Part of every presidential campaign is the post-primary shuffle. That's when the Republican nominee tries to show centrist voters that he isn't really as conservative as he made himself out to be to win his party's base, and the presumptive Democratic nominee similarly tries to pull himself in from the left.
The Swamp notes this morning that the perception among some progressives that Barack Obama is leaving the left for the center has given rise to an unusual way of tethering the candidate to their issues. They're putting their money on the table, hoping to raise $1 million in an "escrow" fund that Obama can't tap until he displays "progressive leadership" on issues.
The issue that sparked the mini-revolt was Obama's support for giving wiretapping immunity to the phone companies under the recent FISA vote, something he had earlier said he would oppose. In a memo to fellow progressives, Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, said he still backs Obama but thinks the candidate could use a little wake-up call from the folks who played a significant role in securing him the nomination.
We're asking you to put some of the money you plan to give Obama "in escrow" until he demonstrates progressive leadership on the issues we care about, like warrantless wiretapping.
We are absolutely not trying to hurt Obama -- we'll give him our money at some point. We're just asking for a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T like Aretha Franklin sang about.
We can get Obama's respect because needs our money -- he turned down $85 million in taxpayer dollars because he believes small donors like us will contribute $300 million. And now is the best time to use our modest leverage, before the campaign goes all-out after the convention.
Our colleague Dan Morain chatted up American Values' Gary Bauer Tuesday about gay marriage and Barack Obama's letter stating his opposition to a California ballot initiative (John McCain supports it). Morain points out that two other states will have similar measures on their fall ballot -- Arizona and Florida. While polls show California pretty safe for Obama and Arizona similarly so for McCain, a gay-marriage fight in Florida could have scale-tipping consequences.
Bauer, founder of the conservative Campaign for Working Families political action committee, said he hasn't decided whether to donate to California's "incredibly important" measure. "If the pro-same-sex marriage forces cannot win in California and Florida, it means that the people of this country still are resistant to radical social change," Bauer said.
Bauer said he was "somewhat heartened when Barack Obama said … that it should be a state decision" but that given Obama's recent statements opposing the California measure, "the idea that he is agnostic about this question doesn’t hold up any more."
"It is a major difference between the two candidates," Bauer said. "Before it is all over, we’ll have a great debate on tax policy, on foreign policy and on this fundamental question of what is the status of marriage."
Bauer said that John McCain and Barack Obama "did not seem far apart a few months ago" on gay marriage. "Now they are quite at odds with each other. It is something that voters in other states are looking at. When you have a significant number of other states that have voted to preserve marriage, it is the sort of thing that could hurt Obama."
Most significant: Obama "has very much been making a play for evangelical voters, suggesting that there would be no reason that an evangelical should vote against him. It becomes harder to make that case."
Federal prosecutors planning their case against Illinois political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko intended to invoke the name of his onetime associate, Sen. Barack Obama, often during the recently concluded two-month prosecution in Chicago.
Rezko was convicted on federal corruption charges.
The onetime political mentor and fundraiser for Obama, especially in the early days of his Illinois political career, arranged for a series of so-called straw political contributions to Obama, money from Rezko channeled through other people's names. Obama has since donated an equal sum to charities.
According to published reports in the Chicago Sun-Times, recently unsealed documents show prosecutors intended to call several witnesses who would tie Rezko to Obama. The federal judge ruled that they could.
"Witnesses will testify that Rezko was a long-standing supporter and fund-raiser of Barack Obama," one prosecutor wrote in their planning notes. But for unexplained reasons, they ended up not calling those witnesses.
We admit we like Internet gadgets as much as -- OK, maybe more than -- the average blogger. And we have to say, this tool from the folks at Open Secrets is fun to play with. You click on a candidate and get a little network of where the top corporate-related donors come from (the data seem to be through March).
Interestingly, Goldman Sachs shows up among the top sources for John McCain, Barack ObamaandHillary Clinton. Citigroup was among the top sources for McCain and Clinton. Overall, people associated with the securities industry gave Clinton $6.3 million compared to $6 million for Obama and only $2.6 million for McCain.
Retirees? They're siding with youth, donating $7 million to Obama, $5.9 million to Clinton and $5.8 million to McCain. Of course, those numbers will be skewed because of the inordinately high fund-raising among the Democrats, so it will be interesting to watch the numbers as the campaign progresses with just two candidates. And to see how much hay the McCain campaign makes out of Obama's big donor groups.
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
This is getting pretty pathetic. First, this Illinois yahoo Barack Obama, who beat Alan Keyes of all people for the Senate job, waltzes into that chamber and usurps the Democratic presidential nomination that was to be Hillary Clinton's by rights.
Then he raises all this money, nearly a quarter-billion or something.
And now? Now, he's got Scarlett Johansson whipped over him. Give us a break here. Like, where's the fairness in any of this?
The guy rides a bicycle around in public in one of those goofy-looking but really, really safe helmets that legislators who don't ride bikes have declared that everyone must wear. Next thing you know they'll say we can't talk on cellphones while driving.
