The Republican nominee for US Senate in Maryland appears to be functionally illiterate. Not joking.
Last edited Wed Jul 20, 2022, 03:57 PM - Edit history (1)
His name is Chris Chaffee. He also ran for US Senate in 2016 and 2018 (placing twice both times in the Republican primary) and for Congress against Steny Hoyer in 2014 (where he was the Republican candidate in the General).
He doesn't even have a campaign website. He does, however, have a Facebook page, a Twitter page (with a grand total of 189 followers to date), and Ric Flair's hairstylist from 1987.
Despite a lack of any sort of visibility or publicity, he has so far managed to capture 41,567 votes (with additional mail in votes to be counted), nearly twice as many as his closest competitor.
And if you go to his social media pages, his positions are...well, one might charitably describe as "interesting."
Remember the famous joke from The Simpsons showing a cut-away of a newspaper article about Grandpa Abe Simpson titled "Old Man Yells At Cloud?"?
Well, that literally is him. Not even joking. He hates those clouds. There's something in those clouds.
He also thinks that the First Trump Impeachment was brought on by an unnamed "Foreign Country":
And--not surprisingly--he has a lot to say about the 2020 elections and the January 6th insurrection:
Now, barring a massive scandal or unspeakable turn of events, should incumbent US Senator Jeff Van Hollen wipe the floor with Chaffee come November? Absolutely.
But will thousands of Maryland Republicans still vote for Chaffee despite the fact he's a conspiracy theorist who struggles to put a comprehensible sentence into written form? Sadly, also yes.
And it's just another example of a fringe joke candidate gaining full acceptance in today's Trumpist Republican Party. In 2020, the Republican nominee for Senate in the Delaware general election was Lauren Witzke, an open and avowed White Supremacist. She lost her election, but somehow still got over 37% of the electorate to vote for her. Not an inconsequential number.
And Maryland's Republican Party, after having its most successful 8 years in recent history with Governor Larry Hogan--a moderate who openly disavowed Trump--shows that it has no interest in building on that success. Their gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox is an anti-vaxer who has spoken at Q-Anon sponsored conferences. Their attorney general candidate Michael Peroutka is a neo-Confederate. And now we have Chris "What's in the Clouds" Chaffee as their candidate for US Senate.
God help us. Our fringe candidates are no longer on the fringes.
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Behind their name. 
