Senator’s Absence Worries Democrats as Gun Votes Near

Mr. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat and the oldest member of the Senate at 89, has been out for weeks dealing with health complications partly from cancer treatment he received several years ago.

But with Democrats scrambling to come up with enough votes to overcome resistance to the most sweeping gun-control legislation in a generation, Mr. Lautenberg’s presence (or absence) is shaping up to be critically important.

Aides insist that Mr. Lautenberg, who has been undergoing physical therapy for weeks, will try to get to Washington once the voting begins on the assortment of gun-safety measures, which are expected to come to the floor in the coming weeks.

Mr. Lautenberg’s aides say he is eager to return, particularly given that he introduced an amendment to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines.

“Senator Lautenberg is feeling better and hopes to be in Washington for gun votes,” Caley Gray, a spokesman for the senator, said in a statement on Monday.

For weeks, rumors and concern have been swirling about the health of Mr. Lautenberg, who this year announced that he would retire rather than seek a sixth term in 2014. The senator cast his most recent vote in the Senate on Feb. 28.

The preoccupation with Mr. Lautenberg, one of the chamber’s most ardent advocates of gun control, has only intensified as the Senate moved in recent days to begin the most significant debate on gun legislation in two decades.

For the last few weeks, Mr. Lautenberg, who received a diagnosis of stomach cancer three years ago, has been grappling with debilitating and long-term consequences that powerful chemotherapy treatment has had on his leg muscles, according to people close to him.

As a result, he has been using a wheelchair while undergoing physical therapy to regain his strength. But Mr. Lautenberg, an extraordinarily proud man who served in World War II, has not wanted to show up in the Senate in a wheelchair, according to those who know him.

For Democrats, the interest in Mr. Lautenberg’s health goes far beyond the coming votes on gun legislation.

Should Mr. Lautenberg decide to retire before his term ends, his departure could have a significant impact on the balance of power in the Senate, where Democrats hold 53 seats and are typically joined by two independents.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, would have the legal authority to make an interim appointment to the seat. And he would almost certainly select a Republican, depriving Democrats of a crucial vote in the Senate.

View the original article here

Rubio Offers Full-Throated Support for Immigration Bill

Senator Marco Rubio offered an extraordinary endorsement of legislation to overhaul the nation’s badly strained immigration system on Sunday when, after holding back for weeks, he appeared on no fewer than seven television talk shows to explain and defend a plan that he said would be “a net positive for the country, now and in the future.”

As Mr. Rubio, a Florida Republican who is a member of a bipartisan group of eight senators preparing to unveil their immigration legislation on Tuesday, pressed his case again and again on the airwaves, new details of the bill emerged. Prominent among them was a proposed fee of roughly $2,000 that illegal immigrants would have to pay before they could earn legal status.

As part of that plan, which was still being completed on Sunday, these immigrants would have to pay $500 when they apply for a temporary work permit, and would have the next 10 years to pay the remaining $1,500 or so, a person familiar with the negotiations said.

Republicans in particular have insisted that the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country should face a tough path — including paying a fee, getting in line behind those seeking citizenship but who have not lived in the country illegally, and learning English — before they could apply for citizenship.

A Senate aide described the $2,000 figure as “significant but not impossible, punitive but not unreasonable.” Democrats and immigration advocates had originally pushed for a lower amount.

Mr. Rubio’s one-man media blitz on Sunday was a striking show of confidence for a lawmaker who only weeks ago had been a voice of caution, a counterweight to the optimism being expressed by others in the group.

On Sunday, by discussing the plan on the five major network talk shows and on the Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision, he was clearly signaling that the plan was ready for scrutiny by the public and by Congress, and that he was prepared to throw his full weight behind it — perhaps, at the same time, risking his own prospects for a widely expected presidential run in 2016.

His tone seemed to reflect those high stakes.

In each appearance he spoke with a sense of urgency, arguing that the plan did not constitute amnesty for illegal immigrants. He said that they would receive no federal benefits during the 13 or so years it would take them to qualify for full citizenship and that the plan depended on tougher border security and better systems for verifying the employment and legal standing of people already in the country.

The new plan would also include a path to citizenship for an additional 500,000 or more people who are currently in “limbo” status — including refugees; people who face persecution in their home countries; and people with visas specifically designated for trading and investing with countries with which the United States has signed treaties of commerce and navigation, another person familiar with the bill said.

Mr. Rubio’s status as a Tea Party member, a prominent young Latino and a rising star in the Republican Party means his imprimatur on the legislation will carry weight. One leading Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, praised Mr. Rubio last week as “indispensable” and “a game changer.”

The timing of the plan’s formal introduction remained unclear, though the group was hoping to go public with its bill on Tuesday. Mr. Rubio would say only that it would come “as early as this week.” But a Democrat in the bipartisan group, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, said that all remaining hurdles had been removed.

“I see nothing in the way,” Mr. Schumer said on the ABC News program “This Week,” “and I think you’ll see a major agreement that’s balanced, that’s fair, that will have the widespread support of the American people on Tuesday.”

Ultimate passage is far from guaranteed. But Republicans are deeply concerned about attracting Latino voters — Mr. Obama won 70 percent of their votes last year — and the measure is seen as the major element of the president’s second-term agenda that has the best prospects.

The Senate group’s push for an immigration overhaul was also being greeted on Sunday as an example of the sort of productive bipartisan cooperation that has become exceedingly rare in Washington.

“The eight of us have met in the middle, and I think that’s where the American people are,” Mr. Schumer said. He had only praise for Mr. Rubio, whom he called “a tremendous asset here.”

Even Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President George W. Bush who is known as a hard-nosed partisan strategist, welcomed the cooperation on immigration.

“The Democrats and Republicans here have tried to cobble together a bill that is thoughtful, sensitive, tough, and with an eye toward getting something done,” Mr. Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Whatever the outcome, he said, it showed leadership on Mr. Rubio’s part. Concerning the presidential race in 2016, he added, “I think it helps him.”

View the original article here

The Gun Vote and 2014: Will There Be an Electoral Price?

Did the senators who voted against a proposal last week to expand background checks on gun buyers take an electoral risk?

At first glance, it would seem that they did. Background checks are broadly popular with the public. Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks when guns are purchased at gun shows, at gun shops or online. Support for background checks drops when guns are bought through informal channels, or gifts from family members — but the amendment that the Senate voted upon last week, sponsored by the Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, would have exempted most of these cases.

And yet, the Senate did not behave as though this was a piece of legislation favored by 80 percent or more of the public. The analysis that we posted last week suggested that, if anything, senators who are up for re-election in 2014 were less likely to vote for the bill.

It’s worth considering in more detail how the senators’ re-election status might have affected their votes. Doing so yields a more subtle conclusion than we’d reached initially. Senators who are up for re-election in 2014 were more sensitive to attitudes toward gun-ownership in their states. However, this influenced behavior in both directions. Senators running for re-election were especially likely to vote for Mr. Manchin’s amendment if they represented states with low rates of gun ownership, but especially unlikely to do so if they came from states where gun ownership is common.

