St. Louis Oracle

Let's not be more irrational than 'birthers'

2011-02-18T14:26:00.002-06:00

President Obama's place of birth is much more than the controversy that will not die. It is a matter that is driving both the political right and the political left to make fools of themselves. It's time to chill already.

Even before Obama's election, some conservatives and Republicans (though notably not defeated Republican Presidential nominee John McCain) became obsessed with the idea that their conqueror was ineligible to be president because he didn't meet the constitutional requirement that he be born in the United States. This in spite of the fact that McCain's own candidacy was a bit of a stretch, his having been born in the Canal Zone, at the time a territory of the United States but never a state. It is admitted by all that Obama was born to parents who were attending college in Hawaii, then already a state. But the “birthers,” as they came to be known, contend that Obama's Kansas-born mother foresook the health and safety of American medical facilities and traveled halfway around the world to Kenya, the homeland of Obama's namesake father, to deliver her child in third-world conditions. The absurdity of the necessary assumptions that attend this scenario help to make birthers seem unreasonable to everyone else.

For his part, the President has taken steps to feed the controversy. Promptly releasing (or authorizing Hawaiian officials to release) his actual birth certificate would have ended the controversy. Instead, Obama belatedly released a modern-day abstract or summary of the birth certificate, which birthers contend to be fabricated. Birthers ask why not release the document issued contemporaneously with his birth, complete with signatures of the certifying government officials. They charge that he can't release what doesn't exist. They liken his refusal to a politician caught in a sex scandal defiantly refusing to dignify the charges with a comment.

A conservative friend of mine recently emailed me a pdf file of what purports to be a photo of Obama's Certified Copy of Registration of Birth from a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Such a document is easily fabricated with technology widely available to anyone with a computer. But because of the passage of time, the production of the actual Hawaiian birth certificate now would be subject to the same suspicions.

So, why did the President let this controversy fester? He may be trying to protect his deceased parents from the release of embarrassing private personal information that his birth certificate may contain. Whether or not that is true, I believe that Obama has learned that his refusal is leading his opponents to make fools of themselves, and to deflect their efforts away from other issues that might have greater negative impact on his reelection. He is playing this controversy masterfully!

But other progressives are not so masterful, and are embarrassing themselves as much as the birthers. Progressives following Saul Alinski's playbook by ridiculing the birthers are now going a bridge too far. A Facebook page called Ostracizing Birthers was launched this past week, with the stated mission “to purge Birthers from our social networks, online and in person, refusing to interact with known Birthers, with the goal of making Birtherism as socially unacceptable as possible.”

Excuse me, but this is really stupid strategy. The popularity of Democrats in general and the President in particular has improved markedly in the aftermath of the tragic Arizona shooting and subsequent appeals to civility. While my previous post disagreed with a civility movement that sought to repress legitimate public debate, this whole ostracization business is entirely different. The information page for this political organization urges people specifically to “avoid engaging Birthers in arguments about Birtherism or other topics” (my emphasis added) because “anyone who still believes that Obama is not a US citizen is a fundamentally unreasonable person, and a waste of our time and energy.” In promoting the refusal to interact at all with persons holding these particular views, on this or any other topic, it is itself a strategy that represses the free and rational exchange of ideas and political thought.

Moreover, ostracization is a form of bullying, which has recently become the subject of extensive legitimate criticism. That's not the way a political movement wants to be perceived.

Ostracization is also potentially very disruptive to everyday business and even family relationships, not the least because of how relatively prevalent birther views are. The organization's Facebook page linked to a Public Policy Polling poll that disclosed that birthers comprise a majority of all Republican primary voters. In view of the huge generational divide opened by Obama's 2008 campaign, this strategy will necessarily pit Generation X and Millennial children against their Boomer and older parents in many cases. Disagreeing over the dinner table (or, more realistically, at the keyboard) is healthy; ostracizing family members is not.

Progressives need to be smart, stop trying to suppress opponents who are defeating themselves, and avoid being even more unreasonable than those they oppose.

Need for civility: a dissenting view

2011-01-25T11:23:00.005-06:00

Much has been said since the Tuscon shooting involving Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) about the need for civility in our discussion of political issues and people. From the President on down, both left and right, politicians are falling over themselves trying to look good by taking this “high road,” no matter how hypocritical it may be in the context of the speaker's own rhetorical past.

The most passionate voices of both the right and the left have come under fire for their rhetoric on subjects unrelated to Giffords or her shooting. Keith Olbermann, the most inspiring, uncompromising voice of the left, was canned by left-leaning MSNBC (though ostensibly for reasons unrelated to his rhetoric). That move led many progressives (e.g., Democrat strategist Mo Elleithee and State Rep. Rich DiPentima (D-NH) in Politico's discussion in The Arena) to press right-leaning Fox News to shed rhetorical flamethrowers Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and even opinionated moderate Bill O'Reilly, and for individual stations to disconnect the Rush Limbaugh radio program.

I respectfully dissent.

I'm a big-time First Amendment guy. I view all attempts to stifle free expression of ideas with great suspicion. While courts have extended First Amendment protection to such things as sexually explicit artwork, it is undeniable that speech on political topics is at the very heart of the amendment's protection. It is also undeniable that physical violence is not a protected expression of free speech.

Many politicians and media personalities have seized on the Arizona tragedy to suggest that the incident was the result of predictable reaction to heated political discussion. That's nonsense. And even if it were true, the occasional tragic response of an irrational sociopath to controversial expression is a small, necessary price to pay for our broader fundamental freedoms. After all, traffic accidents cause thousands of deaths every year, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be allowed to drive automobiles.

The fact is, the most virulent expressions of opinion are often the most effective. Displaying photographs of coffins of dead soldiers, though offensive and insensitive to some, is a legitimate, effective way to promote ending war. And I must admit that Sarah Palin's characterization of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research as “death panels,” though offensive and insensitive, is legitimate and effective in promoting the arguments of health care reform opponents. Those who seek to stifle so-called “toxic” speech are really seeking to suppress the effective, persuasive communication of ideas that they oppose.

Certainly responses to disagreeable expressions of ideas are equally protected and encouraged. Outrageous expressions should not go unchallenged, lest acquiescence be inferred from the silence. Unfortunately, today's society prefers suppression of ideas they don't like over vigorous, reasoned debate, as illustrated by popular culture's favorite retort, STFU. Censorship is wrong, unless there is a clear and present danger to national security. While the First Amendment only limits the government from interfering with free speech and does not prohibit private citizens from doing so, bullying speakers into submission with orchestrated public outcry is just plain wrong.

We don't need to monitor our “tone.” We need more ideas, not fewer. We need to return to the richness of their unintimidated expression. Self-imposed "civility" won't get us there.

Koster should return Comcast contribution

2011-01-21T20:29:00.006-06:00

Jake Wagman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that cable giant Comcast Financial Agency Corporation contributed $2,500 to the reelection campaign of Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster (D, former R) on Wednesday of this week, one day after Koster (on behalf of the state) joined in a settlement that allows Comcast to merge with over-the-air television network NBC.

The FCC approved the merger shortly after the settlement was reached. This dispenses with anti-trust concerns about the resulting creation of an entertainment conglomerate.

The contribution came to light so quickly because new Missouri ethics rules require immediate disclosure of large donations made during the legislative session. Comcast's donation was more than double what had been allowed under Missouri's former contribution limits.

Wagman quoted a spokesperson for Koster's office trying to explain away the apparent conflict of interest by distancing Koster from the negotiations' heavy lifting. But Wagman, ordinarily an apologist for establishment Democrats like Koster, observed insightfully, "So, in other words, it must be a coincidence that an out of state company with limited operations in Missouri gave Koster a campaign contribution the day after he signed an agreement pivotal to their [sic] future growth."

Since Missouri law allows campaigns not to report contributions which the campaign rejects within 10 business days after receipt, Koster's reporting of the contribution means his campaign accepted it.

This sure smells like "pay to play." At minimum, the contribution represented a reward for playing along. In addition, the ethical rules that apply to Koster's conduct as an attorney require him to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Koster should cleanse himself as best he can and return Comcast's contribution as soon as possible.

3 saved Dems' seat at MO redistricting table

2010-11-04T20:30:00.004-05:00

When a commenter to an earlier post mentioned the impact of next year's congressional redistricting in Missouri, I noted that Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon could veto any gerrymander by the Republican General Assembly, and that Republicans would need to win 20 net Democrat house seats (out of the 74 current Democrat seats) to gain the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto. That seemed pretty safe.

But Republicans, who haven't controlled redistricting in Missouri since 1921, came damned close. They knocked off 10 Democrat incumbents and picked up seven Democrat-held open seats without losing any of their own incumbents or open seats, for a 17-seat net pickup. They also increased their senate majority (where they already had a two thirds) by three seats and now hold a three-quarters majority. Wow!

Democrats can thank these three candidates for winning tough contests. These are the Democrats that prevented Republicans from gaining a full veto-proof General Assembly:

State Rep. Sara Lampe (D-Springfield) held on to win reelection by a single percentage point (103 votes), Democrats' narrowest house win. (An independent candidate won over 5%, but I don't know which major candidate his campaign hurt.)

State Rep.-elect Jay Swearington held the open seat vacated by Rep. Trent Skaggs by winning 51.3% of the vote, a 2.6% margin.

State Rep. Ron Casey (D-Festus) defeated a former state rep. to win reelection with 51.9% of the vote, a 3.8% margin, while Republicans were winning most other contests in Jefferson County.

Honorable mention (for the next two closest Democrat house wins) goes to State Rep. Jeanne Kirkton (D-Webster Groves), who won the traditionally Republican district by 4.3 points, and to State Rep.-elect Mary Nichols of Maryland Heights, who held an open seat that many thought would go Republican without someone named Liese on the ballot.

Democrats aren't necessarily home free on redistricting, though, if Republicans can do enough horse trading to persuade three Democrats to vote to override Nixon's veto. As a preemptive tactic, Nixon might dangle some juicy appointive jobs to sitting Republican legislators (e.g., a high paying, prestigious term on the Missouri Public Service Commission) to entice them to resign prior to the veto session.

In the absence of Democrat defections, Nixon's ace in the hole is that the courts will draw the new map if the legislature and governor cannot agree, and most expect these judges to be Democrat-friendly. That prospect gives Republican legislative leaders an incentive to negotiate a redistricting compromise with the governor's representative to produce a new map that a majority of legislators will support and the governor will sign.

Nixon wouldn't be in this position of strength if Democrats had lost three more house seats that the final results demonstrated were in play.

Final forecast for the 2010 midterms

2010-10-29T20:49:00.010-05:00

When I wrote in September, the Democrats appeared to be in position to ride out the storm and maintain its control of Congress. Wow, have things changed!

House

In September, Congressional Quarterly projected Republicans leading in 178 districts, no change from what they hold right now and just two more than they led in at the start of the year. With another 28 seats rated as tossups, Democrats were then in a position to maintain control of the House just by winning the seats where they are still ahead, even if Republicans swept every tossup contest.

But now, on the Friday before the election, Republicans lead in 199 districts, a gain of 21 seats. But Democrats only lead in 195. The remaining 41 seats (all but one of which are currently held by Democrats) are rated as tossups, and Democrats now need to win over half of them to keep control of the House. Moreover, 24 of the districts in which Democrats lead are only rated as "leaning" their way. At the start of the year, a Republican sweep of all seats in which they led, all tossup seats and all seats leaning Democrat would have produced a 33-seat gain, but left them five seats short of control. By September such a Republican "run of the table" would have given them a 57-seat pickup (bigger than the 1994 revolution) and control of the House. Such a feat now would pick up a staggering 86 seats.

While such a "run of the table" is unlikely, the final result is still bad news for Democrats. A more realistic forecast of a Republican “wave” would give that party all of the seats in which CQ now finds them ahead, a 2-1 advantage in tossup contests and 40% of the contests currently "leaning" Democrat. That would give them 52 new seats and control of the House, comparable to 1994. And that assumes Democrats keep every seat that CQ rates as either "safe" or "likely Democrat" (such as Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO)). Surprises could pad that total.

In Missouri, the seat of 34-year veteran Democrat Rep. Ike Skelton, which had been rated "safe" at the start of the year and which was "leaning Democrat" in September, is now rated as a tossup. And within the past week, CQ moved Carnahan from "safe" to "likely Democrat."

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball now predicts that Republicans will pick up 55 net seats (up from 32 in September. The Rothenberg Political Report has 48 current Democrat seats either favoring, leaning or "tilting" Republican (offset by 3 GOP seats turning Democrat) and 17 more Democrat seats (and one Republican open seat) rated as "Pure Tossup."

The Oracle is pessimistic. Throughout the year, these nationally known forecasters have been behind the curve and slow to react, so the actual results will probably be worse. I'm expecting Republicans to pick up 75 seats. In Missouri, Skelton's 34-year career will come to an end, but Russ Carnahan will hold on with a mere plurality. Like I said, I'm a pessimist.

The real surprise from this area may not be Carnahan challenger Ed Martin, but Terri Newman. Who? The underfunded and largely unknown Republican opponent of entrenched Rep. Jerry Costello is running in a district that is 4 points less Democratic than Carnahan's. No national pundit thinks this seat is even in play. But the uninspiring top-of-the-ticket candidacies of Gov. Pat Quinn and Democratic senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias in the shadow of the impeachment of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich will depress Democratic turnout while rural Republican turnout surges. A Green Party candidate is poised to take the votes of those who are unhappy with Costello's votes against health care reform and cap and trade. Other voters who like Costello but are angry about how things are going will think it's safe to cast a protest vote for Newman. If Newman had campaigned more visibly, those voters wouldn't take that chance. This is exactly the kind of contest in which a surprise can occur. It will be close.

Senate

Prospects for Democrats are a little brighter in the Senate. CQ projects Republicans leading in 22 contests, up 5 since September and 7 since January. Six other seats (all currently held by Democrats) are rated as tossups, and two Democrat seats are merely “leaning” that way. Formerly vulnerable Republican-held seats (including Missouri) have firmed up, even with weak Republican candidates. (The Republican nominee may lose in Alaska, but the winner would be the GOP incumbent, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, running as write-in candidate, who has said she would continue to caucus with Republicans.) A Republican sweep of every tossup contest and all in which they lead would give them control. But California is the Democrats' firewall, where the ballot measure to legalize marijuana will draw ordinarily poor-turnout pot smokers to the polls, and they will save arrogant Sen. Barbara ("Please call me 'Senator'") Boxer from defeating herself. Assuming Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal can close the deal against former pro-wrestling CEO Linda McMahon and GOP's controversial senate nominee in Delaware is unable to cast a spell over that state's reliably Democratic voters, Democrats can retain control by winning any one tossup contest. West Virginia, Illinois and Washington are the best candidates to hold off the GOP. But Democrats' hopes of regaining their former filibuster-proof margin are dead and gone.

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball currently predicts a net Democrat loss of eight senate seats, while the Rothenberg Political Report pegs the expected senate loss at 6-8 seats. In both cases, that's up just one since September and short of the 10-seat swing necessary to change control. The Oracle sees Democrats keeping nominal control, but having to change its leadership, with Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) replacing the defeated Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as majority leader.

Save the Libertarians in Missouri

2010-10-27T00:30:00.002-05:00

While the Libertarian Party has been a fixture on the Missouri ballot for a couple of decades, its ballot status is in jeopardy this year. In order to remain on the ballot without a new statewide petition drive, at least one of a party's candidates must get 2% of the vote at least every four years (two election cycles). The party regularly met the 2% test every election for several years, until 2008. That year, none of their candidates got 2% in any of the seven statewide contests, perhaps because they had to share the votes of disgruntled conservatives with the Constitution Party. That means that Libertarians must meet that test this year or be off the ballot, and this is a year in which there are only two statewide contests in which they can qualify. Other contests (such as the 9th District congressional race in which no Democrat filed) don't count for statewide ballot qualification.

We need to help save the Libertarians by voting for their statewide candidates. They are Jonathan Dine for U.S. Senate and Charles Baum, CFP for State Auditor.

I don't belong to the Libertarian Party. They and I have a fundamental disagreement over the proper role of government, but I do like their civil libertarian and anti-war stands, as well as their consistent support for reform of drug laws. They also make positive contributions to political discourse. More manipulative types also believe that Libertarians siphon votes away from Republicans, but I don't believe any party is entitled to anyone's vote.

I know it's hard to cast a vote like this when it means not voting for your own party's candidate. That's easier when the contest is not close and your vote won't affect the outcome. Unlike usual contests for U.S. Senate in Missouri, this year's match between Robin Carnahan and Roy Blunt looks like a blowout. Moreover, neither one of them really deserves our votes! Dine favors the civil libertarian and drug reform policies that I like about Libertarians. His non-interventionist foreign policy positions are better than those of any of his opponents (including Carnahan) and, for that matter, better than the war policies actually put in place by President Obama. With the seat realistically out of reach for Democrats, Libertarian Jonathan Dine deserves our votes for U.S. Senate.

We might also consider Charles Baum for State Auditor. The state is best served if the auditor is from a different party than the governor. Incumbent Democrat Susan Montee was a good choice when elected during the Republican administration of former Gov. Matt Blunt, but she has turned into a lapdog for fellow Democrat Gov. Jay Nixon. That could conceivably make a case for Republican Tom Schweich (who, at least, is from the moderate Danforth wing of the Republican Party), but what happens if Republicans unseat Nixon in 2012? Since a Libertarian governor is highly unlikely any time soon, a Libertarian auditor would be an ideal check against any governor, be she Democrat or Republican. Our votes probably won't elect him, but we can sure help him top 2%.

It's hard to tell which Libertarian is more likely to get 2%, so I suggest voting for both of them. Then go ahead and vote for your usual party down ballot.

A 'Jeff Smith guy' voting for Ed Martin

2010-10-24T21:51:00.002-05:00

Back in the Republican sweep year of 1972 (the year George McGovern picked Missouri Sen. Tom Eagleton for vice-president and then dumped him), a young Democrat named Tom Villa, son of legendary 11th Ward Alderman Red Villa, waited in the wings to launch his political career. His home turf had just been redistricted into a state rep district represented by 24-year incumbent Joe Beckerle. But an incredible thing happened. Joe Fendler, cousin to Democrat Bud Fendler in a neighboring district, filed against Beckerle as a Republican and beat him. Then, two years later, Fendler mysteriously retired after just one term, and the open seat became easy pickins for the young Villa. The district (situated entirely east of Morganford, including most of Villa’s 11th Ward) was hostile turf for a Republican even in 1972. I can’t verify it, but rumors persist that Fendler had the secret support of the Villa organization to eliminate Beckerle, so that young Villa could avoid having to face him in a primary.

Fast forward to 2010. Missouri’s 3rd congressional district is a Democratic bastion represented by Russ Carnahan, an embarrassing scion of a Rolla-based political dynasty. He is the Democrat version of George W. Bush: impressively educated thanks to family connections, yet dumb as a box of rocks. His progressive voting record is the result of his doing what he’s told. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls him “low maintenance.”) Democrats desperately need an articulate defender of the merits of the legislation this Congress has passed, and the 3rd District is a safely Democratic platform from which to do so, but Russ isn’t capable enough to do that. In at least two personal appearances, his gaffes have drawn spontaneous audience guffaws that were embarrassing enough to be aired nationally on Fox News. Repeatedly. One of the reasons that the U.S. Senate campaign of his sister, Robin Carnahan, is doing so poorly against a seemingly vulnerable Republican is that Russ has damaged the brand of both the Carnahan name and the Democratic Party.

It’s time to “pull a Villa.” Democrats will never unseat an incumbent Carnahan in a primary. But what if Republican Ed Martin were to ride the building Republican wave to upset Russ this year? Martin would be a one-termer, because he won’t stand a chance with the very different mix of voters that will likely reelect President Obama in 2012. The overwhelmingly Democratic complexion of the district (which Obama won by 21 points over John McCain) means that a Martin win here would not represent the magic 39th seat that Republicans need to seize control of the House. Even with progressive “help,” a Martin win would still only be possible if it were part of a Republican wave that capsizes at least 75 Democrat seats. That now seems possible.

I admit, I supported progressive firebrand Jeff Smith over Carnahan when the seat was open in 2004. Carnahan later reported Smith to the Federal Election Commission to start a series of events than regrettably led to Smith’s conviction and incarceration, but that old sore isn’t my reason for picking a Republican over him now. (Although many progressives hold “snitches” in low regard, I don’t subscribe to that tenet.) It’s just a matter of voting strategically. Carnahan is a terrible representative and getting worse, and this year is realistically our last chance to use Republicans to knock him off. Demographic changes will keep the GOP in the minority for years to come starting in 2012, so we have to clean house now.

That’s why the Oracle will cast a strategic vote for Ed Martin for Congress on November 2. In the privacy of your voting booth, please join me.

California candidate arrested to prevent debate attendance

2010-10-13T12:16:00.002-05:00

California has intensified its war against independents and third parties with this latest atrocity. This report is from the California Green Party:

SAN RAFAEL – Green Party gubernatorial candidate Laura Wells was arrested here Tuesday as she was attempting to legally enter – with a ticket – the Governor's Debate at Dominican University. Private security arrested Ms. Wells, handcuffed her and held her against her will until San Rafael Police intervened.

Ms. Wells, based on the citizen arrest by Barbier Security agents for allegedly trespassing, now must appear in court.....ironically, on Election Day, Nov. 2.

"Republicans and Democrats will go to any lengths, even arresting candidates, to keep the truth from California voters. There are solutions, but voters aren't being allowed to hear from independent candidates. Meg and Jerry will spend tens of millions of dollars in advertising but still won't address the problems plaguing us," said Ms. Wells, after being released on her own recognizance.

Ms. Wells, 62, a financial and business analyst, and political activist who resides in Oakland, polled more than 400,000 votes as a candidate for controller in 2002, the most ever polled by a Green Party partisan candidate in California.

With green gags covering their mouths, protestors from the Green Party of California picketed the Governor debate here Tuesday – upset that although billed as a "eco debate," the affair unfairly excludes ballot-qualified Green Party candidate Wells.

"The debate is a fraud. Limiting it to Whitman and Brown is not just anti-green, it is anti-democratic and anti-republican," said Ms. Wells, noting polls that would qualify a candidate to participate in the debate were invalid because they didn't even ask voters if they favored Laura Wells. The only choices given to those polled were Whitman or Brown.

Signs of progressive malaise

2010-09-01T20:36:00.003-05:00

These are not good times for progressives in America. While we are almost always disappointed with the Democratic Party’s inability or unwillingness to deliver the progressive policies they promise us, we are even more discouraged, even depressed, today.

This gut feeling of mine is reflected in national polls. According to well-respected Gallup, only19% of American adults approved of the performance of the Democratic-controlled Congress last month, with disapproval a whopping 75%. But more telling is that its approval rating even among fellow Democrats is a mere 38%. Gallup’s most recent weekly generic ballot preference poll gave Republicans a 10-point advantage, the largest GOP edge in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress. That’s even worse than reported by Rasmussen Reports, which critics regard as more Republican oriented.

But the statistic that zeroes in on progressive malaise is the “enthusiasm gap.” In Gallup’s June11-13 poll for USA Today, 35% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting while 56% were less enthusiastic, for a net score of -21%. In contrast, Republicans scored +14% (53%/39%). That 35-point gap is the largest relative party enthusiasm advantage Gallup has measured in any single midterm-election poll.

These measures of progressive malaise are not just short-term responses to disappointment of the so-called “recovery summer,” because signs appeared much earlier in the year. As early as last April, Gallup reported that Americans' favorable rating of the Democratic Party had dropped to the lowest point in the 18-year history of that measure. At 41%, Democrats actually trailed Republicans by a point. That compares to the 11-point lead that Democrats enjoyed a year ago. If that sentiment were measured today, Democrats would fare even worse.

More foreshadowing unfolded with the passing of filing deadlines (late March in Missouri and even earlier elsewhere). Democrats failed to contest 20 congressional seats this year (including Missouri’s 9th District), while Republicans defaulted in only five. This marks only the seventh time since 1920 that Democrats are contesting fewer congressional districts than Republicans. In contrast, in the past two congressional elections, Democratic general election candidates outnumbered Republicans by 34 in 2006 and by 28 in 2008, the two elections in which Democrats built their majorities that they seem to be trying to lose in this election. Here in Missouri, there are only 17 state senate seats on the ballot, but Democrats could find candidates for only 12 of them. There are more defaults on the Democratic ticket (five) than on the Republican ticket (three), a rarity in Missouri. The situation is even more pronounced in contests for the Missouri house, where Democrats were unable to recruit candidates in 42 districts (more than a quarter of the total), compared to only 29 defaults by Republicans. At least one uncontested district (the 3rd) is one that Democrats actually held earlier this decade.

A symptom of the malaise among local progressive activists is the absence of any left-of-Democrat parties on the Missouri ballot this year. The Progressive Party of Missouri was unable to collect enough signatures to place its candidates on the Missouri ballot. The Green Party of St. Louis filed no candidates for office in St. Louis, where it has ballot status, even though no petition signatures were required. The Greens had filed at least one candidate for citywide office in every even-numbered election since 2000. There is little incentive now for voters of the principled left to bother to vote.

Democrats are not so much losing to Republicans as they are beating themselves. In a recent Rasmussen poll that showed solid majorities of voters disapproving of both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), their pitiful approval ratings were actually better than those of their Republican counterparts.

What's with Russ?

2010-08-25T11:42:00.002-05:00

Monday of last week I went to a special meeting of our neighborhood association that was billed as a candidate night, featuring appearances by Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan and his Republican challenger, Ed Martin. Over 100 neighborhood folks attended. But Carnahan did not.

Martin did appear personally, and he spoke first, for 10-15 minutes, without notes. He came off looking reasonable, addressing the need to produce new jobs and conceding the existence of good parts of the cap-and-trade and health care bills that he opposes (and Carnahan had voted for), and explaining why he opposed them. He did better than I had expected.

Next, Carnahan was represented by Erv Switzer (shown above), an attorney who lives in the neighborhood. He spoke right after Martin and mentioned how much Carnahan likes the neighborhood and how some of the appropriations Carnahan had supported helped the neighborhood, and then after about three minutes he was done. Switzer made a nice appearance and was articulate in what little he said (realistically a better appearance and more articulate than Carnahan himself would have been), but he wasn’t who the audience had come to see.

The audience had come to hear why the recession that began in 2007 is still raging three years later, even a year and a half after passage of the stimulus package that the Obama Administration proposed and the congressman supported. They wanted straight talk about how the new health care bill would impact their Medicare and what impact cap-and-trade, if enacted, would have on their utility bills and other energy costs. They heard Martin’s take, but nothing from their congressman.

So where was Russ? This was the night before the mysterious “firebombing” of his campaign finance office, so he wasn’t preoccupied with that. The joint forum was organized by the neighborhood organization, not Martin’s campaign. While it was Martin’s home neighborhood, the meeting wasn’t exactly a lion’s den. Carnahan had carried the neighborhood as long as he had been the incumbent, as had President Obama and the entire Democratic ticket in 2008. Claire McCaskill also carried it when she unseated Republican Sen. Jim Talent in 2006. The event should have been low risk for the congressman. But he sent a representative who spoke for all of three minutes instead.

What’s going on? Carnahan can win the safely Democratic 3rd congressional district without winning Martin’s southwest St. Louis neighborhood, as he did when he defeated Bill Federer by 8 points for the open seat after a contentious 10-way primary in 2004, but why take that risk? Why is Carnahan just phoning it in?

Analysis of 2010 Missouri primary

2010-08-09T17:55:00.003-05:00

This year’s Missouri primary made national news, not only because of the overwhelming passage of Proposition C, but also because of what it meant (or didn’t mean) for the continuing media narrative of anti-incumbency. Here are a few observations:

Proposition C and the Federal Health Care Law

There was no way this vote could be spun favorably for the Obama Administration. The ballot measure attacking the “compulsory purchase” feature of the new federal health care law far exceeded expectations, garnering an astonishing 71% of the vote, even though more money was spent opposing the measure than supporting it. That was nearly 22 points ahead of what Republican John McCain, the presidential candidate most identified with a Yes vote on this proposition, received in 2008. While the mix of voters was much different, and it is mathematically possible (though terribly unlikely) that all of the measure’s yes votes came from voters who had backed McCain, realistically there were still plenty of Obama voters who turned around and backed Proposition C. In the City of St. Louis, for example, where McCain managed a mere 15.5% of the vote, Proposition C won approval from 41.1%. McCain didn’t come close to winning any city ward, but Proposition C carried six of them. There were fewer than 5,000 city voters casting Republican primary ballots, but Proposition C got over 13,000 city votes.

The bad news for Democrats is that there is plenty wrong with their new health care law. The worse news is that the voters know it. Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Robin Carnahan waited until the bill had passed to voice her support for it. Come November, that belated support may come back to haunt her.

The good news for Democrats is that they don’t need a Carnahan victory in this already Republican-held seat to maintain control of the senate.

Few signs of vulnerability among major candidates

Missouri did not repeat other states’ proclivity to slap down party-favored candidates. Both Carnahan and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Blunt won by comfortable margins. So-called Tea Party opposition to Blunt was splintered, as many from that movement backed Blunt, and lead challenger Chuck Purgason mustered a lower than expected 13%. State Auditor Susan Montee and six of seven incumbent congresspersons faced opposition in their own primaries, but only one (Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO-8)) fell below 80%. The poorest showing by an incumbent without organized opposition was Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO-3) with 80.1%. The 63% compiled by Carnahan's Republican challenger, first-time candidate Ed Martin, was impressive in a 3-way contest that included last election's primary runner-up and a candidate with the NASCAR-appealing name of Rusty Wallace.

Anti-incumbency?

Very few incumbents lost, but this was mostly because very few incumbents faced opposition for renomination by their party, and at the state legislative level because relatively fewer incumbents were eligible to seek reelection due to Missouri’s term limits. No incumbent state senators were ousted, and only two incumbent state representatives lost. Democratic voters in the City of St. Louis were the hotbed of discontent, showing three of four contested incumbents the door. They were Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza and both of the state’s defeated state reps, James Morris and Hope Whitehead. Jefferson County Democrats unseated the county’s first county executive, Chuck Banks, by a wide 70-30 margin. St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley made a weak showing, getting less than 76% of the Democratic primary vote (just 60% in south county) against Ron Levy, an 81-year-old political gadfly who previously ran on the Republican, Libertarian, Reform and U.S. Taxpayer Party tickets. But Republican incumbents in St. Charles County swept aside their challenges by comfortable margins.

Hostility towards judiciary?

One anti-incumbency example with national implications occurred in judicial elections. Sitting circuit judges in Missouri are rarely challenged, especially in their own primary. This year, only one incumbent circuit judge was challenged, and she lost by 20 points. This was Republican Judge Cindy Eckelkamp of Franklin County, who lost even though her family name is business and political royalty in that county. In St. Charles County, Associate Circuit Judge Matthew Thornhill (R) won, but with just 43% in a four-candidate field. If these isolated results are symptoms of pervasive voter discontent with the judiciary, it could play well for Republicans in other contests in November.

Hostility towards party insiders?

The influence of party insiders showed mixed results, and not in the ways conventional wisdom would have expected. In the Republican primary, where grassroots Tea Party movements have caused havoc in other states, Missouri’s establishment-backed Republicans did well. Joining Blunt on the statewide ticket is State Auditor candidate Tom Schweich, who won with the backing of most of the party’s elite, even though that backing was generally regarded as a reward for getting out of the U.S. Senate race. Both Blunt and Schweich overcame the storied “Post endorsement jinx” to win.

It is was a different story in the southwest Missouri contest for the open congressional seat vacated by Blunt. First-time candidate Billy Long easily won the Republican primary in a field that included a state senator, a state representative and the prosecuting attorney from the district’s largest county. His win was foreshadowed by his early fundraising success. The Democratic primary winner was Scott Eckersley, the lawyer whose firing created the email retention controversy that rocked the administration of former Gov. Matt Blunt (R), son of this year’s senatorial nominee.

But the big revolts against party insiders occurred in Missouri’s Democratic primary. As noted earlier, Jefferson County’s sitting county executive lost, 70-30. In St. Louis County’s contest for the open 14th District senate seat, former University City mayor Joe Adams claimed unanimous support from all of the district’s Democratic committee members, but he came in dead last in a four-candidate field.

In the City of St. Louis, one would have expected that a contest for a low-visibility office like Circuit Clerk would have been ripe for voters’ reliance on the recommendation of their Democratic ward organization. Yet, only half of those organizations who made an endorsement were able to deliver for their endorsed candidate, some by less 5 points, and only five “delivering” as much as 60% of the vote in the one-on-one contest. The 6th Ward’s endorsement of incumbent Favazza was good for less than 36%. Even with the city-wide trend favoring challenger Schweitzer, Favazza still carried four wards whose organizations had endorsed against him.

Racial forgiveness (for a Democrat)

As I noted before the election, I was pleasantly surprised at how uninterested African American voters were in the ties of successful Democratic Circuit Clerk candidate Schweitzer to her late father-in-law, who had run for city school board in 1991 on a slate organized by the former Metro South Citizens Council, a forerunner of today’s Council of Conservative Citizens. I was unaware of any effort by Schweitzer to distance herself from his candidacy, and she didn’t when I interviewed her for that blog post. Schweitzer was endorsed by at least two African American newspapers (the American and the Evening Whirl) and one black ward organization (the 4th), she carried five north-side wards, and she lost the overall north-side vote by a single percentage point.

While I would not expect a Republican or Tea Party activist to receive the same pass as Schweitzer did, it is heartening to see the display of tolerance, at least within the party.

It isn’t easy being a former Green

While Democrats urge former Green Party members to return to their party fold, they greeted those who sought to return as candidates with the backs of their hands. Byron DeLear, a Green Party congressional candidate in California in 2006, lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for an open state rep seat in Maryland Heights, 64-36, while former Webster Groves mayor Terri Williams, who was active in Green Party politics in the 1990s, lost her bid for the open 5th District council seat, 58-42.

What happens when the 'outsider' is the incumbent?

2010-07-27T15:32:00.004-05:00

In an anti-incumbent atmosphere such as today’s, what happens in a classic contest between insider and outsider when the outsider is already the incumbent? That’s the choice in the only contested city-wide contest in the City of St. Louis in next week’s Democratic Primary.

