#Clinton Leupp

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[benedictusantonius]

Girls Will Be Girls (2003) directed by Richard Day

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Coco Peru is one of the drag queens featured in Wigstock (1995). Coco was born Clinton Leupp and has 32 acting credits from a 1994 Cyndi Lauper video to 13 episodes of a 2022 series. This is her second honorable mention, after To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar.

Her other notable credits include episodes of New York Undercover, Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, The Browns, and seven episodes of Will and Grace.

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

❤🧡💛💚💙💜🏳️‍⚧️

[yourdailyqueer]

Miss Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp)

Gender: Male (she/her in drag)

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 27 August 1965

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Drag artist, actor, activist, comedian, Youtuber

[geekcavepodcast]

Animated “DeadEndia” Coming to Netflix

Netflix and Blink Industries are developing a 2D animated series based on Hamish Steele’s DeadEndia graphic novels and the web short Dead End.

DeadEndia is a coming of age comedy that follows Barney, Norma, and Pugsley the magical talking dog as they navigate their summer jobs at a local theme park while also battling the supernatural forces that reside inside the haunted house attraction. The three are joined by Courtney, a thousand-year-old demon who is their guide to the underworld multiplane.

DeadEndia stars the voice talents of Zach Barack as Barney, Kody Kavitha as Norma, Emily Osment as Courtney, Alex Brightman as Pugsley, Clinton Leupp as Pauline Phoenix, Kenny Tran as Logs, and Kathreen Khavari as Badyah.

DeadEndia will hit Netflix in 2021.

(Image - cover of DeadEndia: The Watcher’s Test)

[graphicpolicy]

Hamish Steele's DeadEndia Goes from Graphic Novels to Netflix Animated Series

Hamish Steele's DeadEndia Goes from Graphic Novels to Netflix Animated Series #comics #comicbooks

Hamish Steele‘s graphic novel series DeadEndia is being adapted into an animated series for Netflix. Blink Industries studio in London is producing the series which is set to premiere in 2021.

DeadEndia follows Barney, Norma, and a magical-talking-dog named Pugsley as they battle supernature forces that dwell within a haunted house at the local theme park they work at.

The graphic novel…

[papermoon4]

TRICK Cumshot for the TRICKSTER with @therealmisscocoperu

[zhuldybin-zakhards738]

Clinton Leupp husband Photos Information and their life details Movie Actress

Clinton Leupp husband Photos Information and their life details Movie Actress

Clinton Leupp Husband

Is she married?

About Clinton Leupp :

About

Understood by her stage/drag name Miss Coco Peru, she is best known for her jobs in the movies Trick and Girls Will Be Girls, the last of which she shared Best Actress praises with her co-stars at the HBO Comedy Arts Festival and Best Actor grant at LA’s Outfest Film Festival.

Prior to Fame

She got her begin in New York City as a…

[kuwaiti-kid]

Netflix Announces New Animated Series ‘DeadEndia’

Netflix announced yesterday, that Hamish Steele‘s horror-comedy graphic novel series “DeadEndia” will be coming soon to a screen near you.

The BAFTA-nominated, London-based studios of Blink Industries will be adapting the award-winning graphic novels into a 2D animated series for the streaming platform. It is set to premiere globally on Netflix in 2021.

Hamish Steele explained that, “DeadEndia is about terrifying demons, vengeful ghosts and mysterious magic. It is also about coming of age in a world that wasn’t made for you. It’s a drama about found family, identity, and making mistakes. And of course, it’s a laugh out loud comedy! I’ve always dreamed of making the show I needed as a lonely, horror-obsessed closeted gay kid, and thanks to Netflix and our ridiculously talented, diverse, and representative writers room and crew, we have shot way past my dreams and into wildest fantasy territory!”

DeadEndia is based on Steele's graphic novel series and web short Dead End, and it follows the adventures of Barney, Norma, and the magical-talking-dog Pugsley, as they balance their summer jobs at the local theme park haunted house while battling the totally real supernatural forces that dwell within it.

Together with their guide to the underworld multiplane, a sardonic thousand-year-old demon named Courtney, they'll face zombie mascots, demonic game show hosts, sleep-sucking witches, and the scariest thing of all: their first crushes!

The series will feature the voice talents of Zach Barack as Barney, Kody Kavitha as Norma, Emily Osment as Courtney, Alex Brightman as Pugsley, Clinton Leupp (a.k.a Miss Coco Peru) as Paule Phoenix, Kenny Trans as Logs, and Kathreen Khavari as Badyah.

