Tag: Elections

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Florida Dems Lagging GOP on Fundraising

Buck Banks

Saving up to buy the next election: According to the Orlando Sentinel, the Republican Party of Florida raised nearly $5 million between October and December last year — a record for the party in a nonelection year. During the same period, the Florida Dems raised $1.8 million — and this is sad — that’s a record for them.

Nearly $1.5 million of the GOP dough came from health care and insurance companies at a time when Gov. Jeb and the wingnut-controlled state legislature are rolling up their sleeves to “reinvent” Medicare in Florida.

Spurred on by Bush, the Legislature last month approved a plan to give managed-care organizations a bigger role in health care for the poor. Supporters said the changes — which will begin with 210,000 low-income Floridians in Broward and Duval counties, but which backers hope to eventually spread statewide — will help hold down spending on Medicaid, a $15 billion-a-year program that currently absorbs almost a quarter of the state’s $63 billion budget.

Under the Republican governor’s plan, money the state now pays directly to doctors and hospitals who provide service to Medicaid patients would instead be parceled out largely through HMOs and other networks. Many of the companies that gave are expected to compete for new, Medicaid-related contracts.

And I’ll wager that some money that’s supposed to be “parceled out” will likely stick in the HMO’s coffers.

Speaking of wagering, the same week the Fla. GOP raised a record-setting $800,000 just happened to be the week of a special session wherein lawmakers considered both the Medicaid plan and allowing slot machines at pari-mutuel betting facilities. Want to know where the moolah came from?

  • Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida wrote the GOP a pair of checks totaling $50,000.
  • Humana Inc. made three contributions worth $40,000 altogether.
  • WellCare Health Plans gave $30,000.
  • HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, donated $60,000 through a trio of committees.
  • Mike Fernandez, a Coral Gables-based health-care entrepreneur, gave the party a $50,000 check Dec. 6 — the second day of the four-day special session.
  • Pari-mutuels, a horse-racing political committee and the Seminole Tribe, which operates casinos around the state, combined to give the GOP more than $265,000.

Is there a super-lobbyist in the house? Well, kids, it looks like this swamp is still for sale to the highest bidders.

‘Dishonest’ – Oh Look, There’s a Picture of Florida Republicans in the Dictionary

Trish

Worried Florida Republicans are behind a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Of the $193,000 raised by Florida4marriage.org, $150,000 was given in a lump sum on Nov. 25 by the Florida GOP.

“It certainly was helpful,” Florida4Marriage chairman John Stemberger said of the donation, which he said was unsolicited. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the details, but they came to us and gave us the money.”

The big contribution was something of a surprise because the effective head of the state party, Gov. Jeb Bush, has been decidedly tepid about the proposed constitutional amendment. He has characterized it as well-meaning (sic) but unnecessary because state law already bars same-sex marriage.

That’s right. It’s already illegal to marry just anybody in Florida. The point of this sham movement is to get out the frenzied GOoPer vote. Cynical leaders are betting their high moral principals will ensure these wingers vote to force gays to continue living in sin. And while they’re there, they will vote to keep corrupt Republican lawmakers in office.

Still, it’s turning out to be a little harder sell than anticipated. Their side needs 600,000 signatures by Feb. 1 to get the phony amendment on the primary ballot. So far, they only have 250,000 but

volunteers are working feverishly at 10 makeshift processing centers at churches and offices in Central Florida.

“It is clear we are not where we want to be,” [Florida4Marriage chairman John Stemberger] said, “but we are seeing tens of thousands (of signatures) a day and if the pace continues we could easily do this.”

Bush’s Presidency Is at Stake in November – Vicious Campaign to Stave Off Impeachment Starts Today

Jon Ponder

Must-win: The start of 2006 signals the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a nasty election year. As of today, Team Bush is officially in war mode. Every move they make from now until November will be calibrated for maximum benefit to GOP candidates in the mid-term elections.

The GOP faces a political disaster roughly the magnitude of Watergate, and there is every reason to expect that this will be the most hard-fought mid-term election in memory. Fortunately for them, they have one factor working in their favor: Their enemy is us.

What is at stake is Mr. Bush’s viability as president. In public, Republicans may sneer at the idea that the president could be impeached, but if the Democrats regain control of either body, investigations into the administration’s actions on a whole host of matters would begin forthwith. Any one of those investigations could reveal crimes and/or cover-ups – and everybody knows it.

