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The US representative Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., S & P, expressed in an interview with a call center on Tuesday November 6, 2018 in Santee, California. (AP Photo / Denis Poroy)
Historically, campaigning on bail for crime is a surefire way to lose an election, with few exceptions.
But this campaign cycle, the felony charges seemed a little more damaging than the ads of attacks on television since three Republican candidates facing a series of accusations of fraud seemed to pbad in front of their opponents Democrats to hang on to their seats Tuesday evening.
They include the representative Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), indicted by the federal government for wire fraud and charges, he funded a luxurious lifestyle with campaign donations; Representative Chris Collins (R-NY), charged with felony federal offense; and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), charged with securities fraud in state court, accused of lying to friends and potential investors about his involvement in a technology company.
Even though rival Nate McMurray, his rival, conceded to Collins on Tuesday, he called for a recount on Wednesday afternoon, after the vote count showed him 1 point behind Collins. Hunter appeared to be holding Democrat challenger Ammar Campa-Najjar with a margin of 8 points, with 67 percent of constituencies reported at 4 am. Paxton, who has successfully delayed his trial three times since he was charged in July 2015, has gained by 4 percentage points. It was an unusually tight race in a state where Republican state leaders have consistently crushed Democratic challengers by 20 or more points over the past two decades.
Despite the tight races in red territory, their apparent victories testify to the polarizing political climate in which criminal investigations of elected officials are often more welcomed by sympathy than by the contempt of the partisans.
The three candidates denied wrongdoing and called the indictment indictment a politically motivated "witch hunt", with Democratic opponents rushing at every opportunity to remind voters that Prison could be their future.
"Republicans, Democrats and Independents know that it's time to move from one party to another and reject a congressman on bail," said Collins' opponent, Nate McMurray, in a statement dated October 29.
"If Paxton can not respect the law, how can he apply it?", Reads in an advertisement of Paxton's challenger, Justin Nelson.
The Texas Attorney General's candidate, Justin Nelson, gives a press conference in front of a mobile billboard depicting Ken Paxton's identity photo, taken three years ago, when he was in charge. he was charged and charged with fraud. (Sarah A. Miller / Tyler Morning Telegraph via AP)
None of this seemed to work.
While it is neither unprecedented nor illegal for incumbents to win congressional or state office seats, it is certainly a rare achievement.
Michael Grimm, a former Republican congressman from New York, reached it in 2014 after winning his bid for reelection despite the federal indictment for tax evasion linked to a restaurant he owned. , where the authorities claimed to have paid undocumented immigrants. A month later, he pleaded guilty to only one tax evasion – but initially refused to resign. When a judge sentenced him to eight months in prison in 2015, she told him that his "moral compbad, Mr. Grimm, needed to be reoriented." Grimm finally resigned from Congress.
Prior to that, there was Floyd Flake, the former Democratic congressman also from New York, who, along with his wife, was indicted for embezzling funds from the African Methodist Episcopal Church where he was a pastor. He won another term in 1990 despite the charges, which were later dropped.
William J. Jefferson, a Democrat from Louisiana, may be an honorary member of the club: In 2006, he was re-elected just months after federal investigators found $ 90,000 worth of box-loaded bribes of food in his freezer. He was indicted in 2007 while he was in power. During the 2008 campaign, Republican Joseph Cao defeated him and became the first non-Democrat to occupy that seat in that district since 1890. Jefferson was convicted and sentenced to prison.
Polling station losses or rapid resignation have been the most common consequences for most of the incumbents in recent decades, and a non-exhaustive list has recently been compiled in the Buffalo News, the principal newspaper in Collins District.
But not for this year's group.
The post-charge campaign tactics for Hunter and Collins became particularly vile after both candidates had issued offensive announcements targeting their opponents, who were quickly denounced as racist.
Hunter, who was accused in August of siphoning election campaign funds for everything from tequila to traveling in Italy to SeaWorld, ran commercial Ammar Campa-Najjar, an American. Palestinian Mexican raised to Christianity by his mother in San Diego, as a terrorist. sympathizer and "security risk" seeking to "infiltrate the Congress" with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
At the same time, Collins published an advertisement featuring the wife of the challenger Nate McMurray, a naturalized US citizen from Korea, who spoke Korean while the announcement suggested that McMurray wanted "fewer jobs for us. . . more jobs for China and Korea. Later, Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, makes an appearance while the ad claims that McMurray "has helped American companies hire foreign workers."
Collins, who was president of a pharmaceutical company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, is accused of having warned his son after the failure of a drug trial, allowing his son and son to get away with it. other members of his family avoid losses exceeding $ 700,000. He had initially suspended his reelection campaign as a result of the indictment. But he relaunched it next month, now his innocence.
If he is found guilty, Collins incurs between five and twenty years in prison. Hunter is between 21 months and five years old and Paxton between five and 99 years old.
Some candidates tried to get re-elected to prison. This too has not always worked well.
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