Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:56 AM and sunset 8:03 PM for 14h 06m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) is arrested for a series of killings in the New York City area over the period of one year.
Unofficial results of contested races below, in order from state to county —
WISGOP Gubernatorial. Trump-endorsed Connecticut-homeowner Michels wins comfortably:
Candidate Total Votes % Votes Tim Michels (R) 326,571 47.2% Rebecca Kleefisch (R) 291,013 42.0% Timothy Ramthun (R) 41,647 6.0% Kevin Nicholson (R) 24,842 3.6% Adam Fischer (R) 8,155 1.2%
For Kleefisch, last of the Walker team, it’s the end of the road. Her dutiful service to Walker, and Walker’s partnership with Trump on Foxconn, only got them, well, Trump’s endorsement of Michels.
On to November, where Michels now sees that he’s going to need donor-class money to beat Evers, as Patrick Marley reports:
@michelsforgov has largely self-funded his campaign and said he wouldn’t accept donations of more than $500. After wining his primary tonight, his campaign manager said he would now accept donations of up to $20,000, the maximum allowed under Wisconsin law.
Lieutenant Governor. Ben Baker reports Democrat Sara Rodriguez and Republican Roger Roth win lieutenant governor primaries to join governor tickets:
98.42% Est. Vote Counted
Choices Total Votes % Votes Rodriguez (D) 353,818 76.5% Her (D) 108,737 23.5% ….
99% Est. Vote Counted
Choices Total Votes % Votes Roger Roth (R) 178,750 30.1% Patrick Testin (R) 108,667 18.3% Cindy Werner (R) 80,857 13.6% Jonathan Wichmann (R) 79,245 13.4% Will Martin (R) 54,752 9.2% Kyle Yudes (R) 32,027 5.4%
WISGOP Attorney General. Eric Toney defeats Adam Jarchow, with Karen Mueller as the biggest crackpot loon of all third-place candidate:
98.65% Est. Vote Counted
Choices Total Votes % Votes Eric Toney (R) 223,180 37.5% Adam Jarchow (R) 219,720 36.9% Karen Mueller (R) 152,302 25.6%
Isaac Yu reports of Mueller:
Mueller did unexpectedly well, capturing a quarter of the vote despite raising just $42,000 last quarter. She had entered the race on a promise to prosecute doctors who refused to prescribe the anti-parasite medication ivermectin for COVID-19 patients. Mueller appeared to be leading in three counties and very nearly took the Janesville-based Rock County.
Speaker Vos Survives Trump’s Scorn. A close race, but Vos survives a challenge from Trump-endorsed Adam Steen, and now — now — Vos declares “Michael Gableman, the man he hired to investigate the 2020 presidential election, ‘an embarrassment.’ ”
31st Assembly District. Whitewater is within the 31st District, and in that race, Ellen Schutt wins the WISGOP primary over Maryann Zimmerman and Jason Dean:
Walworth County Sheriff. Whitewater resident Dave Gerber defeats Craig Konopski in the WISGOP race for Walworth County Sheriff:
Raves in the wreckage: Party planners help rebuild Ukraine:
There is more than one way to help one’s country:
Before the war, Kyiv’s music scene and hipster vibes helped the Ukrainian capital earn the reputation of being “the new Berlin.” But Russia’s invasion has halted the city’s nightlife and put many creative young professionals out of work. Now a group of party-planners have turned their talent’s to hosting “clean-up” raves in Kyiv Oblast, taking volunteers into villages devastated by Russian attacks to help locals clean-up and restore their communities. Without aid from these volunteer groups, government efforts to rebuild homes and clean up communities would likely take years.
I’m thinking that the WI Dems should have listened to Howard Dean when he pointed out that you can’t win if you don’t run. Vos is running unopposed, so deposing him is precluded. It’s possible, albeit remotely, that the whole Gableman fiasco could have gotten him thrown out. Pretty unlikely, given the hard-core “conservative” nature of the district, even before the Gerrymandering reinforcement, but no possible now. Sucks to be Robin…
I put conservative in quotes, as the definition has morphed significantly. The same conservatives that got rabid about Colin Kaepernik’s disrespect of the flag have now turned the American flag into a confederate battle flag, to be proudly flown on a sharpened spear while storming the capitol. My right-wing neighbor has a little Trump shrine next to his driveway that features a solar-lighted flagpole with both an American flag and a Trump “Take America Back” flag on the same flagpole, all tastefully decorated by a nice patch of Black-Eyed Susans. He says he is conservative.
Conservatives are not alone when it comes to redefining conventional nomenclature. Look at what Rand Paul has done to the term “Libertarian”.
All true. A candidate who fights like mad, and has a few clear issues of his or her own to advance again and again, could make for competitive races. There are issues like this, but as you say, no candidate, then no one to advance these points at all (let alone repeatedly).
On libertarians – every last time libertarians have moved toward a fusion with conservatives (and there have been several moments like this since the term libertarian was coined) it has meant a loss of principle and identity for libertarians. Those efforts were destructive of liberty, diluting basic principles for supposed (but chimerical) political gain. The fault of this is wholly libertarian.
With Trumpism, there’s not an effort to conserve, but instead a revanchism toward a nativist autocracy. The most regrettable programs of Sanders, for example, are nothing half so bad as the Trumpists’ use of state power to overturn the constitutional, liberal democratic order. The very nature of liberal democracy is the protection of individual rights within a democracy. The Libertarian Party (LP) has moved in a MAGA direction, and so makes itself a disgrace and fraud on libertarianism and a threat to liberty (when, by contrast, a fundamental principle of libertarianism is to avoid coerced, imposed results).
This horde has simply diluted the principle of liberty into a word for doing what they want without consequence (and indeed, fully aware and gleeful) of the consequential harm to others.
No deals with that ilk. We’ll make our way as small part of a grand coalition in support of the constitutional order.
It’s only easier to align with that band if one doesn’t care about, or seeks to make, life harder for others.