The Progressive Midwesterner

Most election analysts are already predicting that this year's midterm elections are likely to be a very strong election year for the Democratic Party nationally. One region of the country that could amplify an already-likely "blue wave" of Democratic electoral victories is the Inland Midwest, a six state region consisting of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The Inland Midwest region gets its name because all six states are Midwestern states, but none of the six states have a shoreline along any of the Great Lakes. The Inland Midwest is a very Republican-leaning region of the country, as Donald Trump received slightly over 56% of the vote in last year's presidential election in the six-state region . However, at least one statewide race in each of the six states in the Inland Midwest are competitive (including all three U.S. Senate races in the region), and several U.S. House seats in the region are competitive as well. As much of th...

You may have come across a few headlines in the national media about a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct running for a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives this year. She has a name. Her name is Rachel Crooks, and she is a fantastic candidate. Let me make it clear: Rachel did not decide to run for a state house seat in Ohio because of what Trump did to her, in fact, Rachel makes this point clear in her campaign website's biography page . Rachel is running for a state house seat in the 88th Ohio State House district ( includes all of Sandusky County and most of Seneca County ) because she wants to make her community and her state a better place to live. As someone with extensive experience working with international college students at Tiffin University and Heidelberg University, Rachel has helped do the hard work to make America a more inclusive country. As a state house candidate, Rachel has promised to support common-sense progressive ideals to make ...

A week ago or so, Josh Boschee, the Democratic-NPL nominee in this year's election for North Dakota Secretary of State, sent out this tweet criticizing incumbent North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger, who is seeking re-election as an independent, over his silence on the issue of Russian interference in American elections: Who are we supposed to trust? Al Jaeger is silent. GOP Senators reject money to keep elections safe. Trump told us to trust Putin when he says he didn’t meddle in our election. National security leadership: “Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs.” https://t.co/gNmpIn5H2F — Joshua Boschee (@JoshBoschee) August 2, 2018 You may be asking yourself this question: why isn't Al Jaeger running for re-election as a Republican candidate? Here's the answer to that question: Jaeger, who has previously been re-elected multiple times as a Republican, actually did attempt to run for re-election as a Republican, but he lost the Republican endorsement ...

It's no secret that Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway is extremely effective when it comes to protecting Missouri taxpayers. It's also no secret that Galloway's office helped uncover a major rural hospital billing scam in Missouri. In May of this year, Galloway's work uncovering a billing scam at Unionville, Missouri's Putnam County Memorial Hospital earned her national media attention from CBS News . The scam involved the hospital acting as a shell company for, to put it mildly, extremely shady billing practices: (Galloway's) team discovered a management company called Hospital Partners had swooped in weeks before Putnam (County Memorial Hospital) was about to close, promising to turn it around. They made deals with labs around the country to funnel billing for blood tests and drug screens through Putnam, which collects higher reimbursement rates as a rural hospital. Putnam kept about 15 percent; most of the money was wired back to the labs and the man...

The Democratic nominee in the 9th Congressional District of Indiana is Liz Watson, a fifth-generation Hoosier, an attorney who has represented low-wage workers and victims of domestic violence, a former labor policy director for the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, and one of the most progressive Democrats to be nominated for a Republican-held U.S. House seat in the 2018 midterm elections. Can an unabashed progressive like Liz Watson win a U.S. House seat in the Southern Indiana-based 9th Congressional District of Indiana? I believe that she can! One thing that defines Watson's style of politics, more than anything else that one could say about her, is that she is a fighter for the people. On her campaign's biography page, Watson described her style of politics in this sentence: I will always vote to make Hoosiers’ lives better, and that will be my litmus test for every single vote I take. There is this pervasive mentality, particularly in the Trump era, among many in the R...

Tomorrow, voters in Ohio's 12th Congressional District will vote in a special election to fill the district's vacant U.S. House seat. Recent pre-election opinion polling has shown that the election is expected to be extremely close, although support for Democratic nominee Danny O'Connor appears to be surging in the lead-up to the special election. One recent pre-election opinion poll had O'Connor only one percentage point behind Republican nominee Troy Balderson, well within the poll's margin of error, and a different pre-election opinion poll had O'Connor ahead of Balderson by only one percentage point, also within that poll's margin of error. The 12th District of Ohio was gerrymandered by Republicans to be what would be considered in 2012 to be a Republican stronghold. After cracking the Columbus area into three Republican-leaning districts after the 2000 Census, Republicans in Ohio, after the 2010 Census and despite Ohio losing two congressional distr...

Her name is Sarah Godlewski. She's one of many shareholders of the NFL's Green Bay Packers, a team literally owned by its most loyal fans . She co-founded an investment venture designed to invest in socially-responsible companies. She helped reduce wasteful spending in the U.S. Department of Defense's budget. Now, she's running for the Democratic nomination to be Wisconsin's next state treasurer, an office that Wisconsin voters saved just a few months ago. Although the Wisconsin state treasurer's office currently has little actual power, Sarah has promised to protect Wisconsin taxpayers and consumers , and Sarah supports expanding the state treasurer's power to protect Wisconsin taxpayers. If elected, Sarah has promised to publish an annual report on how Wisconsin taxpayer dollars are being spent, and Sarah has promised to advocate for Wisconsin consumers in their collective struggle against those who seek to financially exploit Wisconsinites. Furthermor...

Earlier today, Illinois State Rep. Nick Sauer (R-Lake Barrington) resigned from office in disgrace after he was caught catfishing men by pretending to be his ex-girlfriend and posting nude photos of her online without her consent: A GOP state lawmaker resigned Wednesday amid allegations that he posted nude photos of an ex-girlfriend on social media. Rep. Nick Sauer resigned after a published report alleging he set up an Instagram account under the Chicago woman's name and posted explicit photos. Politico reported that the woman filed complaints with Chicago police and the legislative inspector general against the first-term lawmaker from Lake Barrington. The 35-year-old Sauer was a member of the House Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Task Force and was seeking re-election in November. Republican Governor Bruce Rauner's response to the Sauer scandal was to try to blame Sauer's disgusting actions on...wait for it...Democratic Illinois House Speaker Mike ...