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 Posted January 24th, 2010 at 1:59PM
Thursday’s decision, in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, “is going to flip the existing campaign order on its head,” said Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a Republican campaign lawyer at the law-and-lobbying firm Patton Boggs who has represented both candidates and outside groups, including Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group formed to oppose Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
“It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns,” Mr. Ginsberg said.
Great, so expect this court decision to spur an even greater emphasis on dollars spent each election cycle, becoming ever larger the biggest determining factor in sorting winners from losers. It was always my interpretation that the bill of rights spoke for the rights of the US citizen, not institutions of any stripe. Obviously the Supreme Court has set off on a different understanding while attempting to cohere various first amendment rulings. Unfortunately the divergent result is to limit the individuals’ voice during the democratic process. From the NY Times op-ed -
The [Supreme Court] majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.
The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.
McCain for his part has called campaign finance reform “dead” and the majority ruling in the Supreme Court “naive.” It seems like Obama, being the constitutional law scholar he is, could chart the course toward renewed campaign finance reform, viewed constitutionally legal by this conservatively activist Court. It seems like the only hope for rational government down the line.
If payola and the exchange of money is granted a verifiable constitutional guarantee, where does that leave us? If freedom of expression extends to corporations buying elections, will it similarly extend to the individual looking to purchase crack cocaine or solicit prostitutes?
Posted April 1st, 2009 at 10:03AM
So I voted early yesterday on the way to PA to deal with the passing of a relative. There was a decent number of people milling about our polling place, and the same paper punch voting machines were in use. I checked last night and found the election at 50-50%, with ninety percent of districts reporting, and things haven’t changed much in the past twelve hours.
Dem Scott Murphy enjoys a razor-thin margin of 59 votes – 77,344, opposed to Tedisco’s 77,285 – according to the final tally printed in today’s Times Union. That turnout is better than the expected number of around 90,000 total.
Currently outstanding are 5,900 absentee ballots received, with more expected in the coming days. These have been sealed until a court hearing on April 6th, per an injunction obtained by Republican election lawyer John Ciampola to impound all paper ballots. It appears that registered Republicans have an edge in absentee ballots cast; but considering that they’re the majority party in the district, it shouldn’t come as a surprise or necessarily indicate an advantage.
Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall was pushed off the ballot in the week leading up to the election. This was also per efforts by Ciampola, as Sundwall was expected to pull a few percentage points from Tedisco.
I did a quick google and found the usual partisan hack commentaries floating around. But ultimately it looks as if either candidate will follow lock-step with their respective party once in office. With the large Dem majority in the House, this one seat makes little difference. Still, I would rather have the guy who agrees with the Obama administration, and not the one cock-blocking it.
Despite the sorry state of the GOP nationally, this election was Tedisco’s to loose. He had the large early lead and name recognition as an elected official, and the 20th is a Republican district – but making the election an early referendum on the Obama administration wasn’t a smart move. The stink and political fallout from corporate bonuses and the still-miserable economy haven’t stuck to the White House yet. Meanwhile, nobody in the 20th really has any bearing on how either candidate stands on issues unrelated with Obama’s handling of the economy. Murphy defused extraneous issues by supporting civil unions (“Not marriage”) and gun control during the televised debate, and in recent days self-describing himself as an “economic conservative.” All of this mirroring Tedisco.
For what it’s worth, Murphy handled himself well during said televised debate, and appeared more capable of going off-talking point and responding to the question at hand. I believe he’ll be a capable representative, pending a longish, drawn out process to choose the winner. I say they just draw straws.
Posted March 13th, 2009 at 1:00AM
Because elections are so great, we’ve decided to extend the season by having a special election end of the month, filling Gillibrand’s seat in the House. GOP nominee Jim Tedisco, state Assembly minority leader, did have the name recognition and an early double digit lead over Dem rival Scott Murphy. But the most recent Siena poll released March 12th shows Murphy cutting Tedisco’s lead down to four percent.
“While Murphy continues to enjoy stronger support among Democratic voters than Tedisco has among enrolled Republicans, the biggest shift is among independent voters, who previously gave Tedisco a significant 45-31 percent lead but now favor Murphy by a 43-37 percent margin.
