And the Winners Are…

By Charlie Johnston

Okay, I’m ready. At the bottom of this article I will make my predictions for this election cycle. More often than not, when I make formal predictions, I am eerily on target, picking up on huge undercurrents that no one else does.

My best performances were, 1) in 1994, when I predicted eight months before election that, though I didn’t know about the Senate, Republicans were a dead lock to pick up the House for the first time in 40 years. Then, a week and a half before election, I predicted the exact number of seats the GOP would pick up – much to the howls of laughter by both the Democrat and Republican operatives that were on my show that day. In 2016, the night before election, I told a Christian broadcaster that, contrary to the 99% certainty most of the media had that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, Donald Trump would win handily. The media and Dems were in a confirmation bias spiral and never picked up how quietly angry much of the country had become at the authoritarian chaos spun from the White House the previous eight years. Among my favorites was 1989. A 20-year-seemingly invulnerable incumbent who headed a total slate of eight people was up. I had managed the opposing slate’s campaign. On election night I was at the courthouse for a broadcast of returns (I had done NO broadcasts during the campaign but came back as a commentator after the voting was finished). Early in the night, several officials had come up to me and told me, in commiseration, what a great job I had done but that it was impossible to dislodge a 20-year- incumbent who ran a vigorous campaign. It was getting under my skin. Finally, when the Chief Judge in this county of 750,000 people came up to me to offer condolences before the first returns came in, I got my back up and snapped loudly that, “The surprise tonight is not going to be that my slate wins, but how much they win by.” People looked around at me like the pressure had obviously unhinged me – and nobody said anything else about it. Until the returns came in. Then they said little, either, but looked at me in wide-eyed wonder. The LOW vote-getter on our slate pulled in just over 60 percent of the vote. You CAN fight city hall and win.

On the other hand, in 1992 I was overjoyed when Bill Clinton won the nomination for president, convinced that he was the only Democrat scandal-ridden and weak enough to get the lackluster George H.W. Bush re-elected. That one didn’t work out very well for me.

I have only had mystical insights about elections on two occasions – and both told me things I did NOT want to hear. In 2008 I was doing a Sunday political show on WLS, the big talk station in Chicago. As I was the designated GOP spokesman on that show, I did my job and touted the McCain ticket vigorously, despite my longstanding disdain for John McCain. Late in the summer, it looked like McCain had pulled ahead and my Confessor Priest, who listened to the show every Sunday, asked me excitedly if McCain had a chance of pulling this out when I visited with him. “Father,” I said, “I have been telling you guys for over a decade that the man who leads us into the fullness of the storm will be shallow, vain, petty and glib. Obama is right out of central casting. He will be president.”

In 2010, I got involved in a U.S. Senate primary. To my surprise, after I was recruited and was considering it, I got divine direction that I was to take it – and that we would lose. That is the ONLY time I have ever been told the outcome of a race I directly participated in. I protested, of course. But my angel insisted that God had some very important things in it for me that I had to know. I stepped up while insisting pugnaciously that I would do everything I could to win, despite this. My angel told me God expected no less. It played out exactly as I was told.  The candidate was a solid guy, but it was the most frustrating race I have ever been involved in. But in the frustrations were the lessons tailored to me. They were not just important, but vitally important.

On the bad side, I sometimes miss. When I do, I miss badly. No “close but no cigar” for me. When I miss it is a technicolor train wreck, with fiery explosions and crashes that would do Arnold Schwarzenegger proud. So, at the end of this column I go on record, either to eerily impress you on Nov. 3 or to give you the pleasure of taunting me at how badly I was off base.

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I was saddened to hear of the passing of “Iron Mike” Ditka, the Chicago Bears’ legendary player and coach. Da Coach was truly a Chicago icon – and his face could have been a logo for the Chicago Bears. Those old Saturday Night Live “Superfans” skits were not far off the mark on how we fans viewed him in Chicago.   

In 2006, he came to appear at a private event for a Congressional candidate of mine. He was supposed to say a few words and stay for an hour. It had fallen to me to introduce the Coach to the crowd. Amused at the irony of having an obscure political operative introduce one of the most instantly recognizable figures in America, I did a few minutes of a wry candid fan’s introduction with my regular humor. Ditka stayed the whole evening, gladly signing footballs, jerseys, and any other memorabilia offered, while talking and laughing individually with everyone there. It made for a fabulous evening. Turned out he absolutely loved my introduction, said it had him laughing, too. He told me how to contact his people and invited me to call him if I needed help for a good, conservative candidate.                                   

