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2020 Non-Presidential Elections 2


GreyhoundFan

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This one reminds me of Phill Kline (note the spelling, I seem to recall that there  are two of them with different first name spellings both involved in politics).

Phill Kline (actually I went to the same First Nazarene Church in Lenexa as he did circa 2000/2001 or so)

 

He was State AG and I believe Johnson County DA (because the Johnson County DA bit got him into trouble).  The previous Johnson County DA (Paul Morrison) was removed from office due to a sex scandal (I knew people back in the day who worked as legal secretaries in the Jo Co DA's office and one in particular loathed Morrison) and then this nonsense popped up with his replacement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phill_Kline

Quote

 

Work attendance and residency controversy[edit]

KCTV, a Kansas City CBS affiliate, aired an investigative report that addressed accusations that Kline did not reside within Johnson County as required by state law, and that he spent an inadequate amount of time at the district attorney's office.[29] He had rented a small apartment in Stilwell, and was registered to vote from that location. The KCTV reporters said in their report they were unable to observe Kline or his family at the address. On two occasions, Kline was tailed by reporters from Johnson County back to Topeka, the location of his primary residence.[29]

The Johnson County Sheriff's Office initially refused KCTV-5 access to records that log ID card passes at the Johnson County Courthouse garage, citing security concerns. Through exercise of the Freedom of Information Act, KCTV initially received redacted and incomplete records via the Johnson County Sheriff's Office. According to the report, the security system only saves 90 days worth of data and purged much of the electronic records in question.[29] The KCTV report, based on the incomplete records, also suggested that Kline spent an inadequate amount of time in the Johnson Country District Attorney's Office, averaging only 29 hours per week.[29] KCTV5 devoted an entire 10pm newscast to deal with criticisms leveled at KCTV5's handling of the investigation the following day.[10]

 

And to tell you how conservative this guy is - a Liberty University Tie (and yes - he lost his law license - because perjury) (Also so far right that he couldn't win against two different US House Democrats - because one district included Lawrence and the other is old school republican Johnson County and they cross the line if you are too far right)

Spoiler

Post-electoral career[edit]

In January, 2009, Kline left Kansas to become a visiting professor at the Liberty University School of Law, in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is now an associate professor at the school, which has combined with the Jesse Helms School of Government.[30]

License to practice law suspended[edit]

In 2010 the Kansas Supreme Court Disciplinary Administrator brought formal professional ethics charges against Kline before the Kansas Supreme Court based on perjury, an illegal file transfer, misleading legal guidance that Kline had provided to the grand jury in the Johnson County clinic case, the O'Reilly appearance, and several other matters. Kline's ethics trial began on February 21, 2011. He testified that he had the right to deceive state agencies to gain information in abortion investigations and that he had no duty to promptly notify a trial judge that he had provided flawed information.[31]

On October 13, 2011, the Kansas state Board of Discipline of Attorneys recommended that Kline's law license be indefinitely suspended, citing a pattern of repeatedly misleading statements, "dishonest and selfish motives", and a failure to "take any responsibility for his misconduct." Kline disputed the Board's findings as politically motivated.[32] The recommendation to suspend his license went to the state's Supreme Court,[33] where Kline's demands resulted in the unusual recusal of five Justices and a substitute appeals court judge from the case.[34] The court indefinitely suspended Kline's law license on October 18, 2013. The costs to the taxpayers of defending his license came to nearly $600,000.[4][35]

The United States Supreme Court -- the only level of federal court which could overrule the state supreme court decision[36] -- announced on April 28, 2014 that it was declining to hear Kline's request to review the suspension of his Kansas license to practice law.[37] However, Kline continued to pursue the matter as a federal case, in federal District court, where he lost in 2016. He then appealed that decision to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver -- losing again, July 3, 2017, by the decision of a three-judge panel who refused to allow the case to be reopened in federal court.[36]

 

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Ted Cruz finally gets the point.

 

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Good, I hope all the ground they "gained" will be lost.

Edited by WiseGirl
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So - and it's apparently legal - there is a resident of the state of Washington on the Kansas ballot.

 

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I'm gonna go sit in the corner and laugh at Kobach.  Pat Roberts just endorsed his opponent.

 

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Hey Ashley you misspelled taking personal responsibility

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In an exclusive interview on the KWWL-TV News at 6 Tuesday night, Republican Congressional candidate, Ashley Hinson, again apologized in addressing allegations of plagiarism leveled against her in a New York Times report.