And Obama bowls like a Martian. And golfs like he's weed-whacking. And Scarlett falls for him.
Unbelievable. Anyway, here's Scarlett talking over on our sister blog The Dish Rag, which she isn't:
"I am engaged to Barack Obama. My heart belongs to Barack." Doesn't that make you sick? She's doing a lot of campaigning for him and everything.
We're tired of that politician's mug for a while. Seems like we use it every day. So we're gonna take this opportunity to publish Scarlett's photo instead. Nice and big too.
In fact, we may publish her photo in several unrelated items. Because bloggers are really powerful people.
In their own minds.
The Dish Rag, by the way, is written by Elizabeth Snead. Here's her photograph. Obviously, not a politician. Now, you'll really want to bookmark her blog and go there and read more on Scarlett and this topic. And all the other pretty people stuff they have over there.
Early on in his speech last night claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama offered praise for Hillary Clinton, which can be viewed as either a gracious or cynical overture to her angry supporters (many of whom have commented here).
But Obama also mentioned something that almost sounded like an offer. He said: "You can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal healthcare in this country, and we will win that fight, she will be central to that victory."
Of course, Clinton's history with healthcare reform has not exactly been successful. But Obama's careful wording -- and he is usually very careful in his wording in prepared speeches -- left the impression that he's considering asking Clinton to play a lead role in healthcare reform. Or maybe just be the anchor point in the Senate. Of course, that would be moot if John McCain wins in the fall, but given how much the issue means to Clinton, letting her steer the fight on that issue could be Obama's answer to a pressing question: What to do about Clinton?
With the final primary concluded barely hours before, top Democratic Party leaders in Washington early this morning ratcheted up the pressure to force all remaining uncommitted superdelegates to make their choice of candidate known by Friday -- and thus end the now hopeless, onetime front-running campaign of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The joint statement was obviously pre-planned and timed for issue shortly after Clinton refused to concede the presidential nomination victory to Barack Obama, who's gained sufficient delegates to clinch the party's nomination.
Howard Dean, right, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, chairman of the Democratic Governors Assn., issued the brief statement for unity just minutes ago:
"The voters have spoken," they said, adding later, "Democrats must now turn our full attention to the general election. To that end, we are urging all remaining uncommitted superdelegates to make their decisions known by Friday of this week, so that our party can stand united."
The carefully worded statement, which does not urge the superdelegates to go one way or the other, is a clear step to force an end to the effort by Clinton, who said Tuesday she would take a few days to consider her options and protect the voices of the nearly 18 million voters who cast ballots for her in recent months. Her hand is now being forced by the Friday deadline.
The move is also a sly one politically, since it leaves Obama free of any appearance of forcing Clinton to quit and thus alienating her millions of supporters, whom the Illinois senator will badly need in the general election come Nov. 4.
In exit polls throughout the just-concluded primary season, an unusually high number of Clinton voters indicated they were likely to reject Obama and vote for the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
A complete text of the Democratic Party leaders' joint statement is available by clicking the "read more" line below.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo Credit: Associated Press / Manuel Bolce Ceneta
John McCain's campaign sent a top advisor packing after questions surfaced over his role in a 527 group -- the kind of organization that is barred from coordinating activities with political campaigns.
Consultant Craig Shirley, a public relations veteran, got the heave-ho after a reporter for Politico began asking questions about his role in the "Stop Her Now" 527 and his former spot as a paid advisor to the McCain campaign (he apparently was most recently an unpaid volunteer).
And given McCain's insistence that he represents a new kind of politics, you can expect this to echo into the fall in various incarnations. As Politico reports:
"McCain campaign manager Rick Davis moved to avoid a recurrence of the situation with his conflict-of-interest policy, released late yesterday. It also sought to stem the impression that McCain’s campaign is run by lobbyists — a characterization Democrats have tried to make since it was reported that a senior adviser, Charlie Black, made lobbying calls from McCain’s signature bus, the Straight Talk Express. Davis himself is currently on leave from his lobbying and consulting firm, and the campaign removed two other officials this week for work they’d done on behalf of Burmese junta."
Peter Dreier over at the Huffington Post's "Off The Bus" site has an interesting piece that outs longtime Clintonite Sidney Blumenthal as a disseminator of anti-Obama e-mail, some of it drawn from the "vast right wing conspiracy" that Blumenthal helped define.
What's interesting here isn't that Blumenthal is distributing this stuff -- political reporters, including us Ticketers, get this kind of e-mail all the time from partisans. But it's useful for close watchers of politics -- i.e., Ticket readers -- to digest Dreier's piece as a look inside how some of the candidates' supporters operate. While the piece is specifically about Blumenthal, he is not alone in making sure that journalists and bloggers see whatever is new and nasty about the candidates the activists oppose. Sometimes the campaigns themselves send out the e-mails.
It's all part of the game, one that many political reporters take as part of the process as we try to figure out where the spin ends and the truth begins. But Dreier's piece also helps illuminate the depths some folks go to to influence coverage and perceptions. Email, in a lot of ways, is the new whisper campaign.
