Republican congressional candidate Jesse Kelly has a long list of grievances.
He’s had it with a tax system that takes from the rich to give to the poor. He’s sick of government workers who just “suck off the system.” He wants to scrap Medicare in order to get seniors “off the public dole.” He would “love to eliminate” Social Security. He’s looking for a “day of reckoning for liberals in both parties,” because “liberalism is destroying America.”
At first glance, Kelly appears to be an ill fit for the moderate Republican bent of Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 8, which is now represented by Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Kelly opposes abortions even for women who have been the victims of rape or incest. He doesn’t believe gays could serve openly in the military without destroying morale. He believes Wall Street needs less regulation, not more. He’s outraged that the Obama administration engaged in a “shakedown” to require oil giant BP to set aside $20 billion to aid victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He’s called for every federal department, with the exception of the military, to be cut by at least 20 percent—and is ready to do away with some of them altogether, including the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Republican Jim Kolbe, who represented the area for more than two decades, routinely swatted down right-wing challengers in Kelly’s mold.
Kelly—who has received no endorsement from Kolbe this year—is easily to the right of even Randy Graf, the former state lawmaker who captured the support of GOP conservatives in 2006, when Kolbe retired. Graf went on to lose to Giffords by 12 percentage points in a year that saw Democrats take over Congress.
But 2010 is no 2006. As Graf puts it: “This is a whole different environment. The dynamics are night and day. The resistance we met won’t be here this go-round. Nothing from 2006 applies to 2010. This is virgin territory.”
Jesse Kelly is a newcomer to Southern Arizona politics. Until a month ago, when his own name was on the ballot, he’d never even voted in a GOP primary or a special election, casting ballots only in the general elections of 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Kelly grew up in Montana and attended Montana State University for a year before dropping out—he says he “absolutely hated it”—and joining the Marine Corps; he was part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After four years, he left the service in 2004, moved to Tucson and took a job with Don Kelly Construction, a regional construction company owned by his father. Last year, according to a financial disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission, Kelly earned more than $88,000 in his management job with the company.
Kelly maintains on the campaign trail that the “government doesn’t create jobs; government crushes jobs.” But Don Kelly Construction has found that government contracts can be very lucrative. By Kelly’s own estimate, 90 percent of the firm’s work comes from the government. The Tucson Weekly has reported that the company has received contracts worth tens of millions of dollars for projects funded with stimulus and earmark dollars, even though Kelly says he opposes the stimulus and would never seek earmarks for his Southern Arizona constituents if he were elected in November.
Giffords, who supported the stimulus, says it’s “very hypocritical” for Kelly to badmouth the program at the same time that he has his hand out to take stimulus dollars.
“If he doesn’t like it, then don’t take the stimulus funds,” she says.
Kelly credits the stimulus bill as “the final straw” that pushed him into the race.
“This president and this Congress and this Senate have taken over, and they’re expanding government,” Kelly says. “They’re expanding spending; they’re going to raise taxes; they want to tell you what kind of light bulbs you can keep in your house and what kind of health care you have to buy, and that’s simply not America.”
It’s the kind of message that Republicans across the country are pushing as the unemployment rate remains in or near double-digits: Government has grown too large and is spending too much money.
So far, it appears to be an effective strategy. National pundits say Republicans look increasingly likely to win the 39 seats they need to take control of the House after losing it four years ago.
Congressional District 8 is one of those targeted districts. It leans slightly Republican, with 37 percent of the voters identifying with the GOP, and 33 percent identifying as Democrats. But the key to victory is winning over the 30 percent that identify as independent.
Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report says the district is leaning Democratic, while Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report calls the race a toss-up. Nate Silver, the stats wizard behind political prognostication website fivethirtyeight.com and a New York Times contributor, says Giffords has a 56 percent chance of hanging on in November.
Margaret Kenski, who has polled Southern Arizona voters for more than a quarter-century, says that Giffords’ votes for health-care reform, the stimulus and cap-and-trade legislation are out of step with the voters in the district.