Hinson also called her campaign controversy something else. "I think people see this for what it it, which was a partisan attack on me," she said.

The New York Times alleges Hinson "lifted verbatim sentences on her campaign website and in published op-eds" more than a dozen times since 2019.

She said she wanted to own up to what happened, although she maintains she was unaware that some of the sentences, phrases and paragraphs had been plagiarized from other news outlets for some of her Op-Ed pieces.

 

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I sincerely hope this happens: "As pandemic limits scrutiny, GOP fears lesser-known Democratic candidates will steamroll to Senate majority"

Spoiler

In Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst (R) has challenged her Democratic competitor to six debates, starting in August. In North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis (R) pressed his Democratic opponent to accept five debates, which he wanted to start in the spring.

And in Maine, Sen. Susan Collins (R) declared that she wants to debate her opponent 16 times, once in each of the state’s counties, starting immediately.

Republicans acknowledge that this upends the usual debate about debates, in which an incumbent rarely wants to give the challenger the same platform. Incumbent senators are pleading with their lesser-known rivals to join them on debate stages, or Zoom, trying to elevate the profile of these Democrats.

But they view this as a matter of necessity in a campaign in which Republicans are running into the head winds of President Trump’s sagging poll numbers amid his stumbling response to the coronavirus pandemic.

And the pandemic has limited campaign activities that are normal for a big Senate race, activities such as state fairs, beach walks and large church services — and without those staples, there are fewer chances for candidates to make mistakes.

Instead, Republicans are growing fearful that Democratic candidates are receiving such little scrutiny that they could steamroll to victory, and to the Senate majority, mostly by raising huge amounts of money that fund smart media campaigns on TV and social media.

“The more voters see their candidates, the worse off they are. This is a very weak crop of recruits,” said Jesse Hunt, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats contend that their candidates are doing as much as anyone could expect with the novel coronavirus still raging in many states, suggesting that the Republican senatorial nominee in Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is the most shut-in candidate in the nation. Tuberville refused to debate former attorney general Jeff Sessions in the primary and has yet to agree to debate Sen. Doug Jones (D) in the general election campaign in a state that Trump won by nearly 30 percentage points.

Instead, Democrats say their candidates are focused on the right issue at the right moment — protecting and enhancing health care during a pandemic — as GOP incumbents adopt the tactics traditionally deployed by losing candidates.

“Democrats continue to meet with and hear from voters across their states, and they didn’t need a manufactured debate over debates from desperate incumbents to do it,” said Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

This Democratic crop largely comes from two sets of traditional candidates favored by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.): older former governors or ex-senators who already have high name recognition and fundraising history and lesser-known state officials who will execute their campaigns along the lines of DSCC mandates.

That recipe backfired in 2016, when former senators Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), along with former governor Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), lost races after being hailed as strong candidates.

Three former state officials — Patty Judge (Iowa), Katie McGinty (Pa.) and Deborah Ross (N.C.) — also lost that year.

Those Democratic candidates ran races closely aligned with the themes of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, believing she would thump Trump, and their results closely tracked Clinton’s. Feingold and McGinty were less than three-tenths of a percentage point from matching Clinton’s razor-thin losing margin in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Now, Republicans think Democrats are taking a similar approach. Gov. Steve Bullock (D-Mont.) and former governor John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) are the familiar faces. Republicans allege that state House Speaker Sara Gideon (D-Maine), former state senator Cal Cunningham (D-N.C.), along with former congressional candidate Theresa Greenfield (D-Iowa), are running races closely in line with DSCC marching orders.

Except, with Biden holding a larger lead than Clinton ever did, these Democratic candidates could have more success than their 2016 counterparts. On Thursday, the Cook Political Report, an independent analysis site, declared that Democrats were favored to get a net gain of four seats to claim the Senate majority in November (three seats if Biden wins).

Cunningham and Gideon are raising eye-popping amounts of money for their campaigns. Cunningham, a Bronze Star recipient from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has raised more than $15 million in his challenge to Tillis, while Gideon has raised more than $24 million.

Neither has even run a statewide race before.

Republicans think that if they can get on a debate stage with these nominees, they can make them look foolish.

“We’ve invited him — how many times does an incumbent invite a challenger to debates? He’s deferred on all,” Tillis complained in a recent interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax.