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In a Siena poll released Feb. 26, voters said Tedisco would do a better job than Murphy would representing them on six issues. Murphy now leads on two of the issues, including the most important issue for voters in the 20th district: the economy.
Murphy now leads Tedisco on the economy 42 percent to 38 percent — two weeks ago, Tedisco led 34 percent to 30 percent.”
Murphy is a venture capitalist and lives within the district. Media saturation has been about equal, but it definitely seems Murphy’s ads have been more successful. After some fairly soft punches between the two, Tedisco has promised to run positive from here on. Whoopey. Obviously the economy is the big issue and it’s promising that Murphy is viewed so favorably here. I wasn’t impressed with Scott Murphy at first sight and still have trouble remembering the guy’s name at times, but he’s making a run for it and I’d love to see our seat stay blue.
Worth watching will be a televised debate March 24th at 7PM on WNYT; one week before the election on the 31st. Happy poll-going.
Posted January 23rd, 2009 at 1:40PM
So David Paterson announced Hillary’s successor, and it’s my very own congressional representative: Kirsten Gillibrand. Paterson’s choice seems politically expedient. Gillibrand is a solid fundraiser (the 2008 election was the most expensive on record), savvy and ambitious enough to perhaps succeed in the 2010 special election and become a name brand in her own right. If the pick works out, it could also give Paterson a needed upstate boost.
So far the main complaints have been that she’s perhaps too conservative and whether there were other senior, more appropriate options. Certainly Gillibrand isn’t a household name outside of the area. But I’ve supported her as my representative in Congress and she’s arguably as good a replacement as any for the senate seat.
Gillibrand beat John Sweeney in 2006 (that alone makes her OK in my book). Sweeney was a four term Republican congressman who voted along the lines of the Christian Coalition 69% of the time and whose positions included escalating the “war” on drugs, a ban on gay marriage, and social security privatization. Sweeney was named one of the “20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress” in a 2006 report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He was instrumental in the 2000 Florida recount fiasco, cementing Dubya’s misbegotten presidency (R.I.P.). And in January 2001, Sweeney crashed his Jeep into a utility pole coming from a bar, resulting in a power outage in my very own neighborhood. The state trooper on the scene did not administer a sobriety test or even allow the fire department to be called to direct traffic. Sweeney stayed in office till 2007. Sheesh.
Gillibrand runs with the Blue Dog Coalition, but bear with me. It’s not a deal-breaker. She’s got a certain left-of-center flair, for our district, anyway – favoring stem cell research and gay marriage, tax cuts for middle income families and state healthcare programs for children. Her position on gun control proves to be a non-issue for me. Gillibrand was raised in the Capital Region, and most of the 20th district is classic, gun loving rural country. She attempted to make a loopy “Hunting and Fishing Holiday” to commemorate responsible gun use, but otherwise believes in enforcing current laws on the books (she also supported 2007’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Act). She espouses fiscal “responsibility” which, frankly, sounds pretty neat in an age of trillion dollar a year deficits. She very naturally supports investment in local infrastructure and agriculture (not to mention high tech) and that should translate well to the upstate as a whole.
Gillibrand campaigns hard, has two children (one of which born last year, while she held office), and is plugged into the state political machine (the nightly news might underestimate this). She’s a bona fide Democratic example of a woman successfully juggling both personal life and political career. She does put the junior back into “junior New York Senator” after heavyweight Hillary, but give it a moment and see what happens.
All indications are that Paterson wanted to fill Hillary’s seat with a woman. Understandable. After Caroline Kennedy’s crude campaign and unimpressive performance in the spotlight, Gillibrand seems a logical, dare I say qualified, choice. Here’s hoping.
Two quotes from a rush piece on TIME.com:
“As a child she was loud and talked constantly. She talked so loud we had her hearing tested, but it turned out her hearing was fine and that she just wanted to get her point across.”
— Polly Rutnik, Gillibrand’s mother. Albany Times-Union, May 13, 2007.
“I think politically [the pick] will help the governor, it will help the team. She will do some things for them upstate … Conservative democrats are winning so politically it might be a plus. It gives balance.”
