Political Note #554 Marcy Kaptur Ohio 09

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April 17th, 2023        Political Note #554 Marcy Kaptur Ohio 09

2024            General Election

I was mistaken about Marcy Kaptur.  I wrote about her 2022 re-election and said: “Whoever the Republicans nominate, Marcy Kaptur faces a tough run in 2022.” She was reelected by 35,293 votes.

The Ohio Republican party was mistaken about Marcy Kaptur.  They completed redistricting and were convinced that they had made her district so lopsidedly Republican that she would retire.  She would be 75 years old for November, 2022.  She would not, they thought, expend the energy she would need for a campaign she would lose anyhow.  Marcy Kaptur never hesitated about running again for the seat she had held since 1982.

The Republicans of Ohio’s 9th Congressional District were mistaken, too.  Not so much about Marcy Kaptur, as they were about the man who won the primary with 36% of the vote, beating out two state representatives, each of whom got just about 30% of the vote.  The 9th District Republicans thought JR Majewski would be a perfect candidate.

JR Majewski was also mistaken.  The underdog in the primary campaign, he thought he could sustain his image as a battling outsider right through to the general election.  When he won the primary, he said “I was underestimated because I wasn’t part of the political establishment that we’ve had here in the ninth for so many years.  My campaign and my candidacy is not about my ideology.  It’s about the constituents of the ninth district.”  It turned out that the campaign was about him, about his inadequacies.

JR Majewski was an extreme version of an outsider.  In 2020, he had painted his front yard as a banner supporting former President Donald Trump.  Most of the 64% of the Republicans who did not vote for him in the 2022 primary thought he was some kind of kook. He proved to be a QAnon kind of kook.  He had posted on social media claims about satanic Democratic elites and celebrities and businessmen who were involved in child trafficking.  He seemed like a dangerous kook when it became known that he had traveled to Washington on January 6, 2021 in order to support Donald Trump.  He didn’t enter the Capitol building, he insisted, though he wanted to.

The Coup de Grace of his kookiness came when, less than 2 months before election day, it became apparent that he was lying when he claimed he had fought in Afghanistan.  He was not in that fight.  He was not in the “brawl” he claimed prevented him from reenlisting.  He did not fight at all. He drove drunk in Japan. For that, he was demoted.  His plan to reenlist was unwelcome.  His QAnon ideology, his kooky support of Donald Trump, even his resistance to temptation about entering the Capitol, and certainly his lies about Afghanistan contributed to his thirty-five thousand plus loss to Marcy Kaptur.

Marcy Kaptur will run for reelection in 2024 as the longest serving women ever in Congress. She is the daughter of Polish Americans.  Her dad ran a small grocery store in Toledo.  Her mom was a union organizer for the automobile industry in and around Toledo. Her mom.  (Let that sink in.)   Marcy Kaptur graduated from St, Ursula Academy and left to be the first in the family to go to college.  She wanted to attend either Notre Dame or the Air Force Academy, but neither admitted women.  She went to the University of Wisconsin instead.

After college, Marcy Kaptur studied some more.  She got a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan and a doctorate from MIT in 1981 just before she was elected to Congress.  From 1969 to 1975, she served on her local planning commission.  She went on to be Executive Director of the National Center for Urban Affairs, the organization created by Geno Baroni, a Catholic priest whose vision of social justice called for community pluralism to overcome the ethnic and racial divisions in cities.  While getting her degree from MIT, she also served as a domestic policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter.

Marcy Kaptur defeated a one term Republican, had a close race in 1984, and began winning by large margins – only once dropping below 70% of the vote after 1984.  During her time in office, she supported women’s reproductive health choices, supported regulating banking and business, supported gun safety, and supported unions. She has been for American support of Ukraine in the war against the Russian invasion and endorsed Bernie Sanders’ run for President.

Marcy Kaptur is not so young anymore, but her priorities fit the times.  She has always had an economics focus. Her interest in the Great Lakes was spurred by the previous shape of her district along the southwestern shoreline of Lake Erie.  Since the Citizen’s United Supreme Court ruling, she has had a particular interest in controlling the level of spending on political campaigns.  Do her priorities fit this district which now extends west from Toledo past Defiance to the Indiana state line?

Marcy Kaptur is as vulnerable as she was in 2022.  I will not say she will have a tough fight no matter who the Republicans nominate.  Though JR Majewski has announced his candidacy, she is unlikely to face him or another self-defeating candidate in 2024.  Her district is still the one that was modified to make her vulnerable. She will need every dollar she can raise.  Help her out.

Readers ask about priorities for giving money. 

Let’s get a start on flipping the House of Representatives back to the Democrats in 2024.

Vulnerable incumbents in a range from Gabe Vasquez’s win by 1,350 votes to Susie Lee’s win by 10,003 votes plus Marcy Kaptur whose substantial margin was misleading.  She is vulnerable if the Republicans nominate a normal candidate.

 

  1. Gabe Vasquez NM 02 1st term           Political Note #536
  2. Yadira Caraveo CO 08 1st term           Political Note #537
  3. Jahana Hayes CT 05 3rd term          Political Note #542
  4. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez WA 03 1st term           Political Note #543
  5. Pat Ryan NY 18 1st term           Political Note #545
  6. Susan Wild PA 07 3rd term          Political Note #546
  7. Matt Cartwright PA 08 6th term          Political Note #547
  8. Andrea Salinas OR 06 1st term           Political Note #548
  9. Wiley Nickel NC 13 1st term           Political Note #551
  10. Eric Sorensen IL 17 1st term Political Note #552
  11. Susie Lee NV 03 3rd term Political Note #553
  12. Marcy Kaptur OH 09 20th term         Political Note #554

 

Adam Frisch CO 03 is running against vulnerable Lauren Boebert to whom he lost in 2022 by 546 votes. He is running again Len’s Political Note #523.