Blog for our Future: Mandate Watch – Bellwether Races/Initiatives To Watch Below The Presidential Contest

Blog for our Future

Mandate Watch – Bellwether Races/Initiatives To Watch Below The Presidential Contest

So how will we know the shape, size and depth of whatever mandate comes out of this, the most ideologically polarized election since 1980? Top-line numbers from the presidential contest are only going to give us a snapshot of what really happened. We’re going to have to look at specific bellweather races and ballot initiatives to really know what happened at a structural level. Here are the bellweathers I’ll be watching, beyond the state-by-state results in the presidential race:

COLORADO

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– Amendment 46: Sponsored by the infamous Ward Connerly, this disgusting initiative aims to stoke the old Angry White Man backlash against minorities and women with a measure to essentially ban affirmative action and equal opportunity programs. The latest Denver Post poll suggests this is going to be a close one – if progressives defeat it, they will show that even here in the heart of the Mountain West, we can defeat race/gender-based wedge politics.

…

GEORGIA, NORTH CAROLINA & MISSISSIPPI

– African American Turnout: Will African American turnout be significantly higher in these southern states in 2008, and will that increased turnout be enough to swing both contested presidential and key down-ballot races blue? If yes, it will dent political scientist Tom Schaller’s theory that progressive efforts to compete in the South are futile.

 

Newsweek: TalkLeft: A Last Desperate Flurry of Attacks

Newsweek: TalkLeft

A Last Desperate Flurry of Attacks

Fred Eshelman, “a wealthy North Carolina based pharmaceutical executive,” finances a conservative group that claims to communicate “with a zingy edge and a sense of humor.” An example of that humor is an attack ad airing today . The ad exploits Joe Biden’s prediction that the next president will be “tested” by an international crisis. The script of the latest attack ad is less provocative than than the images used. Along with footage of the Twin Towers, the commercial is shot stylistically like the Fox show with shaky camera images of dark-skinned men building a bomb, and ends with the bomb’s detonation in a city. The ad also uses an image of Obama next to one of the terrorists driving a van.

BlueNC: Pat McCrory: Hatemonger

BlueNC

Pat McCrory: Hatemonger

You can tell the PacMan is getting desperate. This email just came my way, courtesy of his hate-filled campaign.

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Dear Newsmax Reader,

Gaston County, NC: A drunk driving illegal alien kills Scott Gardner, a school teacher, and critically injures his wife and two children. This alien, Ramiro Gallegos, had been previously arrested five times for drunk driving and never deported as a criminal. Nationally, 12 Americans are killed by illegal aliens each day. Those casualty rates are higher than those in Iraq. We are in a war at home and my opponent, regrettably, is on the wrong side.

In our first televised debate my opponent called for amnesty for illegal aliens, but she called it documenting undocumented immigrants. Her party’s platform has the radical notion that cops are too busy with parking tickets to handle arresting and detaining criminal illegal aliens.

According to FAIR, North Carolina taxpayers now pay for more than $771 million dollars in primary and secondary education because of illegal immigration’s impact. And it’s not just money that is being siphoned off from your children’s or grandchildren’s education. The quality of the education is going down.

I could not believe that we are using an honors world history textbook that says Ronald Reagan increased the tensions in the Cold War but didn’t have space enough to discuss Reagan’s role in defeating the Soviet Union so decisively that it collapsed.

No, that history text didn’t have space for Reagan’s role in world history but the text did have space for a Spanish glossary.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have Ronald Reagan than a Spanish glossary in our textbooks.

Worst of all, my opponent supports the policy of the State Board of Education (a board she votes on) forcing a higher standard for school registration on our fellow Americans than on illegals. That’s right. If a citizen registers their child for kindergarten, he or she must produce a birth certificate. All an illegal has to do is point to the child’s name and a date written in the family Bible.

We can’t have harsher requirements for the people who are here legally than for illegals.

I have worked hard to bring jobs to North Carolina. But illegal immigration is taking jobs from inner city youths who have fewer opportunities for entry level employment to start with. How would you like to be one of these kids who doesn’t get pregnant, works hard in school, doesn’t join a gang, goes to church on Sunday, but when they go down to the fast food restaurant, they are told we can’t hire you because we need bi-lingual employees.

