Free Republic

Far-left members of the City Council want to make Big Apple landlords do their work for them — or face five-figure fines. A new bill would require property owners to provide tenants with contact information for all elected officials representing their respective neighborhoods. Under the bill, introduced last week by Brooklyn Councilwoman Jennifer Gutiérrez, landlords would be required to supply new and existing tenants with hard-copy notices listing the names, office addresses and phone contacts for all federal, state and city pols representing their neighborhoods.

WASHINGTON (AP) — No president wants to give up the power and prestige that comes with the office after only one term, and Joe Biden is no exception. He’s pushing forward even though polls show a majority of Americans don’t want to see him run again. We went back to look at when modern presidents announced their decisions to seek a second term, what their Gallup approval ratings were at the time and how things turned out for them. One theme: Primary battles are a sign of whether a president will win reelection. That’s good news for Biden, who appears...

There are 6,278 state legislative seats up for election on November 8, 2022, across 46 states. This page analyzes incumbents defeated in those state legislative races. An incumbent may be defeated at two points in an election cycle: during a primary election or other nominating contest and during a general election.[1] In primary elections, 216 incumbents lost to challengers, 4.5% of incumbents who filed for re-election. In 2022: 63 Democratic incumbents lost in primaries, 2.8% of the 2,273 Democratic incumbents who filed for re-election. 153 Republican incumbents lost in primaries, 6.0% of the 2,568 Republican incumbents who filed for re-election....

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday backed six progressive insurgent candidates in upcoming Democratic primaries, including two contenders who are challenging high-profile House Democrats. And the independent lawmaker’s also at odds with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) -- endorsing a rival candidate to the contender the Senate Democrats’ political arm is supporting in Kentucky. **SNIP** "One of the ways we must continue building that movement is by electing progressives at all levels of government. Because the truth is, real change never happens from the top on down. It happens from the bottom on up,” Sanders emphasized. Among those he’s backing...

Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., represents arguably the most gerrymandered congressional district in the country, and he wants to keep it that way. His latest piece of legislation, H.R. 1 “For the People Act,” would force taxpayers to fund congressional campaigns. Congress has a knack for naming legislation after its opposite intended effect. If you’ve spent more than a weekend in Washington, you know that a bill named “For the People” is likely a far cry from actually benefiting the public. The “Incumbent Protection Act” would be a more fitting name for this piece of legislation. Forcing citizens to fund political...

It’s great to be an incumbent Republican. You can break your promises to voters, vote to massively increase government spending, and time and time again sell out the conservative base — and for the most part, you don’t need to worry about losing a Republican primary election.

FireYourCongressman.com Serial entrepreneur Norbert Richter claims no relation to the inventor of the Richter Scale, but if his breakthrough idea is successful, he’ll be causing political tremors for decades. Richter has used his failed congressional primary challenge as inspiration for a free market workaround that has the potential to be voter–imposed term limits. His new organization, FireYourCongressman.com, bypasses the roadblock that has stopped every federal term limits proposal: Incumbent professional politicians who intend to die in office. Curator of the Senate Mitch McConnell’s clichéd response to voter’s desire for term limits is always a dismissive ‘that’s what elections are for.’...

This page lists the incumbent members of the 115th U.S. Congress who are not running for re-election in the 2018 Congressional elections (both U.S. Senate and U.S. House).U.S. Senate members 0 Democrats 2 Republicans U.S. House members As of November 28, 2017, a total of 33 representatives will not seek re-election to their U.S. House districts. Party breakdown: 11 Democratic members of the U.S. House and 22 Republican members of the U.S. HouseIncumbents retiring from public office 4 Democrats 12 Republicans Incumbents seeking other offices U.S. House members seeking a seat in the U.S. Senate 3 Democrats 5 RepublicansU.S. House...

It’s on! Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed Steve Bannon on Monday during his joint press conference with President Donald Trump. McConnell has failed to pass ANY significant legislation since President Trump entered office in January.Nothing!   Former Trump Chief Strategist Steve Bannon announced his plans to replace the deadbeat Republicans who trash President Trump and stall the conservative-populist agenda in Washington DC. Last week Steve Bannon warned the GOP elites, ” We’re going to cut off the oxygen to Mitch McConnell.” McConnell didn’t like that.Today McConnell lashed out at Steve Bannon for going after GOP senate seats in...

The 248 Republican officials serving in Washington who are up for election in 2018 are facing a deeper and more frightening version of the threat that has haunted GOP senators and representatives since the rise of the Tea Party in 2009: populist ouster from inside their own camp. How much jeopardy does the right’s internal turmoil put them in? This may be the wrong question. The real issue may be how much jeopardy they think they might be in and what they might do to stave it off as a result. This would seem to be a strange moment for...