But she adds that Kelly’s far-right views are “no more in step with them than she is.”
Kenski says the central question in the race is “whether the general unhappiness with the Obama administration is going to be enough” to carry Kelly to victory.
Kelly has successfully “cultivated people who are terribly upset,” but Kenski says he runs a risk in the general election if he continues to denounce moderate voters as Republicans in Name Only.
“He has to do something to appeal to RINOs,” Kenski says. “He can’t win without them. Whether he thinks he can, I don’t know.”
It’s the same problem that Republicans are facing with U.S. Senate candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware: A far-right candidate might have what it takes to win the primary, but have less appeal to general-election voters.
The goal, as always, is getting the most votes in November.
“Fifty percent plus one does not agree with what’s happened in the last two years,” Kenski says about voters, “but 50 percent plus one doesn’t agree with Mr. Kelly, either.”
Team Giffords is well aware that the political environment does not favor the incumbent.
“It’s a tough race,” says campaign manager Rodd McLeod, who also ran Giffords’ 2006 campaign against Randy Graf.
While no nonpartisan polls have been released, a survey by a GOP-leaning group in the days following the August primary showed a neck-and-neck race, with both Giffords and Kelly capturing the support of 44 percent of the surveyed voters.
Giffords, who didn’t have a primary fight, has a big cash advantage over Kelly. While new FEC reports aren’t due until the middle of next month, reports showing activity through early August revealed that Giffords had nearly $1.9 million on hand, while Kelly was down to less than $79,000.
While the National Republican Congressional Committee has not yet announced plans to spend money in CD 8, Kelly has been getting a boost from third-party groups that have been hammering Giffords. These groups—including Conservatives for Congress, the 60 Plus Association and Americans for Prosperity—have combined to spend about $300,000 on televised attack ads.
But Giffords has had plenty of money to launch her own air war in recent weeks. In addition to testimonial spots featuring Cochise County ranchers—designed to inoculate her against attacks that she has not done enough to secure the border—Giffords has gone on the attack with ads that publicize the more controversial statements that Kelly made during the primary.
On the morning after Kelly won the primary, the Giffords campaign already had an ad airing that hammered Kelly for his comments that he’d “love to privatize” Social Security.
“During the primary, he’d been very vocal about saying he’d like to phase it out, and he’d like to eliminate it,” Giffords says. “Now, after the election, he says he wants to protect Social Security. To now change horses midstream, he’s not being truthful.”
Kelly has shown little affection for Social Security. He has called it the “biggest Ponzi scheme in history” and says the nation has no choice but to privatize the retirement program.
Giffords, by contrast, calls it a vital government program that has kept seniors out of poverty.
“The system has worked for 75 years,” Giffords says. “It is cherished. Without it, more than 50 percent of our seniors would fall below the poverty line.”
Giffords generally favors keeping the retirement age at 67 for maximum benefits, but she says that Congress does need to tweak the system to keep it solvent, perhaps by raising the current tax cap on Social Security earnings, or by means-testing, so elderly Americans who have significant retirement assets receive a smaller benefit.
But she opposes allowing the taxes that now pay for Social Security benefits to be turned into privately owned accounts that could be invested in the stock market.
“If people want to invest their own personal dollars in the stock market, absolutely,” Giffords says. “But the stock market is risky.”
Kelly has a much more radical proposal. He has embraced Congressman Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” Plan, which allows current recipients and anyone older than 55 to continue to receive Social Security. But anyone younger than 55 would have the option of putting as much as 41 percent of their Social Security taxes into private accounts that could be invested in the stock market or savings accounts.
The fundamental problem with that proposal: Diverting as much as 40 percent of the revenues into private accounts means that the system will have much less money to pay benefits now and would be driven into bankruptcy much sooner.
Kelly suggests that the money to pay benefits could come from income taxes, even though he’s proposing to sharply cut income taxes as well. Nonetheless, Kelly says that his overall plan will result in “robust economic growth” that will ensure enough tax dollars are collected to support the Social Security program.
