Free Republic

Final election tonight in Mississippi for the US Senate and a few House races.

Voters in Mississippi on Tuesday will decide a U.S. Senate special election runoff marked by racial controversy and capped by a last-minute visit by President Donald Trump to shore up the beleaguered Republican incumbent. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white former state lawmaker who was appointed to the seat in April, is still favored over black Democrat Mike Espy in the reliably Republican state, which has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. But she has been engulfed in a political storm since a video surfaced showing her praising a supporter at a Nov. 2 public event by...

Don't be fooled, Mississippi. Democrat Mike Espy is no southern Democrat — he’s a radical liberal with a track record of supporting tax hikes and stifling economic growth with job-killing policies.Espy, who is running in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate against Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, has been able to keep a low profile during the chaos of the 2018 midterms, and now has an outside chance of becoming the next senator from Mississippi. That would be a disaster for the entire country, just as it was the last time we sent him to Congress.Espy was a registered lobbyist for...

The signs were made public late last night, leaving no doubt this was a racist stunt by Mississippi Democrats to help drive voter turnout. MSM cable outlets have covered the ‘discovery of nooses’ in breathless fashion, but have conveniently failed to mention the signs left alongside. (Photos of the signs at link)

It's "cui bono?" in Latin. Francophones ask, "à qui profite le crime?" Whatever your linguistic leanings, the point is the same. If you're trying to figure out who committed a crime, figure out who benefits from it. Let's apply the principle to the racially-charged Senate run-off race in Mississippi, in which the African-American Dem, Mike Espy, faces Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. One day before today's election, two nooses are found at the state capitol. So . . . who benefits? CNN's Joe Johns supplied the answer on this morning's New Day: "The President defending Hyde-Smith, and directly attacking her challenger, the...

A House race in California that was previously called in favor of Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) has been called into question, with Democrat T.J. Cox pulling ahead Monday in the vote count. The Associated Press on Monday said it was retracting its call in the race after previously declaring that Valadao had been reelected. "No new call will be made until the results are certified," the AP wrote in a tweet. --- The race in California's 21st Congressional District, which includes the San Joaquin Valley, is the last contested race in the country. Cox holds a 438-vote lead as of...

Some random observations on the 2018 offyear elections, for Thanksgiving weekend pondering: 1. We hear constantly, and in some respects accurately, that Americans are deeply divided politically. Another way to look at it: The differences between north and south, visible for two or three centuries, are vanishing. As Real Clear Politics analyst Sean Trende tweeted, "Southern suburbs are starting to vote like northern suburbs, northern rurals/small towns starting to vote like Southern rurals/small towns." Republicans, who lost suburban House seats on the coasts and in the Midwest in the 1990s, lost them this year in metro Houston, Dallas and Atlanta....

FULL TITLE: REVEALED: Democrats won control of the House of Representatives by the largest margin since the Watergate scandal Democrats won the popular vote in the House by the largest margins since the Watergate scandal and resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon. An analysis by NBC News reveals that Democrats stormed to victory over the Republicans in House races, by a whopping 8.6 million votes in this year's midterms. NBC reported that number is the largest margin that Democrats have defeated Republicans in a midterm House election since 1974. That midterm race, shortly after Nixon resigned, allowed Democrats to win...

While you were watching the Red Card in Florida, guess what they pulled in California? A nation riveted. Did Florida elect DeSantis their new Governor, or the anti-Semitic crook with the Hamilton tickets and the Tallahassee corruption scandal? Did Florida elect one of its finest-ever Governors, now term-limited, to the United States Senate, or did they go again for the mummy? And for those with Georgia on their minds, did Stacey Abrams finally figure out that 49 percent is less than 50 percent, or is she still working on the new math? Well, it seems for Republicans focused on those...

Democrats took control of the House by flipping seats in the nation’s suburbs, which have long been political battlegrounds. But those victories rested on more than just the votes of college-educated white voters, whose shift away from Donald Trump and the Republican Party has drawn wide attention. People of color were also a large component of the Democrats’ victories in the suburbs—increasingly diverse communities that no longer fit the stereotype of racial homogeneity. They are more likely to live in the suburbs than in urban areas, and no matter where they live, they tend to vote Democratic. In the AP...

