RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/larry-elder-is-the-school-choice-champion-california-needs-former-dem-senate-leader-says/

Conservative radio host Larry Elder has emerged as the favorite among the Republicans challenging California governor Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall election. The fire-breathing right-wing radio host is not just appealing to staunch conservatives, however, he’s also earned an unexpected endorsement from California’s former Democratic Senate leader, Gloria Romero.

A champion for school choice, Romero plans to abandon the Democratic ticket on September 14 in favor of a candidate she believes will be a champion for the impoverished black and Hispanic children who have been abandoned by the Newsom administration.

Hailing from South Central Los Angeles, Elder has walked the walk when it comes to advocating for education freedom, Romero said in an interview with National Review. Elder’s father, a janitor who earned a GED as an adult, instilled the wisdom of “hard work wins” in his sons, a credo that the Republican contender believes goes hand in hand with school choice.

“School choice benefits children of parents who preach that education and hard work are key to upward mobility,” he wrote in a July editorial defending the policy.

Sometimes called the “fourth branch of government,” the California teachers’ union has a monopoly on education that is holding students hostage, Romero claims. As to why school choice hasn’t made inroads in California, she blames “the spinelessness, the lack of a backbone, and fear” that Democratic elected officials have had in responding to this “800-pound gorilla in the room.”

Beholden to the massive public education bureaucracy, which accounts for nearly half of the state’s annual budget, Democratic lawmakers have historically squashed any attempts at school reform, preventing lower-income African-Americans and Hispanic children from securing a higher-quality education, Romero, who is Hispanic, asserted.

“You’re looking at a war chest that no other special interest in California can even command. It’s unparalleled. That’s where they get the money to smash down and frighten Democrats to shut up and stand down when it comes to education reform,” she said.

Romero and Elder have pointed to surveys showing tremendous support for school choice among African American and Latino parents. Yet their pleas are ignored by the Democratic Party, which colludes with the teachers’ union to avoid relinquishing their power.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/570932-virginia-races-offer-an-early-preview-of-democrats-midterm-challenges

Voters in Virginia will give Democrats and Republicans the first hints of the political landscape in advance of next year’s midterm elections when they head to the polls in eight weeks.

The marquee match-up is an expensive race for governor between former Carlyle Group chief executive Glenn Youngkin (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D), seeking a return to Richmond after four years out of the governor’s mansion.

But the more revealing test will come in smaller, below-the-radar elections for seats in the House of Delegates. Democrats hold 55 of the 100 seats up for election in November, contests that can approximate what appears to be an uphill battle to maintain control of the House of Representatives in Washington one year from now.

Delegate elections “can certainly, at times, play the role of canary in the coal mine. And I think that’s even more true now given how nationalized our elections at every level have become,” said Tucker Martin, who served as a top aide to former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R). “If there are trends developing you’ll see some of them in the results.”

Democrats lost half a dozen seats in Virginia elections in 1993, a year before control of Congress changed hands in the 1994 Republican revolution. Republicans ended more than a century of Democratic control of the House of Delegates in 1999, a year before George W. Bush became the first Republican president since Eisenhower to take office with control of the House and Senate (though Democrats reclaimed control of the Senate after a party switch).

https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2021/09/01/hans-von-spakovsky-missing-ballots-three-states-exceed-joe-bidens-victory-margins/

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said president Joe Biden’s margins of victory in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election were narrower than the states’ respective totals of unaccounted-for ballots.

Biden’s margin of victory in Wisconsin was approximately 20,000 votes despite the number of ballots “missing or undeliverable” in the state amounting to 83,000, von Spakovsky noted.

“Remember the margin of victory in Wisconsin was only 20,000 votes, and that basically 82,000 ballots were either lost or undeliverable or were rejected,” von Spakovsky said on Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. “That’s four times the margin of victory.”

“Those are the numbers that the Wisconsin Election Commission itself reported to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission,” he added.

Von Spakovsky shared details of “unaccounted-for ballots” from a Daily Signal report

“[The Wisconsin Election Commission] said 6,500 absentee ballots they mailed out were sent back by the postal service as ‘undeliverable’ [and] 3,000 ballots that came back were rejected. They don’t say why, but usually [a ballot is rejected] because, for example, the signature doesn’t match, indicating it may have been a fraudulent ballot,” he remarked.

