Tag: john hickenlooper
Sen. Cory Gardner

Democratic PACs Drop Colorado Ads — Because Sen. Gardner Is Doomed

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

The Democratic group Senate Majority PAC announced Friday that it was canceling its remaining $1.2 million TV reservation in Colorado, a move that's only the latest sign that Republican Sen. Cory Gardner is in dire shape against Democrat John Hickenlooper.

While SMP is the first group that has stopped spending here altogether, Gardner's allies have also largely directed their resources elsewhere. The Denver Post's Justin Wingerter reported on Friday that the NRSC, the committee that Gardner himself chaired just two years ago, had spent $145,000 during the first half of October, a negligible sum for the final weeks of a Senate race.

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Democrats Need A Smarter Nominating Process

Democrats Need A Smarter Nominating Process

Is anything really wrong with Jay Inslee? Was John Hickenlooper not qualified to be president? And is Steve Bullock a weak candidate? The answers are no, no, no and for all three, “on the contrary.”

Any of them could be a remarkably attractive Democratic nominee for president. In a general election, they might do better than the two firebrand senators trailing Joe Biden in the polls: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But their campaigns never took off. Something in the Democrats’ nominating process isn’t working for their kind of candidacy.

Inslee, governor of Washington state, distinguished himself by seriously addressing the crisis of global warming. He’s left the race. So has Hickenlooper, former governor of Colorado. He is now running for the Senate. Early polls give him a solid lead against the Republican incumbent, Cory Gardner.

The only one still in is Bullock, governor of Montana. Bullock’s main argument to Democrats is his ability to win elections in red parts of the country. In 2016, Donald Trump took Montana by 21 points, but Bullock won the governorship by four.

As far as Bullock is concerned, defeating Trump should make 2020 a one-issue election for Democrats. And “if we can’t win back places that we lost,” he said, “we’re not going to win this election,” he told a recent CNN town hall meeting.

Yet the latest Democratic polls put Bullock’s support at a meager 1 percent. One of his problems might be that some of the very stances a Democrat needs in a red state are not deemed adequately progressive for party activists.

In Montana, many still work in coal, and hunting is part of life. So Bullock finesses his views on climate change and gun control in ways that may bother those wanting more aggressive approaches. (Note, however, that when he ran for governor, the billionaire Koch brothers poured their fossil fuel riches into supporting his Republican opponent.)

Bullock insists he is progressive. “I’m a pro-choice, pro-union, populist Democrat that’s actually gotten things done.”

As governor, Bullock pushed through an expansion of Medicaid. He lists publicly funded preschool as a top priority. An outspoken environmentalist, he has helped lead the charge against the Republican crusade to transfer public lands to private interests. Being a hunter helps his credibility.

Bullock is outspoken about other handicaps that campaigns like his face. Governors, he insists, have a harder time because they actually have to govern. That often means compromising with Republicans.

Democratic senators in Washington, particularly now that they are in the minority, accomplish little. “D.C. is now set up to have grand speeches, but not actually get anything done,” he told The Atlantic.

The three Democratic front-runners — Biden, Warren and Sanders — are or were senators.

As governor of purple-hued Colorado, Hickenlooper also worked with Republicans. And given the relentless partisanship of the age, that meant coaxing even moderate Republicans who perpetually fear attacks from the right.

Some Democratic Party rules are also tough on noncelebrity candidates from the heartland. Bullock is angry that billionaire Tom Steyer may have bought himself a spot on the next debate stage — something he has not achieved.

“Tom Steyer just spent $10 million to get 130,000 donors,” Bullock said on MSNBC. That number of unique donors is a threshold for admission into the debate next month. So is 2 percent support in four approved polls by the end of the week.

“We’re getting to the point where we’re spending money online as opposed to actually talking to voters,” Bullock complained, not without reason.

In any case, what an interesting presidential candidate Bullock or Hickenlooper or Inslee would or would have been. But don’t rule out vice presidential running mate.

While National Gun Lobby Gloats, States Seek Sanity On Firearms

While National Gun Lobby Gloats, States Seek Sanity On Firearms

“Bulls Eye,” gloats the banner headline across the homepage of the NRA Political Victory Fund, the gun lobby’s powerful political action committee. “NRA won 91% of races, crushing Bloomberg’s gun grab.”

That’s certainly one way to read the 2014 elections, into which the NRA dumped more than $33 million. And with Republicans about to take full control of Congress, the NRA no doubt has reason to gloat, secure in the knowledge that serious gun control at the federal level is a dead letter.

“The Congress was dysfunctional before the November election,” says Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, “and I expect it to be no less dysfunctional in January. I don’t know anyone who is hopeful of getting anything done in this environment.” Yet Everitt and other leaders of the gun control movement are more optimistic about the prospects for serious gun reforms than at any time in recent memory. And they may, in fact, be on to something.

