The Teamsters under Sean O’Brien are going bipartisan. O’Brien is politically lost. As Trump’s GOP tries to kill labor unions of all kinds, the Teamsters President is aiding him. Somewhere under the Meadowlands, Jimmy Hoffa is not smiling.
According to Politico, the Teamsters are handing out cash to the Republican Party:
For the second year in a row, the labor union’s political arm donated to the Republicans’ House campaign arm after nearly two decades of mostly backing Democrats. The labor union’s D.R.I.V.E political action committee — Democrat, Republican, Independent Voter Education — gave the National Republican Congressional Committee $5,000 in the second quarter.
First off, the Teamsters are broke. They gave the NRCC and DCCC $20,000 combined. They are probably hurting, which makes sense, given that professionals in other trades unions will tell you their leadership has no idea what they’re doing. That union is in trouble. This should be a political earthquake of a story on it’s own, but it’s just overshadowed in the bizarre world we live in.
Second off, the Teamsters love themselves PA Republicans. Check out their list:
In addition to giving to the NRCC, Teamsters doled out a combined $62,000 in contributions to nearly two-dozen GOP congressional candidates, including in significant battleground districts:
Rob Bresnahan, Mike Kelly and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania
Pete Stauber and Tom Emmer of Minnesota
Nicole Malliotakis, Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler of New York
Jefferson Shreve of Indiana
Dave Taylor, Bob Latta, Michael Rulli and Dave Joyce of Ohio
Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith of New Jersey
David Rouzer of North Carolina
Tom Barrett of Michigan
Blake Moore of Utah
Darin LaHood and Mike Bost of Illinois
Troy Nehls of Texas
Vern Buchanan of Florida
The group also gave this year to GOP Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jon Husted of Ohio, and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania.
McCormick, Bresnahan, Fitzpatrick, and Kelly are Republicans who to varying degrees have to stay awake around elections. The two glaring omissions? Scotty “Insurrectionist” Perry and Ryan Mackenzie. It seems kind of obvious that even a poorly run labor union wouldn’t give to Perry. Mackenzie? Well let’s be honest, he’s just not moderate at all on labor issues. He not only opposes the right to organize and protections for labor, he opposes forward thinking solutions on automation and the rise of AI. The omission is glaring here.
Happy Monday! There’s about 45 MLB baseball games left. Time to bust out the old power rankings for the first time and give you my take on how MLB’s best stack up. Here’s this week’s #1-30 list.
The Milwaukee Brewers
The Houston Astros
The Philadelphia Phillies
The Los Angeles Dodgers
The Detroit Tigers
The San Diego Padres
The Toronto Blue Jays
The Chicago Cubs
The Seattle Mariners
The Boston Red Sox
The New York Mets
The Cincinnati Reds
The Cleveland Guardians
The Texas Rangers
The New York Yankees
The San Francisco Giants
The Miami Marlins
The St. Louis Cardinals
The Arizona Diamondbacks
The Tampa Bay Rays
The Kansas City Royals
The Atlanta Braves
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
The Oakland Athletics
The Baltimore Orioles
The Minnesota Twins
The Chicago White Sox
The Washington Nationals
The Pittsburgh Pirates
The Colorado Rockies
The Brewers are, and have been, the best team in the league for a few months, just now the record reflects that. The next five teams join them in having a chance to win this October. From #7 to #15 there is still a chance to displace some of those teams, but for varying reasons it seems less likely. From #16 to #24 there are some reasons to still be watching at this stage. From #25 to #27 there’s reasons to maybe watch a few nights a week. The next two don’t really even have any sort of direction or idea of what they want to do next. As for #30, God bless your soul, what have you done?
If you were hired to run a college sports team tomorrow, one of your most important jobs would be to recruit the players that are going to be on your team. You would identify the ideal players that you could realistically recruit to join you, try to get the best player on your list, and then you would put your resources into helping them win. Sure, you realistically don’t mind some competition for spots on your team, but the idea isn’t to have lots of intersquad battles for spots. The idea is to get the best players and put them in the best position to win.
In an ideal world, party politics is a team sport. Staff at the DSCC, DCCC, PA HDCC, PA SDCC, and any other campaign committee, should be trying to build the strongest slate of general election candidates that they can to win the next election. I have to give the DSCC fairly high marks on that front so far this cycle. It appears that they have found the targets that they wanted in North Carolina and Ohio, and may not be far off in Maine. Only Texas looks messy so far. They’re largely avoiding stupid primaries. That’s a good thing, because primaries cost money, and campaign money is precious.