But UA economist Gerald Swanson, author of America the Broke, is skeptical that Kelly’s idea could work, because there’s no money available to make up that shortfall.
“Right now, all of government that is not an entitlement—all of it—is being financed by borrowing,” says Swanson, who has been warning about the dangers of deficit spending since the early 1990s.
While Kelly has been telling audiences that the private accounts would be guaranteed, he said last week that he didn’t think the government should step in to bail out the accounts in the event of a downturn in the stock market. He says there’s no need to do so, because stock market downturns are never serious enough to require such a guarantee.
That position runs counter to the Ryan Roadmap that Kelly says he supports. The Roadmap includes this guarantee: “Individuals who choose to invest in personal accounts will be ensured every dollar they place into an account will be guaranteed, even after inflation. With the recent market downturn, individuals must be assured their retirement is secure. By guaranteeing the dollars put into an account, individuals can be assured that a large-scale market downturn will not cost them their Social Security personal accounts.”
But Kelly says he doesn’t plan to bail out anyone who makes a bad investment.
“The government stays out of it,” Kelly says. “That’s the guarantee.”
While Kelly says that the Giffords campaign is lying about his plans for Social Security, he has had his own troubles with the truth regarding the program.
As recently as last week, Kelly told an audience that Giffords doesn’t have to pay into the Social Security program, but can instead put her Social Security taxes into a private account.
However, Giffords pays the same Social Security taxes as other working Americans. Like all members of Congress, she can invest other retirement funds in the Thrift Savings Plan, an investment program for federal employees that’s similar to private-sector 401(k) plans.
Team Giffords is also running ads going after Kelly’s promise to scrap Medicare.
Kelly has said that, as with Social Security, benefits have to continue for people now in the system. However, he’d like to eliminate Medicare in the future and shift to a system in which elderly Americans purchase health insurance from private providers so they “won’t be on the public dole.” He said during the primary that he’d use tax credits to help people afford the program.
More recently, Kelly has adopted the Ryan Roadmap plan on this issue as well. It calls for elderly Americans to get a voucher that does not keep pace with the rate of health-care inflation costs. Anyone under 55 would be forced into the new system.
Giffords opposes moving to a voucher system that provides funding for private insurance companies to insure elderly Americans. She points out that the Ryan Roadmap has gotten little support, even from Congressional Republicans, because the proposals aren’t popular with the public.
“It’s outside the mainstream,” Giffords says.
Kelly has responded to Giffords’ ad by saying that she supported a $500 billion cut in Medicare benefits for seniors. It’s the same claim made in television ads that were run by the 60 Plus Association.
The nonpartisan FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, calls the claim of a $500 billion cut “misleading.”
FactCheck.org‘s analysis notes: “The law calls for $555 billion in cuts in future growth of the program—over 10 years. The total projected cost of Medicare over that time, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, is $7.1 trillion, even with the cuts.
“CBO predicts that federal outlays for Medicare in fiscal year 2020 will be $929 billion, compared with projected spending of $519 billion this year,” the analysis continues. “So the program isn’t being cut below existing levels, or even stopped in its tracks. It will simply grow slightly less than it would have otherwise—about 7 percent less.”
Kelly has also complained that Giffords has eliminated Medicare Advantage, a program that roughly one of out four Medicare recipients use. Medicare Advantage was designed to use private-sector insurance companies to improve service while lowering costs. But instead of costing less, Medicare Advantage ended up costing about 14 percent more than traditional Medicare.
“That’s just not fair,” Giffords says. “If Medicare is something that every American should get, you shouldn’t get more than some other Medicare beneficiary if you pick a different plan.”
The health-care reform bill passed by Democrats earlier this year gave the federal government more ability to negotiate with insurers, even as it required them to do more for Medicare Advantage patients.
The New York Times reported last week that private insurance companies are still contracting with the government—just at lower rates.
Giffords argues that it’s a sign that Medicare Advantage is not going away, as Kelly maintains. Instead, she says, taxpayers and recipients are getting a better deal.
