Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has announced that he will not be running for reelection as he was done in by naked selfie photos that circulated on social media of the Congressman.
Barton told The Dallas Morning News, “I’ve always listened to people in Texas and worked for them in Washington, and I’ve been listening to a lot of people the last week in Texas,” he said….There are enough people who lost faith in me that it’s time to step aside and let there be a new voice for the 6th district in Washington, so I am not going to run for re-election.”
Rep. Barton originally planned to run for reelection even after the lewd text messages and naked photos surfaced, but the longtime climate change denier who is in the back pocket of the oil industry didn’t have enough support left to mount a re-election bid.
Barton held his seat in the House for decades, so this is not a likely to flip to Democrats next November, but it wasn’t that long ago that someone like Barton would have survived this kind of scandal and would have won another term. To use a phrase that Barton despises the climate is changing. Rep. Barton engaged in consensual relationships with adult women, but the selfies and dirty talk were enough to sink him.
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Trump may tolerate and endorse pervs, but the rest of the country is moving toward zero tolerance on the exact sort of perversion that Republicans turned a blind eye toward when they voted for Trump.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
