Republican senator who voted to convict Trump was not sent to DC to ‘do the right thing’, his party complains

Independent

Republican senator who voted to convict Trump was not sent to DC to ‘do the right thing’, his party complains

Gustaf Kilander                                  February 16, 2021
Senator Pat Toomey walks through the Senate subway after the end of Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial on February 13, 2021. (Getty Images)
Senator Pat Toomey walks through the Senate subway after the end of Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial on February 13, 2021. (Getty Images)

 

A Republican senator who voted to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial was not sent to Washington to “do the right thing”, the GOP chair of one county in his state has said.

Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey was one of seven Republicans who voted with all 50 Democrats on Saturday to convict the former president of incitement following the lethal insurrection at the US Capitol on 6January, when a mob of Trump supporters tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

Those Republican senators are now facing blowback from their parties back home.

Speaking to KDTV, Washington County Republican Party chair Dave Ball said: “We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”

 

Mr. Toomey was censured by the Washington County GOP, and Mr. Ball said that he didn’t think Mr. Toomey “was straightforward with us”, on his thinking surrounding his looming impeachment vote.

Westmoreland County Republican Party chair Bill Bretz told KDTV that they too are looking to censure Mr. Toomey.

Mr. Bretz said: “We strongly disapprove of his action both to hear the case and the subsequent vote to convict,” adding “This is a matter of magnitude beyond a simple up or down vote on some trade policy or something”.

Allegheny County Republican Party chair Sam DeMarco was worried that censuring retiring senators like Mr. Toomey was focusing too much on the past.

He said: “Every minute that we spend sitting there and fighting among each other and going back and trying to censure somebody who has already announced they’re retiring and are leaving is a moment where we’re not focused on the future.”

He added: “We’re a big tent party. I believe there is room under this tent for people who don’t always agree.”

As county parties censure the senator, the state party chairman Lawrence Tabas has signaled that a meeting will be called to “address and consider actions related to the impeachment vote,” meaning that there’s a movement in the party to censure the Senator on a statewide basis.

The York county GOP passed a resolution on Saturday before Mr. Toomey voted to convict, saying that the county’s Republican Committee “condemns, in the strongest terms, the actions of United States Senator Patrick Joseph Toomey, Jr for his failure to defend the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees”. The resolution was passed because Mr. Toomey voted to proceed with the trial, something the county GOP considered unconstitutional.

York County GOP chair Jeff Piccola told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the vote was “overwhelming,” and added: “There was no debate. They were cheering when they were voting and when the resolution was being read. It bubbled up from beneath, it wasn’t my idea.”

Mr. Toomey has been part of the GOP’s rightward journey and has supported almost all of Mr. Trump’s policies and nominees but failed what is becoming the most important litmus test within huge swathes of the Republican Party: unwavering support for Donald Trump.

A poll released on Tuesday shows Mr. Trump routing all possible competitors in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary, with 54 per cent supporting him. His past right-hand man, former Vice President Mike Pence, came in second with 12 per cent.

Mr. Toomey said on Saturday that Mr Trump’s “betrayal of the Constitution and his oath of office required conviction. Had he accepted the outcome of the election, acknowledged defeat, and cooperated with a peaceful transfer, then he’d be celebrated for a lot of the accomplishments that he deserves credit for. Instead, he’ll be remembered throughout history as the president who resorted to non-legal steps to try to hold on to power”.

The vote to convict Mr. Trump was 57 to 43, a majority but short of the 67 senators needed for conviction.

Spare us: After Trump, seven Republican lectures Democrats never need to hear again

Spare us: After Trump, seven Republican lectures Democrats never need to hear again

Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY                          February 17, 2021

 

There’s nothing like a new Democratic administration and a second Trump impeachment trial to clarify where Republicans truly stand on the values and policies they profess to believe. The impeachment verdict, with 86% of GOP senators voting “not guilty,” is the ultimate confirmation of the party’s galactic hypocrisy and the damage it has done.

Democrats have been hoping for years that, as former President Barack Obama put it during the 2012 campaign, “the fever may break.” Instead, the temperature rose higher and higher as Republicans nominated and elected Donald Trump, indulged his corruption, and acquitted him twice.

It’s an understatement to say Republicans have no credibility to lecture Democrats or anyone else. Don’t be fooled in the future when they try to claim superiority on these issues:

►Constitutional originalism. The second impeachment trial crushed that claim like a trash compactor. The House managers used historic precedent, the Framers’ words and the Constitution itself to prove it is constitutional to try an impeached ex-president. That was also the consensus of constitutional lawyers from right to left and, last week, the consensus of a Senate majority. The GOP 86% stuck with their own newfangled, Trump-friendly view of the Constitution as an excuse to vote not guilty. So no more lectures, please, on what the Founders “truly” intended on guns, religion, D.C. statehood or anything else.

