primary that I’ve been imploring people to ignore for months (I really can’t see a Democrat winning the Texas Senate race unless everything goes right), let’s take a look at the big picture on the night. For the most part, last night’s primaries were largely inconclusive as to whether or not we’re in an anti-establishment, insurgency election year. Talarico appears to have defeated Crockett in a race where both sides claimed to be something different and new. Christian Menefee, a brand new incumbent Congressman, leads long time incumbent Al Green in Texas 18, but who knows how much we should attribute this to any one specific thing (Green is a lightning rod in many ways). Julie Johnson trails in her Dallas area Texas 33 seat, but she trails former Congressman and Senate nominee Colin Allred, and like Texas 18, it’s most likely heading to a runoff. Embattled Texas 28 incumbent Henry Cuellar smacked his opposition by 15% and avoided a runoff. Over in North Carolina 4, Valerie Foushee leads by about a thousand votes as I write this, or just about 1% against Durham County Commissioner and leftist darling, Nida Allam. There was a ton of spending here, and the late money favored Allam. So yes, there were some very competitive primaries tonight, and some incumbents are going to lose, but not all of them, and some of them are essentially losing to other incumbents. Let’s call it basically what it is, an inconclusive round.

The Republicans had a much more insurgent election, which is remarkable after a decade of the most insurgent movement in modern political history. John Cornyn was very nearly the Senate Majority Leader like 15 months ago and today he’s heading towards a runoff against a guy who almost got impeached and sent to jail (Ken Paxton), and may not even ultimately hold much of a lead when the count is done. In Texas 23, Tony Gonzales “survived” the scandal for having an affair with a staffer who lit herself on fire then, but will go to a runoff. Dan Crenshaw got crushed in Texas 2. In North Carolina, the Senate President Phil Berger is apparently losing his primary by 2 votes. Despite the best efforts of nearly every significant Republican in America to bend over backwards for Donald Trump, the GOP’s cultural purge continues. I’m not even sure what the policy beef is at this point, nor do I think it matters. Republican voters don’t like the people doing Trump’s bidding, even as they like Trump and replace them with harder line candidates.

Now with all of that said, we can have dessert. Obviously the most important Senate nomination of the night was Roy Cooper in North Carolina, the best Democratic challenge candidate for Senate in the country this year. Texas had all the passion though. Now look, I don’t see either of them as winning, but it fired people up. There was a perception of Talarico as the progressive left’s candidate and Crockett as the “establishment” left’s candidate. This is kind of news to people actually important in both wings, but we digress. Crockett’s strategy was simply to double down on the last decade of Democratic strategy, leaning into the base vote hard and confronting Trump’s GOP on all fronts, especially culturally. Even so, many establishment folks privately didn’t see how it would work here. Talarico seems to want to be less culturally abrasive and try to persuade more moderate Republicans and Evangelicals with progressive Christianity style. I’ve said for a while I don’t think either will work, and this is a battle over whether it’s better to lose by 7% or 9%. While I generally do side with candidates like Crockett, I think that Talarico’s strategy has a slightly better (think 0% vs. 5%) chance of victory. I don’t think you can “turnout” your way through a rough electorate, in either a red area or bad year, and I definitely don’t think you can do that in Texas where you’re losing as many Latino votes as you’re winning. Talarico essentially won in any part of the state that doesn’t have a sizable Black population, and his campaign’s work on Latino voters clearly did pay off. Ultimately I don’t think the House Oversight Committee is a great place to launch any statewide campaign unless you’re in a very blue or red state, and Crockett was quite good at her job on that committee- which is probably the wrong skillset for a Democrat to win statewide in Texas. Again, I don’t think it will matter, so I stayed out of this fight largely. My guess is the somewhat bitter tone of this primary will make it hard for Talarico to turn out Black voters in November, but I also think he’ll lose for more reasons than that.

In the one set of bad news from the night, super douchebag and former Yankees First Baseman Mark Teixeira won the GOP nomination in Texas 21 and will probably win big now. I wasn’t a fan as a ballplayer and I’m not a fan now.

Establishment Politics and the Democratic Party’s Road to Nowhere

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Ruben Gallego is a United States Senator in Arizona. He won his seat in 2024, a key hold for Democrats, largely running on stronger border security. As best I can tell, his Congressional history is largely pro-Israel, opposing BDS, supporting the “Iron Dome,” supported a stronger definition of antisemitism, and consistently supporting a two-state solution (he did support the Iran Deal under President Obama, which Israel opposed). Gallego even says the Democratic Party should focus on building prosperity, over focusing on equity. The guy is a full blown moderate, or at least he was. He seems to be blowing in the winds of change, embracing a radically different vision now.

Ruben Gallego endorsed Graham Platner for the Maine Senate seat today, a shameful act that drew political fire from all directions. Last Fall, he went on Pod Save America to slam the party’s narrative with a bunch of lefties, a bizarre move from a political moderate. Gallego has displayed further bro behavior by complaining about Democrats not allowing “women to be hot.” The guy’s behavior is really all over. When he was running for Senate, he wanted his divorce records sealed after saying his PTSD from the war had lead him to drink and smoke too much and have outbursts. He blasted Kyrsten Sinema for “doing nothing” while considering a run against her, then ran as a moderate Democrat anyway. Gallego is really all over the map.

Even though Gallego is an enigma, his endorsement of Platner doesn’t make much sense. Platner is Mr. Nazi Tattoo. He posted horrible things on the internet for years. His campaign pays his wife a salary, which Gallego doesn’t. Platner might have dated several women at once. He was a Blackwater mercenary. Now we find out he’s going on Nazi conspiracy theorist podcasts and retweeting Neo-Nazis. Even for Gallego’s unsteady brand, Platner is insane. He called him the “kind of fighter Maine has never seen,” which is true, the Nazis never invaded Maine. This seems totally unnecessary.