She points to other benefits in the health-care reform law that have now kicked in, including rebates for seniors’ prescription drugs and requirements that insurance companies cover the costs of preventative check-ups.
Kelly’s economic strategies are, to say the least, a work in progress. At times, they seem to slide into the delusional.
“We need robust economic growth in this country,” Kelly said at an appearance last week. “We need to welcome businesses not only to expand, but to come back from all over the world. … To get out of this debt, when you hear things like 2 percent growth in GDP or 3 percent growth in GDP—that’s gross domestic product—we need 10 percent. And we need it for decades. We need 20 to 30 years of 10 percent GDP growth to get out of this.”
UA economist Swanson calls that kind of growth in the Gross Domestic Product “highly unlikely.”
As Swanson explains: “We’re such a large economy. When you have a $14 trillion economy, 10 percent growth would be $1.4 trillion new GDP dollars each year. We haven’t seen that kind of growth, to my knowledge, post-World War II ever.”
Just last week, Kelly told the press for the first time that he supports a new national sales tax of 8.5 cents per dollar on goods and services.
Throughout the primary, Kelly said the country should sharply lower taxes for its wealthiest residents by establishing a 10 percent flat income tax, because “if 10 percent is good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for the federal government.”
At a debate in Green Valley, he said he didn’t care how much money the new tax would raise: He’d set the federal budget to fit within it, whatever it was.
But last week, after once again telling voters that the country could implement a 10 percent flat income tax for all of its citizens, he admitted that the numbers wouldn’t pencil out.
Instead, he said he now supports a different plan that has a 10 percent income-tax rate for up to $50,000 in income for individual filers, and 25 percent on any remaining income.
To make those numbers pencil out—and to get rid of the corporate income tax, as Kelly also wants to do—he supports creating that new 8.5 percent national sales tax on goods and services. That would come on top of the sales taxes that state residents now pay.
Giffords favors keeping the current tax system and closing a portion of the deficit by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of earners. She’d leave the tax cuts in place for the rest of the country.
“I think long-term solutions to the debt are not wacky tax schemes that are going to raise taxes on the working class, the middle class and the lower class while eliminating taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans,” Giffords says.
Jesse Kelly is facing an inquisitive senior about the recent television ad from the Giffords campaign that suggests Kelly supports a 23 percent sales tax.
“She’s lying her face off about that,” Kelly tells the woman.
He quickly explains his position: It’s not that he thinks the 23 percent sales tax is a bad idea, as long as it’s coupled with eliminating other taxes. But what he really wants to do is lower income taxes to 10 percent, straight across the board. The idea that he supports increasing the sales tax is just a smear from the Giffords’ campaign.
The woman asks again about the 23 percent sales tax. “It’s a consumer tax?”
“That’s right,” Kelly says.
“Which is what I think we should do,” she says.
“There you go,” says Kelly. “No income tax, no death tax, no nothing.”
“Is that what you’re for?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, affirming his support for a 23 percent sales tax—after he’d just accused Giffords’ campaign of lying about his support for such a plan.
“All right, I’ll volunteer for you,” she says.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Kelly says. “You made it easy.”
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2010.
Don’t elect people who hate government to run it. They do a crummy job.
It’s simply astonishing to me that the District 8 race is a toss-up. Gabrielle Giffords is anything but a flaming liberal, while Jesse Kelly is just a delusional crackpot.
If Arizona voters are so enraged by the so-called radicalism of the Obama administration that they are prepared to elect political neanderthals like Kelly and Jan Brewer, then I shudder to think what would happen to them if the country ever elected a genuine progressive to the presidency. The spectacle of exploding craniums from Green Valley to Wilcox would rival the cinematic efforts of David Cronenberg and Quentin Tarantino.
Barack Obama is the most centrist president since Dwight Eisenhower, and to brand him as some kind of a Norman Thomas socialist is, quite frankly, absurd. The Wall Street-worshipping Murdoch empire, personified by Fox N(ewww)s has so poisoned the body politic in this infant century that any concept of governance to the left of George Lincoln Rockwell is branded as Maoist communism, while the United States of America continues its inexorable slide toward global economic irrelevance.
