Category: political challengers

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local leaders political challengers

The Accidental Citizen Legislator

Humor writer. Mom. And politician?

That third item wasn’t in Susan Konig’s life plan. But six years ago, her fellow residents of Westchester County, New York, were having trouble with a local waste company. Susan wondered what she could do about it. Someone suggested she run for office.

But she wasn’t a politician, just a writer — and not even a political writer. And where was she going to find the time?

Still, Susan agreed to give it some thought. Then she got pregnant with her fourth child and stopped giving it thought. Then sewage backed up into her house. Twice. So she ran for the board of trustees as a Republican in a dominantly Democratic town, and won. She worked to curb taxes and spending. She got rid of the irresponsible waste company.

She narrowly lost re-election. After agreeing to run at the country level, she narrowly lost to a Democratic incumbent who had won by a large margin in his previous race.

Susan Konig doesn’t see either electoral loss as a tragedy, given the cage-rattling she accomplished. She learned that a great many people in both parties are sick of runaway taxes and spending. She also learned that even where political establishments are corrupt and calcified, opportunities remain for citizen legislators to do something about it.

Of course, she learned that lesson by proving it, herself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access insider corruption political challengers

Independent at the FEC?

Nowhere has President Obama lost more support than among independent voters. So, now Mr. Obama is talking up bipartisanship. But his focus is too narrow. He needs to think more about NONpartisanship — or, perhaps, “transpartisanship.”

Take for instance the Federal Election Commission. The FEC is governed by six commissioners — three Republicans and three Democrats. As Theresa Amato, an attorney and author of Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, wrote recently in the Kansas City Star, “[M]ake no mistake that the FEC is a partisan body.”

Amato — who serves on the board of Citizens in Charge Foundation, this program’s sponsor — explained that the FEC’s partisan make-up is not caused by “the demands of the law, merely the outcome of a ‘bipartisan’ rather than ‘nonpartisan’ appointment process.”

Amato suggests an easy way to break the partisan gridlock at the FEC and to reach out to the majority of Americans who identify as “independents”: Appoint the first non-Republican, non-Democrat as commissioner — someone independent, or a representative of a third party.

Months ago, leaders of IndependentVoting.org wrote to the president also urging him to shake up the FEC in exactly this manner.

It’s bad enough for a federal agency to regulate political campaigns and political speech. It’s worse to allow the two major parties to control such an agency. We need more independence — and thus independents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Listening to the Voters

After Scott Brown captured the U.S. Senate seat Ted Kennedy had occupied for decades, we heard two different views of the event.

One said the surprise victory of an obscure state senator over the anointed Democrat in such a Democrat-leaning state had much to do with growing antagonism to runaway federal spending and spastic efforts to expand federal control over our lives. That Scott Brown promised to vote against Obamacare supports this view. So do exit polls showing that 41 percent of participants “strongly oppose” the health care legislation, only 25 percent “strongly favor” it.

The other notion is that Brown won only because people are frustrated. President Obama declared that “the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept [him] into office.” People are “angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

See, it’s all Bush-legacy stuff, not anything Obama and the Democrats have been doing.

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

Not everyone’s wearing blinders. Soon after Brown won, Democratic Senator Jim Webb said the election had been a referendum on both health care legislation and “the integrity of the government process.” He urged fellow Democrats not to try ramming Obamacare through before Brown could be seated.

Hmmm. Listening to the voters. Good idea, Jim.

And it’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption political challengers

Great Scott!

Just when you thought nothing could stop Congress from sucking another sector of American life and our economy into the dripping maw of government, a spark of hope.

Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Massachusetts’s open U.S. Senate seat, won.

I’m sure I’d disagree with many of the senator elect’s opinions. But his campaign was based, loud and clear, on his promise to vote against the Democrats’ overblown, misguided, quasi-socialistic healthcare plan — a compelling enough message to propel a Republican to victory in a very Democratic state.

