2018 Presidential Election
- Thread starter Marky Bunny
- Start date
All the Seaborn family Secret Service codenames begin with "P", "Princeton" for the President and "Peacock" for the First Lady
No.
Correct. They also probably haven't been assigned names yet, since they're only two days old.
NBS.COM
Thursday March 19th 2020
Riddle wins Florida Gubernatorial primary and will face Carol Gelsey's daughter in November
Republican Congressman Tom Riddle has been confirmed as the winner of the Republican Florida Gubernatorial primary today after he finally edged out incumbent Lt Governor George Phillips by 50.38% to 49.62%. Congressman Riddle had held a substantial lead but in the closing days Phillips had closed the gap after a strong debate performance but over 48 hours since the polls closed he finally conceded the race to Riddle.
On the Democratic side Jessica Gelsey, the oldest daughter of former Speaker of the House Carol Gelsey, and herself the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate in 1996 (when she lost to Rob Ritchie) easily won the Democratic nomination. Gelsey who doesn't turn 34 until November, (fun fact she was born on November 15th 1986, eleven days after the 1986 "Special Presidential Election") is a state Rep for the 117th district.
Polling for NBS in a head to head match up between Riddle and Gelsey shows Riddle ahead 46-44% with 10% undecided.
Thursday March 19th 2020
Riddle wins Florida Gubernatorial primary and will face Carol Gelsey's daughter in November
Republican Congressman Tom Riddle has been confirmed as the winner of the Republican Florida Gubernatorial primary today after he finally edged out incumbent Lt Governor George Phillips by 50.38% to 49.62%. Congressman Riddle had held a substantial lead but in the closing days Phillips had closed the gap after a strong debate performance but over 48 hours since the polls closed he finally conceded the race to Riddle.
On the Democratic side Jessica Gelsey, the oldest daughter of former Speaker of the House Carol Gelsey, and herself the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate in 1996 (when she lost to Rob Ritchie) easily won the Democratic nomination. Gelsey who doesn't turn 34 until November, (fun fact she was born on November 15th 1986, eleven days after the 1986 "Special Presidential Election") is a state Rep for the 117th district.
Polling for NBS in a head to head match up between Riddle and Gelsey shows Riddle ahead 46-44% with 10% undecided.
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Tom Riddle? If Harry Potter exists in this universe, he's got some pretty funny negative ads coming.
I am not a Harry Potter fan, I even had to Google the reference!!
That will be between incumbent Republican Senator Tannar McClay and the man he beat narrowly in 2014, Max Moreno who is a former Trade Rep during the Bartlet administration.
Friday, 20 March 2020
Pressure on Juchiro increases as scandal grows
Japanese Prime Minister Ayeka Juchiro is facing increasing pressure to resign as the extent of the medical waste disposal scandal grows. On Thursday, journalists for NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) reported that two landfills in the Fukushima prefecture showed elevated levels of radiation that could endanger landfill workers. While the government has since shut down the landfills and sent in teams from the Ministry of the Environment to locate the radioactive source material, NHK's reporting fingers previously-undisclosed illicit medical waste disposal in that region as well.
Juchiro, who has led the nation since 2012, was forced to reshuffle her cabinet after three ministers resigned on Sunday following the filing of criminal charges among administrators and officials in the Ministry of Health, Education and Welfare, for the improper disposal of radioactive medical equipment that resulted in a radiation accident in the northern city of Hachinohe that has hospitalized almost 300 people. While the constitution of her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) forbids her from standing for another three-year term as president (party leader) when her current term expires in October, several people familiar with discussions among party grandees say that several senior politicians, such as Minister of Foreign Affairs Shozo Nomura, have begun preparing for early leadership campaigns among LDP members in the event that public and internal pressure upon Juchiro grows too great for her to continue in office.
Recent opinion polling puts approval rating for Juchiro's cabinet at 37 percent, down nearly nine points from polls taken last month, prior to the Hachinohe accident.
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Friday, March 20th, 2020
Bipartisan group working towards gun control legislation
Despite wariness about touching sensitive issues in an election year, a bipartisan group of senators are planning on forging gun control legislation that will be acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats. On Friday, senators Jasper Irving (R-IL) and Robert Starkey (D-MT), said that they have been meeting with senators from both parties, to begin hammering out a potential change to the nation's gun laws.
"It's early days," Irving told reporters. "We are still figuring out which areas [of firearm policy] where we can work together and which areas are ones where we can't."
The pair are unlikely front men for the initiative: Irving was elected to his seat in a blue state by less than 3,000 votes in 2016 and has shown his willingness to buck his party on several issues, while Starkey is retiring this year after being elected three times as a Democrat in Montana in part because of his pro-gun background as a rancher and veteran.
Among the other members of the group are William Wiley (D-WA), Dylan McNamara (R-MS), Robert Cantina (R-AK) and Chris Casey (D-CT). Reports indicate that the chief topic of discussions are proposals for universal background checks, a possible federal red flag law, and magazine limits on semi-automatic rifles.
