Need to Know for June 26

June 26, 2018 JMORE Staff

Election Day, voter registration snafu, Barr podcast and AP World History

Maryland campaign posters (Photo by Joel Nadler)

Go vote!

It’s Election Day in Maryland, as well as in New York, Utah, Colorado and Oklahoma. In Maryland, polls are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. and anyone in line at 8 p.m. will be allowed to vote. One of the closest watched races is the gubernatorial race in which the incumbent Republican Governor Larry Hogan will face one of the following Democrats as he runs for a second term: Rushern L. Baker III, Ben Jealous, Richard S. Madaleno Jr., Alec Ross, James L. Shea and Krishanti Vignarajah.

Read more about the candidates here.

Also see: Every June 26 primary election you should know about, briefly explained

Voter registration error in Maryland

A computer error at the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration involving voter registration may affect as many as 80,000 voters — about four times as many as officials first estimated over the weekend and about 2 percent of all Maryland voters, state officials announced on June 25, the eve of the state’s primary. The problem relates to changes voters made in address and party affiliation on the MVA’s website or kiosks, information that failed to be sent to the state elections board. Affected voters will need to use the provisional voting process to cast their ballots, according to Fox 5 DC. The MVA said it discovered the error on June 22, and the problem was only made public the evening of June 23. State officials first said about 18,760 people were affected.

Jewish Democrat Jason Kander to run for mayor of Kansas City

Jason Kander, the Jewish former Democratic Missouri secretary of state who many speculated had presidential aspirations, said he will run for mayor of Kansas City. Kander, who was set to make a formal announcement on June 25, joins a field of eight other mayoral candidates, the Kansas City Star reported. Some believed that Kander, 37, may have been thinking about a run for higher office in 2020. A Democrat with a growing national profile, Kander had hired a national communications strategist for Let America Vote, the voting rights advocacy nonprofit that he founded. In 2016, Kander lost in a tight contest for the U.S. Senate to the incumbent Republican, Roy Blunt. Kander served two terms in the Missouri House before serving one term as secretary of state. The Kansas City native is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan. Kander is the son of a policeman and a probation officer. –JTA

Trump nicknames Jewish Democratic senate candidate ‘Wacky Jacky’

President Donald Trump took a swipe at the Jewish Democratic lawmaker challenging Nevada’s sitting Republican senator. Trump nicknamed Nevada Rep. Jacky Rosen “Wacky Jacky” on June 23 in a speech to the Nevada state GOP convention. Rosen, a freshman congresswoman who served as president of her suburban Las Vegas Reform synagogue, is challenging Republican Sen. Dean Heller. Nevada is considered one of the few likely Senate pickups for Democrats in 2018. Heller is the only Republican incumbent whose state voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election in November. “I have a great nickname for her,” Trump said referring to Rosen. “Wacky Jacky. You don’t want her as your senator.” Trump also attacked Rosen for campaigning with Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who he referred to by the nickname “Pocahontas,” over her claims of having some Native American ancestry. “Wacky Jacky is campaigning with Pocahontas, you believe this? In your state!” he said. Trump said he would be in Nevada “a lot” to campaign for Heller. –JTA

In other news …

Baltimore-Washington Parkway deal

Gov. Larry Hogan and the U.S. Department of the Interior have reached a deal to explore transferring ownership of the Maryland portion of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway from the federal government to the state. The Hogan administration has sought to add express toll lanes to the thoroughfare running from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. as part of a $9 billion Traffic Relief Plan, first announced in September 2017. Under the proposal, the Capital Beltway (I-495) and I-270, running from the northwest corner of the Capital Beltway to Frederick, would also be expanded, according to Baltimore Fishbowl. If a transfer goes through, the Maryland Transportation Authority would then construct the new lanes and maintain the parkway. Giving control of the parkway to the state also opens the door for two high-speed mass transit projects, the Maglev and Elon Musk’s planned Hyperloop, both of which have plotted routes in close proximity to the highway.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach releases Barr podcast interview