Zach Barack, Kody Kavitha, Emily Osment, Clinton Leupp (a.k.a Miss Coco Peru), Kenny Trans, and Alex Brightman.

The graphic novels were lauded for capturing the growing pains of early adulthood, with a cast of characters with a wide variety of identities and experiences, including Barney who is a transgender teen and Norma who is neurodiverse.

You can catch DeadEndia in 2021 only on Netflix. 

from Your Money Geek https://ift.tt/2ZxVvBv via IFTTT

[jasontrahan]

Be Kind, Rewind

In the spirit of pride month, I figured I’d tell a story. A story that takes me back to a time when being gay was nowhere near the acceptance it celebrates today. I grew up not ever seeing men kiss on the TV screen or the movie screen. It just wasn’t done. Imagine never seeing something as normal as a kiss that represents you. Imagine only seeing what society wanted you to see. It definitely made me feel unworthy and not accepted—an abnormality, if you will.

It was a very typical day in the small town I grew up in. I called my friend to ask her if she wanted to grab lunch and bring me to the video store. She agreed. We had several video stores, but I assumed our sole Blockbuster Video store would have it over the small mom and pop video stores. I was wrong. The clerk behind the counter had never heard of the movie. I had only ever been to Blockbuster Video, but we had a Hollywood Video, so we decided to check out there. They had it. I had never rented a video from there, so I had to open an account. Eventually, I ended up working there, dated two coworkers, and moved up the latter to manager, but that is for a different blog entry. Actually, that story would fill several chapters of an exciting memoir.

The movie I’m talking about was my first entry into gay cinema. It was a movie released in 1999 called Trick. It starred Christian Campbell, J.P. Pitoc, Tori Spelling, and the delightful Miss Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp). The plot of the film is a familar story for most gay men. Actually, it’s a familiar story for most people in general. It told a story of a musical theater writer who meets up with a Go-Go boy. These two men try looking for a place to hook up. That’s it. That’s the gist of the story. Everywhere they attempt, they’re thwarted by obstacles such as a room mate at home in their studio apartment, a drag queen in a bar bathroom who stirs up trouble, and a best friend who deosn’t catch the hint being thrown her direction that they want to be left alone. It’s a fascinating film that will always be dear to me because it was during the beginning of my journey as a gay man. It’s where my fascination of wanting to live in New York began, or any big city like it. Jim Fall, the director, announced a sequel. It was supposed to come out this year, but they haven’t started filming yet, so I doubt it gets a 2019 release date.

That’ s the story i wanted to tell. The story about a film that holds a significant place in my memory during an exciting time in my life. How about you? What was your first gay film and how did it shape you?

Happy Pride!

-JP

[ramascreen]

Official Trailer For Netflix DEAD END: PARANORMAL PARK

Official Trailer For Netflix DEAD END: PARANORMAL PARK

Netflix has released this official trailer for  Dead End: Paranormal Park Series Launch Date: June 16, 2022 Format: 2D Animated Series Showrunner: Hamish Steele Production Studio: Blink Industries Cast: Zach Barack, Kody Kavitha, Emily Osment, Alex Brightman, Clinton Leupp a.k.a. Miss Coco Peru, Kenny Tran and Kathreen Khavari Guest Stars: Alan Cumming, Angelica Ross, C Nelson, Kemah Bob, MJ…

[martinkhall]

Voice actor/character list from Wikipedia.

Barney (voiced by Zach Barack), a teenage trans boy who works at the haunted house.

Norma (voiced by Kody Kavitha), a neurodiverse character who works at the haunted house with Barney.

Pugsley (voiced by Alex Brightman), a magical dog which talks.

Courtney (voiced by Emily Osment), a thousand-year-old demon.

Pauline Phoenix (voiced by Clinton Leupp)

Logs (voiced by Kenny Tran)

Badyah (voiced by Kathreen Khavari)

That’s two groups that don’t often get represented on TV.

There's a cartoon called Dead End: Paranormal Park coming out on Netflix about a demonic theme park with a trans main character

Ya'll I've watched the trailer and seen a couple of videos like "will this show save Netflix?" and I LEGITIMATELY did not know the mc was trans until this came in. My ass just thought people were wildin' over fun paranormal shenanigans.

