Category: Campaign Finance

What Chris Said

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Chris Bowers, that is

There is a special election in the 20th congressional district of New York tonight. I hope the Democrat, Scott Murphy, wins. However, I am also frustrated that Murphy has received nearly $360,000 on Act Blue from around 2,000 donors. Given that Murphy has made it clear that he will attempt to join the Blue Dogs if he wins the election, the progressive small donor world should not have given him a single dime.

We–participants in blog and email list small donor fundraising efforts–have to completely stop raising money for Blue Dogs. We should not give a single cent to any current member of the Blue Dog coalition. We should not give any money at all to any candidate who refuses to rule out joining the Blue Dogs once in Congress. If we hope to improve Democratic behavior in Congress, this break has to be as public and as thorough as possible.

Agreed.

Scott Murphy may be the very best we can get in that district, and if that is the case, then liberal campaign contributions are better spent elsewhere.

I would “embrace and extend” his message, and include the corporatist “New Democratic Caucus” on the list of people that we should not contribute to.

This goes double for folks in safe Dem districts, which NY-20 is not, Republicans have a registration advantage there, but why pay for someone who will, when the going gets tough, shoot down your agenda?

But I still want Murphy to win, I just won’t give him my money or time.

NRCC Cutting off Money to NY House Races

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Not enough money, so want to direct it toward races that they have a chance of winning:

The decision to abandon much of the state came after internal party polls showed Republican candidates in at least three once-promising races falling behind their Democratic opponents, a party official briefed on the internal deliberations said.

As a result, Republican leaders are diverting money to candidates in other races in which party officials believe they have a greater chance of success, the official said.

The decision by national Republicans to focus on a smaller group of races underscores the degree to which the party is on the defensive not only in New York but also in New Jersey, Connecticut and many other states. The national party is short on cash and is being forced into the difficult position of deciding where to continue to fight — and where to effectively surrender — as the election enters the final days of campaigning.

I’d say it was a realization that they were throwing good money after bad, but all Republican money is bad money.

Happy dance!

Why David Frum is Crapping his Pants

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So, David Frum just wrote an article in the Washington Post throwing John McCain’s presidential bid overboard, suggesting that all Republican Party efforts should be directed towards the Congress, particularly the Senate, so as to prevent a filibuster proof majority.

He notes, correctly, that the RNC is the only place where the ‘Phants are raising good money, and that they are wasting it on his doomed campaign.

He’s concerned about how a “conservative free” management of the financial meltdown will be handled, and he wrings his hands over the, “fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats,” by which he means that their refrain is, “Thank you sir, can I have another.”

But then, he gets to the bit where he actually really gives a damn:

Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named “fairness doctrine”; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.

(emphasis mine)

Between punditry on fox, and his think-tank gigs, he is afraid that he will actually have to work for a living.

I guess that trumps ideology for him.

I incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt org, it was, and is, a completely bogus registration, though it is technically legal and in accordance with all laws and regulations. (no names here, I don’t want do give them grief*) It puts on SF conventions, and running a SF convention should not get tax exempt status, with deductible contributions (In truth, it went 501(c)3 for the cheap mailing rates anyway).

Neither should the right wing pundit full employment welfare programs, like the AEI, where David Frum works. They are playthings of rich people who never had to work for their money, and want to manipulate public policy for their benefit.

They are not charities, they are lobbying organizations.

*And I don’t want to give them anything else. Any contact between me and this organization is very bad for me, which I suppose is more of a reflection on me than it is on them.

Me Bad

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I have been talking politics, and have neglected to mention two races in our back yard:

  • Frank Kravotil running for Congress in MD-1
  • Jennifer Dougherty, who is running for Congress in MD-6

Kravotil is running against Fred Flintstone (he is positively antediluvian), Andy Harris, who defeated the moderate (when it didn’t count) Republican in the primary, and Dougherty is running against Roscoe Bartlet, who…Well….He lives up to the name “Roscoe”.

In any case, they ar both on Matthew Saroff’s Act Blue Page.

Show them some love.

Bachmann-Turnoff Overdrive

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I make no apologies for the pun.

What’s more, I call out all the Liberal Blogosphere….This one was pretty obvious.

Well, Michele Bachmann, the lady who started her political career keeping the Disney Movie Alladin out of town, “feeling that it endorsed magic/witchcraft and promoted paganism” is still experiencing blow-back from her outrageous and un-American outburst on Chris Matthews’ show, where she accused most of the country of being “anti-American”

It now appears that her primary opponent, Aubrey Immelman, will run a write-in campaign against her, because, as he states, “We cannot tolerate this festering brand of neo-McCarthyism in our midst.”

Good for him, and bad for her. She has now generated something north of $700K in donations for Elwyn Tinklenberg, her Democratic Opponent, who has a real chance of pulling this out now, particularly now that the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) has stopped funding their ads for her.

Bummer of a birth mark, Miche.

*I know that it’s not nice to make fun of someone’s name, but his name still sounds like a character from Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegone.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

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As the Minnesota Independent so eloquently stated, “putting Bachmann in front of a live microphone is like handing an excitable 15-year-old a bottle of gin and a loaded gun. The only question is when something unspeakable is going to happen.”

