Bill Maher, who hosts HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday nights, is running a ‘contest’ on his show known as ‘Flip A District.’ Every week, he places two House members into his 16-person bracket to battle it out. He is calling the bracket the ‘Tweet 16’ and encourages his viewers to help not only place the Representatives that should go into the bracket, but who should ‘win’ the matchups. The overall ‘winner’ in the bracket will be on the receiving end of negative ads from Maher’s SuperPAC during this year’s midterm elections.
When Maher announced his contest a couple of months ago, I offered up some potential names to include. One Congressman I named, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), has already been placed in the bracket. However, another House member that I discussed, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), while he hasn’t been listed yet, will be a round-table guest of Maher’s on Friday.
This should be interesting. Not only has this site offered up Hunter as a potential ‘Flip A District’ candidate, numerous YouTube videos have been made suggesting him as an awful Congressman worthy of inclusion in this bracket. Also, every week a number of tweets are sent out asking Maher to consider Hunter.
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Below is one of the YouTube videos:
Hunter’s opponent this November, Democrat James Kimber, has done a remarkable job of getting bipartisan support in his effort to unseat Hunter. While Kimber was at a fundraiser earlier this year, a local band known as Slow Traffic was playing nearby. The band’s lead guitarist, Joe Mullenix, a self-professed Libertarian, listened to Kimber’s speech. Despite not being there for the fundraiser, he was moved enough by Kimber and his passion that he came up with a campaign song for Kimber on the spot.
The band eventually endorsed Kimber on April 1st and recorded a campaign video for the Democratic candidate:
Now, I will say it is highly doubtful that Maher will actually place Hunter in the ‘Tweet 16’ on this episode. Maher has a reputation of being nice to certain Republican lawmakers so as he can have them on as repeat guests (i.e. Darrell Issa, Dana Rohrabacher.) As his show can be brutal to conservatives, he likes to have certain ones he can bring on time and time again. However, knowing Hunter’s reputation for saying inflammatory things and sticking his foot in his mouth, it is possible that Hunter can have a poor enough performance that Maher will have no qualms naming him next time around.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