It just goes on and on and it needs stop now.

As Governor, I will work to take away the incentives like in-state tuition for people who aren’t even supposed to be here that pull illegals into North Carolina. I’ll work to expand the 287g program to help local law enforcement arrest, detain and deport criminal illegal aliens.

Get tough on illegals with your wallet

My opponent has two ways to pay for attack ads. First, she is in the pocket of Big Labor and they are protecting their investment over the years by running large numbers of false and misleading attack ads against me. And if that is not enough, she can always write her campaign a personal check for millions.

In a previous race running for Lt Governor, Perdue ran ads portraying herself as the coal miner’s daughter that made good. Even the Left wing rag, the Independent, harshly criticized the ad because it forgot to mention that her daddy owned the mine.

I can’t defend myself alone against her millions and the deep pockets of the Big Labor bosses. I can’t write a million check or borrow it from my father. My only hope is citizens like you who are fed up with the corruption in Raleigh that comes from one party rule will send small contributions.

She has big labor on her side, but I have you, the people of North Carolina.

I need your help and the help of everyone you know.

I am daily under attack by big labor using secret 527 committees. The only way that I can get my message out is with generous contributions from citizens like you. Can you see your way clear to send $25, $50 or $100 today. Even $5 or $10 would help out.

Americans losing job opportunities can’t speak for themselves. I will speak for all citizens who want this mess to stop.

Sincerely,

PS. My opponent talks a lot about change but has no interest in changing this dire situation. There are good changes and bad changes, right changes and wrong changes. Removing the magnets that draw illegals into our state is the right change for North Carolina

Latino Journal: Sheriff’s public racism against Hispanic immigrants causes stir

Latino Journal

Sheriff’s public racism against Hispanic immigrants causes stir

For years, Sheriff Steve Bizzell watched the number of illegal immigrants in his rural county skyrocket — and with it, he says, residents’ fear that the newcomers were responsible for more than their share of crime.

So he helped make North Carolina the first state where every county can team with federal authorities to train local officers to identify and track jailed illegal immigrants, speeding up the deportation process.

But in a newspaper interview last month, Bizzel complained that “Mexicans are trashy” and pointed to several children playing and said “All they do is work and make love.” Though he quickly apologized, his contrition wasn’t enough to ward off critics who call his comments evidence that the nation’s increasingly popular efforts to enforce immigration statutes locally have nothing to do with law and order.

“The chief law enforcement officer is demonstrating his racism in public, and he’s allowing his officers to do the same,” said Tony Asion, the executive director of nonprofit advocacy group El Pueblo and a retired Delaware state trooper. “It gives them the green light to treat Latinos any way.”

Politico: Club segregation enters N.C. race

Politico

Club segregation enters N.C. race

The husband of North Carolina Democratic Senate hopeful Kay Hagan is a lifelong member of an exclusive country club that didn’t admit its first black member until 1995, Hagan’s campaign disclosed Tuesday. 

Charles “Chip” Hagan III, a businessman and former Democratic county leader, “supported opening up membership” at the 1,000-member Greensboro Country Club — but remained a member for years despite his opposition to the club’s de facto segregation policy, Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan told Politico. 

Kay Hagan, who is counting on strong support among North Carolina’s black Democrats to unseat Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole, has never been a member of the club herself, Flanagan added. 

“Chip supported broadening the membership to include African Americans and others,” she said. “Though it took longer than it should have, Greensboro County Club fully desegregated in 1995 and remains so today.

…

The vast majority of black leaders in the North Carolina back Hagan, who pushed through a $1.5 million state grant for an international civil rights museum in the state senate and recently voted for a bill banning cross burning and the display of nooses. 

Greensboro was one of the last all-white clubs in the area to integrate. In the mid-1990s, members claimed they had never received an application from a black person, even though African Americans make up about 35 percent of the local population — and the city was site to groundbreaking civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. 