[hotspotsmagazine]

Q&A: Coco Peru Talks Hit Show ‘Have You Heard?’

Miss Coco Peru, who is no stranger to South Florida audiences, returns with her hit show “Have You Heard?” for one night only at the Sunshine Cathedral (1480 SW 9th Ave, Fort Lauderdale) on Saturday, March 23 at 8 p.m.

Coco Peru aka Clinton Leupp has appeared in many films and TV shows but is perhaps best known for her role in 1999s “Trick” which also starred “Beverly Hills 90210” alum Tori Spelling. Her very popular “Conversations with Coco,” is a successful internet series that has put Miss Coco in front of legends like Liza Minnelli, Jane Fonda, and Bea Arthur.

It was a pleasure to chat with Miss Coco Peru for this Hotspots exclusive interview.

Were you always an entertainer, even as a child, or when did you get the bug? 

Yes, I was always an entertainer. I was obsessed with the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” and apparently had memorized the entire soundtrack by the age of  two. I would act it out for my family and anyone who would watch and so my parents finally took me to see it on Broadway and when it was over I was pouting. My mother asked, “What’s wrong? Didn’t you enjoy the show?” and I answered, “I’ve been doing it all wrong!” I’ve been a perfectionist ever since.

When and how was Coco Peru born?

In late 80’s I was very inspired by the AIDS activism in NYC. I decided I wanted to combine my love of performing with activism and having been shamed for being effeminate my whole life I figured one of the most powerful, radical things I could do at that time was to be an openly gay performer. I then decided to take it a step further and embrace what I had been taught to try and suppress and instead glorify it.  I know nowadays it may seem that being an openly gay performer and a drag queen is not that big of a deal, but back then there were not the opportunities or even the visibility so it really was a leap of faith. However, I knew in my heart that it was the right thing to do, not just for myself but for future LGBT people.

Did you do “other drag” before you created Miss Coco Peru? 

No. Coco was the first creation and she immediately resonated with people, because I was telling autobiographical stories and that wasn’t something drag queens were doing at that time. I was talking about the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, I was talking about AIDS, I was talking about my family and growing up gay in the Bronx. I was giving a voice to what a lot of people were feeling and my shows sort of became a big group therapy for the audience and me.  In fact, I used to say, “Let’s pretend that this is a group therapy session, and it my turn to talk.”

How did you come up with the name and were there any other choices?

My first boyfriend was Peruvian and we went together to visit his country and I met a very cute boy named Coco who later came out onstage as this glamourous drag queen! I could not believe the transformation and I learned that he was very famous in Peru. It got me asking, “How could a gay man in drag get famous and be loved and celebrated in such a Catholic, homophobic country (at that time you had to knock on doors to get into the gay clubs), and I decided that there was a power in having the courage to embrace 100 percent of who you are and that human beings are wired to respect that courage.

What would be the ultimate place for you to perform in? 

Radio City Music Hall with the Rockettes.

Tell us something about the man behind Coco?

As you grow older there are so many things along the way that can corrupt your love for what you do, so I always try to remember that boy who entertained his family by singing the entire soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof. I remember those Aids activists and those that came before me that made my life easier, and I try to get back to why I originally created Coco, so that when the business makes me crazy I will ask myself, “Why did you get into this business?” After 27 years the answer has always been the same, “I want to entertain, to feel a connection with my audience, and I want to leave the world just a little bit better than I how I found it.” It may sound corny, but it’s important for me to keep things in focus.

Describe Coco and Clinton in three words each?

Coco – Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

Clinton – Bed, Bath and Beyond

#td_uid_1_5c8a6b10dfbf3 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item1 { background: url(https://hotspotsmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CoCo-Peru-160x120.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; }

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Coco Peru and Matt Bomer (Photos: Peter Palladino)

What’s new since we spoke last year?

Well, I’m a year closer to retirement! And I was also on Will and Grace since we last spoke. It was so much fun and they even have me coming back again for the Season Finale which will be on in April. We already filmed it in December and Matt Bomer is in the episode and at the table read he walked over to me and said, “I have to introduce myself, I’m a HUGE fan!” Needless to say, I was thrilled! Being on the show was a great experience, and to have been asked back for a second time this season was a real honor.  The entire cast and crew are the best.

What can the Fort Lauderdale audience expect from your show?