Heh….In any case, if you’ve followed her career, and things like accusations of attempted lesbian kidnapping, secret plans to give Iraq to Iran, and lord know what else that I’ve missed, we now see this missive:

On Friday, Bachmann, R-Minn., told MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews she thought Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle “may have anti-American views” and said the media should investigate whether members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Seriously, this woman is flat out nuts, and within 24 hours of her latest deranged outburst, her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg* got more than $450,000.00 in campaign contributions in the next 24 hours.

Heh.

*I know that it’s not nice to make fun of someone’s name, but he sounds like a character from Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegone.

So NOW Republicans Want an Aggressive FEC

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We all know about Obama’s small donors.

He’s collected hundreds of millions of dollars that way, and the Republicans won’t stand for it:

The Republican National Committee plans to file a complaint on Monday against Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of its small contributions and donations from overseas.

….

But such donations do not have to be itemized in reporting to the election commission unless the donor’s total contributions exceed $200. The lack of information on such donors has been highlighted by watchdog groups as potentially troublesome. The groups have also praised the campaign of Senator John McCain for offering on its Web site a tool that allows a search of all of its donors, including those who gave less than $200.

So Barack Obama is following the law, and the ‘Phants don’t like it, because he raises too much money.

Penny Pritzker Needs to STFU

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Ms. Pritzker, Barack Obama’s campaign finance chairwoman was, as I’ve noted earlier, chairman of the board for Superior Bank of Chicago, the bank that pioneered the subprime and predatory loans as a business model, that collapsed in 2001.

It’s likely that at some point this will become an issue, but to the degree that she invites reporters to cover her, as she clearly does here, she makes it even more likely.

The article is innocuous enough, it really is quite favorable, but it raises her public profile, which makes her a more likely target.

Given the current state of affairs in banking and housing, I cannot imagine anyone, in any campaign, who would not use her background against any campaign with which she was associated.

She needs to keep her head down.

Obama and DNC Rake in Dough

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Both Obama and the Democratic National Committee outraised their Republican counterparts in July.

Obama raised $51 million, as compared to McCain’s $27 million, and the DNC raised 27.7 million, as compared to the RNC’s $26 million, the first time that the DNC has outraised the RNC since 2004.

Happy dance time, though the combined cash on hand is about $94.3 million Obama + DNC vs $96 million McCain + RNC, because the DNC has spent a lot of money on Dean’s 50 state strategy.

McCain’s Fundraising Corruption

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Hmmmm….It appears that one of McCain’s major campaign bundlers, Harry Sargeant III, is using straw donors to funnel money to the campaign from non-US citizens in the Middle East, which is a felony.

Actually it’s two, straw donors and foreign campaign donations.

Read the article. Many of the donors don’t make much money, and many of them are not even registered to vote.

And all the contributors in the story have Arab names, which when juxtaposed with Sargeant’s statement that, “I have a lot of Arab business partners. I do a lot of business in the Middle East. I’ve got a lot of friends,” does lead one to wonder what’s going on here.

And the Always Reliably Clueless Michelle Malkin Strikes Again

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(No link to her, not ever)

It appears that Michelle Malkin is screaming * about the fund raising success of a challenger to John Murtha for congress, one William Russell.

The guy hasn’t campaigned, but he’s raised nearly $1 million, so Michelle Malkin is jumping around like a cheerleader with cerebral palsey.†

The kicker is that this money has come from a corrupt Republican direct mail fund raising outfit called BMW direct, which has a history of raising lots of money for long shot candidates, and then eating up pretty much all of the money raised through their fees, and for fees from consultants close to the firm:

In the most recent quarter Russell raised $669,534, almost all from out-of-state donors who presumably are on BMW Direct’s list of self-styled conservatives with a good track record of responding to direct-mail fundraising.

At the same time, he spent $442,990, almost all of it on expenses related to the direct mail effort and paid to BMW Direct and its affiliates (some of which share the same downtown Washington office).

The only expenses that appear to be spent on an actual campaign totaled about $20,000 for Web site design, a low-budget video and a campaign consultant based in Pennsylvania rather than Washington.

He reports having $269,953 in cash on hand. But he also reports debts totaling $242,521 — almost all for direct mail expenses to BMW Direct and its vendors.

So that leaves him only about $27,431 ahead — not much for a guy who’s raised a total of nearly $1 million this election cycle.

Of course, if Ms. Malkin really thought about what would benefit the Republican party, though she’s not paid to think, she would realize that folks like BMW direct are a cancer on her party, and direct some of her venom against them.

*Yes, I know, she’s always screaming.
†Actually she does “jumping around like a cheerleader with cerebral palsey” bit a lot. Have you seen the video of her in a cheerleader outfit‡ cheering “Defeatocrats”?
‡As to why she has a cheerleading outfit when it’s clear that she was never a cheerleader, that’s between her and Jesse Malkin, her husband, and I really don’t want to know the details.