Connecticut's experiment with New York-style fusion politics gave Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy two lines on the ballot in 2010, and he needed the votes cast on both to narrowly defeat Republican Tom Foley.
So, it's a little surprising that a push to end cross-endorsements is coming from one of the governor's strongest allies in the legislature, Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn. Or that Malloy is open to the idea.
Fittingly, perhaps, Cuomo’s single biggest misstep in office can be tied to the power of moneyed interests. After fighting long and hard, the governor was forced to abandon a scheme to build a $4 billion convention center in Queens, as part of a joint venture with the Genting Group, a Malaysian corporation.
The affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.
“The very rich,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “are different from you and me.”
It turns out he was right. According to a new study by the think-tank Demos (PDF), the affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.
Attorney General Eric Holder made it official in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: Some banks are so big that criminal prosecution poses an unacceptable danger to the U.S. and world economies. This is not Holder's opinion alone. In the past, the Justice Department has consulted with the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to assess the consequences of criminal prosecution. This is a government-wide problem.
Ever wonder why the government seems fine with cutting unemployment benefits and welfare programs? Part of the answer may be that the rich vote more than the poor.
The U.S. political system is increasingly gamed against Americans of modest means — a situation exacerbated in recent years by major changes in the nation's campaign laws.
I attended the oral argument in the Voting Rights Act case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and I came away even more convinced that the Court should uphold the contested parts of the law.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires that covered states "preclear" their proposed election law changes with federal officials. Nine states plus parts of seven others are "covered," and many of these areas are in the South.
Democratic lawmakers say allowing voters to register and cast ballots on the same day would increase election participation, but some county officials worry that it would further complicate the voting process.
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States with same-day registration have turnout rates nearly 6 percent higher than states that don’t offer it, according to Demos, a progressive public policy research group.
It falls into the good-luck-with-that category, but nevertheless the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group and nine other organizations have announced they’re forming a coalition aimed at getting the Wisconsin Legislature to put an advisory referendum on the ballot about the growing problem of unlimited campaign spending.
A scheme under consideration in Virginia to rig the Electoral College in Republicans’ favor could well violate a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, experts on the law say. But that very provision is itself under challenge by the GOP, and could be struck down by the Supreme Court later this year.
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Brenda Wright, a top lawyer at Demos and an expert on voting rights, agreed. “I think there would be strong arguments” that the change harmed minority voters, she said.
Not since the years before the Watergate scandal has a small cadre of mega-donors influenced our elections as much as wealthy givers such as casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner did in 2012.
Even though the ads are gone and the election season is over (for now), the distorting impact of all that ad money permeates our entire political process.
Just sixty-one individuals gave $285.2 million to Super PACs in the 2012 elections, contributing the same amount as 1,425,500 small grassroots donors to the major party presidential candidates, according to a new report from Demos and U.S. PIRG.
This report, the fourth in a series, focuses on "the overwhelming influence of a tiny number of wealthy donors."
WASHINGTON -- More than half of the nation's 400 richest citizens have contributed money to help elect President Barack Obama or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to the White House. These members of the Forbes 400, who boast a combined net worth of $1.7 trillion -- more than 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product -- have donated more to affect the outcome of the presidential race than ever before.
Kimberly Kelley of Tampa has provided Florida elections officials with thousands of names of people she thinks may be ineligible to vote and should be removed from the rolls. On Election Day, she’ll join thousands more — people of all political stripes — to monitor balloting.
“I believe there is fraud both ways. I don’t think it’s a specific group,” said Kelley, a registered Republican whose group is called Tampa Vote Fair. “We’re just there to observe. We’re not going to intimidate anyone.”
At a minimum, we can expect “poll-watchers” to come up with enough “documented” examples of “voter fraud” to support a general post-election effort to de-legitimize the results.
The afternoon before early voting began in the 2010 midterm elections, a crowd of people gathered in the offices of a Houston Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots. They soon formed a line that snaked out the door of the Patriots’ crumbling storefront and down the block, past the neighboring tattoo parlor. The volunteers, all of whom had been trained by the Patriots to work as poll watchers, had come to collect their polling-place assignments.
Is there a “state of emergency” over voting rights in America? That was the declaration of a coalition of civil rights, faith-based and social justice organizations and groups representing communities of color in a conference call on Wednesday, just in time for National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25.