Tag: Campaign 2010

CA Sen: 75% of Independents Support Abortion Rights – Are They Really Ready to Elect a Senator Who Advocates Overturning Roe?

Jon Ponder

photo-scotus-pro-choice-signsEconomies rise and fall. The Bush Recession will end one day soon, and the California economy will rebound.

Anxiety about the economy is driving the election today, but with polls tightening to within 3 percentage points in Sen. Barbara Boxer’s reelection race, it is becoming increasingly likely that Californians could wake up when the recession is over and realize that they have elected a senator, Carly Fiorina, who advocates overturning Roe vs. Wade.

If Fiorina is elected, it would represent a radical departure for California voters, over two-thirds of whom are strongly pro-choice. In fact, Californians have not elected a senator who advocated overturning Roe, as Fiorina does, since it became law in 1973.

That’s why Fiorina has been so desperate to keep the topic of abortion out of the race. When she was asked about it in her first debate with Boxer, she confirmed she would overturn Roe “if there was an opportunity,” but quickly added that abortion “is not an issue I’m running on.”

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Voters Have to Hunt for Charlie Crist’s Name on Florida Ballots

Trish
Ballot
In the words of John Lennon: Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine...

With polls showing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist at about 30 percent in his race for U.S. Senate against Tea Party Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek, the newly independent candidate is already swimming upstream.

I just got my sample ballot, and not only is Crist not listed third, he’s at number nine, ahead only of one other guy and the space to write someone in.

Blame it, along with many of his other campaign woes, on Charlie’s decision to go no party affiliation (NPA) rather than face Rubio in a Republican primary.

Here’s how ballot order works in Florida.

Florida Statutes, 101.151(2)(b):

The last time ten names were listed for one office on a Florida ballot was in 2000. And you know how that turned out.

“The names of the candidates of the party that received the highest number of votes for Governor in the last election in which a Governor was elected shall be placed first under the heading for each office on the general election ballot, together with an appropriate abbreviation of party name; the names of the candidates of the party that received the second highest vote for Governor shall be second under the heading for each office, together with an appropriate abbreviation of the party name.”

So that explains why Rubio jumped to first and Meek is second, but why is Charlie second from last?

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AK Sen: Why Is the National Media Ignoring Scandal Roiling Tea Bagger Joe Miller’s Campaign?

Jon Ponder

The campaign for the Alaska U.S. Senate seat has taken a dramatic turn in the past days. Joe Miller, the candidate chosen by Sarah Palin to take out her enemy, GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has been accused of ethical violations that may have led to his forced resignation as a part-time local government lawyer last fall.

He has also been accused of using other people’s computers without their permission to vote for himself by proxy when he ran (unsuccessfully) for chairman of the Alaska Republican Party in 2008. A job he sought, he said, in order to weed out corruption in the party.

Miller, a rookie in major league politics, has reacted to the controversy by stonewalling the media, a move that has had the predictable effect of bringing the local media’s interest in the story to a rolling boil.

Alaska Dispatch, which took an early lead in the investigation, recently sued Miller’s former employer, the Fairbanks North Star Borough, in an attempt to discover whether Miller was forced to resign or was fired outright. Over the weekend, the Dispatch framed its pursuit of information this way:

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House GOPTers Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Sessions, Bachmann Voted with Pelosi over 50% of the Time

Jon Ponder
Top GOP Pelosi Votes
Leader Boehner 52%
Whip Cantor 57%
Chairman Sessions 57%
Chairman Pence 52%
Michele Bachmann 58%

The House Republicans’ “Party of No” strategy to obstruct legislation and drive up negatives for the Democratic leadership and the president certainly appears to have been successful. Every pollster out there is predicting that the GOP’s lazy, boozing, schmoozing leader, John Boehner, is set to become Speaker of the House in January.

On every issue that made news, the top GOPTers have hurtled themselves in front of any available camera to bellow, “NO, no, no and HELL no!” But, according to a new metric compiled by the Democrats, when it came time to register their vote, some of the most vociferous Republicans voted with the House Democratic leadership more than half of the time:

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FL Sen: Crist Gets an Endorsement That Would Be the Kiss of Death to a California Candidate

Jon Ponder

The last thing candidates of either party running for high offices in California would want these days is the endorsement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, among the four candidates for governor and senator, the one who would want his endorsement the least is Meg Whitman, the candidate running for his job in his own party.

