Watched by his son Henry, Democratic Senate candidate Bob Kerrey delivers his concession speech at the Nebraska Democratic Party's election night gathering in La Vista.

California's lopsided politics yield little election intrigue

SACRAMENTO — It has come to this: California politics have become so one-sided that the only half-way intriguing statewide races this spring are for two largely ministerial jobs.

One is secretary of state.

The other is state controller.

Both are pretty mundane.

The secretary of state oversees elections and maintains public databases on campaign contributions and lobbyists' spending. The office also processes a lot of business-related stuff.

Sounds simple. But under termed-out Democrat Debra Bowen, few things seemingly have been simple. There have been glitches galore, mainly involving web technology.

"It has had more headaches than the Obamacare rollout," says Allan Hoffenblum, frequent user of the state campaign finance database called Cal-Access. "They [the feds] at least got their web fixed."

Hoffenblum publishes the California Target Book, which closely follows legislative races, and says he has been frequently frustrated trying to track how much money candidates are raising and where they're getting it.

Bowen has blamed her problems on a shortage of funds caused by budget cutbacks during the recession.

As for the controller, he or she writes the state's checks and has the power — not used enough — to audit how money is spent. The office also holds seats on some potent tax and regulatory boards.

The sexy offices — governor and attorney general — are considered slam-dunks this year for the Democratic incumbents, Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris.

Blame the pathetic Republican Party, which received more bad news Tuesday. Since the last gubernatorial election in 2010, the GOP's share of the California electorate has dropped another 2 percentage points and is down to 28.6%.

Democrats lost 1 percentage point, but their share is 43.5%, giving them a huge advantage in statewide elections. Voters with no party preference increased by 1 point to 21.1%.

Under California's new "top two" open primary system — with the first and second place finishers advancing to the general election, regardless of party — there's no assurance a Republican will even be in every statewide runoff.

In the secretary of state contest, most political pros believe that Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla, a former Los Angeles city councilman, will make it into the top two.

As a sitting legislator, Padilla has more name-ID — at least in vote-heavy L.A. — and can raise a lot more campaign money than his main Democratic rival, Derek Cressman, a former official of the political reform group Common Cause.

The big primary tussle for the other top two spot seems to be between Republican Pete Peterson, who heads the Davenport public policy institute at Pepperdine University, and no-party candidate Dan Schnur, who's on leave from the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

Schnur, a former GOP operative, is trying to become the first nonpartisan elected to statewide partisan office in California. If he can raise enough money, he'll go after Republican voters, trying to cut into Peterson's natural support.

Also on the ballot, although he has withdrawn from the race, is disgraced state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), recently suspended by the Senate after being indicted on federal corruption charges.

A recent Field Poll found Peterson leading among likely voters at 30%, followed by Padilla with 17%. Trailing far behind were Green Party architectural designer David Curtis at 5%; Schnur, 4%; and Cressman, 3%.

View the original article here

Election law targets Democrats, favors the Republican vote

Respect.

Arizona Democrats have earned it. However, Gov. Jan Brewer and her political operatives have once again abused their power to marginalize Democrats. Signing House Bill 2305, which is designed to bolster the Republican Party's advantage in the 2014 election, is the latest example.

The victories of the past session are due in large part to the gains Democrats made in the Legislature in 2012. By restoring balance to the Legislature, moderate Republicans finally gained the confidence they lacked during the debate over Senate Bill 1070, the impeachment of a redistricting commissioner or the budget cuts that negatively impacted Arizona's schools, universities, cities and public safety, and left hundreds of thousands without health care these past five years.

Expanding health-care coverage this session was only possible because national Democrats risked and lost their political power in 2010 to pass health-care reform. Gov. Brewer is now being anointed sainthood status, though she merely swept in at the last minute to fix a problem that she helped orchestrate.

Brewer could have easily decided it would have been easier to side with the "tea party" and continue fighting Medicaid expansion, but thankfully, she decided to do what was best for Arizona. For this, she does deserve credit -- but we should not forget the foundation of her decision was prompted by 13 Democratic state senators and 24 state representatives.