Tillis’s campaign has created a logo accusing Cunningham of campaigning from the “DSCC windowless basement.”

Cunningham and Tillis agreed Friday to two debates and are trying to schedule a third, not quite the five the incumbent wanted.

Democrats say Cunningham has held 11 events, either in person or over videoconferences, including eight town halls, in the past week. Gideon conducted six events, including talking with lobstermen and holding a roundtable on opioid abuse, since winning the Democratic nomination July 14.

And Greenfield has held four news conferences with Iowa media outlets in the past month, with goals including defending the Affordable Care Act and criticizing business-friendly rulings by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Part of the GOP frustration comes from the steadily shrinking ranks of local media outlets covering congressional elections — a trend that has only worsened with the collapse of ad revenue in the pandemic, leading to further newsroom layoffs.

That phenomenon gets combined with a national news corps that is heavily focused on covering coronavirus stories, limiting the number of stories from key Senate battlegrounds. GOP strategists feel that their incumbents still have to face the Capitol press corps every day that the Senate is in session, while the Democratic challengers carefully choose their public appearances.

This election season has not yet had a single big “tracker” controversy — involving those usually young staffers who follow opposing candidates from event to event, hoping to capture them on camera doing or saying something controversial.

With their ammunition limited, Republicans keep fighting over debates, nowhere as fiercely as in Maine.

Within hours of winning her nomination, Gideon made the first offer: five debates. Collins demanded 16 and accused her Democratic rival of hiding from voters. “I look forward to an open and accessible discussion with you about the future of our state and nation,” Collins wrote to Gideon.

Gideon told reporters that Collins was the one in hiding.

“We have traveled around Maine for the past 13 months. We have heard over and over again from people who have said they have not seen Senator Collins in a forum where they are able to ask her questions,” Gideon said.

 

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At the point, I shouldn't be surprised by anything a Repug does:

 

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On 7/25/2020 at 9:29 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I sincerely hope this happens: "As pandemic limits scrutiny, GOP fears lesser-known Democratic candidates will steamroll to Senate majority"

  Hide contents

In Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst (R) has challenged her Democratic competitor to six debates, starting in August. In North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis (R) pressed his Democratic opponent to accept five debates, which he wanted to start in the spring.

And in Maine, Sen. Susan Collins (R) declared that she wants to debate her opponent 16 times, once in each of the state’s counties, starting immediately.

Republicans acknowledge that this upends the usual debate about debates, in which an incumbent rarely wants to give the challenger the same platform. Incumbent senators are pleading with their lesser-known rivals to join them on debate stages, or Zoom, trying to elevate the profile of these Democrats.

But they view this as a matter of necessity in a campaign in which Republicans are running into the head winds of President Trump’s sagging poll numbers amid his stumbling response to the coronavirus pandemic.

And the pandemic has limited campaign activities that are normal for a big Senate race, activities such as state fairs, beach walks and large church services — and without those staples, there are fewer chances for candidates to make mistakes.

Instead, Republicans are growing fearful that Democratic candidates are receiving such little scrutiny that they could steamroll to victory, and to the Senate majority, mostly by raising huge amounts of money that fund smart media campaigns on TV and social media.

“The more voters see their candidates, the worse off they are. This is a very weak crop of recruits,” said Jesse Hunt, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats contend that their candidates are doing as much as anyone could expect with the novel coronavirus still raging in many states, suggesting that the Republican senatorial nominee in Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is the most shut-in candidate in the nation. Tuberville refused to debate former attorney general Jeff Sessions in the primary and has yet to agree to debate Sen. Doug Jones (D) in the general election campaign in a state that Trump won by nearly 30 percentage points.

Instead, Democrats say their candidates are focused on the right issue at the right moment — protecting and enhancing health care during a pandemic — as GOP incumbents adopt the tactics traditionally deployed by losing candidates.

“Democrats continue to meet with and hear from voters across their states, and they didn’t need a manufactured debate over debates from desperate incumbents to do it,” said Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

This Democratic crop largely comes from two sets of traditional candidates favored by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.): older former governors or ex-senators who already have high name recognition and fundraising history and lesser-known state officials who will execute their campaigns along the lines of DSCC mandates.

That recipe backfired in 2016, when former senators Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), along with former governor Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), lost races after being hailed as strong candidates.

