Majewski’s campaign said last week that he was punished and demoted after getting in a “brawl” in an Air Force dormitory in 2001. Military records obtained since then by The Associated Press, however, offer a different account of the circumstances, which military legal experts say would have played a significant role in the decision to bar him from reenlisting. They indicate Majewski’s punishment and demotion were the result of him being stopped for driving drunk on a U.S. air base in Japan in September 2001.
[…]
Since starting his campaign to unseat longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Majewski has repeatedly said he was a combat veteran who served a tour of duty under “tough” circumstances in Afghanistan. By his own account, he once went more than 40 days in the country without a shower due to a lack of running water.
His story came under intense scrutiny last week when the AP, citing military documents obtained through public records requests, reported that he did not deploy to Afghanistan as he claimed, but instead spent six months based in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally, where he helped load and unload aircraft.
[…]
Military records show Majewski’s only deployment was to Qatar. Last Friday, during a defiant news conference, he insisted that he did indeed serve in Afghanistan, though he declined to offer specifics because he said the details were “classified.”
I have a friend who did classified work while deployed in Afghanistan, but he can prove he was, you know, in Afghanistan even if he can’t talk about what he did whilst deployed.
It takes a special kind of hubris/stupid to lie about such things, especially in the internet era, and assume that no one will find out.
FiveThirtyEight gives Majewski a 25% chance.
- Via the The Philadelphia Inquirer: As campaign struggles, Doug Mastriano plans ’40 days of fasting and prayer’
It was billed as a blockbuster, but ended up a flop. If Doug Mastriano’s “big rally” last weekend were a movie, its Rotten Tomatoes score would be in the single digits.
Only a few dozen supporters joined the Republican state senator on the steps of the Capitol building in Harrisburg — some of them members of a local militia group.
The photos looked bad, because it was bad. The press coverage? Brutal.
[…]
On Monday night, Mastriano’s campaign posted on Facebook a photo of two hands under the words “40 days of fasting & prayer” with the dates Sept. 29 through Nov. 8 — Election Day. “Interceding for our elections, our state, and our nation,” it stated, along with a verse from the Book of Isaiah.
“Starting in a few days,” Mastriano wrote in the post. One Facebook supporter responded: “It’ll be my honor to fast with you.”
While I hate to question a person’s sincerity, this just sounds to me like a cynical attempt to reach out to a particular set of voters. I am having a hard time seeing most Americans, let alone a politician in the middle of a campaign, engaged in 40 days of actual fasting.
The whole piece is, to borrow a word from the quote above, brutal.
FiveThirtyEight gives Mastriano a 5% chance.
Dixon’s campaign has spent just $25,000 on paid ads since the primary. Her campaign’s last finance report showed her with $523,000 on hand, compared to Whitmer’s $14 million. And the two most recent polls have shown Whitmer leading Dixon by double digits.
[…]
A political novice best known for her work in conservative media before running for governor, Dixon surged to the front of a cluttered GOP primary field after two leading candidates were disqualified and Michigan’s influential DeVos family bankrolled a super PAC to support her. Trump’s last-minute endorsement helped close the deal.
“Tudor Dixon would be a much stronger nominee today if she won on the strength of her own candidacy,” said John Yob, a Republican strategist who advised the two disqualified candidates. “The famous lesson is that it’s better to teach them to fish than to buy them a fish. Now we’re at a place where she can’t raise enough money to run a real campaign and somebody has to decide whether they’re going to come up with the $10 million or so it would take to make her competitive.”
Trump is coming to town to do a rally this weekend.
FiveThirtyEight currently gives Dixon a 5% chance.
