We are trying to get each of these two candidates $10,000 to help in their fight to win these seats in Virginia.
Our first Balloon Juice Angel match for Virginia helped get us to $5,000! The second one helped get us to $8,200! Hoping this Angel Match can get us closer to $15,000.
Patrick is our Balloon Juice Angel today – let’s see what we can get to with this one. Big thanks to Patrick and all of our angels, and to everyone who is able to donate!
Patrick will match up to $25 per person, for a total of $500.
Let’s get this Angel Match started! As we kick off the match, the thermometer is at $8,776.
The two Virginia candidates we are supporting are:
- Michael Feggans
- Kimberly Pope Adams
Why these two in particular?
The seats they are running for are held by two rabid anti-choice women. The two white Republicans who hold these seats replaced black delegates who had held the seats previously. Let’s take them back! One of the incumbents ran one of the “fake clinic” that are so despicable, and the other has been involved in the fake clinic scams.
There are other pro-choice candidates for delegates, but these two really need the funds, and many of the other candidates who are in toss-up elections have plenty of cash – and if they don’t win, it won’t be because of money.
There are 4 more folks that we have our eye on, and Q3 fundraising figures should be available very soon, at which point we will reassess which candidates can most use our help.
Open thread.
WaterGirl
Reminder: To count toward the match, donations have to be listed in the comments. Or if you prefer a more private option, you can send me an email message
You all recall, of course, that everything resets with a new angel match. So even if you have donated to one of the other angel matches for VA, the slate is wiped clean with each new angel.
WaterGirl
Since this is an open thread… This is interesting.
BJ attorneys, or anyone else knowledgeable about procedure, what say you?
Joy in FL
I just put $25 in our Act Blue for the Angel match. Thanks, Angel Patrick : )
Josie
In for $25.00
coin operated
@WaterGirl: IANAL, but I thought the whole thing was farce because the House didn’t vote on it. That’s what Trump’s DOJ did to Pelosi when she impeached Trump…forgetting that Nancy SMASH knows how to get votes.
New Deal democrat
I saw some comments in the last thread about today’s employment report. Let me make a few bullet point comments:
– yes, celebrate. But
– 87,000 were government jobs. Plus, all of the 119,000 upward revisions to the last 2 months was accounted for by the upward revisions in state and local government employment, largely in the education categories.
– in other words, the kinks in post- vs. pre-pandemic seasonal adjustments haven’t been worked out.
– so, why did Wall Street not like the news? Because it means the Fed is likely to raise interest rates again at their next meeting.
RaflW
@WaterGirl: While I get that Dems playing this me-too game further deteriorates the norms we used to live by, I think the Biden Admin should ignore the subpoenas on the grounds that witnesses sympathetic to the MAGA caucus routinely ignored Dem subpoenas last term.
Or, provide 1000s of meaningless emails, and then later, if it comes out that there were emails that were relevant and missed, say, oopsie, they were in a bankers box in a guest bathroom. Our bad! Sorry!
(Yes I’m in a petty mood this morning.)
Baud
@RaflW:
It’s not me-too to enforce some norms of legislative procedure. Any subpoenas in these circumstances would be unprecedented.
RaflW
@New Deal democrat: “it means the Fed is likely to raise interest rates again at their next meeting”
But then the Wall Streeters and their debt-doom caucus can get even more worked up about how gov’t service on the debt is getting more expensive, so we should slash Social Security and Medicare, because it’s the only fiscally responsible thing to do.
It’s the brass ring. And it gets closer when interest rates rise.
—
In less snarky news, the jobs data has an embedded bit of (more) good: The unemployment rate didn’t drop with the jump in hiring. Which means people are re-entering the workforce. Ignoring what the investment ghouls think, that is, I believe, an overall quite good thing!
WaterGirl
@Joy in FL: @Josie: Thank you! That’s $50 toward the new $500 angel match.
SiubhanDuinne
In for $25. Thank you, Patrick, for the Angel match — and to WG, as always, for making it easy.
WaterGirl
@coin operated: Yeah, but now they don’t even have a fig leaf – so I think what Dan Goldman wrote makes sense.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks SD!
We are now at $75 toward the match.
New Deal democrat
@RaflW: In re the unemployment rate: unemployment (the numerator) rose by 5,000, and the labor force (the denominator) rose by 90,000 (a low number). The labor force participation rate remained the same.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: There’s the “buy on the rumor, sell on the news” stuff, too.
The S&P is still up 13.5% in the last year. Not too shabby, and yet another reason not to worry too much about the daily swings in the stock market.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
In for $200, which becomes $225 with the match.
sab
@coin operated: That’s what I thought also. Without the House voting for an impeachment inquiry the Executive branch may not respond to subpenas. Isn’t there an Office of Legal Counsel memorandum to that effect ( written under Trump but not revised under Biden) . So the new norm is to ignore those subpenas. It’s not Biden’s people flaunting rules. It’s Biden’s people following rules clarified by Trump’s people.
Rafl@#7 and Baud@#8
ETA Also it isn’t even a new norm. Casually starting impeachment proceedings is the new thing and hopefully will never be a norm. Pelosi was adamant about only going for impeachment for egregious behavior. Hopefully that norm will hold.