Apparently Hillary Clinton hasn't always been enamored with the rambunctious nature of the historic fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. Speaking to financial backers after Super Tuesday, she blamed the party's activists and MoveOn.org for her early primary and caucus defeats, according to an item over at The Huffington Post.
"MoveOn.org endorsed [Barack Obama] -- which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," the item quotes Clinton as saying (there's audio on the site).
Her campaign, she continues, had been less successful in caucuses because those gatherings bring out "the activist base of the Democratic Party... [T]hey are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."
Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director, defended the base: "Senator Clinton's attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator [John] McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points."
So much for party unity in the dash for the White House.
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama's name came up unexpectedly again at the Antoin "Tony" Rezko corruption trial today in Chicago and in a way that earlier filings in the case did not telegraph.
Stuart Levine, the prosecution's star witness, said he and Obama were at a party Rezko threw at his suburban Chicago Wilmette mansion on April 3, 2004, for Nadhmi Auchi, a controversial Iraqi-born billionaire whom Rezko was trying to get to invest in a South Loop real estate development.
Auchi, now a citizen of the United Kingdom, has faced criminal charges in Europe. He also figured in the revocation of Rezko's bond early this year after attempting to wire him more than $3 million. Upon learning of that attempt, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve declared Rezko a flight risk and ordered him held in a federal jail in the Loop.
The Rezko party in 2004 was designed to induce Auchi to pour money into the South Loop investment. Obama's presence at the party of one of his major early fundraisers and political supporters was not previously known.
At the time, Obama was fresh off a surprise win in the Illinois Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate and was riding a crest of national publicity. The freshman Illinois senator is not accused of any wrongdoing, but this is yet another unknown aspect of his relationship with Rezko, which Obama has said he now regrets.
The trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, one-time patron to Sen. Barack Obama and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has turned lurid.
Under cross-examination by Rezko attorney Joseph Duffy, star prosecution witness Stuart Levine, a Chicago-area lawyer, is admitting to conspiracy, extortion, bribery, fraud and other bad acts while he “served” at the Illinois public school teachers pension fund board.
At Duffy's urging, Levine is detailing 30 years of drug usage including sordid day-long binges with other men at a Chicago inn called the Purple Hotel. Rezko's attorney Duffy is wondering whether all that cocaine, crystal meth and other drug use has perhaps fogged Levine's memory.
That aside, much of the trial's focus is on money -- much of it given in the form of campaign money in the careers of Obama and Blagojevich.
It’s an unfolding, seemingly local political story that’s fascinating in its revealing details about the subterranean world of business, financial and family connections in Illinois and Chicago politics that helped take a virtually unknown black Chicago attorney, nurtured him politically and financially and turned him into....
Mark Penn, one of Hillary Clinton's top strategists and worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, apologized this afternoon for meeting earlier in the week with the Colombian ambassador to discuss a bilateral free trade agreement.
Colombia has hired the PR and lobbying firm to help get congressional approval for the agreement, which Clinton opposes. We mentioned the conflict, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, in an earlier posting today.
Penn's apologetic statement was short and sweet: "The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it. The senator’s well known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed."
So Penn is apologizing for doing his day job -- meeting with Burson-Marsteller clients -- and presumably won't meet with the Colombian ambassador again on this issue. Was the error in judgment Penn's involvement in the meeting? Or Penn's job with Burson-Marsteller?
What will the firm do from here on out? Send underlings to meet with clients that conflict with Penn's role as Clinton strategist? Is that enough distance? What other clients does Burson-Marsteller represent that could lead to similar problems? And will it take media reports to get Penn to see them?
This looks like a headache that isn't going away soon.
Mark Penn, a top strategist and mouthpiece for Hillary Clinton, makes his real money as a wheeler-dealer for Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, the international PR and crisis-management firm. And apparently while wearing that better-paying hat Penn found himself way off the Clinton message Monday as he talked with the Colombian ambassador about a bilateral free-trade agreement that Clinton opposes.
Remember, the Clinton campaign milked reports of conversations between one of Barack Obama's advisors and Canadian officials in the run-up to the Ohio primary, where trade issues are local issues. The issue then was more pointed -- did the Obama advisor tell the Canadians that the candidate's opposition to NAFTA was all smoke, little flame? -- and it helped Clinton stave off an Obama rally in Ohio.
At this point no one knows what Penn told the ambassador -- the lobbying firm has a contract with Colombia to represent it before Congress on the trade deal, the Wall Street Journal reports. The campaign insists that Penn wasn't at the meeting as an advisor to Clinton, who has said she opposes any more free trade agreements until national trade policy establishes protections for workers and other safeguards (and as a sitting U.S. senator, she presumably will have to take a formal position on the measure).
At a deeper level, Penn's dual roles are politically problematic because they point up one of the recurring complaints about how Washington works -- the revolving door between the regulators and the regulated, and between those who lobby and those who govern.
