Change is good
Matt Wyatt has some very specific issues that he is running with in his election bid. Check out ElectMattWyatt for more details. This is the first interview in a series.
[This is the way that the Farm Team gets started! City Council then ?]
"If he is seen as wearing
two hats, reporters as well as the public will inevitably wonder: Is he speaking
to us now as the traditional press secretary, or is he speaking to us as a
political partisan?"
DAVID
R. GERGEN, an adviser to four presidents, on Tony Snow's sideline role as a
speaker at fund-raisers for Republican candidates. From the NYT. [Free Regisration.]
PS: To Regular Readers...had to take a small break to let my head settle. Back on the job now. Drop in everyday!
This is the 'Paradox of Our Times', a PowerPoint show. It is insightful and more thoughtful than any I have seen in a long time. While I have seen some of the words before, the imagery and words combine to remind us of a very important reality.
It's Sunday. A day of peace in some parts of the world. Perhaps this will help us all enjoy the day. Please enjoy "The Paradox of Our Times" TBD
Simply unbelievable in a Supreme Court Justice...
Scalia Flips Middle Finger (in Church)
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia "startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics," UPI reports.
The Boston Herald: "The conduct unbecoming a 20-year veteran of the country’s highest court -- and just feet from the Mother Church’s altar -- was captured by a photographer for the Archdiocese of Boston newspaper The Pilot, whose publisher is newly minted Cardinal Sean O’Malley."
Hat tip to Political Wire
Well the Republican incumbent, Gallegly, has dropped out too late and now has jumped back in....it's like watching a tennis match. What illness could have driven him out that got cured that quick but still may not allow him to move at '1,000 miles an hour'? Hmmm....sounds like a campaign theme to me....
<Sigh>....my neck hurts from this one. And I bet his ass hurts from the kicking it got between last week and this one. My best bet is that he wins the General then resigns and causes a Special Election. <Sigh> We're getting used to those...as Francine Busby in CA-50.
Here's the story from CQPolitics.com (sub)
CA 24: Gallegly To Run After AllThis is an updated version of a story that was first posted on March 15 at 4:38 p.m.
California Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly announced this afternoon that he will seek an 11th term this November — ending the confusion caused by his sudden and ultimately unsuccessful retirement announcement last Friday, just hours before the candidate filing deadline in California’s 24th District.
Gallegly, who attributed his initial retirement decision to health concerns, said at a press conference in Washington that he was given a clean bill of health by John Eisold, the attending physician of the Congress. Gallegly, 62, declined to specify his condition beyond saying that medical examinations showed that “there is no catastrophic issue that we have to deal with.”
Gallegly said some symptoms are persisting that that will keep him from running “1,000 miles an hour,” but emphasized that he is “100 percent” and would wage an aggressive campaign for an 11th term — which he also said would be his last.
“I will give it my full vigor the next two years as I have the previous twenty years,” he said.
Gallegly, who filed to run for re-election in February, had announced his retirement under the mistaken belief that he could withdraw from the ballot and that the candidate filing deadline would be extended by five days. Neither action is allowed under state law. Upon learning this, Gallegly said he spent “five days working” and “thousands of dollars trying to find another way” to extend the filing deadline.
Gallegly said he received a call early today from President Bush, who left a message inquiring about his health and urging the congressman to run again if he felt well enough. Gallegly missed the call but spoke with White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, who followed up on the president’s message and assured Gallegly that the president was offering his full support for Gallegly’s re-election.
Gallegly also used the press conference to quash some rumors surrounding the circumstances leading up to his unusual announcement last Friday. One was that Gallegly spoke to five potential successors before announcing his retirement; the congressman said this was not the case.
Rep. David Dreier, who represents California’s 26th District and chairs the Rules Committee, said that the California GOP delegation is “gratified” that Gallegly has decided to run and that Republican leaders will support his campaign. Dreier and other House Republicans from California appeared with Gallegly at Tuesday’s press conference.
Gallegly will face lawyer Michael Tenenbaum in the June 6 GOP primary. Tenenbaum, 37, planned to challenge Gallegly from the outset and has criticized the incumbent’s record on fiscal policy.
Some local Republican officials who endorsed Tenenbaum after Gallegly said he would retire may rescind their support now that Gallegly has reversed his position. Gallegly said that he has received calls from people who originally endorsed Tenenbaum but assured the congressman that he is their preferred candidate.
