May 2008 – Page 7 – Swing State Project

Heather Ryan on Gas Prices: Hold the Oil Industry Accountable

The rising costs of oil prices are pinching consumers everywhere, not just Kentucky or the First Congressional District therein. All over the country American consumers are being gouged at the pump, which has caused the prices of everything else to sky rocket. Here at Ryan for Kentucky we believe that the Oil Companies should be held accountable for there record profits in a time of war, a war mismanaged terribly by the Bush Administration.

We simply can’t expect leaders like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell and Ed Whitfield to care about the pain that American consumers are feeling because they are actually beholden to Big Oil and Big Energy. They recieve millions of dollars in special interest money to maintain the status-quo and in the case of Exxon Eddie are actually invested in those areas. He makes a profit while we suffer.

Here is Heather Ryan’s take on the high price of Gas:

I could not agree with Heather more. It is almost criminal how the Bush Administration has allowed the Energy lobby to write Energy policy in this country. We need leaders who fight against that, not invest in it. We need leaders like Heather Ryan.

Heather would fight the Culture of Corruption that still exists in Washington:

The Budget Reconciliation Bill, signed by President Bush and passed by Congress, cut future spending for Medicare, Medicaid, Student Loans and even free and reduced lunches for poor children; all while giving a $2.3 Billion tax break to Oil Companies and affording a $5.7 billion slush fund to Pharmaceutical Companies (both of which Representative Ed Whitfield has personal financial investments and large campaign contributions). Corporate welfare for profitable companies who donate heavily to Congressmen is corrupt and scandalous. I will work diligently against the culture of corruption which permeates the political system.

http://www.ryanforkentucky.com…

Heather is young, energetic, and has a fighting Democrat spirit. She is a veteran, wife, mother and citizen of the First Congressional District of Kentucky. She lives and works and raises her family among us, and feels our pain too as she watches the prices of everyday neccessities skyrocket due to the cost of fuel. She is ready to fight, just like we are as this speech shows:

We can and will fight for and win this district, expanding our Congressional majorities for our next President. We just need the party to get behind us and give us the resources we need. We have the candidate, as Heather Ryan is educated, smart, and ready to fight!!

Recent Congressional pickups have shown us that in every district this year we will have a chance to fight and pickup seats. This is one of those most essential districts. Even if we don’t win which we can, we will force Republicans to play defense here, freeing up money that would have went to other races.

With that in mind I started my ActBlue page, Americans for Ryan. I had a goal of trying to help Heather get the resources she needed as a serious fighting Democrat to fight for my home. I set a goal of $1500 by May 20, the date of Kentucky’s primary Heather was unopposed in. Thanks to many of you in the blogosphere and right here in Kentucky, I shattered my goal and raised $1745!!!

Now however, the primary is over and it is time to run against Exxon Eddie and the corrupt McConnell Republican machine here in Kentucky. Democrats in this state have serious momentum. Kentucky voters are beginning to shun Republicans on the local level, and this state is poised for Congressional pickups this fall.

If we can get our message out in this district we win. These voters want to be part of the process and to matter again. The Republicans have invested here in the recent past to take over, but with help from our party we can win again.

So now I have to raise the stakes. I hope to get Americans for Ryan to $5000 by July 4, the “Independence from Exxon Eddie” drive. Thats $3255 in a relatively short time, so please anyone who is able send some grassroots Democrats fighting to take back this country from the ground up some love, please consider it:

http://www.actblue.com/page/am…

Anyone donating between now and July 4th will be entered into a drawing for a Robert Kennedy Memorial button, and a Kennedy/Fulbright bumper sticker from 1968. I will have the pics up soon, I have to get them out of storage.

Best wishes everyone!!

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MS-Sen-B: Wicker Leads Musgrove by Four Points

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (5/19-21, likely voters):

Ronnie Musgrove (D): 42

Roger Wicker (R-inc*): 46

(MoE: ±4)

The last time Markos commissioned a poll here, Wicker led Musgrove by a 47-39 margin. However, it would be a bit deceptive to put those results as trendlines. As Markos noted at the time, his December poll heavily undersampled African-Americans. They made up just 9% of his December poll sample, while their real share is closer to 35% of the Mississippi electorate. So if you re-weight that poll, Musgrove was actually leading in December — by a considerable margin.

So while this poll doesn’t show the eight point Musgrove lead that one of the Musgrove campaign’s internals showed earlier this week, it indicates a close race.

For now, Musgrove has the advantage of a statewide profile, which is something that Wicker is still working on. Here’s one area for Musgrove to consolidate some support: he currently leads among black voters by 73-9. He’ll need to push that to at least 90% (preferably higher) on election day.

