February 17, 2010 - Political Memo
G.O.P. Hopes for Senate Control Face Hurdles
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON — The retirement of Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has raised Republicans’ hopes of capturing a significant number of Democratic Senate seats in November. Some Republicans and analysts are even suggesting that the party might take control of the Senate. In theory, at least, that is possible, given the number of Democratic retirements, soaring public disillusionment with Congress and an unemployment rate that seems unlikely to diminish appreciably before November. But a review of the political map suggests how daunting the Republican task would be, requiring both a continuing barrage of bad luck for Democrats and nothing short of a flawless performance by the Republican Party.
That is a lot to get done all at once; flawless is not an adjective often associated with politicians. But the Democrats seem intent on mucking up everything, and have been doing it consistently.
“As the map stands now, if we run the table of competitive races, we can get there,” said Rob Jesmer, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “We hope to get a few more races in play over the next couple months, which would give us some margin for error.” Democrats control the Senate 59 to 41. Because Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. casts the tie-breaking vote if the Senate is split 50-50, Republicans would need to pick up 10 seats to gain control.
For argument’s sake, factor in the possibility that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent whom Democrats have counted as one of their own, switches his party affiliation if Republicans are on the verge of taking control, a move that Democrats do not rule out. Then Republicans would have to win every one of the eight Democratic-held seats viewed as vulnerable — in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.
Republicans can probably put North Dakota in the bank today, after Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a Democrat, decided not to seek re-election. Republicans also appear to be in strong shape in Delaware, where Mr. Biden’s son Joseph R. Biden III, known as Beau, decided not to run, yielding the stage to Representative Michael N. Castle. Mr. Bayh’s retirement makes Republicans justifiably comfortable about their prospects of taking back a state that tilts Republican. An open seat in Illinois means Republicans have a good shot at winning the Senate seat once held by President Obama. In Colorado, where Ken Salazar gave up his Senate seat to become interior secretary, Republicans are hopeful about toppling the appointed senator, Michael Bennet.
Republicans say they have a strong chance of winning in Pennsylvania, where Senator Arlen Specter, who changed his party registration to become a Democrat, is wheezing as he faces a strong primary challenge from the left. And two Democratic senators are clearly in trouble: Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, though a self-identified Tea Party candidate could divide the anti-Reid vote.
If Republicans win all those races, that would put them one seat away from control. But they are not only playing offense. There are seven open seats that were held by Republicans, including four that appear highly competitive: in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio.
“We feel we’re going to pick up states on their side of the ledger, and that is going to make it harder for them,” said J. B. Poersch, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
In Kentucky, the Republicans’ prospects in the general election have been threatened by a primary battle. Rand Paul, who has the support of the Tea Party, is running strong against Trey Grayson, the secretary of state; Republicans think Mr. Paul could easily win a Republican primary but stumble in a general election.
In Missouri, Democrats said the Republican candidate — Roy Blunt, a former Republican whip in Congress — would have trouble overcoming his past association with President George W. Bush. Republicans are less worried, pointing out that Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s presidential nominee in 2008, squeaked out a victory in Missouri over Mr. Obama.
Assuming that Republicans held on to all seven of the open seats and picked up all eight held by vulnerable Democrats, they would still need to pick up one Democratic seat in decidedly less competitive races in California, Connecticut, New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
But the old rule of politics is you can’t beat somebody with nobody. And so far, Republicans are struggling to find top-tier candidates in New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
Showing posts with label Elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elections. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Voter's remorse?
As President Barack Obama began his first State of the Union address Wednesday night, Kevin Fischer glanced at the television above him and compared his 2008 vote for the president to ordering from an infomercial. "You listen to the sales pitch and you're so excited and then it arrives and you open the box and it just crumbles," Mr. Fischer said. "It turns out you didn't get what you thought you were going to."
Exactly how I feel. He can give a good speech, but, where's the beef?
Mr. Fischer, 30 years old, is among many voters here who spoke Wednesday of a creeping unease with Mr. Obama that has supplanted the enthusiasm they once felt. At the same time, many of those same Obama voters said that, given the dire condition of the U.S. when he was sworn into office, not enough time has passed to judge him fairly.
It is only a year, indeed, and he has stanched the economic bleeding, yet I feel a deep unease. The health care reform debacle demolished my confidence, both in the President and the Democratic party. It has also left me angry.
Regret for supporting a Democratic presidential candidate is an unusual sensation in this quiet, snow-covered prairie city. That's because heading into the 2008 election, no Democratic presidential candidate had won here since 1964. Nebraska was second only to Utah in its red-state reliability.
Well, for me the Republicans are none the better, and, in fact, worse: all they have done, down to the very last Republican Senator, is say no. No to everything.
Mr. Fischer said when he voted he believed Mr. Obama would draw down U.S. troops abroad, close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and help get the economy back on track.
"None of that has happened," he said. "I feel duped."
It's a good way of putting it, and duped is a powerful word.
Exactly how I feel. He can give a good speech, but, where's the beef?
Mr. Fischer, 30 years old, is among many voters here who spoke Wednesday of a creeping unease with Mr. Obama that has supplanted the enthusiasm they once felt. At the same time, many of those same Obama voters said that, given the dire condition of the U.S. when he was sworn into office, not enough time has passed to judge him fairly.
It is only a year, indeed, and he has stanched the economic bleeding, yet I feel a deep unease. The health care reform debacle demolished my confidence, both in the President and the Democratic party. It has also left me angry.
Regret for supporting a Democratic presidential candidate is an unusual sensation in this quiet, snow-covered prairie city. That's because heading into the 2008 election, no Democratic presidential candidate had won here since 1964. Nebraska was second only to Utah in its red-state reliability.
Well, for me the Republicans are none the better, and, in fact, worse: all they have done, down to the very last Republican Senator, is say no. No to everything.
Mr. Fischer said when he voted he believed Mr. Obama would draw down U.S. troops abroad, close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and help get the economy back on track.
"None of that has happened," he said. "I feel duped."
It's a good way of putting it, and duped is a powerful word.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
1 year later
All of a sudden, the political game has changed. One year minus one day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as President, the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for 46 years went Republican. Despite protestations of independence, the victor and new Senator, Scott Brown, will make the 41st Republican vote opposing the President's agenda. How far the Democratic star has fallen is incredible.
Interactive Map
Massachusetts Election Results
January 20, 2010
Senator - Elect Scott Brown Pushes For Prompt Seating
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:22 p.m. ET
BOSTON (Reuters) - Scott Brown, who scored a big win for Republicans by winning a Democrat-held U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, said on Wednesday that given the wide margin of his victory he should be allowed to take up the seat very quickly.
Republicans hope that Brown can occupy the seat as soon as possible, replacing interim Senator Paul Kirk, a Democrat, and become the key 41st vote in the 100-member chamber and help block Democratic health care reforms and other legislation.
State law provides for some 15 days to delivery the final election results, but Brown noted at a post-election news conference that this had been circumvented in the past to seat Democratic lawmakers.
His campaign has requested that Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin make available an unofficial vote count, including the number of absentee ballots still outstanding.
"I'm confident that it will show the margin of victory exceeds the number of absentee ballots. Since the election is not in doubt, I'm hopeful that the Senate will seat me on the basis of those unofficial returns," he said.
Brown defeated his opponent, state attorney general Martha Coakley, by more than 100,000 votes on Tuesday.
Brown said the message sent by his upset win was that "people are tired of business as usual" in Washington politics, adding that he would like to see Congress move back to the drawing board on health care reform.
January 20, 2010
News Analysis
A Year Later, Voters Send a Different Message
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
BOSTON — Special elections come and go. And the party that wins the White House one year ordinarily loses seats in the next Congressional election that comes along.
But what happened in Massachusetts on Tuesday was no ordinary special election.
Scott Brown, a Republican state senator for only five years, shocked and arguably humiliated the White House and the Democratic Party establishment by defeating Martha Coakley in the race for a United States Senate seat. He did it one day short of a year after President Obama stood on the steps of the United States Capitol, looking across a mass of faces that celebrated the potential of his presidency.
As a result, Mr. Obama will spend the first anniversary of his inauguration watching Democrats tangle in an unseemly quarrel over who lost Massachusetts — Ms. Coakley’s pollster, Celinda Lake, called the Huffington Post four hours before the polls closed to blame Democratic leaders in Washington — and contemplating a political landscape that has been thoroughly upended in the course of only 10 days.
