Solar-energy group that spent $2 million in Tennessee race takes credit for incumbent congressman's 6-point defeat

A rural Tennessee congressman lost his seat in Thursday's Republican primary election, and a solar-energy lobby is taking credit and sounding a warning to those who oppose the industry.

Rep. Andy Ogles
(Photo by Mark Humphrey, AP)

Rep. Andy Ogles of the recently redrawn Fifth District lost "after the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent $2 million — more than the combined spending of both Ogles and his challenger Charlie Hatcher," a former state agriculture commissioner, Timothy Cama reports for E&E News, a publication of Politico. Hatcher got 53 percent.

“Our goal is to make sure people choose not to cross the industry,” Tom Matzzie, CEO of solar company CleanChoice Energy and chair of the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, told Politico. “I think this is by far our biggest step forward in terms of accomplishing our goal, and it definitively sends a signal that our deterrence is real, and that we will get involved.”

The PAC's spending against Ogles “was its biggest since launching earlier this year. It also got the most national attention, assisted by Ogles criticizing the group,” E&E News reports. “The super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, has spent in a handful of races this year, targeting what it sees as the top foes of the renewable energy sector. So far, that has mostly meant opposing the most vocal supporters of quickly ending renewable tax credits in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the signature GOP tax law, with advertising meant to appeal to conservative audiences.” That's a change for Matzzie. who worked for the AFL-CIO and ran MoveOn.org, a progressive group.

E&E News concludes, “President Donald Trump, who had endorsed Ogles in his race and hosted a tele-rally for him, appeared unfazed by the loss Friday, writing on Truth Social that the lawmaker 'had virtually no chance of winning' and calling Hatcher a 'Great "Trump" Candidate.'” The Nashville Banner notes, “Ogles has consistently generated controversy and scrutiny since emerging from a crowded Republican primary in 2022. He has filed incorrect and late campaign finance disclosures, misled the public about his resume and said 'Muslims don’t belong in American society.'”

Metric Media 'pink slime' news sent to Ohio voters backed losing effort to make abortion-rights measure harder to pass

Front page of the Buckeye Reporter's 'inaugural print edition'
(Photo by George Shillcock via X and NiemanLab)

Ohio voters rejected the Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would have required a 60 percent vote to pass future amendments and tightened petition requirements for getting them on the ballot. The proposal, which lost by about 57 to 43 percent Tuesday, was intended make an abortion-rights measure on the November ballot more difficult to pass.

In the days before the referendum on Issue 1, many Ohio voters received a newsprint publication called the Buckeye Reporter, which until then had been a partisan information site. The print edition had a Chicago return address and was mailed from Dallas, reports Laura Hazard Owen of NiemanLab, who classifies it as "pink slime," the term for ultra-processed meat filler that has come to describe partisan information masquerading as journalism.

The county-by-county vote showed a significant rural-
urban divide. (NPR map, adapted by The Rural Blog)

The publisher, Metric Media, is a publisher that sometimes turns to print campaigns near elections, Owen reports. It is "overseen by Brian Timpone, a TV reporter turned internet entrepreneur who has sought to capitalize on the decline of local news organizations for nearly two decades," The New York Times reported three years ago. Priyanjana Bengani of Columbia Journalism Review, who has done in-depth reporting on Metric Media, "told The Associated Press that 'Metric Media has printed similar mailers ahead of other recent high-stakes elections, such as a referendum on abortion last year in Kansas'," Owen reports.

Cleveland.com described the mailer as "A motley combination of content. Most of it consists of positive articles about Issue 1 . . . while unsubtly describing the measure's opponents as communists and allies of the LGBTQ community. It also includes calendar listings of unremarkable community events," which were an apparent effort to make it look more like a local newspaper.

School-board candidates who campaigned on parental rights see mixed results, a sampling by Ballotpedia finds

Tiffany Justice of Moms for Liberty, at the lectern, says her group
has chapters in 42 states. (Photo by Octavio Jones, Getty Images)

"Conservative candidates who ran for school boards saying they would change what students learn about race, sex and gender, or who opposed Covid protocols, saw mixed results in Tuesday’s election, according to supporters and a sampling of nationwide results," reports Ben Chapman of The Wall Street Journal, citing a sampling of 361 races by Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan election site.

Ballotpedia found that about 36 percent of candidates who opposed schools' Covid-19 protocols, "diversity initiatives or the use of gender-neutral learning materials, won their elections," Chapman reports. "About 28% of winning candidates in the analysis supported those policies or efforts. That percentage is down from elections in April and November 2021, according to Ballotpedia. About a third of candidates in Tuesday’s election analysis didn’t take clear positions on these issues, according to the site."

Chapman notes, "Many candidates received financial support from political-action committees outside their local school communities or from advocacy groups, a relatively new feature in school board elections." The conservative 1776 Project PAC, told Chapman that it has put nearly $3 million into school races since last year and so has backed candidates who won about 100 board seats.

Teachers' unions have been the major players in school-board races, especially in urban and suburban districts, where they are more like to have collective bargaining with boards. "National Education Association President Becky Pringle said most of the candidates in races tracked this year by the group won," the Journal reports. but "Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the Florida-based education nonprofit Moms for Liberty, said roughly half of 270 candidates endorsed by her group won their seats," Chapman reports. The group "has lobbied to curb classroom discussions on gender identity and sex-education issues."

Citizens for Sanity ad in World Series games on Democrats and immigrants' crime is mostly false, fact-checkers say

Politifact rates the ad "mostly false." (WRAL image)

By FactCheck.org

There is a new "dark money" group linked to aides of former President Donald Trump that is getting involved in the midterm elections.