The stunning defeat of President Trump’s chosen Senate candidate in Alabama on Tuesday amounted to a political lightning strike — setting the stage for a worsening Republican civil war that could have profound effects on next year’s midterm elections and undermine Trump’s clout with his core voters. It marked yet another humiliation for the Washington-based Republican establishment, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose allies pumped millions of dollars into the race to prop up Strange and reassure his colleagues that they could survive the Trump era. “If you’re an incumbent, you have to assume the wind is against...

In the race for U.S. Senate, Republican challenger Jim Oberweis is getting shunned by two top Republicans - one local, one national. Dick Durbin is such a favorite for reelection that Republican Senator Mark Kirk says he’s not even planning to campaign with fellow Republican Oberweis. “I’m going to be protecting my relationship with Dick and not launching into a partisan jihad that hurts our partnership [in which we] both pull together for Illinois.” And at his side at an unrelated news conference was Republican Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, in town for a fundraiser, who took a...

I don’t get it. Sebelius claims that “the marketplace is working.” What is there to talk about? Actually, I can think of two items on the agenda. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday will convene a special meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus and senior White Officials to discuss the troubled rollout of ObamaCare…The Senate leader said President Obama called him Tuesday evening to discuss healthcare and other issues.Several Democrats have signed onto a proposal sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) that would force insurance companies to let people keep their health plans if they like them.Sen. Tim...

The Republican Party is broken. Its leadership has great difficulty doing anything beyond yielding to the Obama Machine. Can the party be fixed, or should it be put out of our misery.Here's the RINO view: It hasn't worked very well.Here's the Democrat view: It has worked. In a presentation shortly after the November election debacle, Bill Whittle explained that most Republicans do not stand for what they say are their basic principles. Before getting into that, some historical insights into basic concepts, "big ideas" and what most conservatives believe is necessary Part I -- Constrained vs. Unconstrained Visions of Humanity[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dwz_Z62e0s&w=640&h=390] Video linkPart II --...

Between the new congressional district lines and the new open primaries, people who hold elected office in California are running for their lives. In previous years, maybe 10 percent of congressional and legislative districts were competitive. Now everybody thinks they're at risk. Even well-known incumbents in Democrat-dominated districts - people like Reps. Barbara Lee and John Garamendi - fear they might get beat. As a result, they are scooping up and holding onto as much campaign cash as possible. It's all putting a pinch on Rep. Nancy Pelosi's hopes of the Democrats retaking the House. You see, in the past...

When the dust clears after Tuesday's U.S. Senate runoff, voters in the Republican primary probably will have chosen Texas' next senator. Their decision is expected to shape Texas politics for years to come. It has been a bitter, bruising and expensive battle between Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz, a former state solicitor general. Little divides the two on core policy matters. They are both conservatives who oppose President Barack Obama's health care reform, have called for significant cuts to the federal budget and support stronger measures to secure the border with Mexico. But they differ greatly in terms...

More Americans approve of polygamy than of Congress. A February CBS News/New York Times poll found just 10 percent of respondents approved of Congress’s job performance. snip A new group called the Campaign for Primary Accountability (CFPA) plans to shake up this stagnant system. Its key insight is that incumbents who are ethically challenged, lazy, or ideologically mismatched to their district can be beaten—but in party primaries. And it has already had some impact on this year’s elections.

Even in the most anti-incumbent primary season of the past few decades, less than 5 percent of members of Congress lost their primaries. ... But relatively speaking, this looks like one of the most anti-incumbent years in decades. There are several factors in the coming election that will lead to an increase in the number of members sent home early — and it’s quite possible we could see more incumbents lose than at any point in the last 40 years.

For the Tea Party Express, next year’s election is all about the Senate. With no consensus tea party presidential candidate in sight, the group plans to kick off the new year with a stream of endorsements in Senatorial races, Chairwoman Amy Kremer told Roll Call Friday. In September, the group co-sponsored a Republican presidential debate with CNN and its leaders expected to anoint one of the nominees as the candidate of the tea party shortly thereafter. But no single candidate managed to capture the imagination of grass-roots conservatives.

What will you be doing one week from right now? The most important date in this election isn’t, as Massachusetts Democrats want us to believe, 1991, or 1998, or even this Tuesday, Election Day. The date you should focus on like a laser beam is Thursday. Tuesday you vote. Wednesday is the postgame show. But Thursday will be the first day you fully comprehend the consequences. How are you going to feel if the Massachusetts you wake up to that morning is exactly like the one you’re living in today? How will you feel if, after four years of higher...