Mariano Favazza is the maverick incumbent Circuit Clerk. He unseated former clerk Mavis Thompson in the 1998 primary in an election in which no ward organization endorsed him. He organized a successful grassroots campaign that focused on the wards with a history of highest voter turnout. He used (and still uses) homemade flyers that scream “amateur,” and the voting public ate it up. No high-priced consultants, just Mariano.

Favazza’s animosity with party Powers That Be begins at home. He embarrassed his own 16th ward leadership in 2004 when he ran for Dick Gephardt’s open congressional seat and, though coming in 5th overall, carried his own ward and several others which had endorsed former state rep. Joan Barry. In 2006 he endorsed Derio Gambaro for the open 4th district senate seat, for which the ward organization had backed eventual winner Jeff Smith, and Gambaro carried the ward. In 2008 Favazza family surrogates challenged the incumbent ward committee members and State Rep. Michele Kratky and lost (but not overwhelmingly). So this year was time for payback, and Favazza’s challenger comes from his own ward’s organization in the person of Jane Schweitzer.

Schweitzer is following Favazza’s own 1998 playbook (except that her flyers are professionally made), conducting an intensive door-to-door campaign in the high turnout wards that have historically favored Favazza.

Favazza has also feuded openly with the circuit judges on the court his office serves. That feud provides the primary issues for Schweitzer’s campaign. While her positive campaign flyer merely notes “the Clerk’s failure to cooperate with our courts,” her “attack” flyer makes seven specific charges of mismanagement by Favazza, including his handling of a “Special Interest Fund”and unclaimed property, no-bid contracts, his lawsuit (currently pending on appeal) challenging a court-imposed transfer of power from his office to the judges, and most colorfully, a $10,000 “private toilet for his second office.”

Favazza responded with a flyer answering the charges, which he called “misleading half truths.” He claims that the interest fund holds approximately $250,000 instead of the $7.6 million claimed by Schweitzer, and that earlier interest holdings had in fact been turned over to the city, not withheld. He admitted but justified his handling of unclaimed funds, stating that his actions had facilitated the return of 40% of those funds to their rightful owners, and that his books balanced. He admitted but justified his no-bid contracts with single-source providers for one-of-a-kind products. And while $10,000 doesn’t seem out of line for a toilet, Favazza responded flatly, “There is no toilet.”Schweitzer told me that the toilet had been the subject of a televised news report at the time of the conversion of the former federal courthouse into the Mel Carnahan state court building.

Favazza justifies his lawsuit as challenging judicial action that would nullify an earlier vote of the people to keep the office elective, noting that both sides of the litigation (not just Favazza) were appealing the trial court decision. He told me that protecting the public’s right to vote for his office was his sole motivation for filing the suit. He notes that he lobbied to kill legislation that would have overridden the people’s 2004 vote, even after legislators inserted a provision that would have“grandfathered” him into his position for 10 additional years.

The establishment Democratic ward organizations are split, with a slight majority endorsing Favazza, but 11 back Schweitzer, including most of the wards with a record of high primary turnout. It is unusual for an incumbent city-wide officeholder not be the consensus endorsee of ward organizations unless a race-based challenge is involved. (Both Favazza and Schweitzer are white and live in the same neighborhood.)

The city’s establishment press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (the voice of the white city establishment) and the St. Louis American (the voice of the black city establishment), have endorsed Schweitzer, albeit not without reluctant praise for Favazza. The Post’s endorsement editorial noted that “Favazza has served a useful role in checking judicial over-stepping,”while the American conceded, “Favazza has shown an admirable spirit of independence as a white politician.” But both papers concluded that Schweitzer would be the better choice. The very non-establishment Evening Whirl also endorsed Schweitzer.

One issue that surprisingly hasn’t surfaced is Schweitzer’s connection to her late father-in-law, former Sheriff Gordon Schweitzer, Sr. The ward where Gordon Schweitzer formerly served as committeeman is one of the wards endorsing Jane Schweitzer. The elder Schweitzer was elected sheriff in a racially charged special election in 1979. In 1991, he ran for the school board as part of the “anti-busing” slate that had been organized by members of the Metro South Citizens Council. Many Democrats hold association with that school board faction in low regard. When asked, Jane Schweitzer said she had attended some of the elder Schweitzer’s ward meetings, but could not recall whether she supported his school board candidacy, noting that the issues in that campaign were complicated and that her four children were then aged 1 to 7.

Another interesting aspect of the contest is how it plays into the national campaign narrative of an apparent trend against incumbents. The defeat of any incumbent, especially in a Democratic primary, arguably adds to the momentum of Republican and Tea Party “outsiders,”as was the case when Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) lost their primaries. Of course, this primary can be distinguished from those, because the outsider already holds the office, while the challenger is backed by more establishment-oriented forces. But momentum often builds or changes based on impressions that aren’t influenced by fine distinctions.

The hidden driving issue in the 4th

2010-07-19T16:55:00.002-05:00

There is an unusual contest in Missouri's 4th senate district in this year's Democratic primary. Its driving issue isn't discussed in either candidate's campaign literature.

Four years ago, a spirited primary contest took place in this district between three African Americans from the predominantly black north end and two whites from the predominantly white south end. Abortion was a key issue, with a white anti-abortion candidate seeking a "niche" win against four pro-choice opponents. In spite of the formal neutrality of Mayor Francis Slay, perceived loyalty or opposition to his policies was also a driving force. Jeff Smith, a white, pro-choice Slay loyalist, won with 36% of the vote.

After Smith resigned and pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with an earlier unsuccessful congressional run (covering up an election law violation reported by his victorious opponent, Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO)), Joe Keaveny won the Democratic nomination for the special election to fill the vacancy in a closed-door nominating process, and was elected without opposition in the safely Democratic district. So this is the first time Keaveny faces the voters with an opponent on the ballot.

The expected racial contest between white and black candidates did not materialize, as both Keaveny and challenger James Long are white. The base of support for Long, a retired police sergeant, is the St. Louis Police Officers Association. Unions representing other public employees (firefighters, teachers and state, county and municipal employees) are also backing Long's challenge. The campaign committee of State Rep. Rachel Storch (D-64), who also sought the nomination for this seat after Smith resigned, donated to Long. Neither candidate has raised a lot of money, although the incumbent holds a 2-1 advantage as of the July reports.

The campaign's biggest issue isn't evident in the candidates' campaign literature. Long's flyers take an almost conservative bent, projecting a "law and order" image. His promises to fight government waste, fraud and abuse, oppose "job-killing" new taxes, and keep taxes low seem at odds with the interests of the unions that endorse him. Keaveny touts historic tax credits for job creation and gratuitously whips the unpopular payday loan industry. The 2006 lynchpin issues are not discussed, except for one Slay-related issue. The mayor promoted the state takeover of the city school system, but Long promises to "retain local control of our [city] schools." Keaveny, who blandly recites that he wants to "reform our failing public schools," is tied to Slay's position because he ran unsuccessfully for the school board on a slate that Slay backed.

While the school issue is an apparently successful ploy to expand Long's appeal outside his police base to tap teachers union discontent, that's not the reason for the Long candidacy or the motivation of his supporters. The issue on the surface is local vs. state control of the city police department, which Keaveny favors (and mentions in his flyer) and Long opposes (but doesn't mention). But that wonkish issue masks the real concern of Long's supporters and the reason for his candidacy, and neither candidate's flyers address it. That issue is civilian oversight of police. Black city politicians have long sought a civilian oversight board to act on complaints against police officers, and for that board to be elected by the people and have the power to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony. They lack confidence in oversight by either the civilian Board of Police Commissioners, which is appointed by the governor, or by department's own review by fellow officers in Internal Affairs, and suspect that atrocities regularly get swept under the rug. Police, on the other hand, fear that they would be subjected to abusive second-guessing by the politics of an elected board. Elected civilian oversight boards with subpoena power are not currently legal for jurisdictions like St. Louis and St. Louis County that are under state control. Local control is the gateway to civilian oversight, and police want none of it. Police and their families know all about this issue, and they don't need campaign literature to remind them.

While the challenger's campaign faces long odds (sorry about the pun), Long is putting up an active and visible fight, at least in the south part of the district where I live. Long's lawn signs, many of them huge banners, are prevalent. I have already received two personal visits at my door from his volunteers, and several phone calls, both in person and robocalls, and the election is still two weeks off. In an otherwise dull election season, these folks are dedicated and running full out.

Conventional wisdom dictates that Keaveny should win easily. The civilian oversight issue should play well for him in black wards, but that only works if that electorate is informed. If Keaveny is using the same flyers in north St. Louis as I received, he probably isn't doing what he needs to do to inform and motivate them. North-side voters could find Long's "law and order" campaign and his opposition to the state school takeover appealing. In a low-turnout election in a year where an anti-incumbent trend even infects Democratic primaries, a strong grassroots effort by the Long campaign has a chance of success.

Mid-year analysis of 2010 congressional races

2010-07-06T12:30:00.004-05:00

With the November mid-term elections now less than four months off, conditions for Democrats have deteriorated since my analysis in January, but the majority party still remains in position to ride out the storm and maintain its control of Congress.

House

Since World War II, the party in the White House has lost an average of 16 seats in a new President's first off-year election. Congressional Quarterly currently projects Republicans leading in 178 districts, which is exactly the number of seats they hold right now. They lead in three open seats vacated by Democrats, but trail in three of their own. Moreover, they lead in just two more seats than they did at the start of the year. That’s not much Democrat deterioration, considering the President’s plummeting popularity in the wake of inaction on the Gulf oil spill and the weakening economy.

More troubling for Democrats is the number of other seats that now seem competitive. CQ now rates 28 seats as tossups (up from just 13 in January), all but two of which are Democrat-held seats. But Democrats could maintain control of the House just by winning the seats where they are ahead now, even if Republicans swept every tossup contest.

Potential trouble looms for Democrats on the next level. CQ rates another 32 seats (up from 23 in January) as merely “leaning” Democrat, all but one which is currently in Democrat hands. If Republicans kept all of their current leads and swept every tossup contest, they could take control by seizing a dozen of those “Lean Democrat” contests. Realistically, that is a tall order for Republicans, but an improvement over January, when even a sweep of the leaners would have left them five seats short.

To illustrate just how challenging a “Leans Democrat” contest is for Republicans, consider Missouri 4th District represented by 34-year veteran Ike Skelton. This is one of the Democrat seats that CQ downgraded to “Leans Democrat” since my January analysis. Although the district backed John McCain solidly over President Obama, 60%-38%, and President Bush by even more over both Al Gore and John Kerry, Skelton has regularly won reelection with margins of 2-to-1 or better. His smallest margin was 10 points, and that was back in 1982, when Missouri lost a seat in reapportionment and his Republican opponent was also an incumbent congressman. This past election Skelton ran 28 points ahead of President Obama. He will be tough for Republicans to beat.

A realistic scenario at this point in time is for the parties to split the tossups and for each party to win 75% of the contests “leaning” their way. That would give Democrats their 197 seats that CQ rates either Safe or Likely Democrat, 24 of the other seats now “leaning” Democrat, 14 tossup seats, and 3 that are “leaning” Republican. That would be a 17-seat loss, in line with historical averages, and would leave Democrats with 238 seats and control with a 20-seat cushion.

A Republican “wave” might eliminate Democrat wins in Republican leaning districts, give the GOP a 2-1 advantage in tossup contests and reduce Democrat retention of their “lean” contests to 60/40, but even that scenario only costs them 15 more seats, leaving them in control with five to spare. The latest predictions by Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball (32 seat net change) and the Rothenberg Political Report (25-30 seats) don’t go that far.

Senate

Prospects for Democrats are brighter in the Senate, in spite of their surprise loss earlier this year in the Massachusetts special election. Only 36 seats (including special elections) are on the ballot, half of which are already held by Republicans. While Democrat chances of gaining one net seat to regain their 60-vote working majority are alive but hurting, the chances of losing a net 10 seats for numerical control of the chamber remain remote.

Since January, Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan (ND), Evan Bayh (IN) and Christopher Dodd (CT) announced their retirements and Robert Byrd (WV) died, but collectively they amount to a net 2010 change (since my January report) of just one seat, because the retirement of scandal-plagued Dodd rescued a Democrat seat formerly at risk. The timing of Byrd’s death will not put that red-state seat at risk until 2012.

CQ projects Republicans leading in 17 contests, up two since January, but still one fewer than they currently hold. Two of those seats are rated as just “leaning” Republican. Nine other seats are rated as tossups (up three since January), and three Democrat seats are merely “leaning” that way. A 1994 redux would require Republicans to sweep every one of those contests. Republicans have fielded weak nominees for four of the key seats (Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, and Nevada), and the independent candidacy of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist puts that state’s Republican-held seat in jeopardy. And a poll announced today by Public Policy Polling (a Democrat polling firm) shows the Democrat challenger now tied with Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) in a contest CQ rates “Likely Republican.” Blunders by both major party nominees in Illinois have actually put LeAlan Jones, the Green Party candidate, into double digits in a recent PPP poll, in which Jones is polling higher among conservatives than liberals.

Democrats’ senate chances are better because there are more Republican seats seriously in play. Four of the tossup seats (including Missouri’s) are open seats already held by Republicans. A Democratic takeover of any one of them digs a deeper hole for Republicans and realistically kills any chance to change control.

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball currently predicts a net Democrat loss of seven senate seats, while the Rothenberg Political Report pegs the expected senate loss at 5-7 seats. That’s well short of change of control, and I think Democrats will do better than that. I see Republicans losing their current seats in Ohio, Florida (to an independent likely to caucus with Democrats) and possibly Kentucky. A still uninspiring campaign by Democrat Robin Carnahan seems to be squandering a chance to seize Missouri’s Republican-held open seat, but Missouri won’t realistically be the reason Democrats fail to reclaim the magic 60th vote. The likely losses of Democrat seats in North Dakota, Arkansas, Colorado and probably Indiana and Delaware will keep Missouri from being pivotal.

California declares war on independents, 3rd parties

2010-06-09T20:48:00.002-05:00

California voters passed Proposition 14 this week to replace its party primaries with a "jungle primary" in which all candidates from all parties compete in the same contest, with the top two finishers - regardless of party - being the only candidates allowed to advance to the November general election. This law effectively eliminates independent and third-party candidates from the general election, when more voters participate, and relegates the real choice to the jungle primary in June, when fewer voters participate.

Proposition 14 had the backing of many California Democrats as well as their frequent ally, lame duck moderate Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The express purpose of the law is to favor "moderate" candidates and eschew extremes on either side. Corporate interests poured nearly $5 million into the campaign promoting the proposition.

A similar ballot measure in Oregon, whose ballot language more accurately described what the proposal would do, was defeated earlier this year. The California ballot language, drafted by Attorney General (and Democratic gubernatorial nominee) Jerry Brown, is believed to have been key to the California law's passage. Oakland, CA financial specialist Laura Wells, this year's Green Party nominee for California Governor, charged, "Behind the scenes, Brown sides with corporate money, against the people and voter choice."

Wells noted, "The rotten part of Prop. 14 is that what it promised - open elections - is the exact opposite of what it will do. Prop. 14 will keep dissenting voices off the big November ballot."

Greens, conservative Republicans and as many as five other ballot-qualified parties are mulling a constitutional challenge to the new law.

Campaign advice for Democrats in 2010

2010-01-18T15:31:00.003-06:00

Some Democrat partisans have criticized me for not being a “team player” on their team, and for making Democrat candidates earn my support. Well, I’m a progressive independent, not a Democrat, and I will always require candidates (regardless of partisan affiliation) to earn my vote. Every voter should do the same. But in the spirit of the camaraderie of shared policy perspectives, let me offer a few items of free campaign advice to Democrats in this challenging election year, early enough to help.

I probably don’t have to tell Democrats to watch Martha Coakley’s campaign for the Massachusetts senate seat and then do exactly the opposite. That’s pretty obvious.

My advice to elected members of both houses of Congress: Change your leadership. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are dragging Democrats down. First, the easy one: Dump Reid. Democrats in general and Senate Democrats in particular are appearing to be hypocritical, blindly partisan enablers in covering for Reid’s outrageous racial remarks. The contrast with both their and Republicans’ handling of former Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) (after his praise for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential candidacy) is playing well for Republicans. Ultimate progressive blog Daily Kos now openly speculates that Reid may be bringing all Democrats down with him. The latest weekly Daily Kos poll shows Reid’s favorability rating down to 29% with 61% unfavorable. Rasmussen is in the same ballpark with 31% favorable. Back in October an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll registered only a 14% favorability rating for Reid. Frankly, Reid needs more time to devote to his own reelection campaign, in which he now trails relatively unknown Republicans by double digits.

Here in Missouri, I advise likely Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Robin Carnahan to condemn Reid now and threaten to withhold her vote for him as majority leader. Most Democratic senators, including Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, are reluctant to challenge the sitting majority leader out of fear of retribution on their state appropriations and other ways in which he could make their tenure miserable. But Robin doesn’t have that worry. By the time Robin takes her senate seat, Reid is probably gone. On the plus side, throwing Harry under the bus (D’oh! I hate that cliche), though a cheap ploy under the circumstances, would nevertheless make Robin look like a fearless, principled independent, an impression she would like to cultivate. Robin should do it! Other non-incumbent Democrat senate candidates should consider doing the same. Whoever does it first gets the best press.

House Democrats have a similar problem with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She registers just 35% favorable and 57% unfavorable in the latest Rasmussen poll and 42%-to-49% in the Daily Kos survey. The October NBC/Wall Street Journal poll put her favorability rating at just 26%. Her favorability numbers are worse than the lowest numbers former President George W. Bush ever recorded, and her unfavorables are actually worse than Reid’s. She is toxic to voters in all but the most progressive areas, as she (and especially her new private jet that she demanded the government buy for her so she wouldn’t have to stop and refuel when shuttling home to San Francisco) has become the symbol of what angry voters dislike about this Congress. If Republicans were smart, they would tie vulnerable Democrats to Pelosi and Reid instead of President Obama (whose favorability rating in the same Daily Kos poll is still 55%). Republicans will pummel red-district Democrat incumbents like Missouri’s Ike Skelton (who enjoy personal popularity with conservative constituents) with statistics of how closely they toed the line for Pelosi, pointing out that every “blue dog” Democrat votes to keep Pelosi as speaker. Replacing Pelosi could save 20 seats.

Next, instead of ramming through legislation on the power of your numbers with little or no discussion of the actual bills being passed, I advise Democrats to engage their Republican critics and discuss the issues, explain the merits of proposed legislation and persuade voters how it is in the public interest. Put the actual text of important bills out there for public inspection with time for meaningful discussion (not just 72 hours, and not when everybody is preoccupied with something else, like the Super Bowl). Try to look like you’re acting reasonably. At present, Republicans and “tea party” activists are winning the debate among independent voters pretty much by default. If your bill makes things better, explain why. And if it doesn’t, don’t enact it.

When campaigning, focus on the candidates in the contest, i.e., you and your opponent(s). Democrats this past year have wasted way too much time, effort and, most important, the attention of the voters, by attacking people who aren’t running for anything. While kicking Rush Limbaugh around never seems to get old, attacks on perennial whipping boys like George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich and new villains like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and bumbling national party chair Michael Steele are counter-productive and make Democrats look mean spirited. Palin, in particular, may be the new political “3rd rail” that Democrats need to avoid. Even progressive women who dislike Palin’s stands are offended when others (especially men) take cheap shots at her.

Next, to insure retaining control over Congress this year, Democrats need to go on the offensive. As I noted in my prior post, the President’s party loses an average of 16 house seats in an Administration’s first off-year election, and the ruling Democrats look to be facing losses that are worse than average. Their salvation is their 41-seat House cushion. The key to keeping control in the House and 60 working votes in the Senate (where loss of control is not realistically at risk) is to offset losses by taking some Republican seats. When Republicans seized control in 1994, all of their pickups counted because Democrats failed to take away a single GOP seat. The public’s anti-incumbent mood can cut both ways if Democrats file and support credible challengers against Republican incumbents. Republicans in Congress have even worse favorability ratings than Democrats. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of its targeted “Top Races” includes only 10 GOP incumbents. That’s not ambitious enough.

Finally, and most important, Democrat success depends on adherence to progressive principles. Politically disparate Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan demonstrated that voters react positively to strong leaders who stay true to their principles. After fair and open debate, Congress needs to use its majorities to send President Obama the Employee Free Choice Act and strong cap-and-trade and health care legislation. Weak bills are worse than no bill at all. Ideally the health care bill would be single-payer, because a compromise hybrid may not actually work. At minimum the final bill should have the promised “robust” public option and not discriminate against women needing to terminate unwanted pregnancies. But most important, Democrats need to “grow a pair” and finance it with the tax increases needed to generate the necessary revenue. Currently at least half the financing comes from cutting half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, a fact that risks losing even my support. If Democrats won’t make the fat cats bear their fair share of the load, they’re not worth fighting for.

A New Year's preview of 2010 elections

2010-01-04T15:30:00.006-06:00

In my first 2010 preview last July, I observed, “The 2010 elections will determine whether President Obama is able to translate his personal popularity into a generation-long realignment that gives the Democratic Party - and especially its progressive wing - total control over government policy, or whether the public will react negatively and pare back the current Democratic majorities and perhaps even return control of one house of Congress to the Republicans.” As we start the election year, negative public reaction and a probable paring back of the current Democratic majorities seems to be the more likely outcome, but change of party control of Congress still appears unlikely. But things can change over the next 11 months, just as they have since July, and changes can, well, change everything.

Here’s how things look at the start of the year of this first off-year election of the Obama Administration.

U.S. House

Since World War II, the party in the White House has lost an average of 16 seats in the first off-year election, but actual results vary widely. Democrats lost 54 seats (and control) in 1994, the first off-year election of the Clinton Administration, but Republicans actually gained seats (with help from reapportionment) for George W. Bush in 2002. Republicans need to take over 41 seats to retake control of the House. That could happen, but more things favoring Republicans (or hurting the Democrats) have to change between now and the election for it to come to pass.

Democrats enjoy a 258-177 lead in the House. Republicans have turned up the heat on Democrats who backed Administration policies that appear to be unpopular in their districts. But that heat didn’t register in the results of special elections in 2009. Democrats won two key special elections in New York (one a turnover), seeming to confirm a continuation of the 2006-08 Democrat surge.

As the year starts, Congressional Quarterly projects Republicans leading in 176 districts (including 12 rated as just “leaning” Republican), another 13 seats rated as tossups, and 23 seats as merely “leaning” Democrat. But if the GOP sweeps all of them (including all 23 Democrat leaning contests), they only win 35 new seats. A 1994 redux would require Republicans to take over at least six seats currently rated either Likely or Safe Democrat.

An example of what is involved is unfolding in western Missouri. The 4th District solidly backed Republican John McCain over President Obama, 60%-38%, and voted to re-elect President George W. Bush by a margin of nearly 30 points. But Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) has represented the district for 34 years. He won reelection last year with 66% of the vote by running 28 points ahead of Obama, and scored a 68% win in1994 against the grain of the Republican congressional takeover. He has been winning with a reputation as a conservative Democrat. But his recent voting record has been more progressive, including his vote for the controversial cap-and-trade bill that most other rural Democrats opposed. A sitting state senator and a former state rep are now vying for the Republican nomination to oppose him, and the National Republican Congressional Committee has targeted the contest, prompting CQ to lower its rating from Safe to Likely Democrat. This is the type of district Republicans need to win in order to retake the House, but they’ll need to overcome Skelton’s personal popularity to do it.

Similar scenarios exist in maybe 20 other Democrat-held districts. These districts will determine control of the House.

U.S. Senate

The historic off-year pattern has been less pronounced in the Senate, where only a third of seats (plus special elections to fill vacancies) are up in any election. Underlying factors this year favor Democrats. While they hold a solid 60-40 majority (counting supportive independents) in the upper chamber, the seats being contested this year are evenly divided, with only 18 Democrat seats up. Assuming Democrats hold onto the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in a special election later this month, Republicans will need to hold all of their own 18 plus win 11 of the Democrat seats to regain control of the Senate. On the other hand, as little as a net gain of one could return their ability to stop measures with a unified party filibuster.

In senate races, on January 1 CQ projected Republicans leading in 15 contests (including three rated as just “leaning” Republican), another six seats rated as tossups, and four as merely “leaning” Democrat. But if the GOP sweeps all of them, they only win seven new seats. A 1994 redux would require Republicans to take over at least four seats currently rated either Likely or Safe Democrat.

Democrats’ chances are better in the senate because there are more Republican seats seriously in play. Four of the six tossup seats (including Missouri’s) are open seats already held by Republicans. A Democratic takeover of any one of them digs a deeper hole for Republicans and realistically kills any chance to change control.

Republicans, though, could force a change in the Majority Leader’s chair without seizing control. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is himself one of the senate’s most vulnerable incumbents (even though CQ still rates his race “Leans Democrat”).

What could change things?

Candidate recruiting - I blogged about this last July, and the parties are still trying to recruit game-changing nominees in some states. CQ rates Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) as safe, but he becomes vulnerable if Gov. John Hoeven (R) decides to take him on. CQ rates Vice-President Joe Biden’s former seat in Deleware as leaning towards Republican takeover by Rep. (and popular former governor) Mike Castle, but the race reverts to tossup if Attorney General Beau Biden (D) (son of the veep) answers his party’s call. New York Republicans recently lost their best realistic shot at appointed Sen. Kristen Gillibrand when former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani declined to run. On the de-recruitment front, Democrats avoided their surest giveaway by persuading tainted appointed Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) to retire, and Republicans matched that achievement by talking cantankerous Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) to hang up his spikes. (CQ still rates both contests as tossups.) Still pending is whether Democrats can coax ethically challenged Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) to retire.

Update: Right after this post was published, there were two game-changing senate retirements that pretty-much canceled each other out. First, "safe Democrat" red-state Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) opened up his seat, leaving Republicans a good chance for a takeover, with or without a Hoeven candidacy. The next day, Democrats got the Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) retirement they needed, rescuing a possible blue-state loss. The net numbers mentioned above remain virtually unchanged.

The economy (and don’t call me Stupid) - President Obama may have overpromised on the results of his policies, as unemployment is now much higher than he warned it would become if Congress failed to pass his stimulus package. If unemployment is worse in November than it was when Obama took office, more Democrat seats will be lost. But if the economy improves noticeably, Democrats will hold on very well.

International events - National security is an issue that favors Republicans if the public is focused on it. If minor events (such as the foiled Christmas Detroit plane bombing) leave the Administration looking incapable of protecting the country, Republican chances will improve. Ironically, though, if a major terrorist attack succeeds in the U.S., the natural tendency of the American electorate will be to unite behind their president (as they did behind a befuddled George W. Bush after 9-11), and Democrat chances will improve.

Party intensity - This isn’t a done deal yet, but it could prove to be Democrats’ Achilles Heal. Voter turnout is always less in off-year elections, and Democrat turnout generally dips more than Republican turnout. But this year could be an extreme example. If Obama and Congress fail to deliver what they promised, ideological progressives and folks hurting from the economy (the very base of the Democratic Party) may have little incentive to vote. In contrast, Republican anger at what Democrats have proposed, whether successfully passed or not, will likely result in a much more Republican mix of voters turning out in 2010 than was the case in any election since 1994.

The Tea Party movement - This is related to party intensity. The spontaneous protests over Democrat policies - quite out of character for Republicans - pose potentially big problems for Democrats. The protests are out of character because the characters that are involved are mostly new to politics and don’t all consider themselves Republican. Democrats’ public dismissal of them as “astroturf” suggest that the party fails to understand what’s happening and is therefore unprepared to deal with it. Whether the potential is realized will depend on whether the Tea Party movement can sustain its enthusiasm and whether it focuses on supporting Republicans as the means for removing Democrats from power. If the movement “peaked too soon,” or if it veers off chasing third-party fantasy, it will be a bust, and Democrats will hold on.

Robin's silence ends in a whimper

2009-12-03T23:48:00.005-06:00

I have been waiting for quite some time for Missouri’s presumptive Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Robin Carnahan to take a stand on an important federal issue in a timely manner. This week she finally did so. I think I liked the silence better.

Ms. Carnahan issued a news release backing President Barack Obama’s decision to increase our troop levels in Afghanistan. So did Sarah Palin. It was reminiscent of Robin’s mother, former Sen. Jean Carnahan, who also supported the military initiatives of the president, then George W. Bush. In fact, Sen. Carnahan bragged in her unsuccessful 2002 reelection campaign that her overall voting record had supported Bush 70% of the time. Like mother, like daughter?

This was very disappointing to me and other progressives seeking an end to our involvement in war.

On the other hand, at least Robin finally took a stand on something. The nation is currently in the midst of several robust public policy debates concerning President Obama’s proposals, including economic stimulus bills, the “cap and trade” energy act now pending in the Senate, and especially health care reform. Ordinary citizens have taken an extraordinary interest in pending legislation not seen in many years, and that is encouraging. But Robin has not been forthcoming on where she stands. Her indecision even got national attention in September when Politico published a long analysis by respected Springfield television reporter Dave Catanese.

About a month ago, reporters cornered Robin at a photo op for the unveiling of the new Missouri Blue Book and asked her about her views on the House-passed health care bill. She bobbed and weaved like a prizefighter. Jason Rosenbaum posted video of the encounter; you’ve got to see it to believe it! Asked whether she favored the bill, she said she was “excited that we’re having this debate.” (Well, then, take part in it!) All she gave were general platitudes like “the status quo is not good enough,” but that she was “a little concerned on the House side about the affordability of the bill.”

And in a matter of great importance to progressives, a reporter asked Carnahan point-blank whether she supported the Stupak Amendment (prohibiting federal health care dollars from paying for abortions). This should have been a slam-dunk for the supposedly pro-choice Carnahan, but she demurred. “We ought not be making this an abortion debate,” she lamented. “We hope they get that resolved.”

Wow! That’s leadership?

No, that’s a typical old-line politician, trying to be all things to all people.

Actually, it’s an embodiment of an old political ploy called the “rose garden” strategy. It evolved from the conduct of incumbent presidents seeking to look presidential by busying themselves with the duties of the office while publicly ignoring the campaign. Ms. Carnahan seems to be trying to look busy as secretary of state and ride into office on her reputation from that office and her unmistakable family name.

Is that a smart strategy? I don’t think so. First off, a “rose garden” strategy is ill suited for a candidate who isn’t the incumbent. Moreover, the office of Missouri Secretary of State has not been a particularly good training ground for higher office in recent years. Former Gov. Matt Blunt (R) also served as secretary of state, and frankly, his record there was as good or better than Carnahan’s. But it didn’t prepare him to be governor.

And then there’s the Jim Tedesco story. Tedesco was the Republican nominee earlier this year in the special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who accepted appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Hillary Clinton became President Obama’s Secretary of State. That seat had been hopelessly Republican territory until Gillibrand unseated a Republican incumbent and helped Democrats retake Congress in 2006. The Democratic nominee for Gillibrand’s seat was Scott Murphy, a Missouri native and first-time candidate for anything. Initial polls showed Tedesco, a well-known Republican state assemblyman, with a significant lead. Tedesco chose to sit on the lead and avoid conflict. For weeks he refused to take a stand on the President’s proposed stimulus bill, the issue then on most people’s minds. Murphy hammered Tedesco on his apparent indecision and cut away at Tedesco’s lead. By the time Tedesco took a stand, voters were fed up with him, and Murphy won in an upset.

My early inclination was to support Ms. Carnahan’s candidacy. She had won two statewide races with progressive support, and we have assumed she was progressive. Conventional wisdom is that she is smarter than her disappointing brother, Rep. Russ Carnahan, but at least Russ takes stands (even if they’re just whatever the Speaker’s aides tell him to say). Robin’s indecision makes her look even less attuned to issues than Russ! Both announced Republican contenders, Rep. Roy Blunt and state Sen. Chuck Purgason, have taken decidedly unprogressive stands on the issues, but at least they too have taken stands. Leadership requires taking stands that influences others to do the same. Merely not being Blunt or Purgason doesn’t cut it.

A progressive long shot, Code Pink activist Midge Potts of Springfield, is circulating petitions to get the Progressive Party back on the ballot, enabling her to seek this senate seat under that party’s banner. Maybe it takes her candidacy to reawaken the presumed inner progressive in Ms. Carnahan.

If this keeps up much longer, Robin’s rose garden may not bloom.

The disheartening fall of Jeff Smith

2009-08-28T09:28:00.003-05:00

This week, State Sen. Jeff Smith (D-St. Louis), State Rep. Steve Brown (D-Clayton) and Nick Adams, a graduate student who served as Smith’s campaign treasurer in his 2004 congressional campaign, pled guilty to federal charges concerning a cover-up of their involvement in illegal (but less serious) coordination of that campaign with purported “independent expenditures” by a separate one-man committee. That guy would later get involved with serious, unrelated charges that led federal investigators to stumble upon evidence tying Brown to a coverup of the election infractions. Brown was apparently the domino that took down the others.

Authorities did not announce any action against Clay Haynes, another member of the 2004 Smith campaign who plea documents indicate also agreed to cover up his role in the improper coordination. Haynes went on to serve as a field director for last year’s presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

I won’t comment on Brown, whom I never knew (or even met). But in the case of Smith, this sad episode marks the apparent end of the most promising progressive political career that the St. Louis area had seen in at least a generation. Smith had progressive principles, and he used his political career to advance those principles, not the other way around. As a rookie senator in the body’s minority party, he demonstrated an ability to get positive things done by finding common ground with his political opposites, much better than his fellow Democrats whose “blue dog” credentials put them in closer ideological proximity to the Republican majority.

But what set Smith apart most was his inspiring charisma that motivated thousands of citizens, mostly young and mostly progressive, to care about and get involved in politics and government for the first time. People had been justifiably cynical about politicians, and Smith seemed to be the breath of fresh air that we all craved. His overriding goal in all things seemed to us to be to do the right thing, whether that resulted in winning or losing. In the congressional campaign, he fought a political family dynasty that tarred the Democratic Party with an elitist brand that betrayed its natural populism, a brand that is certain to haunt Missouri Democrats in 2010.

Unfortunately, things weren’t completely as they seemed. Jeff now admits doing things I didn’t think he would even consider doing. First, in the congressional campaign, he worked with campaign volunteers (apparently including long-time friend Brown, campaign manager to then Attorney General and now Gov. Jay Nixon) to coordinate the production and distribution of anti-Carnahan attack mailers that were disguised as being “independently” produced by a supposedly independent committee. Jeff’s campaign provided the guy who was the committee with the information to put in the mailers and mailing lists for their distribution, and Jeff caused his treasurer Adams to get Jeff’s donors to make separate contributions to the “independent” committee to pay for the mailers. That’s the kind of thing we’d expect from the campaigns we were fighting, not Jeff’s.

