Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the recent Political Notes and Len’s Letters on the website. Political Note #349 Joe Biden’s White House at the Highest Level, Political Note #355 Angie Craig MN 02, Political Note #356 Susie Lee NV 03, Political Note #357 Haley Stevens MI 11, Political Note #362 Vicente Gonzalez TX 15
Political Note #363 Tom Malinowski NJ 07
2022 General Election
Philip Hart of Michigan was known as “the conscience of the Senate.” Michigan Conservatives, as confused in the sixties as they are now, attempted to recall him, without realizing they could not a US Senator. Their animosity was based on his support for gun control, busing for school integration, and less restrictive immigration (He proposed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which ended discriminatory quotas.)
If Tom Malinowski https://malinowskifornj.com can stay in the House of Representatives for a decade or two, he could be the conscience of the House. Think of him as the man from Stupsk. The boy from Stupsk, really. He was six when his mother married American journalist Blair Clark and moved to the United States from Poland. He grew up in Princeton, NJ – pretty far from Poland, went to college at Berkeley, and won a Rhodes to attend Oxford for his Master’s Degree.
Tom Malinowski specialized in Europe and beyond. He worked in Vienna for a science institute and for the Ford Foundation. He worked for Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. He worked for the National Security Council at Bill Clinton’s White House. With the Democrats out of power, he lobbied for Human Rights Watch – working on such foreign policy issues as opposing the United States providing cluster bombs to Israel.
In 2013, Tom Malinowski became President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. He led efforts to help religious minorities persecuted by ISIS, to sanction North Korea for human rights abuses, to create a special envoy to defend the rights of LGBT individuals around the world, to get the US to investigate war crimes in the Sri Lankan civil war, and to sanction individual Russians under the Magnitsky Act for abuses of human rights. He was expelled from Bahrain for meeting with members of the opposition.
After Trump’s election, Tom Malinowski joined other members of the Obama administration in an effort to retain Russian sanctions as punishment for the annexation of the Crimea. He described President Trump as having an “obscene fondness” for tyrants.
As a Congressional candidate and a Member of Congress, concern for justice and fair play did not make him radical. Tom Malinowski described the Democratic Party as the party that supports fiscal responsibility, law enforcement, family values, and patriotism. With that viewpoint, he won close elections in 2018 and 2020. In 2018, Tom Malinowski defeated five-term Congressman Leonard Lance, who he described as having grown more conservative along with other House Republicans. In 2020 Tom Malinowski defeated state senator and Minority Leader, Thomas Kean Jr., son of a popular New Jersey governor, a man that Tom Malinowski described as New Jersey political royalty as he warned his supporters about a close race.
In Congress, Tom Malinowski has been a member of the New Democratic Coalition – the largest Democratic caucus, middle of the road and fiscally cautious. He was a natural for the Foreign Relations Committee – joining its oversight and investigations subcommittee and its middle east and terrorism subcommittee. He also has served on the Transportation committee where he focused on environmental issues through the water resources and environment subcommittee and the railroads, pipelines, and hazardous materials subcommittee.
Tom Malinowski described his first term successes as if he were a bring home the bacon kind of Member of Congress – emphasizing his constituent work, the funds the CARES Act brought to New Jersey businesses, and infrastructure like the Frenchtown sewer system. He hasn’t abandoned his own conscience or his role as an institutional conscience. Tom Malinowski was early in calling for Donald Trump’s impeachment; he pressed a video game company and then Apple about complicity with China in its treatment of Hong Kong protesters. He counts funding to oppose domestic terrorists as one of his successes.
Tom Malinowsky has become a particular target of QAnon. They claim that he and Human Rights Watch sought to help sexual predators “hide in the shadows.” He co-authored a Congressional resolution to condemn QAnon, a movement which BuzzFeed described as a “collective delusion that alleges President Donald Trump is fighting a Satanist cabal of elites who abuse children.”
Tom Malinowsky blamed the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee for retweeting QAnon’s claims leading to – 1) a slew of anonymous death threats and 2) a personal confrontation between Tom Malinowski and Republican Congressman Tom Emmer, chair of the Campaign Committee. Emmer claimed he had no idea what QAnon was.
Politics ain’t beanbag. But death threats exceed expectations. Tough political races are a different story. Tom Malinowski https://malinowskifornj.com will have a tough race again in 2022. He will probably see Tom Kean Jr again. Kean is not running in 2021 for the New Jersey Senate again (New Jersey has off-year elections for its state offices). Kean’s supporters suggest he plans to focus all his attention on running for Congress in 2022. Tom Malinowski needs us to focus on his reelection. Made a donation.
Democratic Members of Congress to Support – Members who won with 51% of the vote or less.
Iowa 03 Cynthia Axne https://cindyaxneforcongress.com Received 48.9% of the vote in 2020
Illinois 14 Lauren Underwood https://underwoodforcongress.com Received 50.67% of the vote in 2020
Michigan 08 Elissa Slotkin https://elissaforcongress.com Received 50.88% of the vote in 2020
Michigan 11 Haley Stevens https://haleystevensforcongress.com Received 50.2% of the vote in 2020
Minnesota 02 Angie Craig https://angiecraig.com Received 48.21% of the vote in 2020
Nevada 03 Susie Lee https://www.susieleeforcongress.com Received 48.75% of the vote in 2020
Nevada 04 Steve Horsford https://www.stevenhorsford.com Received 50.67% of the vote in 2020
New Jersey 07 Tom Malinowski https://malinowskifornj.com Received 50.61% of the vote in 2020
Texas 07 Lizzie Fletcher https://www.lizziefletcher.com Received 50.79% of the vote in 2020
Texas 15 Vicente Gonzalez http://www.vicentegonzalez.com Received 50.5% of the vote in 2020
Party Organizations to Consider:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) https://dccc.org
The Democratic National Committee (DNC). https://democrats.org The official organization of the Democratic Party.
