Free Republic

Sean Bielat, won’t you please come home? The Kennedys are back. It’s only been one blessed year with none of them in Congress, and now the plague is about to return. Joseph P. Kennedy III, also known as JoJoJo, is being “urged” to run. Mother o’ Gawd, how can we miss them when they won’t go away? JoJoJo is one of Joe Kennedy’s twin sons. For point of reference, he’s the twin who wasn’t set on fire by his father with illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July during one of those traditional Kennedy family weekends on the Cape. It...

In 2010, Republican Sean Bielat gave Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank the toughest re-election challenge the Democrat had ever experienced. Although Bielat’s insurgent Tea Party-backed campaign fell short of unseating Frank, it was obviously a factor in the 16-term congressman’s decision this week to retire at the end of his current term, rather than seek re-election in a newly redrawn district. Thursday night, Bielat spoke to me in a brief telephone interview.Robert Stacy McCain: So, this is the week of ‘Bye Bye Barney.’ How are you feeling right now? Sean Bielat: [Laughs.] Well, you know, if you would have asked me...

NEWTON — A cranky U.S. Rep. Barney Frank blasted the Herald last night as “irrelevant,” even as surging Republicans grabbed control of the U.S. House and swept him from his lofty perch as chairman of the powerful financial services committee. “With the re-election of the Massachusetts delegation and Gov. Deval Patrick, we can acknowledge tonight that Massachusetts has reaffirmed the complete political irrelevance of the Boston Herald," Frank told more than 100 supporters at the Crowne Plaza in Newton. “There is no limit to the bias and vitriol they unleashed.” Frank won the hardest fight of his political career, fending...

With his wife Hope and son Theo beside him, Bielat said his campaign had done the impossible. "We took on a 30-year incumbent, in the most gerrymandered district, who outspent us by $1 million. And we came close," Bielat said. "We have created, in the 4th District, a choice." "This is not the speech I wanted to give," Bielat said, but he insisted the race would be closer than the 58 percent to 39 percent split projected at 10:30 p.m., when he spoke.

US Representative Barney Frank, the powerful House committee chairman and influential Democrat, easily won re-election today after holding off a challenge from Republican Sean Bielat. After a scare, Frank surged to victory, winning 61 percent of the vote to Bielat's 36 percent, with 62 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press.

Republican Charles Baker's campaign to spur Governor Deval Patrick (D) from office might have reason to celebrate before the polls close at eight o'clock (get out there and vote, if you have not already). Incumbent Barney Frank may suffer if the Republican voters also turn out just like earlier this year in the Scott Brown election. Brown received 53% in all of Massachusetts and took the 4th Congressional District. If Sean Bielat can turn out a significant number of voters, he may be the next Congressman from that district.

Fighting for his political life, a frustrated U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said he was “disappointed” in Sean Bielat’s campaign, saying the surging newcomer has succumbed to the usual right-wing tactics. “I’m disappointed in the campaign,” Frank said while greeting voters in Sharon. “He’s talked very little about the issues and has been a vehicle for an angry right wing.”

Oh my God, could bluer than blue Brookline — the capital of Moonbat-istan — be breaking for Republican Sean Bielat? For 25 years I’ve lived in Brookline, where Republicans admit they’re Republicans at their own risk. Yet I haven’t seen so many lawn signs for a Republican since a few courageous matrons put a “Weld for Governor” placard on their lawn in 1990 and paid the price: social suicide. They were promptly shunned at Whole Foods. Their poor children sat alone in the cafeteria. It says something huge about Barney Frank’s fall from grace that a few brave Brookline-ites are...

(SNIP) Today, Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) indicated how Obama's plans to gut the military would be translated into budgetary allocations. Frank told the editorial board of The Standard-Times that the Democrats would slash military spending by 25%, forcing American to withdraw from Iraq sooner. Rep. Frank said, "We don't need all these fancy new weapon Rep. Frank also called for massive increases in federal spending for social programs and increased taxes.

Wall Street Reform Architect Frank Fights for SurvivalBy Reuters November 01, 2010 BOSTON - Representative Barney Frank, the outspoken, witty Democrat closely tied to the 2008 U.S. bank bailout, faces a tough re-election battle after 15 terms in office at a time when incumbency itself is a liability. Challenging the Massachusetts liberal is Republican Sean Bielat, a former U.S. marine, and opinion polls suggest Frank has an uncomfortably narrow lead over a political unknown. In the run-up to Tuesday's congressional elections, Frank has faced a torrent of negative ads and mailings, much of it from groups outside the state who...