He was as good as his word and did several events for other candidates later. The last time I saw him, a group of lawyers did a private fundraiser for a Senate candidate at his Ditka’s Restaurant. (Ditka’s Restaurant and Harry Carey’s Downtown were the only sports figure restaurants I have ever been to where the food was fabulous in its own right). While the managing partner of the host law firm introduced him, we sat in a booth together. After the partner had droned on for over 10 minutes, Ditka grinned at me and said, “I don’t think he knows who the main attraction here is.” I chuckled and replied, “He’s just starstruck – and some people just keep gushing when that happens.” He raised his eyebrows and said, “So you were never starstruck by me?” “Still am,” I replied, “I just know how to prime a crowd for the main event and then shut up, sit down, and enjoy it.” We both chuckled as the partner continued to enthusiastically drone on.

Ditka had genuine star power and a great sense of humor – sometimes wry, sometimes broad. My favorite line from an event he did with me was, speaking of an effort to get him to drop into the US Senate race in 2004 against Barack Obama, he said he had seriously considered it and he believed he would have won, but in retrospect, turning it down spared him a lot of grief. “I realized that if I went to the Senate, sooner or later I would have just had to kick Ted Kennedy’s a**.” The crowd roared.

God bless you, Iron Mike. You were an original who gave a lot of us, particularly in the Chicago area, a lot of joy.

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 My friend and longtime scheduler, Mary Lapchak, has retired. Oh, she still enthusiastically supports CORAC, but has a lot of change going on in her life. For years I would spend a few days every couple of months with her and her husband, Mark, at their central Colorado farm. We would have coffee in the morning, then go about our work separately, and then Mary would serve dinner downstairs where we would watch TV and movies together. She is a fabulous cook. She loves to try to find a way to get me to eat a salad (and she came up with some very ingenious ones that worked.) Alas, Mark passed away a couple of years ago. I miss those years, but change is inevitable in every life, isn’t it? When big change comes you have to take stock and figure out what to do and how to adapt. That usually takes a few years before you can get a new routine established that hides the hole that loss leaves you with. The Lapchak’s farm is for sale now and Mary has quite enough on her plate. I know many of you got to be friends with her over the years. Give her a call sometime. There are few things she enjoys more than friends – and CORAC has been a goldmine for her on garnering friends, just as she was a goldmine for me in taking worrying about schedules off my plate.

My daughter, Christie, has taken on the job of scheduling me. Privately, I can be gruff sometimes. Mary had gotten used to it and could be gruff right back. I didn’t want to have to break somebody into the fact that that’s how I can be. I mean no harm…and I like someone who will give it back to me if I’m getting thoughtless. Christie got used to that decades ago. And she’s good with people. So, there you go.

If you have any questions or want to schedule a meeting or find when I’m going to be in your area, you can contact her at Christinaj@coracusa.com.

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Okay, on to the midterm election.

This election is going to be Waterloo for pollsters, the media…and the Democratic Party as it is currently constituted.

On the pollsters, I have known for going on two decades that the profession has largely been destroyed by the rise of caller ID and call blocking. That is not their fault. But they have to rely so heavily on subjective assessments now that it is nearly impossible to get a scientifically random selection that is cost effective. They had to come up with something to keep their business models rolling. They adapted the polling industry into one that tries to create a narrative rather than reveal an actual snapshot of the electorate in time. That IS their fault. This time the jig is up and the whole edifice is going to be in ashes. A lot of polling organizations that are busily working away will no longer be in existence this time next year. They will be so far off on so many races that almost everyone, including the lowest information voters who only ever look at the horserace question, will know that the emperor truly has no clothes.

For the media, ever since 2008, they have gotten deeply entrenched in openly covering for Democrats and leftists while reflexively attacking Republicans, conservatives, and normal people. Since 2016 we have been bombarded with hoax after hoax after hoax, each that blew up in the media’s face like a stick of dynamite in Wile E. Coyote’s paws. On the big stories, they have been wrong on almost everything. Yet they have made no effort at self-assessment or course correction. They delude themselves that they still set the agenda while only following the facts. Truth is, they wouldn’t recognize a fact if it rattled its tail and bit them.

