Charlotte County Democratic Women’s Club Legislative Liason Teresa Jenkins wrote the following letter to the editor published Sunday in the Charlotte Sun:
Editor:
Scott Rasmussen’s recent editorial column addressed how Don Blankenship, former CEO of Massey Energy sent to prison for conspiring to violate mine safety standards after an explosion killed 29 men in 2015, had a “real shot at winning the Republican Senate nomination.”
Yet the bigger story is that we have copious felons on the 2018 ballot and the GOP created them all.
Joe Arpaio, running for U.S. Senate in Arizona, was convicted of criminal contempt for defying a court order. Former Rep. Michael Grimm pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion in 2014 and is attempting to reclaim his seat. Rep. Greg Gianfort, running for re-election in Montana, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for body-slamming a reporter. Remember Roy Moore, accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women including a teen? He received 91 percent of the votes of self-identified Republicans in an Alabama Senate race.
All of these men were made possible by a GOP leadership who condones a nativist, lying, racist and sexist president accused by nearly 20 women of sexual misconduct. Add dark money championed by the Republican Party and their propaganda tool “Fox & Friends” to the mix, and we have a political cataclysm that will not disappear when Donald Trump leaves office.
Something is not right when a major political party allows candidates with criminal convictions and others with a long history of misogynistic attacks to be viable candidates for political office. The November elections become more important each day.
Teresa Jenkins
Punta Gorda
(Read the letter in the Charlotte Sun)