And then Jeff made the same classic (and criminal) mistake that politicians have been making regularly ever since Richard Nixon. After “sore winner” Russ Carnahan pursued a complaint against that mailing with the Federal Election Commission, Jeff tried to cover it up. Jeff now admits misleading FEC investigators by denying his knowledge of what transpired and signing a false affidavit to that effect. Brown, Adams, Haynes and campaign manager Artie Harris apparently did the same. That worked for Jeff, until the residence of the guy who did the mailing got raided by federal investigators looking into unrelated charges, and incriminating evidence against Brown in the Smith matter was found. Asked again by FEC investigators, Jeff lied again. And he compounded the problem by encouraging Brown and Adams to do the same. That transformed mere lies (serious enough) into conspiracy.

Brown, already doomed by evidence found in the raid, agreed to wear a wire in further discussions with the others. Thereafter, this past June, Smith met at least twice more with Brown and Adams, in which he was taped suggesting lies that Brown should tell the FBI. Especially disappointing to me, Jeff went on to pursue the classic “old politics” ploy, “blame the dead guy.” That was Harris, the campaign manager who, suffering from depression, had committed suicide in 2007, about two months after he had admitted to the FBI his own role in providing information to the guy who did the flyers. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (my source of information for these events) quoted Jeff as saying, with uncharacteristic insensitivity, “Artie would totally want us to throw him under the bus here.”

What had made Jeff so appealing was the impression that he really was better than other politicians. What makes Jeff’s fall from grace so discouraging is the continuing feeling that, in spite of this conviction, he is still better than the rest. Put another way, the other pols out there probably really did do similar acts or worse, and they continue to ply their trade with impunity. It makes me question whether participation in the process is really worth it.

Smith can (and I hope will) still provide valuable and progressive public service to the community, but in ways that realistically do not include ever holding elective public office again. I am deeply disappointed, but I wish him well. The other qualities that made Jeff a great guy are still there.

Not just a vacancy. A vacuum.

2009-08-26T20:12:00.002-05:00

It isn’t exactly a Pulitzer Prize worthy observation to note the obvious, that Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy (D-MA), who succumbed to brain cancer this week at the age of 77, will be sorely missed. Almost anyone who served in Congress’ senior chamber for over 46 years would be missed after they were gone, but Kennedy was something special.

Kennedy, in spite of his privileged background, was a principled progressive whose leadership was more important than his vote. His legislative worth transcended personal problems that would have brought down a lesser man. He realistically had a greater impact on our nation than his brother, a president who inspired a generation.

But Kennedy’s real worth will probably be best quantified by the effect of his absence. One of his life’s longstanding goals, health care reform, may well be doomed because he is no longer there to advocate it. Kennedy did what the leaders he left behind are not doing: he spoke to the merits of his proposals, and advocated their passage with facts and reasoning based on their substance. His friend and committee surrogate, the ethically challenged Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), and even our golden tongued President aren’t up to the task.

Republican critics and conservative citizens at town halls are punching huge holes in supporters’ talking points for the proposal, and its defenders have been caught flatfooted. Democrats have responded lamely with personal attacks against the critics instead of defending the substance of the legislation. The critics have been reading the bill and documenting their scary charges with page citations, while the bill’s supporters do little more than impugn the critics’ motives. Facts trump character assassination every time. Leaving the substance of critics’ arguments more or less unchallenged, Democrats are losing the public debate so badly that even the presumed support from allies in the media can’t save them.

I have to admit that, after having clamored for single-payer health care (which the current legislation isn’t) for the past decade, even I am beginning to get uneasy with the current proposals. As I approach Medicare eligibility, I have come to be concerned that the health care for which I paid my entire working career is in serious jeopardy under Congress’ and the President’s proposals.

I am convinced that Ted Kennedy would have had a substantive answer to my concerns. The bozos he left behind do not (or at least they haven’t yet).

Kennedy didn’t just leave a vacancy. His passing leaves a vacuum.

Koster ‘pays back’ mentor Nixon with whitewash of E.coli scandal

2009-08-14T13:32:00.002-05:00

Attorney General Chris “The Imposter” Koster swept the first major scandal of Gov. Jay Nixon’s Administration under the rug. What a team player!

The scandal involved the Nixon Administration’s Department of Natural Resources’ month-long delay in releasing the results of the May monthly water quality tests taken at Lake of the Ozarks until after Memorial Day weekend, so that tourists (mostly from Missouri) wouldn’t avoid going to the Lake on that high-usage holiday weekend. As a result, thousands of people were exposed to unsafe levels of coliform bacteria (E.coli) in the lake.

The Department finally released the results on June 26, along with the test results for June.

The issue was brought to a head by a complaint filed by Ken Midkiff of Columbia, director of the Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign, that claimed that the DNR had denied environmentalist Donna Swall’s request for the water quality data. Koster whitewashed it. While admitting that DNR officials clearly understood that a number of people and organizations wanted this information made public and did make requests that the information be released in an expedited fashion, Koster let the administration off on the technicality that “ no one at DNR interpreted these communications as Sunshine Law requests." Well, that settles that!

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted Midkiff as responding that Koster’s investigation had been conducted "in a shabby manner and in a partisan snowjob fashion. From this report, I can only surmise that the office of the attorney general is much more interested in protecting state agencies than ensuring that the laws of the state of Missouri are followed."

For his part, Nixon reacted to the scandal by promoting the responsible person out of the department. In late June, Nixon appointed Deputy Director Joe Bindbeutel to a position as an administrative law judge.

The incident clearly questions Koster’s ability to conduct his job independently of influence from or sympathy with the governor’s office. Koster pretty much owes his job to Nixon, whose donors financed Koster’s victory in the Democratic Primary shortly after he switched to the Democratic Party from the Republicans. He defeated two well-respected, progressive, long-time Democrats for the nomination, Clayton State Rep. Margaret Donnelly and House Minority Leader Jeff Harris of Columbia, in the Democratic primary. One of those campaigns (I think Harris’) dubbed Koster “The Imposter.” Koster had been a loyal supporter of the conservative programs of then-Gov. Matt Blunt (R) right up until the time of the party switch.

McCaskill suffers wasted hit over ‘card check’

2009-07-27T11:16:00.003-05:00

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) wasted some of her political capital this month defending the “card check” provision of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). That provision would have required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union, without a secret-ballot election. While supporting that provision in a conference call with Missouri radio reporters, Sen. McCaskill downplayed charges that card check would allow union organizers to intimidate workers into signing union representation cards. According to Missourinet the blog, McCaskill stated,

I think that this notion that thugs are going to go out and slash people's tires in order to get them to check a card is ludicrous and insulting to working people. That's not going to happen. And, there have been literally a handful of instances where there has been any kind of allegation that has been proven in that regard in the last 20 years.

That quote caused some opponents of the bill to charge that McCaskill had admitted the existence of proven allegations of tire slashing in union organizing efforts in “a handful of instances,” and that she had been too dismissive of the seriousness of such incidents.

That’s the kind of thing that could find its way into future Republican negative attack ads.

McCaskill endured that criticism for nothing, though, because less than 10 days later, Democratic Party leadership let her hang out to dry when key senators dropped that provision from EFCA.

Organized Labor still supports the bill without card check, because its current provisions require that the representation election be held more promptly, reducing the employer’s opportunity to lobby its employees to vote against the union, and because of its binding arbitration provisions. The latter provisions would allow federal arbitrators named by the government to decide disputes over wages and benefits. Unions are hopeful (and business leaders are fearful) that federal arbitrators, especially those appointed by a labor-friendly administration, would be likely to require employers to pay wages and benefits that approach what the unions demand. Many business lobbyists fear the arbitration provision the most, but opposing it won’t be as easy as appealing to Americans’ devotion to the secret ballot.

Realistically the revised bill is better, and it will pass without further bloodshed.

National 2010 preview: candidate recruitment is key

2009-07-17T13:30:00.003-05:00

This appears to be one of those times when a mid-term election will be an important trendsetter. The 2010 elections will determine whether President Obama is able to translate his personal popularity into a generation-long realignment that gives the Democratic Party - and especially its progressive wing - total control over government policy, or whether the public will react negatively and pare back the current Democratic majorities and perhaps even return control of one house of Congress to the Republicans.

The most important factor that will answer that question is the economy (and the electorate’s perception of it) in the fall of 2010. But the magnitude of any shift will depend on something much more organizational - the parties’ respective ability to recruit good candidates for close contests. It is very seldom when a vulnerable incumbent loses to an unsophisticated, underfinanced ticket filler. And blank spots on the ballot never win.

The Democrats have a leg up on candidate recruitment, because their candidates already hold most of the seats that are in play and will be seeking reelection with the advantages (in most cases) that incumbency provides. Republicans will be fighting a dispirited mood left over from 2008 and more retirements creating open seats to defend. And both parties, when seeking either challengers or open-seat contestants, will have to fight the usual reluctance of potential candidates to run when they fear they might lose. Unfortunately, most candidates (and nearly all recruitees who decide against running) give paramount consideration to their own careers, instead of serving to advance the party or ideology they support.

In the House, the ying and yang of politics should favor Republicans. After consecutive elections with big gains by Democrats, the President’s party now already holds nearly all of the seats they have a realistic chance of winning (and even a few they shouldn’t). Around 50 current Democrat seats are in districts that elected a Republican to the seat within the last four years. While some are suburban districts whose demographic or political changes should continue to favor Democrats, many new rural incumbents will be vulnerable. So will some longer tenured Democrats who are personally popular but represent districts carried by both George W. Bush and John McCain.

Different mechanics favor Democrats in the Senate, because the senators that are up in 2010 were elected in 2004, a Republican year. Most vulnerable seats (New Hampshire, Ohio, North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri) are currently held by Republicans. Democrats, on the other hand, “de-recruited” their most vulnerable incumbent, Illinois’ Roland Burris, and Democratic Primary voters may do the same to embattled Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd. If Dodd loses his primary, the most vulnerable seat to Republican takeover might be that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, whose defense is certain to be well-funded. Other potential seats for Republican takeover are Democrat-trending Colorado, a popular incumbent in North Dakota, and an Arkansas seat with a Republican Party in serious disarray. The Democratic nominees for the seats now held by party-switcher Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and appointed Sen. Kristen Gillibrand in New York will probably be bloodied after tough primary fights, but those are both really expensive seats for cash-strapped Republicans to contest. From a GOP point of view, the same dollars that it would take to run just a respectable losing campaign in either of those states would be enough to buy three other seats (in New Hampshire, North Dakota and Arkansas). These factors favor Democrats expanding their filibuster-proof senate majority, even if the country’s mood favors a Republican resurgence.

While the direction of 2010's political wave is still uncertain, the benefitting party won’t be able to ride that wave without credible, adequately financed candidates. That battle is being waged right now. I can’t begin to cover the house races, but recruiting a candidate with the name recognition and gravitas to raise the funds necessary to challenge an incumbent will be crucial to Republican chances.

In the Senate, both parties are pleased with their candidates for open Republican-held seats in Missouri and Ohio. Republicans appear to have won the recruiting war to keep their Florida seat with popular centrist Gov. Charlie Crist, but Democrats have the recruiting edge for the Republican-held seat in New Hampshire. Poor recruiting may doom Democrat chances to unseat Republican Senators Richard Burr in North Carolina and sex-scandal tarnished David Vittert in Louisiana, as well as Republican chances to topple Reid in Nevada and appointed incumbents Gillibrand (NY) and Michael Bennet (who has never run for public office!) in Colorado. Republican takeover chances in several states depend on their ability to recruit reluctant stars who could ride the expected wave. These include Gov. John Hoeven in North Dakota, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and former Gov. (and current Fox News personality) Mike Huckabee in Arkansas, none of whom are yet on board. Kentucky Democrats have too many recruits, as two statewide officeholders will compete to take on embattled Sen. Jim Bunning.

Special interests wreck 'cap and trade' bill

2009-07-02T13:21:00.003-05:00

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the so-called American Clean Energy and Security Act (commonly referred to as “cap and trade”), but what it passed was a severely watered-down version that takes only the smallest steps toward reducing greenhouse gases. While it may be marginally better than no act at all, it fails the people in these ways:

The bill’s targets are far less ambitious than what is achievable with already existing technology, far weaker than science says is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The bill’s targets are undermined by massive loopholes that could allow the most polluting industries to avoid real emission reductions until 2027.
Rather than provide relief and support to consumers, the bill showers polluting industries with hundreds of billions of dollars in free allowances and direct subsidies that will slow renewable energy development and lock in a new generation of dirty coal-fired power plants.
The bill removes the President’s authority to address global warming pollution using laws already on the books.

The final bill contained those flaws because the decision-making process was co-opted by oil and coal lobbyists determined to sustain our addiction to dirty fossil fuels. This occurred with the Democratic Party in total control over that process.

For these reasons, the Waxman-Markey bill was actively opposed by a broad coalition of environmental protection activist organizations, including Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, Citizen Power, Center for Biological Diversity, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, Coal Moratorium Now!, the Rainforest Action Network, International Rivers, and the Energy Justice Network. A joint public statement by these and various local groups observed that the bill “failed to adequately strengthen protections for consumers, communities, and the climate” and “it erased all doubt of who will benefit most from it: Big Business. The resulting bill reflects the triumph of politics over science, and the triumph of industry influence over the public interest.”

While the bill was opposed by Republican congressmen (all but 8) plus an assortment of "blue dog" energy producing and farm state Democrats, it also drew the active opposition of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), perhaps the most progressive member of Congress. "It won’t address the problem," he said. "In fact, it might make the problem worse. It sets targets that are too weak, especially in the short term, and sets about meeting those targets through Enron-style accounting methods." He outdid the environmental organizations by listing 13 detailed reasons why the bill that passed the House is bad for the country.

The biggest problem is the bill's subsidies to the coal industry, which Kucinich described as "one of the primary sources of the problem that should be on its way out." Kucinich criticized these "massive corporate giveaways at taxpayer expense," pointing out, "There is $60 billion for a single technology which may or may not work, but which enables coal power plants to keep warming the planet at least another 20 years."

Kucinich offered or co-sponsored 10 separate amendments that collectively would have turned the bill into an acceptable starting point, but the Democratic House leadership refused to allow any of them to be offered to the full House.

Apparently the Democrats’ seizing control of Congress from corporate-owned Republicans in 2006 meant nothing. Now we get bad legislation from corporate-owned Democrats instead.

Sotomayor is good progressive court pick

2009-06-26T21:17:00.002-05:00

President Obama is to be congratulated for his nomination of 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Sotomayor’s record of decisions is encouraging. The only question mark is the absence of a record on abortion rights. Some have raised the prospect that, as a Hispanic Catholic, Sotomayor could actually provide the decisive vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. It wouldn’t be the first time a president’s court pick backfired. However, the strong endorsement given to Sotomayor’s candidacy by women’s organizations that are dedicated to protecting abortion rights gives me confidence that Sotomayor is on board. While she may well bob and weave and avoid questions on the subject at her confirmation hearing, I am confident that the women’s groups would not have backed her without convincing assurances of where she stands. They can (and presumable did) get candid responses that mere senators cannot.

But the best insight to Sotomayor’s potential was in her taped remarks in which she candidly admitted appellate courts’ role in shaping public policy. It was clear as soon as the vacancy occurred that Obama understood the court’s potential for long-term impact in this regard. The President explained that he wanted someone who had empathy and who'd temper the court's decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless. A court with a majority of like-minded justices could grasp the opportunity to create progressive policy that elected officials can’t risk implementing because of fear of possible voter backlash. Sotomayor gets it.

The court’s have almost always had progressives’ backs during the past generation or so, but now is the time and the opportunity for the Supreme Court to lead the way in cementing progressive legislative gains in place, immunizing them from attempts by future, less progressive Congresses and presidents to repeal them or even water them down. A court that is sensitive to outcomes and their impact on the disadvantaged will not let minor technicalities get in the way of necessary progress. While today’s President and Congress can implement reforms like universal health care, tomorrow’s courts can protect them from excessive reaction from future legislators, or even over-zealous populist ballot initiatives, by recognizing the reforms as the constitutional rights that they ought to be. The court can transform today’s new legislative innovations into
tomorrow’s irrevocable entitlements. Lock in the change!

Thus, in replacing Justice Souter, Sotomayor will do more than merely replace one reliable progressive vote with another. She is positioned to lead the charge as soon as one of the five conservative justices leaves the court, enabling Obama to appoint another progressive justice to change the court’s balance of power. Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated that she understands these dynamics.

Big banks’ ‘briar patch’ strategy

2009-05-24T21:13:00.003-05:00

Remember the Uncle Remus fairy tale in which Br’er Rabbit pled to his captors not to throw him into the thorny briar patch, the very place the conniving rabbit wanted to be all along? Representatives for big banks seemed to have that tale in mind when they cried crocodile tears and warned of disastrous consequences if Congress passed the so-called credit card reform bill.

The banks got their secret wish last week when Congress passed the bill and President Obama quickly signed it into law.

The bill was dressed up with seemingly consumer-friendly features like eliminating over-the-limit charges and a few other no-brainer reforms that even most Republicans supported, like advance notice of rate increases and prohibiting abuses like double-cycle billing and universal default. But some of the bill’s provisions were already scheduled to go into effect anyway by order of the Federal Reserve. Congress and the President merely jumped onto the moving bandwagon and claimed credit.

As a whole, the bill is a Trojan horse that will hurt consumers and give the banks the cover they need to make even more money at our expense. The bill left untouched the banking industry’s single largest abuse, its right to charge usurious interest. Banks locate their credit card operations in South Dakota because that state has no usury laws, and other states are helpless because the legality of the charges is determined by the law of the state of the lender, regardless of where the consumer lives or the transactions take place. Congress could have changed that, but didn’t. So, every charge that banks will no longer be allowed to levy will be made up by higher interest.

The bill also provides cover to the banks to deny credit to young consumers by prohibiting them from issuing a card to anyone under the age of 21, unless the application is co-signed by a parent or guardian or proof of ability to repay the debt can be supplied. The briar patch, indeed! Congress has imposed its elitist judgment that 18-20 year olds who can vote, drive, go to war and carry a gun are somehow incapable of making a decision about getting a credit card! It means that young people will now have to delay building up their credit. Obama and congressional Democrats hosed the very voters that supported them the most!

And let’s not forget the unrelated rider that got enacted with the bill, allowing people to bring loaded guns into national parks and wildlife refuges. Hmm, endangered species and hunting rifles. What could possibly go wrong there?

Of course, the bill’s biggest problem is its impact on our vulnerable economy. Banks will clearly extend a lot less credit, especially to the very people who need it the most. People will buy less, so businesses of all kinds will sell less, and real people will lose their jobs. The recession will get worse instead of better.

But the banks will be sitting pretty.

RIP, Compassionate Conservative

2009-05-03T21:05:00.003-05:00

Former President George W. Bush coined the term "compassionate conservative" when running for his first term. It turns out he never was compassionate as most of us understand the term, and his administration's moves to nationalize banks with its TARP program also undercut his claim to have been conservative. Bush has ruined the brand for the foreseeable future.

Yesterday, the nation lost a political figure who really was a compassionate conservative, long before Bush claimed the moniker. Jack Kemp was a conservative's conservative. He and former Delaware Sen. William Roth were the political parents of Professor Arthur Laffer's "supply side economics," now better know as Reaganomics.

But unlike the stereotype conservative who glorified greed, Kemp really was compassionate. He cared about the poor and the consequences of policy on the underprivileged. While his star power as a former NFL quarterbacked certainly helped, what really got him elected (and reelected 8 times) as a Republican from a blue-collar district in industrial Buffalo, NY, was his sincere concern for working families. He sought conservative solutions to real problems.

Kemp championed the empowerment of disadvantaged people. He favored and encouraged tenant management of public housing, and spotlighted local leaders in that effort (including St. Louis' own Bertha Gilkey). Many of us forget that the purpose of his precious Reaganomics was to increase market-driven employment for low-income people. We can debate whether it worked, but it was clear that Kemp's heart was in the right place.

Jack Kemp was a worthy adversary. He will be missed.

Dems should be wary of Specter party switch

2009-04-30T16:58:00.008-05:00

There's "less than meets the eye" in the surprise switch of Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) from Republican to Democrat.

All the talk about Specter giving the Democrats the magic 60th vote (counting the expected seating of Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota) overlooks the fact that the Democrats already had Specter's vote in every meaningful vote this session, including the stimulus bill and the budget. Moreover, Specter has announced that the party change will not change his opposition to the card-check bill coveted by organized labor. Specter's still a maverick. The party switch only matters in the senate if Specter's vote depends on his party, and the only vote of that kind is the organizational vote on which party controls the chamber. That mattered in 2001, when Vermont Republican Jim Jefford's party change gave senate control to the Democrats. That's not the case now, and isn't likely to be so in the foreseeable future.

What it does mean is that Specter is likely to keep his senate seat for another election. As he stated so candidly, he would have lost renomination in the Republican Primary if he had stayed. (Polls already showed primary challenger former Rep. Pat Toomey leading him by double digits.) The same polls showed Democrats taking the seat in the general election by beating Toomey. The difference is which Democrat wins the seat. Instead of a more traditional liberal Democrat, the party is now likely to nominate Specter as one of its own.

This means that the senate will be less progressive after 2010 than it would have been if Pennsylvania would have been represented by a traditional northeastern Democrat instead of the same old Specter. Instead of being a thorn in the side of Republicans by siding with Democrats, Specter will now be a thorn in the side of Democrats by siding with Republicans.

Except for card-check, that may not matter much in the short term, with Democrats controlling the agenda in both Congress and the White House. The main area where the moderate Specter was valuable to Republicans (and frustrating to Democrats) was the confirmation of judicial nominees of Republican presidents. The razor-thin confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito all occurred because of Specter's support. But Specter also supported confirmation of President Clinton's nominees, and he was not expected to oppose any Obama judicial nominee regardless of which side of the aisle he sat.

But it could be a different story if Republicans rebound by 2012. Obama's reelection will hinge on the success or failure of his economic policies. If they haven't worked their promised magic by then, we could be looking at a Republican president making judicial appointments during the last four years of Specter's next term, and Specter's defection then from Democrat orthodoxy could be key.

Democrats could also suffer another way from giving Specter the opportunity to hold the senate seat the party would have won anyway. Seven years older than John McCain, Specter will be 80 when he wins reelection, and would have to live to 86 to serve out his term. If the economy has not turned the corner within the next two years, conservative economic populism could bring down Specter's running mate, Gov. Ed Rendell, even if Specter wins. That could give a Republican governor the power to pick Specter's replacement if Specter dies in office. In fact, if such a populist revolt takes place then, a 30-year incumbent running in the party of the President might become a vulnerable target for defeat, regardless of what polls say a year and a half before the election.

Perhaps Democrats, especially those of a more progressive persuation, should consider the possibility of running a traditional northeastern liberal Democrat for senate in 2010 instead of a frail Republican retread.

Analysis of Slay's primary win

2009-03-10T10:56:00.008-05:00

Mayor Francis Slay won renomination for a third term by a larger margin than I expected. (I correctly predicted the order of finish, but anybody could have done that.) What happened and what does it say about next month's general election?

This election was a rematch of the 2005 primary (with a different third candidate). In most rematches, the winner repeats with a larger margin than before. This time, Slay's margin shrank (he lost over 4 points and Irene Smith picked up nearly 3), but not by as much as I expected; I had projected that Slay would win by 10 points, but he won instead by nearly 30.

The big news, though, was the lack of interest that the contest generated. Even though voter registration was up compared to four years ago, 19% fewer voters turned out this time. Even in Slay's political base in the 23rd Ward, where turnout was stoked by a 7-candidate open-seat aldermanic primary, turnout declined 8% compared to 2005. But the intensity of opposition to Slay among blacks did not translate into higher turnout. In Smith's 1st Ward, which also featured an aldermanic rematch between Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe and former Alderman Sharon Tyus, turnout declined 32%.

The numbers suggest that voters were turned off by both Slay (who got 5602 fewer votes this time) and Smith (whose votes declined by 1709). Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman (i.e., the candidate who wasn't either of them) got 783 more votes than her counterpart (Bill Haas) in 2005. But mostly, disgusted citizens "voted with their feet" by staying home.

The results showed that the City's political racial divide is alive and well. Slay won every white and integrated ward (including the 6th Ward, which has a black alderman), while Smith won all the black wards. And the difference was huge. Slay's lowest performance in the 17 wards he won (56.6% in the integrated 6th) was 17 points better than his best performance in a black majority ward (39.6% in the 19th). The whiter a ward's population, the more it favored Slay; and the blacker the ward, the more it favored Smith:
95%+ white (Wards 12, 16, 23): 92.5% for Slay
White majority (9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 24): 83.2%
Integrated (6, 7, 8, 15, 17, 20, 25, 28): 65.4%
Black majority (2, 3, 5, 18, 19, 22, 26): 30.3%
99%+ black (1, 4, 21, 27): 17.9%

The same pattern took place this time as in the aldermanic presidency primary two years ago, but with a different end result. (In 2007, black challenger Lewis Reed unseated white incumbent Jim Shrewsbury.) Slay won by polling better than Shrewsbury in all parts of the city; Slay won white wards by more, lost black wards by less, and carried the integrated central corridor wards that Shrewsbury lost.

Also, as I forecast in my prior post, the whiter the ward, the more anti-Slay votes were drawn to Coleman than Smith. These numbers show the proportion of the anti-Slay vote that went to Coleman instead of Smith:
95%+ white (Wards 12, 16, 23): 38.4%
White majority (9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 24): 25.5%
Integrated (6, 7, 8, 15, 17, 20, 25, 28): 21.1%
Black majority (2, 3, 5, 18, 19, 22, 26): 13.9%
99%+ black (1, 4, 21, 27): 12.3%

Slay now faces a more-challenging-than-usual general election on April 7. After having beaten his 2001 Republican foe 88-12 and his 2005 Green Party foe 79-21, Slay now faces three challengers. On the downside, "independent" Maida Coleman (former Missouri senate minority leader) provides much more formidible general election opposition than Slay has ever faced. On the upside, his opposition is divided and there is no runoff, instant or otherwise. None of his opponents is a Republican, a party to whom Slay openly appeals. Libertarian Robb Cunningham will siphon away some of those Republicans, but Slay will get most of them. Rounding out the field is Rev. Elston McCowan, the winner of the first-ever contested Green Party primary. The Green Party was a primary organizer of the failed recall effort against Slay, whose petition drive garnered a large database of anti-Slay voters. The good news for Slay is that this list is most likely in the hands of the Greens and not Maida Coleman.

The primary results suggest that Slay will cruise to a win. The intensity of anti-Slay feelings in black neighborhoods did not generate turnout against him. Moreover, the loyalty of African American voters to Democratic Party nominees is expected to help Slay carry the very wards where he is weakest. Green Party GOTV efforts in their first-ever contested primary, while topping the 100 votes I had forecast, nevertheless generated an insignificant 168 votes.

The ominous note for Slay is the flip side of the primary's low turnout: There are an awful lot of eligible voters who sat out the primary but could still vote in the general. Many believe that Maida Coleman will be a better draw than Irene Smith was. Slay is clearly taking the threat seriously. He saved more than a million dollars from his campaign war chest to spend in the general, his television commercials are already airing, and I already received his first mailing today.

Slay, by a yawn

2009-02-23T13:36:00.007-06:00

Here's how things look to me in the St. Louis primary election to be held a week from today:

Democratic Primary

All the so-called "smart money" is on St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay to win renomination and reelection easily. I think the election will be closer than most people expect, but that Slay will still win.

Slay enters the campaign with enormous advantages:

Financing. The last report showed that Slay had raised nearly $3 million, with $1,180,771 still on hand as of February 19. He has outraised his closest challenger by an incredible ratio of 88-to-1. Slay is using his cash to saturate the media with well-produced positive ads that run unchallenged on the airwaves.
Public political support. The Slay campaign claims the formal endorsement of three quarters of the city's ward organizations (including some African American wards) and much of organized labor, including the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that could ordinarily be expected to be first in line to challenge the establishment.
Tarnished opponents. Former Alderman Irene Smith has already lost to Slay once, in 2005, and it wasn't close. She is best known for her principled filibuster against a 2001 redistricting bill in which she seemingly urinated into a wastebasket in the aldermanic chambers to avoid losing the floor, an action that brought negative national attention to both herself and the city. Last-day filer Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman, rightly or wrongly, is regarded by many as a mere stalking horse and a puppet for hidden interests.
Divided opposition. The once (and to some extent still) vociferous opposition to the mayor, especially in the African American community, has two African American challengers from which to choose, while Slay is the only candidate appealing to his constituents: whites, pro-lifers and the business establishment. With only a candidate running in just one ward, even Republicans (to whom he appeals) are totally free to cross over and vote for him.

But Slay's successes have also engendered the biggest obstacle to his re-election: complacency. While his campaign is taking nothing for granted, most of his rank-and-file supporters are totally confident that he will win. The grassroots campaign of his opponents will not reach his supporters, contributing to their overconfidence. Still exhausted from turning out to vote in large numbers last November, many voters who favor Slay won't see much point in taking the trouble to go out and vote for him.

Slay's strongest challenger is Smith, around whom most African American activists have united. She is the champion of those who believe Slay is out to eradicate the interests of black people. She has a solid base of support in the black community, many of whom regard her urination incident positively as a demonstration of the lengths she will go to stand up for them. Coleman's candidacy will not seriously erode Smith's support there.

Slay's demotion of Fire Chief Sherman George was a symbolic deal killer for many African American voters who had voted for Slay over Smith four years ago. Aldermanic President Lewis Reed's electoral success with black voters over incumbent Jim Shrewsbury (who, unlike Slay, had actively tried to cultivate black support by compiling a record that was quite favorable on black issues, other than his fateful ruling that led to Smith's urination incident) two years ago presages a much improved performance by Smith with black voters this time around. If Slay runs better on the north side next week than Shrewsbury did two years ago, it will send a message that how one addresses black issues doesn't matter.

Just as important is the intensity of Smith's support. Her supporters hate Slay, perhaps as much as they hated George W. Bush. When it comes to voting behavior, hatred is a much better motivator than love. The intensity gap may actually produce larger black turnout than white turnout, something that hardly ever happens.

In contrast, most white voters (other than the teachers union) are happy enough with Slay, and some who aren't neverthess regard the alternatives as worse. Unlike blacks, many whites were offended by Smith's urination incident, and many of the whites who oppose Slay will find Coleman's candidacy more appealing. Ironically, Coleman's candidacy will harm Smith's more with whites than with fellow black voters.

But, as explained above, white turnout will be low. That will make things a lot closer than most expect.

I expect Slay to win, but with less than a majority:
Slay 49%
Smith 39%
Wesley-Coleman 12%

Green Primary

The other game in town is not the Republican Primary (no Republican filed for either citywide office and only one Republican filed for alderman in any ward), but a first-ever contested primary in the Green Party. (A Libertarian candidate also filed for mayor, but he is unopposed in the primary.) Long-time activist (and thorn in the side (or other anatomical location) of the Gateway Green Alliance) Don DeVivo is pitted against organizational recruit Rev. Elston McCowan.

A Green primary is uncharted waters. How many people will sacrifice the chance to vote in the Democratic primary to vote in the Green primary? Last August, only 18 voters eschewed the chance to vote in either the Democratic primary (in which the main events were the Koster-O'Donnell-Harris race for Attorney General and the Zweifel-Simckes-Powell contest for State Treasurer and assorted local party committee races) or the Republican primary featuring the Hulshof-Steelman tiff, to vote in an uncontested Green Party primary. There were 27 Green primary voters in 2006. Contested primaries naturally draw better, but how much better when in competition with the Slay-Smith-Coleman contest?

People who have voted in past Green Party primaries know DeVivo's name, because this is his fourth run for citywide office on the Green ticket. But they don't amount to very many votes. His neighborhood activism in the Forest Park Southeast and Wells-Goodfellow neighborhoods have not translated into many votes in the past.

The former party leadership (who failed to file for re-election to their party committee seats) allied with the Gateway Green Alliance recruited McCowan to make a serious run at Slay, but many of them live in St. Louis County and are therefore ineligible to vote. Other McCowan supporters will be tempted to vote instead for Smith in the Democratic primary.

I give the edge to McCowan in a primary drawing fewer than a hundred votes.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this primary is whether the racial voting patterns that dominate Democratic primaries will surface in the party primary of as progressive an electorate as the Green electorate ought to be. DeVivo is white, and McCowan is black, but neither is believed to have entered the race because of the race of the other. In what pattern will Green voters respond?

Obama transparency: How about campaign finance?

2009-02-03T11:53:00.007-06:00

Accusations are circulating about possible illegal campaign contributions to President Obama’s successful campaign. They are quite serious on their face, but the President could nip the problem in the bud by being as forthright and open as he has promised to be.

Most of the charges are chronicled in an online article at conservative news site Newsmax.com. (Though infused with loaded rhetoric, the piece is well written and an easy read.) The primary allegations are these:

Acceptance of contributions from obviously fictitious names, in violation of the prohibition against making donations in someone else’s name, or exceeding the $50 limit for anonymous contributions.

Acceptance of contributions from foreign donors. Federal law prohibits political contributions of any amount from foreign nationals unless they are permanent U.S. residents holding green cards.

Acceptance of contributions well in excess of legal limits, often by aggregating multiple contributions of smaller amounts into a total that violated the law.

Hiding all of the above infractions by lumping them and reporting the aggregate amount in the “under $200" category.

Here’s my analysis of what this is all about.

Contributions in phony names

Campaign reports filed by the Obama campaign reflect some interesting names. In the final month of the campaign, establishment media icon Newsweek reported that the Federal Election Commission had questioned the Obama campaign about contributions from individuals named Doodad Pro and Good Will. Doodad’s listed address was that of a Nundo, NY liquor store, while the address for Good Will was that of Goodwill Industries in Austin, TX. Newsmax dug deeper and reported that those two “contributors” had made over 1,000 separate serial small donations, and that both had listed their employer as “Loving” and occupation as “You.” The conservative news site also reported, citing a source that requested anonymity, that an official “small donor” Obama fundraising drive tapped donors identifying themselves as Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, O.J. Simpson, Family Guy and King Kong. The Obama campaign accepted all of their donations.