This a Best-Of show and it’s all material that I love performing. For those who remember me from my early days in NYC, they’ll even recognize a monologue that I became very well known for back in the early 90’s. It’s set to opera aria and it’s a bitch to do, but it’s been fun revisiting it, and since my retirement is on the horizon, this might be the last time I get to perform some of this material. Yes, that’s a threat. BE THERE! 

And did I mention that Matt Bomer is a huge fan? 

For more information on CoCo, you can visit her website at: Misscocoperu.com or check her out on social media at:.Twitter.com/themisscocoperu; Facebook.com/misscocoperufans or Instagram.com/misscocoperu.

  View this post on Instagram

  Find us on Willam’s YouTube channel. Xo Coco

A post shared by Miss Coco Peru (@misscocoperu) on Mar 13, 2019 at 7:51pm PDT

To purchase tickets to Coco Peru’s “Have You Heard?,” which start at only $30,  go to Outlandishfl.com.

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2019/03/14/qa-coco-peru-talks-hit-show-have-you-heard/

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

[bountyofbeads]

Republicans are doing the same thing in North Carolina as well. #VoteCalCunninghamforSenate to replace Thom Tillis.

THE PARTY RAIDERS OF SOUTH CAROLINA

Before the state’s Democratic primary, on February 29th, a number of Republicans are trying to settle on the least electable candidate.

Twelve years ago, Rush Limbaugh, who had not yet received the Presidential  Medal of Freedom, urged the listeners of his enormously popular and very conservative talk-radio show to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. In the patchwork process  that is employed to nominate Presidential candidates, more than a dozen states have open primaries, which allow registered voters to participate in either contest. Limbaugh wanted Clinton’s close but seemingly losing fight with Barack Obama to go on for as long as possible, on the theory that a protracted battle would weaken the eventual nominee. He called the plan Operation Chaos. Limbaugh didn’t think that Clinton was necessarily the weaker of the two candidates—in fact, he ultimately concluded that Obama was; by May, 2008, he was pushing his fans to vote for the senator from Illinois. “Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to win—blue-collar, working-class people,” Limbaugh said. “He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that.”

Karen Martin, a freelance editor and pet-sitter who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, believes that her plan is more strategic than chaotic. Martin is the creator of Trump 2-29, which is encouraging Republicans to vote for Bernie Sanders in the state’s upcoming Democratic primary, on February 29th. “We’re really mad,” Martin told me recently, referring to her fellow-conservatives. “Mad at how our President has been treated for the past several years and wanting to do something now.” Voting for Trump isn’t an option: South Carolina’s Republican primary was cancelled in October, out of deference to the President. (“With no legitimate primary challenger and President Trump’s record of results, the decision was made to save South Carolina taxpayers over $1.2 million and forgo an unnecessary primary,” South Carolina’s G.O.P. chairman, Drew McKissick, announced in a statement at the time. A former Republican state representative sued to block the cancellation but lost in court.) Obama’s former Vice-President, Joe Biden, was expected to perform well in South Carolina; Martin wanted to vote for someone who could ruin it for him. As Iowa neared, she said, “We decided it’ll be Bernie.” Martin doubts that Sanders will ultimately be the Democrats’ nominee—though, if that happens, “It would be a great lesson in American Civics 101,” she said, adding, “To have those final debates be between an avowed socialist and a capitalist with the economic record that President Trump does, that would be really a contrast to see. Bernie makes it poetic.”

The South Carolina Republican Party has no official involvement in Martin’s efforts, but it hasn’t discouraged them, either. The executive director of the South Carolina G.O.P., Hope Walker, issued a statement acknowledging the existence of “activists that may decide to participate in the open Democratic Presidential Preference Primary” and explaining that the Party “has taken no official stand on this matter.” Meanwhile, Nathan Leupp, the chairman of the Greenville County Republican Party, told the Charleston Post and Courier, “I think we can easily affect the outcome. This is going to catch on like wildfire.” Leupp told me that he had talked not only to local activists but to the five other upstate-county G.O.P. chairmen about the plan; they concluded that it would be best for “the grassroots activists to make this push,” he said. (The Post and Courier story mentioned a planned press conference; after the story ran, Leupp said, the effort got so much attention that “we didn’t need a conference at that point.”)