Things don’t operate quite the same at the DCCC. In PA-10, the committee got their candidate in Janelle Stelson, a candidate who finally made the district as close as it should be based on the political dynamics there. Meanwhile in PA-8, there is no major candidate yet, and according to the streets, several candidates who have track records of winning elections passed on running. The candidate that is reportedly the preferred candidate in PA-8 just had to go through a primary battle to keep her job as Mayor, and now she faces a general election with both Republican and Independent Democratic challengers, making it likely she won’t be getting into the race very soon. Meanwhile across the river in NJ-7 there are three serious candidates that are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars per quarter right now, and reportedly a fourth is about to enter, meaning whoever gets to face Tom Kean Jr. will be starting from scratch after winning a brutal primary. That probably sounds familiar to folks here in PA-7, where we’re about to get our fifth candidate in the primary to face Ryan Mackenzie. All of this while there’s a candidate clearing the field and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in PA-1 (Bucks County), a district that Democrats have literally have no chance of winning unless Brian Fitzpatrick loses a primary (Fitzpatrick voted against Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and has been winning by double digits for several election cycles now). If this sounds bad, don’t take it as isolated to this region- these problems are persisting in other parts of the country too.
Here in PA-7 is a case study in chaotic recruitment. There are four candidates currently in the race. After a false start or cold feet, the fifth is going to enter on Friday, according to the street word. At least three of the existing candidates met with the DCCC before entering, and received help hiring staff and building their paid media consulting team. After getting them all into the same primary, the committee is shocked to see that two of them aren’t raising a half a million dollars every three months. The third candidate they recruited has become problematic to them, because nobody bothered to vet him ahead of time to figure out he had no ties to the district and was a lifelong Republican and union buster. So since they didn’t like the candidates they had, now they’re telling everyone they have the silver bullet candidate. He doesn’t poll well, even after his bio, he’s never run for office before or raised any money, and has no obvious path to the nomination, but reality be damned. They claim the Governor wants him, and will campaign for him and raise him his money. Of course, they claimed the Governor was going to call and ask everyone to drop out a few weeks ago, but now that the call never came, that isn’t important. They’re bad mouthing the existing candidates, claiming their teams are quitting on them and they won’t show any money raised this quarter. There was a supporter of the new guy in Lehigh County claiming the existing candidates lose a non-existent general election poll to Mackenzie, and badly at that. There’s even a public-sector union member that claims they need to get the existing candidates out of the way because I was mean to somebody on this blog. The list of excuses is almost as long as the list of candidates at this point. There’s no reason to believe we won’t be doing this same thing again with a new candidate come October or November either. This is silly and pointless, and really doesn’t produce winning nominees.
Say what you want about the Republican Party, but last cycle when they decided they wanted Ryan Mackenzie to be their candidate in PA-7, they didn’t put him through a ringer to be nominated. Their leadership bought him the primary over the preferred candidate of the conservative grassroots. The God’s honest truth in PA-7, PA-8, and NJ-7 is that the DCCC could (and probably should have from a pure path of least resistance) have simply went to the most recent Democratic Congresspeople in those districts and guaranteed them support if they had run again. If they had begged hard enough, they might have ran. If they said no, fine, then you go recruit the top prospective candidate in the districts, preferably someone with a strong pathway to winning. What we have here is a mess.
The model of just recruiting a bunch of candidates, teaming them up with all-star DC consultant teams, then making them compete for fundraising dollars with each other until they all fail and you have to go find a new candidate makes absolutely no sense. Pick a candidate, skip the competition. Or if you really think they need to compete with each other, maybe don’t make the field so crowded that no one can get any oxygen. There is no silver bullet, no savior coming to save us all from that.
People get caught up in “horserace coverage” during elections, but the reality is that nothing actually happens until money is being spent and votes are being cast. With that said, I told you about a poll a couple of days ago that was out in the field for the PA-7 Democratic Primary. I didn’t know who had actually done it then though. It turns out the poll was done by PPP (Public Policy Polling). For who? I don’t know. I managed to get the results though. McClure holds a 16% lead in the initial ballot, with Pinsley and Obando-Derstine tied for second. Brooks and Crosswell are within the margin of error of zero initially. After bios McClure and Obando-Derstine are the only serious candidates, with McClure’s lead only mildly changed. Crosswell gets out of being within the margin of error of zero, but only up to 7%. Even after bio, Brooks is only at 5%. The concept of a candidate like Brooks does better with the public than the actual candidate does. Pinsley actually goes down after people heard his bio. When informed that Crosswell is a lifelong Republican, with a union buster past, and no ties to the community, 88% of Democratic voters said they had very serious or somewhat serious concerns.
Only the Pinsley part of this shocks me. Lamont McClure has a base of support that he built up winning races over the past 15+ years, there’s probably no way to really drive him down in Northampton County. While Carol Obando-Derstine is a relative unknown, Democratic voters like voting for an educated woman who is an immigrant to this country. There’s a rationalization for these candidates running. I would think the same for Pinsley, as he’s occupying the political “left lane” in this race, but the polling didn’t bare that out. Crosswell is the creation of some Beltway consultants who want to just pour money into creating a fictional story that didn’t really happen. As for Brooks, while people say they want to vote for a blue-collar bio, fire fighter, and little league coach, that’s not what they end up selecting when push comes to shove.