Captive to a former leader

►Rule of law. No words are strong enough to express what the Republican Party has allowed Trump to get away with. Inciting a deadly riot at the seat of his own government may be the latest instance, but it was preceded by an astonishing four-year stretch of corruption and potential criminality. When Trump said in January 2016 that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” it was a joke. And yet, here we are: His base loves him more than ever, and captive Republicans — who have racked up their own astonishing four-year stretch of failing to hold Trump accountable — are continuing in that vein even though he’s gone.

►Abuse of power. There can be no worse abuse of power than inciting an insurrection against the government you lead. It makes all Trump’s other abuses seem forgettable, even though each one was outrageous, from turning the White House into a convention prop and backdrop to grabbing money Congress appropriated for military construction projects and using it for his border wall. Remember that conservatives attacked Barack Obama’s supposedly “imperial presidency” for years. Remember all of this as Republicans complain (already) about President Joe Biden’s executive orders as overreach.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces storm the US Capitol in Washington D.C on January 6, 2021.
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces storm the US Capitol in Washington D.C on January 6, 2021.

►Blue Lives Matter. You don’t often see someone using an American flag to attack a police officer, but a Trump supporter did that on Jan. 6, 2021. And video of that day, shown at the impeachment trial, may have set a record for F-words on daytime TV as Trump supporters repeatedly shouted it at police trying to protect the building. Republican “caring” about cops apparently doesn’t extend to making Trump say he’s sorry for inciting the Capitol attack and failing to stop it, or making him pay in some way for the deaths and despair it caused.

►True patriotism. The insurrection and Trump’s acquittal destroyed the mythology of conservative patriotism. Real patriotism means loving what makes America special: its diversity, its opportunity, its role in the world, and a history of peaceful transfers of power that lasted from the founding until Jan. 6, 2021. It means flag waving, not U.S. flags as weapons. It means never, ever countenancing racism or Confederate flags or violence or death threats masquerading as a new American Revolution. It means punishing a president who does countenance all that, and who told the lies to start it — not letting him off on a technicality because you fear a primary challenge.

Nothing left to pontificate about

►Value of human life. Republicans are pro-life when it comes to the unborn, because they cannot speak for themselves. But the dead of the Capitol attack can’t speak for themselves (nor can those who died in the tragically mismanaged coronavirus pandemic or because Trump and Republicans cut people off Medicaid or failed to expand it, but I digress). Where was the determination to insist on accountability for the inciter in chief, whose words and actions led to the violence? And what was “pro-life” about Republicans refusing to wear masks as they hid from the Trump supporters storming the Capitol? At least three Democrats who sheltered with them contracted covid.

►The party of Everyman. “We are a working class party now,” Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted on Election Night last year. But when Biden won, the “populist” Ivy League senator quickly turned to purveying the “populist” Ivy League president’s “stolen election” lie, which involved trying to rob millions of working-class voters of their legally cast votes and culminated in the Capitol siege. Trust but verify, as Ronald Reagan used to say. And look at who cleaned up during the Trump administration, starting with that well known working-class couple, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

It might have been easier to list what Republicans are still qualified to pontificate on. Why the federal deficit is a huge, huge problem? Hmmm. Never mind.

With this impeachment travesty, are they finally at rock bottom? Probably not. Trump has left plenty of acolytes to carry on the competition for new lows.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.

Jimmy Kimmel Gives Trump Supporters An Uncomfortable Truth About The Ex-President

HuffPost

Jimmy Kimmel Gives Trump Supporters An Uncomfortable Truth About The Ex-President

Ed Mazza, Overnight Editor, HuffPost        

Jimmy Kimmel told Donald Trump’s supporters how the former president really feels about them on Tuesday.

The “Jimmy Kimmel Live” host aired footage of Trump fans lining the streets outside Mar-a-Lago to wave and cheer as the ex-president went golfing.

“Sure enough, on his way to the golf course he’d never let them join, the former president gave his fans a wave and two little thumbs-up,” Kimmel cracked:

Kimmel’s quick joke hits at a larger issue: Those who’ve been in the former president’s orbit have pointed out that he’s not very fond of his own supporters.

Olivia Troye,  who was on Trump’s coronavirus task force before turning on him, said Trump was happy when pandemic safety measures meant that he’d no longer “have to shake hands with these disgusting people.”

