Key Congressional Races to Watch in the Lead Up to National Elections

• The nation’s congressional elections—clearly “back-benched” by the big media’s obscene obsession with the presidential race—definitely need a much closer look.

As AFP ramps up coverage of House and Senate races starting while Congress is on break, there are some very interesting trends to report in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Kansas.

By Mark Anderson

In one of the most major races this election cycle, insurgent Paul F. Nehlen III, a water-systems technician who sported populist views and steely determination, lost to House Speaker Paul Ryan for the Republican nomination in Wisconsin’s August 9 primary for the state’s 1st District seat. The result was reportedly an 85% to 15% split in Ryan’s favor.

Ryan, whose record shows unwavering support for free trade treaties and other corporatism disguised as conservatism—even while he supported education legislation that deceptively rebranded the “Common Core” program widely despised by grassroots conservatives—blathered to Business Insider that somehow Nehlen’s comments aren’t conservative.

But in a pre-election interview with “Breitbart News Daily,” Nehlen noted that Ryan claims to be “a conservative from the conservative wing of the Republican Party. He is a soulless globalist from the Democrat wing of the uni-party. That’s what he is.”

Nehlen continued: “He is all in for the cheapest possible labor for Wall Street. . . .Can you name the last time Paul Ryan worked as hard for Wisconsin workers as he has for corporate America? I can’t think of one time. Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish in D.C. He is absolutely an open-borders guy. . . .”

Nehlen got outside support from notables such as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and neoconservative pundit-author Ann Coulter, who stopped by Janesville, Wisconsin August 6 to speak in support of Nehlen.

That’s not quite as bad as it sounds, since, to her credit, Ms. Coulter attacked Ryan for supporting the Trans Pacific Partnership trade scam and for being too cozy with Wall Street.

Ms. Coulter, speaking of Ryan and his pro-Wall Street allies such the infamous billionaire Koch brothers, rightly complained: “They want mass immigration; they want their cheap labor.”

In Pennsylvania, there’s more time to work with, since a key race there culminates in the November 8 general election featuring “tea party” insurgent Art Halvorson—a registered Republican—running as a Democrat, in an effort to unseat House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman William Franklin “Bill” Shuster (R-Pa.).

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A retired Coast Guard captain and real estate investor, Halvorson was edged by Shuster in April’s GOP primary, losing by just 1 percentage point—49.5% to 50.5%—a difference of 1,009 votes. Halvorson conceded the race. But he’ll face Schuster anyway in November, an unusual twist made possible by Halvorson’s bold move to secure enough write-in votes from Democrats during the primary.

With a populist tone, Halvorson remarked: “I’m deeply humbled by the coming together of voters in both parties for the critical, common goal of rescuing America from the corrupt career politicians who’ve . . . sold us up the river to corporate lobbyists.”

As quoted August 2 by The Hill, a Washington paper focused on Congress, Shuster campaign spokesman Casey Contres remarked, “Not only is [Halvorson] betraying Democrats by calling their party Godless while forcing them to accept him as their nominee . . . he is also betraying the will of Republican primary voters that have twice rejected his attempt to get a job in Congress.”

Halvorson retorted: “Our current struggle isn’t Democrat vs. Republican; it’s insiders vs. we, the people.”

So, like Nehlen, Halvorson sees the two dominant parties as a singular uni-party—masquerading as distinct entities.

Schuster is fueled by “deep-pocketed special interests” instead of small donors, Halvorson also said, while recalling Shuster’s admitted relationship with a top airline lobbyist who was connected to legislation handled by Shuster.

Also, in the August 2 Republican primary in Kansas, Roger Marshall, a physician with no political experience—funded by the corporatist Kansas Farm Bureau and outside super PACs awash with funds from anonymous donors—unseated Representative Timothy Alan “Tim” Huelskamp.

Huelskamp, who represented Kansas’s large, highly rural 1st district since 2011 after serving in the state legislature, wasn’t afraid to buck the GOP establishment. He dared to oppose Speaker Ryan’s budget plan in the House Budget Committee and lost a valuable committee post.

Huelskamp and nationally popular rebel Republican Justin A. Amash (Mich.) both felt the plan didn’t cut the budget fast enough.

“In December 2012, it was reported that both representatives would not serve on the House Budget Committee in the 113th Congress. Huelskamp also lost his seat on the Agriculture Committee,” reported the Ballotpedia website.

Another rebel, Republican, Representative Walter Beaman Jones Jr. (N.C.), along with Representative David Schweikert (Ariz.), “completed the quartet of lawmakers to lose prominent committee seats during the Republican Steering Commission’s [late-2012] purge of so-called ‘obstinate’ team members,” Ballotpedia noted.

Former House Speaker John Andrew Boehner (R-Ohio) spearheaded the termination of the four members’ committee posts. So it’s likely that Huelskamp, who called the purge a “typical backroom deal,” also was purged from Congress altogether.

The remaining rebel House Republicans—Jones, Amash, Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)—appear to be safe in their November re-election bids. But it’s a fair bet they’re all being targeted by the neocons who, like Ryan, always “fake right and go global” to serve the money masters.

Mark Anderson covers the annual Bilderberg meetings and is chairman of AFP’s new America First Action Committee, designed to involve AFP readers in focusing intensely on Congress to enact key changes, including monetary reform and a pullback of the warfare state. He and his wife Angie often work together on news projects.