It’s time for the 529th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, and today our subject is Trent Kelly, the current U.S. House Representative for Mississippi’s 1st District after winning a special election in June 2015 to succeed the late Congressman Alan Nunnelee with 70% of the vote. Our first order of business would be to point out that Trent Kelly served two deployments to Iraq, in 2005 and in 2009 as a member of the Army National Guard, serving in the 168th Engineer Brigade. And while there are many things we might be critical of members of the GOP for, we will always salute them for their service to our country.
That being said, as a private citizen before he won his special election, we take exception to Trent Kelly. He was working as a District Attorney, talking a big talk about all the good he would do in that job, when he was presented with the opportunity to prosecute a hate crime committed against Devin Norman on federal charges, a man who was brutally beaten for being gay in March of 2015, he balked. Maybe Kelly was thinking charging the attacker with a hate crime, instead of just simple assault would have hurt his chances against some of the other candidates in the GOP field running for office for Mississippi’s 1st (let’s be real, Mississippi’s a state that has a long track record of looking the other way when hate crimes happen). Be it deliberately, or just because he was unaware of the case (unlikely), Kelly dropped the ball, but was still elected to office.
Apparently campaigning solely on his service to his country, Kelly won a terribly crowded GOP Primary against more challengers than can be counted on your fingers, in spite of having almost no stated stances on the issues. And the only thing he did specify is that he would like the 14th Amendment, which normally covers birthright citizenship to also cover “pre-born human beings”. For those needing a translation of what that means, it means that Kelly’s making an end-around attack on Roe v. Wade by having the 14th Amendment declare zygotes and fetuses to be fully functional human beings and not just clumps of cells, so they get the constitutional rights that would make aborting them murder. Isn’t that swell?
So it probably will come as little surprise that right around the time Trent Kelly arrived in Washington, D.C., and the Republican Party was s***ting itself in fury over the Center for Medical Progress’ “sting” video of Planned Parenthood, that he signed onto a letter promising he would vote to shut down the government if Planned Parenthood was not defunded. Based off of a video that experts have debunked as a fraud. If the first idea you agree to as a member of the legislative branch of government is shut the whole thing down, maybe you shouldn’t be in office?
So because he’s been in office only a little more than a year, Rep. Kelly does not have the most extensive voting record. It is, however, still troubling.
- September 11th, 2015: Kelly votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Kelly co-sponsors and votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- November 19th, 2015: Kelly co-sponsors and votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
- February 2nd, 2016: Trent Kelly votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- May 19th, 2016: Rep. Kelly votes against House Amendment 1079, which would have prohibited the use of federal funds for discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So if you were wondering, yes, he’s pro-discrimination, apparently.
Trent Kelly won his second GOP Primary for his seat in the House with 89% of the vote, leading his challenger, Paul Clever, to cry foul because the Lafayette County GOP apparently was illegally fundraising on Kelly’s behalf (allegedly). Kelly still advances to the general election where he will face Democrat Jacob Owens, who will have to overcome a +15 Republican lean for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District to have a chance of pulling the upset. Owens seems to be raising social awareness well in his campaign, linking Trent Kelly to his support of presidential candidate Donald Trump, and also bringing attention to the fact that there are students inflamed enough by bigotry from the Trump campaign that they’ve hinted towards having lynchings on the campus of Old Miss.
Still, Kelly remains enough of a cipher that he seems likely to get himself a second term in office from voters who barely know him as anything but a guy with an “R” next to his name.
One Year Ago, October 1st, 2015: Phil Gingrey (GA)… Update
Two Years Ago, October 1st, 2014: Phil Gingrey (GA)… Original Profile