The first black member to be sponsored was Robert J. Brown, a former aide to Richard to Nixon, according to press accounts at the time. 

Flanagan said Chip Hagan “has been a member his whole life” and inherited the membership from his father, a well-to-do former Marine Corps general and local attorney. She maintained that the candidate herself isn’t a member, despite a recent Raleigh News & Observer report that “the family belongs to the Greensboro Country Club.” 

John Randall, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has bankrolled anti-Hagan ads, demanded to know why the Democrat didn’t demand her husband leave the club, which is located near the family’s house. 

Greensboro NC News-Record: Doug Clark: Race becomes an issue in High Point ward election

Greensboro NC News-Record: Doug Clark

Race becomes an issue in High Point ward election

There’s an undercurrent in High Point’s Ward 2 City Council race: Beat the white guy.

He’s Pride Grimm Jr., one of five candidates running for a seat from the east-central district. The other four are black, as is a fifth who filed but quit his campaign.

Ward 2 was drawn explicitly for the purpose of electing a black representative, and it always has. Ron Wilkins, the longtime councilman for Ward 2, is retiring this year

…

Let’s do the math: With six names on the Ward 2 ballot, someone theoretically can receive as little as 17 percent of the vote and win.

Consider again the voter registration numbers for Ward 2, by race: 65 percent black, 30 percent white, 5 percent other or no response.

Suppose voters follow race: Grimm gets 30 percent. Maybe the other candidates divide the black vote. In that scenario, Grimm wins. For the next two years, the white minority candidate represents one of High Point’s two black-majority wards.

…

Grimm says they’re “trying to play the race card,” adding: “If that’s all they have to stand on … I think the people of Ward 2 are definitely smart enough to see past that.”

Grimm says race doesn’t come up when he campaigns door-to-door whether the residents are white or black. He’s visited black churches and been greeted with “nothing but openness and acceptance.” He lives in a mixed-race neighborhood where people get along fine.

“I don’t see a bunch of racism in Ward 2 except from the people I’m running against,” Grimm told me, excluding Jerry Mingo.

I hope he’s overstating the situation, although racial politics can turn ugly.

I understand the background. Before the ward system, black candidates seldom stood a chance of winning a High Point City Council seat. Most other offices were out of reach, too. Forty years ago, or even less, black voting was suppressed.

But times are changing for the better, as the likely election of Barack Obama as president will show.

High Point has changed, too. It’s been nine years since Al Campbell, who is black, won an at-large City Council seat with well over 60 percent of the vote. He lost the 2003 mayor’s race to Becky Smothers, but Becky Smothers beats everyone.

Jack & Jill Politics: If This Isn’t Voter Intimidation, I Don’t Know What Is (North Carolina)

Jack & Jill Politics

If This Isn’t Voter Intimidation, I Don’t Know What Is (North Carolina)

h/t Washington Times reporter who shot this video of McCain supporters heckling early voters in North Carolina. Calling them cheaters and generally acting nasty.

An organizer at the rally rattled off the addresses of early vote sites nearby that would be open after the event.

Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.

Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.

As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama’s acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word “terrorist.” They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.

see full article from reporter

There’s one Obama supporter in the crowd, who unfortunately got his facts wrong about Obama (claiming Obama is a veteran). Check it

 

Blue NC: North Carolina: A Snapshot of Modern Day Race Relations?

Blue NC

North Carolina: A Snapshot of Modern Day Race Relations?

Does anyone know what is going on in North Carolina? It seems that each day I’m shocked more than I was the previous day. First there was Barack Obama’s stop at Fayetteville’s Cape Fear BBQ & Chicken on Sunday. Let’s just say it didn’t exactly provide an image of racial equality and fellow Americans living as one in hopes of furthering the common good.

…

 

Not exactly a picture of race relations in North Carolina that would make you proud. In 2008, people are proud of a black man for going into the hostile white eatery rather than the more friendly black eatery nearby. Come on North Carolina. That has to be a joke. Right?

Then, Sunday there was that whole “Obama Bear” incident at Western Carolina University that prompted James to begin collecting firearms. (By the way James – probably a better idea to take a deep breath.)