One has to assume that a Clinton presidency would mean a nicely appointed West Wing office for Penn if he wanted it, so what we have here is less a revolving door than a single room with two desks. Penn is advising a client about a trade agreement it wants; Penn is bending the ear of a presidential contender who doesn't want the trade agreement. Beyond being an invitation to skepticism, that conflict plays into Obama's theme that Clinton is too cozy with the D.C. establishment to effect change.
And more broadly, it points up that "experience" sometimes comes with baggage.
The nonpartisan taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste is out with its newest Pig Book, an overwhelming detailing of all 11,610 pork barrel projects inserted in the current fiscal year's appropriations bills by individual members of Congress.
These semi-secret spending measures cost taxpayers an extra $17.2 billion this fiscal year alone. This is the first year legislators have had to attach their names to these measures.
That's B for billion dollar$. In extra spending. That typically didn't go through the usual legislative committee screening. A huge increase over the previous year.
And guess which one of the surviving presidential candidates likes pork the most? And the least?
According to the Pig Book ("The Book Washington Does Not Want You to Read"), New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is our new grand national oinker among presidential contenders for most pork barrel spending. She inserted a whopping 281 individual spending projects into bills for the benefit of New York interests at the cost of taxpayers everywhere.
That totals $296.2 million.
The new national hero, on the other hand, for not inserting one penny of pork barrel spending is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. As a longtime staunch opponent of such earmarks, McCain may be expected to raise the subject of such special spending if Clinton becomes his Democratic opponent in the fall's general election.
He may also bring it up if his opponent is Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who may be a freshman senator but still isn't shy about inserting special earmarks into legislation cataloged by the taxpayer group's annual report. He accounted for 53 special earmarks, totaling almost $97.4 million.
This includes about $402,000 for a juvenile delinquency program at the Shedd Aquarium and $383,000 for another ethanol research plant.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who still technically is in the GOP race, has campaigned against large government seeping into the lives of American citizens. However, according to the Pig Book, that didn't keep him from proposing eight pork-spending bills totaling $22 million, including nearly $4 million to alter a Galveston bridge.
And, it should be pointed out, avoid federal spending limits.
The folks at VoterVoter.com have gone live with a website that lets you upload your own ad for a candidate or a cause, or to chip in money to buy airtime to place an already existing ad. You can even target where it will air, giving you a chance to break into that Jamestown, N.D., market.
VoterVoter.com is nonpartisan and for-profit. It's a subsidiary of WideOrbit Inc., whose investors include the Hearst Corp., which means a media company has a stake in a web company that
lets people buy air time through media companies. Which is vaguely reminiscent of all those X and Y physical characteristics charts from high school biology.
But we digress. VoterVoter.com takes a 15% cut of the air time purchase for placing the ads, so getting your voice heard out there in the chorus of democracy isn't cheap. But then, you knew that.
Now, if presidential politics was like a game of roulette -- and who's to say it isn't? -- you could argue that the Wall Street gamblers are putting their chips on blue after a few cycles of red.
For a story in today's print edition, our colleagues Janet Hook and Dan Morain took a long look at the Center for Responsive Politics' analysis of presidential campaign finance forms and found that Wall Street is giving more this cycle to Hillary Clinton ($6.29 million) and Barack Obama ($6.03 million) than it is to John McCain ($2.59 million). Overall, 60% of the sector's $71.5 million in federal contributions have gone to Democrats this cycle, where four years ago 52% went to Republicans.
Of course, that already has some on the left nervous that the more things change, the more they could stay the same. McCain has famously argued against the pernicious influence of money in politics, and Obama has made rejecting PAC money a part of his campaign. Clinton, too, has railed against the influence of special interests in politics.
But that the campaigns are getting that much cash from the Brooks Brothers set has some progressives worried, particularly given the likely pressure for bailouts of financial firms caught up in the credit crunch. "I want to hear Clinton, Obama and McCain talk about a quid pro quo," Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Democratic-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Hook and Morain. "If we don't hear it, especially from Democrats, it makes sense to ask why not and ask if they are inappropriately cozy with the financial services industry."
The resignation Wednesday of Geraldine Ferraro as a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton got us thinking. There have been an awful lot of staff/advisor resignations from presidential campaigns this cycle, people done in by everything from unleashed tongues (Ferraro) to sex scandals (see below).
So, let's review, in alphabetical order, shall we? For the sake of fairness, we'll separate the ones who fell through impolitic talk -- the Ferraro group -- and those whose troubles involved lawyers. If we left some out, let us know in the comments section.
But remember, we're focusing on those who were forced out of presidential campaign roles, so people like Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana are not included because he was not forced from his role in the Rudy Giuliani campaign over revelations of old liaisons with prostitutes.
Without lawyers involved:
Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, both bloggers, dropped off the John Edwards campaign more than a year ago after complaints surfaced about pre-campaign, anti-Catholic blog-posts.