Independently from Martin, a political and public-relations consultant from Greenville named Christopher Sullivan has launched a campaign that nods more explicitly to Limbaugh’s influence: Operation Chaos 2020. “We’ve put up a Web site, and we’re doing some digital work and communicating with our members and supporters,” he told me. Operation Chaos 2020 flyers were handed out at a Party meeting and garnered some attention on Twitter—there are plans for radio advertising, too, Sullivan said. Both the flyers and the Web site note that the effort is a project of the Conservative Defense Fund, the name of which may suggest a large organization; Sullivan is the chair of the group and, he said, its only full-time employee. (Karen Martin told me, of her own campaign, “The other day somebody asked, ‘So how much money is behind this effort?’ And I had to laugh. It’s when I can, in between dog-walking.”) But Sullivan is optimistic that even a modestly funded campaign could have real effects. He noted that, in South Carolina primaries, Republicans typically turn out at twice the numbers of Democrats—so even a small percentage of Republican crossover voters could be decisive in a reasonably close race.

Unlike Martin, Sullivan is not pushing any particular candidate. “One of the things is that the Democratic primary is in such disarray of their own making that it’s kind of hard, even at this late date, to know exactly which candidate is gonna be the best one to choose,” he said. “Six weeks ago, Joe Biden was the front-runner, and everybody was saying he was assured of the nomination. And now he’s dropping like a rock. It might be the best vote would be to prop up Joe Biden.” Sullivan set up a poll on the Operation Chaos 2020 Web site asking “which crazy Democrat candidate” participants in the operation should vote for. Late last week, Sanders was winning in a landslide, but, over the weekend, thousands of new votes came in for Elizabeth Warren. “I think her socialist policies would be a big loser in the general election, so I can see why Republicans would want her to be at the top of the ticket,” Sullivan told me. It may be that deciding which candidate is the least likely to beat Trump is no easier than deciding which is most likely to do so.

The kind of voting that Martin and Sullivan are pushing for is often called party raiding, and it has been around for a long time. Measuring its effect is difficult, but it is usually thought to be very small. (In 2008, when Limbaugh was pushing Clinton, some Obama supporters were convinced that bad-faith Republican voters had won the Indiana primary for her, but this was disputed.) That said, South Carolina in 2020 is a “perfect storm of crossover voting incentives,” according to Josh Putnam, a political scientist based in Wilmington, North Carolina, who runs the election-consulting firm FHQ Strategies. Putnam pointed to the earliness of the primary and the absence of a G.O.P. contest in the state and noted that, in South Carolina, unlike in many other states, primary participants don’t have to publicly proclaim that they belong to the party whose primary they are voting in. It may not hurt that President Trump has openly encouraged party raiding: at a rally in Manchester the night before the New Hampshire primary, Trump said, “So I hear a lot of Republicans tomorrow will vote for the weakest candidate possible of the Democrats. Does that make sense? You people wouldn’t do that!” (New Hampshire has a semi-open primary: those who are not registered as a member of a party can vote in either race.) Trump added, “My only problem is I’m trying to figure who is their weakest candidate—I think they’re all weak!” The South Carolina effort “has the potential to not only affect the race but how the field of candidates continues to winnow,” Putnam said. “The final remaining variable is promotion.”

Martin has been trying to spread the word on Facebook, where, on the official Trump 2-29 page, you can see debates about the plan unfold in real time. “Bernie is leading in the polls,” a Charleston resident named Sheri Irwin wrote. “Why on earth would we vote for him?” A man named Paul Fallavollita responded by highlighting South Carolina’s importance to Biden, adding, “A lot of corporations and banks have said they’ll pull their donations away from the Democratic Party if Bernie is the nominee. Here’s an opportunity to starve them of funds. Plus, if Bernie wins most of the primaries and the DNC cheats him, his voters will stay home in November.” Irwin wasn’t convinced. “This is how we got the usurper Obama,” she wrote. Then another South Carolina voter, Clark Mccauley, chimed in. “Democrat party don’t want Bernie that’s why we need to vote for him,” he wrote. “He is the craziest.” Lisa S. Marie wasn’t sold. “Good to know that the Tea Party is now pro abortion and for socialism,” she commented. “Good luck selling that!”