This can be seen in the chart below. Among the 26 incumbent senators who will face elections next year (this definition excludes those senators who have announced their retirements), there was a near perfect relationship between the states’ rates of gun ownership and their votes. Among the 12 senators running for re-election in states where the gun ownership rate is below 42 percent, all but one (John Cornyn of Texas) voted for Mr. Manchin’s amendment. Among the 14 senators running where the gun ownership rate is above 42 percent, all but one (Mary Landrieu of Louisiana) failed to do so.

One reason it seems senators running for re-election were less likely to vote for the background-check amendment is because those facing elections next year come disproportionately from states with high rates of gun ownership. Some 18 of the 26 election-bound senators are from states where the gun ownership rate is above the unweighted national average of 38 percent, while just eight come from states where gun ownership rates are below that average.

The senators who are not up for re-election next year were still modestly sensitive to the gun-ownership rates in their states, but were more likely to override this for partisan or ideological considerations. Among this group, 14 senators voted against Mr. Manchin’s amendment despite the gun ownership rate being under 42 percent in their states. (All of these were Republicans except for Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, who voted against the amendment for procedural reasons.) Conversely, eight senators (all Democrats) voted for the amendment despite gun-ownership rates above 42 percent in their states — including four of the five Democrats in states where the gun ownership rate exceeds 50 percent.

The same data is presented in another way in the chart below, which reflects the results of a logistic regression analysis on the two groups of senators. (Mr. Reid, because of his procedural vote, is not considered in the analysis.) The chart illustrates the conclusion we had reached before: senators up for re-election in 2014 were much more sensitive to the gun-ownership rates in their states, and it represented a much clearer predictor of their votes.

But while this provides a useful description of how the senators voted, it does not address the question that we posed initially. Were the senators who voted against background checks taking an electoral risk by doing so? Some states, certainly, are more resistant to laws that would restrict gun ownership. Nevertheless, if as much as 80 or 90 percent of the public supports background checks like the ones Mr. Manchin proposed, the bill would be reasonably popular even in states where gun ownership is common.

Sean Trende, of Real Clear Politics, published a series of arguments on Monday that helps to explain the dilemma. At the core of Mr. Trende’s thesis is the idea that the public might not view Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey’s amendment quite so literally as the polls imply. Instead, they might view it as a proxy for the senator’s overall attitude toward gun regulation and gun rights — without worrying so much about the details. Polls that ask the public about their broader view toward gun regulation find much more equivocal results. A related consideration is that the National Rifle Association will score the vote on background-checks amendment — so a vote for it could have harmed a senator’s overall record on gun rights as judged by the N.R.A.

A counterargument is offered by Nate Cohn of The New Republic, who suggested that the N.R.A.’s power to influence elections may be overblown — or at least that it shouldn’t outweigh other electoral considerations when a bill as apparently popular as Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey’s amendment comes up for a vote.

Whether Mr. Trende or Mr. Cohn is right is something of a judgment call, but it is easy enough to split the difference between them. Mr. Trende is correct that some members of the public may look beyond the literal text of the legislation in deciding how they feel about a bill — either because they are poorly informed about what it does, or because they will attribute symbolic importance to a vote. (He cites the Democrats’ health care bill in 2009 and 2010 as one example: many individual components of the bill polled fairly well, but the overall legislative effort did not.) But even if this is true for many members of the public, it would take a lot to counteract 80 or 90 percent face-value support.

My view, in other words, is that polls showing 90 percent support for background checks will tend to overstate how well the Democrats’ position might play out before the electorate in practice, though public opinion was on their side on this vote.

Moreover, few of the Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2014 are vulnerable for any reason. Only one, Susan Collins of Maine, comes from a state that Barack Obama carried, and she voted for Mr. Manchin’s bill.

In fact, the safety of the Senate Republicans may have enabled them to vote against the amendment, at least in part, for a tactical reason: to protect their colleagues in the House. This is not to suggest that Republicans are likely to lose the House — but there are 17 House Republicans in districts carried by President Obama last year. By preventing the background-check bill from securing the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate, the Republicans may have prevented their House counterparts from having to take a tough vote.

Thus, Democrats are not in much of a position to capitalize on the vote from the standpoint of individual seats in Congress in 2014. To the extent that the issue plays favorably for Democrats in 2014, it is likely to be for symbolic reasons — because they are able to persuade voters that it reflects a Republican Party that is outside the mainstream.

This is not necessarily a hopeless strategy — particularly if Democrats can weave the background-check vote into a broader narrative about the Republican Party having become too conservative. But it does mean that, from an electoral standpoint, the symbolic implications of the vote outweigh the substantive ones. For Democrats to have much of a chance to win back the House — bucking the historical trend of the president’s party faring poorly in midterm years — the Republican Party will first and foremost have to be perceived as out-of-touch on the economy.

View the original article here

In Israel, O'Malley Talks Jobs, Foreign Policy and, of Course, 2016

JERUSALEM – Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland said Wednesday that he would spend the second half of this year mulling whether to run for president in 2016. He seems already to have a campaign theme: jobs and innovation.

At least that’s what he insisted was the sole focus of his eight-day trip to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, and pretty much all he wanted to talk about with a handful of reporters he had summoned to the King David Hotel for coffee. “I’m sure all of you will ask me foreign policy questions,” he said as he opened the floor. “I respect your right to ask them, and I hope you’ll respect my right to shy away from answering them.”

And so, on the news of the day — apparent differences between the Obama administration and the Israeli military on whether chemical weapons had been deployed by the Syrian military — Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat, deferred to the president’s judgment. “It’s certainly one of the great challenges,” he allowed.

Asked whether the American people, weary from a decade of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, would be ready to engage in another military operation to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Mr. O’Malley avoided specifics. “I believe that the president will make that call,” he said, “and the president will have the primary responsibility of making that case to the American people and also to Congress.”

How about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? “All of us hope for peace in the Middle East.”

Governor O’Malley, 50, said it was his third visit to Israel, and that he had brought with him about 50 high-tech executives, Jewish leaders, and Maryland officials for what is essentially a trade mission. After a side trip to Jordan in which he met with Prince Faisal – “What we spoke about was the huge challenge that the ongoing conflict in Syria has for the entire region” – much of his itinerary here is filled with companies that have offices in his home state, including one that makes radar for the vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system.

Mr. O’Malley was also set to meet with President Shimon Peres of Israel; two rising stars in Israeli politics, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, both of whom head economic ministries; and Salaam Fayyad, who resigned earlier this month as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. (Scheduling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was still being worked out.)

“I’m hoping in discussions with him to learn,” Mr. O’Malley said of Mr. Fayyad. “That’s part of the obligation that goes along with travel.”