Gallegly is favored to win re-election in the primary and in November would face Jill Martinez, a Presbyterian minister and affordable housing activist who is the only Democrat in the race. President Bush in 2004 won 56 percent of the vote in the 24th District.
CQ rates the race as Safe Republican. Please visit CQ’s election forecaster for ratings on all races.
If you look on the left side column of The Political Dogfight you'll see a piece written by the brilliant, ground level historian Bernard Fall on the Viet Nam war and the climatic battle that drove the French from the country. He was killed in that goddamn war when the US was there. Just another jounalist like so many that have fallen in Iraq.
Just this morning I see that over 10%, over 10% of our KIA [Killed in Action] have come from my own Camp Pendleton Marine Base, just 15 miles down the road and I fear more will die. Only one, just one, insurgent war in the 20th Century has been won by an outside force according to President Clinton.
I wish I could remember the one that was....I don't. 10% of our battle casualties and most of them drank a beer and raised hell in some bar in San Clemente I've probably been in years ago when I more or less lived there with a girlfriend.
You think it hits close to home and comes close to breaking my heart? Yeah, you bet.
How many more? Over 16,000 battle casualties. Like Tammy Duckworth who is running for Congress after losing both legs and one arm when her helo was hit with rocket fire. And it hit in the cockpit!
You know the amazing part of that story? She landed the bird upright and saved lives!
Will she be worth a damn as a Candidate in Il-06 (if I have the number right...I'm sure sick of hearing of the Primary)? I don't know. But she sure deserves our respect. She's paid a helluva price and is willing to continue fight in our arena; the political arena. That says something...you decide what.
Read what Bernard Fall said about the defeat of the French and see if it makes any sense to you. Today I'm going out into the bright blue sky of California and try to forget that those men and thousands more in training today to be ready to go are just 15 miles away.
Well, it's all over in the CA-48 until the November General Elections. John Campbell flew to Washington DC the next morning, moved into a townhouse previously picked out and then promptly got lost going to the Capitol the next morning, thereby getting held up in traffic, to be sworn in and arrived late for his session.
I bet Speaker Hastert was just peachy thrilled. Good thing Tom Delay was in Texas in trial so he couldn't promptly put a clamp on his balls and lead him to his former office as House Enforcer.
The Empty-Shirt, Used Car Guy arrives in style. <sigh>.....Only from Orange County....
The Details (as if you haven't heard):
Campbell 45,719
Young 28,432
Gilchrist 25,979
Tiritilli 1,409 (Green)
Cohen 963 (Libertarian)
(The Fact a Green beat a Libertarian in this miserably low turnout race could be a good sign for them.)
23% Turnout, only 8.6% actually at the polls.
The Facts:
I unfortunately left my detailed notes home from the night of the vote as I write this, however, on the first vote release ( absentee and early vote only) Campbell got slighly over 30,000 votes and Steve Young nearly 15,000 votes. I was joyous! Steve only got 7941 votes in the entire Primary on Oct 4 so nearly doubling his Primary vote with just Absentee votes was a good omen.
Each time a Live Precinct Vote was released Campbell's lead was cut and his percentage of lead was reduced. Hope was high at the Election night party where I was trying to keep track of the vote by the moment and liveblog the vote at both DailyKos and MyDD. Trying to do all three was a mistake.
Gary Boatwright, well-known from MYdd, showed up, a truly good man, and I should have commandered another laptop and put him into The Big Dog's Live Blogging.....TBD was screwing the pooch. My posts weren't up to my own standards.
In the end, Campbell took the deal. End of the story...no tricks, no gimmicks...no election fraud...he just won. BUT HOW?
It was all in his Absentee Ballot total. The other Strategists and I, or so we thought we were and were called so behind closed doors by the Candidate, were puzzled by the fact Campbell became a ghost in the last two weeks of the campaign. We knew easily enough he was afraid of opening his mouth and losing votes. That was obvious enough. He's a terrible public speaker when he has to respond on his feet.
But why did his commericals disappear? What about most of his signs?
We realized the day after the Election he was 100% banking on those Absentee Ballots and once the day past when you could file for a new Absentee Ballot he vanished! Smart move on his part. He didn't alienate a one of them and even picked up a couple of thousand.
Based on Live Votes alone, Congressman John Campbell finished LAST!