The implications are sure to be far-reaching, and the result leaves Mr. Obama with a long list of tough choices.
Stripped of the 60th vote needed to block Republican filibusters in the Senate, will Mr. Obama now make further accommodations to Republicans in an effort to move legislation through Congress with more bipartisanship, even at the cost of further alienating liberals annoyed at what they see as his ideological malleability?
Or will he seek to rally his party’s base through confrontation, even if it means giving up on getting much done this year?
Will he find a way to ram his health care bill through Congress quickly in the wake of the Massachusetts loss, so that his party can run on a major if controversial accomplishment? Or will he heed the warnings of Republicans, and now some Democrats, that to do so would be to ignore the message of Tuesday’s election, with its clear overtones of dissatisfaction with the administration’s approach so far?
It is not just questions of policy: for Mr. Obama and the Democrats, already worried about the coming midterm elections, the results could hardly have been more distressing. States do not come more Democratic than Massachusetts, the only one that voted for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972, a fact that older residents still recount with fresh pride. By challenging the legacy of Edward M. Kennedy, the holder of the contested seat for 46 years and a liberal icon, the Republican victory could only be dispiriting to the left.
Most ominously, independent voters — who embraced Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and are an increasingly critical constituency — seemed to have fled to Mr. Brown in Massachusetts, as they did to Republicans in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey last November. It is hard not to view that as a repudiation of the way Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have run things.
“This is a giant wake-up call,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in Virginia last year. “We have to keep our focus on job creation. Everything we have to do is related to job creation. We have to do a much better job on the message. People are confused on what this health care bill is going to do.”
Even before the polls closed, the White House was suggesting the outlines of a recovery strategy, a combination of a more populist tone and an embrace of greater fiscal responsibility.
Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to take a more populist stance on financial regulation legislation in Congress, seeking to position Democrats as defenders of the people against Wall Street, and to cast Republicans as defenders of bonus-laden bankers. And on Tuesday night, the White House brokered a deal that could lead to a bipartisan commission to recommend spending cuts and tax increases to address the nation’s fiscal condition. For months, Mr. Obama’s advisers had warned that the perception that budget deficits and the national debt were spiraling out of control was alienating independent voters already turned off by partisan battling.
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said he did not view the results as a repudiation of the White House’s agenda, but he acknowledged that the administration needed to do a more effective job of signaling concern about the problems gripping Americans.
“We are the party in power, and as such there’s an element of responsibility assigned,” he said. “I think people need to know that their challenges and their concerns are the focus of our work every day.”
Ms. Coakley lost in no small part because of what many Democrats viewed as a stumbling campaign against a sharp and focused opponent. There is a good argument that the outcome was as much an anti-incumbent wave during tough economic times as it was an anti-Democratic wave. And there is still time before the midterm elections for the economy to rebound in a way that benefits Democratic candidates, and for Mr. Obama to make a case that the health care legislation, if he finds a way to sign it into law, will benefit the hard-pressed middle class.
Still, Ms. Coakley’s defeat could easily be seen as evidence that the Obama White House is out of step with much of the American public — pushing through a health care plan at a time when many voters are primarily concerned about unemployment.
Mr. Obama could find it more difficult to get moderate and conservative-leaning Democrats in Congress to cast politically tough votes.
It will be lost on few in the House or the Senate that the Democratic defeat in an overwhelmingly Democratic state came despite a last-minute personal appeal from Mr. Obama, who campaigned here for Ms. Coakley on Sunday. This suggests that Mr. Obama may be of limited or no help to candidates in close elections. No less important, he may not have much leverage to stop them from defying him in Washington.
“I think there’s been a misreading of where the public is at: having a health care debate when so many people were focused on their jobs,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic political consultant who managed the presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004.
“The failure to understand how anti-establishment the country has become is a big part of the problem,” Mr. Trippi said of Mr. Obama and the White House. “He actually led the way on that in the campaign and didn’t recognize what was happening as he was president.”
Interactive Map Massachusetts Election Results
January 20, 2010
Senator - Elect Scott Brown Pushes For Prompt Seating
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:22 p.m. ET
BOSTON (Reuters) - Scott Brown, who scored a big win for Republicans by winning a Democrat-held U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, said on Wednesday that given the wide margin of his victory he should be allowed to take up the seat very quickly.
Republicans hope that Brown can occupy the seat as soon as possible, replacing interim Senator Paul Kirk, a Democrat, and become the key 41st vote in the 100-member chamber and help block Democratic health care reforms and other legislation.
State law provides for some 15 days to delivery the final election results, but Brown noted at a post-election news conference that this had been circumvented in the past to seat Democratic lawmakers.
His campaign has requested that Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin make available an unofficial vote count, including the number of absentee ballots still outstanding.
"I'm confident that it will show the margin of victory exceeds the number of absentee ballots. Since the election is not in doubt, I'm hopeful that the Senate will seat me on the basis of those unofficial returns," he said.
Brown defeated his opponent, state attorney general Martha Coakley, by more than 100,000 votes on Tuesday.
Brown said the message sent by his upset win was that "people are tired of business as usual" in Washington politics, adding that he would like to see Congress move back to the drawing board on health care reform.
January 20, 2010
News Analysis
A Year Later, Voters Send a Different Message
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
BOSTON — Special elections come and go. And the party that wins the White House one year ordinarily loses seats in the next Congressional election that comes along.
But what happened in Massachusetts on Tuesday was no ordinary special election.
Scott Brown, a Republican state senator for only five years, shocked and arguably humiliated the White House and the Democratic Party establishment by defeating Martha Coakley in the race for a United States Senate seat. He did it one day short of a year after President Obama stood on the steps of the United States Capitol, looking across a mass of faces that celebrated the potential of his presidency.
As a result, Mr. Obama will spend the first anniversary of his inauguration watching Democrats tangle in an unseemly quarrel over who lost Massachusetts — Ms. Coakley’s pollster, Celinda Lake, called the Huffington Post four hours before the polls closed to blame Democratic leaders in Washington — and contemplating a political landscape that has been thoroughly upended in the course of only 10 days.
The implications are sure to be far-reaching, and the result leaves Mr. Obama with a long list of tough choices.
Stripped of the 60th vote needed to block Republican filibusters in the Senate, will Mr. Obama now make further accommodations to Republicans in an effort to move legislation through Congress with more bipartisanship, even at the cost of further alienating liberals annoyed at what they see as his ideological malleability?
Or will he seek to rally his party’s base through confrontation, even if it means giving up on getting much done this year?
Will he find a way to ram his health care bill through Congress quickly in the wake of the Massachusetts loss, so that his party can run on a major if controversial accomplishment? Or will he heed the warnings of Republicans, and now some Democrats, that to do so would be to ignore the message of Tuesday’s election, with its clear overtones of dissatisfaction with the administration’s approach so far?
It is not just questions of policy: for Mr. Obama and the Democrats, already worried about the coming midterm elections, the results could hardly have been more distressing. States do not come more Democratic than Massachusetts, the only one that voted for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972, a fact that older residents still recount with fresh pride. By challenging the legacy of Edward M. Kennedy, the holder of the contested seat for 46 years and a liberal icon, the Republican victory could only be dispiriting to the left.
Most ominously, independent voters — who embraced Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and are an increasingly critical constituency — seemed to have fled to Mr. Brown in Massachusetts, as they did to Republicans in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey last November. It is hard not to view that as a repudiation of the way Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have run things.
“This is a giant wake-up call,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in Virginia last year. “We have to keep our focus on job creation. Everything we have to do is related to job creation. We have to do a much better job on the message. People are confused on what this health care bill is going to do.”
Even before the polls closed, the White House was suggesting the outlines of a recovery strategy, a combination of a more populist tone and an embrace of greater fiscal responsibility.
Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to take a more populist stance on financial regulation legislation in Congress, seeking to position Democrats as defenders of the people against Wall Street, and to cast Republicans as defenders of bonus-laden bankers. And on Tuesday night, the White House brokered a deal that could lead to a bipartisan commission to recommend spending cuts and tax increases to address the nation’s fiscal condition. For months, Mr. Obama’s advisers had warned that the perception that budget deficits and the national debt were spiraling out of control was alienating independent voters already turned off by partisan battling.