Three former state officials — Patty Judge (Iowa), Katie McGinty (Pa.) and Deborah Ross (N.C.) — also lost that year.

Those Democratic candidates ran races closely aligned with the themes of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, believing she would thump Trump, and their results closely tracked Clinton’s. Feingold and McGinty were less than three-tenths of a percentage point from matching Clinton’s razor-thin losing margin in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Now, Republicans think Democrats are taking a similar approach. Gov. Steve Bullock (D-Mont.) and former governor John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) are the familiar faces. Republicans allege that state House Speaker Sara Gideon (D-Maine), former state senator Cal Cunningham (D-N.C.), along with former congressional candidate Theresa Greenfield (D-Iowa), are running races closely in line with DSCC marching orders.

Except, with Biden holding a larger lead than Clinton ever did, these Democratic candidates could have more success than their 2016 counterparts. On Thursday, the Cook Political Report, an independent analysis site, declared that Democrats were favored to get a net gain of four seats to claim the Senate majority in November (three seats if Biden wins).

Cunningham and Gideon are raising eye-popping amounts of money for their campaigns. Cunningham, a Bronze Star recipient from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has raised more than $15 million in his challenge to Tillis, while Gideon has raised more than $24 million.

Neither has even run a statewide race before.

Republicans think that if they can get on a debate stage with these nominees, they can make them look foolish.

“We’ve invited him — how many times does an incumbent invite a challenger to debates? He’s deferred on all,” Tillis complained in a recent interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax.

Tillis’s campaign has created a logo accusing Cunningham of campaigning from the “DSCC windowless basement.”

Cunningham and Tillis agreed Friday to two debates and are trying to schedule a third, not quite the five the incumbent wanted.

Democrats say Cunningham has held 11 events, either in person or over videoconferences, including eight town halls, in the past week. Gideon conducted six events, including talking with lobstermen and holding a roundtable on opioid abuse, since winning the Democratic nomination July 14.

And Greenfield has held four news conferences with Iowa media outlets in the past month, with goals including defending the Affordable Care Act and criticizing business-friendly rulings by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Part of the GOP frustration comes from the steadily shrinking ranks of local media outlets covering congressional elections — a trend that has only worsened with the collapse of ad revenue in the pandemic, leading to further newsroom layoffs.

That phenomenon gets combined with a national news corps that is heavily focused on covering coronavirus stories, limiting the number of stories from key Senate battlegrounds. GOP strategists feel that their incumbents still have to face the Capitol press corps every day that the Senate is in session, while the Democratic challengers carefully choose their public appearances.

This election season has not yet had a single big “tracker” controversy — involving those usually young staffers who follow opposing candidates from event to event, hoping to capture them on camera doing or saying something controversial.

With their ammunition limited, Republicans keep fighting over debates, nowhere as fiercely as in Maine.

Within hours of winning her nomination, Gideon made the first offer: five debates. Collins demanded 16 and accused her Democratic rival of hiding from voters. “I look forward to an open and accessible discussion with you about the future of our state and nation,” Collins wrote to Gideon.

Gideon told reporters that Collins was the one in hiding.

“We have traveled around Maine for the past 13 months. We have heard over and over again from people who have said they have not seen Senator Collins in a forum where they are able to ask her questions,” Gideon said.

If the country could suck up 4 years of an unqualified, cheating, lying POTUS, we’ll likely do just fine replacing some of lifers in the senate.

 

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"Jaime Harrison is chasing Lindsey Graham like a cheetah running down an impala"

Spoiler

In American politics, some candidates give their opponents a real run for their money. And then there are those candidates who lay chase like a cheetah running down an impala on the Serengeti. Two polls out of South Carolina show that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R) is the impala to the cheetah that is Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison.

An internal poll from the Harrison campaign released Monday shows that Harrison, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, within two percentage points of Graham, who garners 43 percent support to 41 percent for Harrison. That poll comes as a super PAC with the not-at-all-subtle title “Lindsey Must Go” revealed a survey of likely voters that shows Harrison (45 percent) within four percentage points of Graham (49 percent).

The money race isn’t even close. Harrison raised nearly $14 million in the second quarter, which is nearly double what he raised in the first quarter. Both were record hauls for the state. By comparison, Graham raised just $8.4 million in the second quarter. The incumbent senator does have a money advantage, though. Graham has $5 million more on hand than his challenger — and he’s going to need every dime of it.

