The House Race Everyone Should Be Watching

There are 435 seats in the US House of Representatives, but, according to the savvy pros at the Cook Political Report, only 27 of them are up for grabs this year. That’s 6 percent. Among these toss-ups, political reporters like to find contests to profile, looking for an interesting hook, and they are always sure to mention that in the closely divided House this is the face-off that could determine which party ends up in control. It certainly might boil down to one race—or a few. And indeed, I do have my eye on the close race occurring in the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, which includes the cities of Harrisburg and York, not only because it may impact the balance of power in the House but because the current inhabitant of this seat, Rep. Scott Perry, a six-term Republican who heads the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has not been held accountable for his attempt to overthrow the US government.

Perry is not a household name. He’s barely a household name for households that are glued to C-SPAN and cable news. In terms of public prominence, he’s no Jim Jordan or Marjorie Taylor Greene. But after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump covertly plotted to overturn the election and subvert the constitutional order, Perry was one of his most active co-conspirators on Capitol Hill.

Perry’s involvement in this treasonous caper has been thoroughly documented in a Senate Judiciary Committee report and the January 6 committee’s final report. He was instrumental in what might have been Trump’s most dangerous intrigue: his attempt to use the Justice Department to invalidate the election results. (This seditious effort was part of special counsel Jack Smith’s original criminal case against Trump, but after the Supreme Court in July ruled that a president or ex-president in many instances has immunity from criminal prosecution, Smith was forced to cast aside this portion of the indictment against Trump.)

As Perry faces a challenge to reelection, it’s worth reviewing his role in Trump’s cabal.

After Attorney General Bill Barr chose not to go along with Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen and in December announced his resignation, Trump began pressuring the new leadership at the Justice Department—Jeffrey Rosen, who would become acting attorney general, and his top assistant, Richard Donoghue—to launch investigations of the election, file lawsuits, and declare the results “corrupt.” Rosen and Donoghue would not collude with Trump. But another Justice Department official, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, the acting assistant attorney general for the department’s civil division, was delighted to.

And he was in cahoots with Perry.

Following the election, Perry, Jordan, and other members of the House Freedom Caucus began scheming how they could rig the post-election vote certification to keep Trump in power. At a December 21 White House meeting, Perry, Jordan, and other GOP legislators huddled with Trump to discuss possibilities. About that time, Perry introduced Clark to Trump. Within days, Clark, who officially had no role at the department regarding election matters, was conniving in the Oval Office with Trump and Perry. (Clark’s meeting with Trump violated Justice Department–White House rules governing which White House officials could communicate with which Justice Department officials.)

After meeting with Trump and Perry, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce that the Justice Department was probing election fraud and urged them to tell legislatures in swing states where Joe Biden had won to appoint alternate slates of electors. He informed Rosen and Donoghue that Trump was weighing naming him acting attorney general, should they not take these steps.

Throughout this stretch—as Perry continued to meet secretly with Trump and Clark—Clark, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, kept muscling Rosen and Donoghue. Simultaneously, Perry called Donoghue and leaned on him to investigate baseless election fraud claims, noting that Trump had asked him to phone. Perry referred to Clark as someone “who could really get in there and do something about this.” Perry was squeezing the department to hand over this matter to Clark, who was promoting phony conspiracy theories about the election. According to the January 6 committee, Perry repeatedly texted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, urging that Clark be moved to the top of the Justice Department.

The Trump-Perry-Clark conspiracy was intense. On December 31, Trump summoned Rosen and Donoghue to the Oval Office for a contentious meeting and demanded to know why the Justice Department had not “found the fraud.” He indicated he was considering canning them both and installing Clark. But when it became clear a few days later that such a move would prompt mass resignations at the Justice Department, Trump’s plan fell apart. On January 6, after the Trump-incited insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, Perry led the GOP attempt to block the certification of electoral votes from his own state. (Condemning this “attempt to disenfranchise his own constituents,” the York Dispatch, a prominent newspaper in his district, called on Perry to resign.)

With his skullduggery, Perry nearly orchestrated a full-fledged constitutional crisis. Had Rosen and Donoghue not resisted the pressure from him and Trump, Perry and Trump might have succeeded in forcing the department into falsely declaring the election results fraudulent. That would have made the post-election period far more chaotic and dangerous. While other House Republicans were all over social media and Fox falsely asserting the election had been stolen, Perry was quietly working behind the scenes to sabotage American democracy.

When the Senate committee released its report in October 2021 detailing Perry’s role, he refused to comment. He also declined to cooperate with the January 6 committee, ignoring a subpoena. But after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Meadows, told the committee that Perry had requested a pardon—related to his endeavors to undermine the election—Perry denied her account. In August 2022, FBI agents seized Perry’s phone—presumably as part of the investigation of Trump’s election interference. Yet the Clark-Perry plot is no longer part of the federal case against Trump.

