Author: DavidNYC

I think there’s no question that local & regional blogs played an important role in many races this year – and I think this trend is only going to grow. And in many cases, these local blogs didn’t just have an impact on the online community, but they also drove crucial offline coverage as well.

Some good examples would include the folks at Blue Jersey, who busted a staffer for Republican Tom Kean for posing as a concern troll; the trio of NH blue bloggers (Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive, and Yankee Doodler) who also nailed a concern troll who was Charlie Bass’s no. 2 staffer; and the Virginia bloggers (principally Raising Kaine) who played a big role in getting Jim Webb to toss his hat into the ring.

There are many other great sites I could point to as well (Take19, the Idaho bloggers, the North Carolina bloggers), but I’m just one guy and there are only so many blogs I’m familiar with. So I’d like to ask all of you: What are some of your favorite local blogs, whether they cover a particular state, city, region or Congressional district? Please post links in comments. Even if some of your favorites are blogs I’ve already mentioned, I’d love to know why you like them as well.

And, of course, have a great Thanksgiving!

Tim Tagaris is on the ground in Louisiana with the Karen Carter campaign, and over at MyDD, he lays out exactly why this race matters:

For starters, there’s the corruption.  If we are ever going to convince the American people we truly want to “drain the swamp” and clean out the House, we need to prove we are willing to clean out our own house first.  As the Blue Majority fundraising page notes, “send a message that the Democratic Party doesn’t tolerate corruption on either side of the aisle.”  Coming out of the Republican culture of corruption, it’s time to take away the primary GOP talking point on the issue of ethics reform.

…

There’s Katrina — the storm and the flood.  Unfortunately, one of the problems up on the Hill is “Katrina fatigue.”  Having been down here for a few days now, I can assure you the people of the 2nd Congressional District do not share a similar affliction.  They need help, and Congressman Jefferson is really in no place to deliver it.  He was stripped of his committee assignments by the Democratic Caucus, and continues to place his quest to retain personal political power above the needs of his constituents.

And this isn’t just an anti-Jefferson movement:

Karen Carter has also taken some courageous stances on “social issues.”  She is pro-gay marriage, choice and stem-cell research.  These are not easy positions to take in the deep South.  Indeed, her opponents (primary, run-off, and future) are hammering her, primarily through a network of churches, for those positions.  In the face of that pounding, she refuses to run from her convictions.

Carter’s philosophical position is exactly mine:

“I believe in treating people as I would like to be treated.”

If only a few more politicians felt this way. At least, though, we can make sure Carter joins the 110th Congress. I know everyone is strapped from the campaign season, but if you have any spare coin, please toss some Karen’s way over at Blue Majority.

An update on the FL-13 recount situation:

Citing statistical and eyewitness evidence of significant machine malfunctions sufficient to call into doubt the result of the election for Florida Congressional District 13, the Christine Jennings campaign today officially contested the election in Circuit Court. The complaint specifically requests the judge to order a new election “to ensure that the will of the people of the Thirteenth District is respected, and to restore the confidence of the electorate, which has been badly fractured by this machine-induced debacle.”

As Georgia noted, there is some possible precedent in Florida law for a new election. Of course, a new election is the only way the absurdly high undervote in this race can be rectified. One thing is for sure: This legal battle should be extremely interesting.

Separately, I received an e-mail from the People for the American Way saying that they (or at least, Florida voters who have their support) will also be suing to demand a revote. It’s not clear at this time how this suit might complement Jennings’, though perhaps the cases might get combined.

Regardless, please consider contributing to the FL-13 recount fund on the Blue Majority page. If there’s one thing I don’t need to tell you, it’s that court cases get very expensive very quickly, so Jennings will need all the help she can get.

Atrios flags an AP report wherein presidential aspirant and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee complains about John McCain’s campaign finance reforms. Bottom line is that senators can transfer unlimited amounts of campaign cash to their presidential warchests, but governors can’t do the same. It’s crap, and it’s one of the many reasons I oppose much of our current campaign finance regime. But that’s not why I’m penning this post.

Rather, what I want to know is why Mike Huckabee’s presidential chances are taken any more seriously than Felix Macaca’s at this point. Just take a look at this:

2006 Ark. Gov. Results (Open Seat)

Mike Beebe (D): 55
Asa Hutchinson (R): 41

Hutchinson, the Republican candidate who sought to succeed Huckabee, got utterly pounded. And yeah, 2006 may have been a good Democratic year, but several Republicans in much bluer states hung on: Arnie in CA, Pawlenty in MN, and Carcieri in RI just to name a few. Sure, those guys were incumbents, but Arkansas went to Bush by ten points in 2004 – Rhode Island went to Kerry by twenty. Consequently, I consider Hutchinson’s loss to be one hell of a shellacking.