It’s an internal campaign poll, but according to Sean Beilat’s campaign, the GOP candidate is in a statistical tie with Rep. Barney Frank: We obtained a Bielat campaign internal memo on their polling from last week showing the race is a statistical dead-heat against incumbent Congressman Barney Frank. The memo, sent from an anonymous source, illustrates and echoes only what we’ve been hearing and seeing on the ground. While Sean Bielat’s number of supporters seem to be increasing at every event, Barney Frank’s supporters are all but non-existent. Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, has moved MA-4 from...

The last two major polls of the race had him trailing by a dozen, but last night on Hannity’s show he teased the fact that his internal numbers are showing things to be much tighter. And now, lo and behold, a Bielat campaign memo claiming that he’s within the margin of error has been leaked to Fleming and Hayes. I don’t normally link internal polls — as Ace says, you’re never sure how representative the leaked data is — but apart from the Nevada Senate seat, there’s no race in the country that conservatives more urgently want to win than...

A new Boston Globe poll puts Barney Frank ahead of his GOP challenger, Sean Bielat, by a 46 to 33 percent margin. That may sound like good news for the incumbent, until you consider that Frank, who was first elected in 1980, has never won a general election by fewer than 20 points -- and that he's notched at least 64 percent of the vote in every race since 1990. It's not hard to see what's going on here. As I wrote back in January, when Scott Brown knocked off Martha Coakley, Massachusetts is a perfect example of how the...

Sean Bielat’s suddenly energized campaign to unseat Barney Frank has not only gone national ... it’s gone viral. The GOP maverick and former Marine has launched a YouTube offensive with campaign videos that are clicking with the ’Net crowd. The most popular of the bunch is the “The Barney Shuffle,” a mash-up of quotes from Frank about the economic collapse as the Newton Democrat dances (disco balls twirling in the halls of Congress) while rapping “this is not the dot.com collapse ... it’s a bubble ... a bubble ... can I finish my sentence.”

Congressman Barney Frank is in the fight of his political life. In the latest National Journal Political Insider's Poll, surveying 111 Democrat operatives, over two-thirds of the respondents believed Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives after the November 2010 election. Underscoring the apprehension held by the polled insiders was their added belief that the losses would extend beyond moderate "Blue Dog" lawmakers to include a number of prominent progressive representatives. Conventional wisdom had long held the most likely Democrat victims in the House would come from the ranks of these forty or so conservative Blue Dogs. However,...

Barney Frank has given his re-election campaign $200,000 as he faces his toughest race in years. A campaign finance report filed Tuesday showed that Frank, the chairman of the powerful House Financial Services committee, lent himself the money Tuesday. The chairman is facing one of his toughest fights in recent memory against Republican Sean Bielat, a 35-year-old Marine veteran with degrees from Georgetown, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Republican Sen. Scott Brown won Frank’s congressional district, which President Barack Obama carried in 2008. Bielat has zeroed in on Frank’s service atop the financial services committee, indicating that the Democrat...

Longtime Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank has given his re-election campaign $200,000 as he faces his toughest race in years. A campaign finance report filed Tuesday showed that Frank, the chairman of the powerful House Financial Services committee, lent himself the money Tuesday. Frank, a 15-term lawmaker from Newton, Mass., raised $316,644 last quarter and reported more than $1 million on hand with no debts. His campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Barney Frank’s gay boyfriend tries to harass and antagonize Frank’s GOP opponent, Sean Bielat. The weird and awkward scene took place last Wednesday, right after the conclusion of a debate between Barney "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a-okay" Frank and challenger Sean Bielat. The bizarre incident was caught on tape by a Boston Herald reporter and featured Frank’s gay boyfriend, a supposed "amateur" photographer by the name of James Ready, taking pictures of Bielat while he was minding his own business and talking to some reporters. Ready also tried to harass and antagonize Bielat by criticizing the quality of...

In a sign that he has caught the attention of Republicans in Massachusetts and beyond, GOP congressional hopeful Sean Bielat outraised every congressional candidate in the state in the latest reporting period — including his opponent, longtime US Representative Barney Frank — according to newly released campaign finance filings in most races.

Me thinks Barney Frank and the rest of the Dems are starting to PANIC.