Phil Martin, one of four co-chairs of Fred Thompson's campaign, stepped down in November after revelations of a criminal records. Martin had pleaded guilty in 1979 to selling 11 pounds of marijuana, and entered a "no contest" plea in 1983 to cocaine trafficking and conspiracy charges. Until he quit, Thompson was using Martin's private plane to get to campaign events.
Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author for her book on genocide, "A Problem From Hell," quit as a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama last week after ...
The AFL-CIO is planning to spend $53 million on the 2008 presidential campaign, and it won't be for John McCain. In fact, the labor group launched a website today devoted to the "truth" about McCain, including a briefing book on its characterization of his stances on labor and working-class issues.
A kitty that big should be a formidable presence in a national political campaign. But unions' sway with their members isn't what it once was. And while union backing, almost always for Democratic candidates, gives access to phone banks, precinct walkers and other nuts-and-bolts aspects of campaigning, the AFL-CIO's help in the last couple of presidential cycles hasn't delivered a win.
Four years ago, the AFL-CIO ponied up $44 million to back John Kerry over George Bush, and in 2000 spent $41 million trying to get Al Gore elected. Already in this cycle, Barack Obama had the backing of the Culinary Arts Workers union, Nevada's largest, and still lost there to Hillary Clinton. And the Teamsters endorsement didn't help him much in Ohio, either.
Union folks can make the argument that labor spending on political campaigns is dwarfed by spending from business interests. But still, when you're spending the equivalent of a CEO's annual earnings on a presidential campaign, you really ought to be claiming more success.
So file this under the "couldn't hurt" column, but don't look for it to be make-or-break. And the big issue looming on the horizon is, if Obama wins the nomination, what does he do about the inevitable ad spending on his behalf by the kinds of "special interests" against which he rails so often?
Josh Romney, one of former Gov. Mitt Romney's five sons, says it's "possible" his father may rejoin the race for the White House, as a vice presidential candidate or as the Republican Party's standard-bearer if the campaign of Sen. John McCain falters.
The elder Romney, who was unable to assemble sufficient conservative support to thwart McCain, has made no public comment since the McCain camp was rocked ...
Former Sen. Bob Dole, who knows a thing or three about losing elections to the Clintons, has some advice for conservative radio talk show impresario Rush Limbaugh, who's been loudly complaining about John McCain for weeks.
Dole, the GOP candidate who got erased in the 1996 election by Bill Clinton, is trying to calm down the prominent conservative who's threatening party unity with his outspoken on-air opposition to the not-so-conservative McCain, as he appears to zero in on the Republican nomination, which could be decided as early as today.
In a personal letter to Limbaugh released by the McCain campaign, Dole wisely first stroked the conservative broadcaster's broad ego, then proceeded ...
A pro-Barack Obama "Yes We Can" video making the Internet rounds offers an interesting pairing -- Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am and filmmaker Jesse Dylan (son of Bob), plus a raft of celebrities. The inspiration of the video -- and its core theme -- was Obama's speech after he lost the New Hampshire primary, which Will.i.am talks about here.
But pop culture folks can treat this as a quiz -- who do you recognize?
And for a less celeb-filled take -- and one that seems to capture the essence of modern American political discourse -- check out this one (with thanks to Laila Lalami's blog for ferreting it out of the YouTube stack).
UPDATE: Well, it's easy to ferret out a video when you're the one who has posted it. Lalami, author of "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits" and a UC Riverside writing teacher, just e-mailed to say that the video below is of her husband, Alex Yera, and their daughter.
Here comes Big George again. Billionaire George Soros is weighing in heavily with more cash, delivering $2.5 million to a new political organization called Fund for America.
According to a year-end campaign report filed with the Internal Revenue Service and uncovered by The Times' Dan Morain, Fund for America was organized by Taco Bell heir Rob McKay, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and Anna Burger of the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU matched Soros with another $2.5 million, too. Other major donors include investor Donald Sussman, who has given $1 million and AKT Development of Sacramento.
Although it cannot get directly involved in advocacy for or against candidates, Fund for America is expected to air television ads and take other political action aimed at helping Democrats claim the White House and retain control of Congress.The group is organized as a "527," so named for the revenue code section that defines it.
Fund for America is the liberal answer to the conservative Freedom's Watch, organized by former political aides to President Bush and funded by wealthy Republicans including billionaire Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas. But as a nonprofit corporation, Freedom's Watch is not required to disclose its donors.
As he campaigns against evil Washington insiders, Sen. Barack Obama regularly points out that he shuns all money from “currently registered federal lobbyists.” Or so he says on all his fundraising invitations, including the one for his event at Avalon in Hollywood set for Thursday night.
Hey, as long as you're in the Golden State debating, why not pick up some change?
But the policy is one that has complicated Obama's life, from time to...
LAS VEGAS -- A video making the rounds over the past several hours catches an exchange between Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson and Mitt Romney -- the former CEO was at a Staples store, fittingly enough.
There's plenty here for all. People who find Romney's parsing of words to be Bill Clintonesque will twitter. People who think the mainstream media just throw softballs will see some counterevidence. And people who just like a little heat in their politics will find this moving slightly above steady simmer.