I’ve lived in Arizona for ten years, and am embarrassed to admit having invested in real estate here. It appears that a great number of the voters in this state are self-absorbed, bigoted religious fanatics who can only measure success by the size of their bank balances rather than the content of their character. And I’m ashamed that many others who claim to be appalled by what’s happening here DON’T BOTHER TO VOTE! I can only hope that I’m some day able to escape this idealogical sinkhole and live somewhere among actual human beings.
Keep praying for that Reaganesque oligarchy, folks; eventually you’re going to get it. And when that happens, unless you’re already filthy rich, you’ll wish you were dead.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, affirming his support for a 23 percent sales tax—after he’d just accused Giffords’ campaign of lying about his support for such a plan.”
– Kelly isn’t really lying, the college drop out is just way in over his head and doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so it’s easy for him to change positions by the minute.
It is truly sad that these two are the best we can find to fill this office. Giffords is a Pelosi ass-kisser and voted with her 90% of the time. Kelly is just as bad but in the other direction. As for Obama, I am still watching C-SPAN for those bills that he “promised” would be shown prior to voting. Gitmo is still in operation and the economy is still in the ditch.
I further question why he refuses to allow access to his birth and school records and why he LIED on his Illinois bar application when he stated he was NEVER known by any other name when in fact he was known as Barry Soertero. THIS IS ONE RECORD HE COULD NOT SEAL!
Did he order his college records sealed because he attended as Barry Soetero, a foreign student on a scholarship?
His school records from Indonesia show him as a citizen of Indonesia and a MUSLIM, more records he could not hide from the citizens of the U.S. who have a right to know just exactly who he is.
Why would his Kenyan grandmother state that she was there when he was born?
Anyone who thinks, after reading this well-written and articulate analysis of Jesse Kelly’s positions on the issues, they can honestly consider voting for the man had got to be blinded by reality. He is so on the fringe that he belongs with the likes of Christine O’Donnell (masturbation is a sin) in Delaware and Sharon Angle (who doesn’t think autism is a real medical condition…ask my nephew)in Nevada. Think about the type of government, we might have if these fringe elements get elected. If you think there is gridlock now, imagine what a “three-party” idealogical system might be…because this fringe element is far from mainstream Repulican thought. There will be no more room for moderate Republicans in the party. You will have no place to go. Independenats will have no place to look for moderate Rebulican ideas. The republican party will either have to embrace these Tea Party fringe elements, or there WILL be a third party in Congress, stopping government action even further. Not only in the Senate, but now in the House. Do we really want AZ CD 8 to be a part of that?
Re-elect common sense. Re-elect an outstanding representative. Re-elect Gabrielle Giffords.
AZ is going broke, losing jobs, and becoming overrun by illegal aliens who mooch off the services paid for with rising taxes. Let’s keep re-electing idiots.
Roger Rabbit and Jim Nitnzel…I know Jesse Kelly “personally”, and I have never read such a crock of “delusion” in my entire life, which is over 70 years, as this diatribe from the two of you. Jim, it must have taken days to put this creative panarama of distortion and lies together.
As for Giffords, she has been the most useless waste of a Congressional seat, other than working to turn our electric bills into a major solar/electric supplement to TEP; and she and her leader, Mr. Obama, have stated a major goal is to eliminate…ELIMINATE…Medicare Advantage, which has saved Seniors smart enough to enroll, hundreds of dollars a month in perscription costs. (Perscriptions for anything other than generic have already almost doubled in some instances, and my Pharmacist tells me to get ready for a real shock starting next year and up to 2014, when low income retiree’s will really be put to the test.) I have gone through hundreds of pages of the Healthcare Bill, and even Democrats with a brain know that there is going to be an uprising when Seniors are really faced with the facts of what Congress has done to them in order to RE-DISTRIBUTE Medicare to MEDICAID, which will get a free ride at the expense of those who worked to build up the S.S. “Trust” Fund….WHICH CONGRESS RAVAGED AS THEIR SPECIAL ATM…TO BUILD THE WELFARE SYSTEM NOW IN PLACE AND GROWING WITH EACH COMING YEAR. Don’t even get me started on the Border, E-Verify or any of the other “Sanctuary” efforts of Giffords.
