Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH) announced Monday that he will be leaving his post next month to take a job leading his state’s chamber of commerce. His departure will give House Democrats a little more cushion in their extremely tight margin of control in the chamber.
Sneaking out the backdoor for a future run for the open Senate seat?
R+7 district
Being in the minority isn’t much fun.
Lucky for Mr Stivers that there are no ethics regulations prohibiting him from moving into a business relationship to make the big bucks off his government service!
Escaping the crazy caucus. I’m guessing there will be others.
Maybe. He is, after all, headed for the CofC.
take a job leading his state’s chamber of commerce
Take the money and run.
It sounds more like he’s getting out while the gettin’ is good. Heading the state’s Chamber of Commerce sounds like a pretty cake job for a GOPer who voted to certify the election.
I’m glad he’ll be gone, yada yada, but he made a commitment to serve out his term. That’s implicit in running for office in the first place. Asshole.
It’s a symptom of how widely the QAnon delusion has spread in the U.S. In December, an NPR/Ipsos poll estimated that 1 in 3 Americans believed in some of the key tenets of the extremist ideology; another survey, by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, found 29% of Republicans agreed that Trump “has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” On Facebook alone, QAnon groups amassed millions of members before they were shut down, according to an internal company audit in August. At least two dozen Republican candidates who embraced the conspiracy ran for congressional seats in 2020.
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Since Trump’s defeat, the QAnon movement has quietly entered a different, and arguably more dangerous, phase. Adherents now hold local elected offices across the U.S.–from mayors to city-council members to school-board trustees–with the power to shape policies that directly affect the lives of millions of Americans from positions that offer a measure of credibility to delusional beliefs. In some places, like Grand Blanc, the election of QAnon believers to local office has met little organized resistance. In others, it’s prompted street protests, frantic PTA meetings, tearful city-council Zoom calls, and hundreds of angry emails and petitions.
It’s impossible to estimate how many elected officials believe in QAnon or have promoted its theories in the past. No organization keeps tallies, and it can be hard to parse the point where Trumpian provocation ends and true conspiracy thinking begins. But it’s clear from more than two dozen interviews with residents of communities where QAnon-tied officials have taken office that America is only beginning to grapple with the havoc that the cultlike conspiracy theory has wrought. Almost every resident who talked to TIME about their own local official’s links to the movement also pointed out others in the area they had noticed sharing QAnon content: a state legislator, a county commissioner, a sheriff.
TX-06 special election starts early voting today, with election day falling on May 1. It’s likely to be won by the widow of the Republican who gave up the seat for reasons of dying from COVID-19.
Stivers chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee in the 2018 election cycle
You mean the election when Republicans lost the House? Talk about failing upwards.
Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run
Go on, take the money and run
Q lite?
Why would he WANT to stay in the House? He’s not a RW batsht crazy fool so he was SURE to be primaried!
Just got reelected and now quits?
Why does the CofC want a quitter who is willing to give a shiv to the backs of his district?
Another elected Republican sneaking out the back door. This GOP is dying and the people grabbing headlines are helping kill it. If you stand back from the constant hysteria you see they are a cheap grift team. Let’s put them out of their misery in the next election.
The MAGA and QAnon phenomena have shown that the more divorced from reality a conspiracy theory is the better. Something that is close to reality can be critically analyzed. However, a theory without any basis in fact simply becomes an article of faith. Once people start operating of a faith basis, logic and factual refutations become moot.