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Man brings unemployed wife, new children back to public housing residence
March 20, 2020
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OOC: Some more infoboxes. This time, it's four show characters:
Cast
John Aylward as Barry Goodwin
Keith Carradine as August Adair
Robert Picardo as Brad Shelton
Charley Lang as Matt Skinner
Cast
John Aylward as Barry Goodwin
Keith Carradine as August Adair
Robert Picardo as Brad Shelton
Charley Lang as Matt Skinner
- Goodwin was established as being a former governor of Maryland when he was nominated as vice president in 1994. My retcon is that he opted not to challenge Maryland's term limits law when he was elected to a two-year term (1987-1989) that realigned the year Maryland elected its governors after the 1986 presidential election.
- Luckily for me, Goodwin was established as having represented the same district that Andy Wyatt later represented, so I was able to grab his successor at Maryland's 8th district from Wyatt's infobox.
- Adair was recast in 2014 when Mark and disputed picked him to be Jimmy Fitzsimmons' VP nominee and I don't blame them considering how difficult it is to find suitable images for his show actor. The only addition I made to his biography is that Adair was in the Army Reserve, a reference to Carradine's more famous brother having been in the peacetime Army, and his character on Madam Secretary being a Vietnam vet.
Before anyone asks, Adair was established as being the youngest president of Ohio's state senate in history, hence why he's only a 36 year-old, one-term senator when he takes over presiding over the upper chamber in the Buckeye State.
- The Deputy Secretary of State, Edward Middleton, was established as Ambassador to Russia during the Walken administration. I figured the Seaborn administration would keep a few of the old Walken hands around after a close election, mostly to satisfy Republicans in the Senate.
- Shelton was mentioned to be a district court judge when he was considered for the Supreme Court during his show appearance, and that he was a former judge when he was picked to be Santos' second AG. Since Shelton isn't that old (55) when he's named to replace Babish, I had to figure out a way for it to make some kind of sense. My solution is this: Shelton resigns from the bench when he is nominated to avoid any seeming conflicts of interest. It takes a while to get the Senate to confirm him, mostly because of his son's predilection for rash behavior (mentioned during his show appearance is that the younger Shelton burned Bartlet in effigy during a protest of the US-Saudi alliance), so he spends a month as ex-judge Shelton before becoming Attorney General Shelton.
- While he was never mentioned as having been a former lower court chief judge, I found that Shelton would have become chief judge for the Northern District of Ohio had he been a RL judge based on his age and date of commission. The chief judge serves either a seven year-term or until they reach age 65, whichever comes first. Since Shelton was well off the court by the time he hit 65 (2018), he hands the chief judge position off to a colleague when he hits the seven year mark.
- Skinner's actor seems to have stepped away from acting after his show appearances to become a licensed therapist, but luckily he has some professional headshots that I could use to Photoshop him into an official-ish looking photo for Secretary of Transportation.
- Although Skinner is notable for being an openly gay, liberal-leaning Republican, his biography established him as being an independent before his disgust at D. Wire Newman's presidency led him to join the GOP halfway through Newman's term. He also, despite Vermont having legalized same-sex marriage for over a decade both IOTL & ITTL, has never married his long-time partner (the date from which they began dating is my creation, about ten years prior to the old thread beginning when Skinner was already mentioned to have been in a long-term relationship with Thompson).
OOC: As I'm sure everyone is painfully aware by now, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in a massive disruption to everyone's life across the globe, from large events like the Olympics being postponed, down to the granular level, with many people (including the other two writers on this project, and likely myself very soon) being under "stay at home" or "shelter in place" orders to contain the spread of the virus.
While both The West Wing show and our continuation thread(s) have mirrored real life events in order to tell compelling stories or examine real-life issues through the lens of fictional public servants and political operatives, there are some events that are difficult, if not impossible, to tactfully mirror. The September 11th attacks stand out as a notable example—the show made a special, noncanon episode ("Isaac and Ishmael") that alluded to the fear, shock, confusion and anger that the United States felt in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but did not feel it necessary or appropriate to create a fictional terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center, or whose death toll went into the thousands.
The pandemic and disruptions in almost all our lives that it has caused are no exception. This thread will not explore the idea of a global pandemic and its social, economic and political implications while millions across the world, especially the elderly and those with weakened or compromised immune systems, remain under deadly threat. Instead, we ask that you continue reading as President Sam Seaborn and his administration wrangle with Congress over the legislative agenda, deal with events around the world, and finally make their case to voters in the midterm election, in a world without "social distancing" and "flattening the curve".
While both The West Wing show and our continuation thread(s) have mirrored real life events in order to tell compelling stories or examine real-life issues through the lens of fictional public servants and political operatives, there are some events that are difficult, if not impossible, to tactfully mirror. The September 11th attacks stand out as a notable example—the show made a special, noncanon episode ("Isaac and Ishmael") that alluded to the fear, shock, confusion and anger that the United States felt in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but did not feel it necessary or appropriate to create a fictional terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center, or whose death toll went into the thousands.
The pandemic and disruptions in almost all our lives that it has caused are no exception. This thread will not explore the idea of a global pandemic and its social, economic and political implications while millions across the world, especially the elderly and those with weakened or compromised immune systems, remain under deadly threat. Instead, we ask that you continue reading as President Sam Seaborn and his administration wrangle with Congress over the legislative agenda, deal with events around the world, and finally make their case to voters in the midterm election, in a world without "social distancing" and "flattening the curve".
OOC: Or, if you want to rack it up to this universe being a different timeline...
That's supposed to be Aaron Sorkin on the right
That's supposed to be Aaron Sorkin on the right