I live in Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District (PA-16), newly de-gerrymandered so that Erie County is once again entirely in a single district. The incumbent Republican seeking reelection in this district is Mike Kelly who has held this seat since getting elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010. The gerrymandered split of Erie County was intended to help him get reelected and solidify his hold on his district. Now with the gerrymander gone, even though the district went for Trump by 20 points in 2016 and is rated R+8, Democrats have a chance to win it back. Fortunately, we have a superb candidate running against Kelly: Ron DiNicola.
For the last 3 Congressional election cycles, I have concentrated on sending money to candidates in other Congressional Districts because I knew the race in my district was hopeless. Not this year. I have invested both my money and my sweat into getting Ron DiNicola elected, and sending Mike Kelly back to his car dealership in Butler.
If you like what you see, why not throw a few dollars into Ron DiNicola’s campaign chest?
More below the fold, as well as tonight’s comments, but first, a word from our sponsor:
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Let me start by explaining exactly how bad Mike Kelly has been during his tenure in Congress. First, as the graphic by pucknomad implies, Kelly has not held an open town hall almost since he was first elected, despite promising to hold such town halls during his first campaign. Further, he has embarrassed himself repeatedly by making some outrageous and patently false claims. He compared the ACA’s requirement that health insurance cover birth control to the attack on Pearl Harbor and 9/11. In a similar vein, he called an EPA rule on power plant emissions “terrorism.” During the West African ebola crisis, he fear-mongered by raising the prospect that terrorist could essentially weaponize the virus and bring it to the US. (Do you detect a theme?) He argued in favor of gutting an Obama-era regulation preventing racial discrimination in issuing car loans, stating that people concerned about civil rights are “divisive.” (Did I mention that Kelly has a business selling cars?) It was in response to Kelly’s remarks on this subject that caused Maxine Waters to give her “I do not yield one second” speech on the floor of the House:
Kelly has claimed that Obama, after leaving the White House, wants to run a “shadow government that is totally going to upset the new agenda.” And it’s always appropriate to add that he is going to profit massively from the tax cut he voted to approve for himself. There’s no mystery as to why Kelly is one of Trump’s favorite Congressmen. They practice the same sort of fear-mongering and gaslighting, the same sort of self-dealing to their own advantage. He needs to retire, and the Democratic Party, local and national, is going to help him do just that.
Ron DiNicola is the son of an immigrant bricklayer who went to Harvard. He served in the Marine Corp. He was Mohammed Ali’s personal attorney. DiNicola himself was a boxer in his youth, and he has taken to using boxing metaphors in his speeches. He has always been an advocate for public education and for strong unions. The video above the fold briefly tells the story of how he managed to obtain extended unemployment and healthcare benefits for laid-off union workers from the local General Electric plant. DiNicola would probably not be rated as a progressive in these parts (for example, he’s in favor of improving the ACA but not Medicare-for-all), but he’s about as progressive a Democrat as we could hope for in this part of Pennsylvania. He is an advocate for much of the standard Democratic agenda, and he’s strongly pro-choice. (The previous Democrat who represented this district, Kathy Dahlkemper, was “pro-life,” so it was ironic when she was picked off in 2010 in part by conservative anti-abortion groups who argued—falsely, of course—that she had made abortions easier to obtain by strongly advocating for the ACA.)
In July the DCCC put DiNicola on its Red-to-Blue list. As the campaign proceeded, the race rating progressed first from solid Republican to likely Republican, and now, Cook, Sabato, and Daily Kos rate this race as lean Republican. A new poll sponsored by the DCCC has been released showing that DiNicola is only 3 points behind Kelly (46% — 49%), and that’s after the Kelly campaign had spent more than twice what the DiNicola campaign had spent (not counting any advertising funded by dark money). DiNicola’s strength in this campaign is why Trump had a rally in Erie last week: Trump wanted to help out his favorite Congressman, Mike Kelly, because the GOP is afraid he’s going to lose. Ron DiNicola’s campaign is not one of the top-line campaigns that gain the most attention, but it’s one of those peripheral campaigns that a Blue Wave can push past the finish line. The Blue Wave is going to wash over this part of western Pennsylvania, and we will have new leadership in the House of Representatives. And we in northwestern Pennsylvania will have a new Congressman who will work for the benefit of ordinary people, not the super-rich.
Again, if you want to help out a worthy Democrat in a tough but winnable race, click here.
Now, on to the comments!
Top Comments (October 17, 2018):
Highlighted by AppleP:
This comment by aisb23 in Jen Hayden’s recommended post on the passing of a pimp and Republican nominee.
Highlighted by mockingjay:
This comment by NotNowNotEver in karij’s Good News Roundup. (We seem to have established a theme here.)
Top Mojo (October 16, 2018):
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Top Photos (October 16, 2018):
Courtesy of jotter.