H.E.Wolf
Meet Michael:
https://michaelfeggans.com/bio/
Meet Kim:
https://kimadamsforva.com/meet-kim/
[Their “Priorities” pages are well worth looking at, also.]
H.E.Wolf
And a huge thank-you to Angel Patrick!
Baud
@sab: Technically, the alleged behavior is egregious — bribery. The problem is that it’s completely made up.
Steeplejack
Kicked in $25.
RaflW
re: job growth “The broad increase in payrolls was led by the leisure and hospitality industry, which added 96,000 jobs. Restaurants and bars dominated, with 61,000 positions created, returning employment in the sector back to its pre-pandemic level.”
Baud
@RaflW:
I thought the Dems destroyed the restaurant industry. Right after we burned cities to the ground.
RaflW
@sab: Yeah, that memo is out there. It was roundly criticized at the time, but given the lack of procedural authority for this (scam) investigation/fishing expedition, ignoring subpoenas seems fine.
Avalie
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Yes! Thank you so much!
We are at $100 toward the match and much more in dollars! :-)
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: @Avalie: Thank you both. Avalie, nice to see your nym!
That takes us to $150 toward the new $500 Angel match.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Apparently we did a crap job—as usual.
Maxim
FYI, I followed the link in the post and tried to donate, but clicking on the button for the amount I wanted to donate did not take me to the subsequent page to complete the donation. I don’t know if it’s just a temporary glitch or what, but wanted to report it in case it happened to anyone else. I closed the tab and tried again with the same result.
lashonharangue
I donated $25
Steeplejack
@Maxim:
I just gave a small amount again as a test, and it worked with PayPal. Which method were you trying to use—PayPal, ActBlue or “Pay” (credit card)?
Also, what device and browser?
sixthdoctor
in for 50.
Maxim
@Steeplejack: ActBlue, on my iPad. I’m about to try again on my laptop; I’ll let y’all know what happens.
Hmm, didn’t work on my laptop either, which makes me suspect it’s something on the ActBlue end of things.
Another Scott
@Maxim: It sounds like you’ve got some other software interfereing.
Try opening the link in a “private browsing” (or your browser’s equivalent term) window?
It works here.
+$198.
Thanks angel and everyone!
Cheers,
Scott.
Maxim
@Another Scott: I did a private browser window and (once I’d signed into my Act Blue account) had the same problem. It’s something to do with that. I opened a new private window and used a different payment method, and that worked, and then I was able to sign into my Act Blue account afterward. Very strange.
Anyway, in for $25.
Steeplejack
@Maxim:
Glad it worked out (by whatever method).
WaterGirl
@lashonharangue: @sixthdoctor: @Another Scott: @Maxim: That’s $100 more for the match and a lot more than that for the candidates. Thank you!
So we’re at $250 for the match – halfway there!
WaterGirl
If anyone else has a problem with ActBlue donations with a credit card, let me know!
Czar Chasm
So, a little info about each candidate’s localities.
Virginia Beach (Michael Feggans) – More than just an artificial beach, it’s also the largest city in Virginia, almost twice the size of 2nd place, Chesapeake (its neighbor city to the south). Virginia Beach is struggling with several issues, most notably rapidly rising housing costs, increased racial tensions that have grown as more families have relocated from next-door neighbor Norfolk, and more rapidly rising sea levels. The former is a result of now having nowhere else to grow but upward (there’s a 3×3 block of 20-story buildings you can see on the highway that takes you to the beach, that sticks out like a sore thumb), as all the land outside the city limits is either part of another city, some military base or another, or under a large body of water. The area was red for a while (a mixture of the heavy military presence and the “beach culture’ that heavily skews towards rich and white), but has become more purple in the past 10 years, mainly from the migration I mentioned before, so Feggans has a good shot at winning.
Dinwiddie (Kimberly Pope Adams) – With the exception of the Tidewater urban mass, one city, and one other county, most localities south of the James River are notorious for being poor areas. These are the farming communities of Virginia, where tobacco’s influence has been waning for the past 75 years, along with the health of the soil: Tobacco is very cruel to the ground from which it sprouts. Dinwiddie is one of these counties, bordering Petersburg, the sixth poorest city in the Commonwealth, to the north. This city has been expanding in the northern part of the county, making it more purple over the past few years. This is probably one of the most competitive races in Virginia right now, as residents in the southern, very white part of the county are pitted against the ones in the northern, not-so-white parts (no Civil War jokes, please).
WaterGirl
@Czar Chasm: Thanks for all that information about these two areas!
WaterGirl
Hey, we just hit $10,000! (fireworks emoji!)
And we have $250 left on our angel match. This is the last angel match I have for this, just in case anyone was holding out for the next one. :-)
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
Don’t forget my additional $2.00 at #31! 😹
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I did forget that! Sorry!
$248 left on the match
HumboldtBlue
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: That sounds like good news.
But it doesn’t track with what I am seeing at your link. What am I missing?
To me that looks like lower turnout in 2023. What am I missing?
Hirudo
$100 into the hopper.
WaterGirl
@Hirudo: oh, just seeing this, belated thank you!