The question surrounding a promise to kill or veto HB 2305 is irrelevant. The bill lacked compromise and transparency. It was designed not with the intent of making voting easier and more accessible, but with the intent of limiting voter participation and choice. It includes new restrictions on how Arizonans can exercise their right to vote early. Arizona lags behind in voter turnout and has failed to update outdated voter-registration deadlines, improve access to early-voting locations and remove antiquated precinct restrictions on Election Day.

The fight to preserve voting rights defines the modern-day Democratic Party. This right has been fought for and sealed with the blood of those who battled for civil rights. Given Arizona's dark history of discrimination and drawn-out arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Department of Justice, it is crucial that all election reforms require the highest degree of scrutiny, transparency and compromise.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected another Arizona law aimed at restricting voter participation, and the stage was set for Brewer to reverse the political bickering and continue the goodwill she built up with Medicaid expansion. Political decency could have once again prevailed in Arizona. Instead, Brewer and her political advisers did what they do best: divide Arizona.

Luis Heredia is government relations director for the Torres Consulting and Law Group and a Democratic Party national committeeman.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here

Legal Battles on Voting May Prove a Critical Issue in Election

In the last few weeks, nearly a dozen decisions in federal and state courts on early voting, provisional ballots and voter identification requirements have driven the rules in conflicting directions, some favoring Republicans demanding that voters show more identification to guard against fraud and others backing Democrats who want to make voting as easy as possible.

The most closely watched cases — in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania — will see court arguments again this week, with the Ohio dispute possibly headed for a request for emergency review by the Supreme Court.

In Wisconsin, the home state of the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the attorney general has just appealed to the State Supreme Court on an emergency basis to review two rulings barring its voter ID law. But even if all such cases are settled before Nov. 6 — there are others in Florida, Iowa and South Carolina — any truly tight race will most likely generate post-election litigation that could delay the final result.

“In any of these states there is the potential for disaster,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “You have close elections and the real possibility that people will say their votes were not counted when they should have been. That’s the nightmare scenario for the day after the election.”

In the 2000 presidential election, a deadlock over ballot design and tallying in parts of Florida led the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, to stop a recount of ballots, which led to George W. Bush defeating Al Gore. Since then, both parties have focused on voting procedures.

The Obama campaign, for example, brought suit in Ohio over its reduction of early voting weekends used more by blacks than other groups.

Republicans have expressed concern over what they call voter integrity. They say they fear that registration drives by liberal and community groups have bloated voter rolls with the dead and the undocumented and have created loose monitoring of who votes and low public confidence in the system. They have instituted voter identification rules, cut back on early voting and sought to purge voter lists by comparing them with others, including those of the Department of Homeland Security.

Judicial Watch, a conservative organization aimed at reducing voter fraud, says it has found that voter rolls last year in 12 states seemed to contain an ineligible number of voting-age residents when compared with 2010 census data. It is suing both Indiana and Ohio for failing to clean up their rolls in keeping with their obligations under the National Voter Registration Act.

Democrats worry about what they call voter suppression. They say that voter fraud is largely a myth and that the goal of the Republican-led laws and lawsuits is to reduce voting by minorities, the poor and the young, who tend to vote more for Democrats.

At the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina on Thursday, Representative John Lewis of Georgia expressed his party’s view on voter-related Republican-led laws when he compared them to poll taxes and literacy tests used to prevent blacks from voting in an earlier era.

“Today, it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting,” he said. “They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote.”

Courts have taken a mixed view of the two sides’ claims. Voter ID laws have been both upheld as fair and struck down as discriminatory. In Pennsylvania, a state judge upheld the voter ID law, and the State Supreme Court will hear appeal arguments on Thursday.

Elsewhere recently, Democrats have won more than they have lost, but appeals are forthcoming. A federal court agreed with the Justice Department that Texas’ voter ID law was discriminatory and also struck down the state’s curtailment of voter registration; in Ohio, early voting has been restored and rules restricting voter registration drives have been struck down. The Ohio case is under appeal to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit under expedited review. Texas will also appeal but not in time to affect this election. A Justice Department challenge to South Carolina’s voter ID law is in federal court.