Dark money groups spend other people's money to influence elections, but don't disclose their donors. Three former Trump officials sit on the board of one such group that calls itself Citizens for Sanity. Open Secrets, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog, describes the group's ads as "provocative."

Open Secrets reports, "Citizens for Sanity has paid for billboards emblazoned with messages like 'Protect Pregnant Men from Climate Discrimination' and 'Real progressives support violent criminals in their hour of need' in states across the country – including Massachusetts, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, California, Michigan, Texas, Illinois and Georgia."

Fact Check Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley wrote about one of the TV ads this week. The ad, which has run in heavy rotation during postseason baseball games, focuses on a deadly knife attack on the Las Vegas Strip in early October, and misleadingly claims that “every Senate Democrat voted against deporting criminal illegal immigrants.”

As Rob points out, the ad's claims are unsupported. In fact, every Democrat – and some Republicans – increased funding earlier this year for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with deporting those living in the country illegally. The Biden administration also has directed ICE to prioritize the deportation of immigrants in the country illegally who have committed serious felonies.

The ad is based on one of many moves that Republicans made during Senate debate on the tax-and-climate bill that Democrats dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act. These "vote-a-ramas" are largely political theater in which the opposing party often proposes amendments that can be used in future political ads. This move would have sent the bill to the Judiciary Committee to “ensure that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sufficient resources to detain and deport a higher number of illegal aliens who have been convicted of a criminal offense in the United States.” The ad says Democrats voted against “deporting criminal illegal immigrants,” period, and that’s not accurate.

For Farley's complete report on the ad and the issue, click here. Politifact has a similar report, enhanced with a video package from WRAL in Raleigh.

Campaign-finance probe of combative Postmaster General Louis DeJoy could put bipartisan postal-reform bill at risk

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy at a House committee hearing
(Pool photo by Tom Williams via The Associated Press)

The Justice Department said last week that the FBI is investigating possible campaign-finance violations by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in his private business before he was hired. That "threatens to fray a fragile bipartisan and cross-industry coalition that supports financial relief legislation for the U.S. Postal Service," reports Jacob Bogage of The Washington Post.

The bill includes a key provision for community newspapers, which would let them send up to half their mailed circulation to non-subscribers in their home counties at the preferential rates the USPS charges for mailing to in-county subscribers. The current limit, more than 100 years old, is 10 percent of annual in-county mailed circulation.

"Congressional and industry officials say his legal position could imperil bills advancing in the House and Senate that would relieve the Postal Service of $44 billion in debt, as well as its annual $5 billion retiree health-care payments," Bogage reports. "Postal legislation has failed on lesser controversies, congressional officials noted. Some House Democrats late last week privately considered dropping their support for the measure in light of the DeJoy investigation, said four people with knowledge of the talks, reasoning that the chamber could advance more aggressive legislation on a party-line vote."

However, that would complicate passage in the Senate, which has a bipartisan bill identical to the House bill that is awaiting a green light from the House Ways and Means Committee to go to the full House. Supporters of the bill worry that partisanship will get in its way. Leo Raymond of Mailers Hub, which serves commercial mailers, told Bogage, “If you’re just going along to get along, if you’re not ardent, this could make you say, ‘Well, I’m not working with this guy.’” On the other side of the coin, Republicans who like DeJoy could balk because President Biden's Justice Department is investigating him.

DeJoy's profile and political pedigree don't help. "The postmaster general may be the closest thing to former President Donald Trump left in the nation’s capital," Will Weissert of The Associated Press writes. "Democrats are particularly worried that he’s purposefully undermining the post office, which is critical to the conduct of elections and is one of the few federal agencies a vast majority of Americans like."

Soon after taking over a year ago, DeJoy made changes to save money that also reduced service levels, including cutting overtime and removing mail-sorting machines. "Mail slowed enough that Democrats worried about an electoral crisis," Weissert notes, but the fears "mostly proved unfounded."

Still, DeJoy's combative nature makes him a target. “I’m not a political appointee,” he told a House committee hearing. “I was selected by a bipartisan Board of Governors and I’d really appreciate if you’d get that straight.” Asked how long would keep the job, he replied, “A long time. Get used to me.”

Postmaster general and chairman of Postal Service Board of Governors agree to testify before House panel Monday

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the chair of the board that hired him have agreed to testify before a House committee next week "about his controversial Postal Service changes that have raised hackles around the nation, according to two people familiar with the matter," reports Daniel Lippman of Politico.

Mike Duncan of Inez, Ky., chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, has "also agreed to testify, according to a person familiar with the matter," Lippman reports. "Duncan is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee," in 2007-09, after being treasurer and general counsel. DeJoy was finance chairman of the 2016 Republican National Convention. 

"The Oversight and Reform Committee hearing is likely to be tense, with Democrats loudly objecting to changes that have slowed mail delivery in numerous parts of the country amid President Donald Trump’s calls to restrict the use of mail-in ballots for the November election," Lippman writes. "A number of Democrats, including moderate House member Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), had even said that they wanted DeJoy, a major Republican Party fundraiser, arrested by the House sergeant at arms if he didn’t agree to testify."

The Democrat-controlled House may vote "as early as this Saturday on a proposal to block DeJoy’s plans to overhaul the Postal Service," Lippman reports. "The emergency vote would occur weeks earlier than Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders had originally planned to return to Washington during the August recess. Both House and Senate Democrats have also demanded reams of documents from DeJoy and senior USPS staffers as they probe why the Postal Service has cracked down on the use of overtime for postal workers, restricted certain deliveries and warned states that if ballots are put in the mail too late, the Postal Service can’t guarantee delivery of them by election day. Even Trump seems to have changed his tune on what he wants from the Postal Service, telling reporters on Monday: “I have encouraged everybody to speed up the mail, not slow the mail.”