A moral? Listen...the game was in the absentee ballots. And it could be in your District. What District? School Board, Water District, State Assembly, State Senate, Congress...you name it.
When you base your election chances on an Absentee Ballot strategy you have an Election Period lasting weeks. Your opponent has a single Election Day!
Think about it.
John Campbell may be, and is, an Empty-Shirt, Rubber-Stamp Republican that has a hard time learning to take a breath when he speaks....but he knows how to hire smart consultants. And that is a talent. And they kicked ass this time. The voters of the CA-48 will see about next.
This lesson is applicable in any state in any race. Think about it! TBD...on to other races and projects....and, for now, a lot of rest and recuperation. I will try to post daily even though I am essentially resting.
[This really is a topic of great interest in the professional and volunteer circles. The Big Dog will have news on this front after the election in CA-48 on Dec 6th. Look for an update post on that race tomorrow. It is after all a holiday today! TBD]
Courtesy of Politics and Technology
It seems that everyone is talking about blogs these days, but much of the coverage is all about the big national blogs that get millions of hits. But for most political campaigns, it's the local blogs that can make a big difference - generating buzz, finding donors and volunteers, and driving media coverage.
Over at Roll Call, they've got a great piece about the coming role of state and local blogs in the political world.
But if 2004 belonged to the national political blogs, 2006 might well be the cycle of the local political blog. These blogs specialize in state or local political coverage, and while these smaller, non-national political blogs may not have the resources - financial or otherwise - of the well-known titans of the blogosphere, many are starting to gain a following, not to mention the respect of state and local media outlets and politicians.
Last weekend, the Reno Gazette-Journal took notice of the rise of Nevada political blogs, including the Las Vegas Gleaner - a blog that "has quickly become a must-read in political circles."
Though readership is tiny for local political blogs, the Nevada Democrats' spokeswoman Kirsten Searer makes the critical point:
"The beauty of bloggers is they have an audience of the right people. If they break news, then insiders in politics and mainstream media are likely to pick it up."
It is nice to see that the Republicans at the NRCC completely miss the point about blogs. Roll Call quotes spokesman Carl Forti:
"The people who go to these blogs, it's the very partisan Republicans and very partisan Democrats, and those aren't the people we are worried about."
As regular readers of P&T know, the whole purpose of a campaign website is to communicate with, motivate, and organize the grassroots supporters and fans of a candidate.
If there's a blog out there - either of the news, commentary, or activist variety - that's talking to your people... well, that's a blog worth tracking and wooing. Nevermind their roles in pushing stories to the forefront of the big media.
The congressional Democrats seem to get it better. Greg Speed, former spokesman for the DCCC:
Speed added that in battleground areas, keeping an eye on what the blogging community is saying can be an important part of running a campaign.
Speed pointed to South Dakota and Sen. John Thune's (R) 2004 battle against then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D) as an election where bloggers showed just how much of a force they can be. In that election, South Dakota Republicans orchestrated a highly effective blog-based campaign against Daschle and one of the state's largest newspapers, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. During the campaign, bloggers hammered away at the paper's coverage of Daschle and raised questions about certain writers' objectivity.
"You had right-wing bloggers start a blog essentially claiming the Argus Leader was treating Daschle with kid gloves," Speed said. "And what you had was other mainstream media in the state seeing these things and thinking they were real stories."
So, start paying attention to local blogs. It's going to matter in 2006.
Key Resource:
At LeftyBlogs.com,
you can track what left-leaning local blogs are saying in your state. Want to
know the latest on the Corzine transition? Check out New
Jersey. Wondering how superstar Governor Brian Schweitzer is doing? See Montana.
Want the latest on-the-ground commentary from Katrina Ground Zero? Go to Louisiana
You get the idea. Visit LeftyBlogs.com.
Unusual as it seems......
Quote of the Day courtesy Political Wire
"A lot of people want to say Republicans are having problems because of stands we take on specific issues. I've seen polls where that's not the reason. The reason is we're not governing."
-- Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), quoted by the Sioux City Journal.
Well, no shit Sherlock. TBD
courtesy of Political Wire:
Bonus Quote of the Day
"Too many wives... too many drugs. And, yes, I did inhale."
-- Joseph Wilson, husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, quoted by the Oakland Tribune, on why he won't run for office.
God knows, I love an honest man....although frankly I don't see why any of that's a problem in 2005! TBD
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