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said he did not view the results as a repudiation of the White House’s agenda, but he acknowledged that the administration needed to do a more effective job of signaling concern about the problems gripping Americans.
“We are the party in power, and as such there’s an element of responsibility assigned,” he said. “I think people need to know that their challenges and their concerns are the focus of our work every day.”
Ms. Coakley lost in no small part because of what many Democrats viewed as a stumbling campaign against a sharp and focused opponent. There is a good argument that the outcome was as much an anti-incumbent wave during tough economic times as it was an anti-Democratic wave. And there is still time before the midterm elections for the economy to rebound in a way that benefits Democratic candidates, and for Mr. Obama to make a case that the health care legislation, if he finds a way to sign it into law, will benefit the hard-pressed middle class.
Still, Ms. Coakley’s defeat could easily be seen as evidence that the Obama White House is out of step with much of the American public — pushing through a health care plan at a time when many voters are primarily concerned about unemployment.
Mr. Obama could find it more difficult to get moderate and conservative-leaning Democrats in Congress to cast politically tough votes.
It will be lost on few in the House or the Senate that the Democratic defeat in an overwhelmingly Democratic state came despite a last-minute personal appeal from Mr. Obama, who campaigned here for Ms. Coakley on Sunday. This suggests that Mr. Obama may be of limited or no help to candidates in close elections. No less important, he may not have much leverage to stop them from defying him in Washington.
“I think there’s been a misreading of where the public is at: having a health care debate when so many people were focused on their jobs,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic political consultant who managed the presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004.
“The failure to understand how anti-establishment the country has become is a big part of the problem,” Mr. Trippi said of Mr. Obama and the White House. “He actually led the way on that in the campaign and didn’t recognize what was happening as he was president.”
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Hutchison Chases Texas Right
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, above, in August announcing her candidacy to unseat Gov. Rick Perry, who is seen below with Texas Rangers in October.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison may have won the backing of former Vice President Dick Cheney in her race for Texas governor, a key endorsement for a candidate seeking conservative support. But her drive to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry remains an uphill battle.
Ms. Hutchison, one of the Lone Star State's most popular politicians, was expected to mount a formidable challenge to Mr. Perry in one of the long-anticipated GOP primary battles of next year's elections. The GOP winner is an overwhelming favorite to be the next governor in this Republican state.
"We Westerners know the difference between a real talker and the real deal," Mr. Cheney said before a small crowd of about 100 Hutchison supporters and journalists Tuesday evening. "Kay Bailey Hutchison is the real deal."
Perry is more conservative than Hutchison; he even alluded to Texas seceding from the Union. But the Senator is an old Washington pal of Cheney.
But Mr. Perry has built a large lead in polls with less than four months to go to the March 2 primary. In part, he has scored points using what's shaping up as a popular strategy for many candidates during this election cycle, with rhetoric portraying Ms. Hutchison as a Washington insider out of touch with down-home Texans. He also has accused her of waffling on a pledge to resign from her Senate seat, which she had initially said she would do in October or November.
"It really does appear that it is slipping away for her," said Calvin Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
The Hutchison campaign hopes the backing of Mr. Cheney, who before being elected vice president was chief executive of Halliburton Co., then based in Dallas, will deepen the shallow conservative backing that has been long viewed as her principal weakness. But supporters of Mr. Perry, who has the backing of conservative groups and such governors as Haley Barbour of Mississippi, have tried to use the Cheney endorsement as evidence Ms. Hutchison is out of touch with Texas voters. "The Washington establishment usually sticks together," Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said.
That is almost an insult to Cheney, the right's darling.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Let's be friends, plu-eez
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had lunch Wednesday with New York's incoming public advocate, Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.
Michael R. Bloomberg, stung by an election outcome that revealed resentment over his undoing of the term limits law and his extravagant campaign spending, moved quickly Wednesday to strike a conciliatory tone as he reached out to the Democratic establishment that backed his opponent in the mayor’s race.
As aides worried that the narrow win — by a margin of less than 5 percent — would embolden previously cowed lawmakers, the mayor made clear in meetings and telephone calls with Democratic leaders that he understood that the roughness of his campaign had upset some people.
It is to be hoped that someone develops some spine, and challenges Bloomberg, denying him the option to rule without opposition.
But in his conspicuous gestures, Mr. Bloomberg and his aides also sought to send another message: we are still in charge.
That is where they have it wrong: the people are, or should be, in charge.
But tellingly, when the mayor tried to meet with John C. Liu, the Democratic comptroller-elect, Mr. Liu said he could not find time on his schedule, a highly unusual slight.
Good. Great.
Later, Mr. Liu told a reporter: “A long time ago, the people of New York decided there would be no king nor a monarch in New York City.”
Amen.
The speaker of the City Council, Christine C. Quinn, another Democrat, summed up her conversation with the mayor Wednesday as: “It’s time to move on.”
Time to move on, indeed. But keeping in mind that the City Council should not be the Mayor's doormat.
Mayor Bloomberg believes people still like him, and support his mayoralty.
But the election results seemed to reveal a much more complicated relationship with those he governs. Despite at least $90 million in campaign spending, Mr. Bloomberg lost large swaths of the city to William C. Thompson Jr.: he was defeated in both Brooklyn, the most populous borough, and the Bronx, the poorest.
“There’s certainly going to be a lot of Council members who are going to take him on,” said Councilman David I. Weprin, who supported Mr. Thompson. “There is a lot of resentment.”
Good. I certainly expect them to do their jobs, which is not to kowtow to the Mayor.
As the city’s political establishment tried to understand the huge gulf between the cocksure rhetoric of the mayor’s campaign and his showing at the polls, Bloomberg aides said that they had relentlessly promoted the mayor as invulnerable in the race when they knew differently, saying it was the only way they for them to keep the Democratic establishment from rallying behind Mr. Thompson.
No one read poll numbers?
Said one top Bloomberg campaign adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect internal discussions: “If a poll had come out showing that the race was within five points, Barack Obama would have swung into town, the United Federation of Teachers would break for Thompson and Mike Bloomberg would not be mayor today.”
Too bad.
Michael R. Bloomberg, stung by an election outcome that revealed resentment over his undoing of the term limits law and his extravagant campaign spending, moved quickly Wednesday to strike a conciliatory tone as he reached out to the Democratic establishment that backed his opponent in the mayor’s race.
As aides worried that the narrow win — by a margin of less than 5 percent — would embolden previously cowed lawmakers, the mayor made clear in meetings and telephone calls with Democratic leaders that he understood that the roughness of his campaign had upset some people.
It is to be hoped that someone develops some spine, and challenges Bloomberg, denying him the option to rule without opposition.
But in his conspicuous gestures, Mr. Bloomberg and his aides also sought to send another message: we are still in charge.
That is where they have it wrong: the people are, or should be, in charge.
But tellingly, when the mayor tried to meet with John C. Liu, the Democratic comptroller-elect, Mr. Liu said he could not find time on his schedule, a highly unusual slight.
Good. Great.
Later, Mr. Liu told a reporter: “A long time ago, the people of New York decided there would be no king nor a monarch in New York City.”
Amen.
The speaker of the City Council, Christine C. Quinn, another Democrat, summed up her conversation with the mayor Wednesday as: “It’s time to move on.”
Time to move on, indeed. But keeping in mind that the City Council should not be the Mayor's doormat.
Mayor Bloomberg believes people still like him, and support his mayoralty.
But the election results seemed to reveal a much more complicated relationship with those he governs. Despite at least $90 million in campaign spending, Mr. Bloomberg lost large swaths of the city to William C. Thompson Jr.: he was defeated in both Brooklyn, the most populous borough, and the Bronx, the poorest.
“There’s certainly going to be a lot of Council members who are going to take him on,” said Councilman David I. Weprin, who supported Mr. Thompson. “There is a lot of resentment.”
Good. I certainly expect them to do their jobs, which is not to kowtow to the Mayor.
As the city’s political establishment tried to understand the huge gulf between the cocksure rhetoric of the mayor’s campaign and his showing at the polls, Bloomberg aides said that they had relentlessly promoted the mayor as invulnerable in the race when they knew differently, saying it was the only way they for them to keep the Democratic establishment from rallying behind Mr. Thompson.