How do these things happen? The Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign accepted donations from prepaid credit cards that are untraceable. These generic gift cards by American Express, Master Card and Visa have card numbers that act like debit cards, but have no registered owner. They can be bought for cash in most super market check-out lines. Daffy, Bart, O.J., Family Guy and King Kong all used the same untraceable $25 Visa gift card within an hour of one another.

A fundamental verification procedure exists to match the names of contributors using debit and credit cards with the names and addresses of the cardholders. 2007 campaign reports document that the Obama campaign invested more than $2 million in top-of-the-line internet infrastucture. Chase Paymentech, a leading credit card processor, handled his credit card transactions. He had internet-savvy pros on board like Joe Rospars, a veteran of Howard Dean’s trail blazing 2004 campaign. Yet, the National Journal (the independent newspaper that had identified Obama as the most progressive U.S. Senator, with Vice-President Joe Biden rated at Number 3) reported that the campaign didn't implement the verification procedures they had paid for. Newsmax, citing “industry analysts and a confidential informant,” went further, claiming the campaign disabled those features to facilitate the collection of illegal contributions.

Foreign contributions

Obama’s campaign reports list thousands of donations from donors having overseas addresses, including those in Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, and Fallujah. A foreign address does not necessarily mean the contributor is a foreign national, because some U.S. citizens live abroad; their political contributions are legal. But precautions are necessary for a campaign to distinguish between U.S. citizens and foreign nationals. Hillary Clinton required Americans living abroad to first fax a copy of their passport before accepting a contribution. John McCain’s online donation page required proof of citizenship. But conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation asserts that the Obama campaign took no such precautions until the FEC questioned its foreign-source contributions, and then merely asked for passport numbers, making no effort to verify those numbers with the State Department to see if they were valid.

Suspicions of illegal foreign donations were stoked in part by a June, 2008 speech from Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, in which he bragged that “people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa” were engaged in political contribution campaigns “to enable Obama to win the American presidency.” While much of Gaddafi’s bravado is to be taken with a big block of salt, other circumstances tend to confirm the suspicions. Nigerian press reports described a series of Obama fundraisers sponsored by the head of Nigeria’s stock market that raised nearly a million dollars from Nigerian businessmen. It is unclear whether any of it was traceable to Obama’s campaign.

Another red flag for likely foreign contributions is the large number of monetary (not in-kind) contributions in odd amounts. Unless there is a specific promotion using an odd amount as a gimmick (e.g., $20.08), nearly all political contributions are made in round even-dollar amounts. Newsmax reported that the contributions of 37,265 unique donors to the Obama campaign (more than 10 percent of the names the Obama campaign had disclosed) were odd amounts. One explanation for odd-amount contributions, especially those made by credit card, is foreign currency conversion. The Obama campaign responds by attributing the odd amounts to purchases of campaign paraphernalia. I suspect there are a lot of both.

Many of these accusations play right into the hands of anti-Obama fear mongers. The case of those who spread the fear that Obama, even if not a Muslim personally, would favor Muslim interests over our own (or Israel’s) would be validated to an extent if Obama’s campaign turned out to be funded by Arab oil cartels and other Middle East financiers, whose contributions are illegal for multiple reasons (foreign source, excessive amount, and perhaps corporate source). If the accusations are false, why not come clean and put the whispering campaign to rest?

Excessive contributions

Even fully identified U.S. citizens were only allowed to donate up to $2,300 per person per election in 2008. (The limit increased to $2,400 this year.) Obama’s own reports disclosed lots of contributors whose aggregate donations exceeded the limits. Phony “co-workers” Doodad Pro ($19,500 according to Newsmax) and Good Will (over $11,000 according to Newsweek) were among them.

Federal law requires a campaign that receives over-the-limit contributions either to refund them or “redesignate” them to a different election (with notice of redesignation to the donors), and to do so within 60 days. Newsmax contacted several contributors identified in Obama campaign reports who had made significant over-the-limit contributions, and reported that many had not received either refund or notice of redesignation. Campaign reports confirmed the tardiness of refunds, including to Good and Doodad. Obama officials claimed to be in the process of refunding the over-the-limits portions (but not the rest) of their contributions to the credit cards listed with their donations.

But in the case of donations from those untraceable debit gift cards, how does one do that? It reminds me of the joke about the dying millionaire who told gave his lawyer a large amount of cash and instructions to put it in his casket so he could “take it with him,” and the lawyer complied by placing his personal check in the casket!

The “under $200" cover-up

Federal law only requires reporting the identities of those donors who contribute (in the aggregate) more than $200 per person per election. This policy protects the privacy of small donors whose financial support for a campaign could harm them socially, financially or even physically if their participation were known by employers or others of opposing political persuasion. But it also provides an opportunity for unscrupulous campaigns to hide their “dirty” money by simply lying about it.

This is the potential ruse where all of the earlier problems come together. A rogue campaign can hide illegal campaign contributions by simply misreporting them as having been received by donors contributing an aggregate of $200 or less. Then the bottom line on the reports matches the bottom line in the bank. A campaign that, say, receives a $25,000 check from A (well over the legal limit), a $1,000 check from a federal contractor, a $1,000 check from a corporation, a $1,000 check from a union, $1,000 from a tax-exempt charity and a $1,000 check from a foreign national can conceal all of those illegal contributions by simply reporting them all as $30,000 from donors contributing an aggregate of $200 or less. The legal but embarrassing contribution (from, say, Rod Blagojevich, Bernard Madoff or Jack Abramoff) can be hidden the same way. Such misreporting itself is illegal, but with no reporting, who knows? It would only turn up in an audit.

But while a publicly financed campaign like McCain’s is subject to automatic audit, a privately financed campaign like Obama’s is not.

If Obama’s campaign did indeed hide illegal contributions by improperly lumping them together with contributions from donors giving $200 or less, those contributions would logically comprise a much larger proportion of total contributions than other comparable campaigns. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (and noted in an analysis by Bloomberg.com), in other comparable campaigns (McCain 2008, Bush 2004 and Kerry 2004), this category accounted for a consistently narrow range of 31% - 34% of their totals. In Obama’s campaign, this category jumped to nearly half. This is suspicious. Obama supporters say the surge in small donations is the natural consequence of his unprecedented national appeal, but skeptics believe that the discrepancy is better explained by an influx of illegal contributions that the Obama campaign knowingly accepted and concealed.

Several independent watchdog groups, including the Center for Responsive Politics, asked the Obama campaign for more information about its under-$200 donors, but the campaign never responded.

In contrast, the McCain campaign itemized every contribution, no matter how small. Personally, I dislike that practice, because it “outs” the small donors whose participation could harm them in the manner I discussed earlier. But McCain’s policy does serve to disprove the notion that disclosing everybody is impossible.

What the President should do

I broach this subject with mixed emotions. Barack Obama is pro-choice, pro-union, pro-gay rights, pro-gun-control, pro-civil liberties and anti-war; in short, a huge improvement over George W. Bush and a better choice than John McCain. I am glad he is president. But true progressives are just as concerned about the fairness of the process as the bottom-line results.

I hate it when elections are won and lost based upon the amount of money available to the candidates. I support public financing of campaigns, and I was deeply disappointed when Obama, after having pledged to run a publicly financed general election campaign (subject to all of its limitations), reneged and instead ran a campaign bankrolled by a record amount of cash. No previous major party candidate - not even Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush - had ever done that. Compared to the prior election (the old record), Obama’s fundraising made Bush look like a piker, and he more than doubled what fellow Democrat John Kerry had raised. Obama’s victory is due in no small part to his outspending his legally constrained opponent in every battleground state during the crucial final weeks of the campaign. Even Obama’s fantastic grassroots and GOTV efforts were tainted by his inflated financial ability to hire more people and open more field offices. That’s not how elections are supposed to be won, even when the result happens to be good.

More importantly, as observed by Bloomberg.com the day after the election, an unfortunate byproduct of Obama’s success is the likely death of the entire concept of public funding.

I am also aware of the risk that the ultimate result of investigating the President’s fundraising might be findings of intentional wrongdoing. I and the rest of the public would have to cope with the realization that our president had won by cheating. This would be reminiscent of how I felt, not that long ago, when the euphoria I had experienced witnessing Cardinal slugger Mark McGwire’s home run record became tainted by the realization that he too had apparently cheated.

I believe that it is unlikely that Obama had any personal knowledge of or control over any of his campaign’s fundraising indiscretions, so he would not suffer any personal consequences, unless he acts to cover it up. Recall that former President Richard Nixon had no known role in the Watergate break-in itself, but his subsequent obstruction of justice in trying to cover it up cost him his presidency. Obama must not make the same mistake.

The Heritage Foundation has formally demanded an FEC "for cause" audit of the Obama campaign. However, Heritage also speculates that, even though the career FEC staff can be expected to recommend such an audit to the commissioners if they follow the ordinary regulatory model of investigations, the three Democratic commissioners will be under enormous pressure to vote no, because “some members of their party may make it clear that their professional and political careers in Washington will be finished if they vote to approve such an audit.” Since it takes four votes for the FEC to take any action, at least one of those Democratic commissioners would have to join with the three Republicans to approve an audit. Democratic stonewalling would be dreadfully harmful to public confidence in both the Obama Administration and our entire political system.

The President could take a huge step towards restoring public confidence in government by keeping his pledge of openness and transparency and voluntarily subjecting his campaign to such an audit. An FEC audit would be performed by career professionals, and the privacy of small donors would be preserved. Be honest, and let the chips fall where they may.

That would be truly transformational.

Dual milestones for racial equality

2009-01-31T21:46:00.005-06:00

On January 20, 2009, the United States inaugurated its first African American president. I need not repeat what so many have observed how this is the successful culmination of the struggle of African Americans to overcome the stigma of slavery. The American Dream has become a reality for what was once the most oppressed class of our citizens.

Ten days later, a second, less visible achievement demonstrated the completeness of African American acceptance in our society. Another African American, former Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele of Maryland, was elected chair of the Republican National Committee, a major political party largely shunned by African American voters since the 1930s (and vice versa).

Steele’s accomplishment doesn’t come close to matching President Obama’s. But both men’s accessions share an important attribute that is extremely significant for African American progress. Both men won with significant support from white voters (a majority in the case of Steele’s electorate) because they were regarded as the best candidate for their respective jobs, not because they were black. Neither tokenism nor political correctness played a role in either win.

That was not the case for many of the earlier African American pioneers. While James Meredith (the first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi law school), Thurgood Marshall (the first African American justice of the United States Supreme Court), Colin Powell (the first African American Secretary of State) and Freeman Bosley, Jr. (the first African American mayor of the City of St. Louis) all had important merits that put them in position to achieve their success, their race played a major role in their election or appointment.

Obama and Steele are more in the mold of baseball great Jackie Robinson, who became the first African American player in Major League Baseball, not because he was black (more likely in spite of being black), but because he was just too good at what he did to be denied. While race played an important role in the surge of black voters to Obama (who even won a majority from black Republicans), white voters (first in Democratic primaries and then in the general election) merely concluded that the smooth, articulate, erudite Obama was the best person available to lead our nation out of both our severe economic crisis and our overseas military conflicts. Better than Hillary Clinton, the once presumed winner, and better than John McCain, the respected war hero and, yes, moderate maverick. The fact that Obama was black mattered little to most voters.

Similarly, Republicans elected the smooth, articulate, erudite Steele to lead them back to political relevance because he demonstrated the greatest skills needed to do so of all of the candidates for his job. Steele had previously chaired the Republican Party organizations of both his county and state and demonstrated strong communication skills both on the Sunday talk show circuit as chair of GOPAC for the past two years and as a popular Fox News contributor. It was clear that the party did not elect Steele to score points with African Americans, because they understood that, during the height of national euphoria over the Obama presidency, there were no points the opposition party could make with that electorate. Steele’s race was incidental.

To borrow from Martin Luther King, Obama and Steele both won because of the content of their character, not the color of their skin. And to borrow from a leader from the other end of the political spectrum, that’s the way things ought to be.

Is mystery Coleman filing a Mac attack?

2009-01-06T13:12:00.002-06:00

The mysterious last-day filing of attorney Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman for mayor in a field that was supposed to include another Coleman, Sen. Maida Coleman, has lots of fingers pointing at Mayor Francis Slay for encouraging the former to serve as a stalking horse to hinder the challenge of the latter. Slay vehemently denies any connection.

The motivation for the Slay camp is clear: Split the vote of his most dangerous challenger. It's a long city Democrat tradition. Former Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr. won his first elective office by unseating Circuit Clerk Joe Roddy in an election when a mysterious unknown candidate named C. Jo Roddy won more votes than the difference between Bosley and the incumbent Roddy.

While I am no fan of the mayor, I think Slay is being honest here. While he stands to benefit from the filing, I don't think he had anything to do with it.

The Post Dispatch today editorially opined that lawyer Coleman just decided all on her own to seek the office. Yeah, right.

Just as plausible: Minnesota Sen.-elect Al Franken is behind the filing in order to further embarrass rival Sen. Norm Coleman.

So, who else would gain from Slay winning a third term? How about the man who isn't there? That would be License Collector Mike McMillan.

Many had expected McMillan to be a last-day challenger to Slay, but he didn't file. My guess is that the field of challengers was too divided for Slay to be toppled. There's an old saying in government and politics: You don't touch the King unless you kill him. McMillan decided he couldn't knock off Slay in this environment. Besides, McMillan is young enough to wait four more years when Slay will either retire voluntarily or be politically weak enough to knock off.

But what if McMillan miscalculated (like Dick Gephardt did in 1992 about the chances of knocking off President George H. W. Bush)? If Maida Coleman's challenge to Slay were successful, then she'd be the incumbent mayor in four years, and McMillan would not be in a position to challenge a fellow African American for the top job. (Yes, I know, Clarence Harmon successfully did just that to Freeman Bosley, Jr. in 1997, but Harmon won with white support, not black support.) Slay's reelection is now also in McMillan's self-interest.

Is there anything in lawyer Coleman's background evidencing a connection to McMillan? Why, yes there is! Ms. Coleman was in the political organization of legendary 19th Ward Committeeman and state senator J.B. "Jet" Banks. And who succeeded to the throne of the late senator's 19th Ward kingdom? Why, Mike McMillan, of course! He represented that ward as alderman before ascending to his current city-wide post.

Guide for watching presidential returns

2008-11-04T12:31:00.002-06:00

Barack Obama enters Election Day with a six point lead in national polls measuring popular vote. But, as Al Gore supporters well remember from 2000, the electoral vote is all that matters. States whose polls close first in the eastern time zone will provide plenty of clues as to the actual winner.

State-specific polls indicate an approximate order of finish, from strongest Obama to strongest McCain. All of the states that have even a remote chance of going either way (i.e., not including safe states like Illinois) rank this way, in order of strength for Obama:

Iowa 11*
Michigan 17
Wisconsin 10
New Hampshire 4
Minnesota 10
New Mexico 5*
Pennsylvania 21
Nevada 5*
_____________________________

Colorado 9*
Virginia 13*
Ohio 29*
Florida 27*
North Carolina 15*
Missouri 11*
Indiana 11*
Arizona 10*
Montana 3*
Georgia 15*
West Virginia 5*

* denotes a state carried by Republican George W. Bush in 2004.

Bush won with a 16-electoral vote cushion over the 270 needed to win. Obama must win all of the states that John Kerry won, plus 16 electoral votes from Bush states (generally referred to as "red states" in the media). Obama's three strongest Bush states are Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada. Those states appear above the line above, marking the division between the competitive states that Obama needs to win and those he can afford to lose. Notably, Florida and Ohio, though big prizes, aren't needed for Obama to win, as long as he wins everything above the line.

When watching early election returns, if an eastern time-zone state below the line (like Virginia, Ohio or Florida) gets called for Obama, he probably wins, unless that gain is offset by a state above the line (like Pennsylvania) getting called for McCain. If Obama wins a well-below-the-line state like Indiana (the earliest state's polls to close), that will bode well for all of the states above Indiana in the list (including Missouri), and a rout is probably in progress. Conversely, if McCain wins a well-above-the-line state like Michigan, McCain is probably headed for a comfortable upset win.

If Obama wins all of the states above the line (along with New York, California, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and the District of Columbia, all generally regarded as "safe" for Obama and hopeless for McCain), he wins with a vote to spare, regardless of what happens below the line. If Obama wins everything above the line and McCain wins everything below the line, but McCain picks off one electoral vote in Maine by winning the more conservative 2nd congressional district, we get an electoral college tie. That would send the contest to the House of Representatives, where Obama would be the sure winner. (The Senate would pick the vice-president, and they are certain to elect Biden.) In both cases, the newly elected House and Senate do the voting, and both are expected to be more Democratic than their current versions.

According to the latest state-specific polls, Obama leads in all of the above-the-line states, plus Colorado, Virginia, Ohio and Florida. But the polls have been wrong before.

I believe Obama will win even more red states, including Missouri, and that he will pick off an additional electoral vote in deep-red Nebraska by winning the Omaha-based 2nd congressional district. He will win the same way Bush did the past two years, with an excellent get-out-the-vote (GOTV) plan. The Obama campaign has apparently studied Bush's GOTV effort and replicated it, and that's what will propel Obama (and down-ballot Democratic candidates) to a strong victory tonight.

Obama's very own 'Willie Horton' ad

2008-09-14T18:27:00.004-05:00

“I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message.”

Those words may be the most damning of this contentious presidential campaign, the ones that cost Obama my vote. They appear at the end of a disgusting, ageist attack ad released this weekend by Obama for America.

In a campaign susceptible to appeals that are racist (against the African America Democratic nominee), sexist (against the female Republican vice-presidential nominee and, earlier during the Democratic primaries, against Sen. Hillary Clinton) and ageist (against the 72-year-old Republican nominee), we hope and expect that the candidates seeking to lead our nation will take the high road and avoid appeals that tap into those taboos. Regrettably, it took less than a week of national polls showing Obama trailing Republican John McCain for the Obama campaign to become desperate enough to tap into the ageist taboo.

The Obama ad, called “Still,” pokes fun at McCain’s inability to use a computer or send an email message, which is a common trait among older Americans. The ad is particularly distasteful when applied to McCain, whose Vietnam War injuries reportedly prevent him from using a keyboard. To drive home the point about McCain’s age, the ad shows an old photo of McCain in a 1970s haircut, as well as 1980s relics like a disco ball, a Rubrics Cube and a primitive shoebox-size portable phone from that period. The ad was released on the heals of another, more subtle, Obama ad which, while properly deriding McCain’s gaffe about not knowing much about economics and the similarity of McCain’s policies to those of unpopular President George W. Bush, did so with a parody of a bubblegum-era song, designed to highlight McCain’s age.

Why would Obama risk offending senior voters, including heretofore supportive senior voters like the Oracle? The ad’s purpose was to rally Obama’s base of younger supporters, who, resentful of old “deadwood” who they perceive as interfering with their own careers in the workplace, often revel in deriding older people. It was an intentional wedge designed to further the most significant demographic cleavage of this election, young vs. old. This is similar to the reputed Hillary Clinton strategy during the primaries, mostly implemented by Bill Clinton, of burning bridges to their former African American supporters with racially tinged appeals to white voters (e.g., derogating Obama’s victory in South Carolina by noting that Jesse Jackson had also won there, thereby dismissing Obama as “the black candidate” appealing primarily to black voters). Just as Clinton consciously sacrificed black voters to appeal to more numerous white voters, Obama now consciously writes off senior voters to appeal to more numerous younger voters.

“Still” reminds me of the notorious 1988 “Willie Horton” ad. It portrayed Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis as weak on crime by noting that Horton, a convicted felon who had been released early from prison pursuant to a Dukakis policy while governor of Massachusetts, had gone on to kill people after his release. The charge was both accurate and relevant, but the ad featured a large photo of Horton, who was African American. (The victims were white.) The ad succeeded in appealing to race-based fears of white voters and was roundly criticized for doing so. Similarly, Obama’s “Still” ad, while accurately reporting McCain’s computer illiteracy, was transparently designed to appeal to the ageist instincts of the targeted younger voters.

One significant difference: The “Willie Horton” ad was produced by a state Republican Party committee, not the presidential campaign of George Bush, even though Bush took the heat for the ad. “Still” was produced by Obama for America and approved personally by Obama.

Up until now, the campaigns of both Obama and McCain have been careful to let so-called “surrogates” do the real dirty stuff in the campaign, so that the intended message gets out, while allowing the candidate to disassociate himself from any negative blowback. For example, when the controversy broke about McCain being unable to recall the number of homes his wife owns, former Rep. Martin Frost (D-TX) was dispatched to the talk show circuit to contend that this McCain gaffe demonstrated that McCain was losing his mental facilities and was too old for the job. A cheap (and dirty) shot, but not directly attributable to Obama. But now, Obama himself has bought into making fun of McCain’s age.

I’m not one to let a single candidate mistake disqualify an otherwise compatible choice, but unfortunately, these ads reinforce consistently ageist messages from Obama supporters and surrogates that have permeated the web and the airwaves ever since McCain emerged as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. I foresee generational warfare that culminates in newly empowered Gen-Xers and Millennials tiring of paying for my generation’s Social Security and Medicare benefits and cutting us off.

My one-time support for Obama is waning. Maybe I should vote for “the old guy” on the Missouri ballot, 74-year-old Ralph Nader.

Some 4-letter options for John McCain

2008-08-27T13:09:00.003-05:00

No, not that kind of 4-letter word. Names.

As I noted in my previous post, Democrats have adopted the “10-letter strategy” that Republicans have used in all seven of their wins over the past ten presidential elections. The surnames of Nixon Agnew, Reagan Bush, Bush Quayle and Bush Cheney all added up to 10 letters. Now, for the first time in 84 years, Democrats have selected a 10-letter ticket of their own, Obama Biden. Can John McCain respond in kind?

Since McCain is 6 letters, he needs a veep with just four letters, and none of the speculated choices add up, so to speak. The surnames of Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Hutchinson, Lieberman, Cantor, Palin, Fiorina, Whitman, Jindal, Powell and Crist are all too long. I can think of four four-letter possibilities who would make credible nominees, but they haven’t been mentioned on anybody’s short list:

Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) sought the presidency in her own right in 2000, but her senate seat is up for re-election this year. Polls for her contest show it to be very competitive, even with Dole running as an incumbent. She is even planning to campaign right through the Republican National Convention, which she therefore won't attend. Her seat would likely go Democratic if Republicans had to make a last-minute substitution.

Our own Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) would bring lots of experience and the loyalty of an important “swing state,” but Bond’s record on earmarks would contradict McCain’s maverick appeal on that issue. Also, the 69-year-old Bond would aggravate concerns about the age of 72-year-old McCain, an issue on which Obama surrogates continue to hammer.

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch would be a wild card, in more ways than one. Like Joe Lieberman, Koch would form a outside-the-box cross-party ticket. He would also match Lieberman’s Jewish faith, but frankly, rising GOP star Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) would accomplish the same appeal to Jewish voters without alienating the Republican Party base. Plus, Koch is a bit of a loose cannon.

The best four-letter choice might be Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. An African American woman with lengthy foreign policy experience, she would also be a groundbreaking choice. Her race would only matter as a demonstration that Republicans are not bigotted, because neither Rice nor Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney will significantly erode the nearly unanimous African American support for Obama. But Rice’s gender is a different story. She could conceivably seal the deal with disaffected supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

On the other hand, Rice has repeatedly stated that she doesn’t want to be vice-president and, in a CNN interview, declined to say for whom she plans to vote even though she says she has decided. (Ouch!) Moreover, Rice’s deep involvement in Bush Administration foreign policy mistakes would hurt McCain by tying him to an administration from which he wants to distance himself.

None of these four, or any other four-letter name, appears in the Oracle’s crystal ball. Instead I expect McCain to choose either Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, allowing Obama to test whether the 10-letter strategy works for Democrats as well as it has for Republicans.

Obama-Biden: It’s numerologically correct!

2008-08-24T13:18:00.005-05:00

Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama’s pick of Deleware Sen. Joe Biden seeks to complement Obama where he is perceived to be weak – foreign policy. Obama’s message to the public is clear: Biden’s the guy who will take the 3 a.m. phone calls. (I guess the red phone has call forwarding.)

My friend and fellow blogger (and newly elected Democratic committeeman) Antonio French observed:

Joe Biden brings a sense of security to the millions of older, white voters who still aren’t sure about Obama. . . . [Biden] reassure[s] Americans who are worried about Obama’s lack of years in national politics that there will be someone in the White House who has been around a long time, who does know how Washington and the world works . . . . Biden fills the old white guy requirement to a tee.

I’m not sure it’s a good idea for a prominent African American Obama supporter like French to be alluding to “the old white guy” requirement, but perhaps it explains why Obama passed over an even better foreign policy fit: New Mexico Gov. (and former UN Ambassador) Bill Richardson. The Hispanic Richardson’s odds faded as Obama soared in polling numbers among Hispanics without Richardson’s help. Hispanic voters’ too-sudden switch from Hillary Clinton to Obama allowed them to be taken for granted.

But there’s also a less serious side to the choice. Obama is five letters, and so is Biden. The ticket is a combined 10 letters. (Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine would have also worked.)

Since 1968, the surnames of the winning presidential ticket has added up to exactly 10 letters 7 out of 10 times:

1968 and 1972: Nixon Agnew
1980 and 1984: Reagan Bush
1988: Bush Quayle
2000 and 2004: Bush Cheney

Two of the exceptions were 1976, when neither the winning Carter Mondale ticket nor the defeated Ford Dole ticket consisted of 10 letters, and 1996, when neither Clinton Gore, Dole Kemp nor Perot Campbell were 10-letter tickets. Moreover, the Carter Mondale exception subsequently lost re-election to a conforming 10-letter Reagan Bush ticket, at a time when an incumbent president hadn’t been defeated for reelection since 1932. The solid exception was 1992, when Bush Quayle lost re-election to the 11-letter Clinton Gore ticket (arguably with the help of the Perot-Stockdale ticket).

The last prior time that a major-party 10-letter ticket was defeated by a non-conforming ticket was 1960, when the Republican Nixon Lodge ticket lost to Kennedy Johnson, but some still say that Nixon and Lodge won until the election was stolen by corrupt vote counters (or manufacturers) in Chicago.

With that history, perhaps the “10-letter” strategy is a better reason for snubbing Richardson than “the old white guy requirement.”

Does Steelman inspire gender backlash?

2008-08-03T20:39:00.005-05:00

The (apparently) last pre-primary survey of the Missouri governor’s race by Survey USA (released August 1) discloses an interesting non-event: In the high-visibility contest between Congressman Kenny Hulshof and State Treasurer Sarah Steelman in the Republican Primary, there is little or no difference in how the candidates perform with male and female voters.

While the typical partisan gender gap (i.e., women favoring Democrats more than men) appears in test runs pitting each potential Republican against likely Democratic nominee Jay Nixon, the
“identity politics” gender gap that appeared so prominently in this year’s Democratic presidential primaries does not appear at all in the survey of women planning to vote in the Republican primary.

In hypothetical November contests against Nixon, women support the Democrat by 50-39 over Hulshof and by 51-38 over Steelman. The reason Hulshof trails Nixon by only 6 points (48-42), compared to Steelman’s 9-point gap (50-41), is primarily because of men, with whom Hulshof and Nixon are tied 46-46, but who favor Nixon by 5 points (49-44) over Steelman.

But in Tuesday’s head-to-head matchup in the Republican Primary, Hulshof leads by 12 points (45-33) among men and by 11 (42-31) among women, a statistically insignificant difference. The biggest contrast is that twice as many Republican women (20%) remain undecided the Friday before the election.

Frankly, I would have expected Republican women to gravitate towards Steelman, similar to the way Democratic women favored Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Not only have Republican women faced the same “glass ceiling” issues as their Democrat colleagues, they also would be expected to long for a more ideologically and politically compatible symbolic candidacy to support. They support the possibility of electing a woman to a top executive office, just not that woman (Hillary). The socially and economically conservative Steelman would seem to fit the bill. But the poll numbers don’t support that theory.

And if Steelman were the GOP nominee in the general election, I would expect some gender-identity conscious Democrats and independents (excluding single-issue abortion rights advocates), still smarting after Hillary’s loss frustrated their expectations, might have taken out that frustration by crossing over to back Steelman over Nixon. The poll numbers don’t show that happening either.

But there may be something else afoot here. Younger voters might not have noticed, but among older men like the Oracle, Sarah Steelman is hot (at least for a 50-year-old). She plays down her appearance, making a point of calling herself a mom, but her long blond locks are hard to hide. Some time ago (before any ads began airing in the St. Louis media market) I informally asked three male Republican friends of mine (all over 50) who they were supporting for governor, and all backed Steelman. Perhaps their Republican wives noticed they supported Steelman over the unanimous choice of the party’s most trusted leaders and concluded that their decision was motivated more by Steelman’s looks than her masters degree in economics. That may have brought to mind personal workplace experiences in which they perceived that physically attractive women received promotions or other favorable treatment at the expense of seemingly qualified but less attractive colleagues.

The Oracle suspects that Democratic women don’t necessarily have the monopoly on identity politics that the poll numbers might suggest, and that many Republican women do identify with Steelman and support her because of that, but that their support is offset by opposition from other Republican women who subconsciously resent her appearance. These competing factors would net out to near zero.

Obama stronger nationally against McCain

2008-04-28T12:42:00.002-05:00

Here's something for undecided superdelegates to consider. According to comparative polling by Rasmussen Reports in 29 states, Barack Obama runs stronger against Republican John McCain than Hillary Clinton in 21 states, while Clinton is stronger than Obama in 8 states. Missouri, though, is one of Clinton's eight.

Perhaps more significantly, there are five states (Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington) whose electoral votes would switch depending on the identity of the Democrat nominee, and a sixth (North Carolina) where McCain beats one nominee and ties the other. In all cases, McCain wins against Clinton but loses (or ties) when Obama is the nominee.

Missing from the comparison are 21 states and the District of Columbia. Three large states are missing (Obama's home state Illinois, Clinton's home state New York, and Texas), but the only missing state whose electoral votes are realistically in play is West Virginia.

The Missouri results may be of greater interest to Missouri superdelegates than the national figures. While we may be about due for a new poll release, Rasmussen's most recent Missouri poll (March 26) shows McCain leading Clinton by 9 points and Obama by a whopping 15 points. Having to overcome a 15-point spread at the top of the ticket could be a daunting task for the rest of the Democratic statewide ticket and the party's efforts to retake the legislature. On the other hand, for African Americans (and progressive whites like me) who can't stand Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Jay Nixon, an Obama presidential win coupled with a Nixon loss could be a win-win situation!

Ignore party base at your peril

2008-02-13T21:18:00.003-06:00

Unprincipled "win at any cost" advocates received a bipartisan jolt of reality this week in Maryland. Two incumbent congressmen, one Democrat and one Republican, who strayed from their parties' ideological principles by staking out "moderate" voting records, were overwhelmingly defeated for reelection. Neither could draw more than a third of the vote in their own primaries.

Congressional Quarterly rates both seats as "safe" for their respective parties.

Democrat Albert Wynn, an 8-term incumbent, lost his D.C. suburban seat to non-profit executive Donna Edwards, 60%-33%. Edwards, who lost her challenge to Wynn last election, received substantial financial backing from ideologically progressive groups like the SEIU and the League of Conservation Voters, whom Wynn publicly derided as a "left wing conspiracy." In 2004, a Green Party challenger had drawn 4.5% of the vote against Wynn, a very respectable performance in a contest with both Democrat and Republican contenders. Both Wynn and Edwards are African Americans, and both had endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Republican Wayne Gilchrest, a 9-term incumbent, lost his eastern Chesapeake seat to conservative State Sen. Andrew Harris, 44%-33%, even though the anti-Gilchrest vote was split among four challengers. Gilchrest had annoyed conservatives by voting to require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, as well as with his support for gay rights and the environment. Harris was backed by the conservative Club for Growth, while Gilchrest had backing from the same League of Conservation Voters that helped the liberal Edwards pull her upset.

The lesson: Principles matter.

Black Republicans favored Huckabee

2008-02-07T20:44:00.000-06:00

In what may be the only analysis of voting patterns of perhaps the smallest minority -- African Americans voting in a Republican primary, the Oracle has concluded that Mike Huckabee was the big winner Tuesday in this small group. Ron Paul, the GOP's only anti-war candidate, also fared more than twice as well with blacks as with other Republican voters.

In the six remaining totally segregated black wards in the City of St. Louis (Wards 1, 3, 4, 21, 22 and 27), Huckabee won 44% of the Republican primary vote, more than double that of runner-up (and statewide winner) John McCain, who got 18%. 16% of black Republicans voted for an uncommitted delegation (compared to a mere 0.4% statewide). Paul polled relatively well with blacks, winning 12% (compared to 4.5% statewide), ahead of Mitt Romney, who won only 11% of the votes of these black Republicans.

Black support for Huckabee contrasts with Republicans in the rest of the city. Huckabee carried 8 wards (the six segregated wards mentioned above, plus the south side 20th (by just one vote) and the north side 26th (by just two votes), both black majority wards), but finished a distant third in the rest of the city, behind both McCain (who carried the other 20 wards) and second-place Romney.

In the rest of Missouri and the nation, Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has run very well with evangelical Christians, and much larger percentages of city blacks than city whites are evangelical Christians. Prior data haven't reflected whether voting behavior among black evangelicals has any similarity with white evangelicals. These particular black voters are not typical of black voters for the simple reason that they voted in a Republican primary, which represented less than 1% of black voters in those wards. Nevertheless, for those blacks who were inclined to vote Republican in an election in which most of their colleagues had been inspired to vote for Barack Obama in the Democratic primary, Huckabee's evangelical appeal trumped what caused white city Republicans to favor McCain or Romney. Another factor favoring Huckabee may have been his social consciousness and willingness to offer more compassionate government solutions to people's economic problems.

Results in other black majority wards were more similar to those in white wards, with McCain beating Huckabee. In the two black majority wards with the largest white minorities (6 and 19), Romney also finished ahead of Huckabee, just like in all of the white majority wards. These results can be explained by the fact that whites, even those in heavily Democratic neighborhoods in similar economic circumstances as most city blacks, are much more likely than blacks to vote in Republican primaries. 21% of voters took Republican primary ballots in the largely white (and highly Democratic) 24th Ward just south of Forest Park, but less than 1% took Republican ballots in the six segregated black wards. Given such disparity, a black majority ward having a white minority as small as 5% could nevertheless produce a white voting majority in the Republican primary. That is why results in the other black majority wards and all black majority townships in St. Louis County are not fairly indicative of black Republican voting behavior.