Now can you imagine if Tim Kaine (VA) or Chet Culver (IA) had gone down to defeat like this? Mark Warner and Tom Vilsack would have been laughed off the presidential wannabe stage. Indeed, the victories of their successors were crucial to both Vilsack and Warner, as it keept their future ambitions alive.

So could someone please tell me why Huckabee isn’t a joke? At least George Pataki and Mitt Romney can offer lame reasons for their own failures (northeastern open seats should never be easy for the GOP to defend). But what’s Huckabee’s excuse? He’s got none. I know Arkansas has traditionally been more hospitable to Dems than other Southern states, but right now it’s got three of four Dem Congressmen, two Dem Senators, Dems in control of the entire state legislature, a Dem Governor, and Dems elected to every other statewide office. This guy has clearly done jack to build his own state party.

My only answer for now is that the Gang of 500 must love him. I won’t bother to speculate as to why that might be (though feel free), but in a just world with a thoughtful, critical media, Mike Huckabee would rate no higher than Screaming Lord Sutch.

(Bumped – promoted by DavidNYC)

Alright, let’s keep the ball rolling. And don’t forget to help fill out the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.

P.S. Please welcome Left in the West to the SoapBlox network. As I’m sure you know, L/W was the place for MT-Sen coverage in 2006 and I’m sure it’ll be a hopping place for more of the same in 2007 & 2008. Now, with user diaries, it can only get better.

P.P.S. Please don’t forget the Blue Majority ActBlue page. We’ve just added netroots hero Larry Kissell’s recount fund to the list.

From the invaluable TPM Muckraker:

Lawyers for Democratic House candidate Christine Jennings threw down the gauntlet yesterday, asking a state court to secure electronic voting machines and data used in the election.

The move would preserve the equipment in Florida’s Sarasota County for scrutiny by Jennings’ legal team. A hearing on the suit is scheduled for this afternoon. [Update: The judge granted the Jennings campaign’s request to secure the voting machines today.]

It’s just the first step of what is likely to be a litigious aftermath to a close and ugly election (thanks in part to the NRCC’s rampant robo calling in the district). The state began a recount and audit of the election yesterday. Once the audit and second recount is completed and the results certified on November 20th, the Jennings campaign has ten days to contest the results of the election if they still show Jennings down. Before the recounting began, she was down 386 votes.

The fight will center around the district’s Sarasota County, where the electronic machines did not register a vote in the Congressional race for 18,000 voters (13%) – what’s called an “undervote.” That’s compared to only 2.53% of voters who did not vote in the race via absentee ballots.

A study by the local paper, The Herald Tribune, found that one in three of Sarasota election officials “had general complaints from voters about having trouble getting votes to record” on the electronic machines for the Congressional race. Since 53% of voters in Sarasota County picked Jennings over the Republican Vern Buchanan, those missed votes would likely have put Jennings in front.

Needless to say, this is a very serious matter. It’s also going to get very expensive, which is why we’ve added the special FL-13 recount fund to the Blue Majority ActBlue page. And this is not just a chance to add to our majority. For those of you who have expressed concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machines, this is an important showcase for that issue. If you want to help make sure that voting technology is scrutinized under a bright spotlight, then it’s time to back up words with deeds.

I just tossed in $100 earlier today. I urge you to please give as well. And there’s an extra bonus: This is none other than Katherine Harris’s old seat!

The goal is simple: Blue Majority wants to raise $10,000 for Democrat Karen Carter this week. I’ve already laid out in detail exactly why we’re backing Carter in her runoff against the corrupt William Jefferson, and I encourage you to read that earlier post. But the most important point is this one: We need to send a message that we won’t tolerate corruption on the part of any public official, regardless of party.

Jefferson has a long rap sheet and doesn’t deserve to be a part of the Democratic caucus. If we’re going to run a clean House, then we need to clean house first. Karen Carter can beat Jefferson, but she needs our help. We’ve already raised some cash for her, but I know we can do more. So let’s get her another ten grand this week from the grassroots. The runoff is soon – Dec. 9th – so time is short.

Let’s get to work!

