RAW STORY
A candidate running to represent Michigan’s 95th House district in
the state legislature wants you to know that once you look past his
bizarre sexual fetish and multiple felony convictions, he is a
rock-ribbed conservative Republican, whose “stool of conservatism” is
held up by “faith, family and freedom.”
Michigan Live reported Friday
that Saginaw’s Jordan D. Haskins dismisses the arrests and prison time
as the results of youthful indiscretion and said that he is ready to
“move on from that and do what I can” to serve his state as a Republican
state Representative.
“I have dreams,” Haskins said to Michigan Live, “and I want to make a difference.”
Haskins, 24, has served prison time in two states and is currently on
parole, but there are no rules preventing him from running for the
state House.
On four occasions between April of 2010 and January of 2011, Haskins
broke into vehicles on public and private property, disconnected the
ignition wires, then started the engine. As the wires snapped and spit
sparks, Haskins would masturbate to climax in a sexualized ritual he
calls “cranking.”
Haskins has lived in Michigan and North Carolina and has lengthy
criminal records in both states, dating back to the age of 15. Early
offenses had mostly to do with breaking into cars and going on joyrides.
“I was just a lonely, angry kid at the time,” he said. “If anything, I could be put on ‘World’s Dumbest Criminals.’”
Michigan Live said,
“North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety reports a lengthy list of
sentences to prison, county jail and probation for offenses Haskins
committed in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. The offenses include breaking
and entering, larceny and trespassing.”
It was once he returned to Michigan, however, that Haskins started
seeking sexual gratification from breaking into vehicles. He repeatedly
broke into the lot where Saginaw Mosquito Control stored its sprayer
trucks and other equipment.
Police reports obtained by Michigan Live say that “Jordan would
remove the spark plug wires and sit in the car and masturbate while the
motor was sparking and making noises.”
On another occasion, he broke into a lot where sheriff’s cruisers
were parked. He confessed to joyriding around the lot and masturbating
in a police cruiser and a truck. Then in January of 2011, he jumped a
fence and broke into car repair business Scientific Brake and, police
said, later admitted to joyriding in a truck, then “listening to the
engine idle and masturbating.”
It is a fetish Haskins said he learned about online. For some
“cranking” or “pedal-pumping” fetishists, participants derive sexual
satisfaction from watching a man or woman who they desire struggle to start a stalled car,
cranking the engine and pumping the gas pedal against the floor. In
other cases, as with Haskins, the fetish revolves around starting the
car oneself and masturbating.
Jalopnik reported that U.K. newspaper the Independent carried an article about the fetish, describing it as a growing trend.
Haskins said to the Saginaw News, “I was in a messed-up
state of mind mentally and emotionally when I did what I did. That’s the
only way I can even explain it.”
“I really had no friends at the time,” he said. “I didn’t really know
what I wanted to do. I was one of those young people who grew up
without a father in the house, grew up with his grandmother and his mom.
I just didn’t really know what I wanted to do, what my purpose was,
where I wanted to go.”
He hopes now that voters will see him as the man he is, rather than
the troubled teen he was. Haskins said that he has found “my niche, my
passion” in conservative politics.
“That isn’t even me anymore. I’m not sure what really changed or what
happened. I don’t know what it is about when you get into your 20s.
Your chemistry changes. You get wiser and smarter a little bit. That’s
what happened to me,” he said.
Haskins is running in a heavily Democratic district, but he believes that his values will help him connect to voters.
“I want to be the Republican, the conservative candidate that says,
you know, conservatism is for you. Because conservatism, real
conservatism, true red-blooded American conservatism is about grit, hard
work, loyalty and traditional values. Your family values,” he said.
“The three values that make up my stool of conservatism are faith,
family and freedom,” Haskins said. “And I believe that many of the
citizens of Saginaw share those same values.”
The primary to choose his Democratic challenger will take place in August.
