Many of you are already familiar, I hope, with Janet Mills (who was one of the two candidates featured in last week’s Sunday Puzzle). She was elected governor of Maine in 2018, and she is up for re-election this year.
Janet Mills has done a good job as governor, has reasonably good stands on the issues, and has a reasonably good chance of being re-elected. The polling at present favors her to win. But even so it’s important to keep this race in mind and to do what we can to help Mills win, because her opponent is her truly terrible predecessor in the governor’s office, Paul LePage:
Republican Paul LePage became infamous as Governor of Maine for being a pugnacious politician who loved nothing more than a political brawl. He was, as LePage is fond of saying, “Trump before Trump”. He was locked out of running in 2018, as Maine has a constitutional ban on Governors running for more than two consecutive terms. He was replaced by Democratic Governor Janet Mills, a longtime political hand in Maine Politics who became the first female governor in Maine history.
However, LePage has missed the Governor’s office and jumped right back in for the 2022 race...
So far neither Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, nor Paul LePage have been willing to say which of them is the worst governor of the 21st century, but LePage is certainly a strong contender for the title. It’s important to Maine and the nation that LePage not be given another term in office. Making sure Janet Mills gets re-elected is a good way to prevent that disaster.
You may be less familiar with Gabe Vasquez.
I know I was. (And thank you to jomino for bringing him up a couple of weeks ago as a good Candidate Worth Supporting.)
Gabe Vasquez is running for congress in New Mexico’s 2nd district. From his campaign website:
Gabe is a first-generation American who grew up in the borderlands and saw his mother work hard every day to support his family. She showed him the value of hard work and the struggle that it takes to achieve the American Dream. As the first in his family to be born in the United States, he’s made the most of his opportunity and has worked hard to make a positive difference in his community and in the lives of others…
But throughout his life, Gabe has also seen that the American Dream his family fought so hard for is slipping away from the grasp of most New Mexicans. An ever rising cost-of-living, lack of economic opportunities for southern New Mexico, a tax code that benefits CEOs and millionaires and punishes working families, lack of investment in rural and Native American communities, and politicians who put themselves and their Wall Street donors ahead of the communities they are supposed to represent are robbing families of their potential.
Gabe is running for Congress to be a champion for working families and to build an economy that benefits everyone. Gabe will do this by creating high-quality, good-paying jobs, helping New Mexico families deal with the rising cost of living, ensuring all New Mexicans have access to affordable and high-quality health care, combating climate change, and conserving public lands and natural resources to capitalize on the district’s growing outdoor recreation economy. Gabe believes that the work doesn’t stop until all New Mexicans have meaningful opportunities to raise happy, healthy families and pass on their traditions to future generations.
I like candidates who state clearly and strongly where they stand on the issues, and Gabe Vasquez does a good job of that. In addition to good stands on the economy, health care, reproductive rights, climate change, protecting people’s voting rights, and other important issues, he includes a section on an issue more Democrats should join in speaking out on:
Upholding Ethics in Congress
Far too often, those elected to represent us take advantage of their positions for personal gain. We must crack down on insider trading and the kind of self-dealing contracts that we’ve seen erode trust in our elected officials and government. We must restore confidence in Congress and ensure that those elected to federal office are held accountable for the votes and actions that protect or grow their personal wealth and interests. The revolving door of corporate lobbyists that influence the actions of members of Congress must be curbed.
.
So is it time for today’s puzzle yet? Not quite. First, let’s look at the clues and answers to last week’s puzzle. Here are the clues:
1. owed
2. name Paul McCartney substituted for Jules
3. assess
4. pig home
5. back of the neck
6. expression of high praise
7. commercials
8. Crenshaw and Quayle
9. musical groups
10. scrap of cloth
11. extreme anger
12. enthusiastic
13. unrefined rock
14. pulled apart
15. collection of objects, often valuable ones
16. tear apart
17. journey
18. look below
19. say what isn't so
20. citrus fruit
21. look happy
22. acorn
23. a group which works together
24. one of five
25. choose
26. scheme
27. planet or cartoon dog
28. which person?
29. long loud cry
30. entire
31. i
32. facial feature
33. comfort, combat, and danger
In these puzzles, the answers go into rows (3 per row in this particular puzzle, hence the bunching of the clues into groups of 3), and each word in a row includes all the letters of the previous word in the row plus one new letter. The new letters get written in between the answer words, forming columns which spell out the answer to the puzzle. Here is the answer grid for last week’s puzzle:
due J Jude G judge
pen A nape A paean
ads N Dans B bands
rag E rage E eager
ore T tore V trove
rip T trip A tapir
lie M lime S smile
nut I unit Q quint
opt L plot U Pluto
who L howl E whole
one S nose Z zones
As you can see, the first add-on letters column spells out JANETTMILLS (Janet T Mills) and the second add-on-letters column spells out GABEVASQUEZ (Gabe Vasquez).