Again, this isn’t votes being cast. Polling assumes everyone can get their message out at equal levels, which they can’t. On top of this, almost 40% are undecided at the end of the poll, which I’m sure some Carvillian Geniuses in DC and the Valley will say shows this race is going to change. This race is starting to shows shades of the 2018 primary though, in which Susan Wild won by 2.4% with 33.5%. There are five candidates this time instead of six, but were Roger Ruggles or David Clark running to actually win in that race? Carol, by way of bio, is probably going to grow into a candidate who gets close to 30% simply by staying viable. I don’t see how or why she would do better than Congresswoman Wild did in that race though, seeing as how the district is more conservative than it was then. McClure’s positives are very high, like Morganelli in that race, but he isn’t out of step with the party on Trump, immigration, or abortion, like Morganelli was. In this race it will be Crosswell answering for negatives. Brooks kind of looks like the Ruggles in this race. Pinsley wants to be the Edwards. At least right now, this race looks like maybe it’s a two dog hunt. Maybe.
Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley just became the fourth Democrat to officially enter the race for the PA-7 Congressional seat. Pinsley told one Democratic insider last week that he will be the “progressive” in the race. Others have told me he is hoping to garner support from “Make the Road,” and other Lehigh County progressive groups.
Pinsley becomes the second elected official and third Lehigh County based (allegedly) candidate in the race. He will attempt to consolidate the “Bernie crowd.” He has previously run for State Senate and Auditor General. Despite his progressive views, he has struggled in the past with earning union support.
I still expect Bob Brooks to enter and make it five. Very clearly, this field is not closing off and consolidating behind one candidate. We are looking at a crowded 2026 primary.
About a half hour ago my mother received a text poll on the Democratic Primary in PA-7. The poll asked her about Ryan Crosswell, Lamont McClure, Bob Brooks, Carol Obando-Derstine, and Mark Pinsley. It gave some biographical information on each. My mother thought they were “impressive.” No idea who did it, but I’d be interested to hear the results. She didn’t mention any negatives, but I didn’t see it for myself.
I registered as a Democrat in no small part because of George W. Bush. I was unhappy with how he had won the 2000 election and decided to be a Democrat because of this (and a few, very important, other reasons). Then Iraq, the Patriot Act, Katrina, and a market collapse pushed me firmly left of center. I had grown up in a union household, but those young adult years really made me a Democrat. I couldn’t stand Bush 43.
Fast forward to last year. I lose my lower left leg. By Thanksgiving I have my prosthetic. A couple setbacks later, I’m walking for real at New Years. In May I had another issue, back to the hospital for three days. After some healing, I was back up, and this week I get a state of the art brand new leg. Medicine and science are great. For those of you who hate the industries, let me tell you that those of us living with major issues thank God every day that we live with today’s advancements.
Now, the ironic part- I would not have the medical blessings I have without the Bush (and Obama) era VA. I owe 95% of my thanks to the brave Americans who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were the reason the VA and medical field poured money into prosthetics research. Every ounce of faith I have in humanity goes to them. But it was the Bush Administration’s investment that got me walking today. Hence I will tell you- it’s not worth the partisan hate we put out into the universe. Almost always, someone is doing good for others. Embrace that.
Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association President (IAFF) and retired Bethlehem Fire Fighter Bob Brooks will reportedly enter the race for Congress in the Lehigh Valley this week, according to a source in labor. He joins a field of three, with one more person reportedly about to enter. This primary is getting crowded.
Brooks has an excellent profile to run in this district, at least on paper. Every time I’ve ever seen it polled in Pennsylvania, fire fighters are the most overwhelmingly popular group tested. He has an authentically blue collar profile, which fits well trying to win over the district’s crucial swing voters. If he had come out months ago, one wonders if the field would be this crowded.
With that all said, I think this is a fool’s errand. No one knows who Brooks is right now, and there’s no reason to believe he’ll be the kind of fundraiser that Crosswell has been, on his own. Unless he can drive McClure out (he can’t), he’s not going to get enough votes out of his home county. He’s a very risky unknown as a first time candidate in a crucial seat. He claims some major people are backing him, or have promised to back him if he starts out well. Let’s see if they’re willing to not only endorse, and campaign for him, but also to raise him the kind of money he needs. Short of an insane investment from others, I see no path to victory.
At this point, I think this is simply comedy hour. Imagine you’re a Republican carpetbagger. Imagine you also have a history of being a union buster. Now imagine you raise $320k and only $500 of it is from the district you want to represent. Ok, you’ve got all of that? Now you see a story in the Morning Call, a story that ends up being made up, but you don’t know that at the time. You spring to action, because to your credit, you want to help.
Ok, hey, your heart is in the right place, but you’re not in the right place. Your law firm is 3,000 miles away from this family.
Can this firm do the work? I’m sure they can. But if you already are being hit for being a carpetbagger in the Lehigh Valley, maybe hunting for business for a firm in California isn’t the best look. Like I’m 2,000% sure there is an immigration attorney in the Lehigh Valley.
Of course, there was the whole matter of being caught on the wrong side of the lie too. Lyin’ Ryan Mackenzie’s team had a field day with him.
Look, this is amateur hour. This is why you can’t just throw any first time candidate into a Congressional race. This guy is totally out of his element and should probably have shopped for a safer seat in Louisiana, North Carolina, Schuylkill County, Washington DC, California, ah, I give up. He should have just run as a Republican in PA-9, or something.
Apocalypse Vibes 