The visit comes two months after Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican similarly put forth as a potential 2016 candidate, made headlines during his own trip here by referring to Jerusalem as its capital, a point of contention with the Palestinians. Might he face off against Governor O’Malley?

“I plan for the latter half of this year to dedicate some more thought time, reflection time, to the question of whether or not I would run,” he said Tuesday. “The key question in running for any office is having a clear and refined understanding of the shared reality we face and the better set of choices we need to make as a people to meet those challenges and to create a better future for our kids.”

For the latter half of this week, Mr. O’Malley plans to tour the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, the Western Wall and the Old City, and attend Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with his 15-year-old son, one of four O’Malley children who attend Catholic schools, as their father did.

A reporter pointed out that on his way into Bethlehem, he would see the controversial separation barrier Israel has erected in the West Bank. Mr. O’Malley said he had seen something similar in Northern Ireland. “They call it the peace wall,” he noted.

View the original article here

Lawmakers Plead Not Guilty to Charges in Bribery Scheme

Michael Appleton for The New York TimesState Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a Democrat, arriving at court in White Plains on Tuesday, is accused of bribing Republican Party leaders to put him on the ballot in New York’s mayoral race.

WHITE PLAINS — A state senator and a New York City councilman pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges that they plotted to bribe Republican Party bosses to place the senator on the ballot in the city’s mayoral race.

Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III was charged with Mr. Smith.

Noramie F. Jasmin, the mayor of Spring Valley, N.Y., was accused of accepting money and property.

Four others who were named in the indictment also pleaded not guilty here in Federal District Court.

The plot, outlined in a complaint unsealed on April 2, included fraud charges against State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a Queens Democrat; City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III, a Queens Republican; and the Republican Party bosses Joseph J. Savino and Vincent Tabone. Also charged in the complaint were Mayor Noramie F. Jasmin of Spring Valley, in Rockland County, and the deputy mayor, Joseph Desmaret. They were accused of accepting money and property to advance a real estate development there.

Prosecutors said in an indictment last week that Mr. Smith had arranged for $40,000 in cash to be paid by the developer of the Spring Valley project — actually a federal undercover agent — to Mr. Savino, the chairman of the party in the Bronx, and Mr. Tabone, the vice chairman of the party in Queens.

While those officials pledged to help Mr. Smith gain a spot on the Republican ballot, the indictment said, Mr. Smith agreed in return to help obtain about $500,000 in state funds for road work that would benefit the project.

Mr. Halloran received $15,000 to act as an intermediary among the party bosses and Mr. Smith, according to the indictment. He is also accused of accepting payments from the undercover agent and an unnamed associate while agreeing to steer up to $80,000 in City Council discretionary money to them.

The indictment said Mr. Smith had discussed giving money to other state senators to gain their support for a Senate leadership position.

Mr. Tabone was described in an indictment as saying: “I run the Queens County Republican Party. Nobody else runs the party.”

Mr. Tabone, the only defendant to comment to reporters, said he was an “unpaid party volunteer” and added, “I’ll have my day in court.”

View the original article here

Obama’s Budget Revives Benefits as Divisive Issue

In the midterm races already taking shape, Democrats who back Mr. Obama’s budget proposals to trim future benefits as part of a long-term deficit-reduction compromise could be attacked from the left and the right.

Liberal groups and some union activists are threatening to recruit candidates to challenge these Democrats in their primaries. At the same time, the head of the House Republicans’ campaign committee gleefully signaled last week that he would use Mr. Obama’s “shocking attack on seniors” against Democrats in general-election races — though Republican Congressional leaders demanded the concessions from Mr. Obama. And while party leaders rebuked the campaign committee chief, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, individual Republican candidates and “super PACs” would be free to wage their own attacks.

For now, at least, the political warnings to Democrats are coming mostly from the left of their own party.

“You cannot be a good Democrat and cut Social Security,” said Arshad Hasan, the executive director of Democracy for America, a liberal grass-roots group, which staged a small protest outside the White House last week even before Mr. Obama released his annual budget on Wednesday.

“People would be looking to punish them,” said Robert Borosage, a co-founder of the Campaign for America’s Future, another liberal group, “and they would be looking for primary challengers.”

Even if Democratic incumbents do not draw a primary challenger, liberal activists say, they might face a shortage of volunteers motivated enough to do the hard work of campaigning — just as Democrats did in the 2010 midterms, which resulted in big Republican gains.

Looking further ahead, to 2016, some on the left have already begun talking about encouraging a liberal Democrat — the freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is the name most bandied — to take up the “don’t touch Social Security or Medicare” banner as part of a liberal bid for the party’s nomination to succeed Mr. Obama, even against Hillary Rodham Clinton or Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Such talk was stoked when Ms. Warren, within hours of the release of the president’s budget on Wednesday, sent supporters an e-mail sounding an alarm: “Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle-class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch.”

She was not available for an interview, aides said on Friday.

“If the major candidates running for the Democratic nomination hedge on important issues like Social Security, they will leave open a tremendous amount of space for an insurgent,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group often critical of Mr. Obama.

But, Mr. Green acknowledged, “I wouldn’t say anybody’s laying the groundwork yet.”

At a minimum, Mr. Borosage said, all Democratic candidates in 2014 or 2016 “will be forced to take a stand.”

That prospect could complicate the campaign strategies of establishment favorites. Mr. Biden is inevitably tied to Mr. Obama’s policies. And Mrs. Clinton, as a senator, was a fiscal moderate who extolled her husband’s budget-balancing record of compromise. President Bill Clinton negotiated Medicare savings with Congressional Republicans, and their 1997 deal nearly included the same proposal trimming Social Security cost-of-living increases that Mr. Obama has put in his budget to entice Republicans to compromise in turn.

Ideological litmus tests have lately been more divisive for Republicans than for Democrats, over taxes and social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration. But the agitation on the left to defend Social Security and Medicare, the two programs that Democrats consider perhaps their party’s greatest legacy, did not begin last week with Mr. Obama’s new budget.

It had been building since mid-2011, when the president, in private negotiations with Speaker John A. Boehner, tentatively agreed to the new formula for calculating cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security; economists recommend the formula as more accurate, but it would mean smaller increases for Social Security beneficiaries. Even so, Democrats in Congress and the White House agree that the party would have supported Mr. Obama back then if a compromise deal had come to a vote.

But the 2011 talks, just like a second round of negotiations in December, collapsed after Mr. Boehner declined to agree to Mr. Obama’s counterdemands: new taxes on the wealthy and on some corporations, and job-creating investments in infrastructure projects, research and education.

Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.

View the original article here

Alighting on Staten Island, Democratic Mayoral Hopefuls Make Their Appeals

Staten Island does not get a lot of love in Democratic primary elections — only around one-sixteenth of New York City’s residents live there, and its population is relatively conservative.

