Make Smart Choices

Last Wednesday Before the Midterms

This is the last Wednesday before the midterm elections. People across the country are going to vote on everything from dogcatcher to senator. I’m paraphrasing a Florida minister who told Newsweek in 1980 that the Christian Right was going to take hold in this country by running for every elected office big and small. The strategy (which often started with running anti-sex ed candidates for school boards) seems to have worked—the rightest of right-wing candidates are on the ballot this year and some of them will likely win.

Voters in Michigan can cast their ballot for Tudor Dixon who hopes to oust Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Dixon worked for the steel industry and starred in low budget zombie films before launching a conservative radio show. (Maybe we should have a viewing part for Buddy Bebop vs. the Living Dead.) She was not well-known in Michigan politics and only got the GOP nomination because a few of her opponents were disqualified for faking signatures on their nominating petitions. She’s running a pretty standard far-right playbook with Trump’ endorsement. She’s anti-abortion, thinks teaching about gender identity is tantamount to indoctrination, believes that Trump won the 2020 election, and says she got into the race because she was mad at Whitmer for the Covid shutdowns.

Dixon also takes a strict view on what kind of books are and aren’t appropriate for young people. In last week’s debate she accused schools in her state of distributing “pornographic” books which she defines as “books describing how to have sex” (though no books for children actually do that). A clip from her radio show, however, suggests that she’d like to see most books hidden in the back room. Dixon explained that when her daughter was in first grade, she took out a book about divorce and then started to worry that her parents might get divorced. Dixon acknowledges that it’s a decent book for kids experiencing a divorce but felt it shouldn’t just be available on the shelves. Half of all marriages end in divorce. If we’re going try hide that from our kids, we’re going to need to ban a lot more than just books (basically all media and most afterschool playdates).

In the Idaho governor’s race, voters have more than two choices. Republican incumbent Brad Little is facing Democrat Steven Heidt, Independent Ammon Bundy, Libertarian Paul Sand, Constitution Party nominee Chantyrose Davison, and write-in candidate Lisa Marie (not Presley).   

Little is running on a platform of both tax cuts and investment in public education (not sure how the math works out). He supports anti-abortion policies and signed a bill similar to the Texas abortion law that turns citizens into snitches. He did say that he feared the law was unconstitutional and worried that it was unwise to set this neighbors-as-spies precedent as the other side could use it against gun owners in the future. Interestingly, he also worried that the law might “retraumatize victims of sexual assault.”

Democrat Steven Heidt may also be a study in contradictions. He has previously run for Congress in both Washington and Utah as a Republican. He is Mormon and as such says he has never smoked marijuana nor does he plan to, but he would like to see Idaho legalize it and agrees with President Biden’s plan to pardon those convicted of previous marijuana-related crimes. He has spent much of his career teaching English as a second language, and he has taught in the prison system. He criticized Little for signing the abortion law: “I do not believe that the state was ever given a mandate to legislate holy law. That [abortion] is something a woman and her doctor need to decide.”  

Ammon Bundy, the Independent, was the only other person running to qualify for the debates (though these didn’t happen once Little refused to appear). He is the founder of the People’s Rights Network, a national anti-government group that opposed all government restrictions related to Covid and he would like to ban all abortions (because government control is fine if there’s a uterus involved?) He would also like to abolish all social/safety net programs in the state including food stamps, housing assistance, transportation, health care, and “free education.” According to Bundy, these “staples” of socialism should be done as charitable deeds by communities, churches, and families.

He has said that he would pass a law declaring that life begins at conception and banning IUDs. Then he crowd-sourced scientific information about IUDs with a now-deleted tweet asking: “Hey what is your understanding of IUD’s? I am looking for truth and am having a hard time finding it. Not a surprise, right? Some say that an IUD blocks or kills the sperm, others say it works after conception. What is your understanding on the matter?”

Well, Ammon, since you asked, my understanding of the matter is that political candidates should get their information from legitimate sources, like, say, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology which explains how the IUD works this way:

“The IUD works mainly by preventing fertilization of an egg by sperm. The progestin in the hormonal IUD thickens mucus found in the cervix. Thicker mucus makes it harder for sperm to enter the uterus and reach an egg. Progestin also thins the lining of the uterus. The copper in the copper IUD interferes with sperm’s ability to move. When sperm stop acting normally, it is harder for them to enter the uterus and reach an egg.

I’m sure that’s exactly what @byyourbootstraps22 and @aynrandisright86 said on twitter. 

In Georgia’s final gubernatorial debate, Republican incumbent Brian Kemp said he didn’t have plans for more abortion restrictions but refused to promise that he wouldn’t sign them. Kemp admitted that the legislature would probably send more laws his way and said he’d evaluate them as he came. He tried to accuse his Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams of being wishy washy on her abortion positions, but the voting rights activists/romance novelist/Star Trek actor said she’s always been clear—legal abortion until the fetus is viable outside of the womb.