Harrison shouldn’t even be competitive in South Carolina. President Trump won the Palmetto State by 14 percentage points in 2016. The last Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina was the late Ernest F. Hollings in 1998. Yet, data from the Lindsey Must Go poll show why Harrison is seriously in the hunt against Trump’s two-faced golfing buddy. It all boils down to character.

Those surveyed do not think Graham “shares my values” (56 percent), is not “honest and trustworthy” (53 percent) and don’t believe him to be “a strong leader” (53 percent). However, they do think he “will say anything to get elected” (57 percent), “put his own political power first” (59 percent) and “has lost touch with South Carolina” (51 percent).

“People have told me my entire life that I can’t do certain things,” Harrison told me during an interview in February. “And now they are telling me that I can’t win this race for the United States Senate. My retort to them is, watch me.” We’re watching. And when it comes to the cheetah versus the impala, many of us are rooting for the cheetah.

Words can't express how thrilled I'd be if the people of SC voted Lindsey out of office.

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No surprise here:

 

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:wow: Did Susan Collins carefully craft this herself on her laptop? 

And:Yes: promoting your adversary's priorities really works in your favour, Susan. :pb_lol: 

 

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So a trumplican's foundation is sketchy. Tell me it isn't so /sarcasm

"GOP Senate candidate’s claims about his foundation for ‘inner city’ kids don’t add up"

Spoiler

My intent with that foundation is to help young people who are growing up in the inner city or otherwise in difficult circumstances and help them go to college with scholarships. And, you know, we have a process, a committee that looks at applications and makes those selections each year. One of the reasons I did this, quite frankly, was I grew up in a blue-collar family and we didn’t have much.”

— Bryant “Corky” Messner, GOP candidate running for Senate in New Hampshire, during a Merrimack County (N.H.) Republican Committee Happy Hour, May 27, 2020

Messner, who has been endorsed by President Trump, is seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate race in New Hampshire. He built a law firm in Denver and was the general counsel for Chipotle Mexican Grill, amassing a net worth of between $14 million and $53 million, according to his financial disclosure report.

As part of his campaign, he has touted an organization, the Messner Foundation, which he says selects low-income students every year to receive college scholarships. “You know, it’s mostly my personal money,” he told Republicans watching a “Beer Caucus” Zoom call in May with his rival, retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc. “You know, we do some things in the law firm around the country to raise money for the foundation. But ultimately we don’t raise that much so it’s essentially my money that goes into it to help these kids.” He said the foundation had been started “maybe 10 years ago.”

On its website, the Messner Foundation solicits donations and applications from students by claiming it “identifies deserving high school students who have demonstrated leadership traits and gives those students the resources and connections they need to flourish. The goal of the Messner Foundation is to cultivate the next generation of business and community leaders.”

But documents filed with the IRS, for the years 2009 to 2018, show a different story.

The Facts

The Messner Foundation was created to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Messner’s law firm, Messner Reeves LLP, according to an interview Messner gave to the Denver Business Journal in 2010. “The first scholarship winner will begin college in fall 2011,” the article said. “The foundation will combine the scholarships with mentoring and guidance programs.” Messner is quoted as saying that he “wanted to start a vehicle to help young people who are similarly situated as I was.”

In marketing the scholarships, the Messner Foundation is closely associated with Messner’s law firm. A Messner partner hawks the scholarships on television. The Foundation has raised money by raffling off expensive vehicles, most recently a nearly $59,000 Range Rover in 2019.

Indeed, the foundation was originally funded by a $100,000 contribution by Messner Reeves, according to the 2009 tax form filed by the foundation. No other substantial contributor is listed, though Corky Messner is listed as the president of the foundation every year.

Then, oddly, the $100,000 just sat there — year after year. A few hundred dollars in interest was earned. But no funds were distributed, despite the announcement that scholarships would start in 2011.

Philip Hackney, an associate law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who examined the tax filings for The Fact Checker, said the tax law for private foundations requires that 5 percent of the assets be distributed every year. Otherwise, the foundation must pay a fine equal to 30 percent of the amount not distributed. “I’m troubled by the fact that they did nothing for the first four or five years,” he said. “That doesn’t pass muster.”

“The Messner Foundation has always been viewed by the IRS as being in good standing and we have adhered to the advice of our accountant in that regard,” said a campaign statement.