She made similar comments to The New York Times, clarifying that it wasn’t just the hands he didn’t like. It was the people.

“Oh, he talked all the time about the people themselves being disgusting,” Troye told the newspaper last year. “It was clear immediately that he wanted nothing to do with them.”

Radio host Howard Stern, who for years considered Trump a friend and had him on the show as a frequent guest, made similar comments.

“The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most love him the most,” Stern said on his show last spring. “He wouldn’t even let them in a fucking hotel. He’d be disgusted by them.”

Trump’s two impeachments hold same lesson: Republicans can’t be trusted with our democracy

Trump’s two impeachments hold same lesson: Republicans can’t be trusted with our democracy

Jason Sattler, Opinion columnist              February 15, 2021

 

A grand total of seven Republican senators.

That’s how many members of the so-called world’s greatest deliberative body were willing to convict ex-President Donald Trump of the most documented — and possibly most heinous — crime any American president has ever committed against our constitutional order. It can’t get much worse than inciting an insurrection that killed five and easily could have taken out several if not dozens more, including the same Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump.

To be fair, seven is six more Republicans than were willing to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, which dealt with a lesser crime that also demanded removal, also related to Trump attempting to steal the 2020 election. But the lessons of both impeachments were the same: The Republican Party cannot be trusted with our democracy.

Sure, we should have known this before both trials. Yet Democrats had no choice but to document Trump’s high crimes for history, along with Republican complicity in those crimes, and hope to make them pay a political price for both. And you can argue that this strategy, though probably too limited to capture the monstrous scope of Trump’s crimes, succeeded.

America rejected the Party of Trump

Under Trump, Republicans lost the White House, the House and the Senate in one term — something that hasn’t happened since Herbert Hoover was president. But Trump also is the first modern president to leave office with fewer Americans employed than when he came in — something that also hasn’t happened since Hoover.

And there was the pandemic that left more than 400,000 Americans dead on Trump’s watch, with 40% of those deaths being avoidable, according to the recent findings of a Lancet Commission.

So it’s hard to tell exactly what made this country reject Trump’s GOP so quickly. What is clear is Democrats now have less than two years to do everything they can to make sure America never faces another president who would turn a deadly mob on his own running mate and our government.

We have now seen the limits of the Republicans who believe they have any responsibility to govern, especially when a Democrat is president: exactly seven Republicans. But to make almost anything happen in Congress, you need 10 Republican senators because of the Senate filibuster. Actually, let’s be precise. Because of Mitch’s Filibuster™.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Feb. 13, 2021, in Washington. D.C.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Feb. 13, 2021, in Washington. D.C.

 

“In the 87 years between the end of Reconstruction and 1964, the only bills that were stopped by filibusters were civil rights bills,” writes Adam Jentleson, author of “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.”

When Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell become Senate minority leader in 2007, he began using the filibuster at a rate unprecedented in American history.

This gives a minority elected by tens of millions fewer voters an effective veto on almost everything voters elected Joe Biden and Democrats to do. Some argue this duplicitous “kill switch” promotes bipartisanship. But this is a sick canard, like McConnell delaying Trump’s trial for insurrection and then saying he couldn’t vote to convict because the trial was too late. What the filibuster actually does is make sure policies that are popular with average Democrats and Republicans — universal background checks for gun buyers, raising the minimum wage, citizenship for DREAMers brought to this country illegally as kids —have no chance of becoming law.

The filibuster is even delaying essential pandemic relief that voters are demanding. Large chunks of relief will be possible through an arcane process called reconciliation that allows budget-related bills to pass with just 51 of the Senate’s 100 votes, with the vice president breaking a tie. But this already drawn-out process was set back weeks even after Democrats gained control of the Senate.

Why? Mitch’s Filibuster™.

Led by McConnell, Republicans used to threat of a filibuster to make demands before relenting on the organizing resolution that let Democrats actually take control. McConnell’s demands mostly had to do with preserving his filibuster, which he already got rid of for the thing he cares about most — Supreme Court justices. If you think he wants to keep the filibuster because it helps Democrats, please do not ever operate heavy machinery again.

Don’t let GOP cement its gains

Republicans are already in the process of extreme partisan gerrymandering, making it almost impossible for Democrats to win the House or most state houses. The Senate is constructed to benefit the more rural states that Republicans now dominate. And if Democrats let the filibuster become cement handcuffs, they won’t be able to fix democracy. They won’t be able to pass a new voting rights act, or the For the People Act to reform elections for the 21st century, or statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Mitch’s Filibuster™ prevents all that or anything that could help democracy. That’s the Mitch guarantee.