Everitt points in particular to the successful referendum passed by Washington State voters on Election Day, requiring universal background checks on all private sales of firearms, which won with nearly 60 percent of the vote. He believes the Washington victory can be replicated in numerous jurisdictions. So does Erika Soto Lamb, spokeswoman for Everytown for Gun Safety, which spearheaded the Washington initiative. To her, Washington “represents a new frontier in the fight for background checks,” because the overwhelming majority of Americans support these laws. “Even if elected officials in D.C. don’t take action to prevent gun violence, Americans will take matters into their own hands.”

Everytown is financed by former New York City mayor and NRA boogeyman Michael Bloomberg, who spent more than $4 million on research, direct mail, polling, media, and paid canvassers in Washington State. And he has spent millions more on state and local elections in the past four years, demonstrating that the NRA is no longer the only game in town when it comes to putting big money on the table to win elections where guns are at issue.

In early December, Everytown secured another victory when the Nevada Secretary of State approved a ballot initiative for 2016 that will allow the state’s voters to decide whether or not to require background checks for all gun sales in that state.

Nevada is one of 17 states currently lacking strong background checks that allow citizen initiatives. Everytown is looking at financing voter initiatives in Arizona and Maine. Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence spokesman Brian Malte says his group expects to push background check legislation in the Oregon legislature in 2015. Five states have enacted background checks for all gun sales since the massacre of 20 children and six adult staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, two years ago this month.

Like others in the movement, Malte sees growing momentum for “sensible” state limits on gun access since Newtown. He notes that six states, including California, have enacted laws limiting access to guns by domestic abusers. In September, California governor Jerry Brown signed a law allowing family members and law enforcement officers to seek restraining orders against gun owners who pose threats to themselves or others. The law allows a judge to temporarily bar a person from purchasing or possessing a firearm or ammunition and allows law enforcement to remove guns from the person’s property.

California has been one of the chief innovators of gun laws that drive the NRA crazy. Following Newtown, it legislated background checks for ammunition purchases, expanded its list of banned weapons, banned magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition and expanded the time allowed for completion of background checks in an effort to cut back on the numbers of “prohibited persons” able to buy guns.

A patchwork of state laws, of course, is certainly not an ideal solution from the perspective of gun reformers. States with tough background check laws can make it more difficult for criminals to buy guns through private sales or gun shows, but those same criminals may still be able to get their guns in neighboring states that can’t be bothered with background checks. The same holds true of concealed carry laws; states with forceful licensing provisions remain, to some degree, at the mercy of states that issue permits to just about anyone who can breathe. Iowa, North Dakota, and Virginia, for example, all make it possible for blind people, among others, to legally carry concealed weapons.

At the federal level, there have been a few notable victories for gun controllers. The Senate finally confirmed President Obama’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy – whose claim that gun violence is a public health issue infuriated the NRA. And Congress approved $73 million to help states report names of individuals who should be denied firearms to the federal database. (Reporting of mental health records has, in fact, increased dramatically in recent years.) For the foreseeable future, however, the gun control movement has no alternative but to concentrate most of its efforts in the states. And many in the movement think the state-by-state approach will eventually bring pressure to bear for enactment of more rigorous federal laws.

“It took six years and seven votes” in the Congress to pass the original Brady background check bill in 1993, the Brady group’s Malte says, arguing that gun violence prevention groups have embarked on a long game that they believe is beginning to score points.

Gun safety proponents also cite the victories of Colorado governor John Hickenlooper and Dannel Malloy in Connecticut — both Democrats who backed comprehensive gun safety laws and faced stiff opposition from the NRA – as evidence that politicians are increasingly willing to stand up to the gun lobby. They point as well to Democratic Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe’s recent promotion of measures to take guns away from stalkers and domestic abusers, broaden background checks and to reinstate Virginia’s one-handgun-a-month policy in order to make the state a less attractive marketplace for gun traffickers.

Although all of these measures face opposition in Republican-controlled legislatures, they suggest that some Democrats have finally concluded that there may be political advantage to confronting the gun issue — rather than running away from it.

Over the past two years, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks victories by both sides on the gun issue, 37 states have passed a total of 99 laws that strengthen gun regulations — including 10 states with major overhauls of their gun laws and seven with new laws aimed at domestic abusers. Yet even with those improvements, the Law Center still gives a majority of states an “F” in its annual grading of state gun laws.

Where the gun control movement has probably been most successful is in preserving state and local gun laws against legal challenges by the NRA. The Law Center claims a 96 percent success rate by states and localities that have faced Second Amendment challenges in court. The Center cites victories in Colorado, where a court upheld a residency requirement for concealed carry permits as well as limits on large capacity magazines; a New Jersey court ruling, which declared Constitutional a law requiring applicants for concealed carry permits to demonstrate “justifiable cause;” and a San Francisco court’s decision to uphold a law requiring safe storage of handguns and banning hollow-point ammunition. In Connecticut, a federal district court upheld a ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines, enacted in response to Newtown, despite a challenge from the gun lobby.

