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

[LtNOWIS]

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.

[LtNOWIS]

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

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Wouldn't this have came up in a criminal record check?

Even if juvenile records weren't sealed, I don't think the victims ever went to the police.

https://www.kshb.com/news/election-2020/wyandotte-county-election-board-certifies-win-for-19-year-old

He has officially won by 14 votes. the incumbent said he will pursue a recount and is considering a write in campaign in the fall.

It looks the the incumbent is running a write in-campaign, but Republicans are also running a write-in campaign. Hopefully the political leaders there can salvage this, but one guy on the ballot facing divided opposition is gonna have good odds in November.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article245042675.html

[LtNOWIS]

God I'm just disgusted at all the people here either defending this monster or saying this doesn't matter.  Do you realise how creepy and weird you guys are looking defending this.

I agree, but I also think democracy is important.

Democracy includes the state party making people aware of who they nominated and that they have an alternative.

Party primaries are treated as more sacred than they should be, given how under-attended they usually are.

I dont care how unattended they are. He lost fair and square and a court should step in and order him to cease his write in campaign. Do you think the democrats deserve to be able to bail themselves out by cheating instead of doing the right thing and supporting the GOP candidate who didnt lose their primary.

Do you think Lisa Murkowski's campaign should have been halted by the judges in 2010?

Her whole argument was "yes, I was defeated in my primary by the hard-core extremist base in a low turnout primary, but the broader electorate loves me! They love me so much, that I will win as a write-in candidate, defeating my party's official nominee and the minority party's guy!" And then she won, and was seated, and welcomed back to her caucus. And she won the next primary.

Frownfelter is no Lisa Murkoswki, but the principle seems similar.

[LtNOWIS]

God I'm just disgusted at all the people here either defending this monster or saying this doesn't matter.  Do you realise how creepy and weird you guys are looking defending this.

Your answer is surprising too.

You have never heard directly from the boy, you have no idea who he is in real life, he will never represent you personally, but hearsay is enough for you and thousands of Democrats to hound him online.

This prissy attitude is what makes American politics so destructive and poisonous.
If any mistake is disqualifying, and no mitigating circumstances allowed - such as being 14, my goodness, how proud are you of you 14-year old self? - then everything in politics becomes about spin, PR and deflection.

No wonder such an electoral environement attracts so many sociopaths.

If by "hearsay" you mean "widely agreed upon facts that nobody was denying."

We're all reading the same newspapers as anyone else. People in this thread probably have as good a read on this story as the average voter in the Kansas City metro area. Similarly, I've never met Trump, and I've never met my two Senators, but I have a pretty good read on them from following the news, looking at their statements, and looking at other sources of information online and in broadcast media.

Also the idea that "you're not willing to forgive this guy in this case, therefore you'll never forgive anyone over anything!" doesn't track. Plenty of people are willing to consider mitigating circumstances. But the biggest mitigating circumstances would be atonement and time passed. Even if you accept the sincerity/quality of his apology, there just wasn't enough time gone by.

[LtNOWIS]

He seems to quickly be pivoting to an alt-right "F*** those bitches" campaign, so this would seem to be a good time for the party to make clear they'll expel his sex criminal ass the second he sets foot in the Capitol should he win.

Make clear that all this election is settling is whether the state has to waste money on a special election in a few months.

I'm not sure that, legally, they can expel someone or refuse to seat someone for actions they took before they were in office. I know that wouldn't be legal in the US Congress.

Nor would that be a good course of action, since it's rather inconsistent with the idea of democracy. The voters have the information and can make a decision based off of that.

House Democrats can refuse to give Coleman committee assignments or let him participate in the caucus, though. Here in Virginia, Democrats did that for Delegate Joe Morrissey after he was convicted for impregnating a 17 year old girl and then re-elected.

[LtNOWIS]

Oh my god

"Police unions are bad and have enabled seriously bad levels of state violence against people lawfully exercising their first amendment rights" is a fine policy take, but it's pretty bad to use this to deflect from his own issues with abusive conduct. Also I doubt that woman, who was shot months ago outside of Kansas, would want Mr. Coleman invoking her suffering for his own narrative purposes.

[LtNOWIS]

Here's a good one: does Kansas have in state law that anyone voting in a party primary must vote for that party's nominee in November? I know it's never enforced but as I hate open primaries if Frownfelter wins by a large margin this would be the perfect example to make in court the absurdity of the law. Frownfelter could even be the person Coleman could aggrieve against because Frownfelter would have to admit publicly he did not vote for Coleman and if that law is on the books, then Frownfelter by definition would no longer be a bona fide Democrat.

(We're really going out there I know but I'm doing this because that law in states it does exist is an unenforceable fiction and the fiction is tolerated to have open primaries. If the law exists in Kansas and Frownfelter wins it provides evidence of the fiction and why the law should not exist. A small town near me in 2015 the losing candidate brought this issue up in a lawsuit and it was quite the tempest in a teacup.)

No. I don't think any state does since general election votes are private.

The closest thing would be that, when the party runs the process, they can make you sign a pledge to vote for that party in a general election. So not an actual primary, but a "firehouse primary," convention, mass meeting, etc., like we have in Virginia sometimes.

But those are unenforceable and legally meaningless for the reasons you pointed out.

[LtNOWIS]

How is this person a Dem? There's an entire other party that exists for people like him.

He's not a Dem. He's a hard-line authoritarian communist with a fetish for political violence posing as a DemSoc.

yeah, tbh its kind of bizarre that such a candidate is favored to win a state house seat and doesn't reflect well on american politics. hard left, socialists, and even non-authoritarian communists are one thing, but bolsheviks aren't cool

Well, I apologize if you've heard this all before, but for anyone who isn't aware, US parties are very different than European parties. They are really just labels for people to run on, and overlapping, loosely affiliated organizations. Parties typically do not have the ability to prevent someone from running in a primary or being a party. Even if every party official and active party member loathes somebody, they can say they're a member of that party, run in the primary, and make their case to a broader electorate.