SQUIDFRY 10.29.20: Amoral Majority

AMORAL MAJORITY… Squid took a longing look at the calendar. Nine days and counting, Squid thought, until the election, when life has a slight chance of returning to something approximating normal.

But on that day, Oct. 25, all sense of approximating normal went out the window. It was then that Squid first learned about the Moral Concerns Committee, which appears to be neither a committee nor particularly moral.

What they are, though, is loaded with religious opinion. The Seaside-based MCC advocates for smaller government, traditional marriage, guns and voting “Biblical and Constitutional.”

The MCC called a number of candidates (or just Googled stuff) to come up with a “Moral Value Voters Guide.” It’s has little basis in reality – Donald Trump is lauded for being pro-life (ha!) and pro-traditional marriage (two ex-wives). Seaside City Council candidate Tinisha Dunn, meanwhile, declined to participate, yet is listed as pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, a no on defunding the police, a yes on sanctuary city designation and leaning in favor of guns. “This is 100-percent false,” Dunn wrote on Facebook.

According to one resident who received a flyer, “You think people are canvassing with good intentions, but when I read this, it shocked me.”

Squid, the unshockable, agrees. But shocking is very 2020.

CHECKS AND IMBALANCES… Speaking of shocking, Jeff Gorman, the GOP candidate for Congressional District 20, continues to espouse shockingly fringey views. (He recently suggested on Twitter that QAnon is credible.) So it’s surprising he’s raised even $62,630 for his campaign. But that’s tiny compared to incumbent Jimmy Panetta, who is running not only with the advantage of his famous name but also a war chest of over $1 million.

Panetta has raised money from hundreds of individual donors both in District 20 and beyond, as well as left-leaning groups like ActBlue and Democracy Engine. He also raised cash from a long list of corporate interests in sectors from ag to insurance to tech to finance – American Association of Crop Insurers, California Farm Bureau, United Egg Association, Hewlett Packard, Morgan Stanley, Kroger among them (maybe what’s most surprising to Squid is that each of these companies has a PAC at all). He recently was the beneficiary of an ag-driven fundraiser, where oil money (the Duflocks) and onion money (the Gills) combined to add more bucks to the war chest.

What is least shocking is that traditionally conservative interests are cozying up to Panetta. If Gorman is too extreme for them – as he is for most, even Republicans – it’s just consistent with another theme of 2020.