Georgia’s hotly contested election for governor was neither fair nor free, former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams said in a Monday night interview. Abrams, who announced on Friday that she was ending her gubernatorial bid, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that her Republican opponent Brian Kemp had for years undermined democracy as Georgia’s secretary of state. “It was not a free and fair election,” Abrams said. “We had thousands of Georgians who were purged from the rolls wrongly, including a 92-year-old woman who had voted in the same area since 1968 ― a civil rights leader.”

African-Americans increasingly associate GOP with Trump, racist rhetoric Democratic wins in the 2018 midterms were driven largely by African American voters — particularly black women — who increasingly associate the GOP with President Trump’s perceived hostility toward people of color and immigrants, according to an analysis released Monday. The report by the NAACP, the racial justice nonprofit Advancement Project, and the political action group African American Research Collaborative found that across competitive elections 90 percent of black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 53 percent of voters overall. It also found 91 percent of black women, 86 percent of...

New York (CNN Business)Stocks fell sharply Monday, dragged down by reports that Apple's newest line of phones may not be selling as well as Apple or its investors had hoped. The Dow fell more than 500 points and the Nasdaq tumbled 2.8%. Apple's stock fell once more after the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple has cut orders for its iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. The new iPhones, which Apple unveiled in September, cost more than previous versions. The $749 iPhone XR is the least expensive new iPhone, but it costs $50 more than last year's cheapest...

".....Official results turned in Sunday showed Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis was elected governor over Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 32,463 votes out of more than 8 million cast. Republican Gov. Rick Scott defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson by 10,033 votes....."

Truly great disasters come like a thief in the night. How many foresaw Rome’s sacking in 410 A.D., her collapse 66 years later, WWI or WWII? As for today, how many see that the United States is at what some call a tipping point, what others may call a Fourth Turning? Whatever you call it, the American republic is in its last days. This is too scary for many to contemplate, but there’s something far scarier: playing ostrich and not being prepared for things to come. The so-called Left, ever violent since its French Revolution birth and as power hungry...

HOUSTON—An energized Democratic electorate wasn’t enough to defeat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz this month, but in the state’s most populous county, it created a blue landslide. Nearly every Republican in Harris County, home to Houston, was unseated on Nov. 6, including 59 judges and the top executive, Ed Emmett, a moderate who won in 2014 with 83% of the vote. Mr. Emmett, whose official title is county judge and who was widely lauded for steering the county through the devastation of Hurricane Harvey last year, lost to political novice Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat who said she has never previously attended...

United States Senator Rick Scott 4,099,505 50.05% Bill Nelson 4,089,472 49.93% Machine and Manual Recounts Completed

(National Sentinel) Build It: In politics, there are very few lay-ups when it comes to finding issues most Americans agree on, but POTUS Donald Trump hit upon one during his 2016 campaign: Building a “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S. border with Mexico to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking. And according to midterm exit polling, it’s still a political lay-up. Exit polling conducted by Zogby Analytics for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that the vast majority of Republican voters — more than 80 percent — favor the construction of a border wall along the southern border....

You supposedly won’t have Brenda Snipes to kick around anymore. The subject of one of the more famous “Florida Woman” stories of late is reported to have resigned her position as Broward County Election Supervisor, taking effect in January. After numerous, spectacular failures in processing election results over the years, Saturday’s debacle of submitting their recount results two minutes after the deadline had passed was apparently a bridge too far and Ms. Snipes is stepping down. (Washington Times) Taking a page from the playbook of disgraced public officials around the country, Snipes reportedly wants to “spend more time with her...

Just hours after finishing a tumultuous election recount on Sunday, Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes submitted her resignation. “It is true. She did send it,” said Burnadette Norris-Weeks, an attorney who works as counsel to the Supervisor of Elections Office. Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a former office spokeswoman who left several years ago, said Sunday evening she was told by people in the office that the letter was sent “to Tallahassee” earlier in the day. Norris-Weeks said she saw an early draft of the letter. In the version she saw, she said Snipes, 75, expressed a desire to spend more time...