19-year-old Fmr. Candidate for KS Governor may have just won a State House seat

[Duke of York]

I hope he wins. We need some young blood in politics.

[tmthforu94]

More absentee counting in - his lead has expanded to 5.

[VPH]

Aaron Coleman is not a good guy. I hope Frownfelter can mount a write-in campaign!

[MaxQue]

Aaron Coleman is not a good guy. I hope Frownfelter can mount a write-in campaign!

Nope. Kansas has a sore loser law.

[Duke of York]

Aaron Coleman is not a good guy. I hope Frownfelter can mount a write-in campaign!

Nope. Kansas has a sore loser law.

What does that mean?

[I’m not Stu]

Aaron Coleman is not a good guy. I hope Frownfelter can mount a write-in campaign!

Nope. Kansas has a sore loser law.

Alaska and West Virginia have sore loser laws, but they only apply to candidates on the ballot, not write-ins. Does the sore loser law in Kansas apply to write-in candidates?

[tmthforu94]

Aaron Coleman is not a good guy. I hope Frownfelter can mount a write-in campaign!

Nope. Kansas has a sore loser law.

Alaska and West Virginia have sore loser laws, but they only apply to candidates on the ballot, not write-ins. Does the sore loser law in Kansas apply to write-in candidates?

I'm not 100% certain on this, but I believe write-in candidacies are still allowed. Frownfelter couldn't get the nomination for another party, though. This is based on remembering there being talk in '14 of Wolfe running as a write-in in the Senate race before ultimately deciding not to, so my guess is since it was talked about, it would have been legal.

[Duke of York]

Aaron Coleman is not a good guy. I hope Frownfelter can mount a write-in campaign!

Nope. Kansas has a sore loser law.

Alaska and West Virginia have sore loser laws, but they only apply to candidates on the ballot, not write-ins. Does the sore loser law in Kansas apply to write-in candidates?

I dont think they do. He hasn't talked about doing so. I think he ought to respect the democratic process but its ultimately his choice.

[Logical]

He has no republican opponent lol

[Duke of York]

He has no republican opponent lol

The district is in Kansas City. A republican doesn't have a chance there. I hope the recount doesn't overturn the result

[VPH]

"19-year-old Aaron Coleman recently admitted to 'bullying, revenge porn, and blackmail' of multiple girls while in middle school.
One young woman who says she was among his victims says she later attempted suicide."

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article244930027.html?fbclid=IwAR3VR3lnZ9iLy_Ft7MvOOb-B2nG_MgGqX2DtK90WnW3ZlIl9HSu9XlXTG3Y

[tmthforu94]

He needs to withdraw his name from consideration.

[Not Me, Us]

What is wrong with this dude? The State House Speaker should refuse to seat him, this is insane.

[Duke of York]

What is wrong with this dude? The State House Speaker should refuse to seat him, this is insane.

Not sure if they can do that. There has to be legitimate reason for that. I dont think they can refuse to seat someone just because they feel like it.

Im not defending his actions but everyone makes mistakes. if he's genuinely sorry there is no need to withraw or refuse to seat him

[MaxQue]

What is wrong with this dude? The State House Speaker should refuse to seat him, this is insane.

This would set a very disturbing precedent (i.e. refuse to seat someone to not lose the majority).

[Indy Texas]

Was reading the 2nd article and saw the photo they have of the 19 year old. That guy *really* needs dress shirts that fit properly

Ironically enough, the 19-year-old from Kansas looks older than this 26-year-old from Missouri who also won his primary and is likely going to his state legislature.

Why does it feel like the vast majority of 20 year olds running for office are Republicans? This 'Americans for Prosperity' kid and the 24 year old real-estate CEO in NC-11 feel like outliers amongst their generation

I sense a lot of it is wealth-related

Madison Cawthorn (NC-11) received a multimillion dollar settlement stemming from the car accident that confined him to a wheelchair. No idea about the Kansas City guy but according to one of his campaign finance reports, he loaned his campaign $10,000, which is typically not something a 26 year old schoolteacher is in a position to do unless they have money from somewhere else.