No one read poll numbers?
Said one top Bloomberg campaign adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect internal discussions: “If a poll had come out showing that the race was within five points, Barack Obama would have swung into town, the United Federation of Teachers would break for Thompson and Mike Bloomberg would not be mayor today.”
Too bad.
Morning after regrets
The Vote for Mayor, Block by BlockAs the cheering dies down over at William C. Thompson Jr.’s headquarters, where close almost passed for victory on Tuesday evening, New York’s Democrats are left to consider a colder reality: This was a race most Democrats now believe they could have won. Numbering among the co-conspirators in the Democrats’ defeat, in the view of some party leaders and activists, are Democratic grandees, from President Obama — who did not campaign for Mr. Thompson — to the City Council speaker, whose support could not have been softer, to two powerful labor unions that remained studiously neutral.
Why were the grandees quiet? And why could the President campaign in Jersey but not in NYC? Curious.
By the next mayoral election, it will have been 20 years since a Democrat occupied the mayor’s office, and the second guesses were many on Wednesday.
“The conditions were there all along for a formidable challenge to the mayor,” said Andrew Breslau, an observer of city politics and the executive director of City Futures, a nonpartisan urban policy group. “There was class resentment in this economically fraught time.”
And yet, once again, Democrats struggled to run an effective mayoral campaign. The causes for this are many.
The Democratic political machines stand covered with rust, with bosses ruling as minor potentates rather than boroughwide forces. Mr. Thompson was Brooklyn’s native son, yet the borough president, Marty Markowitz, piped up that he was a Bloomberg guy. The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, a Democrat, endorsed Mr. Thompson with the enthusiasm of someone facing a tooth extraction.
Nice. Party loyalty, anyone?
Nor did Mayor Bloomberg offer an easy mark. He had good favorability ratings and lavished more than $90 million on his campaign, collecting prominent Democratic consultants as a schoolboy might collect stamps. He created an aura of gilded invincibility, which the media retailed. For labor unions like 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East and the United Federation of Teachers, whose leaders are acutely sensitive to power, it seemed wise to stay silent.
Wise, or prudent? Wisdom implies good judgment and savvy; what labor leaders, among others, exercised was pusillanimity (contemptible fearfulness).
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
And da winner waz
GOP civil war the only real win for Democrats on Election Day
Republican infighting, conservatives v. moderates, lone saving grace.
Republican infighting, conservatives v. moderates, lone saving grace.
Beck and Palin didn't help or win
Douglas L. Hoffman, a previously unknown accountant from Lake Placid, ran as a Conservative, and drew the backing of social and fiscal conservatives like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck
Democrats won a special election in New York State’s northernmost Congressional district Tuesday, a setback for national conservatives who heavily promoted a third candidate in what became an intense debate over the direction of the Republican Party.
One can only hope that the right wingers continue their unabashed push to the extreme.
The battle became one of the most closely followed races in the nation, drawing in some of the biggest forces in politics in both parties. Republicans who viewed the race as a test of the party’s most deeply held conservative principles — including Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska; Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a presidential hopeful; and grass-roots groups that have forcefully opposed Democratic economic and health care policies — rallied behind Mr. Hoffman.
And they failed.
The finger pointing among Republicans started on Wednesday morning. Some conservatives were blaming the Republican Party for the loss, saying that if they had supported a more conservative candidate all along, the seat could have been won.
Victory has many parents, defeat is an orphan.
“I think Doug Hoffman likely would have won if he had been the Republican candidate from the get-go,” said Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential contender. “It wasn’t a spike in the end zone for the Democrats. They got that seat not because Democrats were brilliant, but because Republicans were stupid.”
Stupid? Par for the course.
Many conservatives attempted to frame Mr. Hoffman’s defeat as a victory, saying that despite Mr. Hoffman’s loss, conservatives prevailed because the moderate Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was forced out of the race.
Spin, spin, spin.
“Our number one goal was to make clear that the Republican Party cannot take someone as liberal as Dede Scozzafava and thrust her out on the voters and expect the voters just to accept it,” said Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, which worked to defeat Ms. Scozzafava, the Republican candidate who faced a challenge from Mr. Hoffman.
I rest my case. Still, pray tell, what is this NOM? Their website states opposition to same-sex marriage.
Leading conservative voices — including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and The Weekly Standard and the talk show personalities Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck — took on the Republican nominee, Assemblywoman Scozzafava, who supports gay rights and abortion rights and had embraced some Democratic economic policies like the federal stimulus package. They labeled her as too liberal.
A veritable who's who of the hard right.
But the race was perhaps most notable for the fissures it opened in the Republican Party. Ms. Scozzafava, who was selected as the Republican nominee by the 11 leaders of the county committees that comprise this vast district along the Canadian border, was excoriated by Washington’s conservative establishment almost as soon as she was nominated.
County leaders chose a candidate that met with disapproval from the conservative establishment, much of which is Washington-based, or otherwise elite.
Democrats won a special election in New York State’s northernmost Congressional district Tuesday, a setback for national conservatives who heavily promoted a third candidate in what became an intense debate over the direction of the Republican Party.
One can only hope that the right wingers continue their unabashed push to the extreme.
The battle became one of the most closely followed races in the nation, drawing in some of the biggest forces in politics in both parties. Republicans who viewed the race as a test of the party’s most deeply held conservative principles — including Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska; Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a presidential hopeful; and grass-roots groups that have forcefully opposed Democratic economic and health care policies — rallied behind Mr. Hoffman.
And they failed.
The finger pointing among Republicans started on Wednesday morning. Some conservatives were blaming the Republican Party for the loss, saying that if they had supported a more conservative candidate all along, the seat could have been won.
Victory has many parents, defeat is an orphan.
“I think Doug Hoffman likely would have won if he had been the Republican candidate from the get-go,” said Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential contender. “It wasn’t a spike in the end zone for the Democrats. They got that seat not because Democrats were brilliant, but because Republicans were stupid.”
Stupid? Par for the course.
Many conservatives attempted to frame Mr. Hoffman’s defeat as a victory, saying that despite Mr. Hoffman’s loss, conservatives prevailed because the moderate Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was forced out of the race.
Spin, spin, spin.
“Our number one goal was to make clear that the Republican Party cannot take someone as liberal as Dede Scozzafava and thrust her out on the voters and expect the voters just to accept it,” said Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, which worked to defeat Ms. Scozzafava, the Republican candidate who faced a challenge from Mr. Hoffman.
I rest my case. Still, pray tell, what is this NOM? Their website states opposition to same-sex marriage.
Leading conservative voices — including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and The Weekly Standard and the talk show personalities Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck — took on the Republican nominee, Assemblywoman Scozzafava, who supports gay rights and abortion rights and had embraced some Democratic economic policies like the federal stimulus package. They labeled her as too liberal.
A veritable who's who of the hard right.
But the race was perhaps most notable for the fissures it opened in the Republican Party. Ms. Scozzafava, who was selected as the Republican nominee by the 11 leaders of the county committees that comprise this vast district along the Canadian border, was excoriated by Washington’s conservative establishment almost as soon as she was nominated.
County leaders chose a candidate that met with disapproval from the conservative establishment, much of which is Washington-based, or otherwise elite.
I voted against him
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg celebrated his re-election Tuesday night at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers
For the first time in years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finds himself governing New York City from a most unaccustomed vantage point: Vulnerability.
Ninety million dollars and a near-constant loop of negative commercials about his opponent later, the mayor ended election night in possession of a surprisingly modest margin of victory — far narrower than pollsters had predicted and with 100,000 fewer votes than he won in 2005. This could have profound implications for the tenor of a third Bloomberg term, not least that it is likely to hinder the mayor’s well-honed ability to cow Democrats and liberal interest groups.
Somebody should stand up to him; hopefully John Liu will have the spine to do so.
What perhaps was missing all along, and what will be his challenge now, is to find a more tactile, emotional connection with New Yorkers.
It is not in his DNA to be emotional. He is the remote technocrat.
“It’s not a vote of repudiation; it’s a vote of no confidence,” said Fred Siegel, a history professor at the Cooper Union and a longtime chronicler of urban America. “A lot of people are going to think twice before showing him deference.”