Of course, the crazier race in Georgia is the one for Senate which has Reverend Raphael Warnock running against former Heisman trophy winner and amateur sheriff Herschel Walker. Walker has the support of Trump and emulates his elder with word salad sentences and bizarre comments (so much so that I worry he suffers from football-is-too-dangerous-to-be-a-sport syndrome). Earlier in the campaign Walker took this dig at science: “At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”

An ex-girlfriend of his came forward a few weeks ago saying he paid $700 for her to have an abortion in 2009 because it “wasn’t the right time for a child” and that he asked her to have an abortion again in 2011, but she decided not to and gave birth to a son. She also suggested that Walker, who like the thrice-married Trump is running on a platform of family values, has been an absentee father.  

A second woman emerged last week claiming that she had an affair with Walker between 1987 and 1993. She planned to get an abortion when she got accidentally pregnant but called Walker to say she couldn’t go through with it. At a press conference she said: “I left the clinic in tears. When I told Herschel what had happened, he was upset and said that he was going to go back with me to the clinic the next day for me to have the abortion.”

While he has categorically denied that he’s ever paid for an abortion, Walker did admit that he has four children, three sons and a daughter, which came as a surprise to some people. The additional children and abortion accusations led one comedian to walk up on stage at a Walker rally and offer the candidate a long roll of condoms. Jason Selvig, who is known for political pranks, said in a tweet, “A Herschel Walker rally can be scary. Luckily I brought protection."

“Do as I say, not as I do” seems to have worked for Donald Trump, who got and kept the support of Evangelicals despite paying hush money to a porn star to keep quiet about the sex they had while his wife was home with a four-month-old. It may yet work for Walker, though he’s trailing in the polls. Walker has been called out for changing his opinion on abortion mid-campaign. At a forum in August, Walker said of exceptions for rape and incest that he feels bad for those women, but he will always vote his religious beliefs which means no abortion. In a debate with Warnock, however, he said he’s always supported bills like the one in Georgia that ban abortion after six weeks but make some exceptions.

There are other ultra-Right candidates running especially in House races. In North Carolina, Sandy Smith got the Republican nomination despite, or maybe because of, admitting that she marched on the Capitol on January 6th. Brandon Williams, who may win in central New York, called the Dobbs decision a “monumental victory” and, according to the New York Times, has “suggested that there were instances when a woman’s life should be sacrificed to deliver her unborn child.”  

Linda Paulson, a very white great-grandmother running, for state senate in Utah, decided that the best way to tell us about her values would be in the form of a rap. Dancing next to an American flag she tells us that she’s pro-religious freedom, pro-life, pro-police (which really means she believes her religious beliefs trump mine, opposes abortion, and doesn’t really care when an innocent black man is shot by police). She then says/sings, “Government programs should lead to self-sufficiency, and support traditional family, as the fundamental unit of society. But in schools they’re pushing for new beliefs. Just to clarify, as a female adult, I know what a woman is?” (which really means she blames poor people for being poor, doesn’t think gay or lesbian couples should marry and have children, and opposes the very existence of transgender people).

And then, of course, there is Dr. Oz who has been offering us discredited medical information for years. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but there was once a study that suggested the medical information on Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins (a cartoon about a kid who has a hospital for her stuffed animals) was more accurate than what Oz spewed on his self-titled talk show. I for one would rather have Doc in the Senate than the carpetbagging surgeon.

Before I wrap up, some sort of honorable mention has to go to the race for County Community College Governing Board in Maricopa County, Georgia. The Republican candidate in that race has suspended his campaign after being arrested for public sexual indecency on—wait for it—a college campus. Randy Kaufman was caught masturbating in his pick-up truck which was parked a mere eight feet from an on-campus preschool where kids were on the playground. While he has stopped actively campaigning, election officials say the candidate has not officially withdrawn from the race. In an apology Kaufman said: “I will never stop fighting to protect the United States Constitution and the values that make America the greatest country in the world.”

I would argue that if we elect the Kaufmans, Walkers, Dixons, and racist great grandmas of the world, America doesn’t stand a chance of being the greatest anything.

I know a lot of pundits are suggesting that this midterm election might signal the end of our democracy as we know it, and I fear there is a kernel of truth in these warnings. The unwillingness of so many candidates to admit that Trump lost, combined with attempts across red states to stop people from voting does seem to suggest that the GOP has given up on actually earning votes. And the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband confirms a growing lawlessness and acceptance of violence that scares me.  

I may be preaching mainly to the choir here, but on the chance that someone looking at this is on the fence in one of these or other elections where reproductive rights, the future of democracy, and my faith in humanity are on the line, I will give the advice my sister gave her teenagers before they went out at night: “Make good choices.”

P.S. I’m taking next week off to, gulp, visit colleges with my high school junior. I’ll be back the following week. Good luck to us all.