Time for hardball: Let’s get real. Joe Biden, Democrats and America need results much more than unity.

Everybody knows that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have assured McConnell they’ll be the wind beneath his filibuster. But Sinema only has to look at her home state of Arizona, where Republican legislators have introduced 34 bills making it harder to vote because Democrats are suddenly competitive there, to know that her constituents need a new voting rights act if she wants another term. And Manchin has to decide whether he wants to go down in history as the only Democrat who can win in West Virginia, or the savior of a state that kept hemorrhaging coal jobs under the coal-sucking Trump.

These two senators must be convinced. Nothing is more important. We cannot let Republicans let Trump get away with trying to steal the last election, then go on swiping elections for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Seven Republicans are not enough. The filibuster has to go, or democracy will.

Jason Sattler, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and host of “The GOTMFV Show” podcast.

Dems buzz about breakout stars of Trump’s impeachment

Dems buzz about breakout stars of Trump’s impeachment

Holly Otterbein                       February 14, 2021

 

The Democratic House members who prosecuted the case against former President Donald Trump last week say they’ve been laser-focused on his trial.

But as their speeches were being piped into Americans’ homes 24-7, they also elevated their national profiles — in some cases, generating considerable buzz about their prospects for higher office.

Rep. Madeleine Dean is being talked about as a potential candidate for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022, a top priority for the party. Democratic strategists are speculating that Rep. Joaquin Castro, relatively well-known before the impeachment trial, further distinguished himself as an impeachment manager, advancing talk of a statewide bid in Texas. And an ex-Jeb Bush aide went so far as to say that Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse gave his “2004 convention speech” — a nod to former President Barack Obama’s breakout moment in politics.

For the lawmakers who have been able to use this moment to boost their name recognition and grow their fan bases, they’re following in the footsteps of Democratic and Republican impeachment managers who have shone in the past.

“I remember Lindsey Graham as an impeachment manager,” said Tom Lopach, former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “It is rare to have a congressional hearing or session of such import that it is on throughout the day. You have to go back to Watergate, you go back to the Iran-Contra hearing, you go back to the Clinton impeachment and Trump’s impeachment.”

Graham, who was an impeachment manager during former President Bill Clinton’s 1999 trial, ran for the Senate and won just a few years later in 2002. Asa Hutchinson, another then-House member who made the case against Clinton, is now the governor of Arkansas. Bill McCollum, also on the impeachment team against Clinton, went on to become Florida’s attorney general.

More recently, Democratic representatives such as Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Val Demings served as impeachment managers during Trump’s first trial, burnishing their national profiles. Schiff is now looking to be appointed California’s next attorney general. Demings, a Florida congressmember, made it to President Joe Biden’s vice-presidential shortlist.

Some of the impeachment managers for Trump’s second trial include Democrats who have considered or ran for higher office before, such as 2020 presidential candidate Eric Swalwell and Castro, who has eyed bids for the Senate. One Democrat who isn’t able to run for the Senate, Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett, has some Democrats wishing that she could after her steady performance.

Though impeachment is an inherently political process, elected officials typically don’t like to admit that working as a manager can come with electoral benefits. They were required to walk a careful line, especially when making the case that Trump incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Still, strategists from both sides of the aisle acknowledged that their roles likely furthered their careers.

“When you’re part of impeachment proceedings and you’re in a managerial position, of course you’re going to have better name ID. You’re on camera all this time, bringing incredible evidence,” said Sonia Van Meter, a former campaign consultant to Castro. “And anyone who’s paying attention to these proceedings is going to get to know your face.”

For some of the managers, their presentations were shared widely on social media. Neguse, who is an attorney and the youngest impeachment manager, won acclaim for his compelling and high-minded arguments. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead manager, poignantly talked about his daughter and son-in-law fearing for their lives during the insurrection only a day after he buried his son. Dean, who previously ran for lieutenant governor, grabbed viewers’ attention when she teared up recounting the day of the attack.

“The part where she showed emotion, that was very real and it gets to who she is,” said Larry Ceisler, a public relations executive based in Pennsylvania. “Obviously she’s raised her profile in the caucus, with political people, and maybe some people who don’t know her. When you distinguish herself as she has, people are going to mention her for the Senate opening.”

Ceisler added that her performance was likely influenced by her past experience as an executive director of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association: “She has at her fingertips some very good legal minds in Pennsylvania … and my guess is, knowing Madeleine, she didn’t go at this on her own, she would ask advice.”