Actress Roseanne Barr became emotional and expressed regret for her tweet against a former Obama administration official during a podcast interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. The interview had taken place two days after ABC canceled her popular show, a reboot of her late 1980s sitcom, over the tweet mocking Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama and an African-American. The tweet said the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” The actress later deleted the tweet and issued an apology, saying she had made “a bad joke about her politics and her looks.” Boteach did not release the podcast at the time, saying: “I want to give her space to reflect on the recent events and releasing the recording is a decision she will make at the appropriate time.” He released the podcast early on June 24, a day after ABC rehired most of the cast of the rebooted show with reported plans to launch a new show, “The Connors,” about the popular working class family but without the original show’s namesake. During the podcast, Boteach traced his 20-year relationship with Barr, who is Jewish, and noted that she “loves the Torah.” Barr broke down crying during part of the interview, telling Boteach: “I’m a lot of things, a loud mouth and all that stuff. But I’m not stupid for God’s sake. I never would have wittingly call any black person and say they are a monkey. I just wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do that. And people think that I did that and it just kills me. I didn’t do that. And if they do think that, I’m just so sorry that I was so unclear and stupid. I’m very sorry. But I don’t think that and I would never do that. I have loved ones who are African American, and I just can’t stand it. I’ve made a huge error and I told ABC when they called me.” Barr said she thought Valerie Jarrett was a white woman when she made her comments.

No drugs found in Anthony Bourdain’s system

Anthony Bourdain, a celebrity chef and writer who hosted popular food and travel shows on CNN, did not have narcotics in his body when he died. Bourdain’s death earlier this month at age 61 was ruled a suicide by hanging by French police, after his body was found in a hotel bathroom in Kaysersberg, a small French village, where he was working on an upcoming episode of his CNN series “Parts Unknown.” The New York Times reported over the weekend that no drugs were found in his body except a regular dose of a nonnarcotic medicine. Bourdain had been upfront about his use of cocaine, heroin and other drugs, and had filmed a 2014 episode of “Parts Unknown” that explored the nation’s opioid epidemic, where he talked about his own drug use. In 2013, Bourdain traveled to Israel for an episode of “Parts Unknown,” where he explored the culinary traditions of Jews and Arabs and reflected on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the show he said his father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish, but that he was raised without religion. His mother, Gladys, told the New York Times that she would get his name, Tony, tattooed on the inside of her wrist as a personal memorial to her son, drawn by his tattoo artist. Bourdain’s death came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying suicide rates rose in all but one state between 1999 and 2016, with increases seen across age, gender, race and ethnicity. —JTA

Jewish historical figures to be cut from AP World History curriculum

The College Board recently proposed a controversial change to the AP World History curriculum: start at the year 1450, not the dawn of civilization. The idea, aimed at limiting the amount of material covered in the course, has prompted criticism from educators since it was announced last month. Time pointed out that if that new curriculum goes into effect, an array of significant world figures would miss the course’s cutoff. With the help of astrophysicist Michael H. Hart and the MIT Pantheon project, the magazine compiled a list of 200 of the most influential individuals in documented history, from the Pharaoh Menes, born in 3201 B.C.E., to President George W. Bush, born in 1946. Going by this list, students in the course would no longer study 40 percent of the history’s influential people. Not surprisingly, among those missing the cutoff on the Time list are some of the most important figures in Jewish history: Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon (although some feature more prominently in the course than others). The Jewish figures who still make the 1450 cutoff on the Time list are Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and Gregory Pincus, co-inventor of the birth control pill. Critics have noted that the change appears to shift the focus largely to Western history. “They couldn’t have picked a more Eurocentric date,” World History Association president Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks told The New York Times. Due to the vocal opposition, the organization, according to its AP program head, Trevor Packer, is reconsidering its decision, weighing moving the start date to “several centuries earlier” than 1450. The College Board will announce its final decision in July. –JTA

J-Word of the Day
Mazel (Hebrew)
Meaning: luck; good luck
Usage: Mazel to all the candidates who can help our city, state and country today.

JBiz

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