Radio Free America: Let’s talk about who Republicans campaign with

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Ted Nugent is an avowed fan of sleeping with underage women. It’s not that he just wrote a song about the practice; he also became the legal guardian to a 17-year-old that he had a romantic relationship with and bragged about other relationships with teenagers. Courtney Love said they had a sexual encounter when she was either 12 or 14. He denies any wrongdoing or criminality, but even the most generous reading of his past indicates that he’s a creep.

This has been public knowledge for decades, yet Republican politicians like John James and Bill Huizenga had no problem sharing a stage with him in July for the Rock Michigan Red event. The event passed by with little media attention (aside from yours truly, of course). And as far as I can tell, nobody filed a resolution in the House of Representatives to condemn Nugent.

So there’s this double standard haunting American politics as Abdul El-Sayed has been roundly condemned for campaigning with another controversial surrogate: Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Campaigning with a guy who loves to make flippant remarks about American Jews is the biggest mistake El-Sayed has made in his campaign, and it has metastasized as journalists ask seemingly every Democratic candidate about their thoughts on Piker.

But Piker sure seems less noxious than the people Republicans are campaigning with! In addition to his… proclivities… Nugent said Barack Obama should “suck on my machine gun” and called Michelle Obama a man. Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry took the stage with election denier Scott Presler, a Qanon promoter who was at the J6 insurrection and allegedly filmed pornography in a Republican field office. El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, campaigned with Cameron Dundas, who suggested sending Jews to North Korea.

And we haven’t even gotten to the campaign surrogates who are running the country. For example, Rep. Zach Nunn campaigned with Pete Hegseth, an alleged alcoholic abuser who is actively working to resegregate the military. Even MAGA pundits thought Nunn made a mistake in doing that. There’s also Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who campaigned against pasteurized milk with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in spite of Kennedy’s history as a conspiracy theorist, bear corpse desecrator and overall jerk whose term as HHS secretary has helped further his dangerous pro-diarrhea agenda. Oh, and not sure if you’ve heard of this Donald Trump guy that Republicans frequently campaign with, but he’s offensive, extreme and bad at his job, too!

And notably, Trump, Hegseth and Kennedy are way more powerful than Piker, a guy whose job is literally talking while playing video games. Even Presler is a local elected official; Dundas actually used to work for Rogers’s campaign. While they’re less buzzy than Piker, the dangerous extremists that Republicans campaign with have real, political power in a way that Piker does not.

So what gives? Well, we all know that large media conglomerates are pretty bad at actually informing the public. (That’s why you have to subscribe to my newsletter to figure out what’s going on.) And to them, right-wing extremism is something of a “dog bites man” story — not noteworthy because it’s so common. It’s much more interesting for them to cover someone who sucks in a leftist manner instead of the people actually in charge of this country. It’s the same reason they love to cover scandals at one of the 20 or so private colleges that they all went to.

And it certainly doesn’t help that Democrats like Josh Gottheimer would rather make Piker an election issue instead of Trump, Hegseth, Kennedy, Nugent, Presler or Dundas. Gottheimer was perhaps best known as Congress’s worst boss before the latest imbroglio, but as a close friend of Mark Penn, he might share his pal’s knack for sussing out how to lose a winnable election. 

But maybe Gottheimer is doing other, more politically savvy Democrats a favor. Now that the people who Democrats campaign with is a live political issue, it’s time to talk about who Republicans actually campaign with as well. Make the case to the media conglomerates, which are feckless and lazy but easily bullied, to cover Republican surrogates. Make them cover their horrific personal lives to their equally horrific personal views. Let’s make it so voters understand who actually calls the shots in the Republican Party and what they believe. Because if you can do that, you secure yourself the House and Senate for the next two years.

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ACROSS AMERICA

• Massachusetts’ primary was on Tuesday, and the headline was Rep. Seth Moulton ending his political career because he didn’t understand that the 2024 election was about inflation. In other news:
  • Dan Koh rode Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ endorsements to a whopping 41% of the vote in the primary for Moulton’s old seat, which was enough to win in a divided field. That 41% is actually high for Massachusetts, as this is how much of the vote Koh’s future colleagues who won open seats got in their initial primaries:

Lori Trahan (2018)	22%
Jake Auchincloss (2020)	22%
Kathleen Clark (2013)	32%
Stephen Lynch (2001)	39%
Bill Keating (2010)	51%

• This is a state that’s begging for some type of electoral reform like runoffs or ranked-choice voting, as the current system elevates candidates who might not have had majority support in the primary but benefited from split opposition. Notably, Auchincloss and Trahan were establishment picks who won with less than a quarter of the vote while outsider candidates combined to receive more votes than them. This fall, Bay Staters will vote on whether or not to move to a jungle primary system, which has had a mixed at best record in California but could still represent an improvement over the status quo.
• Also, the much publicized socialist takeover of the Democratic Party seems to have gone off the rails in Massachusetts legislative primaries. Left-wing victories there were limited to the inner urban core around Boston and university towns. Such was also the case in the neighboring and far superior state of New York.

• Rep. Ralph Norman is telling his supporters to write in his name instead of voting for Sen. Darlene Graham in the South Carolina U.S. Senate election after he narrowly lost the primary to her. South Carolina law bans a candidate who lost a primary from running a write-in campaign, but hey. Silly things like “election laws” haven’t stopped Ralph Norman before! 
• Remember forever chemicals? Last year, a number of states (all but one of which has a Democratic legislature) passed laws banning their use. But now, data center operators are looking into using PFAS as a cooling option, which means having a Republican-controlled legislature makes it more likely you’ll get a data center in your town.
• Voters still don’t like data centers. On Tuesday, Harry S. Truman’s hometown recalled a councilor who supported one by a more than 2-to-1 margin. 
• New York’s congestion pricing might end up being the biggest policy victory since the stimmies kept us from falling into a depression. Not only does it increase revenue, decrease traffic and lower air pollution, but it’s making it so EMTs can get to emergencies more quickly.

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INTERNET STUFF I LIKED THIS WEEK

First of all, if you haven’t listened to Dire Straits’s seminal album “Brothers in Arms,” you need to open another tab and fix that right away. Once you’ve completed that mission, check out Israeli guitarist Kfir Ochaion, who somehow manages to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the style of the Straits’ lead guitarist Mark Knopfler. Ochaion’s YouTube page has plenty of other Knopfler-style covers, but the Nirvana one is by far my favorite.

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BOOK CLUB

Photo via Simon & Schuster

Earlier this year, Craig Fehrman wrote about how he wanted his books to make you feel like you were there, with readers experiencing what the subjects went through. He’s successful in his latest effort, as you really feel like you’re crossing the northwest with Lewis and Clark in “This Vast Enterprise.” It’s also a welcome addition to the growing corpus of early American literature that treats Native tribes not as irrelevant and backward nor noble victims, but savvy, independent political players in their own right.

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HELP US OUT

I had a pretty sweet job this week, cackling at all the Sportscenter commercials that you sent me. Arnold Palmer! John Clayton! Landon Donovan! But I still have to go with another classic, the wrestling one with King Kong Bundy.

Having Paul Bearer standing there is what really makes it.

On the topic of sports, it’s fantasy football season. I’m not gonna lie, I have done basically zero research, and my team, Hooterville Junction, came in last place last year. My draft is on Monday: Who are we taking ahead of their ADP, and who are we avoiding at all costs? Email me what you think!

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