But on Monday night, five Democrats running for mayor made their way to the College of Staten Island for a forum at which each pledged to help the island if elected, offering to do everything from lowering the toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to using a proposed giant Ferris wheel to attract tourists.

William C. Thompson, Jr., a former comptroller who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Manhattan, noted that Staten Islanders had often felt that theirs was “the forgotten borough.” But he vowed that it “won’t be forgotten under a Thompson administration.” He said he would reduce the $15 toll on the Verrazano (it is $15 now, and set to go up to $20 in 2017) and offset the cost by reinstating a commuter tax and increasing automobile registration fees for heavy vehicles.

Mr. Thompson also said he would create a new position, a deputy mayor of infrastructure, to oversee rebuilding areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a Manhattan resident, said that rebuilding in response to the hurricane would be her first priority. Ms. Quinn said homeowners in areas of Staten Island hit by the storm should be eligible to sell their homes to the city or state if they did not want to return to them, and she proposed burying power lines.

She also said that she would spur the island’s economy by creating a regional council charged with expanding New York City’s volume of exports and guiding the new export business to Staten Island’s waterfront.

John C. Liu, the current comptroller and a Queens resident, promised to build a public hospital on the island, which currently does not have one. He also said he would expand express bus service on the island, and move forward with a proposed light-rail project on the western shore that would connect it with Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system in New Jersey.

To prepare for future major storms, Mr. Liu said the city should consider building sea walls in New York Harbor to protect Staten Island. He also said that should he become mayor, he would visit Staten Island so much that “you’ll think that I’m living here.”

Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate and a Brooklyn resident, also expressed concern about the island’s lack of a public hospital but said the best solution might be for the city to provide support to the borough’s private hospitals to encourage them to expand services. He expressed cautious support for a proposal to build the world’s largest Ferris wheel near the St. George Ferry Terminal, saying it could encourage tourism. He also proposed reviving a plan for a rail line along the island’s northern shore, to connect with the ferry terminal.

And Sal F. Albanese, a former councilman from Brooklyn, also promised to address the toll on the Verrazano Bridge, which he likened to “being mugged without a gun.” He personalized the toll issue with a slightly shaggy dog-like story about buying an elliptical machine at Dick’s Sporting Goods on the island, and learning that the store was unable to deliver it to his Bay Ridge home on the appointed day; its truck had already made one trip to Brooklyn, and could not afford to pay the cost of the toll again.

View the original article here

As Governor Steers Maryland to the Left, Talk Turns to 2016

But the opponents had no chance, as allies of the governor passed sweeping gun restrictions, the final victory in a series of triumphs that capped one of the most successful 2013 legislative seasons of any governor in the country.

Besides gun control legislation, Mr. O’Malley coaxed a liberal wish list from the General Assembly session that ended Monday: repeal of the death penalty, a $1.7 billion subsidy for offshore wind turbines and a bump in the gasoline tax to pay for mass transit and roads.

Republicans fumed that Mr. O’Malley had steered well to the left of Maryland residents’ concerns, and denounced his agenda as a punch list for a 2016 Democratic presidential primary campaign. Mr. O’Malley — largely unknown outside Maryland, though he is mentioned in presidential speculations alongside Govs. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado — said the bills were smart policy and in step with state residents.

“I don’t think the relevant question for Maryland families is whether we’re moving left or right; it’s whether we’re moving forward or back,” he said in an interview. To voters under 35, who represent a generational shift in American politics, especially on social issues, “these are pretty mainstream things,” he added.

In a relaxed mood a few days before the adjournment of the General Assembly, Mr. O’Malley, 50, offered a tour of the fine art in his office. He pointed out a Rembrandt Peale portrait of George Washington, whose distant eyes are the most arresting feature.

“They have the look of a man who knows how the conversation is going to end before it begins,” Mr. O’Malley said.

It was a comment that could apply as well to Mr. O’Malley, who is in his next-to-last year as a governor facing term limits. That he is looking ahead to a presidential campaign “is the worst-kept secret in Annapolis,” said Anthony J. O’Donnell, the Republican minority leader in the House of Delegates. Mr. O’Donnell added that the governor was “planting his flag as far to the left as possible” with left-leaning Democratic primary voters in mind.

Mr. O’Malley would not confirm any such thing. He said he was flattered that people noticed “the tough things we’ve accomplished here.”

“I haven’t put a whole lot of brain power or effort or time into 2016,” he said.

His successes come on top of others a year ago, when lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled legislature approved same-sex marriage and in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants. After opponents forced both measures onto the state ballot in November, Mr. O’Malley campaigned hard for them, and voters upheld the changes — victories that provided political capital that allowed the governor to pass his even more ambitious agenda this year.

But with lawmakers in Annapolis increasingly on the ideological wings of each party, it is an open question whether Mr. O’Malley has left Maryland residents behind. Protests against his gun restrictions, including an assault weapons ban and fingerprinting for handgun buyers, were the largest and most inflamed in memory. In a Washington Post poll last month, a plurality of Maryland residents, 48 percent to 41 percent, said the state was on the wrong track.

A former mayor of Baltimore, who despised the city’s dark portrayal in the television show “The Wire,” Mr. O’Malley is not a traditional liberal. His arguments to abolish the death penalty were practical, not moralizing, in keeping with his reputation for shaping policy by analyzing data. He argued that capital punishment failed as a deterrent and did not reduce violent crime.

Similarly, his defense of same-sex marriage and tuition breaks for illegal immigrants is an economic argument, aimed at attracting the well-educated and socially tolerant “creative class” to Maryland. “We believe that openness and inclusiveness are good for creating jobs and expanding opportunities,” he said.

Mr. O’Malley has succeeded with a fiscal policy balanced between tax increases and spending cuts, of the sort President Obama has sought with less success in talks with Congressional Republicans. He has nearly wiped out a $1.7 billion structural deficit he inherited in the Maryland budget, partly by slowing the rise of spending. He won re-election in 2010 in part by pointing out that spending went up less in his administration than under the previous governor, a Republican.

But Republicans denounce his tax increases, including on individual incomes above $100,000 — a definition of “high earner” that is lower than the $250,000 threshold Mr. Obama campaigned on during his re-election race. Critics say Maryland has chased entrepreneurs to lower-taxed Virginia.

“Since 2007, we’ve lost 40,000 jobs in this state; we’ve lost 6,500 small businesses who have closed their doors to move across the border,” said Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, the Republican minority whip in the legislature’s lower house.

Mr. O’Malley has been called a rising star in the Democratic Party since he rode on the back of garbage trucks as mayor. But he has picked his battles with care. He decided not to challenge Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the Democratic primary for governor in 2002. When she lost the general election, Mr. O’Malley had a clean shot at Annapolis four years later.

He went on to lead the Democratic Governors Association, raising his national profile as a happy partisan warrior who attacked “the dinosaur wing of the Republican Party.”