This is Keith Olberman's take on it, including the footage from the throwdown. It's also sparked some debate among journalism critics about whether Johnson was too aggressive. Give it a watch and post your comments.
With the nation's economy increasingly becoming a volatile issue in the presidential campaign, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce is about to issue one very tough promise to spend millions of dollars against candidates deemed to be anti-business. (Are you listening John Edwards?)
Actually, are you listening, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee?
Tom Donohue tells The Times' Tom Hamburger no more Mr. Now and Then Nice Guy.
"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," Donohue threatens. But how does he really feel? Donohue plans to outline exactly how hard the chamber will bite at a Washington news conference Tuesday, as a nice lighter change of pace from, say, New Hampshire politics.
Hamburger's entire exclusive story is available by clicking here.
Numerous political activists and consultants are quietly establishing campaign organizations these days with the goal of influencing the 2008 presidential campaign.
It’s tough to tell which will actually develop and have any impact on the race. But The Times' Dan Morain, who monitors campaign finances, has come upon documents for voters to keep their eye on.
It's the American Alliance for Energy Independence.
Given the events in Washington this week, a practiced eye might assume that the United States’ energy future is likely to be an issue in the 2008 general election campaign. Congress approved and the president signed one bill increasing gas mileage requirements for all vehicles, and a second measure to grant loan guarantees to power companies that might seek to build new nuclear power plants.
And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency blocked California’s effort to curb greenhouse gases.
While energy has received passing attention in the presidential campaign, two Democratic politicos are convinced that given the stakes, the issue needs a tad more attention. Hence, they took out papers recently to create American Alliance, a 527, so named for the revenue code section that defines rules governing such independent political organizations.
Both organizers come by way of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who had a short-lived presidential candidacy and sought to make energy a key issue before dropping out and endorsing Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Craig Varoga, the Alliance's president, was former campaign manager for Vilsack’s brief presidential effort. Joe Householder was the governor's communications director in his 2002 reelection campaign. In 2003 and 2004, Householder became communications director for Clinton, and now works at Public Strategies, a Texas-based consulting firm.
Varoga hopes to attract donations, say $2 million, for ads and activities to generate attention for the concept of energy independence and to urge presidential candidates to get specific on the topic, a perennial issue for the past several presidential contests.
“If we wake up in November 2008," says Varoga, "and there was no serious discussion about energy independence, we’ll be worse off.”
And you thought it was hard to make sense of your own little checkbook with each month's statement.
The omnibus budget bill passed by the House today funds most of the federal government for this entire fiscal year, which actually began more than two months ago. The bill costs $516 billion, plus more money yet to be added for Iraq. It is more than 3,000 pages long, an unwieldy package that would normally be contained in 11 separate bills. (The Pentagon budget was passed separately.)
Now, the Roll Call newspaper reveals on its subscription-only website that this mammoth spending bill also includes nearly 9,000 earmarks, special provisions originated by individual legislators to benefit someone or something back home and buried inside a larger bill for a legislative ride relatively free of public scrutiny.
Earmarks for $136,000 here, $250,000 there, $1 million over there and a lot more sprinkled throughout. Just listing them took 700 spreadsheets. Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that the 8,983 special earmarks will cost taxpayers more than $7.4 billion, though additional costs will become apparent in coming months.
Democrats boasted the earmark number was smaller than last year, but it still works out to 20 special spending provisions for each House member. Do you think these earmarks might get mentioned by incumbents campaigning for reelection next year?
"It’s totally fiscally irresponsible to lump everything together in one spending bill and put it to a vote less than 24 hours later,” said David Williams, vice president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste. “It doesn’t have to be this way. They had all year to do this."
Anyway, it's a darned good thing we had all that talk and all those promises by new Congressional leaders about earmark reform earlier this year. Otherwise, this earmark business could have become costly and stayed out of control.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets back in front of the camera (OK, as a politician he never really left, but still) as part of a new ad campaign geared toward pressuring recalcitrant members of Congress to move swiftly on legislation to lessen global warming.
The ad, to begin airing next week in 17 markets, was put together by Environmental Defense and features Schwarzenegger, Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a Democrat, and Jon Huntsman Jr., the Republican governor of Utah. All notably are governors of Western states with wide areas of stunning natural beauty -- and the tourism-based economy that goes with it.
Schwarzenegger has been pressing the federal government on global warming, but also has his own well-heeled baggage on the issue. Frustrated with what they view as a lack of federal leadership on the issue, Schweitzer and Huntsman also have struck out on their own.
The reason for the ad campaign now? Environmental Defense wants to make sure the issue gets its due during the current election cycle. And with Al Gore still not running for president, the political dialogue has revolved primarily around the war in Iraq and healthcare. Place your bets on how much attention the issue gets in tonight's Democratic debate in Las Vegas on CNN at 5 Pacific time.
The drive to make healthcare a top presidential campaign issue for the next year is going Hollywood.