Marie is not the only South Carolina conservative who simply can’t stomach voting for someone whose views diverge so sharply from her own, regardless of the potential payoff. Hal Roach, a fifty-eight-year-old lawyer in Greenville, told me that he had friends who were originally “on board to vote for Bernie, but, after looking at some of these debates, they’re saying, ‘They’re all crazy, and there’s no way I can possibly and in good conscience ever vote for anybody up there,’ ” even to help Trump. Still, most Republicans, he believes, are less conflicted about crossing over than they are about who to choose. “Do you pick the most sane—the least crazy, as I view it—Democratic nominee?” he said. “For me, that would be Amy Klobuchar. Or do you pick the biggest whack job—that’s one of my favorite words—who I believe to be Bernie.” Roach has settled on Sanders.

Gaye Holt, a “very conservative, Christian-based Republican” who works for a family-owned screen-printing business in Greer, first heard about the Trump 2-29 effort on Facebook and has been fully convinced by the case for Sanders. “I think he’s a Communist, a Marxist,” she told me. “He wants to give everything for free and have no capitalism in America, even though he flies around on his private jets and town cars.” Holt also told me that she had seen the Democrats doing their own party raiding during a previous election. In the 2012 Republican primary, she was a poll worker, she said, and one of her jobs was to ask those who showed up which primary they had arrived to vote in. “A number of people said they wanted to vote in the Democratic primary,” she recalled. “And I would explain, ‘Well, there’s no Democratic primary today, there’s only a Republican’ ”—that year, the two contests were scheduled a week apart—“and their response, every single time, was ‘Oh, I want to vote for Rick Santorum,’ ” the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania. She added, “Not to judge anyone, but I knew these people were not Republicans.” Holt is convinced that these people had been “guided by someone” to vote for Santorum, “because he would be the easiest for Obama to beat.” If this reflected a concerted effort, it was not a successful one: in 2012, Newt Gingrich won the state’s Republican primary. Santorum finished third.

Among the reasons that party raiding is unlikely to have a tremendous effect on the Democratic nomination is that, in most states, including South Carolina, the Party awards delegates proportionally, according to the percentage of the vote received. (The Republican race, on the other hand, features many winner-take-all states.) When Clinton eked out a win over Obama in Indiana, in 2008, Obama still received thirty-four of the state’s seventy-two pledged delegates.

But Martin emphasized that upending the Democrats’ nominating process is, for her, a secondary goal. Martin is an organizer for the Spartanburg Tea Party and a former member of the South Carolina Republican Platform Committee, and she has been advocating for closed primaries for more than a decade. “Anytime a Democrat comes and votes in a primary that I’m also voting in, my vote is diluted,” she told me. “So it’s a very personal thing. It impacts who represents me.” Sullivan, the consultant, is also in favor of closed primaries, as is Leupp, the Greenville G.O.P. chair. “I go to a Baptist church,” Leupp told me. “When we go to pick a new minister, my Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, and Mormon friends shouldn’t have a say.” He went on, “This Democratic primary has brought attention to something we feel needs to be changed. If it also disrupts the Democrats, so be it.”

In this respect, at least, the campaigns led by Martin and Sullivan have already made some headway. The state senator Marlon Kimpson, a Democrat who represents Charleston, has introduced a bill to end open primaries in South Carolina, and he cited Republican efforts to vote in the 2020 Democratic primary in his argument for the legislation. Martin posted a video of Kimpson’s remarks on Facebook, writing, “LOOK! Listen! this is what our Trump 2-29 Campaign activists have accomplished in just the first few days . . . Welcome to the team Senator Marlon Kimpson!”

“This is not targeted at the dissatisfied Republicans who are in good faith voting in our primary this time,” Kimpson told me. “It’s designed to send a message to the people who want to unfairly influence our process by voting for the weaker candidate.” Kimpson agrees with Martin about who that is. “The Party is searching for a moderate candidate, and Bernie has seized on the division in the Party. But, by every indication, a democratic socialist is problematic. I think the national data bears that out.” In a recent Gallup poll, a majority of Americans said that they wouldn’t vote for a socialist—but Sanders comes out ahead of Trump in an average of head-to-head national polls and has performed better in such polls than most of his Democratic competitors. (Sanders, who is running as a Democrat for the Presidency but is still an Independent in the Senate, has also expressed support, in the past, for open primaries, in which he has often done well.) It’s possible that conservative party raiders, like Limbaugh twelve years ago, have too much confidence in their political forecasting. As for the likelihood of his bill passing, Kimpson said, “I’ve asked for an expedited hearing. I don’t know that the judiciary chairman will give it to me. We’ll be talking this week.” He doubts that it will be addressed before February 29th.

*********