Strategists who have worked with him do not believe he will seek the presidency in 2016 if Hillary Rodham Clinton commits to the race. The governor is close to Mrs. Clinton, whom he supported in her unsuccessful 2008 primary campaign. A generation younger, he will presumably have many options when his term ends in 2014, including a run for the Senate or a cabinet position in a future Democratic administration.

Mr. O’Malley pointed out that he had begun campaigning to overturn the state’s death penalty in 2007, his first year in office, long before Republicans in the General Assembly accused him of checking boxes for a presidential race.

“These guys would be sorely pressed to say that that was some sort of appeal to the base in Keokuk, Iowa, or Manchester, N.H.,” he said.

He turned to an aide, Teddy Davis, his director of strategic communications. “They still have the death penalty in New Hampshire, don’t they?”

Mr. Davis said they did. “They had passed a repeal bill about 10 years ago. Governor Shaheen had vetoed it,” he said, referring to Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who is now one of the state’s senators.

And how did an aide to Maryland’s governor know policy details in New Hampshire, which holds the first presidential primary?

“Just learned my New Hampshire stuff,” said Mr. Davis, whom the governor recently hired to help with the next phase of his career.

View the original article here

South Carolina: Ex-Governor Advances

By Marcus Mabry, Ben Werschkul, Channon Hodge, Pedro Rafael Rosado and Alyssa KimSanford’s Political Comeback: The Times’s Kim Severson on Mark Sanford’s runoff win and re-entry into politics, three years after he was plagued by political scandal as governor of South Carolina.

View the original article here

Burnside's Police State

Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

Near dawn on March 24, 1863, Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside stepped off a train in Cincinnati. The tall, bald, magnificently bewhiskered soldier arrived from Washington to take command of the Army’s Department of the Ohio, an enormous command that encompassed Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and most of Kentucky. His orders from the War Department were to collect troops and prepare to lead an invasion of eastern Tennessee. In the meantime, though, he also had to deal with the roiling antiwar politics of the Ohio Valley.

Burnside’s new billet offered redemption after failure at the head of the Army of the Potomac during the winter. The general had led the disastrous assaults on entrenched Confederate troops at Fredericksburg, Va., in December. Later, the “Mud March” fiasco, a failed attempt at a winter campaign, prompted feuding among the Army of the Potomac’s top commanders. President Abraham Lincoln finally removed him in late January 1863. But Lincoln liked the unassuming and sincere Indiana native and wanted him to have an active command. This new assignment was another chance to serve his country.

Library of Congress Gen. Ambrose Burnside

Burnside replaced Brig. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, who had commanded the Department of the Ohio since its formation in August 1862. Wright remained in Cincinnati for several days to ease the new man into command and teach him the lay of the land. The threat of a springtime Confederate invasion of Kentucky loomed, and the defense of the commonwealth took priority over offensive plans. More to the point, the restive states north of the Ohio River had to be quieted. Burnside learned from Wright that Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were cauldrons of violent resistance to the federal government.

Just as galling to these soldiers, anti-administration speech throughout the region was commonplace. Democratic speakers and newspapers heaped torrents of abuse on Lincoln, his policies and his generals. The Emancipation Proclamation continued to be a lightning rod for protest. The constant abuse, many officers and enlisted men believed, encouraged desertion and seriously weakened the armies in the field.

To put an end to it, Burnside had a solution. Three weeks after arriving in Cincinnati, on April 13, he announced General Orders 38, applying military authority to the regulation of all speech and publication in the department. “It must be distinctly understood,” he declared, “that treason expressed or implied will not be tolerated.”

Burnside’s order reflected the sentiments of many soldiers who blamed partisan — i.e., Democratic — speech for prolonging the war. Days before the order appeared, Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, commander of the District of Ohio, noted in a speech that soldiers believed “that these enemies at home are more dangerous than those they meet in the field.” As Burnside himself publicly explained, his order was a declaration of military superiority over civil government in combatting disloyalty and policing the home front. “I am probably invested with a little more power than the majority of you in suppressing anything like treason, and acts that tend to create dissention.”

Burnside’s military edict against treasonous speech was only the latest military measure to fight the growing problem of resistance to the government in the North. Wright, his predecessor, had created a spy bureau made up of civilian detectives and soldiers detailed to roam the landscape and sniff out disloyalty and conspiracy. His Army detectives spied on groups who aided deserters and vowed resistance to the newly passed Enrollment Act. They also reported on sales of arms and ammunition to groups deemed disloyal and bent on violence. Wright also instituted a department-wide ban on the sale of firearms and ammunition in order to keep guns out of the hands of traitors.

General Orders 38 met with widespread approval from Republicans who dearly wished to muzzle their political foes. Troops applauded the measure, none more so than Brig. Gen. Milo S. Hascall, commander of the District of Indiana, who promulgated (with Burnside’s approval) a similar order specifically for his state. “All newspapers and public speakers that counsel or encourage resistance to the Conscription Act, or any other law of Congress passed as a war measure, or that endeavor to bring the war policy of the Government into disrepute,” would, he warned, be deemed violators of the order.

While Republicans cheered the orders, Democrats scolded the generals for unconstitutional infringements of the freedoms of speech and the press. Several Indiana Democratic editors mockingly wondered what Burnside meant by “implied treason.” In May, Hascall proceeded to arrest editors, shutter several newspapers and threaten others in his state as a demonstration of the term’s meaning. Many Democratic speakers and newspaper editors held their tongues lest they be arrested and imprisoned by the Army.

Democratic indignation soared. Many Democrats soon braved the threat of arrest and boldly criticized Burnside’s military edict. Speakers and editors lambasted the order as tyrannical, unconstitutional and merely the latest Lincoln administration travesty. The order quickly came to have the opposite effect from what Burnside had hoped: far from stifling dissent, Burnside’s order provided a rallying cry for antiwar partisans. Rallies throughout the region brought out thousands of energized Democrats.

One Democratic politician appears to have used his party’s reaction to Burnside’s edict to revive his political fortunes. Former Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Dayton, Ohio, defeated in his 1862 congressional race, had plans to run for governor in the fall of 1863. He tapped Democratic anger and attacked General Orders 38 in public speeches. Army officers dressed in civilian clothes recorded one of his speeches. Shortly afterward, troops surrounded Vallandigham’s Dayton house and battered down his door; they arrested him and hauled him away to headquarters in Cincinnati. Burnside promptly tried him by military commission for violation of the order. While Dayton dissolved in riot and half its downtown burned, the tribunal found Vallandigham guilty and sentenced him to military imprisonment, which Lincoln changed to exile in the Confederacy. Vallandigham’s arrest made him a martyr in the eyes of Ohio Democrats, who nominated him as their candidate for governor.

Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive.