Here are the two most convincing arguments I’ve heard to explain Cantor’s loss:
Conservative activist-pundit Erick Erickson says that, in addition to antagonizing conservative activists, Cantor was trying too hard to be a national figure at the expense of his district:
Cantor’s constituent services moved more toward focusing on running the Republican House majority than his congressional district. K Street, the den of Washington lobbyists, became his chief constituency ... Cantor lost his race because he was running for Speaker of the House of Representatives while his constituents wanted a congressman.Another take comes from political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, who weighed in on Twitter as the results came in Tuesday:.................................
I’m less interested in examining why Cantor lost than I am in Bernstein’s explanation of how his loss goes a long way to showing what his legacy will be. As much as anyone else in Congress, Cantor is responsible for the loud, showy, total-war nature of Republican opposition — summoning up the forces that defeated him last night.
From day one — literally, the night of President Obama’s first inauguration — Cantor was leading the charge to not just oppose Obama, but to delegitimize him — denying him the conciliatory, bipartisan policy style he campaigned on, and turning even policy successes into the kind of grueling partisan battles that voters dislike. It was a deeply cynical maneuver, but a successful one. Cantor helped unite the Republican caucus around this scorched-earth strategy, and played a major role in the 2010 campaign that leveraged the grim results of that strategy into a new majority.
In 2011, Cantor became Majority Leader thanks in part to the winning challengers he recruited and funded. In the midst of a still-sputtering economy, he introduced a three-word mantra that would define his now-abruptly-ended time as Majority Leader: “Cut and Grow.”
“Cut and Grow” was always a sick joke. It’s basic Republican ideology dressed up as a solution to the Great Recession — rather like having a warehouse full of chemicals you can’t sell, and deciding to pitch them to sick people as medicine.
The “Cut and Grow” strategy worked like an anvil works as a life preserver. It dragged down an economy that desperately needed rescue.
Cantor complained loudly that the Senate was blocking the House’s job bills, but had the chutzpah to make this claim about “jobs bills” like a resolution expressing disapproval of net neutrality. He has consistently opposed extending unemployment benefits for the thousands of long-term unemployed. He even introduced the novel strategy of demanding spending cuts to offset emergency disaster relief.
The 2011 debt-ceiling standoff is the height of Cantorism, a perfect illustration of big angry talk and economically counterproductive results. Republicans began to describe the routine increase in the debt ceiling as a favor to Obama, for which they needed concessions in order to “give” it to him. The debt ceiling is an accounting formality that has catastrophic results if left undone, but in one of the great acts of political spin in the past few years, Cantor called it a “leverage moment” to make President Obama capitulate to the Republican ideological agenda.
The result was a miserable summer of collapsing consumer confidence and slowed job growth. Cantor wouldn’t even stay at the table for the negotiations he forced to happen with his debt-ceiling extortion.
After months of efforts to end the (completely optional) crisis, Congress passed and the President signed the Budget Control Act, which created the pointless “supercommittee” process and eventually led to sequestration, a blunt-instrument package of cuts, including cuts to programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels. Sequestration was terrible policy - It was yet another drag on an economy - and, even after his strategy made it happen, Cantor still complained about the sequester and blamed Obama for it.
If you want to know Eric Cantor’s legacy, it’s not just about the forces that he encouraged and that backfired on him last night. It’s a political style and an ideology that actively set back the economy, time after time. His cynical advocacy of “Cut and Grow” has had real negative consequences.
He tried to ride the tiger into battle, and the tiger ate him. His loss is richly deserved and poetically just, but it comes too late.
Eric Cantor will be fine — he’ll get a lobbying job, board-of-director seats, “visiting fellow” offers at think tanks, Wall Street Journal op-eds, and of course a full Congressional pension. If only the thousands of people whose unemployment came from his policy choices could be so lucky.
Seth D. Michaels is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. He's on Twitter as @sethdmichaels.
This post has been updated.