Sixth District MAGA Congressman Ben Cline, desperate to protect his taxpayer-funded six-figure job, doesn’t seem to know what a “grassroots effort” is.
His campaign sent out a press release on Thursday to tell us about “the launch of a statewide grassroots effort” that it says is aimed toward the “defeat the illegal voter referendum on April 21.”
OK, let’s get to definitions here.
Grassroots (n.): the basic level of society or of an organization, especially as viewed in relation to higher or more centralized positions of power.
By definition, a congressman can’t launch a “grassroots effort”; a “grassroots effort” would have to rise up from the efforts of people who aren’t in “centralized positions of power.”
Credit, though, to Team Cline, because at least they admitted in the press release that:
- “Cline has created ‘Stop the Gerrymander,’ a 501(c)(4) organization opposing the gerrymander, and seeded it with his campaign funds”;
- and that “Cline announced the hiring of skilled operative John Pudner to run grassroots and voter outreach efforts in all corners of the Commonwealth.”
You don’t need to be told this directly, but “grassroots efforts” aren’t “seeded” with a congressman’s “campaign funds” earmarked to pay the salary of a “skilled operative.”
Incidentally, by setting up his “grassroots effort” as a 501(c)(4), Cline doesn’t have to disclose how much money he’s spending, any other sources of income, or what he’s paying Pudner, the president of an outfit that calls itself Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition, and a freelance writer whose setlist includes a column titled “Elon Musk is a Strong Candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
This isn’t “grassroots”; it’s astroturf, but, I mean, I get it.
Cline’s campaign dollars are no doubt better spent trying to sow confusion over the referendum than they would be trying to prop up what would certainly be a losing campaign in a newly-drawn Sixth District.
Cline’s obvious interest in the referendum is, if it passes, he will be moved from a Republican +20 congressional district to a Democrat +3 district.
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And given that Cline is an unmitigated MAGA, running into the headwinds of the massive failures of Trump 2.0, it might as well be a Democrat +infinity district, as far as his chances of winning are concerned.
This is entirely why he is trying to defeat what his team’s press release termed “the illegal voter referendum on April 21.”
Cline is quoted in his press release as calling the redistricting effort an “illegal, partisan power grab” and an “unconstitutional redrawing of district lines,” which, of course, neither true.
The Supreme Court of Virginia has already weighed in on that, twice – moving to allow the referendum to proceed.
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Cline would know this; he is a party to one of the suits, filed, curiously, with a local court down in Tazewell County, in a part of the state that is closer to the capitals of five other states than it is to Richmond.
Judge-shop much?
Democrats can’t do anything without the consent of the voters; the referendum is on a measure to amend the state constitution.
Cline, who has a law degree and presumably passed the bar, would know that a enacted constitutional amendment is neither “illegal” or “unconstitutional.”
I will concede here: I might be giving him too much credit, assuming that he knows the basics of constitutional law.
He only had to know the basics of law as relates to prosecuting jaywalkers in his previous job.
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Chris Graham