While most Republicans took delight in military punishment for Democratic speech, one important Republican acted behind the scenes to put an end to Burnside’s order. From the outset, Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton perceived both that enforcing the order was impractical and that Democrats gained more from it politically than Republicans. The month before he had disposed of the dangerous problem raised by the military arrest of a sitting Illinois Democratic judge, Charles H. Constable. The generals by their heavy-handed tactics were again interfering with political matters for which they had little aptitude. He traveled to Washington and lobbied the Lincoln administration to remove both Burnside and Hascall. He failed to have Burnside canned, but the War Department soon replaced Hascall.

Morton’s intervention with national authorities brought an end to Burnside’s policy of military arrests for speech. At the beginning of the military commission trial of a Democratic Indiana state senator arrested for disloyal speech, a messenger from Morton informed Burnside that the president and his cabinet disapproved of Burnside’s arrest of Vallandigham and the Army’s interference in political matters. Rattled by this startling news, Burnside telegraphed the president to offer his resignation, which Lincoln tersely declined, saying that the arrest had been foolish but the Cabinet would back him. The general promptly ended the policy of arrests and trials for disloyal speech, even freeing the Indiana state senator after the commission found him guilty.

While he discontinued arrests for speech, Burnside still aimed to silence critics. On June 1, he ordered the shutdown of The Chicago Times, the leading antiwar Democratic newspaper in the West. Reacting to Democratic clamor and protests from prominent Republicans, Lincoln initially ordered Burnside to rescind the order. But other Republicans who approved of Burnside’s move intervened, prompting Lincoln to waffle. He flip-flopped and ordered Burnside to keep the paper under lock and key. His message arrived too late. Burnside had already lifted the suppression order. While the general did not rescind General Orders 38, the suppression of The Chicago Times was to be his last major attempt to curb Democratic opposition in the Department of the Ohio.

Burnside blamed Governor Morton for the demise of his program for rigorous military intervention into civil affairs, one of the most notorious efforts to suppress speech and press freedoms in American history. “The civil law is too slow,” he groused privately. The general, who saw himself as supreme military governor over five states, greater than a mere state governor, believed the power of the Army should be employed to quell dissent. But the capable Indiana executive prevailed and kept the general at bay. In July, Morton again skillfully deflected Burnside’s efforts to declare martial law in Indiana during an extensive Confederate raid across the region.

In angry frustration, Burnside’s staff officers turned a portrait of the governor that hung in their Cincinnati headquarters upside down. The irony of their symbolic protest appears to have escaped them.

Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.

Sources: William Marvel, “Burnside”; Craig D. Tenney, “To Suppress or Not to Suppress: Abraham Lincoln and the Chicago Times,” Civil War History 27 (September, 1981); Stephen E. Towne, “Killing the Serpent Speedily: Governor Morton, General Hascall, and the Suppression of the Democratic Press in Indiana, 1863,” Civil War History 52 (March, 2006); Stephen E. Towne, “Worse than Vallandigham: Governor Oliver P. Morton, Lambdin P. Milligan, and the Military Arrest and Trial of Indiana State Senator Alexander J. Douglas during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History 106 (March, 2010).

Stephen E. Towne is an associate university archivist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the editor of “A Fierce, Wild Joy: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Edward J. Wood, 48th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment.”

View the original article here

The Early Word: Calamity

April 07

The White House says a threatened filibuster by Republicans on gun control was an affront to the families of the children who died in a school shooting in Connecticut.

April 06

Dan Pfeiffer, senior adviser to President Obama, is on the Sunday shows, talking about North Korea, the budget, immigration and gun control.

April 06

Political news from today’s Times and a look at the president’s weekly address.

April 05

Scott Brown, who just turned down a chance to run again for the Senate in Massachusetts, is hinting that he might hop over the state line and challenge Senator Jeanne Shaheen in 2014.

April 05

Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana announced their support Friday.

View the original article here

Obama Pauses From Fray to Raise Money for 2014

WASHINGTON — As he battles to advance legislative priorities on gun control and taxes, President Obama opened a multimillion-dollar fund-raising drive Wednesday in the hope of winning a friendlier Congress for his final two years in office.

With a two-day swing through the money corridors of Northern California, Mr. Obama began fulfilling a promise to Congressional Democrats to use the power and prestige of his office to fill their coffers for the 2014 election in a way he did not during his first term.

The president was the headliner at the first two of four big-dollar events Wednesday night and planned to appear at two more Thursday before returning to Washington. Although his approval rating is stuck below 50 percent in many polls, Mr. Obama remains a top draw for wealthy Democratic patrons, particularly in the supportive realms around San Francisco.

“Two thousand twelve was a referendum on the president, so the president had to campaign for himself,” Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview. “Two thousand fourteen is going to be a referendum on House Republican obstruction, and so the president is now helping House Democrats.”

The president returned to the campaign trail while making a high-profile effort to court Republican lawmakers. He has taken Republican senators to dinner, and is scheduled to have another dinner with Senate Republicans next week after releasing his long-delayed budget plan.

Such dual-track efforts are common for presidents of both parties, but this one could complicate Mr. Obama’s outreach on issues like deficit reduction and immigration.

“My hope is that we’re going to see more and more Republicans who say, you know what, I didn’t come here just to fight the president or demonize Nancy Pelosi, I came here to get some stuff done,” Mr. Obama said at one of the Wednesday night fundraisers, where he was flanked by Mrs. Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. “But, realistically, I could get a whole lot more done if Nancy Pelosi is speaker of the House.”

Mr. Obama’s choice of hosts likewise opened the president to criticism. His first reception Wednesday was at the San Francisco home of Thomas F. Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire, and his wife, Kat Taylor, where 100 guests each paid between $5,000 and the $32,400 legal maximum. After that, the president was headed to the San Francisco home of the billionaire philanthropists Ann and Gordon Getty, who had invited 75 people to write checks for $32,400.

On Thursday morning, the president is due in nearby Atherton for a brunch for 30 guests paying $32,400 apiece at the home of Mark W. Heising, founder of a private equity investment firm, and his wife, Liz Simons. Then Mr. Obama is due at the Atherton home of John D. Goldman, a Levi Strauss heir, and his wife, Marcia, for a reception for 250 donors paying between $1,000 and $20,000 each.

The Republican National Committee posted a video mocking Mr. Obama for calling on the wealthy to pay more in taxes and then hitting what it called “Billionaires’ Row” to collect big campaign checks.

“On the campaign trail, Obama’s favorite applause line was attacking the very people he’s now begging for campaign cash,” Reince Priebus, the party chairman, said in a statement. “Hypocrisy at its finest. Barack Obama has his priorities completely backward — prioritizing billionaires over the taxpayers who demand and deserve a budget.”

Republicans were not the only ones protesting Mr. Obama’s fund-raising trip. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups picketed outside the Getty home to press him to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, the latest of several such demonstrations.