In 2022, Perry won reelection by 8 points against a Democratic member of the Harrisburg City Council, despite his participation in Trump’s scheme. This year he faces a tougher challenger. His Democratic opponent, Janelle Stelson, is a well-known local veteran news anchor. As of the end of September, she had outraised Perry $4.8 million to $3.5 million and had $1.4 million in the bank compared to his $717,000. Last week, the Cook Political Report changed its rating of the race from “Lean R” to “toss up.”

Perry’s participation in the Trump-Clark conspiracy shows he’s far more dangerous than the average Trump bootlicker. Though he has avoided becoming a high-profile symbol of Republican extremism and of Trumpism’s threat to democracy, his political career is now in jeopardy. Whatever the outcome of this race might mean for control of the House, Americans who care about the rule of law and the constitutional order would have much reason to cheer his defeat.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

There are so many stupid and dangerous things Trump says that do not receive sufficient attention. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day. When he referred at a campaign rally to legendary golfer Arnold Palmer’s apparently well-sized genitalia, that earned—deservingly—media notice. (How low can he go?) Yet another curious remark drew less scrutiny.

Appearing on Fox News this week, Trump was asked by a young boy, “What was your favorite president when you were little?” Trump first cited Ronald Reagan, showing he had not understood this simple question. He was 34 years old when Reagan was elected to the White House. (Cognitive difficulties?) Then Trump noted that Lincoln was “probably a great president.” Probably? He continued: “Although I’ve always said, ‘Why wasn’t that settled?’ You know, I’m a guy that—it doesn’t make sense. We had a civil war. Why wasn’t that—as an example, Ukraine would have never happened and Russia, if I were president.”

Trump was rapping Abraham Lincoln for failing to cut a deal to prevent the Civil War. This reveals an abject misunderstanding of basic American history. Most of the states of the Confederacy had seceded before Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861. A month later, Southern forces fired on a federal fort in Charleston Bay, and the war began. Prior to that, there had been attempts to prevent this conflict. Legislators and politicians had discussed and debated various options. But they all rested on a fundamental concession: the continuation of slavery, which was the foundation of the Southern economy and the wealth of its white supremacist oligarchy. The historical record is clear on this point. If there was to be a deal—and that might have been impossible—it would have involved the preservation of human bondage and the slave trade. Would Trump have accepted that?

“Prison Diaries,” Alexei Navalny, The New Yorker. I rarely highlight magazine articles here. I figure that if you subscribe to this newsletter, you’re probably already reading magazines and don’t need recommendations in that regard. But I urge everyone to read in the October 21 issue of the New Yorker excerpts of the prison diaries written by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who perished in a Siberian gulag in February. (The full diaries are being published this week under the title Patriot: A Memoir.) Navalny was a braver person than I—and maybe you—will ever be. He challenged the tyrannical regime of Vladimir Putin, exposing its many corruptions, and was poisoned, nearly to death, by Putin’s thugs. After surviving that assassination attempt—which landed him in a coma—he and his wife, Yulia, in early 2021 returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned, as he expected to be. He was chockful of courage. But so are many critics of dictators and political prisoners. If you’ve paid any attention to Navalny—say, watched the excellent CNN documentary Navalny—you know that his fearlessness was sandwiched between unrelenting optimism and profound sangfroid that allowed him to maintain a wry sense of humor through travails that would wreck another person.

His prison diaries showcase these traits, which unsurprisingly made him a charismatic figure in the age of social media. This is a fellow who trolled Putin in a fierce battle for democracy and freedom. In these writings, he shared his bemused observations about the mundane details of his prison life and offered his deeper thoughts about his plight and how best to confront evil. On the first anniversary of his imprisonment, he wrote, “I want to tell everyone exactly the same thing I shouted to those who gathered outside the court when the guards were taking me off to the police truck: Don’t be afraid of anything. This is our country and it’s the only one we have. The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. That we will surrender without a fight.”

Navalny, as the diary shows, spent much time pondering fear and how it is exploited by despotic governments. And in a long March 2022 entry, he described his strategy for coping with fear, despair, anger, and deprivation: “Imagine the worst thing that can happen, and accept it. This works, even if it’s a masochistic exercise.” He noted that he had resolved he would spend the rest of his life in prison—and could well be killed there—and recalled a visit with Yulia when they agreed to accept this “as the base scenario and arrange our lives on that basis.” And, as he said to her, “if things turn out better, that will be marvelous, but we won’t count on it or have ill-founded hopes.” There’s no woe-is-me within his diary. He even pointed out that with his supportive family on the outside and global attention, he had it much better than many political prisoners of the past or present. Nalvany also cited his Christian faith as essential element of his staying-sane strategy: “Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about?”