Van Meter said the trial is “upping Joaquin Castro’s name ID and certainly Stacey Plaskett’s.”

She has also worked as a campaign adviser to Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a manager during Trump’s first impeachment, who she said has been invited onto TV and quoted in articles more often since the trial.

Jon Seaton, a former senior adviser to Graham during his 2016 presidential campaign, said the South Carolina Republican’s sense of humor during the Clinton impeachment trial led to national attention and media clips. Graham was noticed ahead of the trial for asking, “Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?’” — a reference to a 1960s soap opera.

“I think it did help. I don’t know if it was determinative, but it certainly gave him a leg up,” Seaton said of Graham’s Senate bid shortly thereafter. “I just think he acquitted himself very well throughout the Clinton impeachment trial and I think people kind of liked him. And it’s always hard to break through, and that gave him an opportunity to break through that his opponents just didn’t have.”

But some Democrats who earned the most praise this week will likely not be in a position to run for higher office for some time. Neguse’s home-state senators are both Democrats, and Michael Bennet has said he plans to run again in 2022, while John Hickenlooper is not up for reelection until 2026. Incumbent Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, faces reelection in 2022.

Poor impeachment performances can also have a lingering effect. When Bruce Castor, a former acting attorney general of Pennsylvania, was named as one of Trump’s attorneys for the trial, it set off speculation that he was contemplating a bid for Senate or governor in 2022. But that chatter has died down after his initial speech last week was widely panned — including by Trump.

And sometimes, the volatile mix of electoral politics and impeachment can create uncomfortable moments. Dean’s son, former Obama aide Pat Cunnane, tweeted on Wednesday that Dean “seems comfortable in the Senate.”

Aware of the optics, Dean’s aides struck a different tone. “She’s focused on the trial,” said Dean’s spokesperson, Timothy Mack, when asked about Cunnane’s tweet.

Ted Cruz’s Tweet About California Energy Shortages Comes Back To Haunt Him

Ted Cruz’s Tweet About California Energy Shortages Comes Back To Haunt Him

Jeremy Blum, Reporter, HuffPost                     

An old tweet from GOP Sen. Ted Cruz criticizing California’s energy policies went viral on Monday as the senator’s own state, Texas, reeled from a massive snowstorm that knocked out power to more than 4 million homes and businesses.

Cruz’s August 2020 post had taken aim at a tweet from the Office of the Governor of California, which urged residents to conserve energy by turning off lights, limiting the usage of electrical appliances and adjusting thermostats.

At the time, California was gripped by a major heat wave and implementing its first rolling power blackouts since 2001.

“California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity,” Cruz wrote back then.

The senator also claimed that supporters of the Green New Deal ― like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, then campaigning for the White House, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ― wanted “to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide.”

As Monday’s extreme snow and freezing temperatures caused Texas to implement its own rolling blackouts, multiple commentators referenced Cruz’s old tweet, pointing out that the senator was perfectly happy to criticize California last August but noticeably quiet when it came to the emergency measures affecting his own state.

As of Tuesday, outages in Texas were expected to last the full day for most affected homes and businesses. A representative for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas told a local ABC station that only about 10-15% of those customers were expected to get power back by mid-afternoon.

Adam Kinzinger’s Lonely Mission

Adam Kinzinger’s Lonely Mission

Reid J. Epstein                                February 16, 2021

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 22: Congressman Adam Kinzinger attends the 2014 Global Leadership Dinner at Cipriani 42nd Street on October 22, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic)

WASHINGTON — As the Republican Party censures, condemns and seeks to purge leaders who aren’t in lockstep with Donald Trump, Adam Kinzinger, the six-term Illinois congressman, stands as enemy No. 1 — unwelcome not just in his party but also in his own family, some of whom recently disowned him.

Two days after Kinzinger called for removing Trump from office following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, 11 members of his family sent him a handwritten two-page letter, saying he was in cahoots with “the devil’s army” for making a public break with the president.

“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”

The author of the letter was Karen Otto, Kinzinger’s cousin, who paid $7 to send it by certified mail to Kinzinger’s father — to make sure the congressman would see it, which he did. She also sent copies to Republicans across Illinois, including other members of the state’s congressional delegation.

“I wanted Adam to be shunned,” she said in an interview.

A 42-year-old Air National Guard pilot who represents a crescent-shaped district along the Chicago’s suburbs, Kinzinger is at the forefront of the effort to navigate post-Trump politics. He is betting his political career, professional relationships and kinship with a wing of his sprawling family that his party’s future lies in disavowing Trump and the conspiracy theories the former president stoked.