John Adler for Congress Action Alert: Vote Now!

We have a great opportunity to bring General Wesley Clark to campaign for John Adler here in the 3rd District!

A community service organization called Democrats Work and General Clark’s political action committee (WesPAC) just launched a contest called “Serve with the General” to see which district General Clark will visit next. And guess what? Our district is included in the list.

Please go to http://democratswork.org/index… and vote for John Adler and New Jersey’s 3rd District. Voting starts today and ends May 30th. Please forward this message to your friends and help get out the vote to bring Gen. Clark to New Jersey!

With two military bases (Fort Dix and McGuire), and a large veteran population in the district, a visit by a well respected veteran like General Wesley Clark will be a great boost to our efforts this November.

Please go to http://democratswork.org/index… and vote now, and spread the message to your family & friends! We need your help to bring General Clark here to New Jersey’s 3rd district.

Disclaimer: I am a volunteer for Adler for Congress.

NY-13: Top GOP Pick Won’t Run

Wow — this is big. The NRCC’s top choice to replace Vito Fossella in the House, Richmond County DA Dan Donovan, won’t do it:

Staten Island DA Dan Donovan has decided to take a pass on running for the seat that will be vacated by Rep. Vito Fossella at the end of the year.

Donovan, who is a protege of former Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, had fielded calls from GOP leaders in Washington, D.C. urging him to get into the race. […]

In a prepared statement, Donovan expressed a desire to address unfinished business in his current post, specifically mentioning a need to curb domestic violence and crack down on deadbeat dads.

Donovan would have been a formidable candidate for the GOP — even in a rough year like this one. He was re-elected to his borough-wide post last November with 68%, and national Republicans believed he had the right profile to retain this seat.

The GOP’s second choice would be state Sen. Andrew Lanza — but his candidacy could be problematic for New York Republicans, who need to mount a vigorous defense of the state Senate this year.

This race just got even more interesting.

(Big hat-tip to Phillip.)

NM-Sen: Udall Has More CoH than Pearce, Wilson Combined

Crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP

It looks like Tom Udall is the big winner of the money race again.

His campaign sent out a press release minutes ago touting the fact that he will enter the general election with $2,876,030 cash on hand. Nearly three million dollars cash on hand — before June.

From the release:

Udall reported total expenses of $431,865 and finished the period with $2,876,030 cash-on-hand.

This is the third consecutive reporting period Udall has outraised both of his potential GOP opponents combined. He reported a strong total of over $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2008, which ended March 31, and in the final months of 2007 he raised over $1 million.

Not only did Udall raise more money than both combined, his cash on hand advantage is tremendous.

The AP reported on the numbers from Pearce and Wilson.

Pearce’s campaign spent more than $964,000 from April 1 to May 14, according to a fundraising summary released today by his campaign.

Wilson spent more than $776,000 during the same period.

Wilson, however, has a larger stockpile of campaign cash for the closing weeks of the hotly contested race. Her campaign cash balance stood at $712,476 as of last week; Pearce reported $247,207 cash on hand.

Pearce raised about $357,000 during the latest campaign finance reporting period, and Wilson received contributions of about $291,000.

Combined,t he two have a cash on hand balance of just $959,683 heading into the general election — and with lots of money being spent by the two on television ads in the final days leading up to the primary, it’s not of the realm of possibility that the winner could come out of the race actually in debt.

Even if the numbers stay where they are now, Udall has three times the cash on hand of Wilson and Pearce — combined. Well, actually 2.996854 times the money of the two Republicans combined.

Not the way one wants to start the general election.

Just How Racist is Pat Buchanan?

I was mortified when I read this:

—–

March 21, 2008

A Brief For Whitey

By Patrick Buchanan

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about “the U.S. of K.K.K. America,” and howled, “God damn America!”

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright’s statements were “controversial,” and “divisive,” and “racially charged,” reflecting a “distorted view of America.”

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The “white community,” said Barack, must start “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … .”

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The “white community” must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with “ladders of opportunity” that were “unavailable” to Barack’s and the Rev. Wright’s generations.

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”

Was “white racism” really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

MD-01: Poll Shows Race Is Close

This is hot off the presses. A new poll of the MD-01 race shows Democrat Frank Kratovil is withing strking distance of his Republican opponent, Andy Harris, who beat Wayne Gilcrest in a primary back in February.

As Democrats reassess their chances in once-safe Republican districts after their successes in a series of special elections this spring, one place they may take a closer look at is Maryland’s Eastern Shore-based 1st district.