Roger Rabbit, you won’t have to wait long for your death wish, because if you can’t afford your med’s…it will be ethanasia by purpose of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid/Giffords, et al NEW WORLD GOVERNMENT THEY HAVE BUILT THE FOUNDATION FOR IN THE LAST 2 YEARS! Believe me, there is a better place to live (I stupidly came back…to S. Az.!!!) and it is North and East of the I-101 and I-202…Southern Arizona as I knew it when I came here in ’82, moved to OV in 94, then to N. Scottsdale (Carefree area), and then back to Green Valley….I must have been out of my mind, but I had no idea the quality of life had so deteriorated here. Tucson has always been looked down upon by people N. of Casa Grande, but I just took it as a grain of salt…but believe me…this area was better when we were controled by mob bosses than under the current La Raza mentality….but, like you, I doubt the value of my custom home I built 7 years ago will ever return in my lifetime, and it is just going to cost more to support the major import of S. Az…..poverty. But, the newspapers love it. Right, Jim, build a “downtown” when all the high class resorts are going under….YEP…GIFFORDS AND GRIJALVA LOVE THAT POVERTY…JUST KEEP LYING TO THOSE FOLKS AND SEE WHAT YOU END UP WITH…
The G-Team Wants You!
If you are sick of Arizona being on Comedy Central AND believe that “Arizona is better than this!”, become a member of the G-Team.
Team Giffords and Team Goddard are joining forces to transform the unrelenting talk of fear, hate, anger and apathy. We hope to have a huge group of G-Team members walking at the Light the Night Walk in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society at 5:30 pm., Saturday, October 16, at Brandy Fenton Memorial Park in Tucson.
You do not need to make a donation to walk with us; however, if you give a minimum of a $10 tax deductible donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, you will receive a Terry Goddard for Governor t-shirt and Gabrielle Giffords stickers and signs to show you have joined us. http://pages.lightthenight.org/dm/TucsonL1…
The more tax-deductible donations the G-Team can generate, the more Arizonans will believe us when we say that, “The fear agenda is history – Arizona is better than this!”
I have not seen one ad or reason to vote for Giffords. She has nothing of merit to campaign on so all she does is bash Kelly. She voted for Obama care and we are all seeing the love we have for that program. We are now discovering all the hidden taxes. Did you know that if you sell your home after 2012, there will be a 3.8% tax due?
She and her husband, along with other useless Dems, some 165 people total, went on vacation to Denmark on my dime when there was NO REASON for her to be there. Average cost of $2,200 per day for rooms! Any treaty that could have been signed could only be signed by the Senate of which she is not a member.
CBS News asked members of Congress and staff about whether they’re mindful that it’s public tax dollars they’re spending. Many said they had never even seen the bills or the expense reports. It’s clear they don’t care about wasting our money.
And all those attendees who went to the summit rather than hooking up by teleconference? They produced enough climate-stunting carbon dioxide to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools. Guess they don’t care much about global warming after all!
richcat has a lot to say…maybe he is unhappy. Has he really examined Giffords record or is he blindly believing the rhetoric? Has he really looked at the alternative?
I am a conservative voter, and I just can’t imagine voting for Kelly.
How do people reconcile his constant government bashing with the fact that he and his family have been living off our tax dollars for years?
Seriously – someone help me out here. I’m not dogging him or his family for being government contractors, but I think it is wildly disingenuous to claim to be the “small government” guy while you are doing it. How do you vote for this guy when this is such a disconnect with reality??