Then, today we get the icing on the racism cake. Think Progress has a couple of videos of a decent size group of white McCain/Palin supporters protesting and shouting at a large line of people (almost entirely black) waiting in line to vote early this past Sunday. Here is Think Progress’s description of the scene:

 

On Sunday, the Washington Times’s Christina Bellantoni stopped by a polling place in North Carolina, where she reported that a “group of loud and angry protestors” — almost all of whom were white — were shouting and mocking voters — nearly all of whom were black. Bellatoni noted that people “were shouting about Obama’s acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word ‘terrorist.’ They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.”

Everyone should watch the videos. Then, if you’re like me, you’ll probably watch to watch them again to make sure you’re really seeing what you think you’re seeing. Shouting at people standing in line to vote? Does that really happen in North Carolina? Correct me if I’m wrong – this is 2008, not 1957. Right? As with most of you, one image comes to mind when I see all of these events unfolding:

 

 

AmericaBlog: McCain hires racist who told voters McCain’s daughter was a “black baby” in 2000

AmericaBlog

McCain hires racist who told voters McCain’s daughter was a “black baby” in 2000

Interesting that McCain is interested in the skills of a slime merchant who peddles racism. Now that’s hate you can believe in. From ABC’s Jake Tapper:

ABC News has learned that Warren Tompkins, one of the strategists of then-Gov. George W. Bush’s South Carolina campaign in 2000 — which Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blamed for his family being slimed — is now a part of the McCain-Palin campaign team, albeit in an “unofficial” role.

Tompkins, a protégé of Lee Atwater, has been dispatched to North Carolina to assess the state for the McCain-Palin campaign, Southern GOP strategists tell ABC News…..

The news of Tompkins being brought on board the McCain campaign brings to a total of three the number of GOP operatives McCain now is using despite the fact that he once held them responsible for the ugly campaign that contributed to his South Carolina primary defeat, a campaign in which McCain’s wife Cindy was attacked for her past addiction to painkillers, and the McCains’ adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget was targeted as his illegitimate black baby….

Eight years ago, of course, McCain was much chattier on the subject of these types of calls.

“A lot of phone calls were made by people who said we should be very ashamed about her, about the color of her skin,” McCain told one interviewer. “Thousands and thousands of calls from people to voters saying ‘You know the McCains have a black baby.’ I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those.”

Now the people who slimed McCain’s own daughter have a special place in John McCain’s campaign. Way to defend your kid.

RedState: Kay Hagan Supports Atheists and Segregationists. Only in North Carolina, Folks.

RedState

Kay Hagan Supports Atheists and Segregationists. Only in North Carolina, Folks.

Yesterday, I pointed out how Kay Hagan and the Godless America PAC are connected.Hagan is running against Senator Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.

To review: Godless America PAC wants to get all references to God off the money, out of the Pledge, and end Christmas as a federal holiday. One of their leaders got Kay Hagan to go up to Massachusetts for a big fundraiser with a bunch of atheists.

The Country Club didn’t allow black members until at least 1995. According to Michael Riley, writing in Time on June 25, 1990, “”Signs of separation persist in the city’s neighborhoods, nightclubs, gazes and words. A perspiring black man, nattily dressed in suspenders, white shirt and a hat, pushes a mower across a lush lawn just yards from the elite, whites-only Greensboro Country Club.”

Jack Scis, writing in the News & Record on April 6, 1995, noted, “Greensboro Country Club may join other clubs in admitting African-Americans.”

This year, in The News & Observer, Kay Hagan told Rob Christiensen, “The Hagans sent their children to the private Greensboro Day School and the family is a member of the Greensboro Country Club, which she said is racially integrated.”

Hagan just failed to leave out that she and her husband were members well before the County Club started letting black people through the front door. And you can get on Nexis yourself. You’ll find no record of Kay Hagan ever standing up publicly against the policy.

But you will find Hagan standing up with a bunch of atheists at a Massachusetts fundraiser held in her honor who want to get rid of Christmas and take “In God We Trust” off our money.

It’s all about priorities.