In his diary, he chronicled his birthdays, the missed birthdays of his loved ones, the poor shovel technology of Russia, his attempt to memorize Hamlet’s soliloquy in English, his efforts “not to become brutalized and bitter and lose my laid-back demeanor.” In June 2023, he wrote, “Am I really in a good mood, or do I force myself to feel that way? My answer is, I really am.” He certainly would rather not “wake up in this hellhole.” But, he added, “social progress and a better future can be achieved only if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs...I see my situation not as a heavy burden or a yoke but as a job that needs to be done. Every job has its unpleasant aspects, right? So I’m going through the unpleasant part of my favorite job right now.”

In an entry written a month before his death, Navalny answered the question that has been asked about him for years: Why did he go back? The query frustrated him. He thought he had made it obvious: to fight for Russia. And he was sad to see that in a Russian society so imbued with cynicism and conspiracy theories, this straightforward truth could not be accepted at face value. He wrote, “Everything really is that simple. I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.” When he ran for office challenging Putin, he had declared, “I won’t let you down...and I won’t abandon you.” Writing in his cell, he explained, “By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don’t lie to them.”

It sounds trite to say that Navalny’s prison reflections, like his entire narrative, are inspiring. They remind us of the sacrifices and strivings that have brought about the freedoms and rights that we enjoy—and the need to do what must be done to preserve and expand them. Whatever happens on November 5, we may well be tested in this regard in the months and years ahead. As Navalny wrote, “We must not give up, and we must stand by our beliefs.”

Baby Reindeer. Not long ago, I was dining with an LA-based screenwriter who asked if I had watched Baby Reindeer, Netflix’s British black-comedy-crime-drama-psychological-thriller that cleaned up at the Emmys this year. I hadn’t. He insisted I do so, adding, “There’s no way this could’ve been made in Hollywood. Everyone loved it. But they would have never said yes to this.” He’s probably correct.

I did binge it recently. As a Brit might say, it’s brilliant. The show is predicated on an episode that occurred in the life of its star and creator, Richard Gadd, a Scottish actor, comedian, and writer. Before he became a success, while he was toiling in a pub, Gadd was stalked by a disturbed middle-aged woman. He turned that experience into a one-man show that became a break-out performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Next came a play based on the show, and it was a smash in London. That led to the seven-part Netflix series.

In the television telling, bartender and failing comic Donny Dunn, Gadd’s alter ego (played by Gadd), is working at his pub when in walks Martha (Jessica Gunning), a pudgy fortysomething name-dropper who claims she’s a Very Important Lawyer connected to bold-faced names the world over but who emanates vibes of pathetic-ness. Donny, pitying her, befriends the patron. She takes it the wrong way and assumes he’s keen on her. But as the relationship doesn’t advance as she fancies, she increasingly acts out her frustration, anger, and desperation. As is usually the case in a drama, matters escalate. But what makes Baby Reindeer such a stand-out is that this is not merely a Fatal Attraction–like story of a mad woman who goes too far. There are far more layers to the tale—and layers to the layers.

A driving question is why Donny remains sympathetic toward Martha, even as she threatens him and those near and dear to him and almost destroys his life. It’s quite tense when she shows up at his comedy gigs, and her actions imperil his budding romance with Teri (Nava Mau), a transgender therapist. Donny is trying to sort out his sexuality, which is tied to a difficult and unresolved episode in his past, and this endeavor colors his interactions with Martha. Late in the series, we learn the reason he has taken a curious stance toward his odd relationship—if you can call it a relationship—with Martha. I won’t spoil this key plot point, but it’s disturbing.

Baby Reindeer is in part a study of obsession, and it is executed so well that it makes for obsessive watching. Beyond the screen, the series has raised additional questions. The first episode opens with a familiar claim: “This is a true story.” That’s not quite true. Gadd, as was his right, took artistic license. He altered the story. He changed names—in part to protect the privacy of those involved, including the stalker. And in interviews, he never identified her. But inevitably internet sleuths found her and publicized her name. It turns out that this woman, Fiona Harvey, was not, as was Martha in the series, convicted of stalking and sent to prison for five years before she met Gadd. Disputing this and other parts of Baby Reindeer, she has sued Gadd and Netflix in a California court for defamation, seeking $170 million in damages. The judge recently ruled the case can go forward, noting the series “appears to present itself as fact” rather than as a representation of Gadd’s perspective because it states at the start that it is “a true story.” It seems that if Netflix had said “based on a true story,” it might have avoided these legal troubles.

Harvey’s lawsuit is interesting and could affect how television and movie studios do business. But it doesn’t undercut the achievement of Baby Reindeer. Gadd turned a complex, unsettling, and raw story into complex, unsettling, and raw television. One wonders how often Hollywood can pull off something like this—or would want to try.