The 2013 tax form listed the assets as $100,374. “It’s a particularly small foundation,” Hackney noted.

Finally, in 2014, a disbursement was made. But it was not for a scholarship for a low-income student. Tax records show the foundation made a $50,000 contribution to the Colorado Academy, one of the state’s elite private schools, for “construction of athletic facilities.” (The campaign says the money funded a baseball field.)

The donation to Colorado Academy — which Messner’s sons attended from kindergarten through 12th grade — cut the foundation’s assets in half.

That contribution was among $700,000 in donations that Colorado Academy received that year. The school in 2014 had an endowment of $22 million, according to its tax filings, and on its website boasts that its “verdant 94-acre campus is delightful, whatever the season.”

The Messner campaign says the scholarship program had not started yet. “It was a discretionary donation that predated the creation of the Foundation’s scholarship program,” a campaign statement said. “Corky believed the gift [to Colorado Academy] was in keeping with the Foundation’s stated mission to cultivate the next generation of business and community leaders, and appropriate for a college-preparatory school that attracts gifted scholar-athletes.”

But the 2014 website of the Messner Foundation, showing photos of Black and Hispanic students, claimed: “The Messner Foundation identifies underprivileged high school students. … The Messner Foundation not only helps its Scholars financially, but provides life experiences as well.”

Starting in 2015, the Messner Foundation began to raise money by holding raffles of luxury cars. In an announcement pegged to the firm’s 20th anniversary, the law firm claimed it would “raise significant funds that will have a lasting and measurable impact on the lives of students selected as Messner Scholars.”

But it was an expensive proposition. The foundation in 2015 earned almost $210,000 in raffle ticket sales but had $113,000 in expenses, including $84,000 for the cost of the car, a Tesla. It ended the year with $146,000 in assets — but still had offered no scholarships.

The campaign, saying “it took several years to come up with a sustainable funding source and a process fair to applicants,” supplied to The Fact Checker a letter to the IRS in 2016 seeking approval for the scholarship program and a letter showing IRS approval in 2017.

The Messner Foundation in 2016 extended its first scholarship: about $5,500 to Majarlika Diane Villaruel-Mariano, a local high school student who attended the University of Denver. That same year, the foundation’s assets were boosted by another car raffle, this time for a $63,000 Jeep.

In 2017, Villaruel-Mariano was given about $17,500 by the foundation.

In 2018, the foundation gave Villaruel-Mariano almost $25,000. All told, she received about $48,000 over three years. No car raffles were held by the foundation in 2017 or 2018, so with the last available tax filing, the foundation’s assets stood at about $148,000.

In other words, over the first 10 years, the foundation made grants to only one student.

Villaruel-Mariano would not discuss the scholarship or respond to emailed questions. “You should talk to them about that,” she said in a brief telephone conversation. The Messner campaign later provided a quote from Villaruel-Mariano: “Thanks to the support from the Messner Foundation, I will be the first in my family to graduate with a college degree. … I am grateful to Mr. Messner for his support and guidance.”

Colorado high schools listed the Messner Foundation as a possible source of scholarships, so presumably the law firm received applications from other students.

The Denver Scholarship Foundation, which promotes 500 different scholarships, at one time listed Messner as a potential source of funds. “One student will be selected from the pool of applicants and will have access to funding for up to four years for undergraduate studies,” the notice said. “Awards for subsequent years will be awarded based on reapplication.”

But now the organization no longer lists Messner. “We removed it in 2018 because we couldn’t verify that it was still an active scholarship,” said Latia C. Henderson, director of marketing at the Denver Scholarship Foundation. “We aim to only include verified scholarships in our directory so it’s been removed for now.”

By coincidence or not, the revival of the car raffles in 2019 came just as Messner was considering jumping into the Senate race. “He has spent a great deal of time and his own money working with an army of consultants as he considers his future,” said a May 28, 2019, email seeking financial support for the Messner NH Exploratory Committee from one of his law firm partners, Michelle Harden. The day after sending that email, Harden appeared in a television interview with Villaruel-Mariano to tout the 2019 car raffle.

The Messner campaign said Villaruel-Mariano has received additional funding from the foundation, not yet shown in public tax filings, so her total scholarship is about $78,000. “Arnold Acosta is the latest recipient, who has received $4,886 from 2019-20 and the Foundation intends to provide further support as his studies continue, as we have done for the first recipient,” a campaign statement said. “A third student was selected, but chose not to accept the scholarship.” (The campaign did not supply the tax forms that would verify these statements.)