In Florida, a federal court ruled last month that a year-old state law that reduced the number of early voting days to 8 from 12 could not be enforced in 5 of the 67 counties that are covered under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the court suggested that extending the hours of voting over the eight-day period in those five counties would satisfy the federal requirements. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, was able to persuade election officials in four of the counties to extend their daily hours, but the supervisor of elections in Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, refused, saying that the county would maintain an early voting period of 12 days.

One issue that is likely to lead to lawsuits after Election Day is that of provisional ballots. Under federal law, anyone whose identity or voting precinct is in doubt can ask for a provisional ballot at any polling station and then has a number of days to return with the required documentation to make that vote count.

Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting.

View the original article here

This Election, Supreme Court Could Rally Democrats

The prospect arises both because of President Obama’s comments this week implicitly warning the court against striking down his signature domestic achievement, the expanded health insurance law, and because of recent court rulings, chiefly the Citizens United campaign finance decision, and looming cases on immigration and affirmative action that incite passions on the left.

“Historically, the court has been a rallying point for the Republican base, and it is now much easier to imagine that it will be a rallying point with the Democratic base just as much if not more, especially if the court overturns the Affordable Care Act,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who works with Priorities USA Action, a group supporting the president’s re-election but independent of his campaign.

“My guess,” Mr. Garin added, “is that more voters will think, ‘If they can do that, they can do just about anything — and that includes overturning Roe v. Wade’ ” — the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision.

Though the justices are not expected to rule on the 2010 health care law until June, the public reaction to the three days of arguments last week offered evidence of a potential Democratic backlash. In a poll for The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 32 percent of Democrats said they had a less favorable opinion of the Supreme Court after the hearings, compared with 14 percent of Republicans.

“There’s evidence here of a negative reaction from Democrats,” said Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate director for research. The justices “didn’t even decide anything yet, and many people walked away from their hearings feeling more negative about the court. So you can imagine the reaction if they overturn the law.”

Officials at the White House and with the Obama campaign would not comment for the record, though several insisted there was no political strategy to run against the Supreme Court’s conservative majority — at least not unless the court invalidates the health care law. Aides said Mr. Obama, a former Harvard Law Review president and constitutional law instructor at the University of Chicago, had simply been answering the predictable questions about his reaction to the hearings.

And much as Democrats argued in past election seasons, some aides expressed skepticism about how effective the issue could be in the election, given the public’s poll-tested lack of interest in the court.

Republicans, by contrast, have made it an issue since Richard M. Nixon, running in 1968, denounced the Warren-era court for liberal rulings on social issues and criminal procedures, and made phrases like “judicial activism,” “legislating from the bench” and “strict constructionism” presidential-year perennials for conservatives.

The criticisms fit with the broader Republican message against crime, cultural permissiveness and the removal of Christian faith from public policy. In the Republicans’ current contest for the presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich courted conservatives by arguing for elected officials to ignore judicial decisions they oppose. Last week, Rick Santorum joined protesters of the health care law outside the Supreme Court.

“I don’t think there’s a single presidential campaign going back to 1968 upon which the result turned on the Supreme Court generally or a single Supreme Court case,” said Joel Benenson, an Obama pollster.

“To the extent it would be a motivating issue this year,” he added, “it would be for Democratic and independent voters around the Citizens United case.”

That decision, with five Republican-appointed justices forming the majority, overturned precedents and allowed corporations and individuals to give unlimited sums of money to support independent campaigns on behalf of political candidates — a freedom that has helped define the Republican presidential contest.

Mr. Garin said his polling and focus groups showed that Citizens United “is probably the best-known decision since Bush v. Gore” — the 5-to-4 ruling that decided the deadlocked 2000 presidential election for the Republican, George W. Bush.

What makes the Citizens United case resonate with Democrats and some independent voters, party strategists say, is its fit with many Americans’ sense that the political system, including the conservative court, favors corporate and special interests.

“The jurisprudential divide on the Supreme Court regarding high-profile legal issues now appears to map almost perfectly onto the political divide that exists in the larger nation,” said Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Texas, who was a law clerk to Sandra Day O’Connor, a former Republican appointee, and Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a Democratic appointee. “I do think that this may be a year for the Supreme Court to play a prominent role in the election in a way that we have not seen in a long time, maybe ever.”