Well, sometimes endorsements happen for stupid reasons. Really stupid reasons. Like Ruben Gallego has the same television consultant as Graham Platner, so he endorsed him. Rebecca Katz, who was also a part of that Pod Save America debacle, is the television consultant for both of them. She was John Fetterman’s advisor as well, because of course she was. Her co-workers worked for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Cori Bush. Oh, and they’re Bob “Crooksy” Brooks’ consultants too. And in case you need to be shocked some more- Ruben Gallego also endorsed Brooks. Because I’m sure he knew a lot about Crooksy going into this.

This whole “blue collar populist” Democratic movement is a sham. If you pay certain people enough money, they’ll shovel you into their template and give you another endorsement from an erratic Senator in another state. They’d probably have “Shrek” Fetterman out there endorsing some of these freaks, but he’s not very popular right now because he refuses to cosplay a Nazi, and honestly that might be the most respectable thing he’s done in his strange, strange existence, which they also created. Their entire argument is that if we just have some white guys all go out and sell socialism, with an occasional non-white person who happens to be young and halfway interesting, we can convince America to at least be more like Europe, if not like Mao’s China. Because, you know, Mr. Nazi Tattoo is a good future for America.

As Pete Stumps for Bob “Crooksy” Brooks, I Wonder if Crooksy Even Likes Buttigieg, or Anyone in the Biden Administration?

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Pete Buttigieg did a tour through Eastern Pennsylvania today. He stopped in Philadelphia today with Malcolm Kenyatta, he hung out with Frank Pintabone and Larry Holmes Jr. in Easton, and of course he did an event here with Crooksy. If you’re wondering why Pete Buttigieg endorsed a guy he didn’t know before he got a call from him, Pete’s Iowa State Director was a Fetterman senior staffer with Crooksy’s TV consultants- you know, establishment Democratic politics at play. An endorsement as worthless as the promissory note Crooksy signed to pay back his ex-mother-in-law, according to the judges who rejected his appeal over a decade later.

Since Bob “Crooksy” Brooks brought Secretary Buttigieg to town to stump for him though, I guess it’s worth asking, what does Crooksy actually think of “Mayor Pete?” Look, you might say that’s ridiculous, but I never would have thought a statewide union President would think President Obama “sucked” when his own international union supported him. Then again, Crooksy does have some opinions on outspoken Black men. You see though, Pete Buttigieg was the Secretary of Transportation in the Biden Administration, and we don’t know what Crooksy thought of Biden (yet). We do know, at least if you do a simple google search, that the Pennsylvania Association of Professional Fire Fighters declined to endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris in 2024, with Brooks himself deferring to the IAFF for an endorsement, who also didn’t endorse Harris (simply google “did the Pennsylvania professional fire fighters association endorse Kamala Harris?”). Boy, I wonder what Crooksy didn’t like about her? Oh right, she didn’t know how to speak to the middle class like he does.

Anyway though, enough with “Crooksy Brooksy’s” feelings about Black people and the Biden Administration, and on to some real substance here. I don’t think Pete Buttigieg really knew the guy he was endorsing all that well, and I am not so sure that Crooksy actually likes Secretary Buttigieg. Or at least, if Crooksy does like him, I think he keeps it quiet so he doesn’t upset his “rain maker” in Harrisburg, the Governor. You see, Secretary Buttigieg was the main point person out selling the Biden era Infrastructure Bill that passed Congress. One of the things Secretary Buttigieg really sold hard to the public? Rural Broadband. In fact, Secretary Buttigieg really sold the case for broadband in the bill:

“A connection to the internet is about as important as a connection to the interstate is,” he said. “You need both, you need to be able to connect both digitally and physically in order to do everything; from getting up to date market information on when to sell, to being able to have your kids do their homework or take advantage of telemedicine opportunities.”

The deal would put $65 billion towards expanding the country’s broadband network. Buttigieg said 100 percent of Americans should have fast, reliable, and affordable internet.

“That’s not easy, especially that last couple percent, after you get to 98 percent or so, for folks who are in really spread-out areas,” Buttigieg said. “But it’s important to the President that no one’s left behind and that no one has to wonder whether this bill is going to be for them.”

You know, I couldn’t agree more with all of that. Broadband for all! You see though, there’s some debate about how that went. You see, Governor Shapiro called the program a failure, going so far as to say absolutely no one in Pennsylvania benefitted from it. For real, he said zero people got it. If that’s the case, that is one of the biggest government boondoggles in history. Either Biden’s Administration, and by extension Buttigieg, were a bunch of inept morons, or Shapiro’s Administration was totally inept in applying for the money, or both. Now, I’ve got my opinions on Buttigieg helping Shapiro be successful, but I think it’s fair to say both sides have their opinions on what happened, and they don’t mix.

It may seem a bit inconvenient for Crooksy’s backers that Shapiro says Buttigieg and the team on the infrastructure law were incompetent, especially when they are bringing Buttigieg to the district, but I doubt that bothers Crooksy in the slightest bit. He knows that the Governor butters his rolls in this race, and frankly Buttigieg was just doing a fly in for promotion ahead of 2028. I mean, Crooksy didn’t like Barack Obama, he clearly didn’t like Kamala Harris, by proximity the guy probably thinks Joe Biden wasn’t so bright too, and Pete Buttigieg is just some guy who was junior to all of them anyway. He’s probably glad he came in and gave him a shout out, but he needs the Governor to buy him this office. So don’t be fooled by any of this. It was little more than a publicity stunt, and not a believable one at that.