Also of note: If he does win, I believe that makes him the first officeholder to be born in the 21st century.

There could be some local school board member or town councilman or something.

But this would appear to be true in state level politics. The closest person thus far is West Virginia Delegate Caleb Hanna, born in October 1999.

He's a black Republican in West Virginia. He should be asking the GOP to pay him a generous retainer to remain in office so they can point to him as evidence that they're not just a racist white people party.

[Orwell]

Was reading the 2nd article and saw the photo they have of the 19 year old. That guy *really* needs dress shirts that fit properly

Ironically enough, the 19-year-old from Kansas looks older than this 26-year-old from Missouri who also won his primary and is likely going to his state legislature.

Why does it feel like the vast majority of 20 year olds running for office are Republicans? This 'Americans for Prosperity' kid and the 24 year old real-estate CEO in NC-11 feel like outliers amongst their generation

I sense a lot of it is wealth-related

Madison Cawthorn (NC-11) received a multimillion dollar settlement stemming from the car accident that confined him to a wheelchair. No idea about the Kansas City guy but according to one of his campaign finance reports, he loaned his campaign $10,000, which is typically not something a 26 year old schoolteacher is in a position to do unless they have money from somewhere else.

I actually read about Cawthorn today, throughout the rest of this he'll be referred to as "wheelie" and it seems to me that he actually didn't get any money from the insurance settlement. Basically, as I understand it. He was going back home from spring break with a friend, friend falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into a concrete divider, Wheelie is partially paralyzed, after all the medical stuff he has around $3 million in medical debt I guess he didn't have insurance or something, Friends insurance company offers Wheelie $3 million to cover the expenses, Wheelie sues and demands $30 million, Judge rules in favor of Insurance company. Later on, he worked for Mark Meadows district office, went to college for a semester and then dropped out, his business "SPQR holdings" has one employee which is himself, I'd like to note it's pretty interesting that his business SPQR is the same as the acronym for the Roman Senate.

Final note, his website is atrocious, his issue profiles are all 1-2 sentences, I've seen school board candidates with better websites.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

What is wrong with this dude? The State House Speaker should refuse to seat him, this is insane.

This would set a very disturbing precedent (i.e. refuse to seat someone to not lose the majority).

There is actually a good, non-political reason for refusing to seat him though, especially if what he did was illegal.  (I don't know what Kansas law says about this.)

If he's seated, Democrats need to scrub this kid from any position of influence in the party and statehouse and primary his ass out in 2022.

[LtNOWIS]

At this point Dems should find a good write-in candidate and endorse them for November.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Apparently, the stuff that this kid is being accused of (and seems to have admitted to) occurred when he was in sixth grade.

It’s totally fair to slam him for the dumb stuff he is saying now.  But there’s no way stuff you did when you were 11 years old should follow you around in your adult professional life.

[Lord Admirale]

I have a feeling the Democrats won't accept him to the caucus and the Republican Speaker will not seat him.

[NYDem]

Apparently, the stuff that this kid is being accused of (and seems to have admitted to) occurred when he was in sixth grade.

It’s totally fair to slam him for the dumb stuff he is saying now.  But there’s no way stuff you did when you were 11 years old should follow you around in your adult professional life.

Awful take. We aren’t talking about dumb forum posts or underage drinking here, this guy blackmailed someone with nude pictures to try to get more of them. There is no age he could’ve done that at to make it anything other than psychopathic. He should be nowhere near elected office.

[Indy Texas]

Was reading the 2nd article and saw the photo they have of the 19 year old. That guy *really* needs dress shirts that fit properly

Ironically enough, the 19-year-old from Kansas looks older than this 26-year-old from Missouri who also won his primary and is likely going to his state legislature.