Hopefully.
New Yorkers Have Their Say
Slide Show
Election Day 2009
Graphic
Profile of New York City Voters
For the first time in years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finds himself governing New York City from a most unaccustomed vantage point: Vulnerability.
Ninety million dollars and a near-constant loop of negative commercials about his opponent later, the mayor ended election night in possession of a surprisingly modest margin of victory — far narrower than pollsters had predicted and with 100,000 fewer votes than he won in 2005. This could have profound implications for the tenor of a third Bloomberg term, not least that it is likely to hinder the mayor’s well-honed ability to cow Democrats and liberal interest groups.
Somebody should stand up to him; hopefully John Liu will have the spine to do so.
What perhaps was missing all along, and what will be his challenge now, is to find a more tactile, emotional connection with New Yorkers.
It is not in his DNA to be emotional. He is the remote technocrat.
“It’s not a vote of repudiation; it’s a vote of no confidence,” said Fred Siegel, a history professor at the Cooper Union and a longtime chronicler of urban America. “A lot of people are going to think twice before showing him deference.”
Hopefully.
New Yorkers Have Their Say
Slide Show
Election Day 2009
Graphic Profile of New York City Voters
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Bush memoirs to haunt GOP
For Republicans looking forward to the first Bush-free election in a decade, the book publishing schedule is the bearer of bad news: Between New Year’s Day and next November, as many as five Bush administration officials — including the former president himself — will rehash history in hardback.
First Hank Paulson, that lovable Treasury Secretary, then Laura, then W himself. Should be neat.
The Bush montage plays right into the hands of Democrats, says Democratic strategist Douglas Schoen, who predicts that the midterm elections will be a battle between those who will try to make it a belated referendum on the Bush administration and those who will try to make it a premature referendum on the Obama administration.
Well, jobs will play a significant role, and the Republicans will try to emphasize that, whilst trying to dodge all those books.
Friday, August 7, 2009
State Races Seen as Tests for Obama
President Obama arrived Thursday to speak at a fund-raiser in McLean, Va., for R. Creigh Deeds, a candidate for governor
President Obama has returned to the campaign trail. He is appearing in television advertisements in New Jersey this week on behalf of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, the embattled Democrat struggling to win a second term. And he campaigned on Thursday evening alongside R. Creigh Deeds, the candidate for governor fighting to keep Virginia in the Democratic column.
The New Jersey and Virginia races for governor are the only big-ticket political contests for 2009. And fairly or not — Mr. Obama’s advisers are not alone in arguing that the significance of these races does not extend beyond the boundaries of either state — the contests are being held up as an early measure of how Mr. Obama is doing and a predictor of how Democrats might fare in next year’s Congressional campaigns.
Non-stop campaigns. People began talking about 2010 and 2012 days after January 20, 2009.
President Obama has returned to the campaign trail. He is appearing in television advertisements in New Jersey this week on behalf of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, the embattled Democrat struggling to win a second term. And he campaigned on Thursday evening alongside R. Creigh Deeds, the candidate for governor fighting to keep Virginia in the Democratic column.
The New Jersey and Virginia races for governor are the only big-ticket political contests for 2009. And fairly or not — Mr. Obama’s advisers are not alone in arguing that the significance of these races does not extend beyond the boundaries of either state — the contests are being held up as an early measure of how Mr. Obama is doing and a predictor of how Democrats might fare in next year’s Congressional campaigns.
Non-stop campaigns. People began talking about 2010 and 2012 days after January 20, 2009.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
In Iran, a Struggle Beyond the Streets
Clerics during prayers in June. Many religious leaders have not spoken out in support of Iran’s president or supreme leader.
The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy.
That is more than has been reported; the analysis offered was that the protests were over what seemed election fraud, and only that.
From the beginning, both have vied for an upper hand, and today both are tarnished. In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said.
Well, it was always a dictatorship, for candidates had to be approved by a board of clerics before gaining permission to run in elections.
Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms.
Yet Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr. Ahmadinejad and their allies still have a monopoly over the most powerful levers of state. They control the police, the courts and the prosecutor’s office. They control the military and the militia forces. And they retain the loyalty of a core group of powerful clerics and their conservative followers: for example, a hard-line cleric who heads the Qum Seminary, Ayatollah Morteza Moghtadai, said on Tuesday that “the case is closed.” No one, not even restive clerics, is in a position to strip this group of its power in the short term.
But the long term is what is in play as this conflict evolves.
For now, Iran’s most hard-line forces have been emboldened. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Muhammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, has said elected institutions are anathema to a religious government and should be no more than window dressing.
At least he's honest about it.
To understand the nature of the conflict, it is essential to look back to the founding of the republic. Ayatollah Khomeini built on two different and often contradictory principles, one of public accountability and one of religious authority. To tie it all together, Ayatollah Khomeini imported a centuries-old religious idea, called velayat-e faqih, or governance of the Islamic jurist. Shiite Muslims believe that they are awaiting the return of the 12th Imam, and under this religious concept the faqih, or supreme leader, serves in his place as a sort of divine deputy.
The competing poles of Iran’s system have produced a fight-to-the-death ethos. Compromise is not just elusive but a sign of weakness.
The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy.
That is more than has been reported; the analysis offered was that the protests were over what seemed election fraud, and only that.
From the beginning, both have vied for an upper hand, and today both are tarnished. In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said.
Well, it was always a dictatorship, for candidates had to be approved by a board of clerics before gaining permission to run in elections.
Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms.
Yet Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr. Ahmadinejad and their allies still have a monopoly over the most powerful levers of state. They control the police, the courts and the prosecutor’s office. They control the military and the militia forces. And they retain the loyalty of a core group of powerful clerics and their conservative followers: for example, a hard-line cleric who heads the Qum Seminary, Ayatollah Morteza Moghtadai, said on Tuesday that “the case is closed.” No one, not even restive clerics, is in a position to strip this group of its power in the short term.
But the long term is what is in play as this conflict evolves.
For now, Iran’s most hard-line forces have been emboldened. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Muhammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, has said elected institutions are anathema to a religious government and should be no more than window dressing.
At least he's honest about it.
To understand the nature of the conflict, it is essential to look back to the founding of the republic. Ayatollah Khomeini built on two different and often contradictory principles, one of public accountability and one of religious authority. To tie it all together, Ayatollah Khomeini imported a centuries-old religious idea, called velayat-e faqih, or governance of the Islamic jurist. Shiite Muslims believe that they are awaiting the return of the 12th Imam, and under this religious concept the faqih, or supreme leader, serves in his place as a sort of divine deputy.
The competing poles of Iran’s system have produced a fight-to-the-death ethos. Compromise is not just elusive but a sign of weakness.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Regresa el PRI
“The PRI comes back” shouted the front page headline of the daily newspaper El Universal on Monday, the day after the political party known as the PRI swept midterm elections.Regresa el PRI
But the story was all in the photograph, a shot of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari as he left a voting booth. He was not running for any office, but the photograph seemed to ask why Mexicans were returning to power the party identified with Mr. Salinas, who left office 15 years ago amid political scandal and economic chaos.
Presidente Calderón's campaign to eradicate corruption and narcos has been violent, disruptive, and does not seem to have been effective (insofar as the results are not complete, and people generally wish they were now complete).
“Yes, I admit the PRI is corrupt,” said Luis Osorio, a juice vendor in Mexico City, on Monday as he discussed election news with customers stopping by his stand. “So we voted for the PAN, and they turned out to be just as corrupt. They turned everything into their personal business.”
Although Mr. Calderón is personally popular, his economic policies are not. Mexico has been buffeted especially hard by the global economic crisis, and the economy is expected to contract by as much as 8 percent this year.
So now PRI is demanding a Cabinet shuffle.
And the leader of the PAN, Germán MartÃnez, has resigned.
The image of the PRI outside the capital is very different from its reputation among the political and social elite in Mexico City. “If you say you’re a PRI-ista in Tamaulipas, it’s something to be proud of,” said Francisco Abundis Luna, a pollster with the firm ParametrÃa, referring to the state of Tamaulipas, which is on the Gulf of Mexico and borders Texas.
