GOP Rep. Michelle Steel wins reelection after campaign marked by charges of red-baiting, racism, and sexism, her opponent Michelle Denton won just 1 percent of the vote in a race that included attacks on her supporters, her mother, and the Democratic Party, and accusations of corruption by Steel, which was never proven.
One week after defeating incumbent Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, a Democrat, in her conservative Southern California district, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez claimed victory in his party’s primary and declared that his challenge of Steel would “show the country what we mean when we run against corrupt incumbents.”
“The idea that in the final days of the campaign that this woman was somehow corrupt doesn’t really make any sense. Her campaign came from the grassroots, she recruited people from across the country, she built an army of volunteers from across the country,” Perez said. “There’s no way she could have reached out to that many people unless she herself was so excited about the work that she was doing. She recruited people to help her make it through this race. That’s what we saw when we went through this campaign. It was a grassroots campaign that came from the ground up to show the country what we mean when we run against corrupt incumbents.”
Steel’s campaign manager, Andrew Smith, told the Los Angeles Times that the campaign could not have succeeded without the help of thousands of volunteers, who were “reaching out to voters of all ideological stripes and persuading them to get involved.” Smith said Steel’s political experience as the daughter of a former steelworker would “bring an authenticity and authenticity to our campaign that you just don’t see in these campaigns.”
Steel’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
In an appearance last week on Fox News’ “The Five,” Steel was slammed as an “anti-woman, anti-immigrant, racist, and corrupt” opponent. The show, which received an audience of more than 10 million viewers, featured Steel, a former deputy undersecretary of the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, who has led a congressional career of controversies, most notably being accused of racism, sexism, and corruption.
Steel’s Democratic primary opponent, Andrew Bremberg, spent