Two leading nonprofit entertainment organizations -- the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the Motion Picture and Television Fund -- have joined a growing coalition of advocates for older Americans and business and labor groups to put pressure on presidential candidates of both parties to address the need for more affordable healthcare and retirement security.
The developing coalition known as Divided We Fail includes AARP, the Service Employees International Union, the Business Roundtable -- which represents chief executives of major companies -- and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. They intend to sponsor candidate forums, mount ads and otherwise try to spotlight health and retirement issues.
The entertainment groups this week joined the coalition of strange bedfellows and helped produce a public service announcement that features an all-star lineup of Ben Affleck, Garth Brooks, Dakota Fanning, Morgan Freeman, Eva Mendes, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Piven and Reese Witherspoon.
You can see the group's first commercial by clicking here.
Fred Thompson, the newest candidate in the Republican presidential field who touts himself as the "consistent conservative," is about to get the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee.
When he finally launched his campaign Sept. 5, Thompson was seen as the conservatives' great hope, a Reaganesque character who could play the role of the strong presidential authority figure as he's done on TV and in movies. But his light campaign schedule and laid-back style -- some might call it soporific -- have disappointed many. Now, The Times' Michael Finnegan reports here, he's trying to change that.
The Times' Stephanie Simon has now confirmed the endorsement will come tomorrow and she'll have a complete story on this website tonight and in Tuesday's print editions. The endorsement by the committee with some 3,000 chapters nationwide could give a badly needed shot of energy to a campaign whose poll numbers have dipped almost since his announcement.
The conservative wing of the Republican Party appears split these days, with indications that heightened concerns over terrorism and national security may be trumping the traditional party litmus test of abortion opposition. Last week, televangelist and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson, who's held a life-long opposition to abortion and gay unions, endorsed Rudy Giuliani, who supports both. Previously, Bob Jones III, head of the conservative Bob Jones University, endorsed Mitt Romney, who holds a pro-life stance despite flirtations with accepting Roe vs. Wade.
Other conservative religious leaders such as James Dobson, who's expressed dissatisfaction with GOP candidates including Giuliani, John McCain and Thompson, have threatened to mount a third-party conservative candidate.
And today Simon found some anti-abortion people bothered by the impending endorsement. Jill Stanek, a leading antiabortion blogger (and columnist for World Net Daily), said National Right to Life may be more interested in backing a winning candidate than in upholding principle. "There's a lot of suspicion in the pro-life movement that they're Republicans first and pro-life second," she said, "that they're making picks that are politically motivated."
Troy Newman, who runs the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, said he could never support a candidate who would leave decisions on abortion laws to the states, as Thompson recently said he would. "Pro-life people believe abortion is an act that takes the life of a human being," Newman said. "If he wants to leave it to the states, that seems to indicate he's not truly pro-life." Newman hasn't yet decided who he will endorse. Right now he's leaning toward either Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul.
Last week in a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Huckabee assailed Thompson's stance that abortion law should be left up to the states. "You can't have a different morality between New York and Nevada, between Iowa and Indiana," Huckabee told an enthusiastic crowd of 150. He said such an approach -- on the issue of slavery -- was what led to the Civil War. Deferring to the states, he added, would be akin to declaring that "a human life has a different value in different states."
"A full two-thirds of respondents to a new Marist/WNBC poll said they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a 9-point increase from fall 2006. Harris' 'Alienation Index' has also risen slightly since last year, as more Americans told pollsters this month that they feel the nation's leaders don't care about them and are out of touch with the country at large.
"Considering such widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo, it's no wonder 58 percent of registered voters responding to a new Gallup/USA Today poll said the outcome of the 2008 presidential race matters more to them than previous elections. For many months the conventional wisdom had placed the blame for the public's angst squarely on President Bush and the Iraq war. But recent polls suggest that Americans are increasingly worried about traditional bread-and-butter issues, too."
And the butterhas been melting. So it's a "pox on both their houses" mood out there, though other polls show that more people think the Democrats are better suited to straighten the mess out than the Republicans. Those sentiments won't mean much in the primaries and caucuses, but they will come next November. And of course anything can happen between now and then to change the current mood.
But you have to wonder what might have happened had the national elections been this week instead of next year, and how many babies would have gone out with the bathwater.
Here's a revealing example of how high-stakes presidential campaigns try to make trouble for each other behind the scenes.
They all do it. The major parties too. Usually, the public doesn't learn about it because of a self-serving secrecy pact between reporters, who want to get information to write, broadcast or blog, and the campaigns, which each have a vast research operation on their opponents and want to circulate certain embarrassing information about them. The reporters get many more tips than they use, and the better ones do their own research and verification.
Remember back in June when Barack Obama had to apologize publicly for a caustic memo his campaign leaked to reporters about Hillary Clinton's ties to the Indian American community? We wrote about it here.
To get Clinton's reaction, a reporter showed the memo to her campaign people, who had no promise to keep. So they turned it around on Obama by leaking it to other reporters with the same secrecy promise to demonstrate the alleged hypocrisy of his "politics of hope" campaign. It's like a game, isn't it? Except the stakes are rather high.