Increasingly, Professor Driver said, the court splits 5 to 4, with appointees of one party opposite those of the other. That was true of Monday’s ruling that local officials can strip-search anyone being jailed, no matter how minor the alleged offense and regardless of whether there is reason to suspect contraband.

In contrast, court decisions of past decades that most roiled conservatives often had lopsided majorities or even unanimous votes. Until recently, party affiliation had little bearing. For example, the dissenters in Bush v. Gore included two Republican appointees, while the author of Roe v. Wade was a Republican appointee and its chief dissenter a Democratic appointee.

Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, said “the smart money” among legal scholars was on the court’s upholding the health care law. But if the law is overturned, he said, the court is certain to be a major issue in the presidential campaign.

Together with decisions like Citizens United, he said, “that would add up to a real pattern of conservative judicial activism, of a kind that will really be unprecedented since the New Deal.”

Mr. Obama made that argument on Tuesday to a convention of newspaper editors, seeking to clarify his much-criticized comment on Monday that it would be “unprecedented” for the court to strike down a law.

On Tuesday he said he had meant that the court had deferred to Congress on matters affecting interstate commerce — like health care — “at least since Lochner.” That referred to the judicial era before the New Deal, when pro-business courts routinely invalidated laws on minimum wages, child labor and business regulations.

View the original article here

Claim of Fraud as Votes Are Counted in Brooklyn Special Election

Ángel Franco/The New York TimesThe city’s Board of Elections on Wednesday began counting absentee ballots in a special election to fill a vacant State Senate seat in Brooklyn.

What began as a pleasant day of official vote-counting in the undecided special election for state senator in south Brooklyn devolved into claims of fraud and disenfranchisement from both campaigns on Wednesday afternoon.

In other words: nothing new.

On Wednesday morning, at the city’s Board of Election’s headquarters in Brooklyn, the Republican candidate, David Storobin, 33, a lawyer, led the Democratic candidate, Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, by 119 votes.

By the end of the day, when about a third of the roughly 1,500 absentee ballots and affidavits were counted, Mr. Storobin’s lead was down to 37.

The counting will continue on Thursday, and most likely on Friday, when lawyers for both campaigns are expected to appear in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn so that a judge can review the ballots in dispute, including 151 from Wednesday.

The candidates had already taken a contentious, if not ugly, approach in the campaign for the 27th District. Now, their representatives are continuing the trend.

“We have identified significant patterns of fraud, including a good number of people who sent in absentee-ballot applications who stated they were permanently disabled but then showed up to vote,” Kalman Yeger, Mr. Fidler’s campaign manager, said.

Lawyers for Mr. Fidler’s campaign said they had identified 177 people who had filled out applications for absentee ballots claiming permanent disability, ballots that were collected by the same woman.

“These votes are being targeted ethnically for exclusion so it can go to court,” David Simpson, a spokesman for Mr. Storobin, said. “We believe every vote should be counted the same way.”

The machine totals last week showed that Mr. Storobin, who was born in the Soviet Union, had a slight edge in primarily Russian-American neighborhoods like Brighton Beach and Gravesend. His campaign considered that a moral victory, considering that Gregory Davidzon, a power broker with a popular Russian radio show, had endorsed Mr. Fidler, originally considered the front runner.

“It’s the height of ridiculousness to say that there’s any effort to disenfranchise anybody,” Mr. Yeger said.

Proving a voter’s disability before a judge could be a difficult task, however, and it is possible that testimony from private investigators hired by Mr. Fidler’s campaign will seek to determine the authenticity of the absentee ballots.

“It is shocking that the lies from the Storobin campaign continue a week after the election,” Mr. Yeger said.

Mr. Storobin’s campaign was just as outraged. “David Storobin made a concerted effort in this historic election to empower Russian-American voters and better include them in the democratic process,” Mr. Simpson said in a statement. “It is wrong for the Fidler campaign, now that they are losing an election, to try and subvert the democratic process by specifically excluding voters from the Russian areas of the district, many of whom are participating for the first time.”

View the original article here

Supreme Court throws out Texas election maps (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court handed Texas Republicans a partial victory in a partisan fight over election redistricting that has erupted after a huge increase in the state's Hispanic population.