As a former Democrat recently turned Republican, I am a strong supporter of the Fair Tax. If I knew nothing else about either candidate, the Giffords commercial that seriously misrepresents the truth about the Fair Tax would have me eagerly voting for Jesse Kelly. Unfortunately, Kelly seems a lot like Giffords in one undesirable way — they are both slick politicians who are more interested in themselves than the state of Arizona. I will reluctantly vote for Kelly.
Yes I am unhappy and I did vote for Giffords! And I have followed her voting with Pelosi on bills that I am also unhappy about. As I stated previously both of them SUCK and it is very sad that they are the best that our district has been able to offer.
I feel that Kelly won’t be able to get any of his wild ideas passed but at least he won’t voting for Pelosi’s wild spending bills and that is a PLUS. He will get my vote.
This author sounds more like campaign manager for the Gifford camp. Real bias reporting. I’m shocked that anyone reading this won’t recognize this article as nothing more than campaign propaganda for Gifford
Jesse Kelly’s political campaign is like a reality show. He becomes a celebrity when the press devotes the majority of their coverage to his absurd statements and positions.
Look closely at the article in the Weekly and you’ll see that Giffords gets only a fraction of the coverage given to Kelly. Kelly also received the majority of the coverage from the printed press in the primary without it costing him a dime. The irony is that the press helps create the monsters that they then decry. Voices of reason and sanity rarely receive more than token coverage by the press. Yet the press continues to complain about the quality of our politicians. Very early in every election cycle the press decides which candidates the public should take seriously and that decision is largely based on the amount of money the candidates have raised, their previous political experience. or their headline worthiness. Wisdom and knowledge seldom receive consideration. The press wants to sell papers and they can’t sell papers promoting quiet thoughtful candidates. Kelly is every political reporter’s dream candidate.
Jay Quick
The problem is that during the primary the Dems got involved to make sure Jesse kelly was elected. They new they could beat him whereas the other two candidates would have actually caused a huge problem for Giffords. Republicans fell for it and ended up with the worst possible candidate coming out of the primary. And we as Republicans do it every election cycle. Until we start putting up candidates who actual have common sense and ideas with a plan behind it, people like Giffords will keep getting elected. Who thought it was a good idea to elect a primary candidate who dropped out of college, served 4 years in the military, then went to work for his daddy and isn’t even out of his 20’s yet?! Come on people!
Bunch of sour grapes on this post. I see we have Jenn K. still whining because her weak candidate, Brian Miller wasn’t even able to survive until the primary. Then there is Jay Quick who got about 1% of the vote, if. And Jay, I find it hilarious that you would refer to anyone’s campaign as a “reality show” after your performance on the Arizona Illustrated debate.
Jesus, what a rant, GV. Every angry Teapublican I know/meet seems to be the type of person who was ignorant enough to be duped into buying the Medicare Advantage “give-up-your-paid-into-Medicare-in-exchange-for-being-soaked-by-private-insurers” plan or ignorant enough to think a stick-n-stucco “custom” home whose “value” had quadrupled in the past 2 years would continue to appreciate.
Why don’t you take a little responsibility for your own lack of research and/or “huckster” mentality? This country is being RUINED by people who didn’t pay attention to economics, didn’t plan and don’t seem to realize their greatly reduced standard of living is largely due to their own complacent insularity coupled by the failed policies of the Republican “trickle-down-Contract-with-America” b.s we’ve been subjected to for the last 30 years.
Jesse Kelly is the biggest phony I’ve seen in a long, long time – and I’ve been voting since the 70s.
Jesse Kelly going from his father’s stimulus-laden construction company to the government’s highly-paid fraternity
OR
Gabrielle Giffords driving her truck back to Tucson to take her father’s tire company into the ground and then on to the government’s highly-paid fraternity ?
Which one do I vote for ??????
Luckily, the system is so bureaucratized it really doesn’t matter, as, at their level, they are both “gophers”.
To Roger Rabbit we already do know what would happen when a real progressive is elected to the presidency – opponents make sure the votes in the candidate’s brothers state get misplaced and tossed and do it while the supreme court is in their pocket to steal the election away from what was our rightful president.