Well, during the last day or so behind the scenes, the Clinton folks, who play hardball, have been shopping around to some writers (not this one) a story idea that a couple of prominent Obama supporters had lobbied the South Carolina Democratic Party's executive council last week to keep Stephen Colbert off the state's primary ballot, which they succeeded in doing.
When you think about it, that's probably a good idea. Colbert, a funny fellow who plays a political talk show host on his Comedy Central show, got Doritos to sponsor his candidacy and claimed to be showing the fundamental hypocrisy of the political system by trying to run in both parties' primaries.
He's good for a laugh, and normally serious Tim Russert even had him on the normally respectable "Meet the Press," for a faux serious candidate interview. The "truthiness," as usual these days, is that Colbert's "campaign" provided priceless free publicity for his TV program and new book.
The Clinton folks may also have wanted Colbert off the ballot too, because each vote for...
Not long ago, Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and his Countrywide Finance Corp. were riding high and friends of many politicians. That was before serious problems in the nation's home mortgage industry and the new investigation by securities regulators into the timing of Mozilo’s sale of $145 million in Countrywide stock in the months before those shares went into a nosedive.
Before all this unpleasantness, Mozilo and his company were good for almost $2 million in federal and California campaign donations dating back to 2000, according to research by Dan Morain, The Times' resident expert in campaign finances.
Countrywide’s biggest spending has not been countrywide; it's been concentrated in California, where contribution caps are much less strict: they spent $450,000 for a failed measure to create open primaries and $250,000 on efforts to limit shareholder lawsuits; and gave $150,000 to the California Republican Party and $83,000 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But Mozilo has also played nationally. In the presidential race, Mozilo and a handful of Countrywide executives gave $13,950 to Republican presidential front-runner Rudolph Giuliani, and just to be safe $6,600 to one of his main foes, Mitt Romney.
On the Democratic side, Mozilo himself gave $2,300 to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Countrywide’s political action committee gave $10,000 to Sen. Christopher Dodd’s campaign. Now, why Dodd, you may ask? He's from far away in that cute little place called Connecticut.
Ah, well, when he’s not running for president and thanks to the new Democratic majorities in Congress, Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which has regulatory authority over home lenders such as, well, will you look at that, companies like Countrywide.
Presidential campaigns do not like to miss an opportunity to drive home a message, especially if it's free and critical of their opponents. So today the John Edwards crew issued a statement critical of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and pointing to a Times story as proof.
The story by Peter Nicholas and Tom Hamburger appeared online here last evening and in Friday's print editions. The story detailed a vast Clinton fundraising operation producing hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars in $1,000 and $2,000 gifts from dilapidated New York Chinatown addresses and poor Chinese families of dishwashers, waiters and sidewalk vendors on the margins of the economy who would seem unlikely targets for political contributions.
The close connection, which has helped make Clinton the most successful presidential fundraiser in history, is Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing new immigrants from Fujian province, and at least one organization previously involved in illegal gambling and human trafficking operations.
In a statement, David Bonior, Edwards' campaign manager, said, "Many Clinton campaign contributions are raising eyebrows again. Many of their donors are not even registered to vote, and at least one denied even making any contribution at all.
"In order to win in 2008," Bonior continued, "Democrats need to select a nominee who knows the system in Washington is not only broken, but it’s corrupt. This is not a purity contest -– it’s not about what we’ve done yesterday. This is about what each of us can do today to fix the system.
"The bottom line," he added, "is we need a nominee who can do two things: campaign in all 50 states and challenge our broken system in Washington. With every day the growing question has to be can Hillary Clinton do either?”
Barack Obama, or rather his campaign's finance folks, seem to have stumbled onto a useful fundraising gimmick -- an urgent "personal" note to supporters pleading for a quick donation of modest size and signed by "Barack" himself. Although, to be honest, it's hard to tell if it's a genuine signature in an e-mail.
When Hillary Clinton announced her third-quarter fundraising numbers Monday, it turns out she'd collected about $2.1 million more than Obama. Shortly after midnight, his campaign transmitted a message that appeared to be from Barack himself. "We continue to build the largest grassroots movement in history," he wrote, "but Washington lobbyists and special interests rallied to help Hillary Clinton out-raise us for the first time.... We must close the gap right now. I need you to make a donation of $50."
Noting that he has not accepted "a dime" from lobbyists and special interest PACs, the message went on to add: "Hillary Clinton aggressively seeks money from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. She's even said these lobbyists represent real Americans."
The result: Within a little more than 24 hours, the campaign received more than $1 million from an unspecified number of donors, the largest spike in single-day donations since his announcement last winter, a spokeswoman said. (The campaign also reported collecting $4.5 million from nearly 22,000 Californians in the third quarter.)
So what did the campaign do? It sent out another quick-hit missive Wednesday night. "I'm leaving the Tonight Show studio," "Barack" wrote at 10:50 p.m. Pacific time, actually about five ho
self in from the left.