— Rev. Al Sharpton, on the benefits of Gillibrand’s selection. FOX News, Jan. 22, 2009
Posted November 5th, 2008 at 12:11PM
I’m currently sitting in a cafe using their wifi, having coffee and a wrap, and soaking in the positive atmosphere. Even though he led virtually the entire campaign and all indicators pointed toward an Obama win (FiveThirtyEight’s predictions were spot-on) nobody took this result for granted. The full import has yet to fully sink in on my end, but I’m looking forward to these formative years. Ending the occupation of Iraq, reforming our healthcare system, and working toward balancing the budget are the three key issues I’ll be watching develop, in addition of course to the most pressing economic woes. I’m hopeful, and that in itself is something I haven’t been able to say for a long time.
Posted November 2nd, 2008 at 12:25PM
So the other day I received a political flyer in the mail, not from Obama, McGaughey, or Gillibrand, but Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, the Green Party’s Prez / Veep candidates. I’m registered Green and one of only a half dozen (at most!) in my entire district, so I’m just surprised they found my name in the voter logs.
This got me to thinking. In 2000, I was underage, but supported the Greens (that time, Ralph Nader). Four years ago I begrudgingly voted for Kerry because I felt a large popular vote against Bush was needed to repudiate his first reign of terror. This year, I haven’t given any third party option a second thought after supporting Obama through the extended primaries. What’s changed?
Eight years ago, Nader had a good spiel against voting for “the lesser of two evils.” But history has proven stark differences between the two major political parties. Is there anyone who’ll argue that we’d have seen the same slash and burning of environmental legislation under a President Gore as we have under Bush? And Al Gore wouldn’t have stacked the executive branch with card-carrying PNAC members. The occupation of Iraq wouldn’t have been the priority it was. To trivialize all differences between Obama and McCain, Democrat and Republican, is facile, immature.
Certainly, I don’t believe in a great bulk of the Democratic platform, today or eight years ago. Obama is hawkish on Iran, Afghanistan, Israel. Economically he promises the whole pie, or two or three, without disclosing a single item he’ll use his metaphorical scalpel on. Some of this is political necessity, some of it, his actual politics.
Even though I might not agree with Obama on all the issues, I’ll vote for him, on the Working Families party line. The Greens have for the past few elections been encouraging people living in safe states to vote for them. Get 5% of the vote, and you’re eligible for federal funding the next cycle. But federal funding would not change the fundamentals of our electoral system, which needs significant reform before third parties become viable. And a vote for an independent candidate (as Nader runs today) actually encourages the status quo – character-based politics, the sort of ass-backwardness that got Schwarzenegger elected governor.
Meanwhile, Obama holds some promise as president, with the alternative far more frightening. Framing the debate in a way that results in a choice between the “lesser of two evils” is to turn the election into a moral debate. And I’m uninterested in using elections as my own little referendums on morality.
McCain isn’t the evil choice; he’s the stupid choice. Things aren’t black and white, right and wrong. Life is shades of grey, and Obama comes out a shader (or three) better than McCain.
Posted October 29th, 2008 at 1:17PM
Will undecided voters move toward McCain come election day? Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight doesn’t think so -
The Undecideds
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A somewhat higher proportion of whites (and Latinos) are uncommitted, but the differences are not overwhelming.
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Another problem is that we haven’t been distinguishing undecided voters from third-party voters. There is an argument that third-party voters should be treated as quasi-undecided voters, since third party support tends to collapse at the voting booth. Nevertheless, Bob Barr and Ralph Nader will probably pick up a collective 1-2 percent of the electorate, and third party support tends to be overwhelmingly concentrated among white voters.
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Long story short … given optimistic assumptions (McCain wins 2/3 of white undecideds, 100 percent of third-party support collapses), the undecided vote is worth a net of about a point for McCain. Given what I’d consider to be more neutral assumptions, there’s no particular reason to think that the undecided vote favors him.
My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between and that this is worth, say, half a point for McCain. Even give him the full point if you like. This effect is probably smaller than that of the cellphone problem, from which there may be 1-2 points of cushion in Obama’s direction. If on top of that the polls are being overly conservative with their likely voter modeling, the numbers are more likely to be underestimating Obama’s standing than overestimating it.
It also should be noted that people still undecided at this point are more likely to simply skip voting altogether, further reducing any advantage for McCain. A sudden upset is looking less and less likely.
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