The race between a liberal to moderate Republican and a conservative to moderate Democrat would be a tough call. This one is not. Gabrielle Giffords has my vote.
We had planned to attend the “Town Hall Meeting” in Green Valley, that Gabby had scheduled last fall but chicken shit got scared when she saw what was happening to her fellow liberals at their town hall meetings. So what does chicken shit do?? She cancelled the meeting and then rescheduled it at DM AFB. You had to “ask” and get cleared to attend. We did not feel it was worth the gas to drive there and back just to listen to her whine.
We need to remember that this is a Liberal paper and Jim Nietze is also a Liberal, so his writing is biased.
I don’t think he was aware that Ms Gifford when invited to speak to Company and made the employees read a prewritten card with questions for her to answer. She lost many votes that day. in response to Jesse Kelly is a case of having his ears filled with water.
Ms Giffords does not have the ability to answer question from an audience. on Channel 9 news, she was recorded stating “I am not here to answer questions, only SPEAK to you”. She does not listen to the majority of her constitentsand does not list her voting record because it is lousey
Bullseye, In case you didn’t know, Mr. Kelly Senior has been in the construction business for years, before Stimulus was even an idea. He is a SUBCONTRACTOR and bid many of those jobs before stimulus. Are you aware the Electric Companies, Airline Builders and Computer companies have all accepted Stimulus funds? Just to name a few, there hundreds of others.
It is hilarious how this fellow Kelly can make up “facts” for his audience, swearing by them, then minutes later do a quick change in front of a questioner so that now he is all for what his constituent was previously told was off the table. We call people like this eels, they can bend and twist into any position or direction, Having no morality, these people will happily tell their audience exactly what they want to hear. Republicans have been at this slimy game for the last hundred years, telling people what they want to hear then passing legislation that totally screws their constituents after they’ve been elected.
I certainly see how screwed up this Jesse Kelly is. If he’s so hard up to cut costs of government, he should promise to not accept any salary for a Congressman’s job, nor accept any government sponsored medical coverage, or invest in the federal employee Thrift Savings Plan for retirement benefits. Better yet, Mr. Kelly: shun the delusional egoist that you are, get off the family dole, and get real. What a waste of time you are.
I pray Mr. Kelly will someday understand what it means to have true social responsibility. The modern infrastructure of America was built on a 95 percent tax rate, back in the fifties. He’s benefited all his life from this infrastructure. It’s now time for the hypocrite to give something back!
Jesse Kelley is way off base with a lot of that stuff, but this is a liberal site and the writer is a flaming liberal as well as are most of the folks who comment on here. Not to worry though, you’re only spewing what you’ve fed yourselves on.
No one running for office in this district is worth a grain of salt. Better luck next time! 🙂
This is a “hold your noseand vote for the one who will do the least damage” election.
A vote for Giffords is a vote for the Obama/Pelosi/Reid programs thatwe have already seen as failures.
A vote for Lell is a vote to eliminate astaunch supporter of the above failed programs. However, Kelly’s seemingly rambling, loose cannon ideas will get no where and he will be a one term winner, replaced by a more thoughtful and southern Arizona citizen next time around.
The goal here is to save the country, and the only choice we have here in CD8 is to send Kelly to Washington as a stopgap representative.
Yep, it is a hold your nose and vote election we have here.
Join supporters of Gabrielle Giffords and Terry Goddard (aka G-TEAM) at the Light the Night Walk this Saturday, 5:30 pm at Brandi Fenton Memorial Park in Tucson. We hope to have a huge group from both campaigns to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). Bring signs, get a Goddard T-Shirt, Giffords stickers, support LLS and have a FUN few hours! Terry plans to meet us at the end of our walk. Get info at http://pages.lightthenight.org/dm/TucsonL1…
richscat, I encourage you to visit http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/category/fe… – a blogger has carefully cataloged every accusation and theory about our President’s religion and place of birth. You’re welcome.
As far as Kelly goes, I will give him props for genuinely believing in what he says. Unfortunately, most of it’s laughably optimistic about the nature of people and supply-side economics.