In two states that more accurately represent a microcosm of American voters—Florida and New York—candidates generally committed to democracy and the rule of law defeated a Republican hodgepodge of Qanon believers, Adolf Hitler admirers, and, in one case, an admirer of Russia and Vladimir Putin. The election returns also pointed to a collapse in the corporate media’s insistence that the Republicans will score victories at the expense of Democrats in this year’s midterm elections.
Defying polls predicting a Republican victory in a special election to fill a U.S. House seat in New York’s 19th congressional district, Democrat Pat Ryan secured a surprise upset over Republican Anthony Molinaro. The seat became vacant as a result of Democratic Representative Antonio Delgado being appointed Lt. Governor of New York. The 19th is a traditional swing district that has alternated in voting for Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
In the race to fill the 23rd congressional seat of sex scandal-plagued Republican Tom Reed, who resigned in May, Joe Sempolinski, a former Reed staffer, edged out Republican Max Della Pia to finish Reed’s term in the U.S. House. Della Pia, a retired Air Force colonel, is on the ballot for the seat in November. Della Pia received a surprising 47 percent of the vote against Sempolinski’s 53 percent in the normally Republican-leaning district.
Sempolinski is not running in the November general election, becoming one of the most short-lived incumbents in Congress. The winner of the Republican primary for the 23rd’s general election is Nick Langworthy, who defeated the racist and Hitler-admiring Carl Paladino in the GOP primary. Paladino had received the endorsement of New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, the number three GOP leader in the House. Langworthy now must contend with the political fallout from the Supreme Court’s Roe decision on abortion in the general election in the western New York district.
In the Florida U.S. House 11th district, Project Veritas and Qanon veteran Laura Loomer ran a surprisingly strong race against Republican incumbent Daniel Webster. Loomer, who attacked the conservative Webster for not being substantially pro-Trump, finished with 44 percent of the vote to Webster’s 51 percent. Loomer, who outspent Webster in the campaign, won Sumter County, the location of The Villages, a far-right enclave of retirees, which also spans two other counties, Mario and Lake. The 11th district loss for Loomer was her second, having lost the race in 2020 for the 21st district seat held by Democrat Lois Frankel. Loomer has been banned for her hate speech by Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, PayPal and Venmo and she is not permitted to use Uber or Lyft. Mimicking Trump by refusing to concede, Loomer is claiming that she actually won the election for the 11th and that the Republican establishment and Webster stole her victory. She is also refusing to pull down her campaign signs, a legal requirement for candidates after an election.
In the Florida 1st U.S. House District, suspected underage sex trafficker Matt Gaetz won re-election over his closest Republican challenger Mark Lombardo with 69 percent of the vote to 24 percent. Democrat Rebekah Jones, the Florida state data scientist who was fired and subsequently arrested by Governor Ron DeSantis for refusing to cook the numbers on Covid-19 deaths in the state, won the Democratic primary over Peggy Schiller, who described herself as a “former corporate attorney.” Not everything went Gaetz’s way in the Panhandle. The Gaetz-endorsed GOP candidate for the Florida House District 3 seat, Mariya Calkins, was soundly defeated by physician Joel Rudman. WMR helped expose Ms. Calkins, a native of what was then the Soviet Union and who became a U.S. citizen in 2018, as an apologist for Russia and Vladimir Putin. That background information spread on social media contributed to Rudman receiving endorsements from current and former Republican political officeholders in the 3rd district. With no Democratic candidate in the November election, Rudman has won the Florida House seat.
In wins for DeSantis and losses for the First Amendment, 21 DeSantis-backed candidates for Florida school boards won election. Many of the victors, backed by the extremist group Moms for Liberty, support book and mask bans, as well as right-wing radicalization of public school curricula. Pro-DeSantis school board members, who received dark campaign cash from the Friends of Ron DeSantis Super PAC and the 1776 Project PAC, won control of the Sarasota and Miami-Dade county school board. One of those working behind the scenes to ensure far-right victories on Florida school boards was Paul Manafort, the disgraced ex-con and a top Russian agent-of-influence as the 2016 Trump presidential campaign manager who colluded with the Kremlin. Democratic-backed school board incumbents in Hillsborough and Volusia counties beat back challenges from DeSantis-backed candidates.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and nationally-distributed columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