In that race, Queen Anne’s County State’s Attorney Frank Kratovil (D) has pulled within single digits of state Sen. Andy Harris (R), according to a month-old Democratic poll obtained by Roll Call today.

The Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group poll of 400 likely voters gave Harris 43 percent of the vote and Kratovil 34 percent, with 23 percent undecided. The poll was conducted April 23-24 and had a 5-point margin of error.

The numbers got even tighter among voters who were familiar with the backgrounds of both candidates.

I’m still digesting this, so I will have more to say on the thread later.

NY-13: Savino “Won’t Likely” Run

Things are moving VERY rapidly in the NY-13 since Fossella’s annoucement that he is not running for re-election. It was reported earlier than Mike Cusick and Mike McMahon are looking at the race and today also comes word that Diane Savino will not likely get in.

Van Hollen and his lieutenant at the DCCC, Rep. Steve Israel (D-L.I.) spoke with four Democrats either already running or considering jumping into the race, including Staten Island Assemblyman Mike Cusick, Staten Island Councilman Mike McMahon, Brooklyn Councilman Domenic Recchia and 2006 candidate Steve Harrison. Another Democrat whose name had been mentioned, State Sen. Diane Savino, has indicated to party officials she likely won’t jump into the crowded field.

Cusick, McMahon and Recchia are also holding private talks among themselves. “The discussions are about what will take to win and who would be the best candidate who can win in November,” a well-placed source tells The Mouth.

I am happy to see that there is so is so much coordination on our side so as to avoid a costly primary. Hopefully we’ll have our guy soon.

MS-01: Which Is It?

Stuart Rothenberg, May 19, 2008:

According to a post-primary survey by Anzalone-Liszt Research, which polled for Childers (and Democrat Don Cazayoux, who won the special election recently in Louisiana’s 6th district), Davis came out of the GOP primary runoff with a 65 percent favorable and 10 percent unfavorable rating among self-identified Republicans, and leading Childers 73 percent to 13 percent among Republicans.

In the last Democratic survey before Tuesday’s special election, Davis had a 71 percent favorable and 13 percent unfavorable rating among Republicans and held a 71 percent to 17 percent lead among GOP voters.

Stuart Rothenberg, May 21, 2008:

And in Mississippi, Republican Greg Davis’ high personal negatives, combined with Childers’ ideology and personal appeal made the Democrat a safe choice for swing voters.

I suppose we could engage in some hair-splitting and say that Rothenberg was only talking about Republicans in that first excerpt. But really, in that piece, Rothenberg went out of his way to say that the GOP lost because “Republicans nominated a candidate from the wrong part of the district.” He also argued that “[p]olling in the district showed Bush’s ‘favorables’ well above 50 percent….”

If, three days ago, Davis had high favorables with Republicans, if Bush had high overall favorables in the district, and if Davis lost because he was from South Memphis rather than the “right” part of the district, how are we to believe that now, Davis lost because of his “high personal negatives”?

The contradictions don’t end there, though. From the first piece:

Democratic pollster Anzalone minced no words when he told me, Louisiana’s 6th and Mississippi’s 1st “are not referenda on Bush and Republicans in Congress.”

From the second piece:

Special elections often produce odd results when an unpopular president sits in the White House. They offer voters an opportunity to send a message. And swing voters and conservative Democrats surely did.

It’s like Rothenberg is trying to simultaneously argue and debunk every claim made about this election all at once. This bit, though, made me laugh:

Nor does the Mississippi 1st district result mean that “there is no district that is safe for Republican candidates,” as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen said recently. That’s just silly hyperbole and something the Maryland Democrat undoubtedly will be embarrassed to have said.

Stuart Rothenberg seems to be forgetting that campaign committee chairs engage in a little thing called “pr” every day of the week that ends in “y.” I predict Van Hollen will be no more embarrassed about those remarks than Rothenberg will ever be about writing these two highly contradictory columns.

San Diego mayor: Francis stalls

There’s a interesting mayor’s race going on in San Diego. Jerry Sanders is the incumbent with some ethical issues. Steve Francis is running as the outsider using only his own money. Both are Republicans.

Francis had been gaining ground until the latest SUSA poll: (5/1 in parentheses)

Sanders 42% (40)

Francis 35% (36)

There are a few minor candidates on the ballot.

This looks it’s going to a runoff. Now San Diego hasn’t had a Democratic mayor since ___.

And both candidates are getting really nasty with attack ads.

Despite a nearly even split in partisan registratinon in the city, the GOP has dominated local politics. It’s a shame a Democrat can’t step up to the plate. Then there could be some real change.

I think the problem is because of the libertarian

bent of the area, and among large cities in America, immigration is a hot button here.

Any thoughts?