New speaker might be surprised some Americans see Sunday as day NFL plays

Cuomo aide DeRosa gives some insights into what changed Stefanik - jealousy

By Ken Tingley

The photo was startling.

It was from January, but as the vote approached to consider Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), his supporters circulated a photo of six member of Congress kneeling in prayer in the well of the U.S. House of Representatives. It was before one of the House votes that eventually elevated Rep. Kevin McCarthy to speaker.

Rep. Johnson was in the photo.

The photo bothered me.

It still bothers me.

Rep. Johnson was elected speaker last week and that night he said to Sean Hannity, one of Fox network’s leading entertainers, “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’ I said, ’Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”

That doesn’t help us with gun control.

Or climate change.

Maybe that’s a cheap shot, but if your job is to legislate for the best interests of the American people, I think you need to broaden your reading beyond one book.

When Johnson addressed the House chamber after being elected he said: “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you – all of us.”

That’s a heck of a job reference.

But here what really concerns me.

If Johnson’s religious views are so intertwined with his political views and he truly believes that those in the House of Representatives are the chosen ones, then he needs to explain how George Santos was selected.

Between his writing and podcasts, Johnson has compiled quite a record regarding his beliefs and it’s clear he doesn’t have a very high regard for folks who deny the existence of god.

I grew up in a generation where religion and politics were not discussed in polite conversations. But those days are long gone.

Since 2007, the Pew Research Center has been asking Americans: “What is your present religion, if any?” The percentage who say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular has grown from 16 percent to 29 percent.

That’s about a third of the country.

That’s about 96 million people who believe first and foremost that Sunday is the day when the NFL plays.

Pew shows that the number of adults who identify as Christian has fallen from 78 percent to 63 percent.

I spent some time in the South after college and watched the rise and fall of several of those television preachers like Jim Baker. As I wrote last week, politicians who invoke scripture - like Rep. Elise Stefanik did in her nominating speeches for Jim Jordan and then Johnson - concern me.

I still believe in the separation of church and state because I think there are some 100 million out there who look at religion with a dubious eye.

Mike Johnson’s resume is frightening.

Beginning in 2004, he served for eight years on the board of the policy arm of the Southern Baptists Convention.

The Baptists have 13 million members. You know what the Southern Baptists did this past summer: They expelled two of their churches for the sin of making women pastors, then it doubled down by passing a policy that said only men can be pastors because that is what scripture says.

During Johnson’s time as a lawyer, it was reported he only represented Christians. He said on his podcast that “hostile” interviewers would ask him why he represented only Christians as a lawyer doing religious liberty litigation.

“I would say because the fact is very simple: There is not an open effort to silence and censor the viewpoints of other religions,” he said. “It is only and always the Christian viewpoint that is getting censored.”

I suspect Jews might have something to say about that.

Since 2018, Johnson has also served as an online professor Liberty University and been paid about $120,000 over five years.

Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, is one of the leading Christian colleges in the country. It was was also in the news last week.

Liberty is facing a $37.5 million fine from the U.S. Department of Education for failing to publicly report data on campus crime. To give the fine context, consider that Michigan State paid $4.5 million when a team doctor abused its athletes, including some Olympians.

The report on Liberty was first reported to Susan Svrluga in The Washington Post.

She wrote that the report “paints a picture of a university that discouraged people from reporting crimes, underreported the claims it received and, meanwhile, marketed its Virginia campus as one of the safest in the country.

“Liberty failed to warn the campus community about gas leaks, bomb threats and people credibly accused of repeated acts of sexual violence - including a senior administrator and an athlete,” Svrluga wrote.

I realize Johnson was an online professor and might not have any idea about the problems at the university, but he should know who is paying his salary because this is what hypocrisy looks like.

Liberty University has a strict code of conduct for its students called “The Liberty Way.”ProPublica published a story in 2021 describing how Liberty mishandled claims of sex abuse and sex harassment on campus and used its code of conduct as a way to blame the victims.

The scandals at Liberty have spread into the top leadership of the college.

Perhaps, that’s what those congressmen were praying about in the well of the House last January. But I doubt it.

Strange bedfellows

Melissa DeRosa and Elise Stefanik both went to the Albany Academy for Girls as teenagers where they became friends.

You may remember DeRosa. She became one of Gov. Andrew’s Cuomo’s closest aides and has been doing the rounds on a book tour. She was talking at the University at Albany campus last week where Albany Times Union columnist Chris Churchill published an account of her friendship with Stefanik as reported in the book.

DeRosa and Stefanik followed similar paths into politics. Stefanik was elected to Congress in 2014 while DeRosa became a key advisor to Cuomo in 2017. They both got together from time to time to catch up and talk about their lives in politics. Then, something changed. I’ll let Churchill explain it from here:

“DeRosa claims she noticed something in her friend, once the youngest woman elected to Congress, when an even younger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected in 2018. Jealousy. 

“She disdained AOC’s politics,” DeRosa writes, “but even more, she resented the attention she was receiving.”

Soon after, Stefanik abandoned her public skepticism about Donald Trump to go full MAGA, and DeRosa implies that she did so because she craved the attention AOC was receiving. 

“In a lot of ways, burrowing her way into Trump’s good graces made Elise the AOC of the right. She was famous and on a fast track to leadership, and that was that.”

That would explain a lot about Stefanik’s abrupt change in beliefs.

“DeRosa says she tried to dissuade Stefanik from going full MAGA, telling her that doing so would jeopardize her reputation and future,” Churchill wrote. “Nevertheless, the two managed to stay friends until Stefanik launched an #upstatelivesmatter campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic to protest Cuomo’s push to move ventilators downstate. “Are you kidding with this?” DeRosa asked Stefanik in a phone call, adding: “How could you say this administration — this governor — doesn’t care if upstate New Yorkers live or die?”

Churchill reports the two argued. DeRosa told Stefanik she was embarrassed to be associated with her that she had become a partisan hack. They haven’t spoken since.

 “It’s kind of tragic,” DeRosa said at the event in Albany last week.  “We live in a time when you can’t be friends with people you disagree with politically.”

Churchill wrote that he reached out to Stefanik to see if she remembered the story any differently, but he had yet to hear back.

Local elections

It’s a light slate of races in local elections this year.

Jim LaFarr is running for sheriff again in Warren County. He has lots of really big signs up around Queensbury and Glens Falls to remind people there is a sheriff’s race.

The thing I’d like people to remember about LaFarr is that in the months after he was elected the first time, he hired his son as a Warren County sheriff’s deputy while choosing to ignore the county’s nepotism policy.

After The Post-Star wrote an editorial condemning the move - OK, I wrote the editorial - LaFarr backed off.

Unfortunately, a year later LaFarr worked behind the scenes to get the nepotism policy watered down and he hired his son. Voters should remember that about LaFarr.

Earlier this year, there was a shooting not far from the Kensington Street Elementary School. Two people were wounded. The shooter then took his own life.

This is what we know about that shooting: Nothing.

LaFarr released this statement a couple of days later: “Out of respect to the family and victims, we will not release anything further.”

He didn’t.

We won’t know why two people were shot.

We don’t know who the shooter was.

We don’t know why he took his own life.

And we don’t know where he got the gun.

All seem like important questions regarding public safety. The lack of transparency by the Sheriff’s Office is stunning.