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Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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So many bastards, so little time.

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T R E 4 5 O N

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Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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Let’s finish the job.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Sunday Read: ‘Val Demings Is On A Mission’

Sunday Read: ‘Val Demings Is On A Mission’

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Great introductory anecdote here (which I’m not gonna spoil, click over ya lazy bastids), and a good strong narrative. Rita Omokha, at Vanity Fair:

There was sure to be drama at the Lake County campaign stop. That’s expected for any Democrat entering a rural Florida town that went to Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, let alone a Black woman. It was a hot spring morning. The pine trees were full, the sky clear, and Representative Val Demings pulled up on her red Harley-Davidson with her biker crew, 30 deep, engines revving. People stared. Some stuck out phones. This was her first of four drop-ins to local eateries in the county: A tiny Cracker Barrel–type spot with cream-stained walls and the smell of fried butter and syrup. The goal that Saturday was to do the stops in about three hours. A bite here, a sip there, and selfies everywhere.

Demings’s staffers hustled into the red bungalow, scurrying to keep her on time. Since breaking day at Ace Cafe, 27 miles away in her 10th Congressional District, where her pack of motorcyclists—ex–Air Force, military, law enforcement—first congregated, her campaign staff of millennials and Gen Z’ers had worried the crammed day would veer off schedule. They’d come to appreciate, and plan around, Demings’s penchant for zingers and lingering conversations.

Geared up in a Harley pink-striped button-down, blue jeans, and fingerless gloves, Demings milled about with twinkling eyes. Mostly white customers filled the space. They stared and flashed reflexive smiles. She announced to each table that she’s running for Senate to unseat Marco Rubio, her voice crisp and measured. When she stopped to greet the only Black family in the place, a father with his two young sons, the man smiled and quietly told her he knew her well. As Demings worked her way out the diner, a white man with sparse grays and a stubbly beard grabbed her right hand…

Demings has been guided by that same earnest self-checking she’s exerted at campaign stops since entering Congress five years ago. She went from upholding the law as a police officer at every rank for 27 years to crafting it, first taking the oath on January 3, 2017—17 days before Trump was sworn in. “I went to his inauguration,” Demings told me. “Even though I didn’t vote for him, he was still our president.” As he governed, she found one of Trump’s shortcomings was that he never understood the oath he took, “our democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, and therefore, he didn’t protect it, and it showed.”

Eight years before that swearing-in, Demings was chief of the Orlando Police Department when a man entered a downtown office tower and began firing a handgun, injuring five people and killing one. The November 6, 2009, shooting made national headlines. Her handling of the case is what her husband, Jerry, a former Orlando police chief, believes caught the attention of the national Democratic Party, because afterward, the couple was invited to D.C. to meet with its leaders, including then Vice President Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Jerry told me the meeting felt like recruitment for future party leaders. He sensed they were “somewhat strategic in identifying the talent to replace them. They want authentic individuals who have intellectual abilities, the charisma to be able to do the job. And because I mean, they are all 80-plus years old, so they got to fold it soon.”…

She emerged in the party as someone who can speak about systemic racism and police brutality while insulating Democrats from GOP charges that they are soft on crime or hold extreme progressive ideologies. Heading into the midterms, Demings provides Democrats a big-name candidate in their hopes to hold on to the Senate. The 65-year-old three-term moderate has appeared uninterested in upending the system, so there’s no worry of her being caricatured as a leftist or a “socialist” bearing “woke” ideals as she runs in a bastion of Republican conservatism. With her consistent track record in policy and tone, “you never have to wonder where she stands on an issue,” Representative David Cicilline, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee alongside Demings, told me. “She has a set of life experiences that give her incredible credibility.”…

Biden called Demings to tell her he was running for office before his April 2019 announcement. Once his campaign launched and Demings became a cemented star in her party following the trial, the vetting team phoned to say she was on the vice presidential short list…

The vetting team dug deep into Demings, her husband, their three sons, the couple’s 20-year tax records, and anyone within a stone’s throw throughout Demings’s life. Three of her brothers were asked to explain their career choices. The team raised an eyebrow at another brother who had been arrested. Her sons handed over social media passwords and were asked about the intentions behind posts from years earlier. They asked about particular sermons her pastor preached. When the Demingses couldn’t locate two years of their tax returns, the vetting team pushed the couple, “ ‘Well, we need the other two, and perhaps you need to hire a CPA to help you get access to them.’ ” So they did. “You know what I really wanted to say was, Okay, when Donald Trump gives you one year”—of his never-tendered tax returns—“then come back to me,” she said, laughing a serious laugh.