“Americans are showing up by the thousands to tell the president in person: ‘You must be bold on climate. You must reject Keystone XL,’ ” said Michael Brune, executive directorof the Sierra Club.

Mr. Obama may get that message even more directly from Mr. Steyer, who retired last year from Farallon Capital Management. Mr. Steyer, an environmental advocate, is such an ardent foe of Keystone that he recently threatened to broadcast ads against a Senate candidate in Massachusetts unless the candidate renounced support for the pipeline.

The events Wednesday night were to benefit the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mr. Obama promised to hold eight fund-raisers for the group this year, including two with its Senate counterpart. He appeared at only two fund-raisers for the committee in 2009 and one in 2011. The Thursday events will be for the Democratic National Committee.

View the original article here

Midterm Elections Unlikely to Alter Party Balance

Well, get used to the combination of a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and White House. It’s likely to remain that way for the next four years, not just two.

And oddly enough, that might just help Washington lower the partisan temperature and strike a few compromises for a change.

The campaign for midterm elections in 2014 has begun. Late Wednesday, President Obama travels to California to raise cash for the Democratic National Committee and his party’s House campaign arm.

But chances that Democrats can gain the 17 seats needed to recapture control of the House appear remote. Republicans have better prospects of picking up the six seats they need to regain the Senate – but not drastically better.

After midterm “wave elections” in 2006 and 2010, the calmer outlook this time reduces the stakes of electoral competition next year. That, in turn, may expand opportunities for bipartisan action on such issues as immigration, modest gun control measures and deficit reduction.

“We’re going to maintain our majority,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in an interview. But with Mr. Obama not going anywhere either, he added, “I’m committed to seeing ways we can work with this White House, knowing full well we have big differences.”

“I think what you’re seeing emerge now is an appetite for achievement,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who is a solid favorite to win re-election next year. “We want to do some things – or at least try – on a bipartisan basis.”

The ideological and political gap between the parties remains wide in any event. But the lure of seizing control of the House or Senate, and winning the presidency, has widened that gap in recent years by injecting all-or-nothing electoral drama into virtually every high-profile dispute.

In 2006, Democrats used unhappiness over the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and other Republican setbacks to recapture House and Senate majorities. When the financial crisis hit two years later, they captured the presidency.

In 2010, House Republicans used continued economic weakness and a backlash against Obama administration policies to create their own comeback wave. Last year Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, set his sights on winning control of the Senate and ensuring Mr. Obama’s defeat.

As it turned out, voters last November preserved the existing balance of power. Odds favor their doing the same next time.

As this week’s fund-raising jaunt suggests, Mr. Obama is lending his energies to Congressional Democrats now that he no longer has to campaign for himself. But history and circumstance argue strongly against Democrats retaking the House.

Since voters tend to blame the White House incumbent for their discontents, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but three midterm elections in the past century. The number of times the president’s party has gained 17 seats in a midterm election: zero.

Democratic campaign operatives say they will defy history and gain at least a few seats. Among other factors, they point to strong fund-raising and the Republican Party’s national image problems.

But district lines drawn after the 2010 census circumscribe their opportunities. Charlie Cook, a political handicapper, estimates that fewer than 30 Republican-held seats are even at risk, and Democrats themselves have slightly more in jeopardy.

The midterm electorate tends to be heavier than in presidential years with older voters and whites – both important Republican constituencies. In Senate races, Republicans once again boast an auspicious map of possibilities.

View the original article here

Rubio, Amid Planning, Is Yet to Commit on Immigration Bill

Given the disdain some conservatives reserve for Republicans who consort publicly with Democrats, he had reason to be.

The next time Mr. Rubio is likely to appear with his colleagues in the eight-person bipartisan group could be an even bigger moment, when its members officially introduce joint immigration legislation this month. The probable tableau seems ready-made for problems in the 2016 Republican presidential primary fight in which many expect Mr. Rubio to partake: images of Mr. Rubio, smiling and celebrating alongside Democratic senators and maverick Republicans as he claims co-authorship of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that many Republicans will reject.

And so the question percolating on Capitol Hill has become: Will Mr. Rubio, an up-and-coming young conservative elected on a 2010 Tea Party wave, ultimately sign onto the immigration bill that he has been helping to draft ever since the November election?

“We have to see if the Boy Wonder plays ball or not,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group.

For now, the answer — among members of the bipartisan group, immigration watchers and even Mr. Rubio’s own staff — is a tentative yes, even with Mr. Rubio increasingly urging caution about racing ahead with any immigration measure as the unveiling draws nigh.

“We understand Marco is not going to be rushed into anything,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the group. “But we don’t doubt his commitment to seeing this through at all.”

In recent days, Mr. Rubio has begun to sound nervous again when it comes to the immigration legislation. He sent a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, counseling against “excessive haste” in changing immigration law. On Sunday, just moments before two of his fellow bipartisan group members were set to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he released a statement that warned, “No final agreement on immigration legislation yet.”

Mr. Rubio finds himself in an extremely delicate position as a rising conservative hero and a proponent of immigration law changes. As much as the fate of the bipartisan group’s legislation hangs on Mr. Rubio, who is perhaps the only member of the group with the conservative credentials to sell the plan to skeptical voters, the fate of Mr. Rubio’s ambitions for higher office are also inextricably bound up with the immigration legislation and his base’s reaction to it.

So far, Mr. Rubio has seen early success wooing grass-roots Republican voters. When he joined the bipartisan group late last year, after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election in part because he was overwhelmingly rejected by Hispanic voters, Mr. Rubio quickly went on a one-man blitz of conservative news media outlets, explaining his guiding immigration principles and winning plaudits from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

“The argument is that it’s not conservative policy to have 11 million illegal immigrants in this country,” said Phil Musser, a Republican consultant and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “By showing up and by boldly deciding to engage people who have had their fingers in their ears on this issue, he’s been able to decalcify a process that’s been stuck for a long time.”

He and his staff have studied the mistakes of the last attempt at immigration overhaul, in 2007, and have tailored their pitch to address conservative concerns. Mr. Rubio stresses that strict goals for border security must be met before any illegal immigrants can be put on a path to citizenship. And he talks of refining the current system — from increased enforcement to a workable plan for future legal immigrants — saying he wants to ensure the country does not face another wave of illegal immigrants down the road.

“His emphasis on strong border security and enforcement is a big deal, and I think the Democrats are finally beginning to get that, and I think that is because of his strong leadership and communication skills,” said Mel Martinez, a former Republican senator from Florida who was part of the failed 2007 attempt at an immigration overhaul.

View the original article here

For Democrats, a Rare Force Commanding in Cowboy Boots

Had she not followed her grandfather’s instructions, Ms. Guerra, now a Democratic strategist, might have gone down a different path. Now 31, she recalls how voting in that local election — though she cannot remember what was on the ballot — started her on a journey that has included leading the bruising but successful recent campaigns of two state senators and a state representative.