Throwing out a set of election maps that favored Democrats and minorities, the justices on Friday sent the case back to a lower court, forcing further review of a matter with a limited timetable for resolution as 2012 elections are fast approaching.

In its first ruling on political boundary-drawing based on the 2010 U.S. Census, the high court unanimously rejected interim election maps that had been drawn up by federal judges in San Antonio.

The court said the judges' maps did not sufficiently take into account an earlier set of maps that were drawn up by the Texas state legislature that favored Republicans.

Under the high court's ruling, the Texas judges must redraw the maps for primary contests set for April 3 that will decide party candidates for congressional and state legislature elections in November.

The case is typical of redistricting fights that unfold in states across the country every 10 years after a national census. In this one, protecting the voting rights of millions of minorities and substantial political power are at stake.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, said, "The Supreme Court's swift decision will allow Texas to move forward with elections as soon as possible under maps that are lawful."

The case is being closely watched because it could help decide whether Republicans or Democrats gain as many as four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in November. The Texas delegation now has 23 Republicans and nine Democrats.

MEXICAN-AMERICANS GROUP WEIGHS IN

A civil rights group representing Hispanics, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the ruling reaffirmed Texas' obligation to comply with the voting rights law. The group said it looked forward to further proceedings in San Antonio to secure fair interim maps.

Abbott had appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the lower court had overstepped its authority, and arguing that the judges should have deferred to maps drawn by elected lawmakers.

Those maps favor Republican candidates, but have been challenged for violating the voting rights of Hispanics and other minorities.

The Supreme Court ruled that the federal district court judges appeared to have unnecessarily ignored the state's plans in drawing certain districts and that those maps can at least be used as a starting point.

"Some aspects of the district court's plans seem to pay adequate attention to the state's policies, others do not and the propriety of still others is unclear," the court held in its narrow opinion limited to the unique facts of the Texas dispute.

Redrawing the Texas districts has been a major political and legal battle. The state's population went up by more than 20 percent, or 4.2 million people, over the past decade, with Hispanics accounting for 2.8 million of the increase.

FOUR NEW DISTRICTS FORMED

After the 2010 Census, Texas got four new congressional seats, giving it 36. The legislature's plan, signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race on Thursday, created only one new heavily Hispanic district.

The Supreme Court, in the 11-page, unsigned opinion, said the judges, in coming up with new maps, must be careful not to incorporate any legal defects from the legislature's plan.

The interim maps drawn by the judges in Texas were designed to remain in place until a separate court in Washington, D.C., could decide whether the Texas state plan should be approved or rejected under the federal voting rights law.

A trial in that case is under way. That case and a different pending legal challenge in San Antonio are expected to determine the final maps to be used in Texas in future years.

The Obama administration, the state Democratic Party and minority groups have challenged parts or all of the state's redistricting plan for violating the voting rights law, and said the judicially drawn one should be used on an interim basis.

Justice Clarence Thomas issued a brief opinion agreeing with the judgment, but adding that he would have gone further. He said the legislature's plans have not been found to violate any law and should be used for the upcoming elections.

The Supreme Court cases are Perry v. Perez, No 11-713; Perry v. Davis, No. 11-714, and Perry v. Perez, No. 11-715.

(Reporting By James Vicini; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Vicki Allen)

View the original article here

How Did Ohio, Mississippi Ballot Initiatives Fare in 2011 Election? (ContributorNetwork)

The election that took place on Nov. 8, 2011 featured a number of statewide initiatives that have national import. Two of the results would seem to favor Democrats while two other results favored Republicans.

What the meaning these initiatives have for the 2012 election, if any, will be the subject of considerable debate for the next few weeks. Both sides of the political aisle find reason for comfort and for concern.

Ohio Issue 2: Collective Bargaining Rights for Public Sector Unions

Ohio voters rejected the Issue 2 ballot initiative, a result that had the effect of repealing a law passed in the Ohio legislature that restricted the rights of public sector employees to collectively bargain. Labor unions poured in tens of millions of dollars and many thousands of man hours to defeat the initiative. They succeeded by about a two to one margin. Conservatives warn, however, that this means that either taxes will have to be raised or services cut and employees laid off.