In August 2020, Biden called to let Demings know she had not been selected. He chose Senator Kamala Harris instead. Demings told me her competitive side responded with, “Oh, darn.” But as a consummate optimist, she moved right back into, “I know that God has something else for me.” She also made it clear to Biden and his team that she didn’t want a position in the Cabinet because “there’s work to be done in the House, and that’s where I am until I go to the Senate.”…

“In Val there’s hope,” Representative Robin Kelly said of her longtime friend and colleague’s campaign, “that we can move closer to that promise of America.” Demings’s life is also “a story of success,” her Delta sorority sister, Representative Joyce Beatty, told me. “She understands multiple systems and how to work through them without ever forgoing on her principles…it’s the power within her.” If successful, Demings will become the only active Black female senator and third ever in its 233 years, behind Carol Moseley Braun and Harris. (It took 24 years from Braun’s election to Harris’s win.) She will also be the second woman elected to the Senate from Florida since Paula Hawkins in 1980.

Records aside, this run is a most consequential assignment Demings has been ready to complete. “Oprah talks a lot about that aha moment,” she said, “when we think about that, we think it’s like really big and powerful, but it’s usually not. It’s just that quiet moment that tugs at the heart. And John Lewis, his legislation, now he’s gone, but now we are the guardians of what he died for, risked his life for. So, we got to continue to do that. If not us, then who?

“When I make it to the U.S. Senate, it will not be the same.”

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    Thank you, AL! It’s one of the best Vanity Fair articles I’ve read, and the pictures are great.

    I would be so happy to see Lil’ Marco go.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    Too long for me.  But all I need to see is a (D) after their names.

    I hope this gets her more volunteers and funds.  Defeating Rubio would be almost as awesome as defeating DeSantis.

  6. 6.

    Evap

    A few days ago I donated to a bunch of senate candidates including Demings.  I guess it’s a long shot, but a girl can dream.  She would rock in the senate.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    It’s a long shot, but I believe Demings can win, and she’s raising a ton of money. That’s important because Florida is a difficult and expensive media market, and Rubio has a huge name rec advantage. Luckily, even Republicans don’t really like the simpering hack Rubio. It’s too bad this race coincides with a gubernatorial election because the DeSantis cult will help Rubio. But I’m hoping a lot of fed-up Floridians boost Demings. She’d be a great senator, IMO.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Some actual good news: Elephant and baby saved in dramatic rescue from manhole in Thailand

    Veterinarians and park staff have pulled off a dramatic rescue of a pair of elephants in Thailand that involved the use of a boom lift, a digger and the resuscitation of an unconscious mother by three people.

    The rescue took place in the pouring rain in central Nakhon Nayok province on Wednesday when a one-year-old elephant fell into a roadside drainage hole. The distressed mother stood guard over her calf, according to national park staff, but also fell in shortly after she was sedated.

    Rescuers used a truck-mounted boom lift to pull the mother out before climbing on top of her to perform simultaneous cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) as a digger cleared away earth so the anxious calf could climb out from the slippery mud.

    The calf began suckling its mother, who soon regained consciousness, and both returned immediately to the wild.
    …………………….
    Chananya said it was “one of the most memorable rescues we’ve done”.

    I would guess so. It’s gonna be hard to top that one.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: Ha, he would! Maybe they’ll rig up a giant upside-down water bottle like in hamster cages so he won’t have to reach off camera.