Many voters think that PRI politicians are corrupt, Mr. Mercado said, but his polling found what he called a perverse nostalgia for the PRI’s style of corruption. The PRI tolerates a bending of the rules that allows working people, like illegal street vendors or unlicensed cabdrivers, to earn a living. [Lauro Mercado Gasca, a pollster who directs Mercaei]
“It’s perverse and antimodern, but it’s functional,” Mr. Mercado said.
It works.
The PRI will have de facto control over the lower house in an alliance with a smaller party. Mr. Calderón’s only leverage now is in the Senate, whose members were not up for election and where his party has a 40 percent plurality.
Still, many analysts warned against interpreting the election results as a broad shift of power in Mexico, noting that the PRI won only slightly more of the popular vote, about 37 percent on Sunday, than it did during the 2003 midterm elections.
The PRI also prospered from what appears to have been the near-collapse of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, or P.R.D., which was split by an internal feud. Once-solid P.R.D. territory went to the PRI.
That's interesting: PAN kept its vote percentage, and PRI picked up PRD support.
The PRI has successfully painted itself as more experienced than the PAN. Its new slogan says "Today's PRI: Proven Experience. New Attitude." But analysts said the party has done little soul-searching from its loss of the presidency, when it was widely viewed as corrupt.
Spin. It works.
"Among voters, they have credibility as a governing party that can be summed up like this: 'We might be corrupt, but we're more efficient than the other guys,'" Mr. Rubio said.
Perceptions might be summed up: everyone is corrupt, and PRI delivers.
Growing political clout from the PRI could hurt Mr. Calderón's war on drugs. Many PRI members have been ambivalent about the effort, worried about the army's growing presence in various cities. Some party insiders have also argued that cutting backroom deals with organized crime in Mexico is the best way to control violence.
Negotiate with narcocriminals; nice strategy.
Some analysts hold out hope that the PRI's victory will push it to be cooperative as it tries to convince voters that it can be trusted with the presidency. They said the PRI may even cooperate on thorny issues like tax reform to shore up the country's weakening finances.
That window, analysts say, will stay open for about a year and a half before the next election begins to pit the PAN and the PRI against each other again. Mr. Calderón won't have much time.
Two PRI candidates whose relatives or associates had links to the drugs trade, and who were the subjects of a Wall Street Journal article Friday, romped to easy victories at the polls.
Mario Anguiano Moreno won with about 53% of the vote in his race for governor in the state of Colima, while former Ciudad Juárez Mayor Héctor MurgÃa Lardizábal easily won his race for a seat in Mexico's national assembly -- beating his nearest rival by 30 percentage points.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Election: lost, or stolen?
In this news analysis, curious grammar and sentence construction. To wit:
It is impossible to know for sure how much the ostensible re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the preference of an essentially conservative Iranian public and how much, as opposition voters passionately believe, it is the imposed verdict of a fundamentally authoritarian regime.
Fundamentally authoritarian? Does authoritarian merit qualification? A sham election is also mentioned.
Domestically, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to the fears of the more pious and poor who found change unsettling. This included those alarmed by the days of political street carnival preceding the election and those (not just men) put off by Mr. Moussavi’s attention to the traditional, second-class role of women in this paternalistic quasi-theocracy.
Quasi-theocracy? It either is, or it isn't a theocracy, right? An a ham-handed defiance of the West is added. Ham-handed is a curious choice of metaphor regarding an Islamic country that abstains from pork.
Aside from language, the politics of the election aren't encouraging. The mullahs have spoken.
It is impossible to know for sure how much the ostensible re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the preference of an essentially conservative Iranian public and how much, as opposition voters passionately believe, it is the imposed verdict of a fundamentally authoritarian regime.
Fundamentally authoritarian? Does authoritarian merit qualification? A sham election is also mentioned.
Domestically, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to the fears of the more pious and poor who found change unsettling. This included those alarmed by the days of political street carnival preceding the election and those (not just men) put off by Mr. Moussavi’s attention to the traditional, second-class role of women in this paternalistic quasi-theocracy.
Quasi-theocracy? It either is, or it isn't a theocracy, right? An a ham-handed defiance of the West is added. Ham-handed is a curious choice of metaphor regarding an Islamic country that abstains from pork.
Aside from language, the politics of the election aren't encouraging. The mullahs have spoken.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Koreans want Flushing Council seat
Photographs by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times - At least two Korean-Americans are running for the City Council seat of John C. Liu in Flushing, Queens: Ronald Kim, left, and S. J. Jung
May 6, 2009
Korean New Yorkers Hope for Council Seat in Queens, Their First
By KIRK SEMPLE
You hear it a lot these days among New York’s Korean-Americans, a heady declaration of political entitlement: “It’s our time.”
Korean-Americans number more than 132,000 in the state, according to the latest census figures, and have become a significant economic force in the New York region. Yet none have ever been elected to the New York City Council, the State Legislature or any statewide office.
But now that John C. Liu, a Chinese-American who represents Flushing, Queens, on the City Council, is running for city comptroller, many Korean-American civic leaders and political operatives say this is the opportunity they have been waiting for.
Two Korean-American candidates have announced they will run for Mr. Liu’s seat: S. J. Jung, a community organizer, and Ronald Kim, Gov. David A. Paterson’s regional representative for Queens. A third, John Choe, Mr. Liu’s chief of staff, said he might also jump into the fray, and there has been talk of still others.
The growing field mirrors the increasing visibility of Koreans — not just in Mr. Liu’s ethnically diverse district, where a Koreatown of restaurants, shops and other businesses thrives, but also across the region, where the contest is drawing interest and money from Korean-Americans. Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said this could be “a decisive moment” in the political maturation of the Korean-American community.
“They’re exploding onto the scene,” said Ms. Hong, who is Korean-American. “I think the Council race is only one manifestation of that.” (Ms. Hong has thrown her personal support behind Mr. Jung, though her organization is nonpartisan.)
For all the excitement, victory for a Korean-American candidate is far from guaranteed. With the primaries still more than four months away, the contest to succeed Mr. Liu in the overwhelmingly Democratic 20th Council District is already shaping up as one of the season’s most dynamic and intriguing local races.
The field is crowded. Three Chinese-Americans — a community activist and former teacher, a Queens Democratic Party district leader, and a businessman who is the only Republican running so far — have announced their candidacies, as have a Greek-American college student and a civic activist and retired cancer researcher of Sephardic Jewish heritage.
The ethnic diversity of the district, which covers a swath of northeast Queens, is reflected in the voice-mail greeting on Mr. Liu’s office phone: “Thanks for calling,” Mr. Liu, who was born in Taiwan, says on the message. “For English, press two; Spanish three.” He then cycles through options in Korean, Chinese, Russian and Greek.
The Asian-American population in the district has grown rapidly over the last three decades, to more than half of the total population. Residents of Chinese descent are by far the largest ethnic group, composing about 32 percent of the population and outnumbering Korean-Americans by roughly 2.5 to 1, according to calculations by Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College demographer, based on the latest census statistics.
The election of Mr. Liu, in 2001, was hailed as a watershed for the Chinese-American community, which had long been shut out of the political mainstream. Mr. Liu, the only person of Asian descent ever to sit on the City Council, easily won re-election in 2003 and 2005.
The number of Korean-Americans in the district has actually declined slightly over the last decade, but the number in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has increased by about 19 percent, according to census data.
Korean-American leaders say that larger community is now politically mature and organized enough to elevate one of its own.
Ms. Hong said that in recent years, a variety of Korean-American advocacy groups around the region had become more politically active and sophisticated, learning how to mobilize their community and lobby elected officials on welfare and immigration matters. They have forged ties with more-established civil rights and immigrant rights groups.
Yonghwa Ha, president-elect of the Korean-American Association of Greater New York, said a record voter turnout in late March for the association’s presidential elections reflected the increasing political participation of the community. In that election, more than 15,000 people voted in New York City and New Jersey.
Though anyone of Korean descent was eligible to vote, regardless of legal status, Mr. Ha said he hoped to harness that enthusiasm and register more Korean-American voters in time for the City Council election. “I want that fever,” he said.
Community leaders say Korean-American money from around the region has already been flowing into the candidates’ campaigns in District 20.
But political analysts say it is unlikely a candidate can win without cobbling together broad support spanning various ethnic and racial groups. According to Evan Stavisky, a Democratic political consultant who lives in the district, about 35 percent of the registered voters there are Asian-American, a roughly equal number are white, 20 percent are Latino and 10 percent are African-American.