Kinzinger was one of just three House Republicans who voted both to impeach Trump and strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee posts. During the House impeachment debate, he asked Democrats if he could speak for seven minutes instead of his allotted one, so that he could make a more authoritative and bipartisan argument against the president; the request was denied.

He has taken his case to the national media, becoming a ubiquitous figure on cable television, late-night HBO programming and podcasts. He began a new political action committee with a six-minute video declaring the need to reformat the Republican Party into something resembling an idealized version of George W. Bush’s party — with an emphasis on lower taxes, hawkish defense and social conservatism — without the grievances and conspiracy theories that Trump and his allies have made central to the party’s identity.

To do so, Kinzinger said in an interview, requires exposing the fear-based tactics he hopes to eradicate from the party and present an optimistic alternative.

“We just fear,” he said. “Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is it does real damage to this democracy.”

Kinzinger said he was not deterred by the Senate’s failure Saturday to convict Trump in the impeachment trial.

“We have a lot of work to do to restore the Republican Party,” he said, “and to turn the tide on the personality politics.”

Kinzinger now faces the classic challenge for political mavericks aiming to prove their independence: His stubborn and uncompromising nature rankles the very Republicans he is trying to recruit to his mission of remaking the party.

His anti-Trump stance has angered Republican constituents in his district, some of whom liken him to a Democrat, and frustrated Republican officials in Illinois who say he cares more about his own national exposure than his relationship with them.

“There doesn’t seem to be a camera or a microphone he won’t run to,” said Larry Smith, chairman of the La Salle County GOP, which censured Kinzinger last month. “He used to talk to us back in the good old days.”

Kinzinger is unapologetic about his priorities.

“Central and northern Illinois deserve an explanation and deserve my full attention, and they’ll get it,” he said. “But to the extent I can, I will also focus on the national message because I can turn every heart in central and northern Illinois, and it wouldn’t make a dent on the whole party. And that’s what I think the huge battle is.”

Kinzinger has drawn praise from Democrats, but he is not anyone’s idea of a progressive. His campaign website trumpets his long-standing opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and he is an opponent of abortion rights and increased taxes. He first won his seat in Congress with Sarah Palin’s endorsement.

Raised in a large central Illinois family — his father, who has 32 first cousins, ran food banks and shelters for the homeless in Peoria and Bloomington — Kinzinger was interested in politics from an early age. Before he’d turned 10 he predicted he would one day be governor or president, Otto said, and he won election to the McLean County Board when he was a 20-year-old sophomore at Illinois State University.

He joined the Air Force after the Sept. 11 attacks and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Upon his discharge he joined the Air National Guard, where he remains a lieutenant colonel. In the 2010 Republican wave Kinzinger, then 32, beat a Democratic incumbent by nearly 15 percentage points and, two years later, with support from Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, ousted another incumbent, 10-term Republican Don Manzullo, in a primary following redistricting.

But Kinzinger soon became dispirited by a Republican Party he believed was centered around opposition to whatever President Barack Obama proposed without offering new ideas of its own.

“His frustration level has been rising ever since he got to Congress, and I think the Trump era has been difficult for him to make sense of and participate in,” said former Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas, who was one of Kinzinger’s closest friends in Congress before losing a 2018 reelection bid. When loyalty to Trump became a litmus test for Republican conservatism, Yoder said, “that became a bridge too far for him.”

While Kinzinger never presented himself as a Trump loyalist, he rarely broke with the former president on policy grounds, but he was critical of him dating back to the 2016 campaign, when he was a surrogate for Jeb Bush.

Trump was aware of Kinzinger’s lack of fealty. At a fundraiser in the Chicago suburbs before the 2016 election, Trump asked Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois, how Kinzinger would do in his reelection bid. He didn’t have an opponent, Porter recalled telling the future president.

Trump, Porter said, poked his finger in his chest and told him to deliver to Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. When Porter relayed the comment to Kinzinger during a conversation on Election Day, Kinzinger laughed and invited Trump to do the same.

In Illinois, Republicans have been struggling to guess what Kinzinger’s next move may be. In the interview, Kinzinger said he’s unlikely to pursue the 2022 nomination for governor or the Senate. Right now, he’s leaning toward running for reelection, but with redistricting looming this fall, it’s unclear how the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature will rearrange his district.

What is clear is that Kinzinger has found himself on the wrong side of rank-and-file Republicans at home. John McGlasson, the committee member for Kinzinger’s district, said the congressman had been “insulting with his comments” since Jan. 6.

Republican voters interviewed in the district last week lambasted Kinzinger for turning on Trump.