    My guess is Rubio will try to limit the number of debates so he can coast, but I’ll be surprised if there isn’t at least one. Primary is next month, so we’ll hear more after that, probably.

  16. 16.

    germy shoemangler

    The day the world ends the New York Times will be like "in a blow to progressives' ambitious agenda in Washington, we're all gonna die."

    — Evan Greer (@evan_greer) July 15, 2022

  17. 17.

    Mike in NC

    Thirsty Micro Rubio needs to get a real job. His run for president was greeted as the ridiculous joke that it was.

  19. 19.

    Tony Jay

    The 65-year-old three-term moderate has appeared uninterested in upending the system, so there’s no worry of her being caricatured as a leftist or a “socialist” bearing “woke” ideals as she runs in a bastion of Republican conservatism.

    Well, that’s a relief. I assume the author of the piece got that promise in writing? On a legally binding contract? Signed by every single Republican and Republican adjacent shit-stirrer in Florida?

    If not, I have my doubts that Red Val the Red Dem will get a bye on her long and shameful history of promoting BLM violence and forcing CRT deviancy on decent, hard-working, non-urban folks.

  20. 20.

    Geminid

    @WereBear: Val Demings is a very talented Democrat who got little attention until she took a turn on the national stage as Manager in one of the Impeachment trials. Joe Neguse, Stacey Plaskett and Jaime Raskin were some of the others.

    Congresswoman Elaine Luria will benefit from this effect, I think, when she and Adam Kinzinger conduct the January 6 Commitee hearing this Thursday evening. Luria faces a very tough reelection campaign in her coastal Virginia district, and her “discovery” by national Democrats will at least help her fundraising.

  25. 25.

    Suzanne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Maybe they’ll rig up a giant upside-down water bottle like in hamster cages so he won’t have to reach off camera.

     

    Oh my God. Can someone Photoshop this? Please? Make sure to include the “heel lifts” he wears. Oh please oh please oh please?

    The alternate could be an enema bag going to his mouth.

    In all seriousness, Demings seems to be a fantastic candidate and I hope she wipes the floor with Rubio, who just looks like he secretes snail mucin from every pore.

  26. 26.

    zhena gogolia

    Oh my God. Can someone Photoshop this? Please? Make sure to include the “heel lifts” he wears. Oh please oh please oh please?

    Yes! Please!

  27. 27.

    Andrew Abshier

    Demings is very popular in Orange County, which gives her a very large bloc of voters right out of the gate.  I agree that she needs to push hard in south Florida, but I like the fact that she’s going into Republican strongholds and basically daring them to oppose her.   Claire McKaskill did the same thing in her successful run for the Senate in 2006, peeling off just enough rural voters to put her over the top once the votes from KC and St. Louis were counted.  I think it’s good strategy.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mike in NC:

    The only time in my life I’ve ever genuinely cheered for Chris Christie was the 2016 GOP debate in which he mocked Rubio’s memorised, robotically-delivered line (“Let’s dispel with this notion…”). He just flattened him.

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    @Andrew Abshier: I agree — that’s a great strategy for any Dem who’s running in a state with a significant rural/red population. You don’t have to win those areas, but you do have to keep Republicans from running up the score.

  31. 31.

    VOR

    @Tony Jay: Agree. She’s a woman, black, and a democrat. They will not hesitate to attack her as a socialist communist, far-left, doesn’t know her place, crazy wild-eyed radical. I mean, they are attacking Joe freaking Biden as a crazy leftist.

  33. 33.

    Bill Arnold

    @Betty Cracker:

    You don’t have to win those areas, but you do have to keep Republicans from running up the score.

    It’s a statewide election. A Dem vote in those areas counts exactly as much as a Dem vote in an urban area. Different local tactics, though, yeah.
    (Assuming no systematic GOP election fraud by elections officials in deep GOP-controlled areas.)

  35. 35.

    Bill Arnold

    @Nelle:

    Slightly off topic- Iowa poll shows that Mike Franken is only 8 points behind Chuck Grassley.

