The Hot Seats: Can a Progressive in Illinois Take Down Activist Enemy No. 1?

As was expected, former failed University of Cincinnati football coach Tommy Tuberville and former Sen./Attorney General Jeff Sessions finished neck and neck in the 'Bama Republican Senate primary on Super Tuesday. Now both are headed to a March 31 runoff for the right to face Doug "Big Doug"* Jones in November. As was sort of expected given that it was the most obnoxious possible option, Donald Trump has endorsed Tuberville on the grounds that Sessions-who was the first senator to endorse Trump, and who essentially supplied him with his entire immigration agenda-didn't do enough justice obstruction on Trump's behalf during the Mueller investigation. Tuberville, Trump wrote, is a "REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down." KAG apparently stands for Keep America Great (cause Trump already made it great in his first term), and obviously you can not let KAG down if you want Trump's endorsement.

*Not his real nickname.

And here we have another one of these younger progressive-challengers-taking-on-a-more-moderate-Democratic-incumbent situations. So many younger Democrats out there, getting frisky! What's their deal, anyway? Don't they like living through never-ending high-stakes crises and not being able to afford anything? Aaaaaanyway, the challenger in Ohio's 3 ^rd, which covers most of Columbus and many of its suburbs, is Harper, a 36-year-old who (per her campaign bio) was placed in a Columbus foster home as a newborn before being adopted, eventually graduating from Stanford Law School, and getting a job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration. The incumbent Dem is Joyce Beatty, 69, who has been in Congress since 2013 and previously held a state House seat that she took over from her husband, Otto. (Otto is an underrated name!) Harper has raised $670,000 in small-donor money and generated positive press coverage, but-stop me if you've heard this one before-she's running against a well-entrenched Democrat who has long-standing connections to numerous local organizations. Beatty also hasn't taken any particularly apostatic positions or been involved in a big scandal. Who will win? I don't know, since there isn't any public polling available!

The 50 ^th-which, as currently drawn, extends from San Diego's suburbs out into some beautiful but unforgiving desert country where two friends of mine once got married-was once represented by Republican Duke Cunningham, who resigned in 2005 after pleading guilty to having received more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors. Other parts of the San Diego area that are now included in the district were once represented by Republican Duncan L. Hunter, who was found to have written 399 checks for money he didn't have during the 1980s "Rubbergate" scandal. (He was never charged with a crime.) Hunter was succeeded in Congress by his son, Republican Duncan D. Hunter; Hunter won reelection in the 50 ^th in 2018 despite being under indictment for egregious personal misuse of campaign funds but accepted a plea agreement and resigned this January. In California's March 3 "jungle primary," one of the two candidates who qualified for November's runoff to fill the seat was Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar, who lost to Hunter by just 3 percentage points in 2018. The other ... was longtime San Diego-area congressman Darrell Issa, who was once convicted of carrying an unregistered handgun, indicted (but not convicted) for stealing a car, and suspected (but never charged) of burning down a car alarm factory for the insurance money. Campa-Najjar should probably consider robbing a bank just to show his potential constituents that he means business.