(Bumped – promoted by DavidNYC)

I think you guys are gonna like this. Based on this suggestion from Terry312, I went ahead and created a brand new wiki at WetPaint.com called 2008 Race Tracker. The name is pretty self-explanatory: This wiki is designed to be a database for information on all 2008 House, Sen and Gov races. The main focus now is inputting candidate information, both incumbents and possible challengers.

The WetPaint system is incredibly easy to use – everything is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). If you’ve ever waded into Wikipedia and quailed at the thought of editing its quirky code, fear no more. Absolutely no code of any kind is necessary to create pages on WetPaint. The only thing you’ll need to do is create a user account, which takes 30 seconds. (I set this requirement to ward against vandalism.)

I’ve created easy-to-use templates for each type of race which I strongly encourage you to use. (Here’s an example of what a page ideally looks like.) The idea is to create a page for each race, so we have a lot of info to fill in. I figure our first objective should be to fill in all the incumbent data. Anyhow, check out the main wiki page for some more info and just jump right in! This should be fun.

(Bumped – promoted by DavidNYC)

There are no breaks here at the Swing State Project! One election cycle ends and another begins. I don’t just mean that in a technical sense, either. Several candidates who had little or no prior political experience were able to compensate for that in part by getting a very early start. Paul Hodes, Patrick Murphy and Eric Massa would be some good examples.

Now, I doubt that many people apart from presidential hopefuls) are going to be announcing any runs for office this quickly, but it’s still fun to think about. Here are some topics worth considering:

• Which Senate seats should be our top priority in 2008, both on offense and defense?

• Which members of the House might retire at the end of their terms? How about during their terms (being in the minority sucks), prompting special elections? Who is ready to run in the event of a retirement? This is something to keep a close eye on all next year.

• Who are our most vulnerable new Reps going to be? What, if anything, can we do to help protect them apart from the obvious – ie, giving them tons of scrilla?

Plenty of food for thought!

It seems that the elections never end on election day anymore. There are several recounts afoot and a run-off in Texas. There’s also a run-off in Louisiana, where Democratic state Rep. Karen Carter will face off against corrupt U.S. Rep. William Jefferson in LA-02.

This race matters because we need to send a strong message, a message that the Democratic Party won’t tolerate corruption on either side of the aisle. Come January, we’re finally going to take back the House. But before we do, we need to clean house first. And that’s why the Swing State Project, DailyKos and MyDD are officially endorsing Karen Carter in her runoff on Dec. 9th.

Now, if you haven’t already heard Bill Jefferson’s tale, well, it’s a sordid one (PDF). The Department of Justice has accused Jefferson of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, and he is currently the target of an ongoing FBI investigation. One former aide has already plead guilty to conspiracy to bribe a public official – he’s now serving eight years in prison. Another associate – a businessman who gave Jefferson $400,000 in a pay-for-play scheme – is also going to jail following a guilty plea. The kicker: Both men named Jefferson in their plea agreements.

But Jefferson’s most notorious act – the one you probably heard about – is this:

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday.

A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson’s home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said.

Jefferson’s behavior was so outrageous that the Democratic caucus, in an extremely rare move, stripped him of his committee assignment. And as one New Orleans native put it, “You find $100,000 in your freezer, I ain’t voting for you.” Seventy percent of the voters in Louisiana’s second Congressional district apparently agree, because Jefferson carried just 30% of the vote yesterday.

Fortunately for us, Louisiana’s unusual electoral system mandates a run-off between the top two finishers whenever the winner fails to reach 50%. That means we can give Jefferson the boot he so richly deserves by supporting the second-place finisher, Karen Carter.

Carter is a strong candidate – she took 22% in a crowded field, despite getting a very late start and facing a long-time, well-known incumbent who outraised her by more than two-to-one. One sign of her strength is that in a surprise move before the election, the Louisiana Democratic Party endorsed her over Jefferson, marking the first time in memory that the state party failed to endorse an incumbent.

But Carter will still need a lot of help to beat an entrenched incumbent, however corrupt, like Jefferson. To that end, we plan to highlight this race over the course of the next month. We’ve created a new ActBlue page that we’re calling Blue Majority. The goal of this new page is to support and strengthen our new Democratic majorities. And right now, we can start by replacing Bill Jefferson with Karen Carter. Of course, if you live in the district or a nearby area, we strongly encourage you to volunteer for Karen. She’ll need every able hand she can get.

So let’s finish out this already-awesome election season on a true high note and let’s send that message!