2006 elections

Thursday Chris Bowers at MyDD posted on a study by Harvard University's Elaine Kamarck indicating early success for Howard Dean's Fifty State Strategy. The study focused on "39 congressional districts where Dean had made an investment in organizing" (as opposed to states where the organizers worked at the state party headquarters for all U.S. House candidates). The North Carolina Democratic Party now has three organizers.

...those congressional districts where the DNC had paid organizers on the ground for over a year more than doubled the Democratic vote over what would have happened due to forces outside the control of the Party, such as the war in Iraq and the unpopularity of a Republican President.

There are probably some things more annoying than whining Republicans, but I can't think of any today. That's because I just got my very own copy of Citizen News, the bi-monthly newsletter from the John William Pope Civitas Institute. The lead story in this edition is by Puppet President Jack Hawke, entitled "Republicans Win the Vote, Lose the Election."

In the 2006 election, Republican candidates for the state House received 31,703 more votes than Democrat candidates. The Republicans also received a majority of 51 percent of the vote in state House races. Yet, in spite of receiving more than 31,000 more votes than the Democrats, the Republicans not only failed to gain the majority, they lost five seats.

Rory Blake, the Democrat who ran against Howard Coble got a taste of "Florida style elections" in Guilford County.

Excerpts from the Dec 7 issue of Yes Weekly:

The forgotten Democrat: Rory Blake tries to ride blue wave into red territory

...Blake pokes his head around the corner and summons his campaign staff - Smith and Gaddy - into a back room. In front of him sits a pile of sample ballots lifted from several 6th District precincts. His race tops the ballot, but his name doesn't appear on the paper.

"You can either choose Howard Coble or Howard Coble," Blake says, his temperature rising.

He's heard secondhand that a Democratic observer at Edgefield Baptist Church encountered the same non-choice during the actual touch screen voting and he's livid. Guilford County Board of Elections Director George Gilbert assures Blake the mistake had been taken care of and does not appear on the screens, but Blake doesn't buy it. The candidate is on his cell phone, trying to bend the ear of sympathetic journalists and gin up some last-minute support for what he now thinks might have been a stolen election.

The 2006 Senate race should have been a no-brainer for the Republicans. In contrast to 2008, when Senate Republicans make up 21 of the 33 seats up for reelection, in 2006 they made up only 15 of 33. Among those were the red state Senate seats of VA and MT and the deeply purple incumbent seats of OH, PA, and MO. Only RI, a truly Blue state, posed a serious opportunity for pick-up. The Republicans held 55 seats and left the 2004 election talking about how to win the veto-proof majority they would need in 2006. It seemed likely with Democrats in danger in FL, WA, NJ and MI; leaving open seats in MD and MN; and Democrats up for reelection in deep red states like ND and NE. This was the future that Democrats were facing in November 2004. Yet, Republicans self-destructed at every turn.

originally posted at A Raw Dole, your daily source of all things Liddy.

I had dinner last week with a new friend from Portland. He and his wife had already voted by mail, which is the system used statewide in Oregon. Based on his glowing endorsement (he is a long-standing progressive), I've been looking into that model to assess it for myself. After reading about the irregularities and suppression happening all across America today, I think it's time we consider it here in North Carolina.

There's a good diary up at Daily Kos about VBM ... and a whole organization has been created to explain why Vote By Mail is the smart way to go. Now if we can just find an effective, progressive legislator or two to get VBM on the General Assembly agenda in January.

North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections is a new coalition of advocacy organizations including: AARP, Center for Voter Education, Common Cause North Carolina, Democracy North Carolina, League of Women Voters, NC Conference of Branches of the NAACP, NC Association of Educators, NC PIRG, NC Council of Churches, and the NC Justice Center. NCVCE aims to advocate for "Voter Owned" elections and public financing of campaigns. Some, but not all of these groups, are also members of the North Carolina Coalition for Lobbying Reform.

In October NCVCE issued a legislative scorecard rating NC General Assembly members on their campaign finance and lobby reform votes in the 2005-2006 legislative session and summarized on a press release

Fourteen members in the N.C. House and eighteen members in the N.C. Senate received a perfect score of 100%. Thirty-nine House members and thirty-two Senate members received scores of 80% or above.

See high and low ratings below the fold............

I just looked up at my clock and realized there's less than 72 hours until the polls close. It is finally here.

It's been a pretty wacky campaign season; all you need are a few key words to conjure up what we've been through: Foley, Vernon Robinson, Black and Decker, Iraq, John Kerry (regrettably)...the list goes on.

The fat lady hasn't sung yet, however. 72 hours is all Karl Rove needs, or so he says. Baghdad is being locked down for possible strife that comes after they decided to hang Saddam tomorrow. I keep my fingers crossed I don't see Speaker Black's name on the front page of the N&O. And who knows what else remains. If you had told me that an evangelical leader would be busted this week for having a three year gay relationship, or maybe even just for buying meth, I would have told you you were dreaming.

Crossposted on dKos and MyDD

WGHP News Video of Debate

YouTube - Why we support Roger Sharpe

What a stink! More after the flip.

Crossposted at dKos and MyDD. Please recommend and comment.

Meet Roger Sharpe

Today Virginia Foxx is supposed to debate Roger Sharpe. It will be taped. No reporters will be present. It will only be broadcast late Sunday night at 10:30pm. It will be broadcast form a TV station that is not even located in the district and has only 10% signal coverage of the district in question.

This is the face of the Virginia Foxx democracy - unanswerable to the public.

Today, the Winston-Salem Journal is reporting on the details which are more akin to Soviet era propaganda than American democracy.

I bumped this because it seems like just the kind of negative press Virginia Foxx deserves ONE week before the election. Write an LTE if you live in the area. Get this on the front pages. "What is Virginia Foxx hiding?" - RP
Meet Roger Sharpe

In a move that can only be classified as classic ass-hattery, Virginia Foxx is REFUSING to debate Democratic opponent Roger Sharpe unless reporters are BANNED from the taping.