    I still very much want to know why Grassley’s team announced Jan 5 2021 that he and not Pence would be opening the electoral college envelopes:

    NEW: Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the Senate president pro tempore, says he and not Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the certification of Electoral College votes, since “we don’t expect him to be there.”
    — Roll Call (@rollcall) January 5, 2021

    Is Grassley an insurrectionist who was part of the attempt to seize the Federal Government of the United States of America?
    Should he spend his remaining years in prison?

  36. 36.

    Kropacetic

    @Bill Arnold: Is Grassley an insurrectionist who was part of the attempt to seize the Federal Government of the United States of America?
    Should he spend his remaining years in prison?

    Stay tuned for the second half of the first season of the January 6 committee to find out…

  37. 37.

    H.E.Wolf

    Val Demings’ Senate campaign is one of the biggest reasons why I’m doggedly writing GOTV postcards to Florida Democrats. 5 per week is all I can commit to; but that’s 160 Democratic voters per year who might not otherwise be reached!

    And there are lots of other people writing. As I recall, Betty Cracker got a postcard at one point. Maybe a Balloon Juice writer will be the one to write to Mustang Bobby, or Adam Silverman, or another jackal… it could happen, you never know. :)

    If you want to join in: https://postcardstovoters.org/volunteer/

  38. 38.

    Gretchen

    @H.E.Wolf: thanks for doing that.  I’m writing postcards for the Kansas abortion vote on August 2. I got some cards from a local jeweler who said she got more new customers from sending postcards than any other advertising method. People take a look at handwritten mail.

  39. 39.

    Tony Jay

    @VOR:

    Just as membership of the Great Right Wing Circle of Jerk requires buying into a whole smorgasbord of unrelated shibboleths about True Conservatism, it also requires that they believe that everyone on The Left  is equally bound by an opposite and equal dogma.

    IOW, if you’re not a Republican, you have to be an evil pervert loving cop hater who wants to send all Christians to atheist reeducation camps, or you’re simply not doing it right.

    It’s the same over here. They do love their pigeonholes.

  42. 42.

    Cmorenc

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The woman is being convicted and sentenced to death for adultery in Somalia – but doesn’t adultery by definition require a partner in crime?  Why isn’t the man who co-committed adultery with her being prosecuted and given an equal sentence?  She is going to be executed, while he is scott-free to walk about and maybe even do some more adulting?

  44. 44.

    James E Powell

    @Bill Arnold:

    I still very much want to know why Grassley’s team announced Jan 5 2021 that he and not Pence would be opening the electoral college envelopes:

    Another one of those questions that – to my knowledge – not one political reporter has bothered to investigate. And I do not consider asking Grassley’s staff to be an investigation.

    I’d start by asking Pence if he heard it and what he thought was going to happen.

  45. 45.

    Kent

    @James E Powell: What does it actually matter who opens the envelopes?  EVERYONE already knew what was inside each one

    What was he going to do.  Slip in a fake one and say “California’s 55 electoral votes go to Trump” or some such?

  46. 46.

    PIGL

    I read about the degree of vetting with interest. And shock Does it strike anybody else as an overly fearful, cringeworthy even cowardly attempt to make the candidate proof against opposition research? Because it’s not going to work. The rethugs will just invent a pack of lies.

    The cure for Trump’s refusal to produce his tax returns is to arrest him, not impose preposterous requirements for spotless Christian hero-dom on all Democratic candidates.

  48. 48.

    Geminid

    @Kent: The guy who opens the envelopes could have decided which ones to open. I think there was a different set of envelopes for some states that trump’s people tried to have presented.

  49. 49.

    Scout211

    The Texas House committee report on the Uvalde Robb Elementary School mass shooting was released today.

    Full report here.

    The 77-page report, reviewed by The Texas Tribune, provides a damning portrayal of a family unable to recognize warning signs, a school district that had strayed from strict adherence to its safety plan and a police response that disregarded its own active-shooter training.