Polls, including exit polls, tend not to measure the choices of African American Republicans, because their numbers were too small to form a large enough base from which to draw statistically significant conclusions. The selected wards produced 124 Republican votes, which is a smaller overall sample but many more black Republicans than typical poll samples. Untold is whether the voting behavior of black Republicans living in segregated city neighborhoods differs from black Republicans in integrated city neighborhoods or in suburban or rural settings.

Clinton, Huckabee lead Missouri primary

2008-01-25T18:47:00.000-06:00

According to Rasmussen Reports, Democrat Hillary Clinton enjoys a 19-point lead and Republican Mike Huckabee has a single-point lead in the Missouri primary on February 5 (Super Tuesday). This mirrors earlier Rasmussen findings (as reported here) that those two candidates were their parties' strongest general election candidates in Missouri when matched against leading opponents from the other party.

In the Democratic contest the poll reported Clinton 43%, Obama 24%, Edwards 18%, and only 5% undecided. (An early misprint on Rasmussen's site gave Edwards 28% but still listed him third.) This 19-point deficit has to be disappointing to Obama supporters who have been hitting the pavement hard for their man in St. Louis. Obama was also the only candidate running ads in St Louis up until the day of the poll.

The Republican lead was within the margin of error, with Huckabee at 27%, McCain 26%, Romney 18%, Giuliani 7% and Paul 5%. These results have to be disappointing for Romney backers (Gov. Blunt, former Sen. Talent, speaker Jetton) and to Sen. Bond, who had publicly claimed his organization would carry Giuliani to victory, not single digits. The poll represents bases of spontaneous support, because to date no Republican candidate has hit the airwaves in Missouri. Advertising and momentum from next week's Florida primary could change things before election day.

Missouri's results are amazingly close those in Alabama, where candidates in both parties poll in the same order and the leaders get the same numbers (Clinton 43% and Huckabee 27%), except that McCain gets one more point there and ties Huckabee for the lead. We're a bellwether all right: as goes Missouri, so goes Alabama!

I would love to see results broken down by regions and age groups, but Rasmussen Crosstabs are available only to paying subscribers, and the Oracle is a certified cheapskate.

UPDATE: On Friday's 10:00 news, Channel 4 previewed results of similar polls that the station conducted jointly with the Post Dispatch, with complete results to be published in Sunday's Post. Their results are slightly different, with Hillary's margin only 13 points (44-31) and McCain leading the Republican contest (with no numbers or standings cited).

Democrats should rethink guv candidate

2008-01-23T21:25:00.000-06:00

Democrats should reconsider anointing Jay Nixon as the party's nominee for Governor. With Republican Gov. Matt Blunt no longer seeking reelection, it is no longer good enough just to attack Blunt's record, because he's gone. With voters no longer preoccupied with "getting rid of Blunt," the Democratic candidate will be forced to make a case for her/himself. In that context, Nixon looks like a poor choice.

Perhaps most important, Nixon's rapport with the black community has always been very poor. So poor, in fact, that when Nixon challenged Republican Sen. Kit Bond for re-election in 1998, enough black voters crossed over to vote for Bond (against Nixon, really) to make the difference that beat Nixon. Nixon's "black problem" stems from his career-long opposition to school desegregation. He angered black leaders by failing to consult with them when he settled the desegregation case, causing then-Congressman Bill Clay to urge President Clinton to cancel a fundraising trip for Nixon in 1998. Nixon is also a strong supporter of the death penalty, whose disproportionate application to African American inmates is an anathema to many black voters. He was also a no-show last year at an important NAACP that even Blunt attended.

This all gets worse when put in the likely political context. While the year looks to be shaping up as a Democratic year based on Bush backlash, a race-warfare crosscurrent seems to be emerging that could drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and its long neglected African American base. Barack Obama's inspiring non-race-based victory in lily-white Iowa has given way to racially charged rhetoric from the Hillary Clinton campaign that has polarized the electorate. The bitter campaign has driven much of Hillary's formerly substantial black support to Obama, while white Democrats have surged to Hillary, for a net advantage to Hillary, now once again the likely nominee. Adding to that toxic climate is the stormy relationship of Democratic St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay with the city's African American community. In addition, it appears increasingly likely that August's Democratic primary in term-limited Sen. Maida Coleman's 5th District will be won by veteran southside state rep. Tom Villa, eliminating the city's last black-held senate seat. In that context, if Democrats nominate Nixon for governor to share the top of the ticket with Hillary, the party will virtually dare African Americans to revolt.

But there's more to fear in Nixon than just his (and the party's evolving) "black problem." With Nixon cruising along as the consensus Democratic nominee, Republicans have fired off salvo after salvo against him. While it's easy for Democrats viewing the allegations through rose colored glasses to dismiss them as politically motivated (which they are), I think many of the independent voters that the winning candidate will need to win over will be troubled by many of them. Among the more troublesome are these:

Nixon's mishandling of politically sensitive cases in AG's office, including his forced removal in litigation brought by political ally Planned Parenthood; ineffective defense of Missouri's campaign finance law revisions, including possible collusion with his former staffers on the opposing side of the litigation; advocacy of opponents' positions when ostensibly defending Missouri's school funding formula; and acceptance of indirect campaign contributions from Ameren during Nixon's investigation of Ameren's fault in the nearly deadly breach of the Taum Sauk reservoir. While some of those actions were politically desirable to progressives like myself, they were ethically questionable in the context of his job, and are not as well received by independent voters.

In addition to Ameren, Nixon's campaign has accepted large campaign contributions from affiliates of Charter Communications, the subject of several investigations by Nixon's office for no-call law violations and consumer complaints; also from trial lawyers who prosecute claims against the Second Injury Fund overseen by Nixon; a campaign fundraiser hosted by a Blue Cross executive during litigation by Nixon against Blue Cross; contributions from nursing homes over which he has legal oversight; and from developers seeking business from the Missouri Housing & Development Commission on which Nixon sits.

Nixon has lavishly rewarded campaign contributing lawyers by outsourcing litigation in his office to them with lucrative contracts.

Ongoing environmental problems, including a lawsuit by the Missouri Public Service Commission, involving a Jefferson County sewage plant owned and represented by the father and other long-time political supporters of Nixon.

Nixon's distribution of state funds from the multi-million dollar tobacco litigation settlement through the non-partisan Missouri Foundation for Health (whose purpose is to assist Missourians without health insurance) to finance political allies like Planned Parenthood, Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Jobs with Justice, the National Education Association, and an affiliate of Missouri Pro-Vote. I like these groups personally, but this is public money that was supposed to help folks without health insurance.

A federal employment discrimination lawsuit against Nixon by a former disabled employee discharged by Nixon.

Inconsistent record on Medicaid cuts: defending Holden Administration cuts but attacking Blunt Administration cuts. As John Kerry would say, Nixon was for Medicaid cuts before he was against them.

Similar inconsistency regarding Sunshine Law violations. He was lax during Democratic administrations, but transformed into a Sunshine Law hawk when Blunt took office.

The political motivation behind these accusations don't necessarily mean the charges aren't accurate. I think that, in the minds of independent voters, at least some of the charges will stick And there are so many of them, voters may simply conclude that there's too much smoke for there not to be fire.

Nixon backers point to his track record of electoral success. The problem is, Nixon is great at winning reelection with the advantage of incumbency against poorly financed political unknowns. But he lost two statewide elections (1988 and 1998) in which he faced well-known, well-financed Republicans. This is 2008, and (with apologies to The Weather Channel) Nixon loses on the 8's. His only statewide win against a well-financed Republican opponent was his 1992 run for Attorney General, when he was swept into office with less than 50% of the vote in the Clinton-Carnahan landslide.

It isn't as though Democrats have no one else. Robin Carnahan, Joe Maxwell, Susan Montee, Emanuel Cleaver, Charlie Dooley, and Senators Yvonne Wilson, Rita Days, Joan Bray and Jeff Smith would all make better Democratic candidates than Nixon. Even Bob Holden would be better. One needs to step forward, and party leaders need to persuade Nixon that the party needs him to get out of the way and accept a nice judgeship or something.

Filing for office doesn't start for another month or so, and candidates can file as late as March 25. Republicans are starting off fresh looking for their strongest candidate. Democrats should do the same.

What happened in Iowa

2008-01-05T13:43:00.000-06:00

Much to the enjoyment of Oracle critics, my crystal ball was wrong about Iowa. From my personal perspective, I was delighted to have been wrong, because predicted winners Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney would have both been (and may yet be) bad for the nation. But I still need to figure out what happened that was different than I expected.

What I had predicted – that the turnout machines of Clinton and Romney would succeed in getting their reliably motivated people to the caucus – did in fact occur as predicted. It also appears that most of the Democrats hoping to cash in on presidential patronage and influence showed up to be seen and appreciated in Hillary’s caucus. But what also happened, and changed everything, was the success of the seemingly less professional campaigns of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in drawing their inspired followers to caucus in record numbers. (John Edwards’ relative success vs. Hillary was less of a surprise, because his labor backers know how to turn their people out.) Ordinary people came in and outnumbered The Establishment.

The night’s biggest story was Obama. Whether it was his message, his manner or his Oprah-electrification, he inspired his followers to overcome the obstacles that had kept most of his voters from ever participating before in Iowa caucuses. Remember, a caucus system is specifically set up to favor insiders and discourage participation by ordinary folks. Unlike a 12-14 hour primary election, the caucus took place at a specific time in the evening, when many young adults had to work, many elderly citizens had to overcome night-vision problems and other fears of going out after dark, single parents had to find baby-sitters, and even two-parent families needed to leave one of them home to care for the kids. Most participants had to travel farther to get there, because there were a lot fewer caucus sites than polling places for an election. There were no absentee ballots for those out-of-town or physically disabled. And the Democratic Party, the one-time champion of the common person, imposed a complicated “viability” procedure that effectively required participants to devote their entire evening to the event in order to be counted, further complicating efforts by those needing to juggle work schedules or rely on babysitters. Even with record turnouts for both parties, over 80% of registered Iowa voters stayed away from the caucus sites. Can you say “disenfranchised”?

Obama’s supporters were largely first-time participants, the very people that the system was designed to discourage. His success in the face of those odds is as remarkable as it is encouraging.

Huckabee’s success proved that the death of evangelical influence in the Republican Party was, in Mark Twain’s famous words, premature and greatly exaggerated. The turnout machine on which Romney spent millions was outperformed by what networks of mostly evangelicals did for Huckabee for free.

The Republican results also demonstrated that Huckabee’s message of economic populism is welcome in the Republican Party. Spinners have been trying to portray the Iowa results as evangelicals blindly rallying behind one of their own while being blissfully unaware of Huckabee’s record and rhetoric that was uncomfortably progressive to establishment Republicans. But Iowa Republicans weren’t at all ignorant of that. The Romney campaign spent lavishly on making sure that they knew about Huckabee’s record on crime, immigration and social justice, his criticism of President Bush’s foreign policy, and the opposition to Huckabee’s candidacy by establishment neo-cons like the Club for Growth. The evangelical movement showed signs of maturing, by embracing a candidate who stood not only for opposition to abortion and gay rights, but also for economic compassion and concern over Bush’s arrogant foreign policy. While Bush had campaigned about a phony “compassionate conservatism” that never materialized in his administration, Huckabee’s seems to be the real deal. Huckabee’s supporters knew about that much better than anywhere else in the country. And they demonstrated that they like it.

It was also heartening to see Huckabee win in spite of his lack of funding. While Obama also beat The Establishment, he had plenty of money to make it happen.

Another upshot from Iowa was, for the most part, more reliable polling results. The impediments to turnout mentioned above had led both me and professionals like Rasmussen Reports to discount most of the polls. But the final Des Moines Register poll was right on the money in both the Democratic and Republican contests. “Matt” commented on my blog post the day before the caucus, “[T]he Register doesn't have the best respected poll for nothing. They uniquely know what is happening on the ground.” I don’t know what intrusions on personal privacy the Register employed to figure out who to count, but they did it right.

Iowa predictions

2008-01-02T15:38:00.000-06:00

The latest DesMoines Register poll gives Barack Obama a 7-point lead in the Democratic caucuses and Mike Huckabee a 6-point lead for the Republicans. But the winners will be Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.

The primary reason in both cases is that the Iowa contest is caucuses, not a primary election. Even if there is a record turnout (as will probably occur), and even with all the students and other "new" participants being drawn to the process, the number of participants tomorrow night will be a small fraction of the number of Iowa voters that went to the polls to vote for president in 2004. Instead of just going to your neighborhood polling place, maybe waiting in line a while and then voting, participants (especially in the more complicated Democrat procedure) will need to devote their entire evening to the process. And if you can't make it then, too bad, you don't get to vote. There are lots of Iowans responding to pollsters who won't actually vote in a caucus.

The winners will be those who know what the rules are and who are best prepared to identify their supporters and get them to the caucuses in accordance with those rules.

The best organized (and best financed) Republican is Mitt Romney. He didn't invent the rules, but he put together an organization that is best equipped to cope with them. He has the best Republican "ground game," and it will propel him to victory. Poll leader Huckabee, in addition to peaking just a bit too soon, became a viable candidate far too late in the process to compete effectively in this environment. Huckabee points with pride to being competitive in spite of being outspent by Romney, 20-1, but chalk this one up for Gollaith. Huckabee's loyal evangelical following, though, will probably earn him second place and a trip to New Hampshire.

The disproportionate influence that intensely loyal followers have in small turnout numbers will produce the evening's biggest surprise: the solid third-place showing (perhaps even second) of libertarian (and anti-war) Republican Ron Paul.

Factors in the Democrat contest are much more complicated. For one thing, Clinton's spending has been matched by the equally well-funded Obama campaign. More important is the "viability" rule that applies only to the Democrat contest. At any particular gathering, supporters of a candidate who do not amount to at least 15% of the group are not allowed to form a caucus for that candidate, and are required to join a caucus of some other candidate. That's why the "second choices" of participants favoring candidates other than Clinton and Obama are so important. Many of the participants who aren't for Clinton really dislike her, and are likely to join caucuses for her major opponents. Notably, Dennis Kucinich has announced to his supporters that, if they are unable to form a Kucinich caucus, he would like them to join the Obama caucus as their second choice. (Kucinich did the same for John Edwards four years ago.)

But in the end of the night in Iowa, the same factors propelling Romney to victory in the Republican caucuses will do the same for Hillary Clinton among Democrats. Building on lists left over from her husband's two Iowa campaigns, Hillary has an excellent organization that knows how to get her supporters to caucus. In contrast, much of Obama's support has been spawned by Oprah Winfrey's whirlwind tour, which has predominantly drawn people who have never before taken part in a caucus. As the memories of Oprah's visitation fade and the reality of the evening-long commitment take hold, many of those votes will evaporate. The support of well-intentioned college students will suffer similar erosion. Edwards' labor-based support will fare better, and propel Edwards into second.

But there is another, more important factor that seals the deal. There is no such thing as a "secret ballot" in a caucus. You physically stand with the caucus you select, and the campaign leaders of that caucus -- and the other caucuses -- see where you stand, and take notes. Much of the public, and Democrats in particular, believe that this year's Democratic nominee will win and become the next president. Though struggling in a 3-way contest in Iowa, Hillary has a double-digit lead in national polls, and remains the odds-on favorite to win it all. With the presidency come the spoils of appointments and contracts. The Clintons are legendary in how they reward their friends and punish their enemies. Any Iowa Democrat who wants in on the goodies will want to be seen in Hillary's caucus. Hillary will win Thursday night, and it won't be all that close.

Polls says Clinton, Huckabee are strongest in Missouri

2007-12-18T20:37:00.000-06:00

Two national polling organizations released results for the Missouri presidential contest today, with apparent differences but also some similarities. In short, Missouri is up for grabs.

In one-on-one general election queries, Hillary Clinton (the choice of Mayor Slay and Dick Gephardt) had a better shot at winning Missouri's pivotal electoral votes for Democrats than Barack Obama (the choice of Claire McCaskill, Russ Carnahan, Lacy Clay, Jeff Smith and Antonio French), and in a sudden reversal, Mike Huckabee competes better here than Rudy Giuliani (the choice of Kit Bond) for Republicans. Huckabee succeeds here without any high level endorsements (other than members of the legislature).

In a Clinton-Giuliani matchup, Clinton leads 49-43% in Survey USA and 45-39 in Rasmussen. But a Clinton-Huckabee matchup produces mixed results within the margin of error, Survey USA showing Clinton ahead, 49-47, while Rasmussen shows Huckabee with a comparable lead, 45-43. Huckabee benefits from the timing of the polls, released during his December surge in polling numbers. Whether Huckabee's surge continues or this is his peak remains to be seen.

Barack Obama also leads Giuliani in Missouri, but by less than Clinton. Oprah's candidate leads America's mayor by 5 points, 47-42, in Survey USA, and by just one point in Rasmussen. Huckabee beats Obama in both polls, 47-45 in Survey USA and 45-41 in Rasmussen. Obama thus competes slightly less favorably against the two current national Republican frontrunners than Clinton does in both polls.

Comparing the polls, Democrats poll better in the Survey USA poll (taken on behalf of a Kansas City television station), and Republicans do better in the Rasmussen poll (in partnership with Fox Television Stations, Inc.). Survey USA must be pushing undecided voters more for a decision, because its polls consistently show fewer undecided. That means its results are more susceptible to change.

Clinton outperforms Obama in Missouri in spite of the fact that, according to Rasmussen, Obama has a better favorability rating (52-51%) than Clinton. Those favorability numbers are lower than Huckabee (53%) but significantly better than Giuliani (45%).

Survey USA also tested Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain (but not Fred Thompson or anti-war Ron Paul) against Clinton and Obama. McCain trails Clinton, 50-46, and Obama, 47-44. But Romney, in spite of the backing of much of the state's GOP establishment, including Matt Blunt and Jim Talent, gets his clock cleaned in Missouri. Survey USA show both Clinton and Obama leading Romney by 10 points. It isn't that Missouri voters are as intolerant to Mormons as they are to gay marriage, because Romney's underperformance in general election matchups is a consistent national trend.

Neither poll posed the question with John Edwards as the Democratic nominee. In prior polls, both nationally and in various states, Edwards ran stronger than either Clinton or Obama. Democrats' continuing tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory means that Edwards doesn't stand a chance to win the nomination.

Rasmussen also posted results for the governor's race, showing Blunt trailing challenger Jay Nixon, 47-42, after the same pollster had found Blunt ahead by a point in October. The governor's office email controversy was publicized between the two polls.

Mizzou fans should boycott FedEx

2007-12-03T11:37:00.000-06:00

There is no real mystery who is at fault for #6 Mizzou not getting a BCS bowl bid. After Oklahoma got the automatic Big XII bid, the call who got the conference's second BCS bid belonged to the FedEx Orange Bowl selection committee. They looked at Mizzou's 11-2 record, which included wins over Kansas and Rose Bowl-bound Illinois and whose only losses were against just one team, #4 Oklahoma, and compared it to #8 Kansas, whose 11 wins came against the 11th easiest schedule (out of 119 teams) and whose loss was to Mizzou, and those geniuses somehow decided to pick KU.

The selection committee lamely explained that KU had a long connection to the Orange Bowl from back in the Big 8 days, an explanation that applied equally well to Mizzou.

Mizzou fans can express their disapproval this Christmas season with a message to the selection committee's sponsor, Federal Express. When sending Christmas presents (or business packages) this month, why not consider diverting your business away from FedEx to competitors like UPS and DHL?

And if the committee was thinking about television ratings, perhaps those of us in the St. Louis market should watch something else when the FedEx Orange Bowl is on, and see if the Wichita market can make up the difference.

A bigger mystery is how Mizzou got screwed a second time, by not getting a better opponent in the Cotton Bowl. The spot was reserved for either the #3, 4 or 5 SEC team, which (after BCS-bound LSU and Georgia) included #12 (and defending national champion) Florida (who instead will play unranked Michigan, loser to Appalachian State) and #16 Tennessee (who drew #18 Wisconsin). Instead Mizzou got a nothing-to-win and everything-to-lose matchup with Arkansas, which is not even in the BCS Top 25 and ranks no higher than 24th in any major poll. That isn't to say they aren't any good, because they are, as BCS Championship Bowl-bound LSU found out in its regular season finale. The problem is, Mizzou will get no year-end boost from beating this team, but would suffer greatly by losing to them. High risk, low reward. The Cotton Bowl, a traditional New Years Day bowl that is generally regarded as the best non-BCS bowl, seemingly could have and should have done better.

Hillary gets nasty against Obama

2007-10-26T12:51:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton has gotten nasty against fellow Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a dispute over her vote to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

A condescending Clinton campaign e-mail belittled Obama, saying, “Stagnant in the polls and struggling to revive his once-buoyant campaign, Senator Obama has abandoned the politics of hope and embarked on a journey in search of a campaign issue to use against Senator Clinton."

The release accused Obama of making "false charges" about her vote. Critics of Clinton's Iran vote, including Obama, had charged that the resolution designating the Republican Guard as a terrorist group authorizes President Bush to take military action against Iran.

Addressing that charge, the campaign release stated, “If Senator Obama really believed this measure gave the President a blank check for war, shouldn’t he have been in the Senate on the day of the vote, speaking out, and fighting against it? Instead he did nothing, remained totally silent, skipped the vote and spoke out only after the vote to engage in false attacks against Senator Clinton.” The release inferred Obama is a hypocrite, noting, “Never mind that he made the very argument he is now criticizing back in November 2006. Never mind that he co-sponsored a bill designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a global terrorist group back in April.”

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton responded, “All of the political explanations and contortions in the world aren’t going to change the fact that, once again, Senator Clinton supported giving President Bush both the benefit of the doubt and a blank check on a critical foreign policy issue."

With Clinton opening up a huge lead over Obama in polls, both nationally and in early caucus and primary states, she is now the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee. However, this bitter interchange makes a Clinton-Obama dream ticket more and more unlikely.

The nasty, overly ballistic reaction of a frontrunner with such a comfortable lead also reflects poorly on how the public will perceive her ability to handle foreign policy crises if elected president. Will she have an itchy trigger finger on the nuclear button?

Robin Carnahan slights Nelly, Berry

2007-08-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan ran a straw poll at the Missouri State Fair (hat tip: Political Fix), asking attendees to vote for their favorite kind of "Missouri music." There were only four choices on the ballot: Branson country, Ozarks bluegrass, Kansas City jazz, and St. Louis blues.

Has Robin not heard of hip hop, or how Nelly and a slew of other nationally renowned St. Louis artists have put our town back on the music map?

Or what about rock music fans? I think a Missourian by the name of Chuck Berry had something to do with the popularity of that music genre. (Some might add Ike and Tina Turner, but in fairness, they were from the east side.)

And since when does Kansas City get a higher claim on jazz than St. Louis? Robin, meet Erin Bode.

No classical music on the ballot either. I think the St Louis Symphony won a grammy or two in that genre. Or does Robin regard the predominantly rural attendees of the state fair as hayseeds who aren't sophisticated enough to care much for classical music?

The poll, of course, was designed as a ploy to get some free publicity for Ms. Carnahan. Instead, she seems to have offended pretty much all of the state (except for the ozarks, where they don't vote for her anyway).

Blunt wins over key Democrats on Medicaid

2007-04-14T12:48:00.000-05:00

Republican Gov. Matt Blunt’s plan to reform Medicaid, now dubbed MO HealthNet, passed the senate this week, 26-7, gaining support across partisan and racial lines.

St. Louis area supporters, besides Republicans Gibbons, Gross, Loudon and Rupp, included African American Sen. Rita Days (D, north county), Sen. Harry Kennedy (D, St. Louis City), Sen. Tim Green (D, Spanish Lake) and Sen. Ryan McKenna (D, Jeffco).

Until now, many presumed that likely Democratic guberatorial nominee Jay Nixon and other Democrats would make a big issue of the Medicaid-related actions of Blunt and the Republican legislature. These votes will make that tactic problematical.

The seven Democrats who stayed true to the game plan included Sens. Jeff Smith and Maida Coleman of St. Louis, progressive icon Joan Bray of University City and, ironically, conservative Democrat Frank Barnitz of rural Lake Spring. If Barnitz could stand up to the conservative tide, why couldn’t Days, Green, McKenna and the term-limited Kennedy?

Racial voting again dominates city's Democratic primary

2007-03-07T20:33:00.000-06:00

The results of Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the City of St. Louis had a very simple geographic tone. Draw a line from the western city limits to the Mississippi River along the southern borders of Wards 28, 17, 19, 6 and 7. Regardless of aldermanic or committee endorsements, victorious Lewis Reed carried every ward north of that line, and incumbent Jim Shrewsbury carried every ward south of it. No exceptions!

A slightly more sophisticated version has four zones. At the north end are Wards 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26 and 27. All eleven of these wards gave Reed over 75% of the vote, averaging a little over 80%. Next come the central corridor wards just south of there, Wards 6, 7, 17 and 28, where Reed won by smaller margins ranging from 55-65%. (This band is broken geographically by a narrow southern arm of the 19th, but a precinct-level analysis, when available, will probably show that “arm” with results more similar to this band than the rest of the ward.) Next are Wards 8, 9, 15, 20 and 25 on the near south side, which all went for Shrewsbury by margins ranging from 53-65%. Finally, the remaining wards to the south and west, Wards 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 23 and 24, all voted for Shrewsbury with 2-1 or better margins, all but one topping 70%.

These geographic stripes are explained (surprise!) by race. Generally, the blacker the ward, the stronger it went for Reed, and the whiter the ward, the stronger it went for Shrewsbury. Four of the city’s five purest (i.e., most segregated) black wards (27, 4, 22, 1) were Reed’s top four wards, each giving him over 85% of the vote. In the other totally segregated black ward, the 21st, Shrewsbury had the backing of the ward’s alderman and committeeman, but that support only dropped the Reed vote there by 5 points. The 12 wards represented by black aldermen were Reed’s 12 best wards.

At the other end, the six wards where Shrewsbury topped 70% are the city’s whitest. Reed carried only two of the wards represented by the five white aldermen who endorsed him, both from the central corridor. Shrewsbury apparently won most of the young white progressive voters in the integrated neighborhoods surrounding Tower Grove Park, carrying both the 8th and 15th Wards with about 58% in each.

So why did Reed win? Even though Shrewsbury is the first serious white candidate ever to lose a one-on-one citywide Democratic primary to a black candidate, I reject the notion that people were fed up with Shrewsbury’s performance and voted to throw him out. Elections like that show an upward spike in turnout (because pissed-off people turn out to vote), and that didn’t happen this time. Only 13.3% of registered voters cast ballots. The result, as I speculated in my preview post, was a reflection of who voted and who didn’t. Reed won by 2,042 votes. There are more Shrewsbury fans than that who were too complacent to vote and were kicking themselves this morning.

One interpretation is that Reed had more appeal across racial lines than Shrewsbury, winning 32.6% in the predominantly white south side while Shrewsbury was winning less than 20% in the predominantly black wards north of Delmar. That difference overcame the fact that turnout on the south side was much higher than up north. If Shrewsbury had won 77% of the south side vote instead of just 67%, he would have won.

But I think the other side of the coin is more significant: that 3-1 majority of Democratic primary voters who continued to vote for the candidate of their own race, notably African Americans. Shrewsbury had worked hard to please African American voters, especially with his support for civilian oversight of police and his crucial leadership role in eliminating medical waste incineration from north St. Louis. Even in racially divisive elections, black voters have historically given a third of their votes to white incumbents like Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, former State Sen. Pat Dougherty and even Mayor Francis Slay. If Shrewsbury had won a third of the vote north of Delmar instead of less than 20%, he would have won. It is mind boggling to me why Shrewsbury would do more poorly among black voters against Alderman Reed than Slay, who is regarded by many black voters as a virtual political antichrist, got against Alderman (and respected attorney) Irene Smith just two years ago. There are over a thousand black voters out there who apparently voted for Slay two years ago but for Reed this time. I’d love to ask them why.

Developers, Callow bankrolling Reed

2007-03-05T12:40:00.000-06:00

The 8-day campaign finance report and a 48-hour supplemental report for aldermanic president challenger Lewis Reed show that he had raised about $375,000, much of it from developers, allies of Mayor Francis Slay, and supportive politicians. That puts him within $100,000 of the man whose job Reed wants, incumbent Jim Shrewsbury.

Among the notable donors on Reed's 8-day report are Paul McKee ($1K) of the controversial developer Blairmont, which is quietly assembling (and then neglecting) parcels in Old North St. Louis. Well, it would be quiet but for watchdog preservationist Michael Allen over at Ecology of Absence, and his blog.

Other major developers pouring funds to Reed this period include Rothschild Development, McCormick Barron Salazar and several employees (including Richard Barron), Tom Barta of Fred Weber, Bill Bruce of Bruce Development, and McAvoy Realty. Other contributors include over a dozen companies whose names sound like they are developers.

Another notable (and long suspected) supporter of Reed is Richard Callow, Mayor Slay's public relations guru who is married to Barbara Geisman, Slay's deputy mayor for development. Callow donated a thousand bucks on January 29, just after the close of the prior reporting period. Flint Fowler, city school board member supported by Slay, also pitched in, joining another former Slay school board member, James Buford.

Richard Mark, chief apologist for Ameren prior to Karen Foss' arrival, donated a thousand bucks to Reed, as did the St. Louis Rams and the Chase Park Plaza. A PAC for AT&T also donated.

The two largest contributions surfaced after the 8-day report, disclosed by a special 48-hour filing and first reported at pubdef.net. Paul Weissman of New York City donated $35,000, and George Kruntchev of University City made a late $10,000 contribution that raises his total in this campaign to $16,250. Does anyone know these guys, or why they would be interested in investing that kind of dough in this campaign?

The 8-day report was filed late, for the stated reason of illness on the part of the campaign treasurer. But that's what deputy treasurers are for. The tardiness has been successful, so far, in diverting most news reporting sources from reporting what I have mentioned above.

The 8-day report also failed to list addresses for seven corporate contributors, including the Anheuser Busch Credit Union. Does the Reed campaign have a phone book?

Perhaps more serious, the report merely listed "employer requested" for 34 separate contributors, including the controversial McKee and Callow. One wonders whether the campaign consciously attempted to conceal McKee's connection to Blairmont. In any event, the Missouri Ethics Commission takes the position that contributions over $25 which are received from donors not disclosing their employers (or occupations if self employed) must be returned. Reed also listed "employer requested" for several contributors on the 40-day report filed in January, but never supplemented that report to disclose any of those employers.

Preview analysis of Tuesday's St. Louis primary

2007-03-04T15:26:00.000-06:00

The key to Tuesday’s contest for aldermanic president in St. Louis, as has been the case in many recent primaries, is turnout. The corporate media have given these city elections very little attention, and turnout will be low. That means that the impact of good GOTV efforts will be magnified in a smaller voter pool.

Incumbent Jim Shrewsbury starts out ahead with the power of incumbency that one earns with a good record. The contest appears once again to be following racial lines, which is helpful to both. That helps challenger Lewis Reed because being adopted by the black community as “theirs” gives the challenger greater credibility than a two-term back-bench alderman would ordinarily get. But the racial orientation probably helps Shrewsbury more, because white voters, especially those in his own southwest city base, tend to turn out in greater numbers than African American voters. Historically, African American citywide candidates don’t generally prevail over a serious white candidate in one-on-one contests like this one. (In Shrewsbury’s losses for comptroller to Virvus Jones and Darlene Green, there were additional serious white candidates competing for his votes.)

But other factors could tighten it up. Reed has been successful in attracting to his camp just about anyone who has ever had reason to dislike Shrewsbury. The people who don’t like Shrewsbury really don’t like him, and hatred is a better voter motivation than gratitude. While Shrewsbury is not complacent or overconfident, many of his casual supporters may be. The only people whose opinions count are those who actually vote.

Who will win: The likely low turnout makes the contest hard to call. While I think the contest will be close, I wouldn’t be surprised to see either candidate win by as much as 65-35. My call is a narrow win for Shrewsbury.

Who ought to win: I reiterate my endorsement of Shrewsbury set forth in the previous post.

4th Ward: Alderman O.L. Shelton’s incumbency and prior service as state rep have given him ample opportunity to build up an unbeatable collection of grateful constituents. But he hasn’t. He won the seat by plurality in a 4-way contest, and now faces a rematch one-on-one against Sam Moore, the leading challenger last time. North side politics are always contentious, and job security for incumbents there is more tenuous than elsewhere. I see Moore unseating Shelton.

6th Ward: Ordinarily a ward committeeman, especially one as well funded as Patrick Cacchione, should have an advantage. Not this time. His relatively conservative views (especially his opposition to abortion rights) are unpopular with many progressives in the ward, and he has two very substantial opponents. Christian Saller has greater and better experience, and is popular with preservationists, who are plentiful in the ward. Kacie Starr Triplett, granddaughter of the late Sen. John Bass and daughter of a popular former Big Red player, has a flair for politics that belies her youth (26), and has the best organized, most effective campaign. She has the additional advantage of being the only African American candidate in a ward with a slight black majority.

Who will win: Kacie Starr Triplett will win easily.

Who ought to win: While Ms. Triplett is a potential star (no pun intended) on the rise, the ward and city would be better served by the experience and policies of Christian Saller.

12th Ward: As I have written before, the city’s only Republican primary may have an impact on the Democratic contest for aldermanic president, by keeping Republicans in this ward from crossing over. Challenger Matt Browning’s inspiring story, seeking public service in a new arena after losing his law enforcement career (and both of his legs) to a drunk driver, makes him the most credible new city Republican candidate in years. Unfortunately, he chose to challenge 28-year incumbent Fred Heitert, the board’s only Republican and the only Republican to carry the ward in over a decade. Heitert has survived the ward’s political changes by being responsive to his constituents, bridging party divisions and getting along well with everyone. The 800-pound gorilla in the contest is the police vote. Large numbers of cops and their families live there, and neither candidate for board president is likely to attract them to the other primary. The St. Louis Police Officers Association formally endorsed Heitert, but many cops may find the loyalty of their “brotherhood” is stronger than their appreciation for Heitert’s legislative support for their agenda.

Who will win: Heitert relatively comfortably, but with an impressive minority for Browning, who could succeed Heitert when the latter retires.

Who ought to win: Heitert has served the ward well. Now that he has retired from his day job as an engineer, he will have even more time than before to serve his constituents.