The list of Bush scandals that have been whitewashed by the corrupt Republicans who control the Congress is breathtaking. Here are the major ones:

  • Voting irregularities in 2000 and 2004
  • Cheney’s Enron-designed energy plan in 2001
  • Response to 9/11
  • War lies and/or gross official negligence in sending the nation to war on bad intel
  • The CIA leak and cover-up
  • The Downing Street memos
  • The disastrous Katrina response
  • Abramoff lobbying scandals
  • Deliberately and repeatedly violating the FISA law

Pursuing just two or three of these items, the Dems could keep the Republicans on the defensive all the way up to the 2008 presidential election.

The GOP knows it faces a political disaster in the order of magnitude of Watergate. They are cornered and there is every reason to expect that this will be the most hard-fought mid-term election in memory.

Fortunately for them, however, they have one factor working in their favor: Their enemy is us.

Yesterday, on the Sunday news chat shows, Liberal Oasis spotted two leading Dems still playing softball – or was it footsie? – with Mr. Bush:

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New Hampshire Republicans Declining the Kool-Aid

Trish

Boston Globe:

Republican senators and congressmen are trying to distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular national GOP

…the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation is becoming increasingly at odds with the national Republican Party in a state that was long a GOP bellwether, according to an analysis of votes and other actions in Congress over the past year.

Congressmen Jeb Bradley and Charles Bass voted for expanded stem cell research and opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and Bradley notably declined to endorse Bush’s Social Security plan.

Senator John E. Sununu opposed Bush’s plan for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, joined a filibuster to insert civil liberties protections into the USA Patriot Act, and voted against his party leadership on several major spending bills.

Even the state’s senior senator, Judd Gregg, who is a member of the GOP leadership and generally backs the party’s priorities, voted against the transportation bill and the massive energy bill that grew out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.

The senators and congressmen say they are acting in the tradition of the state’s libertarian brand of conservatism, even if the national GOP moves in a different direction. But Democrats and some independent observers, pointing to the fact that Senator John F. Kerry beat President Bush in New Hampshire, and that Governor John Lynch , a Democrat, is the most popular official in the state, say the Republican senators and congressmen are trying to distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular national GOP.

Fixing Elections for Fun and Profit

Jon Ponder

Datamation:

Two counties in Florida have terminated their use of Diebold computerized voting equipment after computer experts showed that vote totals could be changed by a single individual in a way that would be undetectable later.

The county commission of Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, voted on Dec. 13 to scrap its Diebold equipment and switch to a different manufacturer, at an estimated cost of $1.3 million. Three days later, the county council of Volusia County (Daytona Beach) approved a similar change. The switch will cost that jurisdiction at least $2.5 million, county officials said.

These actions, and the events that led up to them, can teach us a great deal about our dependence on computer procedures that are developed by flawed human beings.

Via Buzzflash.

56 Senators Can Sleep Well Tonight

Trish

Thank you to all the brave senators who voted to defeat the so-called budget resolution that contained a provision for drilling in ANWR. By insisting that the ridiculous end-run tossed at them like spoiled produce by Sen. Ted Stevens at the last minute be removed from the spending bill, they showed remarkable integrity. In the case of Florida’s own Bill Nelson, the only Democrat to hold statewide office, it took true grit to risk being labeled anti-military in his re-election bid next year, when Republicans will be throwing all the wilted lettuce and squishy tomatoes they’ve got at him and will no doubt try to spin this into something it wasn’t. Thanks Bill, for always being counted on to do the right thing.

Ralph Reed: Poster Boy for the Abramoff Effect

Trish

Surprisingly good commentary from the MSM on Ralph Reed’s troubled run for the Number Two spot in Georgia next year. CBS:

Reed is an example of what Jack Abramoff will mean to the GOP next year

For Reed, this run for lieutenant governor is part of an assault on greatness: lieutenant governor in 2006, governor in 2010, and president after that. But Reed is an example of what Jack Abramoff will mean to the GOP next year. Reed was an integral part of the Abramoff gambling swindle in Texas in 2002, in which the former super lobbyist worked both sides of the gambling debate, working for one client to get a casino shut down, with Reed’s help, then signing up the vanquished Indian tribe for more than $4 million to get the casino reopened, which he tried to do with the help of the now embattled Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.