Unsurprisingly, much of the legislative action since Newtown has not gone the way the anti-gun violence movement would prefer. Backed by the NRA, states have enacted scores of new pro-gun laws, making it easier to carry weapons openly, to carry concealed weapons, and to carry guns in more public spaces, including on college campuses, in casinos, airports, restaurants, bars, and churches.

Several states have passed new “stand your ground” laws, allowing citizens who feel threatened – or later claim to have felt threatened – to shoot assailants, real or imagined, and to potentially eliminate any opposing witness. Others have enacted far-fetched and Constitutionally dubious measures that seek to nullify federal firearms statutes, replacing them with more gun-friendly state or local laws. A Montana judge recently ruled one such law unconstitutional – and the Brady Center is currently challenging another in Kansas.

Both Parties Have Candidates On ‘Endangered Governors’ List

Both Parties Have Candidates On ‘Endangered Governors’ List

By Thomas Fitzgerald, The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett has been described as “endangered” so often in the past couple of years, it could be mistaken for his first name.

Long saddled with low approval ratings in statewide opinion polls, the Republican governor trails by double digits in his fight for a second term.

For all his troubles, it turns out that Corbett has plenty of company in misery this year: 11 governors of both parties are in tight re-election races, and analysts foresee the roughest ride for incumbent chief executives since at least 1994, when six lost their jobs.

The modern record was 1962, when voters jettisoned 13 incumbents.

Republicans such as Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Snyder of Michigan and Florida’s Rick Scott are threatened. Endangered Democrats include Pat Quinn of Illinois, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Connecticut’s Dannel Malloy.

A combination of local political turmoil, self-inflicted wounds and a restive mood among voters is likely at the root of the gubernatorial job insecurity, analysts say.

“There’s something of a revolt in these states against the status quo,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the political forecasters at the University of Virginia. “One theory is that people are mad — if you look at the national polls, they don’t like the way the country is going — and this is being expressed at the state level against the executive who’s closest to home and on the ballot.”

Some of the governors have added to their own troubles with controversial or polarizing decisions, but the economy is the underlying common denominator in many contests, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“Michigan and Illinois, for instance, are not recovering as fast as some states in the country,” Duffy said. “I would say that’s a big part of Corbett’s problem as well.”

Corbett inherited a weak state economy when he took office in 2011. Early term cutbacks in education spending and the fallout from the child sex-abuse scandal that engulfed Pennsylvania State University’s football program also weakened his popularity. And the tight-lipped Corbett, a career prosecutor, has never really mastered the communications aspect of his job. In that regard, at least, his garrulous predecessor, Democrat Ed Rendell, was a tough act to follow.

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois is staggering after tax hikes and spending cuts, including to education, enacted during his term. The state has had fiscal problems even after Quinn canceled some public-union contracts to try to save money.

In deep-red Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican, is in deep trouble after doubling down on an aggressive series of tax cuts, which have not produced promised economic or state revenue growth, and he has had to slash state services. (The Kansas GOP is also deeply divided between moderate and conservative factions).

Though the split is less pronounced, there are echoes of that phenomenon in Pennsylvania. Corbett has been unable to get most of his agenda, including liquor privatization and pension reform, through a GOP- controlled legislature; he secured passage of a transportation-spending package only after a prolonged fight.

Democratic Gov. Malloy of Connecticut won by a few thousand votes in 2010 and is locked in a re-match with Republican Tom Foley. Malloy raised taxes and cut public-union benefits, which alienated a key part of the Democratic base. Foley is being attacked for his record as a private-equity investor.

“In 2010, a lot of open (gubernatorial) seats switched parties, and those are the people who are up for reelection now,” said John Weingart, director of Rutgers University’s Center on the American Governor. “Some of them won races they probably wouldn’t have won if they’d run two years earlier or later, in a presidential year — and they may be vulnerable as a result.”

Since 1948, incumbent governors who have sought re-election have been successful 72 percent of the time, according to analysis by Rutgers’ center, part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

That sounds high, but it pales in comparison to job security in the U.S. House. Despite record low opinions of Congress as an institution, the overwhelming majority of representatives running for re-election win — 93 percent, on average, since 1954.

The parties have been able to draw House districts to their advantage, reducing their competitiveness in elections.

U.S. senators, like governors, have to run statewide, and they’ve enjoyed an average of 85 percent re-election rate since 1964.

“It’s tough economic times, and that can hurt incumbent governors in the same way it does presidents,” Rutgers’ Weingart said. “You don’t have as much good news to deliver, building projects, preserving parkland, expanding education programs — there’s less money to do that.”

Photo via Wikimedia Commons