“When it comes to inflicting ‘Collateral Damage’ on the economy, Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger are definitely ‘Twins.’ Charlie’s flip-flops have made him a master at telling ‘True Lies.’”
– Rubio campaign

The political stank around Schwarzenegger apparently has not drifted 3,000 miles southeast to Florida, however:

Gov. Charlie Crist lost endorsements from prominent Republicans when he bolted the party for an independent Senate run, but one is sticking by him: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger made his announcement over Twitter on Tuesday. He summed up his thoughts on Crist in 136 characters: “I endorse Gov (at)charliecristfl for Senate. Great leader, works with both parties, and our country needs someone like him in DC right now.”

The campaign of Crist’s GOP tea bagger opponent, Marco Rubio — which is apparently run by third-graders — shot back by cleverly incorporating titles from Schwarzenegger’s film oeuvre into their news alert:

“When it comes to inflicting ‘Collateral Damage’ on the economy, Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger are definitely ‘Twins.’ Charlie’s flip-flops have made him a master at telling ‘True Lies.'”

If that was so funny you forgot to laugh, it’s probably because you don’t have “Total Recall.”

But seriously Rubio campaign, poking fun of Arnold using titles of his films is ssoooo 2003.

Trish and Buck unwittingly contributed to this article.

CA Gov: Whitman’s Hypocrisy on ‘Whore’ Issue Evokes Laughter from Debate Audience

Jon Ponder

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/video.

The “Whoregate” controversy was front and center in the final California gubernatorial debate between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman last night. The controversy arose last week after the release of a secretly recorded conversation among Brown and his aides in which an adviser suggested attacking Whitman as a “whore” because she had sold out her own strong opposition to unions in order to receive a union endorsement.

The Whitman campaign has repeatedly portrayed the comment as a misogynist slur. But Brown came to the debate prepared and, in a single deft stroke, he managed to put the gaffe in context, undercut Whitman’s manufactured outrage and expose her as a hypocrite:

WHITMAN: So Jerry, it’s not just me, it’s the people of California who deserve better than slurs and personal attacks. That’s not what California is about. It is not our better selves. And I, um, think people know exact…I think every Californian, and especially women, know exactly what’s going on here. And that is a deeply offensive term to women.

BROWN: Well, can I just interject? Have you chastised your chairman, Pete Wilson, who called Congress “whores” to the public sector unions?

WHITMAN: You know better than that Jerry. That’s a completely different thing. The fact you are defending your campaign…

[Derisive LAUGHTER from audience.]

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New Ad Drives Home Rick Scott’s Dirty Deals

Trish

It’s hard to watch this video from the Alex Sink campaign and not care if she or Rick Scott is elected governor of Florida. One of the many things that bother me about Scott is how much he doesn’t get the concept of answering to the people — and if he is elected, he will be working for us, not a private corporate board. When Jeb Bush was governor, we were used to arrogance in Tallahassee but it was a different type. Rick Scott truly thinks he can tell us only what he wants to, and the rest is none of our business. It ain’t that way.

Obama’s Approval 6 Points Higher Than Reagan or Clinton Three Weeks Out from First Mid-terms

Jon Ponder

graph-prez-approval-midterms-o-r-c

According to Gallup, Pres. Obama’s approval rating is now positive 48 percent to 46 percent. That’s a reversal from Sept. 8-9, when his approval/disapproval was 44/48, and a slight uptick from Sept. 16-17, when it was 47/46.

And you wouldn’t know it from listening to the vitriol coming from the corporate media and the GOP’s tea bagger base, but Pres. Obama is polling six percentage points ahead of presidents Reagan or Clinton three weeks out from their first mid-term elections:

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NY Gov: Paladino Smears Cuomo ‘Like a Rotten Hot Dog Wrapped in a Bacon of Sadness,’ Says Gawker

Jon Ponder

I didn’t march in the Gay Pride parade this year. My opponent did. There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. That’s not how God created us, and that’s not the example that we should be showing our children – and certainly not in our schools.

– Carl Paladino, GOP tea bagger candidate for governor of New York.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a smear of Paladino’s Democratic opponent Andrew Cuomo wrapped inside a layer of gay-bashing like a rotten hot dog wrapped in bacon made of sadness.

– Adrien Chen at Gawker.