It is hard to measure but impossible to deny the damage that Abramoff has done to the GOP’s chance in 2006, and Reed may become the poster boy for the Abramoff Effect in the 2006 midterms. If Republicans can’t pull off the political reversal they need in the wake of Iraq and Katrina and get rid of the scandal cloud over the Congress, the 2006 elections may go down in history as the end of the GOP revolution of 1994, a 12-year period during which they not only ran the government, but developed a pugnacious, unsentimental way of doing business and an overconfidence that Democrats still have not figured out how to match. And in a lot of ways, Reed and Abramoff were archetypes of the times, and weaved into the collapse of their personal and political fortunes, is the demise of a political movement.

From CBS’s lips to God’s ears.

Nobody Said Democrats Were Funny

Trish

Florida Democrats proved they should cling desperately to their day jobs during the recent state convention, held in Disney Central, aka Orlando. Lakeland Ledger:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama: “I feel like Katherine Harris. I can’t count all the Democrats.”
"We ran into the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. You know: Goofy! "Then I ran into Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: Pinocchio! "And even Cruella De Vil, whom I ran into when I was checking in, remarked to me that even she couldn't vote for Katherine Harris." Howard Dean didn't scream, but he did mock President Bush's efforts to boot undocumented aliens from the country. "I say, if the president can't find a 6-foot-4 Saudi [Osama Bin Laden], he's not going to find" -- we presume he was going to say "undocumented aliens," but he was drowned out by applause. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama was the main speaker and won the audience over with this opening line as he praised the large conference room filled with party loyalists: "I feel like Katherine Harris. I can't count all the Democrats."

Dems Talking Tough, But Not On Billboards

Buck Banks

Billbored: The Democratic Party is still up in arms over GOP Rep. “Mean” Jean Schmidt’s speech on the House floor wherein she called Purple Heart recipient and 37-year Marine veteran John Murtha a coward for speaking out about the failed Republican policy in Iraq. Tom McMahon, executive director of the Democratic National Committee has been sending me e-mails regularly to keep me apprised of the DNC’s response to Schmidt and to hopefully prise some money out of me to support it.

The DNC response? Put up two “Shame On You” billboards near Schmidt’s Ohio district office. Now that’s talkin’ tough, man. First, Tom asked me for money to buy the signs. He then wanted me to get excited because 7,000 Dumbocrats had “stepped forward to fund a campaign designed to show Republican leaders that there will be consequences for continuing their pattern [of] shamelessly attacking the service of veterans who don’t share their warped view of reality.”

Then he wanted me to get indignant whent the sign company, Lamar Advertising, refused to erect the boards. Well, I didn’t, but 100,000 others with less self-control did, and signed a protest letter to Lamar demanding, as Tom put it, their “right to be heard.”

Tom wrote me today to let me know that Lamar had caved — kind of — and was saying they would put up the boards if the words “shame on you” were removed or a prominent “paid for by” message was included. Tom characterized these demands as “shocking developments,” and noted indignantly that “the DNC will never allow a corporation to determine the content of our ads.”
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CA GOP Abandons Schwarzenegger Over Gay Hire, Threatens to Run Mel Gibson in ’06

Jon Ponder

Terminator vs Braveheart: Is there a bigger bunch of hapless fools than the folks who run the California Republican Party? They’re angry at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger because he hired an openly gay Democrat as his chief of staff, and now they’re threatening to run Mel Gibson against him next year.

In the recall election, many people voted for Arnold because they thought it would be “funny” to have the Terminator as governor. They are not laughing now.

Why Gibson? Because he produced “The Passions of the Christ,” the blockbuster homage to S&M tarted up as a passion play:

There is even a movement to draft Mel Gibson, the actor and director, to run against Schwarzenegger in the Republican primary next year — in part because the success of Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” could help his chances among religious conservatives. Raised in Australia, Gibson was born in New York and is a U.S. citizen, although he has not expressed an interest in elected politics.

“We need to have a good backup,” said Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, a grass-roots organization that is separate from the state party. Spence’s group has set up the website, http://www.melgibsonforgovernor.com . “He seems to be more consistent with the Republican message” than the governor is, Spence said.

Let’s do the numbers. As of 2004, 35 percent of California voters were registered Republicans. Let’s say half are American-Talibanis – meaning about 18 percent of voters might reflexively vote for Mel Gibson because of his extreme religious views.

Bring it on.

Sure, there are star-struck voters who might vote for Gibson just because he’s famous. However, during the election to recall of Gov. Gray Davis, many independents and even some Democrats voted for Schwarzenegger essentially because they thought it would be “funny” to have the Terminator as governor. Believe me, they’re not laughing now.

It’s hard to imagine that Californians will elect any movie star – Democrat or Republican – anytime soon. And there’s even less likelihood it would be a light-weight like Mel Gibson.