“In communities like Flushing, there’s no one single group that’s capable of delivering an election to their favorite son or daughter,” Mr. Stavisky said. “Instead, you not only must galvanize your own constituency but you need to be able to break through to other groups, putting aside any historic differences or tensions between the communities.”
In interviews, some Korean-American candidates took pains to distance themselves from ethnic labels.
“I’ve been a bridge builder,” said Mr. Jung, who showed up with a multiethnic, multidenominational group of supporters to celebrate his campaign’s start in April. “I’ve worked with diverse communities.”
Mr. Kim, Governor Paterson’s representative, said he was “not just running as a Korean person.”
“I’m just a local kid from Queens,” he said. “I just want to represent the district and want to represent everybody in that district.”
Still, they will have to win Korean votes. And community leaders intent on electing one of their own admit that the more Korean-Americans in the race, the less likely it is that any one will win enough of that natural base to prevail. Indeed, if the field still remains crowded come Primary Day, Sept. 8, the Korean-American community may well find that it has been too successful in spurring political involvement.
“If three Koreans come out, you have no chance,” declared Fred Fu, a prominent Chinese-American member of the Flushing business community. “When you say this is the year for a Korean, you say ‘Korean,’ not ‘Koreans.’ No ‘s!’ ”
Few forces could break a logjam of candidates like an endorsement from Mr. Liu. The councilman said in an interview last Wednesday that he would probably “weigh in,” but would hold off until the roster of candidates crystallized, perhaps at the beginning of June.
“It’s definitely fever pitch among the Korean-American community to once again make history in Flushing,” he said. “The community is organized and galvanized.”
May 6, 2009
Korean New Yorkers Hope for Council Seat in Queens, Their First
By KIRK SEMPLE
You hear it a lot these days among New York’s Korean-Americans, a heady declaration of political entitlement: “It’s our time.”
Korean-Americans number more than 132,000 in the state, according to the latest census figures, and have become a significant economic force in the New York region. Yet none have ever been elected to the New York City Council, the State Legislature or any statewide office.
But now that John C. Liu, a Chinese-American who represents Flushing, Queens, on the City Council, is running for city comptroller, many Korean-American civic leaders and political operatives say this is the opportunity they have been waiting for.
Two Korean-American candidates have announced they will run for Mr. Liu’s seat: S. J. Jung, a community organizer, and Ronald Kim, Gov. David A. Paterson’s regional representative for Queens. A third, John Choe, Mr. Liu’s chief of staff, said he might also jump into the fray, and there has been talk of still others.
The growing field mirrors the increasing visibility of Koreans — not just in Mr. Liu’s ethnically diverse district, where a Koreatown of restaurants, shops and other businesses thrives, but also across the region, where the contest is drawing interest and money from Korean-Americans. Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said this could be “a decisive moment” in the political maturation of the Korean-American community.
“They’re exploding onto the scene,” said Ms. Hong, who is Korean-American. “I think the Council race is only one manifestation of that.” (Ms. Hong has thrown her personal support behind Mr. Jung, though her organization is nonpartisan.)
For all the excitement, victory for a Korean-American candidate is far from guaranteed. With the primaries still more than four months away, the contest to succeed Mr. Liu in the overwhelmingly Democratic 20th Council District is already shaping up as one of the season’s most dynamic and intriguing local races.
The field is crowded. Three Chinese-Americans — a community activist and former teacher, a Queens Democratic Party district leader, and a businessman who is the only Republican running so far — have announced their candidacies, as have a Greek-American college student and a civic activist and retired cancer researcher of Sephardic Jewish heritage.
The ethnic diversity of the district, which covers a swath of northeast Queens, is reflected in the voice-mail greeting on Mr. Liu’s office phone: “Thanks for calling,” Mr. Liu, who was born in Taiwan, says on the message. “For English, press two; Spanish three.” He then cycles through options in Korean, Chinese, Russian and Greek.
The Asian-American population in the district has grown rapidly over the last three decades, to more than half of the total population. Residents of Chinese descent are by far the largest ethnic group, composing about 32 percent of the population and outnumbering Korean-Americans by roughly 2.5 to 1, according to calculations by Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College demographer, based on the latest census statistics.
The election of Mr. Liu, in 2001, was hailed as a watershed for the Chinese-American community, which had long been shut out of the political mainstream. Mr. Liu, the only person of Asian descent ever to sit on the City Council, easily won re-election in 2003 and 2005.
The number of Korean-Americans in the district has actually declined slightly over the last decade, but the number in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has increased by about 19 percent, according to census data.
Korean-American leaders say that larger community is now politically mature and organized enough to elevate one of its own.
Ms. Hong said that in recent years, a variety of Korean-American advocacy groups around the region had become more politically active and sophisticated, learning how to mobilize their community and lobby elected officials on welfare and immigration matters. They have forged ties with more-established civil rights and immigrant rights groups.
Yonghwa Ha, president-elect of the Korean-American Association of Greater New York, said a record voter turnout in late March for the association’s presidential elections reflected the increasing political participation of the community. In that election, more than 15,000 people voted in New York City and New Jersey.
Though anyone of Korean descent was eligible to vote, regardless of legal status, Mr. Ha said he hoped to harness that enthusiasm and register more Korean-American voters in time for the City Council election. “I want that fever,” he said.
Community leaders say Korean-American money from around the region has already been flowing into the candidates’ campaigns in District 20.
But political analysts say it is unlikely a candidate can win without cobbling together broad support spanning various ethnic and racial groups. According to Evan Stavisky, a Democratic political consultant who lives in the district, about 35 percent of the registered voters there are Asian-American, a roughly equal number are white, 20 percent are Latino and 10 percent are African-American.
“In communities like Flushing, there’s no one single group that’s capable of delivering an election to their favorite son or daughter,” Mr. Stavisky said. “Instead, you not only must galvanize your own constituency but you need to be able to break through to other groups, putting aside any historic differences or tensions between the communities.”
In interviews, some Korean-American candidates took pains to distance themselves from ethnic labels.
“I’ve been a bridge builder,” said Mr. Jung, who showed up with a multiethnic, multidenominational group of supporters to celebrate his campaign’s start in April. “I’ve worked with diverse communities.”
Mr. Kim, Governor Paterson’s representative, said he was “not just running as a Korean person.”
“I’m just a local kid from Queens,” he said. “I just want to represent the district and want to represent everybody in that district.”
Still, they will have to win Korean votes. And community leaders intent on electing one of their own admit that the more Korean-Americans in the race, the less likely it is that any one will win enough of that natural base to prevail. Indeed, if the field still remains crowded come Primary Day, Sept. 8, the Korean-American community may well find that it has been too successful in spurring political involvement.
“If three Koreans come out, you have no chance,” declared Fred Fu, a prominent Chinese-American member of the Flushing business community. “When you say this is the year for a Korean, you say ‘Korean,’ not ‘Koreans.’ No ‘s!’ ”
Few forces could break a logjam of candidates like an endorsement from Mr. Liu. The councilman said in an interview last Wednesday that he would probably “weigh in,” but would hold off until the roster of candidates crystallized, perhaps at the beginning of June.
“It’s definitely fever pitch among the Korean-American community to once again make history in Flushing,” he said. “The community is organized and galvanized.”
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Economic Decline Lifts the Prospects of a Vocal Populist
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former presidential candidate, attracted thousands of supporters to a Mexico City rally Jan. 25
AMLO is still about.
Only two years ago, Amlo, as he is known, was the driving force in Mexico’s polarized politics. After he narrowly lost the presidency and led months of street protests charging that it had been stolen from him, politics boiled down to one issue: who was for him and who was against.
Last year, his hold on public attention began to falter. The public, the news media and many of his supporters had simply moved on, letting the turmoil of the 2006 election fade into history.
Saying that the economy will only get worse, Mr. López Obrador announced a campaign to press the government to cut wasteful spending, lower consumer prices and taxes, and do more for the poor.
Price controls sound good.
“Our movement must continue demanding a change in economic policy, which has demonstrated its failure,” he said. “The model must be changed. You cannot put new wine in old bottles.”