Ohio Issue 3: The Individual Insurance Mandate Under Obamacare

Proving that health care reform, also known as Obamacare, remains universally unpopular, voters in Ohio voted to pass Issue 3, which would exempt Ohioans from having to comply with the individual insurance mandate. Unfortunately if Obamacare remains law and if the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate, the results of the measure are largely moot. It would, however, prevent Ohio from enacting its own version of Romneycare, passed in Massachusetts, which also has an individual mandate.

Mississippi Initiative 26: The Personhood Amendment

This ballot initiative would have defined a human being a legal person from the moment of conception, effectively outlawing all abortions, even in the case of rape or incest. This initiative proved to be too much, even for conservative, Bible belt Mississippi. The fear of unintended consequences, including the possibility that a woman suffering a miscarriage might be charged with involuntary manslaughter, influenced Mississippi voters to turn down the amendment.

Mississippi Initiative 31: Eminent Domain Reform

Even since the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, which permitted state and local governments to seize private property and to give that property to another private entity under eminent domain, states and localities have been scrambling to pass laws to tighten restrictions on eminent domain. Mississippi is the latest state to do so, passing a ballot initiative that largely prohibits state and local governments from taking private property and giving it to another private entity, even if it can claim that a public purpose, usually higher tax revenues, is being facilitated. It is another victory for property rights.

View the original article here

50 Democratic House Seats in Play for 2012 After N.Y. Special Election (ContributorNetwork)

The National Review reports, based on the results of the special election in the New York 9th Congressional District, as many as 50 Democratic House seats may be vulnerable in next year's election.

This is not to say that the Republicans will pick up all 50, but the National Review provides a list of seats that are as favorable or more so for a GOP turnover for 2012.

The widespread vulnerability of House Democrats, even after the political tsunami of 2010, parallels the predicament President Obama is facing in formerly safe states. Coupled with the fact Democrats have to defend over 20 Senate seats, 2012 is shaping up to be a history-changing year.

Political strategists charged with deploying resources in a nationwide election always take note of four kinds of House seats. There are seats one's party holds that are safe, seats one's party holds that are vulnerable, vulnerable seats the opposition party holds, and safe seats held by the other party. The best situation to be in is to have few of one's own seats vulnerable and as many of the other party's seats as possible vulnerable.

The Democrats are in the worst of all situations. They have to defend many vulnerable seats and do not have many Republican seats ripe for a pickup. Resources such as money, paid campaign workers, and volunteers have to be spread very thin to defend vulnerable seats. Some very vulnerable seats may have to be given up as hopelessly lost.

Coupled with the president having to campaign in previously safe states and defend many Senate seats, one can see the Democrats are bracing for a bloodletting they have not seen in their history. It is a combination of 1980, when another weak president was suddenly at bay in the face of a conservative Republican candidate, and 1994, when congressional Democrats found themselves suddenly an endangered species.

The stakes cannot be higher. The prospect of a Republican president with a large majority in the House and a healthy majority in the Senate, with a mandate to execute a kind of hope and change the Democrats never imagined, must keep people in that party awake at night.

Source: After NY-9, 50 Democrat-Held House Seats Could Be Competitive, Jim Gergahty, National Review, Sept, 15, 2011

Results of New York Election Points to Obama Vulnerability, Mark R. Whittington, Yahoo News, Sept. 14, 2011

View the original article here

Democrats catching up in election spending race (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats, badly outspent in congressional elections last year, fired their first shot on Wednesday against conservative groups in the advertising wars running up to the 2012 presidential election.

Priorities USA, a new political fundraising group run by a former aide to President Barack Obama, will spend $750,000 on its first television advertising in politically vital states like Iowa and Florida to help re-elect Obama.

Democrats were outgunned by tens of millions of dollars by Republican-backed independent groups at the midterm elections last year when Republicans won control of the House of Representatives.

They now appear to be catching up. Priorities is expected to report in coming days having pulled in some $4 million to $5 million in its first two months of operations, according to the group. Republican-backed American Crossroads reported last week that it took in $3.8 million since January.