18th Ward: A mismatch between African American incumbent Terry Kennedy and perennial Caucasian candidate Bill Haas in a ward where Haas’ CWE precinct is attached to an otherwise African American ward.

Who will win: Kennedy in the day’s most lopsided contest.

Who ought to win: In spite of his reputation as a gadfly, Haas would actually make a very good alderman. He is attentive to a fault. But he’s overmatched in this contest, in qualifications as well as in politics. While Mike McMillan is (and Lewis Reed wants to be) the “showboat” star of the black community, it is Kennedy that African Americans look to for leadership in serious matters. Kennedy deserves re-election.

20th Ward: For the second consecutive election, no African American candidate has filed for the seat that Mayor Francis Slay designed as a south-side black ward in the last redistricting. Alderman Craig Schmid is challenged by art gallery owner Galen Gondolfi. The main issue seems to be Gondolfi’s support for, and Schmid’s opposition to, more bars in the ward. A large non-voting non-citizen Hispanic community helps make this the lowest turnout ward in the city (although the Bosleys’ 3rd ward actually turned in a worse turnout last November).

Who will win: One reason that no African American has ever run for this seat is that African Americans are happy with Schmid’s representation. Schmid will win, but it will be close.

Who ought to win: I have had my disagreements with Schmid, but he’s the right guy. I admire his willingness to buck the archaic tradition of aldermanic courtesy when the matter directly affects the welfare of his ward. I also believe that Gondolfi is too tied to business interests, while Schmid will put the interests of ordinary people first.

22nd Ward: A re-match between Alderman Jeffrey Boyd and the man he unseated, Jay Ozier, in a ward with a history of voting irregularities. The smoke-filled rooms cloud the Oracle’s crystal ball, and I have no clue who will win. Neither should.

24th Ward: Another re-match pits Alderman Bill Waterhouse against former Alderman Tom Bauer, who was recalled over his support for eminent domain for commercial development and his use of SLAPP suits to silence opposition. Bauer, however, has tapped into an issue where Waterhouse is vulnerable, the latter’s support for the lease of Forest Park land to BJC, which is the subject of several huge lawn signs in the ward.

Who will win: Bauer will do better than critics expect, but Waterhouse will still win.

Who ought to win: Bauer is a nicer guy than his record makes him appear, but the SLAPP suits are a killer for me. Waterhouse makes President Bush look smart. No endorsement.

26th Ward: Yet another re-match, but with lots of twists. Alderman Frank Williamson should be a prohibitive favorite, and may be the only choice if litigation succeeds in removing challenger H. Lee Willis from the ballot at the last minute. This ward is the Clay family fiefdom, and Williamson has strayed. He and his predecessor, Irv Clay, are backing different candidates for board president, and Williamson also backed a different candidate than the organization in last summer’s hot contest for state senator. Williamson will still win. No endorsement.

The Post-Dispatch and Suburban Journals weren’t interested enough to endorse in contests other than the aldermanic presidency, and their reasoning in that race (one endorsement for each candidate by the commonly owned papers) was worthless. For an alternative set of thoughtful (though sometimes different) endorsements, check out Urban Review.

Endorsement: Re-elect Jim Shrewsbury

2007-03-02T12:32:00.000-06:00

On the surface, both candidates for aldermanic presidency in St. Louis are good, capable candidates with many similarities. Voters must decide whether to fire incumbent Democrat Jim Shrewsbury and replace him with 6th Ward Alderman Lewis Reed.

Both candidates have impressive aldermanic experience. Reed’s 8 years on the board is about average, but it is dwarfed by the 24 years (as either alderman or board prez) served by Shrewsbury. Only Fred Heitert, the board’s sole Republican, has served longer.

Both candidates claim to be embracing a Jeff Smith-like “for all St. Louis” approach bridging racial gaps, but, like in Smith’s own contest, support has lined up largely along racial lines. Breaches of the racial divide include Reed’s endorsement by five white aldermen and Shrewsbury’s endorsement by Sen. Maida Coleman, Alderman Bennice Jones King, former alderman Irv Clay and the Service Employees International Union.

Both candidates support civilian oversight of city police as proposed by 18th Ward Alderman Terry Kennedy. This has been an unfulfilled African American priority for a decade or more, but it is (wrongly) perceived as something that matters only to African Americans. That perception has been the biggest stumbling block to passage. Consequently, as one of its few white supporters, Shrewsbury’s re-election to his high-profile office will help get it done better than replacing him with an African American, whose support would be tacitly written off as race based. (This works the other way too: County Executive Charlie Dooley’s opposition to civilian oversight is more important to opponents than opposition by white officeholders.)

To their credit, according to the Vital Voice, both candidates “have been supportive of GLBT issues.” That is noteworthy, considering that Shrewsbury’s political base in southwest city and Reed’s political supporters in north St. Louis are the only two areas of the city that backed the anti-gay “definition of marriage” constitutional amendment.

To their mutual discredit, both candidates supported public funding for new Busch Stadium, and neither candidate has exerted leadership in either supporting or opposing the state takeover of city public schools. Shrewsbury has been criticized for his leadership role in guiding the current ward redistricting plan to passage, but I understand (but have not verified) that Reed also supported that bill.

Other important issues include exempting stock options from the city earnings tax, ending medical waste incineration and the candidates’ positions on the proposed lease of Forest Park land to BJC Health Center, which are discussed in detail in my earlier post below.

One major difference is responsiveness. Shrewsbury lists his home number in the phone book, and the after-hours recording on his office telephone suggests that you call him at home and also gives you the number, a practice which Reed actually criticizes. Shrewsbury returns phone calls promptly. In contrast, Reed’s home phone is unlisted, and the Arch City Chronicle notes, “sometimes you have to call him twice or three times to get his attention.”

Another major difference is style. Shrewsbury is a principled, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense guy who doesn’t “showboat” to the media. Reed has criticized Shrewsbury’s lack of “vision,” without really saying what that means. The contrast is reminiscent of that between Former Mayor Vince Schoemehl and Former County Executive Gene McNary. In describing their joint efforts for the region in the 1980s, Schoemehl explained that McNary “sold the steak,” while Schoemehl “sold the sizzle.” Notably, sizzle-selling Schoemehl’s ward organization backs Reed. But the “vision” thing doesn’t resonate with me. If “vision” means new proposals and new ideas, let’s see them! Reed offers hardly any specifics. The appeal seems to be an attempt to tap into the “style over substance” trend that is infecting society. I don’t buy it.

Reed touts the fact that a majority of sitting aldermen endorse him, but I regard this is another factor favoring Shrewsbury. The sad fact is that, with a very few exceptions, our board of aldermen is a really sad collection of pols. Mediocrity is a level of excellence to which many aspire at best. Shrewsbury has used his leadership to try to bring professionalism to the board, and the laggards resent it. They want Reed to put an end to that annoyance. Even a newspaper supporting Reed admitted that he “doesn’t list professionalism of the Board as a plank in his platform.”

The other element of the job, the key vote on the three-person Board of Estimate and Apportionment, is even more important. As I mentioned in the last post, Shrewsbury has been the independent swing vote on matters on which Slay has differed with Comptroller Darlene Green, the board’s third member. Unsubstantiated rumors persist that Slay recruited Reed to oppose Shrewsbury (or at least tacitly supports his candidacy) to try to get a more reliable supporter than Shrewsbury on the E&A board. Just a few months ago, this city voted overwhelmingly to oust Sen. Jim Talent, primarily because they regarded Talent as a “rubber stamp” for President Bush. I fear that Reed, who is married to a city judge appointed by Slay, would become a rubber stamp for Slay. Shrewsbury’s thoughtful independence is good for the city.

In making an endorsement, I should first make a disclaimer or two. I live in the 16th Ward, which Shrewsbury represented for 19 years before winning the presidency, and I know him. I once ran against him (long before I became the Oracle. If I had been the Oracle then, I would have foreseen how decisively he would beat me). Also, in offering this endorsement, I realize that, quite properly, hardly anyone cares who a newspaper endorses for what, and that mere bloggers are probably regarded even lower. What matters (or should matter) to readers is whether the reasoning behind the endorsement makes sense to the reader and her/his own values and priorities. The Post Dispatch, Suburban Journals and Arch City Chronicle made competing endorsements backed by reasoning that largely made no sense. I humbly offer the reasoning in this and prior posts for your consideration.

The city would easily be best served by re-electing Jim Shrewsbury. We need his knowledge and experience. His personal integrity is impeccable, he is principled to a fault, and he really does have the best interests of the entire city at heart. Firing someone as hard-working and self-sacrificing as Shrewsbury would send the wrong message to potential leaders of tomorrow.

Coming this weekend: Predictions, plus some ward-level endorsements.

Role reversal in board presidency race

2007-02-28T12:04:00.000-06:00

The St. Louis aldermanic presidency contest is a classic bout between a white incumbent and a black challenger, pitting a business-oriented insider against a progressive, independent advocate who’s willing to rock the boat. The twist is that the progressive boat-rocker is the white incumbent.

What distinguishes the candidates more than their race is the constituencies their records represent. In spite of his background representing the relatively wealthy and influential 16th Ward in southwest St. Louis, incumbent Aldermanic President Jim Shrewsbury has a solid record of looking out for the proverbial “little guy” (and, no, I’m not referring to Shrewsbury’s (or my) height). On the other hand, supporters of African American challenger Lewis Reed, the 6th Ward alderman, tout his record of supporting development. Much of the regentrification of the city that the administration of Mayor Francis G. Slay has subtly pushed has taken place with Reed’s backing in his ward, which has eroded the African American majority that the ward was given in the 2001 redistricting. Campaign finance reports show that developers and power brokers from the city’s wealthiest wards have provided Reed with the financial resources necessary to mount a credible challenge.

Three particular issues illustrate the contrasts between the candidates. First was the bill to exempt stock options from city earnings tax in 2000, when both Shrewsbury and Reed were aldermen. (Slay was then the board president, and the mayor was Clarence Harmon.) The exemption was a purer “tax cut for the rich” than anything ever proposed by Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. Most stock options go to wealthy executives, and poor people never get them, so exempting them from tax would benefit only the rich. The issue was not about jobs leaving town, because no employer would bolt and leave capital assets behind over whether a mere 1% tax applied to one portion of compensation. The bill was sponsored by Lyda Krewson, alderman of the 28th Ward, home to more corporate executives than any other ward. Corporate political action committees and executives made generous campaign contributions to supportive aldermen. The ostensible 28-1 Democrat majority passed this “tax cut for the rich” easily, with only four dissenting votes. Reed backed the bill, and Shrewsbury was one of the four who voted no. A majority of the bill’s Democrat backers who remain on the board, including Krewson herself, have lined up behind Reed in this election, compared to just one of the dissenters.

The second issue was medical waste incineration, a practice that produces cancer-causing dioxin, releases toxic gases that exacerbate asthma and other respiratory diseases (especially among children), and transforms metals like mercury and lead into gaseous forms that are more easily absorbed by the body. The Stericycle plant in the 2nd Ward in north St. Louis disposed of medical waste in that manner. St. Louis County had illegalized the practice, but environmentalists’ efforts to get a similar ban in the city had gotten nowhere for several years. The bill couldn’t even get a hearing in committee. Lack of support by 2nd Ward Alderman Dionne Flowers was a key obstacle. The young doctor who led the environmental effort even went to Flowers’ barber shop and got a haircut from her just to talk to her, but to no avail (except for the haircut). But Shrewsbury got behind the proposal shortly after succeeding Slay as board president, and was key in impressing Flowers with the bill’s importance and getting her on board. Shrewsbury also assigned the bill to a more receptive committee than the one previously assigned by Slay. I was one of the environmentalists who had supported the bill, and I attended the committee hearing when the bill finally got one. It was entertaining to see aldermen who had been so disinterested for so long and who weren’t even members of the committee show up and ask to be added then as co-sponsors, so they could claim credit for it. More pretenders did the same (in front of city cable TV cameras) when the bill went to the floor. It eventually passed by unanimous voice vote, and Stericycle converted its plant to use the safer autoclave procedure. Even though the final record shows the entire board in favor of the bill, the fact is that, without Shrewsbury’s hard work, it would have never passed. The entire city, and especially north St. Louis, owe Shrewsbury a great debt of gratitude.

The final and most recent issue is the proposed lease of a part of Forest Park to BJC Health Center. Reed voted to authorize the lease, siding with Slay, while Shrewsbury opposes it, siding with neighborhood activists in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood who want the park’s green space preserved. Neighborhood leaders conducted a successful petition drive to put voter approval of such transactions on the April ballot, and Slay and BJC hurried the process along to get the lease done before voter approval is required. Supporters of Reed and the BJC deal claim that the deal would create jobs in exchange for the park land, by enabling expansion of the city’s largest employer and from the planned construction on the leased land. Can you say “trickle-down economics”? After initially joining Shrewsbury in opposition, Comptroller Darlene Green, an African American, agreed to switch and join Slay in backing the lease if half of its revenue were reserved for the 42 parks north of Delmar, leaving the 62 parks on the south side and central corridor to share the other half. Shrewsbury stood his ground, standing up for the neighborhood most at risk, and for the principle of preservation of scarce urban green space. Reed stood with Slay, Big Business and “trickle-down” economics.

Even some Republicans are impressed with Reed’s support of developers, executive tax cuts and “trickle-down” economics. Former West County state rep Brent Evans and former Republican election board member, Talent-booster and Slay-appointed school board member James Buford have donated to Reed’s campaign.

Shrewsbury and Slay represented neighboring wards before advancing to their current offices, but they haven’t exactly been a “team”on the powerful 3-person Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Shrewsbury’s independence has made him the crucial swing vote on matters on which Slay has differed with Green, the board’s third member. Unsubstantiated rumors persist that Slay recruited Reed to oppose Shrewsbury (or at least tacitly supports his candidacy) to try to get a more reliable supporter than Shrewsbury on the E&A board. Slay has remained formally neutral in the contest; his father,23rd Ward Committeeman Francis R. Slay, backs Shrewsbury, while his alderman, Kathleen Hanrahan, backs Reed.

So, in this classic match up, the slick black dude is the proponent of Big Business, tax cuts for the rich, and “trickle-down” economics, while the little nerdy white guy is the true representative of ordinary people. Go figure.

Reed's early mailers miss the mark

2007-02-22T23:41:00.000-06:00

Lewis Reed appears to be first out of the box with direct mail for the March 6 Democratic primary for aldermanic president in the City of St. Louis. I received a couple mailings from his campaign this past week. I thought it interesting (and unconventional for an African American politician) that both pieces were printed by a white union shop in southwest city instead of a black-owned business. Perhaps Lew wanted to make a statement by shopping in the back yard of his opponent, incumbent Democrat Jim Shrewsbury. Or perhaps Reed wanted to emphasize that he is a south-sider, whose home is south of I-44.

But enough of the fluff. Let’s get to the content.

The first piece was purely a negative attack piece. It used the “Contact Jim Shrewsbury and tell him . . .” approach commonly used in independent expenditures by special interests that aren’t permitted to advocate directly the election or defeat of a candidate. In fact, the only place Reed’s name appeared was in the legally required “paid for by” disclaimer, and it was a white-on-yellow reverse that seemed to be difficult to read by design. The piece attempted to paint Shrewsbury as “soft on crime,” apparently based on a single budgetary decision by Shrewsbury concerning the circuit attorney’s office, but the mailer doesn’t specify exactly what it refers to.

The lack of specifics may have been because the charge isn’t really true. Shrewsbury’s first television commercial notes than he even turned over his city car to the circuit attorney’s office, but the issue is more complex than that. Budgetary decisions on the E&A Board involve splitting up a revenue pie that isn’t big enough to meet the city’s needs. Shrewsbury backed significant increases for the circuit attorney’s office at the very time that most other city agencies were forced to take cuts. Reed’s piece didn’t bother to mention what part of the city budget he would have cut to make room for even more funding for the circuit attorney.

Not that other opponents haven’t tried before to tag Shrewsbury as “soft on crime.” In Shrewsbury's first re-election campaign in the 16th Ward in 1987 his Republican opponent tried it, but it didn’t work. (Shrewsbury won 62% of the vote in what was then a Republican ward.) Perhaps Reed was trying to copy Darlene Green, who used the tactic more successfully when defeating Shrewsbury for comptroller in 1999.

The second piece was a positive piece, and it was better (except for not mentioning he is running as a Democrat, and a few embarrassing typos that slipped through). It was strong on Reed’s background, but it didn’t offer much about what he would do if elected or how he would do a better job than the guy he wants to replace. It touted the fact that a majority of the board’s members have endorsed him. However, given the general level of mediocrity of the board, that may be faint praise.

This is not an open seat, so Reed needs to convince voters that they ought to fire Shrewsbury. The biggest challenge for Reed’s campaign is that Shrewsbury’s record is actually quite strong. There’s still time to try to make that case, but he hasn’t made it yet.

House Democrats fumble another chance

2006-12-14T12:20:00.000-06:00

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Incoming U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has apparently “reached out” to the Bush Administration by putting the House Intelligence Committee in the hands of someone with whom the President can relate, an “intellectual equal,” so to speak.

Passing over senior committee members Jane Harman (D-CA) and Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Pelosi tapped Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) to head the committee that shares responsibility for the budgets and oversight of U.S. spy agencies and receive regular briefings on classified intelligence.

Voters ended 12 years of Republican control of Congress last month at least in part because they lacked confidence in the intellectually challenged president’s handling of foreign policy. But this doesn’t look like the kind of change we wanted. It doesn’t look like any change at all.

The Wall Street Journal has reported on Congressional Quarterly’s recent interview with Reyes in which the congressman demonstrated unfamiliarity with the most fundamental aspects of al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Notably, Reyes said he thought al Qaeda was predominantly Shiite, the Islaminc rivals of the predominantly Sunni al Qaeda that the terror group is targeting even more than American soldiers.

The Journal observed, “So it appears America will fight the next two years of the war on terror with an important Congressional post occupied by a man who has no grasp at all of the dynamics of the conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon and the broader Middle East. This isn't an auspicious start by Democrats who hoped to campaign in 2008 having established some credibility on national security.”

The wonderment, of course, is based on the fallacious assumption that there really is some significant difference between Republican and Democrat-run governments. There isn’t. Both dominant parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of the same power brokers.

But at least Bush has someone with whom he can feel comfortable and unintimidated when dealing with our foreign policy.

Browning's filing could affect contest for board prez

2006-11-27T21:22:00.000-06:00

A contested Republican primary on the southern edge of the city could have a significant impact on the Democratic Primary for President of the Board of Alderman.

One of today's surprises on the first day of filing for municipal offices in the City of St Louis was the filing of disabled retired police officer Matt Browning for alderman in the 12th Ward (south of Carondelet Park). Shortly thereafter, incumbent Alderman Fred Heitert also filed.

Heitert has rarely faced opposition during his 28-year tenure. But what makes this really interesting in the overwhelmingly Democratic city is that both incumbent Heitert and challenger Browning are Republicans. While the 12th is the second most Republican ward in the city (behind the 16th), Republican Sen. Jim Talent, who got the most votes of any Republican running in the ward this year, got less than 37% of the vote.

While the Heitert-Browning contest should be interesting if neither withdraws, it may have an even bigger impact on the Democratic primary for president of the Board. That contest is shaping up as a classic black vs. white barnburner between white incumbent Jim Shrewsbury and an African American challenger, 6th Ward Alderman Lewis Reed. In contests like that, most of the 20% or so of the city's Republican voters usually cross over and vote in the Democratic primary, usually for whichever Democrat is most conservative.

While not quite the most Republican ward, the 12th is nevertheless regarded as the city's most conservative. In the 2005 contest for Mayor, Republican crossovers swelled the ward's totals in the Democratic Primary and gave white conservative Mayor Francis Slay a big margin over black Alderman Irene Smith. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce enjoyed similar crossover support in her 2004 primary win over Jerald Christmas, and this year Shrewsbury would be expected to enjoy similar support against Reed (even though Shrewsbury isn't particularly conservative on matters not involving abortion - similar to Sen. Pat Dougherty). Shrewsbury won a big margin in the 12th when he first won the post by defeating 28th Ward Alderman Lyda Krewson. But with an interesting Republican Primary between Heitert and Browning, many 12th Ward Republicans will "stay home" and participate in their own party's business. Nearly every erstwhile Republican crossover who votes in her/his own primary instead is probably a lost Shrewsbury vote in the aldermanic presidency contest.

With the 12th being an important part of the high-turnout southwest city bloc that powers conservative Democrats to victory, one almost smells a rat, as though the impact on the aldermanic presidency contest were the prime motive for creating an unusual GOP primary contest as a diversion. Such would be consistent with the style of Reed consultant Richard Callow. But it's hard to imagine that scenario playing out with these players. Though conservative for my personal tastes, I regard both Heitert and Browning as class acts. While there is no love lost between the St Louis Police Officers Association and Shrewsbury, I can't really see the SLPOA going out of its way to help Reed. (The conspiracy theory would sprout into full bloom if the SLPOA were to endorse Reed.) Heitert also lacks any apparent motive to boost Reed over Shrewsbury. In fact, if the Shrewsbury-Reed contest appears close, I could even see Heitert opting to retire and eliminate the diversionary primary.

Let's see how filing proceeds, and see whether political unknowns file to create contested Republican primaries in other wards where Shrewsbury is expected to run strong (e.g., the 10th, 14th, 24th, or even Shrewsbury's own 16th).

Women, blacks, atheists powered Claire's win

2006-11-21T21:26:00.000-06:00

Claire McCaskill can thank women, African Americans and atheists for her victory in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race this year. These were the groups where there were significant shifts in party preference, relative turnout, or both, when compared to the 2004 presidential election, according to the Edison/Mitofsky Missouri exit polls for both years. The polls are published by CNN.

McCaskill won by getting bigger margins among voters who traditionally favor Democrats, and by those groups comprising a bigger share of electorate.

Perhaps the most decisive change in McCaskill’s favor was the return of the gender gap. Among male voters, Talent defeated McCaskill by the same five-point margin as Bush defeated Kerry. But it was a different story among women. McCaskill won 51% of women’s votes, six points better than Kerry, while Talent lagged nine points behind Bush. (In 2004, Edison/Mitofsky reported that Bush won among both men and women, and actually did better among women.)

McCaskill’s advantage among women was magnified by a surge in relative turnout. Women comprised 55% of the electorate this year, up two points over 2004. So her advantage was magnified by their greater weight.

The party vote of African Americans remained fairly constant from 2004 to 2006, but turnout is what made the difference. Blacks had given Kerry a 90%-10% advantage in 2004. This year, in spite of McCaskill’s neglect of black voters and Talent’s visible outreach towards them, McCaskill actually improved slightly upon Kerry, winning 91%-8%. But what made the black vote noteworthy was relative turnout, with African Americans comprising 13% of the electorate this year, compared to only 8% in 2004.

The opposite was true among voters lacking any religious affiliation, but the result still favored McCaskill. This group comprised 9% of the electorate both years. But McCaskill picked up eight points among atheists, routing Talent by 60 points, 78%-18%, significantly better than Kerry’s 72%-26% margin among that group.

At the other end of the religious spectrum, white “born again” Christians favored Talent over McCaskill, 74%-24%, virtually identical to advantage they had given Bush over Kerry. But that advantage was a little less meaningful this year, as those voters comprised only 31% of the electorate, compared to 35% in Bush’s victory in 2004.

All of the 2006 changes weren’t in Claire’s favor. Roman Catholics, who had given Kerry a one-point advantage in Missouri in 2004, went for Talent, 51%-46%. This is probably attributable to the high-profile opposition of both Talent and Roman Catholic leaders to the Missouri stem cell research ballot initiative. Catholic voters opposed that constitutional amendment by a 10-point margin, less than expected but by more than the margin they gave Talent, but Talent still benefitted among the 21% of the electorate in that bloc.

Perhaps the most surprising counter trend that helped keep the election close was the vote among senior citizens 65 and over. After having backed Kerry, 52%-48%, enough of them switched to give Talent a 50-47% advantage. The switch was more meaningful because of a surge in the bloc’s relative turnout, moving from just 11% of the electorate in 2004 up to 17% this year.

Claire the pro-lifer?

2006-10-08T12:11:00.000-05:00

Waffles for breakfast this morning. That's what Sunday morning television viewers got while watching Sen. Jim Talent and State Auditor Claire McCaskill field Tim Russert’s questions on today’s Meet the Press. Both candidates waffled like they were impersonating John Kerry.

For me, the most startling revelation was McCaskill’s statement that she would support a ban on partial birth abortion as long as it exempted abortions to save the life of the mother. Put in context, that’s a more radical anti-abortion position that President Bush, Sen. Kit Bond or even her opponent, Sen. Jim Talent, all of whom would also exempt abortions of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. It was apparently no slip of the tongue, because Russert specifically repeated the condition for the exemption, protect the life of the mother, and Claire repeated her support for such a ban.

The accepted pro-choice position for partial birth abortion is that the bill must exempt abortions necessary to protect the health of the mother. The difference between “life” and “health” is huge. The “health” exception is a hole in the ban that you can drive a Mac truck through. Subject to subjective interpretation, it makes getting an abortion as easy as getting out of jury duty for medical reasons. An exemption based on saving the mother’s “life” is more objective and much tougher. All but the most radical pro-lifers accept the “life” exception, and all but the most radical pro-choicers accept an illusory ban with the “health” exemption.

Russert’s prepared questions were tough and incisive, and made each candidate happiest when the other was being questioned. But he did miss one important follow-up opportunity. The program’s first question covered the Mark Foley sex scandal and allowed both candidates to claim how they wouldn’t have tolerated it. But later, McCaskill discussed how she thought Bill Clinton was a “great president” but that she wouldn’t want him anywhere near her daughter. So, if Foley was effective in his legislative duties (and I don’t know whether he was or not), would McCaskill have let him continue, just nowhere near her son?

Talent also did lots of waffling. He hemmed and hawed and hemmed and hawed some more when Russert painted him into a corner by asking Talent if he thought Bush was a great president, after having mentioned Bush’s frequent fundraising for Talent and Talent’s 94% pro-Bush voting record. Talent’s attempt to stress “the other 6%” wasn’t very effective. He would have been better off pointing out how statistically misleading the 94% figure is, because the majority of issues are really consensus based. His predecessor, Sen. Jean Carnahan (D), had a 73% Bush support record, so only about one vote in five is any different than with a Democrat in the chair. I don’t have the numbers, but I bet even Missouri’s most progressive representatives, Lacy Clay and Emmanuel Cleaver, support Bush a majority of the time when you count all the same issues.

Talent also muffed an opportunity when Russert questioned him about his 3-month-old statement that things in Iraq were going well. I thought the senator would respond that things in Iraq were going better three months ago than they are now, but he didn’t.

The real point about the Iraq war, that we shouldn’t have gone there to begin with and that withdrawal should take place now, not be phased over two years, never came up with these two contestants.

Of course, both candidates did a lot better than I would have done under similar fire. But their performances did highlight what the corporate media don’t want you to know - that’s there’s not all that much difference between the two, except maybe four years of seniority.

I’m happy there are other choices, notably Progressive candidate Lydia Lewis.

Talent, McCaskill conspire to preserve duopoly

2006-09-26T17:10:00.000-05:00

In the 1950s, when the Oracle and St. Louis television were both young, the Veiled Prophet Ball was a featured televised event. The restrictive organization of city’s upper crust used television to allow the masses to take a peak at the grandeur of their little members-only soiree that glorified themselves and their riches. It mattered not that some working man’s daughter was brighter, prettier or was more likely to make the community a better place, for the Queen of Love and Beauty was chosen just from among their own kind.

The upcoming senatorial debates between Republican Sen. Jim Talent and Democrat Claire McCaskill are reminiscent of those times. These two establishment campaigns have just agreed to their 5th joint debate – and the fourth limited to just themselves. The four duets will be televised live over free tv. The business community and the corporate media have eagerly cooperated to keep these private little parties a closed affair. Other candidates on the ballot, Libertarian Frank Gilmour and Progressive Lydia Lewis, are consciously and pointedly excluded. It matters not that they offer much different and perhaps better ideas. They’re not part of the private club, and this election is for members only.

While principled third parties from both sides of the political spectrum have alleged for years that Democrats and Republicans were really reading from the same corporate script, this year that’s literally happening. Talent and McCaskill’s unprecedented issuance of joint press releases about the debates that even include self-laudatory comments about the other seems to be a genuine smoking gun for conspiracy theorists.

The Missouri Press Association held a token all-candidate forum on September 15, nearly two months before the election, that was not broadcast or telecast live anywhere. Interested voters need to watch for video replays on C-SPAN (available only to subscribers of cable or satellite television) and its web site (available only to those with web access.)

None of this is an accident. A viable and principled third party candidate would be the corporate political establishment’s worst nightmare. Worse yet is evidence that the public is receptive, actually hungry, for just such a choice. A little publicized April 25 nationwide poll by Princeton Survey/Pew Research Center reported that 53% agreed that we should have a third major political party. The Oracle has circulated petitions to get the Green and Progressive Parties on the ballot every election since 2000, and found people more eager to sign this year than ever before.

The corporate political establishment clearly fears that non-corporate candidates like Lewis and Gilmour will expose how similar Talent and McCaskill really are. Both of them support the U.S. war in Iraq, differing only on how the war is managed. Talent and McCaskill both favor the death penalty, are anti-drug hardliners, and oppose same-sex marriage, differing only about whether a constitutional amendment is necessary. Both Talent and McCaskill favor health care plans that continue to rely on insurance companies, which Lewis contends are the heart of the problem. And they both appeal to anti-immigrant hysteria, promoting policies that are even farther to the right than President Bush! Lewis takes the opposite stand on all of those issues. Gilmour agrees more with Lewis than the other two, and in some cases suggests policies in the opposite direction (such as no government involvement at all with health care).

As this all evolves, it is increasingly clear that it is more important to the corporate political establishment to preserve their duopoly than whether Talent or McCaskill wins. Instead they are pulling out all the stops to insure that voters don’t know about Lewis or Gilmour or what they stand for.

The Green Party nationally (including its Missouri affiliate, the Progressive Party) was formed by people who were tired of the same business-oriented policies from the existing parties. While the Greens have roots that date back to the 1980s, their greatest growth prior to this year was inspired by disappointment in the unprogressive policies of the Clinton-Gore Administration, culminating in Ralph Nader’s presidential candidacy in 1996 and 2000. Progressives could not stay in a party whose President joined with House Speaker Newt Gingrich to pass the job-killing NAFTA free (not fair) trade agreement, who worked (in Clinton’s words) “to end welfare as we know it,” and who initiated massive aggression against other sovereign nations, seemingly bombing helpless nations whenever he needed to divert attention away from a personal scandal. Meanwhile, since Teddy Roosevelt left the White House, the Republican Party has offered few policies that progressives could support.

Lewis, the Progressive, notes wryly, “Democrats and Republicans are just opposite sides of the same coin, and that coin is in the pocket of corporate America.”

Greens and Progressives also recoiled from the deteriorating ethical standards in both parties. Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader set himself apart from partisan Democrats by announcing that, if he had been in Congress, he would have voted to impeach President Clinton for his obstruction of justice. Nader and the Greens also prophetically warned against the corporate greed and corruption that later came to pass. Even today the Greens (and the Progressive Party in Missouri) continue to be the only political party whose candidates are totally independent of corporate control because they refuse to accept money from corporations or corporate-sponsored political action committees.

Today, the situation is even worse, especially in Missouri. Republicans promote horrendous policies, while Democrats mimic them as best they can in order to pander to more conservative voters. Dr. Bill Hastings, Progressive Party candidate for Congress in the 9th District, notes the folly of that strategy. “Voters clearly see no reason to support Democrats running as conservatives when they can vote Republican in case they want to support conservatives.” Expanding on Hastings' sentiments, why would conservative voters fall for McCaskill's pandering when they already have the real thing in Talent?

The interests of progressive voters (and especially minorities) are taken for granted by Democrats and written off by Republicans. Progressives clearly need a party of their own, and the Progressive Party is here to answer the call. The Libertarian Party might make a similar case for itself on the right, but I’ll let them speak for themselves.

Big Business and Big Media are doing their best to suppress information about the real challengers. It’s up to the people to demand better from their public airwaves. Protest the exclusion of Gilmour and Lewis, and make “Tweedle Dee” Talent and “Tweedle Dum” McCaskill make a case for themselves against meaningful alternatives. If either Talent or McCaskill had any confidence in their positions and enough integrity to rock the boat, they would insist on the inclusion of the others.

Don’t count on it.

Examining the ‘Post curse’ in Republican primaries

2006-08-14T11:48:00.000-05:00

While the endorsement of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a valuable asset in most political contests, there is one venue where the paper’s imprimatur has come to be known as “the kiss of death.” That is in Republican Party primaries.

Most attribute this apparent effect on the general perception that the Post is a “Democrat” paper, a perception well-nurtured by the fact that the overwhelming majority of its endorsements in general elections go to Democrats over Republicans. In contests for offices with a Democrat incumbent seeking re-election, a Post endorsement of a Republican challenger virtually never happens. The fact that this year’s crop of Republican primary Post endorsees included a 2004 Green Party candidate, a candidate with an apparent Democrat past and a gay-rights activist may have also tainted the other endorsements in the minds of Republican voters. It is only natural that such a record would create distrust among Republicans deciding whom to nominate in their own primary.

In 2004, the Post’s endorsement of Councilman Kurt Odenwald in the contest for the Republican nomination for St. Louis County Executive is blamed by some as being decisive in Odenwald’s wafer-thin loss to former County Executive Gene McNary. It may have also played a role in Jay Kantzler’s 2002 upset loss to convicted felon Al Hanson in the GOP primary for State Auditor.

So, what about this year? Two thirds (8 out of 12) of the Republicans endorsed by the Post lost. In contrast, 71% of the Democrats the paper endorsed won their primaries.

Was the Post endorsement the “kiss of death” for Republicans, or was it merely coincidental?

The most prominent “casualty” was State Rep. Jack Jackson, who lost the GOP nod for State Auditor by less than a percentage point in spite of putting a half million dollars of his own cash into the campaign. However, Jackson carried most of the counties in the Post distribution area, including St. Louis County, the city, and neighboring St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin Counties. On the other hand, in a race that close, virtually every factor can be decisive. One can argue Jackson would have won enough additional votes here to win if he hadn’t had the endorsement.