“If you want to vote as a Democrat, vote as a Democrat,” Richard Reinhardt, a 63-year-old retired mechanical engineer, said while eating lunch at a Thai restaurant in Rockford. “Otherwise, if you’re a Republican, then support our president. Trump was the first president who represented me. The stuff he did helped me.”

Kinzinger predicted “the hangover” of Trump’s post-impeachment popularity “will kind of wear off.’’

Former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the last Republican to win statewide office in Illinois, in 2014, said Kinzinger could find himself a casualty of the bitter schism dividing the party. “The only winners in the war between Trump and Republicans will be Democrats,” Rauner said. “For some voters, character matters. For most, it doesn’t.”

Kinzinger said he has little desire to reach out to the loudest critics in his district’s Republican organizations, whom he hasn’t spoken to in years and said hold little sway over voters. The letter-writers in his family, he said, suffer from “brainwashing” from conservative churches that have led them astray.

“I hold nothing against them,” he said, “but I have zero desire or feel the need to reach out and repair that. That is 100% on them to reach out and repair, and quite honestly, I don’t care if they do or not.”

As to his own future in the party, Kinzinger said he will know by the end of the summer whether he can remain a Republican for the long term or whether he will be motivated to change his party affiliation if it becomes clear to him that Trump’s allies have become a permanent majority.

“The party’s sick right now,” he said. “It’s one thing if the party was accepting of different views, but it’s become this massive litmus test on everything. So it’s a possibility down the road, but it’s certainly not my intention, and I’m going to fight like hell to save it first.”

Solar panel plant to be built at proposed Watertown business park, create hundreds of jobs

Tribune

Craig Fox, Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.             February 16, 2021

 

WATERTOWN — The Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency has landed what could be the biggest economic development project in its history with construction of a solar panel manufacturing plant at a proposed business park near Watertown International Airport.

The JCIDA will announce Tuesday morning that Convalt Energy, a New York City-based renewable energy company, plans to build a solar panel manufacturing facility in the agency’s proposed business park on Route 12F in the town of Hounsfield.

The Convalt facility would initially create about 165 jobs in the first year, then grow to 525 in five years, said David J. Zembiec, chief executive officer of Jefferson County Economic Development, the JCIDA’s sister organization.

DigiCollect, another company associated with Convalt Energy, would employ an additional 175 people in Watertown in its first year and expand to 1,535 jobs after five years.

Mr. Zembiec has been working with Convalt’s chairman and CEO, Hari Achuthan, since August. Mr. Achuthan’s company plans to invest $650 million in the venture over 10 years.

The state’s Empire State Development Corp. is offering tax credit and job credits to the company, Mr. Zembiec said.

Instead of relying on other companies, the airport facility would manufacture solar panels for a series of renewable energy projects that Convalt Energy is involved with in Africa and Asia.

“They want to avoid the middle man,” Mr. Zembiec said.

The company is developing renewable projects in the western and central Africa countries of Chad, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The company has worked on a 300-megawatt solar renewable project in Myanmar and owns a waste-to-renewable-energy plant in India. The company also runs wind and hydro power plants in other countries, according to its website.

The JCIDA’s Revolving Loan Fund Committee plans to approve a loan application and payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, agreement with the company Tuesday morning, with the full board voting on the funding package Thursday. Mr. Achuthan is in town to attend both meetings.

The company hopes to break ground on the airport park project in the fourth quarter of this year, or early 2022, Mr. Achuthan said Monday.

The company is still looking for investors in the project.

The announcement has been coming for weeks. In December of last year, Mr. Zembiec confirmed that a solar-related company was eyeing the airport park and that news could come by the end of the year. At the time, he declined to divulge the name of the company or any information about the venture.

In year one, Convalt plans to build a 20,000-square-feet facility and hopes to expand it to about 500,000 square feet by the fifth year.

The company would be the first to build on the site that the JCIDA has been trying to develop for several years. DigiCollect also would construct a 5,000-square-foot facility that would grow to 100,000 square feet in year five, Mr. Achuthan said.

DigiCollect, a software technology company, builds Enterprise Resource Platforms that would manage and monitor the company’s renewable energy system “in real time” once it’s in operation, Mr. Zembiec said.

The JCIDA owns the property. The main site for the airport business park, which is east of the airport off Route 12F, is about 90 acres. It includes an additional 12 acres on the west side of the airport.

Convalt had been looking at other sites in New York and outside of the state before deciding on the Watertown location, Mr. Zembiec said. He first mentioned a site in Deferiet to Mr. Achuthan, then the company CEO came to Watertown in November to see the airport site.