Clue 2 refers to Paul McCartney substituting the name Jude into the song Hey, Jude as a substitute for Jules, the name of John Lennon’s son. Clue 8 refers to Dan Crenshaw and Dan Quayle. Clue 27 refers to the dwarf planet Pluto and Mickey Mouse’s pet dog Pluto. If you have any questions, just ask in the comments and one of the cats or I will try to explain.
So if that’s all clear, let’s see what today’s puzzle looks like.
In today’s puzzle, there are 4 answers in each row, and the 3 columns of add-on letters will spell out the names of 2 Candidates Worth Supporting — one who’s running in Oregon and one who’s running in Tennessee.
.
1. gamble
2. strike violently
3. place to sit
4. not likely to fall
5. college board
6. colony dwellers
7. nightgown material
8. Peter, Paul and Mary
9. round dessert
10. kind of piper?
11. longed for
12. agonized
13. found in Boston from November to March
14. take a nap
15. interest and exchange
16. take a run without any clothes on
17. found in LA from November to March
18. annoying person
19. raises the foot and brings it down
20. soaks in hot water
21. found in the Nebraska panhandle from November to March
22. bath, place, and welcome
23. very tiny things
24. not quite
25. draw
26. location
27. tries to lose weight
28. included in the phone book
29. found in Omaha from November to March
30. [look at the picture posted above]
31. rigid social group
32. Abrams
And now, Poll Cat has a question for you.
Back in April Texas governor Greg Abbott began sending busloads of migrants from Texas to northeastern cities such as New York City and Washington DC as a stunt to get his name in the news, to rile up liberals, and to make life harder for migrants who enter Texas.
Recently Florida governor Ron DeSantis decided to join in, except he used planes instead of buses and he sent the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an island about 95 miles southeast of Boston.
Migrants in the group said they’d agreed to fly to Massachusetts on the promise of jobs and assistance but didn’t realize they were bound for Martha’s Vineyard. No one on the island knew they were coming and, according to their attorneys, they’d been given falsified U.S. addresses by immigration officials, perhaps ensuring that they’d be deemed in the country illegally.
“They were told there was a surprise present for them, and that there would be jobs and housing awaiting for them when they arrived. This was obviously a sadistic lie,” said Rachel Self, a Boston immigration attorney who was assisting with the migrants’ cases.
Once people on Martha’s Vineyard realized what had happened, they quickly began doing their best to help:
Local church members and politicians rushed to help. TV cameras on tripods overtook a small one-way street in front of the St. Andrews Episcopal Church, where the families had taken up temporary shelter. Neighbors biked or walked their dogs to witness the scene for themselves.
Inside St. Andrews, volunteers walked in and out all day in shifts. They accepted food. They took in bags of candy. They accepted warm clothes. Staff from the Salvation Army pledged to stay “as long as it takes.”
But it’s obvious DeSantis wanted to make this as difficult as possible for the migrants who were suddenly dropped off in an unfamiliar place and abandoned by the people who had been transporting them. If the aim had actually been to help them, rather than to cause them fear and anxiety, they would have been given correct information about what was going on and DeSantis would have been in contact with people on Martha’s Vineyard to help them prepare for the arrival of their guests.
(And they would have compiled and presented to the Martha’s Vineyard accurate paperwork listing the people who were being brought there. That’s not what DeSantis’ people did. Instead, according to Rachel Self, his agents
“apparently chose random homeless shelters all across the country from Washington to Florida, to list the migrants mailing addresses, even when told by the migrants that they had no address in the U.S.” The group of migrants, Self said, were being asked to appear in jurisdictions near homeless shelters all across the country as early as next Monday.
DeSantis kept the plane’s destination a secret not only from the people on the plane but from the people where they were going. No government agency or humanitarian organization was alerted in advance that the plane full of migrants would be arriving in Martha’s Vineyard. People on the island only discovered it when the plane dumped the migrants off and flew away, meaning the island folks had to scramble to let volunteers know their help was needed right away and to get all the resources the volunteers would need into place. A day or two advance notice would have made things much easier — but it seems obvious DeSantis’ aim was to make things harder rather than easier.
So the question Poll Cat would like to ask you folks this week is:
“What would you like people to do to help get it across to Ron DeSantis that what he did was wrong and to get him and people like him to stop doing things like this?”
(I have a different answer to that question than any of the things Poll Cat offered as options in the poll, so I’ll explain what I’d like to see done in a comment below.)