Besides the initial $100,000 from the law firm, the only other contributions listed in tax filings are from raffle sales that also promote the law firm in the Denver area. But administration expenses (mainly the cost of cars that are raffled) are a significant percentage of revenue. Over its lifetime, it cost the Messner Foundation more than $45 to raise $100, according to the tax records. And just 32 percent of expenses was spent on charitable programs.

“The car raffles have not generated the hoped-for revenue, given the expense of car purchases, covering the winners’ tax liability, and raffle promotion,” the campaign statement said.

The law firm and Harden did not respond to requests for comment.

“Corky believes in supporting and mentoring young people from diverse backgrounds pursuing various careers. That’s why the Messner Foundation was established in 2009 with a generous $100,000 donation from Messner-Reeves, LLC, of which Corky Messner is Founding Partner and CEO,” Michael Biundo, senior adviser for Messner for Senate Campaign, said in an emailed statement. “While the Foundation’s scholarship program that started in 2016 is fairly new, it has already had a positive impact on the lives of young people and has fulfilled its stated purpose, to follow the student through their education life cycle.”

The Pinocchio Test

Messner claims that the foundation selects worthy students for scholarships every year, that the goal of the foundation is to help low-income students and that the foundation was mostly funded by his own money.

But in the first 10 years of the foundation’s existence, only one student received a scholarship from Messner’s foundation — and even more money was given to an elite private school that Messner’s sons were attending at the time. The foundation was essentially dormant after being founded, despite Messner’s claim nine years ago that scholarships would start. The law firm is listed as the source of the original $100,000, while tax forms show the only other funds have been raised with car raffles that, incidentally, also promote the law firm. There are no records of personal contributions from Messner, though, to be sure, he is the founding partner of the law firm.

The campaign now says that a second student has begun to receive scholarship funds and that the scholarship program only started in 2016. That may be the case. But for years Messner and the foundation have suggested that many students had been the recipients of funds.

Messner earns Four Pinocchios.

 

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I concur. Vote him out.

 

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GA-14 is an R+27 district, so the odds are extremely high that she will be elected in November.

 

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23 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

GA-14 is an R+27 district, so the odds are extremely high that she will be elected in November.

 

Also doesn't believe the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11.

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 I think John Cornyn, the senior senator of Texas, is getting a little nervous about being reelected. He's actually giving speeches in places like Abilene, San Angelo, and Midland! :shock:

For the non-Texans, here's some voting information from the 2018 Senate race between Cruz and O'Rourke and the 2016 presidential election between Trump and Clinton.

Taylor county (Abilene):

Spoiler

 

image.png.530e35801bdd4f522787126da2f46a0d.png

image.png.ce16f46f834baf67c40a1b5c088e6103.png

Tom Green county (San Angelo):

Spoiler

image.png.cec72f857bb29d4d3f9633cc4784ac59.png

image.png.6436505b19f69b7f59a599a0fd04af3c.png

Midland county (Midland):

Spoiler

image.png.685402751e1580f6accd9a428a3e8bfc.png

image.png.e0643344f672c4d2ccb21eb4066de6a9.png

 

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:shakehead2:

School started in my county last week, but most parents in my county are opting for the remote learning option. I think the fact that our county positivity rate is higher than the state rate of 13% is contributing to that decision.

 

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This is awesome:

 

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Okay so in Kansas - a 19 year old was running for state leg.  Democrat.  And now has dropped out because he apparently posted revenge porn.  This may result in Republicans (who did not have anyone running in this particular race) appointing someone instead.

 

 

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The people of TX-13 should be ashamed that they chose this jackass in the primary. :roll:

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Remember Shelley Luther who opened her hair salon in defiance of Governor Abbott's shutdown order a while back? Well, Ms. Luther now wants to become a member of the Texas Legislature:

Political ad:

Spoiler

 

The current officeholder of senate district 30 resigned last month because he's running to represent TX-4 in the U.S. House, so Governor Abbott has called for a special election to be held on the 29th. The winner of that election will be up for reelection in November of 2022. This district hasn't elected a Democrat since the 90s, so one of the five Republican candidates on the ballot will win the seat.

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