Tag: Elections

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Why Bill de Blasio Doesn’t Care, Is Driving Cadillacs in His Dreams

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Much is being made of Bill de Blasio’s recent mayoral win in New York City, with the Washington Post even calling it “historic,” since he will be the first Democrat to serve in that office since David Dinkins won in 1989.

It’s not just worth nothing that de Blasio won, but how. De Blasio focused on income inequality in NYC, or what he called “two cities,” one rich and one poor, much the way the ultimately disappointing Sen. John Edwards talked about two Americas.

As Marketplace’s Sabri Ben-Achour noted:

According to the Census Bureau, income inequality in the New York City region is higher than any other major metropolitan region in the country. So taking the whole city, Brooklyn to the Bronx, if you are in the bottom 20 percent in New York your income, on average, is about $9,000 a year. If you’re in the top 20 percent you make, on average, $223,000 a year. So otherwise, put [that] the top 20 percent of the population makes about 25 times what the bottom 20 percent makes.

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3 Things to Know About Florida Politics Now

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  1. Former Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is running for governor in 2014 as a Democrat. The official announcement was made in Crist’s hometown of St. Petersburg, and puts an end, not to speculation that Crist would run, but to when the campaign would begin. It’s on.
  2. Alex Sink (D), former state chief financial officer, who lost to Gov. Rick Scott (GOP/Tea) in 2010 by 1% in a campaign where Scott provided $75 million of his own money, announced she is running for Congress to fill the seat of U.S. Rep. Bill Young (R), who died in October. Sink claims a fundraising headstart, and if successful, will help chip away at the Republican majority in the House. Dist. 13, where Sink is running, is 37.7% Republican, 35.2% Democratic, 23.2% independent, and the rest “other.”
  3. Republicans are already gunning for both Crist and Sink. This promoted tweet from the Florida GOP went up as Crist was delivering his announcement:

House Republicans Call Out Senate Republicans Over Government Shutdown Plan

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Does Ted Cruz have a plan to get 41 votes? Does he have a strategy he’s executing on to get 41 votes? Not that I’m aware of. Has he ever come to the House leadership and said, ‘Here’s my plan to get 41 votes in the Senate, to hold the line so we can defund Obamacare?’ Never. No. He’s just on his twitter account attacking House Republicans.

A frustrated but anonymous “GOP leadership aide” to NBC News, criticizing tea party Republicans vying for the 2016 presidential race, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who want to shut down the government (or at least pretend their goal isn’t to gain political advantage) in yet another attempt to derail the Affordable Care Act.

Even Seniors Are Starting to Dislike Republicans

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Remember when Republicans held their noses and voted for Mitt Romney in 2012? The results showed that really, really hating Candidate A isn’t enough to overcome feeling pretty meh about Candidate B.

A new poll, from a Democratic polling group, shows the same scenario heading into 2014.

Just 28 percent of voters 65 and older had a favorable view of the Republican Party in a national survey conducted last month by the Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, versus 40 percent who had a positive view of the Democrats. That’s a reversal from a poll Greenberg conducted in early 2011, when 43 percent of seniors saw Republicans favorably and 37 percent saw Democrats that way.

“It is now strikingly clear that [seniors] have turned sharply against the GOP,” Erica Seifert, a senior associate at Greenberg’s firm, wrote on the company’s website this week. “We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.”

And yet, seniors still say they will vote Republican. For now.

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A Ten Point Loss Is Welcome News for Florida Gov. Rick Scott

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Why is this man smiling?

The news was all good for Florida Gov. Rick Scott (Tea/GOP) in a recent Quinnipiac University poll…if you consider losing re-election to any competitor by at least six points to be good news.

In a match-up with former Gov. Charlie Crist (who is considering running against him as a Democrat), Scott would lose 47 – 37. But that’s six points lower than he would have lost in March, according to the poll.

If he were running against U.S. Sen Bill Nelson (D – Fla.), he would still lose, 48 – 38.

Against former state Sen. Nan Rich (D), Scott would lose less badly: 42 – 36 percent. Of course, 84 percent of those polled said they didn’t know enough about Rich to form an opinion on her.

Scott also earned the highest approval ratings he’s seen, showing that a PR charm offensive that included basically paying teachers off is working. A whopping 43 percent of those queried approved of his job performance.

Best of all, only 50 percent of voters say Scott does not deserve to be re-elected.

If you’re wondering why what might be seen by others as reason for a stiff, commiserating drink is making Scott so happy, Quinnipiac explains.

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Floridians Were All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Vote

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201,000

Number of Floridians disenfranchised on Election Day 2012 because of long lines, according to new research on voter patterns and precinct-closing times which showed turnout fell by 2.3% for each hour of waiting. Republicans in Florida’s state houses cut the number of early voting days while crowding the ballot with 11 constitutional amendments that totaled more than 3,000 words (or about six college-level term papers), resulting in up to a five-hour wait in some precincts. The study was narrowly structured, but its researcher suspected even more people missed voting. “My gut is telling me that the real number deterred is likely higher,” he said.

The Less Influence They Have, The More Radical the Pro-Gun Groups Grow

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Reba McIntyre and Michael Gross as the Gummers in the movie, Tremors

There’s an interesting list of numbers on the website, Meet the NRA. Ladd Everitt, communications director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, recently called the National Rifle Association a “paper tiger.” With this record, I can see why.

  • The National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund received a 0.83% return on the $11 million they spent during the 2012 election cycle, the worst performance of any Super PAC that spent over $5 million in the election.
  • NRA PACs spent more than $13 million to defeat Pres. Obama alone, all for naught.
  • The NRA spent $100,000 in eight Senate races, and lost seven of them.
  • Of the 30 House incumbents who lost, 17 were endorsed by the NRA.

Maybe the NRA’s political fortunes are in part behind the rise of the even more radical Gun Owners of America (GOA). GOA refused to endorse Sen. John McCain in 2008 because they thought his record on “gun rights” (yes, apparently guns have rights) was weak. They endorsed Rep. Ron Paul in 2012 because they admired his inability to compromise.

And although Everitt continued to reference the more widely recognized NRA when he appeared recently on the Diane Rehm Show and described the unhinged nature of the new Burt Gummers of the world, he was probably also thinking of the GOA:

We often tell people this not your grandfather’s NRA. And, you know, the modern pro-gun movement today is marked by what we would call insurrectionist ideology, which is this belief that the NRA and others have put forward that there is an individual right under the second amendment to essentially shoot and kill government officials when you personally disagree with democratically enacted laws.

Karl Rove Was a Bigger Loser Than Mitt Romney on Election Day

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1%

The return on investment (ROI) from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC in the 2012 elections, since almost every candidate for which the group ran ads lost. Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which is not required to disclose its donors, had a 13% ROI. Together, the two groups spent about $176 million, mostly on TV ads. By contrast, Priorities USA Action, a Democratic super PAC, had a 100% ROI, since it put its $67 million behind Pres. Obama. Majority PAC, which supported Democratic Senate candidates, produced a 70% ROI, and House Majority PAC, a 44% ROI.