"Democrats will not let (the) secret cash onslaught go unanswered this time," former Obama aide Bill Burton said in a tweet announcing the advertising push on Wednesday.

Priorities USA is the Democrats' answer to groups like American Crossroads, conceived in part by Republican operative Karl Rove, and Americans for Prosperity, backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries.

An arm of Crossroads fired the opening salvo earlier this month by investing $5 million of a planned $20 million in what it called a "massive advertising blitz" to blast Obama over the fledgling economic recovery. The group's goal is to spend $120 million during the 2012 cycle.

"We are admittedly late to the game here," Burton told Reuters.

Technically speaking, 'independent groups' are typically partisan but can have no formal coordination with political campaigns, and are subject to much looser spending and disclosure rules.

Such outside spending dwarfed funding by the Republican and Democratic parties and some campaign finance advocates say played a key role in unseating certain Democratic incumbents in 2012.

Spending by these partisan organizations is not new but Republican-backed groups took it to a new level last year, in part because of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Citizens United" ruling in 2010 that killed limits on corporate spending on independent broadcasts.

Spending by these outside groups jumped 130 percent to $280 million in 2010 from two years earlier, according to George Washington University's Campaign Finance Institute.

The group noted that these numbers are understated, since some spending is not subject to public reporting.

Republicans took the lead with $185 million in outside spending, with Democrats spending $87 million.

"There is no greater threat to our majority than the deep pockets and nasty tactics of Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers and their network of corporate-backed special interest groups," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in an email last week seeking donations to back Majority PAC, another independent spending group.

Majority PAC, started in part by a former aide to Reid, is devoted to keeping the Senate Democratic, and House Majority PAC seeks to take back the House. A fourth group called American Bridge is charged with rapid-fire opposition research.

American Bridge will "track" candidates at Republican campaign events for video that could be used in advertising.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Eric Walsh)

View the original article here

Illinois governor signs election law favoring Democrats (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Illinois Democratic Governor Pat Quinn signed into law on Friday a new congressional district map that could reverse gains Republicans made in the state in 2010 midterm elections.

Democrats were able to leverage their control of the General Assembly and a Democratic governor to approve a new election map for 2012 that analysts said could help Democrats win at least three more congressional seats in the state.

The effects of the law, which Republicans or third-party interest groups may challenge in court, would be to pit strong Republicans against each other, extend Chicago Democratic incumbent districts into suburban Republican districts, and incorporate new voter blocs into Republican strongholds.

Quinn denied that the redistricting was a partisan ploy by Democrats.

"This map is fair, maintains competitiveness within congressional districts, and protects the voting rights of minority communities," Quinn said.

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady differed.

"This bill is a crass, partisan political move to silence the voices of Illinoisans, who last November made it very clear that they wanted to fire Nancy Pelosi by electing a majority Republican Congressional Delegation from the home state of President Obama," Brady said.

The Illinois Republican Party's lawyers will review the maps to see if any state or federal laws have been broken, said Jonathan Blessing, a party spokesman.

In the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans picked up 60 House seats nationally, knocking Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi from power and putting Republicans in charge of House committees. It was the biggest shift in power in the House since Democrats gained 75 House seats in 1948.

But Democratic analysts believe Illinois and California, where Democrats are still in power at the state level, are their best chances to gain back seats in 2012 through redistricting.

Republicans in power in most of the Midwest and South are drawing maps in those states seeking to protect new Republican members of Congress elected in 2010.

In Illinois, Republicans picked up four seats in 2010 to hold an overall edge of 11 to 8 in the state's congressional delegation. They also kept control of the wealthy North Shore suburban Chicago district vacated by Republican Mark Kirk's successful Senate bid.

Illinois will lose one of its 19 congressional seats due to slow population growth relative to other states, according to the federal census.

Andy Shaw, President of the Better Government Association, said the Illinois map was partisan politics as usual.

"Most of Quinn's adult life was spent in opposition to this blatant political manipulation of the system," Shaw told Reuters. "His willingness to sign the bill without any changes is another indication that he has had to abandon many of his progressive principles to be able to deal with the political realities of Springfield (the state capital)," he said.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

View the original article here