Wisconsin authorities cannot account for 76,000 ballots, von Spakovsky stated. “They don’t know what happened to them,” he said. “In other words, voters requested an absentee ballot, or [Wisconsin officials] simply decided — in some places in Wisconsin — to simply mail out absentee ballots to everybody, and the ballot never came back, so it’s unaccounted for. These are the official numbers of the election commission [in Wisconsin], and we don’t know what happened to them. We don’t know if [the ballots] got lost [or] if they were stolen and somebody didn’t get to vote.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-come-back-eric-adams-mayor-covid-recovery-florida-crime-charters-police-11630677464?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Like many New Yorkers, Eric Adams plans to head for a warmer climate this winter. But for him it’s a business trip. “On Jan. 2, 2022,” he says, “I’m taking a flight to Florida, and I’m telling all those New Yorkers that live in Florida—I’m telling them, ‘Bring your butt back to New York.’ ”

Long a cold-weather bolt-hole for affluent New Yorkers, Florida became even more attractive last year as it quickly ended its pandemic restrictions. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles estimated this July that 33,500 New Yorkers—many able to work anywhere with an internet connection—had made the move in the preceding 10 months. A real-estate firm’s analysis of postal change-of-address forms counted some 26,000 moves from metro New York to the Miami area in 2020.

Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for New York mayor, expects to be sworn in on Jan. 1. He has good reason for wanting to win back erstwhile New Yorkers who’ve voted with their feet. Speaking by phone from the back seat of his car somewhere in his home borough of Brooklyn, he says he believes many of those who moved were “among the 65,000 New Yorkers who pay 51% of our income tax.” That is entirely plausible, given that New York City residents pay state and local income taxes at rates of up to 14.776%, while Florida has no income tax.

“I don’t blame them for leaving,” Mr. Adams says. “New York has become too violent, too bureaucratic, too expensive to do business.” He appreciates their financial contribution to the city: “We have cops on our streets, teachers in our schools and all of the other things because of those high-income-tax earners.” (He’s quick to acknowledge the contribution made, “also, by middle-income earners and even the low-income earners.”)

The election for mayor isn’t until Nov. 2, but Mr. Adams appears to be a shoo-in. Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1 on the city’s voter rolls. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg won a combined five terms as Republican nominees between 1993 and 2009, but they didn’t leave an effective party behind. Joe Lhota, a former Giuliani aide who was the GOP mayoral nominee in 2013, received less than a quarter of the vote as he lost to leftist Democrat Bill de Blasio. The current GOP nominee, radio host Curtis Sliwa, founded the Guardian Angels anticrime group in the late 1970s.

On the Democratic side, Mr. Adams prevailed as a centrist in a crowded field. He outpolled all rivals in every borough save Manhattan and did especially well in minority neighborhoods. (Mr. Adams, who is black, is serving his second term as Brooklyn borough president.) After 22 years in the New York City Police Department, rising to captain, he positioned himself as the mayoral candidate best equipped to tackle crime—a problem that seemed well under control in the Bloomberg years but has grown worse under Mr. de Blasio.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/31/californias-recall-election-has-already-been-stolen/

California’s gubernatorial recall election is officially September 14, but “Election Day” has ceased to have any meaning, Mail-in ballots were automatically sent to every registered voter on August 16. Return postage is “free,” pre-paid by California taxpayers. The registration deadline was August 30, but you can still register to vote “conditionally” and cast your vote immediately, right up to and including on the 14th. 

Mail ballots do not have to be received by “Election Day.” Ballots received up through September 21, a week after the election, will still count. Which gives the people in power plenty of time to correct any “mistakes” revealed by the initial vote tallying on September 14. 

You will recall that a drug-addled miscreant was recently apprehended in his car with 300 stolen mail-in ballots. The police found these ballots not due to brilliant detective work but because someone reported a man passed out in his vehicle. “Police are working with officials to ensure that all voters affected by the thefts get new ballots,” reported the Los Angeles Times. 

The Times concludes its story with the line: “The incident isn’t tied to additional ballot thefts, police said.” 

That’s right! No chance any other ballots have been tampered with. They’ve nabbed the ballot-stealing mastermind who passed out in his car. He must be the mastermind because the police tell us this incident isn’t tied to additional ballot thefts. How lucky we are that they have now found all the ballots that were stolen, and without even investigating. You can be confident the police will just as tirelessly not investigate further vote fraud issues.

I was going to suggest that this recall election was a test not of Governor Gavin Newsom’s popularity but of democracy in America—that is, a test of whether the will of the voters can still have any effect on government. But who are we kidding? You need only look at the rules for this election—the month-long voting window, the automatic mail-in ballots, the legality of ballots received a week after election day, plus that little incident of 300 stolen ballots being discovered entirely at random—to know that this election has already been rigged. Democracy has already been tested in California and has already failed—we need only wait until September 21 for official confirmation.

The real purpose of this recall election has nothing whatever to do with democracy or even with Newsom. The election is intended simply to keep the people of California quiet. It will enable the state’s leaders to say, “You’ve had your chance at voting, and look, we won! So calm down and continue to follow our orders.” 

Ultimately, this election will test whether Americans will accept a dictatorship. 

https://www.city-journal.org/playing-race-card-on-california-gubernatorial-candidate-larry-elder

The possibility that Larry Elder may win California’s recall election against Governor Gavin Newsom is generating acute anxiety in the mainstream media and among the activist Left. Elder’s foes are responding with their favored means of destruction: by playing the race card. Never mind that the nationally syndicated talk show host is black. A series of opinion columns and editorials have accused him of being a white supremacist, or at the very least a shill for other white supremacists. Elect Elder and California will reinstate Jim Crow, state senator Sydney Kamlager, a Democrat from Los Angeles, has warned.