Why does it feel like the vast majority of 20 year olds running for office are Republicans? This 'Americans for Prosperity' kid and the 24 year old real-estate CEO in NC-11 feel like outliers amongst their generation

I sense a lot of it is wealth-related

Madison Cawthorn (NC-11) received a multimillion dollar settlement stemming from the car accident that confined him to a wheelchair. No idea about the Kansas City guy but according to one of his campaign finance reports, he loaned his campaign $10,000, which is typically not something a 26 year old schoolteacher is in a position to do unless they have money from somewhere else.

I actually read about Cawthorn today, throughout the rest of this he'll be referred to as "wheelie" and it seems to me that he actually didn't get any money from the insurance settlement. Basically, as I understand it. He was going back home from spring break with a friend, friend falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into a concrete divider, Wheelie is partially paralyzed, after all the medical stuff he has around $3 million in medical debt I guess he didn't have insurance or something, Friends insurance company offers Wheelie $3 million to cover the expenses, Wheelie sues and demands $30 million, Judge rules in favor of Insurance company. Later on, he worked for Mark Meadows district office, went to college for a semester and then dropped out, his business "SPQR holdings" has one employee which is himself, I'd like to note it's pretty interesting that his business SPQR is the same as the acronym for the Roman Senate.

Final note, his website is atrocious, his issue profiles are all 1-2 sentences, I've seen school board candidates with better websites.

He's been an unreliable narrator in all of this.

When you're in an accident that's someone else's fault, the way it works is you get whatever surgery/medical treatments you need and your health insurance pays for it, but they then file a subrogation lien with the liable party's insurance company. (Or, if you don't have insurance, then the doctors/hospitals will file those liens with them because that is how they'll get paid.) So when you get a settlement/judgment, the money to pay for that gets taken out of your settlement.

My understanding of what happened with Madison Cawthorn is that his friend was driving a car owned by his dad's company, which had a $3M liability policy. The liability insurer offered to pay him the maximum $3M payout allowed by the policy. After some ambiguous back-and-forth between the Cawthorns and the insurer, they hired an attorney who rejected the offer and filed a lawsuit against them and some other parties they claimed were liable.

A couple of years go by and Cawthorn finally accepts the policy limits from those insurance companies. $3M and whatever other policies were involved. Then he turns around and enters into a separate settlement with his friend and his friend's father and his father's company for $30M. They obviously did not have $30M to give him so that opened the door for his friend to file a bad faith lawsuit against the insurance company (for not protecting him from liability over and above the policy limits), and the settlement agreement involved assigning that right to sue to Cawthorn so that he could theoretically just get the $30M from the insurance company himself (since, again, the friend didn't have $30M to give him in the first place).

This led to a federal lawsuit because the insurance company was not a party to that $30M settlement and the court affirmed existing case law that Cawthorn did not have a right to sue them in that manner.

tl;dr A Republican, despite the GOP being all about opposing "frivolous lawsuits", filed a frivolous lawsuit and lost.

If you look at his financial disclosure, it's clear that he's living off of (1) dividends and capital gains from stocks he bought with his settlement money; (2) a small disability pension that he mentioned in one of his depositions.

[brucejoel99]

This race isn't over yet, as the vote canvas (which will rule on any provisional ballots) takes place on Monday.

That being said, talk of the Speaker not allowing Coleman to be seated if he wins is honestly a bit much. The power to expel ought not be expansive enough to empower the State House to simply disregard the will of Coleman's electorate, however distasteful the State House may find his previous conduct, because Coleman's constituents still chose to elect him despite knowing about his actions. The State House needs to respect that if they respect, y'know, the idea of democracy.

[Duke of York]

This race isn't over yet, as the vote canvas (which will rule on any provisional ballots) takes place on Monday.

That being said, talk of the Speaker not allowing Coleman to be seated if he wins is honestly a bit much. The power to expel ought not be expansive enough to empower the State House to simply disregard the will of Coleman's electorate, however distasteful the State House may find his previous conduct, because Coleman's constituents still chose to elect him despite knowing about his actions. The State House needs to respect that if they respect, y'know, the idea of democracy.

I agree completely with this. I have a feeling the lead will likely expand slightly