Of her grandfather’s instructions, she said, “I just remember him yelling names at me, he was a couple of booths down.” She remembers thinking, “This is embarrassing.”

Her former employers say Ms. Guerra is a force behind the scenes, and more than a mere up-and-comer for the state’s beleaguered Democratic Party. She is viewed by some in the party as a rare weapon for progressives in a conservative stronghold.

Part of Ms. Guerra’s drive comes from a lack of patience with Democrats who think the party’s time will eventually come.

“We’ve been in this holding pattern for so long, like we have to wait until ‘this’ year before Texas turns blue,” she said. “I just think, I am not getting any younger. I don’t want to wait for it to happen. I just want to make it happen.”

The second of five children, Ms. Guerra was raised by her mother and her grandparents.

Her mother held a number of odd jobs, including part-time work at an Army surplus store, before landing a job at the state’s Health and Human Services Commission. She eventually joined the state employee’s union and became enthralled with Democratic politics.

Ms. Guerra, a graduate of Texas A&M University, said her mother’s passion, along with lessons in elections and politics from her grandparents, steered her toward her current path.

She became a field worker for the Texas Democratic Party, then eventually joined Representative Chris Turner, Democrat of Grand Prairie, when he was working for former United States Representative Chet Edwards. She became a consultant for Mr. Turner’s campaign when he decided to run for the Texas House.

Her latest victory came this month, when she helped propel State Senator Sylvia Garcia, Democrat of Houston, to victory. Ms. Garcia defeated Representative Carol Alvarado, a fellow Houston Democrat, in a special election that began late last fall and started with a field of eight candidates.

“We were both interviewing each other,” Ms. Garcia said. “I was looking for the right manager, and I think she was looking for the right candidate, and I think it was just the right match.”

“I saw her handle more than one problematic issue on the campaign to where you saw she was chiquita, pero picosa,” Ms. Garcia said, using a phrase meaning small but spicy. (Ms. Guerra is barely 5 feet tall in her signature cowboy boots.) “You saw where she was there to protect me as a candidate, there to protect our campaign.”

Ms. Guerra joined Ms. Garcia’s team a week after leaving the victorious campaign of State Senator Wendy Davis, Democrat of Fort Worth, who survived a challenge from former Representative Mark Shelton, Republican of Fort Worth, in the most expensive state Senate race of 2012.

Ms. Davis said Ms. Guerra was one of several people the senator interviewed, and though she lacked experience in a race of similar size and expense, Ms. Davis was soon won over.

“Despite how unassuming she can be, she was not at all afraid to ask for the job and assure me with tremendous confidence that she knew she was capable of doing it,” she said. “It’s a pretty rare quality for a person of her age, and for a woman, and probably even more rare for a woman of that age who is a Latina. But she has a tremendous self-confidence, and I think that’s one of the things that keeps her very happy to be behind the scenes.”

Ms. Davis came to believe her decision when she saw how Ms. Guerra commanded her field workers.

View the original article here

After Other States’ Moves, Connecticut Is Still Working on Stricter Gun Law

In January, New York passed the first comprehensive gun legislation in the wake of the killings. On Wednesday, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado signed bills mandating sweeping new restrictions on the sales of firearms and ammunition there.

But in Connecticut, which became the epicenter of the debate over guns, legislative leaders have yet to introduce a bill to address gun violence and mental health issues. They continue to meet daily, and now expect introduction around the first week in April.

The result, to some, has been a perplexing process in a state traumatized and galvanized by the killings, where opinion polls show overwhelming support for new gun legislation, and where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the General Assembly and thus have the ability to pass whatever they want. But legislators say that given the state’s relatively moderate politics, with a culture of bipartisan lawmaking and a new House speaker who made a commitment that both parties would be involved in writing gun legislation, the process has played out in a largely familiar way.

Some Democrats, including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and gun control advocates have expressed frustration with the pace. But the House speaker, Brendan Sharkey, a Democrat presiding over his first session, said he was confident that Democratic and Republican legislators could agree soon on comprehensive gun legislation. And, citing a statement by New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, that his state’s new limits on ammunition magazines were unworkable and needed to be modified, Mr. Sharkey said Connecticut legislators were wise to take the time to get their legislation right.

“My mantra at the beginning was it is important to act quickly, but it is more important to act intelligently,” Mr. Sharkey said in an interview.

He added, “I’m personally very confident that what we produce will give Connecticut the strongest gun safety legislation in the country when we’re done.”

After the tragedy, Connecticut created a somewhat confusing process, with one commission established by Governor Malloy to research guns, violence and mental health issues and a separate task force set up by the legislature.

Republicans and Democrats on the legislative task force agreed on many elements of a gun-control package but offered separate reports. Both sides called for universal background checks, greater safe-storage requirements and more requirements for buying ammunition. Only Democrats called for expanding the existing assault-weapons ban to cover a broader array of weapons and for a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

But Democratic and Republican leaders indicated that the fact they were still talking was evidence that those two elements could be part of bipartisan legislation. And Larry Cafero, the House Republican leader, said passing legislation roughly four months after the shootings would be extraordinary given the complexity of the issues.

Colorado’s legislation came eight months after the mass murder in Aurora, Colo., last summer, Mr. Sharkey noted.

Alluding to New York’s experience, Mr. Cafero said, “To be the first out of the blocks and get it wrong is not a success as far as I’m concerned.”

Legislative leaders have largely kept their deliberations private. But one aspect discussed is whether to have multiple bills, with one able to gain broad support and another dealing with issues like assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that would have a harder time attracting bipartisan agreement. That approach now seems unlikely, people close to the deliberations said.

If there is support for a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, the next question is whether it should apply just to their sale or also to their possession, meaning that those people who now own them would have to dispose of them. The commission appointed by Mr. Malloy, in an interim report, recommended the ban of the “sale, possession or use” of magazines with more than 10 rounds.

Mr. Cafero last week also sharply criticized the State Police for a briefing about the Sandy Hook case it delivered this month at a law enforcement convention in New Orleans. The Daily News, quoting someone who had attended the convention, reported on details of the crime that have not been disclosed to legislators or the victims’ families. Among the details was that the gunman, Adam Lanza, had compiled a large spreadsheet of mass murders and the weapons used in them.

Mr. Cafero said lawmakers should have all appropriate information as they work on legislation before they finish.

Mr. Malloy echoed Mr. Cafero’s disappointment with the leak, and directed the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney to release additional information on the investigation by next Friday.

But, perhaps indicating some limits to bipartisanship and frustration with the progress made, the governor said in a statement that “the vast majority of people in Connecticut can agree on some simple, common-sense things we can do — right now” and that legislators should by now have all the information they need to proceed.

“What more does Mr. Cafero need to know before he’s finally ready to take action?” Mr. Malloy said.

View the original article here