The media have focused particularly on Elder’s views about crime and policing. The self-described “Sage from South-Central” maintains that criminals, not the police, are the biggest threat in the black community. According to Elder, the false narrative about lethal police racism has only led to more black homicide deaths. “When you reduce the possibility of a bad guy getting caught, getting convicted and getting incarcerated, guess what? Crime goes up,” he said recently at a campaign event in Orange County.

Elder also rejects the charge that white civilians are gunning down blacks, as LeBron James maintained in a tweet during the George Floyd riots: “We are literally hunted everyday, every time we step outside the comfort of our homes.” Elder has a different take. If a “young black man is eight times more likely to be killed by another young black man than [by] a young white man,” Elder told the Orange County Republicans, then “systemic racism is not the problem.”

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/27/fraudulent-candidate-terry-mcauliffe-didnt-follow-va-election-law-and-a-new-lawsuit-could-boot-him-off-the-ballot/

The Republican Party of Virginia filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Virginia State Board of Elections and the Virginia Department of Elections, asking the courts to remove the state’s gubernatorial candidate Democrat Terry McAuliffe from the ballot for failing to sign a required form declaring his candidacy. This means the former Virginia governor might not be getting his old job back any time soon.

The Virginia Republican Party’s lawsuit also contends that McAuliffe’s Declaration of Candidacy contains “signatures from two individuals claiming that they witnessed McAuliffe sign the Declaration despite his signature appearing nowhere on the face of the document.” 

According to DCist, an independent copy of the form obtained from the Department of Elections is indeed missing McAuliffe’s signature in the box labeled “SIGNATURE OF CANDIDATE.”

When asked about the lawsuit by Fox News, McAuliffe campaign spokeswoman Christina Freundlich said the former governor’s campaign “submitted the required paperwork” and that the suit was a “desperate Trumpian” political move to force McAuliffe, who “is consistently leading in the polls,” out of the race.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/gavin-newsom-and-larry-elder-caught-in-a-tight-race-in-california/

Mail-in ballots for the September 14 referendum on whether the governor should be recalled have begun to roll in.

A ugust has been a rough month for Democratic political royalty. Governor Andrew Cuomo, the son of the late governor Mario Cuomo, resigned in disgrace over sexual harassment and COVID scandals. Terry McAuliffe, the longtime fundraising fixer for the Clintons, is polling below 50 percent in his attempt to reclaim Virginia’s governorship.

And California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, whose family has been intertwined for generations with the families of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former governor Jerry Brown, is in grave danger of being ousted from office in a September 14 recall election.

Newsom’s plight is surprising. He was elected with 62 percent of the vote in 2018 in a one-party state, where Republicans haven’t won a single statewide office in 15 years.

But he has squandered his political capital. His handling of COVID-19 has been characterized by constantly shifting lockdowns, closed schools, vaccine-distribution snafus, and an unemployment-benefits scandal that may have seen $31 billion improperly go to prisoners, fraudsters, and people out of state. Half of the state’s people are under a mask mandate. COVID restrictions have especially hurt Latinos. They gave Newsom 64 percent of their vote in 2018, but recent polls show more Latinos back the recall than oppose it.

Indeed, Newsom has acquired a reputation as an arrogant elitist who acts as if mandates are for “the little people.” He turbocharged the recall by breaking his own coronavirus rules and attending an opulent dinner at French Laundry with lobbyists. His children have had in-person learning at an elite private school since last fall, even though he claims “he’s been living through Zoom school” — a statement the Sacramento Bee found “mostly false.” Just last month his kids had to be yanked from a summer camp because the governor said he suddenly learned it had no mask requirements.

Then there are California’s intractable problems. A BANANA movement (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody) has pushed housing costs to stratospheric heights. A new survey by a former pollster for Joe Biden has found that 65 percent of Californians believe that crime is getting worse. High taxes, stifling regulations, and poor schools are driving more and more businesses to leave, and household moving vans follow them out of the state.

This disillusioning environment created the conditions for the September 14 recall. Voters will be presented with two questions. The first will be whether Newsom should be recalled. The second will be who should succeed him if a majority removes him. The candidate with the most votes on the second question becomes governor, no majority required.

Unlike the recall that vaulted Arnold Schwarzenegger into office in 2003, there is no celebrity candidate this time. Newsom intimidated any even remotely known Democrat from filing to replace him, and the relatively unknown Republicans who have been debating each other have proved themselves knowledgeable but bland in their presentation.

The exception is attorney and talk-show host Larry Elder, who is skipping the debates and focusing on Newsom. Elder has honed a cerebral and spirited conservative critique of California’s ills in 27 years on the state’s TV and radio stations.