When I was the managing editor of a group of suburban weeklies in the Chicago area, I used to give a short, impromptu quiz on the basics of how government works to every applicant for a reporter’s job. At that time, I was aggravated at how poorly applicants routinely did. Aspiring journalists I rejected now look like Edward Murrow in comparison to today’s crew of national reporters. And my rejects weren’t nearly as smug and self-satisfied as today’s crew is. All illusions of their influence will be dispelled by this election. Watch for a rise in, “Will bloviate for food” signs in the next few years.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has gone full radical. Abolish police, abolish prisons, jail parents who won’t gender-transition their kids, eat the rich (Stalin defined “rich” as owning a cow and two chickens – the “rich” for the DSA means anyone who disagrees with them and most of their own foot soldiers, to boot), give men and boys free reign in little girls bathrooms and locker rooms…I won’t even bother with a full laundry list. The DSA has become the most vigorously energetic faction of the Democrat Party – and party leaders have made all the effort to keep them firewalled from the regular party that they did to secure our borders. The upshot is that the DSA has become the face of the Democratic Party. They have not shifted the Overton Window: they have pushed it right off the edge of their flat-earth fantasy world. And this election, despite the best efforts of their polling and media advance troops, they will reap what they have sewn.

With the horrific violence the left calls down on any who dissent from their insanity people have quietly, but firmly, resolved to put an end to this at the ballot box. The most quiet among those ordinary people are honest, liberal Democrats who have been left politically homeless by the insanity of the modern Democrat Party. Republicans should not make the mistake, after this election, of assuming those people have become newly minted conservative Republicans. This is the self-defense election for them as they pray and hope for a rational, responsible, patriotic liberal party in the mold of Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and JFK to rise from the ashes of modern Democrats’ self-immolation. The Insane Clown Posse will be sent packing this election. And all the advance work by their heralds in polling companies and the establishment media will only serve to torch those heralds. So, let’s get to some numbers and specific races…

Republicans will pick up 17 seats in the House (the number that actually sticks in my head is 27, but I have to give some tribute to conventional metrics) and five in the Senate.

The most prominent Senate race in the country between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico in Texas is not close. Paxton will win by 12 points.

In Michigan, Mike Rogers will not just beat Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, he will crush him by close to 20 points or better.

At least one Republican, maybe two or, even three, Republicans will win statewide in Minnesota for the first time in decades. Sadly, Republican Michele Tafoya will narrowly lose the Senate seat to Democrat Peggy Flanagan.

Among actual, legitimate ballots, Republican Steve Hilton will trounce Democrat Xavier Becerra in the California Governor’s race. I don’t have a good sense of how effective California Democrats’ magic mail-in ballot machine will be this cycle, but I suspect the Democratic groundhog will see its shadow and California will get four more years of ridiculously expensive insanity and fraud.

In Maine, Republican Susan Collins will handily defeat Democrat Troy Jackson by nine points after all the polls showed her behind by about that much. Didn’t have to go against history on that one. This is how things always turn out for Collins, as hope springs eternal for Maine pollsters until it is invariably brought back to earth on election day.

In the battle of the pine forest titans in New Hampshire, Republican John Sununu will beat Democrat Chris Pappas, a sitting Democrat Congressman.

In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton squares off against Republican Incumbent Roger Marshall for Senate. Kansas Republicans are nervous about it. They needn’t be. Hamilton is pastor of the biggest Methodist Church in the state. Alas, it is a far-left activist church. Actual Christians are fed up with and disgusted by Democrats trying to push abortion-loving, gender-bending, gay marriage, big government activists as Christian, while denying all the commands of Jesus and the prophets and the Apostles. Those Christians will speak in a roar with their ballots this cycle against this rank blasphemy. (Though it won’t hurt if the Kansas GOP does serious outreach to authentically Christian Churches these last few weeks.)

The shock of the night will be how handily Republican Bruce Blakeman defeats incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul for Governor of New York, slowing that state’s decline into the financial abyss, UNLESS…

New Jersey Republican Justin Murphy pulls off a sleeper race to unseat Democrat incumbent Senator Corey Booker. I’m not predicting this one, just watching it. Over the years, Booker has become a caricature of himself and a part of me thinks New Jersey voters might be ready to send the Democrats’ answer to Sesame Street’s Grover into retirement.

Alas, in my beloved old home state of Illinois, Democrat J.W. Pritzker will easily win re-election, not because people love him so much, but because Republicans are in absolute disarray in that state this cycle. My feelings about Illinois are like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s were about Russia: I love my old homeland, but can’t tolerate what the communists have done to it.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, at least until November 4^th.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

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