The airport location has a direct connection to air travel, it’s close to Interstate 81 and is in proximity to Canada and access to the St. Lawrence River, Mr. Zembiec said.

Fort Drum would be a source for its workforce at the facilities, with about 150 soldiers retiring from the post every month, Mr. Achuthan said. He noted the companies’ hopes of reverting to the north country’s manufacturing past, the region’s connection to hydro power and its rural atmosphere as other “attributes” that attracted him to Jefferson County.

He also noted that the state is making a commitment to renewable energy.

“It was checking off 20 boxes, not just one thing,” he said, adding that the JCIDA was “more aggressive” than other economic development agencies that competed for the project. “It just made for a natural fit.” It also was important to keep all operations at one site, rather than splitting them up in two or three areas, he said.

Mr. Achuthan is also the founder, chairman and CEO of ACO Investment Group, Convalt’s parent company. Founded in 2011 and based in New York City, ACO is an alternative investments manager and a private equity firm that focuses on investing in the energy, power, information technology, e-commerce, telecommunication, transportation and logistic sectors.

“We’re a quiet company that operates under the radar,” Mr. Achuthan said.

Prior to founding ACO and Convalt, Mr. Achuthan was a director at Credit Suisse Asset Management in the Alternative Investment group, where he covered hedge fund, real estate and private equity strategies.

He has a bachelor of science degree in applied economics from Hofstra University and is a frequent guest lecturer at Louisiana State University School of Business.

Florida can run on 100 percent clean, renewable energy

We are at a tipping point when it comes to how we power our lives. Nationwide, and in Florida, we are still producing, consuming and wasting energy in ways that create lasting damage to our environment and our health. In 2021, we have the opportunity and know-how to tap into clean and renewable energy from sources such as the sun and wind, but doing so will require the nation and state to transform the way they produce and consume energy.

Given the inaction on clean energy at the federal level and the deep-rooted influence of fossil-fuel companies within our politics today, that transformation sometimes feels out of reach.

But it isn’t. Floridians have the power to demand better of their elected officials, and we have the state-based policy solutions to bring the Sunshine State into a clean-energy future.

That is why I filed House Bill 283, legislation to transition Florida to 100 percent renewable energy by 2040 and carbon neutrality by 2050. Filed in the state Senate by Sen. Lori Berman, D-Boynton Beach, this legislation also bans fracking in Florida and establishes a workforce board to ensure that the state’s drive toward a clean-energy economy produces new high-paying jobs — a much-needed initiative following COVID-19’s damaging impact on the state’s unemployment rate.

Renewable energy resources are vast. Tapping into just a fraction of them could give us all the energy we need for every aspect of our lives. The United States has the technical potential to meet its current electricity needs more than 100 times over with solar energy alone, or more than 10 times over with wind energy. With that inexhaustible potential, falling renewable energy prices and installations booming, we can envision a future powered entirely by clean energy.

We have the power to reshape our energy future. Since the 1990s, states across the country have been setting minimum standards for renewable energy that utility companies must meet. Today, 30 states have these renewable portfolio standards (RPS) in place, and 25 of those have substantially increased their standards since they were first implemented.

States have consistently bumped up their renewable-energy targets, in part because of growing public demand for action, and because renewables have consistently risen to the occasion. Across the country, states, including Massachusetts, Colorado and California, have been meeting their targets ahead of schedule, increasing them, hitting them again and then repeating that cycle. We’ve learned one key lesson from this: Goal-setting works.

In just the past five years, seven states have stepped up to set the ultimate goal — reaching 100 percent clean or renewable electricity. Hawaii first started the trend with a landmark commitment in 2015, and California followed suit in 2018. Last year, New Mexico, Washington, Maine and New York all jumped on board, and Virginia became the latest to join those ranks in April. Momentum is building in many more states, and Florida absolutely should be next to set its sights on transitioning to 100 percent renewables.

With rising sea levels and increased storm activity directly affecting the Sunshine State, Florida has a chance to set an example and be a leader in clean energy. On top of risks from Mother Nature, the continued use of fossil fuels could lead to more harmful effects to our ecosystems like we saw in the Gulf in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

We need to stop digging for energy from the ground and instead garner the energy that is all around us. Passing HB 283 and adopting clean, renewable energy to power every aspect of our lives — from keeping the lights on to heating our homes and fueling our cars — will mean a safer, healthier Florida right now and for generations to come.

Rep. Anna Vishkaee Eskamani, a Democrat, represents Florida’s 47th district in Orange County in the state House.