What now? Well, hopefully we are going to stop the big government juggernaut. That is, unless Democrats start playing some very dirty pool.

Will it be the kind of dirty pool MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz endorses? In the final days of the campaign, Schultz bragged on his radio show that if he were a Massachusetts resident he’d cheat at the ballot box to stop Brown. “[I]f I lived in Massachusetts I’d try to vote ten times. . . . Yeah, that’s right. I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would.”

It’s not unheard of, in politics, for politicians and even activists to go off the deep end, foreswearing principle for the sweet smell of partisan success. But I bet one reason Brown won was that he represents the kind of above-board probity that Schultz and far too many in Congress — Democrats, and Republicans, too — utterly lack.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers term limits

Dollars and Change

Big spending by candidates doesn’t always win elections. For instance, New Jersey Governor — soon to be ex-Governor — Jon Corzine outspent his opponent, Chris Christie, more than three to one . . . and still lost.

Of course, spending more money usually works better than spending less.

Michael Bloomberg won his race for mayor of New York City. But barely. Bloomberg spent 16 times more than his challenger — over $100 million dollars to get just 50 percent. It cost him more than $150 for every vote. Ouch.

So, why did the mayor have to spend so much to eke out a win?  Two words: term limits.

Bloomberg’s deal with the council to gut the city’s two-term limit and allow them all to run for a third term didn’t cost him his powerful perch. But it did cost him millions of dollars. And his reputation.

There were also a number of initiatives on the ballot. Before Tuesday’s election, at Townhall.com, I highlighted Maine and Washington State measures to put a cap on state spending growth. Both measures were defeated, but it was educational to take note of the spending.

In the final months, Maine’s measure was outspent by about ten to one. Washington’s? $3.5 million to nothing. Predictably, the big money came  from groups already wealthy from standing in the receiving line for government spending.

Spending money to make money . . . spending money to take money.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Wake Me When It’s Over

There are gubernatorial elections, today, in Virginia and New Jersey. My Republican buddies in Virginia are excited. After losing to the Democrats in the last two elections for governor — and for president, and the last two U.S. Senate contests — Republicans are now poised to win back the governor’s mansion.

Me? I’m not as excited.

Oh, Bob McDonnell, a former legislator and then attorney general, doesn’t seem any worse, and may be better than your average politician. But his campaign has the usual messaging: more jobs, better education, more and better transportation. All new and improved. For less.

Strikingly similar to the Democrats, I dare say.

Except that McDonnell hasn’t flat-out said he’d raise anybody’s taxes. His opponent, Democrat Creigh Deeds, admits he would — only after a gallant attempt to dodge all those pesky questions and tip-toe around taxes.

No independent or third party candidate is on the ballot.

In New Jersey, the sitting governor, Democrat Jon Corzine, may win with less than 50 percent of the vote. What a shame that’d be — the majority votes against a guy and yet they’re still stuck with him.

The polls show it very close, with independent candidate Chris Daggett getting 7 to 13 percent.

I prefer Republican Chris Christie. He promotes voter initiative and referendum. He promises he’ll actively push to establish a statewide initiative process.

That would give people a real vote for change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Enemies Lists

Courtesy of the Obama administration, we’re experiencing more and more Nixonian moments.

Take medical reform. The health insurers started out in Obama’s camp. But a shuffling of policies and a few insurance companies began making obvious points about how this or that feature would raise costs, not decrease them.

And the Obama administration struck back.

I’ve talked about the Humana gag order, how our bureaucrats in Washington decided to tell insurance companies to shut up about reform proposals. Congress gagged the gaggers.

Then a health insurance association released a study suggesting that the cost of insurance would likely go up under legislation being proposed in Congress. The president retaliated by threatening to take away the industries’ immunity from anti-trust laws.

What? An important policy change, and the president threatens it not to achieve a better outcome, or for constitutional reasons, but merely to punish and thereby silence opposition to his policies? How petty. How dangerous.