    It explains how the gunman, who investigators believe had never fired a gun before May 24, was able to stockpile military-style rifles, accessories and ammunition without arousing suspicion from authorities, enter a supposedly secure school unimpeded and indiscriminately kill children and adults.

    In total, 376 law enforcement officers — a force larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo — descended upon the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene that lasted for more than an hour. The group was devoid of clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to take down the gunman, the report says.

    Notably, the investigation is the first so far to criticize the inaction of state and federal law enforcement, while other reports and public accounts by officials have placed the blame squarely on Uvalde school police Chief Pete Arredondo, for his role as incident commander, and other local police who were among the first to arrive.

  50. 50.

    CarolPW

    @Scout211: Unfortunately the school fucked up too: main findings

    A coach saw the shooter outside the school, radioed the front office, and they did not announce a lock down on the intercom. I was shocked that the school had not managed to go into lockdown in time since the shooter was seen outside the school quite a while before he entered.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: It doesn’t work that way.  The official ballots are sent to the Archives weeks before the ceremony in the Capitol.  Multiple official copies of the Certificate of Ascertainment, governor’s signature, a whole involved process.

    While more of the process can and maybe should be codified, there is no “single point of failure” that would have allowed this hare-brained January 6 scheme (“We’ll have Pence locked away at the Naval Observatory and Grassley will throw out the Biden electors!!11ONE Genius!!”) to work.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Bill Arnold

    @Another Scott:
    There were a few schemes. One was to reject the ballots from the states that were, per Republican lawsuits, in dispute. Ask the states to reconsider, and/or throw the election to the House where the each state gets an equal vote. IIRC. I’m not saying Grassley was involved, but his statement is consistent with involvement and has not been adequately publicly explained.
    Either way, if it had “worked” it would have ignited (over a few months, starting non-violent) a low grade civil war, quickly getting rather violent, and the insurrectionist GOP fuckers(/Enemies of the USA) involved were delusional if they were sure that they (and their families) would have survived. Civil wars are messy and bloody, and politicians are soft targets. All involved in intentionally risking a US civil war should spend the rest of their lives in prison, IMO.

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211: Just skimming through it, it seems to be a lot of not-well-thought-out security theatre that didn’t recognize how people – especially teachers and grade-school students – behave in old buildings.

    E.g.

    Both Uvalde CISD Police Chief Arredondo and Lt. Mike Hernandez possessed a large number of keys to Uvalde CISD buildings. Chief Arredondo kept a number of keys in his car, but he was not sure whether he had master keys for Robb Elementary. He knew he did not have a key to every building, though he testified that he had requested a complete set for himself.92 Of the over 50 keys that he carried with him, Lt. Hernandez testified that he had a Robb Elementary master key that had worked, although sometimes he had to jiggle keys to make them work. Additionally, sometimes staff would change locks without notice to him.93

    Yeah, dragging around 50 keys makes a lot of sense. :-/

    The security policy was that all the room and outside doors should be locked at (almost) all times. But, of course, the locks aren’t made any more, they ran out of blanks for keys, and teachers (and especially substitutes) would not have keys. So someone was always having to unlock and lock doors for the teachers. Or the teachers would find ways not to lock the doors every single time…

    It’s not a workable system in an elementary school. School should not be a prison.

    :-(

    The problem wasn’t that the room locks didn’t work, or weren’t locked, or that the school fence wasn’t high enough. The problem was a deranged young man bought weapons of war and nobody stopped him from doing so (even though he was talking about his planning online).

    Grrr…,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    Citizen Alan

    @PIGL:  It is indeed a sad commentary on the state of this country and especially its political media.  But the fact remains that a woman and/or a POC who wants to rise to the highest level of political office must be must be as close to “beyond reproach” as possible. Especially since scandals are only scandals when they happen to democrats.

  55. 55.

    jibberish

    I have been to Florida maybe a dozen times, from the Georgia border to Miami, Tampa to Daytona Beach, and I had no idea Florida had such deep red dirt.

    Which part of Florida, exactly, has this kind of soil?

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