The Post endorsed African American candidates for contested nominations for St. Louis area congressional seats, and both lost decisively. State Rep. Sherman Parker’s loss to 2nd District incumbent Rep. Todd Akin was widely expected, although the 8-to-1 margin was a bit sobering. The big surprise for non-insiders was former nominee Leslie Farr’s lopsided loss in the 1st District to newcomer Mark Byrne. Farr had recently demonstrated relative success in raising money, and had been establishing credibility among the media. The loss was apparently not racially based, as Farr lost in black city wards as well as in white suburbs. Could the endorsement of the liberal Post have caused voters to think Farr was too moderate?

In the only contested area GOP primary for the state senate, Post endorsee Councilman Joe Brazil was a 2-to-1 loser to new incumbent Sen. Scott Rupp. But Rupp is an incumbent, fresh off his victory to win the seat in a special election. Brazil also had to answer to a history of alcohol-related offenses and, even worse for Republicans, a political history in Florissant where he was apparently regarded as a Democrat.

Perhaps the most glaring defeat for a Post endorsee occurred in St. Charles County’s 13th state rep district, where Stephanie Bell finished dead last in a 5-way contest with less than 6% of the vote. She not only lost 8-to-1 to Dr. Bob Onder (The Oracle’s allergist), she even lost by 2-to-1 to the candidate who finished next-to-last.

In fact, the only Post endorsee to win a Republican primary for state rep was an incumbent. In addition to Bell, Post endorsees who lost were Charles Cuba in central St. Louis County’s 87th district, former rep. Steve Banton in the Wildwood-based 89th and Charles Stadtlander in Kirkwood’s 94th. The lopsided losses of Cuba, the 2004 candidate of the Green Party facing a Republican incumbent, and Stadtlander, a gay-rights advocate, were not surprising. However, the “Post curse” might be blamed in Banton’s case. As a seasoned house veteran, having served two prior districts before term limits, he offered experience rarely available in a post-term-limits universe (especially for someone under 60). He also enjoyed superior name recognition and was every bit as conservative as the district.

The survivors

Sen. Jim Talent won re-nomination easily in spite of the Post endorsement, but high-profile, scandal-free, non-controversial incumbents of both parties generally sail to renomination without regard to newspaper endorsements.

State Rep. Charles Portwood is a different story. Alcohol-related driving offenses two years ago made Portwood damaged goods. His recent actions distancing himself from unpopular Gov. Matt Blunt may not necessarily have played that well with Republican primary voters. Some may have even smelled a fish in the Post endorsement, suspecting that the pro-Democrat paper was merely trying to boost the weaker GOP candidate in order to help the Democratic nominee in November. (That conspiracy theory will pick up momentum if the Post doesn’t endorse Portwood then.) Portwood ended up winning by just 132 votes. Whether the Post nod restored his credibility and put him over the top or made the contest as close as it was is anybody’s guess.

Republican endorsees won nomination in county council races in St. Charles County and central/west St. Louis County. Joe Cronin won narrowly in St. Charles County, 53-47%, but I don’t have any background to analyze.

In the St. Louis County contest, political newcomer Colleen Wasinger, whom the Post endorsed, handily defeated Fenton Mayor Dennis Hancock. This was exactly the kind of down-ballot contest where the Post endorsement could have wreaked havoc, but didn’t. The Post (mistakenly in my judgment) characterized Wasinger as a moderate, which the Post regards as complimentary but most West County Republican primary voters do not. Hancock enjoyed superior name recognition from his two terms as Fenton mayor and an unsuccessful run for County Executive, as well as some “false return” name recognition in the form of voter confusion with former Congressman Mel Hancock (author of the Hancock Amendment) and former State Rep. John Hancock (who was actually a paid consultant for Wasinger). Both candidates sported endorsements from GOP township organizations and prominent politicians. Wasinger enjoyed a 2-to-1 fundraising advantage over Hancock, but she still raised less than $100,000, which trailed both council candidates in the neighboring 5th District and four of the five contenders in the similarly sized 4th senate district in the city. Wasinger’s campaign overcame the obstacles, perhaps including the Post endorsement, and prevailed by 61-39%.

The professor beats the pols

2006-08-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

After all the whining from supporters of four experienced legislators about how we couldn’t afford to elect a senator with no legislative experience, voters in the 4th senate district opted instead for the inclusive, principled advocacy of young college professor Jeff Smith. The margin was much larger than anyone expected.

As regular readers know, the Oracle had picked second-place finisher Yaphett El-Amin to eek out a narrow win. What happened? Well, thanks to very prompt election returns in ward-by-ward breakdowns that the City’s new Election Board and its new computer voting machines produced, we have some answers.

The reason for who won, as I had correctly forecast, was turnout. Fewer voters turned out this year than rookie Secretary of State Robin Carnahan had forecast: not only less than in the presidential year primary two years ago, but also substantially fewer than in the comparable election four years ago. Low-turnout elections favor candidates who can get their supporters to vote. I hadn’t thought that Smith supporters would do so, but they did, and Smith won.

Seven wards produced turnouts that, relatively speaking, exceeded projections for an election with this kind of turnout, and five others notably lagged those projections. All but one of those exceeding projections were wards in which Smith finished first or second, including his top three. In every ward but one, the increased relative turnout seemed to consist of Smith voters, because those wards also produced larger shares of the vote for Smith than I had projected. In contrast, all five underperforming wards were north side wards carried by El-Amin. Turnout in Ward 1, which is home to both El-Amin and Amber Boykins, was down 24% from the last state senate election four years ago. The only north-side ward that exceeded turnout projections was the 21st Ward, which El-Amin lost to Boykins.

Except for the 21st, turnout had a regional flavor. I had projected that the eight north-side wards would produce 41% of the district’s vote, but they only produced 37.5%. In contrast, I had projected that the four central/southeast wards where Smith was strongest would produce just 19% of the district’s vote, but they produced 22% instead. The six southwest wards that collectively gave Derio Gambaro a 3-point edge over Smith (and Smith a 43-point margin over El-Amin) produced nearly 41% of the vote instead of the 39% I expected. All of this worked to the benefit of Smith and to the detriment of El-Amin.

In addition, El-Amin failed to dominate the African American vote by the extent that she needed to win. I had written last week that she could win district-wide by winning 70% of the African-American vote. Because of the disproportionate turnout, she actually would have needed 76% from the eight north-side wards. She got a little less than 56%. The seemingly moribund Boykins campaign came back to life the final week, and Boykins snared 27% of the north side vote and nearly 13% overall. In the white and integrated wards, Boykins’ share of the vote for African-American candidates increased. In the six southwest city wards, Boykins matched El-Amin’s total.

Also, as previously forecast, El-Amin’s efforts to win white support among fellow Muslims in the Bosnian community went nowhere. In the 14th Ward, whose 4th District precincts included substantial numbers of both Bosnians and African-Americans, El-Amin won less than 5% of the vote. Results in the demographically similar 5th precinct of the 10th Ward won’t be known until precinct results are issued.

Third-place Derio Gambaro fared only a percentage point better than I had forecast. The only wards where he scored significantly better than my own (unpublished) forecasts were on his home turf. He won an extra 5% in his home 10th Ward and an extra 4% in the 24th (which he still lost to Smith), which was in the state rep district he had represented and where he was committeeman before ward redistricting divorced his Hill neighborhood from then-Alderman Tom Bauer.) Gambaro didn’t win, or even seriously contend, because his south-side strength could not overcome getting less than 1% in the eight north-side wards.

Smith’s biggest disappointment had to be the continued dominance of racial voting, in spite of Smith’s dedicated efforts to woo African American votes. Smith won just 10.6% in the eight north-side wards, short of my own (unpublished) pessimistic forecast of 12.5%. (Smith won 20% in the 26th Ward, but that ward has a larger white minority than other north-side wards in the district.) This was well short of totals earned by whites such as Mayor Francis Slay, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and Smith’s predecessor, Sen. Patrick Dougherty, in recent, similarly racially divisive contests, but all of them did so running as incumbents, and with at least some north-side ward backing. Smith’s 10% (11 times better than fellow white Gambaro) realistically wasn’t bad for a non-incumbent facing three well-known African American opponents.

White cops issue last-minute smear

2006-08-07T10:59:00.000-05:00

This morning, crews from STL Direct were distributing flyers in my 16th Ward neighborhood (and elsewhere, I'll bet) that claim to have been paid for by the St. Louis Police Officers Association PAC. I don't doubt the accuracy of the disclaimer. That's the union-like organization of mostly white police. African American officers have a separate organization.

Ripping off the name of Howie Mandel's game show, the brochure is titled "Deal or No Deal?" It goes on to allege that out of state "politicians" are trying to get voters to elect Jeff Smith to be "their" state senator, with contributions totalling $25,000. It urges voters to pick Derio Gambaro instead.

Distributed on the day before the election, it is timed to hit without an opportunity for response. Such a response might include the fact that $25K is less than 10% of Smith's warchest, and that it is far less than the much larger sums Gambaro himself has received from out-of-district (some of it also out-of-state) and out-of-party sources. Pure hypocrisy.

The flyer also doesn't mention its true motivation. This is payback by the cops to Gambaro for his loyal support of cops' politically unpopular efforts not to be required to live in the city that pays their salaries. Cops also recognize that Gambaro is the only senate candidate (out of five) that opposes a civilian oversight board. Some cops, the bad apples, like to mess with people, cheat, plant evidence, and sometimes beat the crap out of a suspect who they decide (as prosecutor, judge and jury all wrapped up into one tarnished blue uniform) doesn't "respect" them enough, all in the name of "leveling the playing field" in a job where hardened criminals don't play fair either. They like the current system, where Internal Affairs goes through the motions of review and the police board pretends to provide civilian oversight, but where most atrocities get swept neatly under the rug, time and time again. They trust Gambaro as the only candidate who is willing to let them keep doing as they please.

Handicapping the 4th District senate race

2006-08-02T11:34:00.000-05:00

Five major candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination for the open 4th District senate seat. Winning 30% of the vote should be enough, but a little less might suffice. In a similarly splintered 5-way contest for the Republican nod in the 2nd congressional district in 2000, 26% was enough for underdog state rep. Todd Akin.

Impact of turnout

As noted in my July 29 post, this should be a low turnout election, which means that getting one’s known supporters to vote will be more important than persuading undecideds to vote for you. Whichever candidate most effectively gets her/his supporters to vote probably wins.

Each candidate has some organizational support from party regulars, but none of them dominates this aspect. Organizational support is more important for turning out supportive voters than for influencing how people vote, as the impact of ward endorsements on how the ward actually votes has been eroding steadily for more than 50 years. In this election, an endorsed candidate will win the ward less than half the time.

The votes of motivated single-issue voters are also split. Conservative Derio Gambaro is only competitive because of strong support from voters opposing abortion and GLBT rights, supporting school choice and opposing civilian oversight of police, as well as strong ethnic loyalty from Italian Americans. Jeff Smith scores with lifestyles voters concerned about losing abortion and GLBT rights. Amber Boykins might have a cross-racial niche with teachers (thanks to the Local 420 endorsement), but that appeal probably loses out to the perception that her campaign has faded.

But the most important single-issue motivator is race. The historically African American district (whose history traces back to Missouri’s first black state senator) now has just a slight African American majority in population and a slight white majority of registered voters. But that racial balance does not mean it is integrated; the north end is mostly black and the south end is mostly white. The district’s only white senator in the last 46 years is its current one, term-limited Sen. Pat Dougherty. Consequently, whites are largely content with the status quo, while many African Americans long to take back “their seat.” Discontent is a better motivator than contentment, so African American candidates gain that motivational advantage in an otherwise low-turnout election.

The 4th district was progressive enough to give John Kerry more than 80% of its presidential votes in 2004, but not so progressive that about 90% of its voters won’t end up backing a candidate of their own race. This is partially because most of the candidates aren’t even trying to reach voters of the other race, even though all but one have raised over $100,000 and therefore have the funds to do so. For example, my wife and I are highly targeted “frequent voters” in the white south end of the district, but we didn't receive a single piece of direct mail from any African American candidate until today. Similarly, a black blogger I know was surprised to hear about Gambaro’s direct mail pieces, because he hadn’t received any of them up north. The only candidate doing more than token campaigning district-wide is Smith.

The other big factor is the effectiveness of grassroots organization, especially in getting out the vote (GOTV). All candidates have good records of that, but one’s is different from the others. While all have the benefit of experienced traditional ward organizations, Smith also has a youth-oriented set of volunteers who nearly pulled off an upset win over Russ Carnahan in the 2004 3rd District congressional primary, now memorialized in the prize-winning documentary, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? That near-miss was powered by a virtually unprecedented mobilization of young voters. That is a very self-indulgent “me-centered” voting group for whom personal lifestyle is the most important motivator. They have the worst turnout record of any age group, apparently because taking time out to vote and doing the personal planning necessary to insure that voting finds a place in the schedule are often low priority unless they feel personally threatened. This is especially true in an off-year primary election. Smith succeeded in reaching those voters and motivating them to vote in 2004. Whether he can repeat that success in this lower-profile contest will probably determine whether he wins or loses.

Analysis by candidate

Former alderman Kenny Jones has by far the most legislative experience, but has raised little money. Money is more important than experience for both the Democratic and Republican Parties. Jones does have the endorsement of his own ward organization (the 22nd) and also the midtown 17th. But he is also haunted by whispers that he may be implicated in the pending scandal involving fraudulent petition signatures in an unsuccessful drive to recall Alderman Jeffrey Boyd. Jones should be given the benefit of the doubt unless and until charges are filed, and he deserves to fare better, but he will finish last with less than 5% of the vote.

African American state rep. Amber Boykins showed early signs of support across racial lines. She started fast with significant fundraising success, won a couple endorsements in white wards, and enjoyed a slight lead in an early poll commissioned by opponent Smith. But her campaign seems to have fizzled down the stretch. The only recent good news was the endorsement by the teachers union, but they aren’t working for Boykins the way they did for successful school board candidates Donna Jones and Peter Downs. Voter backlash against Downs and Jones following their ouster of Superintendent Creg Williams may even make the Local 420 endorsement damaging to her. I now expect Boykins to finish fourth.

Derio Gambaro, who is white, is a conservative in a liberal district, but he should be favored to win against a progressive vote split four ways. But his base support quickly eroded, as leaders of the three most conservative wards endorsed other candidates, and Gambaro alienated many conservatives with his unpopular support for eliminating police residency requirements and his seemingly arrogant personal demeanor. Gambaro is openly courting Republican crossover votes, backed by some key GOP committee members, but those votes are less important because they come from outside the typical Democratic primary electorate, not at the expense of one of his opponents. His well-financed campaign produces literature that is slick but not all that effective. (The anti-Smith crossword puzzle attack piece was cleverly done, but full of cheap shots and distortions. Two pieces focusing on eminent domain (a once-hot issue whose importance has dropped like a rock after the Republican legislature seized the opportunity and acted on the issue) feature a photo of Gambaro in front of a bulldozer in a pose that strikes me as a “Dukakis in the tank” moment.) Gambaro supporters are confident because they see lots of his lawn signs and other positive reinforcement all around them (including today’s endorsement by the South City, South Side and Southwest City Journals); but there aren’t enough like-minded voters district-wide to pull it off. Gambaro will do better than many have predicted, but his south-side strength cannot overcome finishing dead last everywhere north of Delmar. Gambaro will finish just a respectable third with maybe 22%. (See my July 9 post for more about Gambaro's chances.)

Two-term state rep. Yaphett El-Amin, who has the advantage of being listed first on the ballot, is seeking to consolidate African American support with an in-your-face appeal to voters who resent white representation of the historically African American district. Supporters include most black ward organizations, Organization for Black Struggle, SEIU Local 2000 and ACORN. Endorsements of the black weeklies aren’t out yet, but El-Amin is expected to sweep both the St. Louis Argus (owned by her father) and the St. Louis American. Her main strategy seems to be copied from the reputed Karl Rove playbook: Incite your base by taunting voters who aren’t going to vote for you anyway. She politicized July’s power outages in appearances with Rev. Al Sharpton, and her campaign is connected with a “push poll” and press release that pointedly referred to Smith as the “known Caucasian.” (Poor Derio is just as Caucasian, but apparently less “known.”) While these tactics alienated many white voters, they helped El-Amin cement her appeal as the leading candidate in the black community. She gained support at the expense of fellow blacks Boykins and Jones. She alienated voters like myself who had respected El-Amin but who were realistically already planning to vote for someone else. That works just fine for El-Amin. However, a supplemental strategy to play the religion card to fellow Muslims in the Bosnian community currently shows no visible signs of success. El-Amin went to the expense of printing a special batch of Bosnian-language lawn signs (and a billboard), but her only lawn signs in the district’s Bosnian neighborhood appear to be those on the Islamic Community Center property, which strikes me as improper.

Jeff Smith, a white college professor, is taking the opposite tack: seeking to form a broad cross-racial appeal that lends itself to representing the diverse district effectively. His passionate advocacy of progressive ideals wins the respect not only of progressives, but also moderates and even some conservatives, in the same manner that conservatives Ronald Reagan and John Ashcroft won the respect of moderate voters who admired them for standing up for their principles. Smith’s well-organized ground game is winning new supporters every day. On a personal level, he is the hardest working, most energized candidate the Oracle has ever seen. The 2004 outsider now enjoys establishment backing from many labor unions and ward leaders, including Francis Slay, father of the mayor. Both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Arch City Chronicle have endorsed Smith.

Who wins and why

Any candidate that can dominate the vote among her/his own race wins. Down south, the white vote is divided by abortion. 2004 Democratic primary results in the 3rd congressional district portion of this district (the white southern half) showed that 43% chose pro-life candidates (i.e., neither Smith nor Carnahan nor any other pro-choice candidate). While most of the remaining 57% (as well as some prominent pro-lifers like the elder Slay) will back Smith, pro-life Gambaro’s total will erode part of the white vote that Smith needs to win. The idealist Smith is not inclined to appeal to the racial fears that might convince Gambaro backers to switch. Moreover, today's mail also produced four blistering attack pieces, two each from Smith and Gambaro attacking each other. Both probably alienated south-side supporters of the other who might have otherwise considered them a "lesser evil" when confronted with the possibility of insensitive representation by a north-side senator.

Up north, the 3-way split of the black vote first appears to be hopelessly splintered, given the intense personal animosity among the black candidates. But a strong underlying desire of black voters to retake “their seat” will cause many to coalesce behind whichever black candidate seems to be strongest. At the moment, that would seem to be El-Amin, whose campaign is peaking at exactly the right time. 70% of the black vote equals 30% of the district vote, probably enough to win. That’s a challenging number, but the apparent collapse of the Boykins campaign gives El-Amin a chance to pull it off.

Smith’s hopes depend on the effectiveness of his GOTV efforts. If he repeats what he did in 2004, he overcomes even a united north side and wins. But the “Rock the Vote” political awareness and anti-Amendment 2 fervor that made voting a high priority for Smith voters in the 2004 primary aren’t in play now. Sentiment that Smith has it in the bag makes motivating these voters even harder. Smith has an excellent campaign crew that has a really tough challenge. I think they will fall short.

My call is that El-Amin will edge Smith for the win. I would like nothing better than for Smith supporters whom I have identified as poorly motivated to prove me wrong. Smith and his loyal cadre of hard workers deserve better.

Turnout dynamics for the August primary

2006-07-29T16:57:00.000-05:00

The outcome of any election is determined by who votes. Answering the phone and telling a pollster who you like doesn’t count. Only the people who go to the trouble either to go to the polls during the 13-hour allotted period or to cast an absentee ballot actually count.

The Missouri primary is an “open” primary, meaning any registered voter can cast votes in any party’s primary. The voter has no obligation to vote for the same party or candidates in the November general election as she/he did in the August primary. Nevertheless, many voters shun voting in a primary. First, they need to be knowledgeable enough to be able to pick particular candidates, without being able to just vote a “straight ticket.” That is an intimidating chore to many. Primary voters are also obligated to announce to the election judge (and anyone else in earshot) which party’s ballot they want. That too is intimidating to many. And once the choice is made, one cannot “split the ticket” in the primary, by voting, for example, for a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator and for one of the five Republicans running for state auditor. As a result, primary elections almost always draw fewer voters than general elections, even in party-dominant areas like St. Louis where the most important decisions are made during the primary.

Even among voters willing to jump through the hoops to vote in a primary, turnout rates vary a lot. Primaries in non-presidential years (like this one) usually draw fewer voters than presidential-year primaries. For example, in the primary two years ago, early GOTV efforts by MTV’s “Rock the Vote” and George Soros-financed groups like America Coming Together had already increased political awareness among young voters who were highly motivated to unseat President George W. Bush, inspiring many of them to vote in a primary for the first time (even though Bush would not appear on the ballot until November). Other items on the same ballot, such as contentious races in other contests and controversial ballot measures, also raise turnout in a particular primary election. Two years ago, turnout in the primary was inflated by interest in the “definition of marriage” constitutional amendment and the contentious gubernatorial bout between Gov. Bob Holden and challenger Claire McCaskill.

All of those factors caused turnout in 2004 to be relatively high for a primary. Those factors aren’t present now to motivate voters to take part in the 2006 primary. Moreover, the external factors that are at work this year are having exactly the opposite effect. Most notably, numerous scandals involving prominent people in both major parties have made voters weary and disgusted with both Republicans and Democrats. Earlier primaries in other states have recorded very low turnouts, and Missouri shouldn’t be any different. Bottom line: Turnout on August 8 will be very low.

Each vote in a low-turnout election has disproportionately more clout than when diluted by the votes of more casual voters in a high-turnout election. Low-turnout elections favor the following kinds of candidates:

1. Those who are or who are backed by party regulars, especially those whose followers are dependent on party patronage. These people always vote, as though their very livelihood depends on it, because for many it really does. Their candidates do better when their votes aren't diluted by many casual voters.

2. Candidates with a good grassroots organizations, especially GOTV “ground games.” The candidate who can get more “casual” voters favoring her/him to vote has a big advantage over an opponent who cannot motivate her/his supporters off the couch. Only the votes that are actually cast count. The one-on-one action of grassroots activity reaches relatively few voters. The injection of those relatively few voters is most decisive in low-turnout elections.

3. Candidates who appeal to highly motivated single-issue voters. What motivates voters varies from year to year, but racial and ethnic appeals, stands appealing to either religious fervor or threats to lifestyle (such as abortion) and chauvinistic appeals to patriotism are usually good bets. Appeals to class warfare are less effective in a primary, when all of the contestants are probably on the same side.

These are the factors shaping what the Oracle’s crystal ball sees happening on August 8. The first predictions will surface in the special election edition of the Arch City Chronicle, which will be available in hardcopy on August 1.

'Niche' strategy will fall short in 4th district

2006-07-09T00:46:00.000-05:00

In a “plurality wins” system with no runoff, “niche” strategies often allow someone well out of step with the district’s majority to win in a multi-candidate field by staking out an isolated “niche” identity with voters against opponents who divide the majority vote. The niche may be a racial, ethnic, religious or lifestyle minority, but it most often is a minority ideological position. When several strong candidates voicing the majority views of the district vie for the same audience, a single candidate voicing the opposite point of view has a chance to unite the district’s minority into a voting bloc that, though well short of a majority, nevertheless wins the election by collecting more votes than any single proponent of the majority point of view.

Such a strategy gave Todd Akin the Republican nomination in 2000 for the congressional seat he now holds. Akin rode the support of highly motivated evangelical Christians (who are a minority in urban and suburban areas even among Republicans) to victory over four well-known, better funded and more moderate opponents to win with less than 26% of the vote. (That election was also a textbook case in effective GOTV work, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Some “niche” strategies are in progress in the August primary. The most prominent is in the Democratic primary for the state senate in the very progressive 4th District in the City of St. Louis. This is a district that gave Democrat John Kerry more than 80% of the vote while he lost Missouri decisively. Census figures say more than 55% are black or mixed race. A solid majority of its voters are pro-choice and solidly against school vouchers. The northern half of the district
is predominantly African American and solidly pro-choice. The more conservative southern half of the district is in the 3rd congressional district, scene of a spirited 10-candidate Democratic primary contest for the seat vacated by Rep. Richard Gephardt in 2004. In that part of the 4th District, the “pro-choice” candidates outpolled the “pro-life” candidates, 57% to 43%. While Russ Carnahan won the primary, runner-up Jeff Smith carried the 4th District portion by over five percentage points.

Smith, who is white, is now running for the 4th District senate seat, and the 28% of the vote he won in the congressional primary in the new district forms an excellent base of support. Many African Americans believe they are entitled to retake the seat that had been theirs for 40 years before the tenure of retiring incumbent Pat Dougherty, but their votes are divided among three well-known members of their community, two state reps (Amber Boykins and Yaphett El-Amin) and a former alderman (Kenny Jones). Derio Gambaro, a white former state rep. and former Election Board chair, rounds out the field.

Many observers dismiss Gambaro because his conservative views are so out of step with the majority of the district. But in a 5-way contest with four opponents who are all progressive, pro-choice, and favor civilian oversight over police, Gambaro’s pro-life, pro-police, pro-vouchers and other more-conservative-than-the-field stands are actually his strength. That’s his “niche.”

If you combine the southern half’s projected 43% pro-life vote, with assorted additional (albeit somewhat overlapping) support from white police officers and their families and proponents of school vouchers, Gambaro should have a better base of support than Smith or any of the African American candidates. Whether by intentional design or mere happenstance, Gambaro’s “niche” strategy makes this election his to lose.

But at this point, it looks like Gambaro is doing just that. The niche strategy requires unity within the niche, and that’s not happening. As fellow blogger Antonio French pointed out, the earliest breach came from the heart of Italian-American financial support, when Democratic Party powerbroker Luther Boykins, father of candidate Amber Boykins, got well-known and well-connected Italian-American powerbrokers Kim Tucci and former state rep. Anthony Ribaudo on board for the younger Boykins. They were influential in getting Boykins the endorsements of the south side 12th and 15th Wards. Boykins won’t win either ward, but Gambaro’s early viability suffered.

Ward leaders and organizations of the city’s two other most conservative wards (16 and 23), which together with the 12th ought to be Gambaro’s home turf, backed Smith. All three organizations had backed pro-life former state rep. Joan Barry in the 2004 congressional primary, and all three were carried by another pro-life candidate, Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza. In the 16th, many believe that Gambaro’s perceived involvement in negative attacks against State Rep. (and 16th Ward Committeeman) Fred Kratky by Gambaro protege Shonagh Clements in the 2002 primary for Gambaro’s former house seat have come home to haunt in Kratky’s and the 16th Ward organization’s endorsement of Smith. The Oracle isn’t aware of any similar Gambaro gaffe that cost him the 23rd, but the imprimatur by committeeman Francis Slay, the dean of the party and father of the mayor, was a major boost for the Smith campaign. While Gambaro will still probably carry all three conservative wards, the organizational endorsements will hold down the margin Gambaro needs there to win the district.

In the 24th Ward, which was Gambaro’s home ward before redistricting sent Gambaro and his Hill neighborhood into the new 10th Ward, Gambaro won the organizational endorsement, but much bitterness remains with the ward’s alternate organization, which had been at odds with Gambaro’s organization and loyal to former Alderman Tom Bauer prior to Bauer’s recall. Bauer’s organization is even more conservative than the one that endorsed Gambaro, but it is doubtful that these natural ideological allies will forget the old hostilities. The electorate in the Dogtown, Clifton Heights and Ellendale neighborhoods comprising the 24th Ward are more progressive than either Democratic club, and Smith should win the ward handsomely.

While Gambaro has the formal and enthusiastic backing of most white police organizations, the basis of their loyalty is less about Gambaro’s opposition to civilian oversight than his record of support for eliminating city residency requirements for police officers. Most voters in Gambaro’s conservative south side base favor police residency requirements, and Gambaro’s opposition will alienate many of them.

Gambaro also appears to be his own worst enemy in personal appearances in his south side base. He consciously projects a confident, knowledgeable image, to contrast with college professor Smith’s lack of actual elective governmental experience. But there is a point where confidence morphs into cockiness and arrogance, and it appears to the Oracle and others in the audience that Gambaro regularly crosses the line. Catty remarks aimed at Smith have backfired.

Gambaro’s “niche” of conservative Democrats may account for as much as 25% of the district’s vote, and Republican crossovers (which Gambaro is openly courting) could add a couple more points, but there are enough erosions in the conservative niche to hold Gambaro’s share of the vote to 19-21%. That may be good enough for a respectable third-place finish, but not enough to win, which will take at least 30%.

Who was--and wasn't--at Gay Pride parade

2006-06-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

St. Louis area politicians flocked to take part in what organizers called the biggest Gay Pride parade ever in St. Louis on Sunday.

In the spirited contest for the 4th District senate seat, all but one campaign had some representation in the parade, including two or three of the candidates. Frontrunners Jeff Smith and Amber Boykins appeared in the parade, and it was difficult to tell whether or not Yaphett El-Amin was in the car bearing her signs (a closed sedan containing two people waiving). While the campaign of Derio Gambaro (on record opposing gay rights) did not have an entry in the parade, a car carrying an alderman displayed his signs (more later). No presence was noted for the fifth candidate, former alderman Kenny Jones.

Mayor Francis Slay, Comptroller Darlene Green and Aldermanic President Jim Shrewsbury (wearing a Stonewall Democrats t-shirt) were all in the parade, as were License Collector and aspiring Collector of Revenue Gregg Daly and his aspiring replacement, Alderman Mike Millan. Other notables included State Sen. Maida Coleman, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, and several aldermen and state reps.

No candidate for statewide office either appeared or was represented in the parade. While neither U.S. Senator Jim Talent nor his likely Democratic opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, made an appearance, a possible opponent of both was busy on the sidelines. Lydia Lewis, who is seeking the Progressive Party nomination for that office, was spotted on the east side of Grand collecting signatures to get her party on the ballot. No candidates for state auditor made a parade appearance.

The Smith campaign entourage had a little surprise for the audience. The passenger in a convertible with signage for Smith waived enthusiastically at the crowd, but the guy wasn’t Smith. The candidate himself trailed the car by about 30 feet, coming to the sidelines to shake hands with a visibly supportive crowd. It was a Jimmy Carter moment.

On the downside for Smith, the car bearing signage for Gambaro was courtesy of 23rd Ward Alderwoman Kathleen Hanrahan, whose ward organization headed by Francis Slay has endorsed Smith. One wonders whether and how serious a split may have developed in that ward’s organization, at least in this contest.

Jeff Smith on St. Louis Mag's A-List

2006-06-17T20:58:00.000-05:00

"Jefferson City may want to brace itself for some unexpected incoming energy," says the new July issue of St. Louis Magazine. The "Players" section of its "A List" names 4th District senatorial hopeful Jeff Smith as the "up-and-coming politician." (Take that, Mike McMillan!) The publication touts Smith as "new-school in his grassroots tactics, using the Web, coffee klatches and a legion of volunteers; raising his money through small donations; and urging urban renewal, social justice and environmental stewardship." In naming 136 people, places and things on the list, the self-described "premier lifestyle magazine" of St. Louis (with the help of 23 separate reporters) claims not to be "picking favorites," but "singling out the stars."

Perhaps more interesting will be whether (and if so, how) this has any impact on the campaign. While it's nice to have such nice things said about one right before a key election, it might also provide fodder for whispering campaigns and anti-Smith blog commentators who deride the city candidate's Clayton/Ladue background. The magazine touts itself as reaching an audience of "active, affluent adults," with a six-figure median income and nearly a third being millionaires. With a Democratic primary electorate that loves to hate "tax cuts for the rich," this may well be a tempting target for Roosevelt-era class warriors who haven't noticed that rich people in urban areas are now just as likely to be Democrats as Republicans. Moreover, Smith shares the St. Louis Magazine stage with such unLadue notables as DJ Needles, DJ Bishop, Praix, Bennie Smith, Hamiet Bluiett (surprise winner over Erin Bode for jazz artist), City Museum, Venice Cafe, Star Clipper comics, South Side Cyclery, Volpi's, Berix Coffeehouse and Deli, and most ironically, Missouri Baking Co., the business of the family of fellow 4th-District candidate Derio Gambaro.
The smart move would be for Smith not to tout the distinction and for his opponents not to take cheap shots at it.

Other notable A-List inclusions for political junkies include Sam Koplar as "mover and shaker," photographer Suzy Gorman as "image consultant," and The Royale as the best casual bar.

Analysis of new Missouri campaign disclosure law

2006-05-13T21:27:00.000-05:00

The legislature passed, and Gov. Matt Blunt says he will sign, HB 1900, which revises Missouri’s campaign finance disclosure law. The major media and the major parties have focused on the bill’s elimination of the dollar limits that can be given to candidates and the imposition of a new ban on monetary contributions to candidates by party committees. An examination of what the bill does and doesn’t do indicates that there is more – and less – than meets the eye.

The first thing to note is something the bill doesn’t do, and that’s have any impact whatsoever on this year’s election. It’s not a Republican plot to reelect Sen. Jim Talent. It does not apply to this year’s U.S. Senate or congressional contests because it doesn’t (and couldn’t legally) apply to federal elections. And it doesn’t apply to state and local contests on this November’s ballot (including the race for State Auditor) because the law’s provisions don’t take effect until January 1, 2007.

HB 1900 does indeed eliminate the dollar limits that can be given to candidates, consistent with the current absence of limits on contributions to political parties, ballot measure campaign committees and political action committees. This will increase the sums that candidates receive directly to run their campaigns.

Who benefits?

Historically, the contests that draw the big bucks are for governor and state treasurer. When Missouri courts finally cleared the way for the limits to apply in 1999, the last-minute push for legal over-the-limit contributions primarily benefitted Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Holden and his Republican counterpart Jim Talent. Banking interests historically invested heavily in campaigns for state treasurer.

Conventional wisdom has it that these higher limits will benefit Republicans, because of the perception that Republican contributors have deeper pockets. That perception is based on the class-based party alignments initiated by the election of President Franklin Roosevelt. But those New Deal coalitions have gradually collapsed in both major parties, and today the monied financial interests are nearly as likely to support Democrats as Republicans. In addition, “bandwagon” contributors who like to back perceived winners flock to Democrats in a year that is expected to favor that party. Democrats probably wish the changes took effect this year.