On the floor of the Senate, Lamar Alexander advised the Obama administration to play a little less hardball. Alexander warned that by creating an “enemies list,” including people in the media, the White House is heading into Nixon territory.

“An enemies list only denigrates the presidency, and the republic itself.” An old Nixon aide, Senator Alexander should know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers

Will the Revolution Cross the Delaware?

So strong their support for Pat Toomey’s challenge, Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania have chased Senator Arlen Specter over to the Democratic Party.

Could a similar revolution happen across the Delaware River in New Jersey’s race for Governor?

PolitikerNJ.com reports that Jersey’s “GOP establishment insiders” aren’t “in panic mode” — no — just “very alert to the gubernatorial candidacy of former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan.”

An outsider, Lonegan says he’ll “deconstruct” Trenton, the capital. He gained fame by suing his own Republican governor, back in 2000, over unconstitutional state borrowing. He’s worked against eminent domain abuse and helped defeat two big spending ballot measures pushed by current Governor Jon Corzine.

Lonegan faces Chris Christie in the June 2nd primary. Christie has some reform credentials himself, having prosecuted and convicted 130 state and local Jersey politicians during his seven years as U.S. Attorney.

It’s a target-rich environment.

But Christie’s no-bid contract for a friend and unauthorized tracking of citizens via their cell phones are ugly reminders of his “insider” status. The state Republican chairman hypes Christie as “recommended by virtually all the key leaders from state government and political circles.’’

Lonegan is being massively outspent, but voters will have the final say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers

A Plan for Republicans?

Three. Count ’em. Three special elections where congressional Democrats have defeated Republicans in seats previously held by Republicans, the latest in Mississippi.

GOP Minority Leader John Boehner offered reporters, “[T]his is a change election, and if we want Americans to vote for us, we have to convince them that we can fix Washington.”

Republicans are in big trouble. Because no one much believes they even want to fix Washington, much less that they could accomplish the task. Unless Boehner means “fix” in a different sense, as in “the fix is in.”

Years of pork-barrel pig-outs have taken a toll on the public. After losing the majority in ’06, congressional Republicans are poised to lose a lot more seats in ’08.

Not because folks are inspired by congressional Democrats. Not at all. No, the problem is the negatives associated with Republicans, who have discredited themselves.

In Mississippi, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $1.8 million on ads blasting the Republican candidate for raising taxes.

To win elections you have to connect with voters. Pledge to do what voters want.

I remember back in 1994, when Republicans took the Congress. They had a Contract with America. They had ideas, actual plans. What were they? Hmmm . . . Balanced Budget Amendment . . . Term limits . . . Spending restraint . . . political reforms.

Hey! Should we remind the Republicans about this?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers term limits

Bad and Worse

The best argument for voting for the Democrats is they aren’t the Republicans. On the other hand, the best argument for voting Republican is they’re not the Democrats. With choices like these, no wonder we’re fed up with both parties.

One of few things Congress did to change the corrupt culture of Washington was term-limit committee chairmen. It was the most significant reform of the Republican Congress because it would have ended the near dictatorial rule of a small number of career politicians.

With term limits on chairmen, power was to be more equalized and opportunities for corruption reduced. Good thing, right? So guess what? Speaker Denny Hastert and the Republican leadership are weakening the six-year term limits on committee chairmen. The GOP leadership’s new interpretation allows a chairman to step down from chairing one committee and immediately begin chairing another committee. Still too much power in too few hands.

Now flip to the Democrats. They boast they’ll kill committee chair term limits altogether if they win back the House this year. Maybe their election slogan should be “The People Be Damned.” Too often our election choices come down to the lesser of two evils.

Well, the lesser of two evils is still evil. Is there anything behind door number 3, for goodness sake? Well, forget about parties. Look for principles. If you want a real choice, look for the candidate who takes the term limits pledge the guy who refuses to be a career politician for either party.

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.