With the next presidential election three years off, Mr. López Obrador’s precise ambitions are unclear. He calls his new campaign a social movement and clearly aims to be a force to be reckoned with.
Not tipping his hand gives him an unknown element.
But his relationship with his own party remains fraught. Last year he lost a battle with a rival faction over the presidency of the party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or P.R.D., and he no longer holds any official position in the party or in government.
He doesn't need no stinkin' adges.
The low point came last fall, when most of the senators from his party broke with him to approve an important energy bill, as his supporters scuffled with police officers in an attempt to block the vote.
To many who had backed his presidential bid, Mr. López Obrador’s street-brawling political style had become a liability.
What is evident is that while talk of a comeback may be premature, so was writing him off.
“He’s a charismatic, intuitive politician,” said Joy Langston, an analyst with the CIDE, a Mexico City research institution. “He not only knows how to win over the masses but also to govern in a way that continues his popularity. Amlo will never be completely finished.”
AMLO is still about.Only two years ago, Amlo, as he is known, was the driving force in Mexico’s polarized politics. After he narrowly lost the presidency and led months of street protests charging that it had been stolen from him, politics boiled down to one issue: who was for him and who was against.
Last year, his hold on public attention began to falter. The public, the news media and many of his supporters had simply moved on, letting the turmoil of the 2006 election fade into history.
Saying that the economy will only get worse, Mr. López Obrador announced a campaign to press the government to cut wasteful spending, lower consumer prices and taxes, and do more for the poor.
Price controls sound good.
“Our movement must continue demanding a change in economic policy, which has demonstrated its failure,” he said. “The model must be changed. You cannot put new wine in old bottles.”
With the next presidential election three years off, Mr. López Obrador’s precise ambitions are unclear. He calls his new campaign a social movement and clearly aims to be a force to be reckoned with.
Not tipping his hand gives him an unknown element.
But his relationship with his own party remains fraught. Last year he lost a battle with a rival faction over the presidency of the party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or P.R.D., and he no longer holds any official position in the party or in government.
He doesn't need no stinkin' adges.
The low point came last fall, when most of the senators from his party broke with him to approve an important energy bill, as his supporters scuffled with police officers in an attempt to block the vote.
To many who had backed his presidential bid, Mr. López Obrador’s street-brawling political style had become a liability.
What is evident is that while talk of a comeback may be premature, so was writing him off.
“He’s a charismatic, intuitive politician,” said Joy Langston, an analyst with the CIDE, a Mexico City research institution. “He not only knows how to win over the masses but also to govern in a way that continues his popularity. Amlo will never be completely finished.”
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Bibi borrows from Obama
If imitation is the best form of flattery, Bibi is complimenting President-elect Obama. Yeah, right. What Bibi's doing is shamelessly riuding a wave. Just like Bibi: do anything to get elected, and forget shame. Shameless? One of his middle names. Never in modern times has there been a politician who so nakedly pursues power for the sake of having power and getting attention. If Nixon lived in cyber-times, Tricki Dickie and Bibi would be in hot competition for the title of the most unprincipled politician -- and that's saying something.
Israeli Candidate Borrows a (Web) Page From Obama
The campaign Web site of Benjamin Netanyahu, right, looks a lot like Barack Obama's, and it's no coincidence.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
He's Back
And that familiar finger, too. Awgawd.
![[Go to the article]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uS8Aly9QGnBLgBFJVZ9NoRBcbKdBmiTpNFK2v-eX38TAUYC2yaRFFNcfC5yOyxovD1Txs72DRB8MfN_P6yLsEmwjP0Ju32Dws7iwiWbLjt34tTPqs3sANW_QzFjF4rbIVj8ZROVfBpFi8rU6VPWQ=s0-d)
Billification: The former president, here in Carlisle, Pa., has been pushing his staff to arrange more appearances for him on the stump.
His role has come at a cost -- to morale among some campaign staff, relations inside the Democratic Party and with African-American leaders, and in the view of some, his own legacy. He has lost considerable credibility with many party leaders, who, as "superdelegates" to the party convention, will be crucial in determining who is the Democratic presidential nominee.
One can only hope the cost is high.
Billification: The former president, here in Carlisle, Pa., has been pushing his staff to arrange more appearances for him on the stump.His role has come at a cost -- to morale among some campaign staff, relations inside the Democratic Party and with African-American leaders, and in the view of some, his own legacy. He has lost considerable credibility with many party leaders, who, as "superdelegates" to the party convention, will be crucial in determining who is the Democratic presidential nominee.
One can only hope the cost is high.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Trench warfare
A British journalist looks at the campaign.
The Clintons may have been trained as lawyers but they have always been professional politicians, who revel in the bare knuckle, brow-beating, arm-squeezing, baby-hugging business of getting elected and wielding power.
Bare-knuckled, indeed.
That's what Hillary means when she boasts about experience and tells her audience that she has been in the fight long enough to know how to deliver the knock-out blows against John McCain in November. In effect she is saying: "I may not be about change. I may not embody the new type of politics, you all yearn for. But I am really good at the old type. In a nasty fight you want me on your side not the loping intellectual from Harvard!"
Of course, she went to Wellesley and Yale.
The voters don't actually matter any longer. There is only one audience that matters in this trench warfare and it is not the energised voters of North Carolina, Indiana, Puerto Rico or Guam. t is the 796 super-delegates, the unaccountable conclave of cardinals, who can in theory vote for whomever they like, giving whatever reason they fancy.
Unaccountable conclave of cardinals: great phrase, and completely on the mark.
The Clintons may have been trained as lawyers but they have always been professional politicians, who revel in the bare knuckle, brow-beating, arm-squeezing, baby-hugging business of getting elected and wielding power.
Bare-knuckled, indeed.
That's what Hillary means when she boasts about experience and tells her audience that she has been in the fight long enough to know how to deliver the knock-out blows against John McCain in November. In effect she is saying: "I may not be about change. I may not embody the new type of politics, you all yearn for. But I am really good at the old type. In a nasty fight you want me on your side not the loping intellectual from Harvard!"
Of course, she went to Wellesley and Yale.
The voters don't actually matter any longer. There is only one audience that matters in this trench warfare and it is not the energised voters of North Carolina, Indiana, Puerto Rico or Guam. t is the 796 super-delegates, the unaccountable conclave of cardinals, who can in theory vote for whomever they like, giving whatever reason they fancy.
Unaccountable conclave of cardinals: great phrase, and completely on the mark.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Di nuovo - Again
Conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi appeared to clinch Italy's national election, making it likely that the media mogul will return as prime minister for a third time. Center-left leader Walter Veltroni conceded defeat, saying the result was clear even if the vote tally wasn't yet final.
This is amazing, yet typical of Italy. This is the country that has had 57 governments in the 60 years of the modern Republic. And it is the same country that has been considering a bridge from Calabria to Sicily for the past 143 years. And it is the world's 7th largest economy.
Of course the faces remain the same across time, so 57 governments doesn't mean that it has been ... wait, it does mean that continuity has been there, but so has been instability. Maybe it shows that government doesn't mean that much.
Of course, not everyone is happy. This man clearly isn't happy.
![[Berlusconi]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sj2_C6cCgbvVjnHS2BScRAwx1hiP5wHdS51p9UJEHBe_cfWQIBgyaS1HDm8pCUjMAwFmEXGP90wjn6kefI5xy0u1FnDPNYTkIqzyCB-nE-nYFNZe7GYcD00YpBoWY1EPSqMHwSn8PsqnIhz7NayQ=s0-d) |
| Getty Images |
| Silvio Berlusconi cast his ballot at a |
Of course the faces remain the same across time, so 57 governments doesn't mean that it has been ... wait, it does mean that continuity has been there, but so has been instability. Maybe it shows that government doesn't mean that much.
Of course, not everyone is happy. This man clearly isn't happy.
![[See more photos]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_urEo9gl4EilpMiVMPaSQKIFvXQ9MAVmVaUGoWP9PnltIA7knUso1sgg5V4HGioucZ-bxVuj0TBd4zxzhALTZWVueghNzUt4koQ8_vxp4qHHtYKVT8Atg-jMV1gEDhSr4p9bn-4SHGAVCPLWCda=s0-d) 1 |
| Associated Press |
| A man reacted to the vote at the Democratic Party headquarters in Rome Monday. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)