Looking ahead to 2008, the biggest beneficiary of this action by the Republican legislature will likely be Attorney General Jay Nixon, the frontrunner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Trial lawyers (primarily those representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases) rival organized labor as the single most important source of Democratic campaign cash, and Nixon made millionaires of many of them in outsourcing representation of the state in the class action against big tobacco companies. Prior to this legislation, the lawyers could “thank” Nixon with no more than $2,550 per election cycle ($1,275 each for the primary and general elections). But now Nixon can expect “thanks” more commensurate with the benefit received. The lawyers may up the anne even further by trying to one-up one another in currying favor with the possible new guv.

Supporters of the legislation claimed that big money was getting to candidates anyway by funneling unlimited contributions to political party district committees, which then used their larger limits to pass the money on to the candidates. Those limits were meaningless because of the hundreds of possible party committees who could each use those higher limits. One example of how these committees were used was the large donations of Holcim executives to Democratic Party committees, who passed the funds on to then-Governor Holden’s unsuccessful 2004 reelection bid. Holcim was appreciative of Holden’s Department of Natural Resources rolling over and approving its environmentally toxic new cement plant near Ste. Genevieve. Similar abuses benefitted Democrats and Republicans alike. Bill supporters say the money would be easier to trace if the donors could just give all of it to the candidate directly.

Well, yes and no. Lazy donors will do it that way, but those who hope not to be noticed will still be tempted to use the party committees. While easily discovered, checking the campaign filings of the party committees is an extra step that reporters and opposition researchers have to take. Party committees, while prohibited from making any monetary contributions to candidates, will still be able to make in-kind contributions, and without any limits whatsoever. The legislation does not change the definition of “in-kind” contribution, so the candidate can fully coordinate her/his campaign expenses with the party committees, without any “independent expenditure” charade. All the candidate needs to do is contract for whatever campaign work or supplies is desired and then have the friendly party committee pay for it directly. Elimination of the ceilings means that the candidate only needs to coordinate with one party committee. A candidate seeking to hide her/his financial strength from an unsuspecting opponent can simply have donors give to an unlikely party committee (or a PAC, which is unrestricted by the new law). A suitably positioned candidate can even form and control that party committee (but not the PAC), because a party committee (but not a PAC) is exempt from the law’s purported prohibition of candidate sponsorship or control of a “continuing committee.”

The impact on campaigns in small districts (like state representative and alderman) will be mixed. On one hand, monied special interests with a high-priority interest in the outcome of the election will be able to finance their candidate single-handedly if need be. An official elected under such circumstances will clearly be owned lock, stock and barrel by the donor. On the other hand, some other contributors may reduce their contributions, which will hurt candidates who lack a major benefactor. Under the present law, the ceiling often becomes the rule for the amount of a contribution. When you can be a big shot for just $325 (the current limit), why not? But when the sky’s the limit, many of those contributors (especially new ones not accustomed to the $325 rule of thumb) will only give $100 or $250.

Other major beneficiaries of the new law are prominent citizens who have felt compelled to risk their reputations conducting charades designed to skirt the present limits. For example, the limits caused companies to “suggest” that its executives make their own separate contributions to campaigns supported by the company. The law prohibits company reimbursement of such contributions, but compensation was often “adjusted” to accommodate. Now this uncomfortable charade will no longer be necessary.

In another context, informal slates of candidates running for multi-member board positions will now be able to get coordinated support from a single continuing committee that isn’t limited to a ceiling on in-kind contributions. Prominent people on such committees will no longer have to worry about having to pretend to make “independent expenditures” that aren’t coordinated with their candidates. All candidates for the St. Louis Board of Education and supporters such as Mayor Francis Slay and the Teachers Union will be able to breathe a sigh of relief next time around. One also wonders whether the Missouri Ethics Commission will become even more lenient (if that’s possible) with violators of the current law, when the prohibited activity is about to become legal.

Other provisions in the bill:

Candidates for statewide office and the legislature will be required to file campaign reports electronically, regardless of funding level. This is good for public disclosure of information and will eliminate the abusive practice of filing campaign reports on dark paper that is difficult to copy legibly. However, the provision may be a hardship for computer-unsavvy candidates, which has class and racial implications, and may also discourage recruitment of token candidates in districts where chances of election are minimal. On balance, requiring candidates for state rep to file electronically is probably a bad idea.

One specific exemption to the prohibition against monetary contributions by party committees (which seems redundant under the definitions) allows candidate committees to donate to other committees, including other candidate committees. This reaffirms that the long-standing practice of powerful candidates who raise more than needed funding the campaigns of fellow party members who don’t appeal to those contributors.

The law doubles the advance time (from 30 days to 60) that a “continuing committee” must be formed prior to an election in which it makes contributions or expenditures. This worsens a law which the Oracle has always thought to be an unconstitutional infringement of freedom of speech.

The bill clumsily attempts to reduce the threshold for the special filing requirement disclosing last minute independent expenditures by Missouri PACs from $500 to $250 (the threshold that already applies to out-of-state committees). The reduction in threshold is meaningless because the change in amount was made only to clause describing the report and not the clause defining the circumstances for which the report is required. However, the clause did successfully shorten the filing period from 48 hours to 24 hours.

Last minute “hit and run” ethics complaints are addressed by another poorly worded provision prohibiting the Missouri Ethics Commission from accepting complaints within 15 days before the election at which “such candidate” is running for office. It is unclear whether the term “such candidate” refers to the filer or target of the complaint. (For example, does the prohibition apply to a complaint against a candidate filed by a citizen who isn’t a candidate, and does it apply to a candidate filing a complaint concerning a ballot measure at the same election?) The provision also mysteriously seems not to apply to special elections.

War protester loses own grandson in Iraq

2006-05-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

Leon Deraps of Columbia, MO, was killed Saturday, May 6, by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, Iraq, while on duty with the U.S. Marines. He graduated from high school less than a year ago.

Leon was the youngest grandson and namesake of Leon "Bud" Deraps of St. Louis, one of the area's best known anti-war protesters. A member of Veterans for Peace since 1993, Bud has tirelessly approached young people to dissuade them from joining the military. He tried to do the same with Leon, but to no avail.

Bud ran for 24th Ward Alderman in 2003 as the candidate of the Green Party and won 29% of the vote against then-incumbent Democrat Tom Bauer, a record high for that party in Missouri.

Heartfelt sympathy for Bud and his family.

New school board majority being tested

2006-05-03T13:15:00.000-05:00

Antonio French, the new editor of St. Louis Schools Watch (which had been produced by Peter Downs prior to his election to the school board), reports on his Pub Def Weekly blog (scroll down to "More Schools Stuff") that Downs and fellow board members Bill Purdy and Donna Jones have written a letter appearing in today's edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, defending teachers from "unwarranted" criticisms over absences.

The Oracle believes that the most interesting part is who didn't join in. Board member Veronica O'Brien was conspicuously absent from the letter.

O'Brien was originally named to the Board by Mayor Francis Slay, but then broke from the mayor's majority faction and voted with the minority after clashes with board bully Vince Schoemehl.

Schoemehl's gone now. Dissidents control the board by a one-vote margin that includes O'Brien. It wouldn't surprise me if the mayor or his business allies tried to retake control by persuading one of the current majority to switch sides. O'Brien would seem to be the logical choice, since her background originally appealed enough to Slay for him to appoint her in the first place, and the other three all seem more solidly oriented against the mayor (and for Local 420). And, of course, O'Brien has changed sides once before.

It's just speculation, but it's worth watching.

Jeff Smith wins official 16th Ward endorsement

2006-04-28T00:35:00.000-05:00

The 16th Ward Democratic Club voted by secret ballot Thursday night (4/27) to endorse Jeff Smith for the 4th district senate seat. The seat is currently held by term-limted Democrat Patrick Dougherty.

While this vote validates the previously announced personal endorsements of the committeeman and committeewoman, the ward's official endorsement is by vote of the membership, which does not always follow the leadership. (In 2003, the club voted to endorse Steve Malle for alderman, over former State Rep and Director of Elections Jim O'Toole and eventual winner Donna Baringer.) Eligibility to vote was granted to members whose 2006 dues was paid and who had attended two of the past three meetings. Candidates for all offices were allowed to speak and then requested to leave (except for congressional candidate Jim Frisella, unopposed State Rep. Fred Kratky and unopposed Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza, who are voting members of the club). Smith, former State Rep. Derio Gambaro, State Rep Amber Boykins and former Alderman Kenny Jones all attended and spoke on behalf of their candidacies for the senate seat. A fifth candidate, State Rep Yaphett El-Amin, did not attend. An animated discussion followed, with Favazza, Frisella and several other club members expressing their support for Gambaro for the senate nomination. Committeeman Kratky, Committeewoman Cathy Ruggeri Rea and Michelle Kratky were among those voicing support for Smith. The club announced only the winners and not the number of votes, but the Smith-Gambaro vote is believed to have been close.

While the organization's endorsement is chosen very democratically, the endorsement historically has had little influence on the ward's voters. In 2004, the club endorsed Claire McCaskill's successful challenge of Gov Bob Holden, former State Rep Joan Barry for Congress and State Rep Mark Abel for State Treasurer, but didn't carry any of them in the ward. Favazza handily carried the ward in the congressional contest, beating the endorsed Barry by about 2-1. Smith finished third in the ward, but ahead of district winner Carnahan, who finished fourth in the ward. The 16th Ward is home to more Republicans than any other city ward (even though the city's only GOP alderman represents the neighboring 12th), and the ward's Democratic voters are among the most conservative in the city. In the primary, the Oracle expects that Gambaro will also beat the endorsement and narrowly outpoll Smith in the ward, but that Smith will win the nomination with a strong showing in other parts of the district.

The club also voted to endorse incumbent Congressman Russ Carnahan over Frisella, but that vote was also far from unanimous. Both candidates spoke. Carnahan was given special treatment to accommodate his schedule.

While Darrell Wattenbarger of Columbia spoke to the meeting, the ward endorsed the heavily favored Susan Montee (who did not attend) for state auditor (but not unanimously).

Uncontroversial endorsements were also won by U S Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, License Collector Greg Daly for Collector of Revenue and Alderman Mike McMillan for License Collector, as well as all Democrats running unopposed for the party's nomination. Daly, McMillan, Kratky, and State Rep. Mike Vogt attended and spoke. Favazza, unopposed for re-election, opted not to speak on his own behalf.

Campaign law breaches, racial politics mar school contest

2006-04-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

Challengers Peter Downs and Donna Jones surprised most political observers with their clean sweep of Tuesday’s school board elections in the City of St. Louis, unseating incumbents backed by Mayor Francis Slay and the business establishment. The Oracle correctly predicted Downs’ top finish (see April 3 post below), but even I didn’t foresee Jones joining him in the winners circle.

The campaign was encouraging, regardless of which side you supported, because it was a classic contest between a well-financed media campaign and a volunteer-rich grassroots campaign that was won by the grassroots campaign. In our hearts, that’s the generic result most of us prefer, independent of the candidates and issues.

But the campaign also had its discouraging elements. Perhaps worst were the violations by both sides of fundamental campaign laws. Both sides conducted campaigns primarily with (wink-wink) “independent expenditures” that everyone knows were fully coordinated with the candidates. At least this year was an improvement over prior years, with fewer choreographed photo sessions involving both candidates posing together with model kids (really, paid models) financed with “independent expenditures.” (Compare last year’s farce.) This year was less blatant, but still improper.

Incumbents Darnetta Clinkscale and James Buford published joint newspaper ads and expensive joint lawn signs which recited they were paid for by their individual candidate committees. The Missouri Ethics Commission regards such expenditures as being partially in-kind contributions to each other. The size of these expenditures clearly exceeded the $1,275 ceiling that each could legally contribute to the other.

The campaign for Downs and Jones had its own campaign disclosure problems. The legal disclaimer on its sample ballots merely stated, “Labor donated by the St. Louis Teachers and BRP Union Local 420 COPE Committee.” This confuses two separate concepts. The legal disclaimer required by law requires the use of the words “Paid for by” and that the treasurer of the committee be identified. Neither those words nor the treasurer’s name appeared anywhere on the flyers. Even if a volunteer ran them off a copy machine, somebody paid for the paper and toner. “Labor donated” is the wording commonly used to explain not using a union printer (which ought to be embarrassing for a UNION). Now maybe that sounds picky, but Local 420 can’t really pretend to be political neophytes who are too inexperienced to know better. And not being able to use the right words is pretty sad for TEACHERS!

Both sides also made subtle appeals to Democratic Party loyalty in this nonpartisan contest by printing their election day flyers on the standard green paper stock used for Democrat sample ballots. The Democratic Party didn’t object, so apparently any candidate can use that paper for her/his flyers. (Cautionary note: Candidate photos look really creepy on that green background!)

Both sides can also be faulted for playing racial politics, with different messages for the predominantly black north side and the predominantly white south side. Educate St. Louis distributed two mailings specifically attacking Peter Downs, whose apparent selective distribution was widely questioned on major blogs. It was also interesting that the only white candidate in the seven-candidate field was the one singled out for the attacks.

Local 420 played the race card by publishing two separate sample ballots: one for the north side itemizing endorsements of primarily black politicians and organizations, and one for the south side listing endorsements of primarily white politicians and organizations. They spent extra money for separate printings, apparently to conceal the endorsements of Organization for Black Struggle, the Black Women’s Political Action Coalition and numerous African American politicians from south side voters. The union’s sample ballot also took a stand against the anti-recall proposition on the north side ballots, but didn’t mention it on those sent to the south side.

These tactics were especially regrettable in a school board contest. The board members and union teachers set very poor examples for their students. Why should students play by the rules, they might ask, if their own teachers and the school district’s governing board don’t?

The bad blood didn’t stop when the polls closed. Clinkscale’s heretofore classy facade broke down the day after the election with this hyperbolic sour grapes comment to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "The teachers union won and the children lost."

Third time may be Downs' charm

2006-04-03T19:55:00.000-05:00

On the eve of the hotly contested school board election in the City of St. Louis, the Oracle's crystal ball sees a tight race resulting in a split decision: third-time challenger Peter Downs will be the top vote getter, but recently appointed incumbent James Buford will outpoll both his running mate, board president Darnetta Clinkscale, and leading challenger Donna Jones, with Joe Clark coming in fifth.

Supporters of the current board majority apparently fear that this election is Downs' time. Educate St. Louis, the so-called "independent expenditure" PAC supporting the Clinkscales and Buford candidacies, has sent out two blistering attack pieces focusing on Downs, but not Jones or Clark. With the generous financial backing of Big Business and the Mayor Francis Slay's own campaign fund, this group can afford sophisticated polling. Their polls must be showing Downs in front.

The current board majority, which has the support of Slay, would retain control by a 4-3 margin if the predicted result takes place.

While the Oracle plans to vote for Downs and Jones, the predicted result wouldn't be all bad. As I posted earlier on the Political Fix blog, such a result would give the deciding vote, and therefore effective control of the board, to a sometimes maverick Flint Fowler. The minority would include two well-informed dissenters, Downs (publisher of St. Louis Schools Watch) and veteran board member Bill Purdy. Thus, while leaving policy in the hands of the current majority, the minority will have both the votes and the information necessary to keep the majority in check. It could be "checks and balances" at their best.

Focus of filing fee flap shifts to Robin Carnahan

2006-03-14T13:03:00.000-06:00

A controversy has arisen among those commenting on the Post-Dispatch’s Political Fix blog over Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s removal of Glenn Miller, Jr.’s name from the Missouri primary ballot for U.S. Congress in the 7th District after the Democratic Party rejected Miller’s filing fee. The Republican Party also announced preemptively that it would also reject Miller’s fee if he tried to file as a Republican. Miller then skipped the GOP and filed as a Libertarian, but that party rejected him too, and Carnahan removed his name from their ballot as well. Missouri law provides that the filing fees are payable to the political party in which the candidate files.

Parties don’t want Miller as their candidate because of his reputation as an anti-semitic white supremacist. The Associated Press identifies him as the former leader of the White Patriot Party.

But the controversy is no longer about Miller and his views. It is now questionable whether Carnahan had the legal right to deny Miller’s right to file in any party’s primary. (Filing as an independent would require a petition drive to get signatures of over 5,000 registered voters from that district.)

I have concluded that the Democratic Party (where Miller first filed) simply decided to reject the filing because they wanted to. With fellow party member Carnahan in charge of election filings, it was easy to get her to oblige. The wording of the Associated Press release that Post-Dispatch reporter Jo Mannies quoted in her blog suggests that the party told the AP that its rejection of Miller’s money meant he no longer qualified to run on the their ticket. The media bought it, just assuming that the party knew what it was talking about. The Democrats were undoubtedly comfortable assuming that Republicans and other parties weren’t about to call them on it, because they want the same power for themselves.

This tactic is regrettably common in government, surfacing most often in sunshine law violations, where a government official blows off an unwanted freedom of information request, and the decision sticks unless and until the requesting party marshalls the resources to file a lawsuit against the government, and win it. It’s bullying, plain and simple. In the current matter, draping it in the clothing of fending off racism is just a smokescreen.

The Oracle and others who commented on the Political Fix can find no statutory authority for denial of Miller’s place on the ballot. A commentator called “publiceye” (believed to be Mayor Slay’s publicist Richard Callow, who runs a consulting firm by that name) pointed out a provision stating that “no candidate’s name shall be printed on any official ballot until the required fee has been paid.” He went on to opine, “No fee. No file.” But I pointed out, with some agreement and no expressed disagreement by other commentators, that Miller’s tender of the fee probably satisfied the payment requirement, and that his check was not deposited to clear was out of his control and not his problem. All political committees, including political parties, have the right to refuse contributions. But does (and should) that give the parties the right to deny the donor the place on the ballot to which the statutes entitle her/him for making the payment?

What solution is best for society? The easy take is that keeping white supremacists and others with toxic views off the ballot is a good thing. But the law must be blind to the substance of a candidate’s political expression, and must apply equally and equitably to all. Since there is no statute (or apparently any case law or state regulation either) on the subject, there are no formal standards governing when a party may reject a candidate’s filing. That would mean that parties could reject filings at will, with no reason required. If allowed to stand as precedent, a party’s right to deny filings would empower factions in control of the party to keep insurgent factions from challenging them, effectively leaving no contest for voters to decide in the primary. That very result is already happening by way of backroom deals that eliminate competition, so it’s safe to expect that parties (or controlling factions) would abuse the right if this trial balloon were allowed to soar.

If such a practice had been utilized in the past, St. Louis would probably have no citywide African American officials, because the white-controlled Democratic City Committee could have held off the successful challenges of Benjamin Goins and Freeman Bosley, Jr., just by rejecting their filing fees. The Jim Crow era Democratic State Committee might have done the same to Ted McNeal, Missouri’s first African American state senator, when he filed to oust white Sen. Edward Hogan in 1960. That’s unthinkable today, but I’ll bet it would have happened then if the pols had thought of it. Darlene Green, Larry Williams and Maida Coleman might not hold their present offices if those earlier trailblazers had been denied the right to compete.

Tom Knapp of St. Louis County, a respected member of the executive committee of the Missouri Libertarian Party, offered this thoughtful justification why parties should have such a power: “Parties are groups of people who associate together to advance political ideas they share. In many states, Missouri included, [political parties] have to do considerable work to secure a spot on the [ballot]. They do so for the purpose of running candidates who advance the ideas the party advocates. . . . Why should someone who wants to run for office be allowed to hijack the efforts of people who do not agree with him and do not care to have their work used to advance HIS ideas, which are antithetical to their ideas?”

In a similar vein, the Missouri Green Party has a platform plank that would allow parties to replace the primary election with a convention or caucus to nominate its candidates. One local Green expresses the concern that a major corporation like Monsanto could file its own candidates for party committee, take over the party, and bring the party’s work against the company’s genetic engineering technology and products to a halt. Neither the Green Party of the United States (with whom the Missouri Green Party is not affiliated) nor the Progressive Party of Missouri (the state’s GPUS affiliate) have any similar plank.

But enough of this “fair and balanced” review of this issue. It is up to Secretary of State Carnahan to enforce the law that exists, not the law she would like to exist. Any changes to current law are the province of the legislature, and it’s already too late to change the rules for this election. I think Robin overstepped her authority. Perhaps she needs to be reminded that manipulating filings for office is what got Democratic Secretary of State Judi Moriarity impeached in the 1990s.

Bill would ban 3rd-party campaigns for Congress

2006-02-05T00:41:00.000-06:00

Eight Democratic congressmen have filed a bill that combines a laudable goal – public funding of congressional campaigns – with a vicious attack on freedom of speech. The bill would effectively eliminate virtually all congressional campaigns by independent and third-party candidates.

The bill, HR 4694, would provide public financing for both Democrats and Republicans in most districts. But Ballot Access News reports that candidates not qualifying for funding would not only receive no government funds, but would also be barred from spending any privately raised money. No government money and no private money means that a non-qualifying candidate would be prohibited from spending any money at all, not one red cent. Not even a business card with the candidate’s name and office sought would be legal under the bill!

Requirements for qualifying for funding would be relatively easy for the major parties but almost impossible for independent and third-party candidates. The bill would provide public funding for nominees of parties that had averaged 25% of the vote for U.S. House in that district over the last two elections. Independent candidates who had averaged 25% would also get full public funding, but unlike party candidates, only the specific individual who previously got those votes would qualify. All others would be required to submit petitions signed by 20% of the last vote cast for full funding, and 10% for partial funding. For example, in Missouri’s 2nd congressional district, a candidate with a party that won less than 25% of the vote in the last two elections would need nearly 70,000 signatures to qualify for the public funding that her/his Democratic and Republican opponents would get automatically, and only signatures from the 2nd District would count. Nearly 35,000 signatures would be required in order to allow the candidate to spend anything at all on the campaign.

In certain districts where a single party is dominant, the bill would eliminate campaigns by the district’s second party as well. Not surprisingly, Democrats (who propose this bill) hold Republican opponents to below 25% in more districts than Republicans do the same to Democrats. If the bill were law today, a Republican campaign in Lacy Clay’s 1st District would be illegal without a massive petition drive. In Roy Blunt’s 7th District, Democrats would be less than a percentage point away from the same fate.

The offensive bill is sponsored by Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and co-sponsored by fellow Democrats Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Barney Frank and James McGovern of Massachusetts, Henry Waxman and Bob Filner of California, Steve Israel of New York, and Tim Ryan of Ohio. So much for standing up the for the little guy.

The Oracle wonders if the sponsors’ support for publicly financed elections is genuine, or if this legislation is merely a disguised attempt to discredit the whole concept.

Civilian Review Approved by Public Safety Committee

2006-01-22T22:02:00.000-06:00

The Public Safety Committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed Board Bill 69, Alderman Terry Kennedy's bill for a Civilian Review Board, with a "Do Pass" recommendation, on January 19.

The Civilian Review Board would conduct joint investigations of complaints against St. Louis police with the Police Internal Affairs Division and make recommendations about appropriate discipline. The CRB could also conduct independent investigations whenever it is dissatisfied with the joint investigation.

Two hot button issues have held up progress on the bill, both of which passed the committee in Kennedy's favor. The bill empowers the CRB to use the subpoena powers of the Board of Police Commissioners, and the CRB's seven members would include four elected by the people. The other three would be appointed by the Board of Aldermen.

These issues have divided the board along racial lines, with every African American alderman on record favoring the Kennedy bill as written and every white aldermen opposed to a bill with the subpoena powers and elected members. The committee vote went along racial lines, with five African American members in favor and two white members opposed.

Without change in the board's racial solidarity, the bill's prospects before the full board remain slim. The board has a slim 15-13 white majority, with Aldermanic President Jim Shrewsbury (D), a white, holding the tie-breaking vote.

Pressure will be on white aldermen representing wards with significant African American populations. Aldermen Joe Roddy (D-17) and Craig Schmid (D-20) represent wards with slight African American majorities, while Phyllis Young (D-7), Steve Conway (D-8) and Jennifer Florida (D-15) represent substantial African American minorities. Shrewsbury is elected citywide.

Molly Ivins will not support Hillary for prez

2006-01-21T12:04:00.000-06:00

Respected liberal columnist Molly Ivins, the journalistic icon who coined the "shrub" nickname for President George W. Bush, published a column recently in which she stated that she cannot support New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for president in 2008. It is my sense that her words represent a growing feeling among the American left.

Ivins explained, "Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges."

Recalling the tumultuous Vietnam War era in 1968 when obscure Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) demonstrated the courage to speak out, Ivins observed, "There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief."

Boldly predicting that Tom Delay would lose reelection in his "safe" suburban Houston district, Ivins intoned, Oh come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. . . . If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely." Now is the time, she says, to seize the day and push for reforms that would end special interest ownership of our national agenda: public campaign financing for Congress ("the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this"), redistricting reform, electoral reform and House rule changes.

Her column's conclusion raised the spectre of a major third-party challenge ala 2000: "Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can."

I agree. Claire McCaskill, whose early stands on federal issues seem to mimic Hillary's, should take notice.

Argus says El-Amin, Troupe have reconciled

2006-01-17T00:49:00.000-06:00

The current edition of the St. Louis Argus reports that the rift between State Rep. Yaphett El-Amin and her home ward alderman, Charles Quincy Troupe, has been settled. While the paper did not explicitly state that Troupe had endorsed El-Amin’s candidacy for state senator in the 4th District, it implied as much by stating that Troupe and El-Amin would work together for the betterment of that district specifically. The two were photographed together.

The Argus is published by Eddie Hasan, El-Amin’s father.

The absence of solid home ward support for El-Amin because of her feud with Troupe had led many commentators, including the Oracle, to minimize El-Amin’s chances to win the Democratic Primary in the senate race. This reversal of fortune restores El-Amin's credibility as a significant contender for the 4th District nomination.

Other announced candidates for the nomination are Washington University lecturer Jeff Smith, State Rep. Amber Boykins and former State Rep. Derio Gambaro. El Amin’s biggest competitor for her greatest potential bases of support is Boykins, at whose expense El-Amin’s new surge is likely to come. El-Amin shares very little common potential support with Smith and virtually none with Gambaro. This means that this development does not disturb Smith’s status as presumed frontrunner. The likely harm to Boykins’ bid actually widens Smith’s perceived lead.

Candidates may formally file starting on February 28.

Is Starbucks the 'blue-state' WalMart?

2006-01-16T18:50:00.000-06:00

Just after the first of the year, I went by my friendly neighborhood coffee house, The Sweet Life on Chippewa in Barney's Plaza, across the street from Target. It really was friendly as well as in the neighborhood. Bosnian-American owners Shon and Vesna made a point of welcoming everybody. More like the immigrants of last century than the current wave of which they are a part, they didn't make a big deal about their ethnicity and consciously did their best to assimilate into U.S. culture. Bosnian-American with the accent on American.

But this time, there was a simple hand-written note on the door saying that they had closed their doors forever on December 31, but thanking all of their dear friends for their loyal patronage. A loss to our community.

Shon wasn't there to ask, so I speculated why closing might have been necessary. What came immediately to mind was the "new" Target, right across the street. Target had reopened its newly remodeled store in early October. When they did, they brought along an extra business imbedded inside: a new Starbucks, the giant in the coffee house industry. Starbucks is also planning a second location just a few blocks west, on the site of the former Steak n Shake. Perhaps so much competition from the industry leader so close proved to be too much.

It reminds me of the early knock on WalMart. WalMart moves into a community, and the mom n pop stores on Main Street close, one after another. I don't know anything about Starbucks' employment practices or its employee health care plans, but the parallels to the WalMart impact on local business are striking.

And then the irony struck me. WalMart is the epitome of pure red-state capitalism. Based in Arkansas, WalMart executives dating back to Sam Walton himself have been big supporters of the Republican Party, as well as their conservative home-state Democrat, Bill Clinton. In contrast, Starbucks is very blue-state. I don't have comparable data about its executives' political donations, but Starbucks is based in deep-blue Seattle, and its customer base is the young urbanites that voted heavily for John Kerry. An August, 2005 Zogby Poll disclosed that Starbucks' national dominance in consumer preference (leading 2nd place Dunkin Donuts, 34%-30%) was powered by a 2-1 margin among self-described liberals and progressives. (How did we ever survive as a people without essential information like that?)

So Starbucks moves into the increasingly blue neighborhood around Hampton Village, and within three months, The Sweet Life is history. I wonder if they're scouting property near Hartford Coffee.

Week marks split decision for trial lawyers

2005-12-17T22:00:00.000-06:00

While trial lawyers representing tobacco claimants suffered a big, costly loss in Illinois this week, they solidified their control over courts in Missouri.

Media attention focused on the Illinois Supreme Court's reversal of the $10-billion judgment against Philip Morris. The high court reversed the decision of the notoriously plaintiff-friendly Madison County trial court in a 4-2 split decision. Newly elected Judge Lloyd Karmeier, a Republican, cast the deciding vote. Karmeier was elected to the court last year in a costly contest against Democrat Gordon Maag. Trial lawyers backed Maag, while business interests backed Karmeier. In Illinois, supreme court judges are elected directly by voters in partisan elections, on the same party tickets as candidates for president, governor and the like.

In contrast, under Missouri's non-partisan court plan, vacancies on the Missouri Supreme Court and three district courts of appeal are filled by appointment of the governor, whose choices are limited to three candidates nominated by an appellate judicial commission. Some trial judges, including those in St. Louis City and County, are chosen the same way. Voters periodically vote whether to retain a judge, but no Missouri judge has lost such an election in over 50 years.

But the process in Missouri is still very political. In recent years, trial lawyers representing criminal defendants and personal injury claimants have become major financial supporters of Democratic candidates. This contrasts with the long-time (though eroding) support of Big Business interests for Republican candidates. The legal interests of Big Business (especially casualty insurance companies) are diametrically opposed to the trial lawyers. (In a political context, the term "trial lawyers" does not include those attorneys who appear in the same trials defending claims against insurance companies and other businesses, even though they too are literally trial lawyers.) Republican demonization of trial lawyers' influence over Democratic
candidates reached the presidential level last year, as supporters of the Bush-Cheney ticket criticized Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards for his pre-senatorial career as a trial lawyer.

Missouri’s judicial nominating commissions consist of a designated chief appellate judge plus equal numbers of attorneys elected by the bar and citizen members appointed by the governor, all in staggered terms. During the 12 years preceding the election of Republican Matt Blunt, Democratic governors appointed all of Missouri’s appellate judges and also the citizen members of the commissions. Contests for the lawyer spots are not overtly partisan, but tend to pit candidates favored by trial lawyers against candidates favored by business interests, which correlates strongly with Democrat vs. Republican. Republicans believe that Governor Blunt’s prerogative to pick conservative judges is being thwarted by nominating commissions who present the governor with exclusively Democrat and/or pro-trial lawyer choices from which to pick. Holdover citizen commissioners appointed by Blunt’s Democrat predecessor, Bob Holden, often join with lawyer commissioners who are trial lawyers to do just that. The votes of lawyer commissioners are often decisive. These dynamics raise the stakes in the bar elections for the lawyer members of the commissions.

This is the context in which this and last month’s bar elections for lawyer commissioners took place. The trial lawyers took two of three, and for the first time, women lawyers won all of the contests.

The most important seat was on the appellate judicial commission, the statewide body that nominates judges for the Missouri Supreme Court and the three district courts of appeal. Nancy Mogab won a runoff election, narrowly defeating Frank Gundlach, 1988-1753, for a seat representing eastern Missouri lawyers. Mogab represents injured workers in workers compensation claims and has long been a leader in advocacy groups for trial lawyers, whose support she enjoyed. Her late father, Charlie Mogab, was a legendary St. Louis trial lawyer. In contrast, Gundlach is a partner at a large downtown firm primarily representing business interests and is a past-president of the John Marshall Republican Club (an organization of Republican attorneys). Mogab replaces Gerard Carmody, a partner in a Clayton firm primarily representing business interests, including insurance companies and medical professionals in malpractice cases.

Lawyers in the City of St. Louis elected Mary Anne Seday to the judicial commission for the city’s circuit courts. Seday is a civil rights attorney and LGBT- and abortion-rights activist. This election culminates a 20-year effort on Seday’s part to win a seat on the commission. Her perseverence paid off this year.

Both Mogab and Seday have served on the Board of Governors of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys and are frequent contributors to campaigns of Democrats.

Business and insurance interests arguably won only in St. Louis County, whose lawyers elected Debbie Champion. Her firm primarily represents insurance companies and other businesses. Her recent political contributions have gone mostly to Mark Smith, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Congress last year, but also to Republican Catherine Hanaway.

A common thread in all three contests, though, was gender politics. All three winners were recruited by the Women’s Lawyers Association of Greater St. Louis, which formally endorsed them, promoted them throughout their campaigns, and worked to get out the vote during the election period. Its efforts were encouraged by the Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life, a publicly funded organization based at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, which a WLA press release credits with providing early strategic advice for these campaigns. In addition, Stacey Newman, Executive Director of the Missouri Women’s Coalition, served as a campaign consultant to the three candidates and was particularly invaluable during the early stages of the Mogab campaign.

The WLA press release notes that the organization seeks “gender parity” on the judiciary in order to “reduce the severity and frequency of systemic gender discrimination and . . . improve the quality of the judiciary and the equality of justice for all litigants.”

Lohr outpolls Blunt for ‘Grinch of the Year’

2005-12-09T18:14:00.000-06:00

Apparently progressive union members and like-minded activists aren’t as outraged at Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt (R) as many thought – or at least not as outraged as they are at Ron Lohr of Lohr Distributing Company.

Lohr “won” the annual voting for “Grinch of the Year” award, sponsored by Jobs With Justice, by a nearly 2-1 margin over Blunt. The majority faction of the St. Louis Board of Education backed by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay came in a distant third. The mayor was not nominated.

Lohr was nominated by Teamsters Local 600 “for permanently replacing their striking beer delivery drivers [who] were striking to protect health care for their families and a reasonable workload for a good wage.” Lohr got 2,812 (46.7%) of the 6,024 ballots cast.

1,578 votes (26.2%) were cast for the Republican governor, who was nominated by AFSCME District Council 72. Perhaps it is some consolation to the guv that 73.8% of these very liberal voters thought that someone else was worse.

Six other nominees polled a combined 1,634 votes.

Results may not necessarily be indicative of voter sentiment. The ostensibly progressive sponsor used a very regressive balloting procedure: “one dollar, one vote.” It was a JWJ fundraiser, so I guess the ends were supposed to justify the means.

The JWJ press release alluded to future “public actions to present ‘awards’ to our Grinch winners, and perhaps even some runners-up,” so Lohr, Blunt and the school board majority may want to prepare for some theatrics.