How The GOP Blocked The Vote In North Carolina

OpEdNews, 11-24-14

   

   |

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Over the summer and into the fall, while polls showed other Senate Democrats in swing states like Colorado and Iowa falling behind their GOP challengers, incumbent North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan had consistently clung to a small lead.

In the end, Hagan lost by less than two points, defeated 48.8 percent - 47.3 percent by her Republican opponent Thom Tillis, Speaker of the GOP-led N.C. House.

Here are three reasons Democratic voter turnout missed the mark on election night:

(1) Black voters turned out at record levels, but their votes weren't enough.

After the GOP seized control of the North Carolina legislature in 2010, and won the Governor's mansion in 2012, they pushed through the nation's most restrictive new voting laws. Experts described them as the worst voter suppression measures passed by any state since the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.

Besides mandating unreasonably strict Voter ID provisions (no student ID's, no public employee ID's) and cutting one week of early voting, they repealed several laws designed to make voting easier and more convenient for citizens that had been in place for years. Same-day voter registration during early voting and out-of-precinct voting on election day were both abolished. These efforts to block the vote may have provided Tillis with his margin of victory, and have been universally recognized as a blatant attempt to make it more difficult for core Democratic constituencies to cast ballots, including African-Americans, low income voters, and students.

In response, North Carolina's black community and progressive allies organized to fight back. One of the largest ever efforts to mobilize black voters in North Carolina in a non-presidential year was launched, spearheaded by Democrats, voting rights groups, and the state NAACP. And even with President Obama not on the ballot, African-American voters still turned out for Kay Hagan.

In Durham County, a bastion of black and white liberal voters in North Carolina, Hagan received 70,601 votes, or 76.6 percent of the votes cast. Mecklenburg County is home to Charlotte, the state's largest city, and another source of black voting strength. Democrats and independent voters outnumber Republicans there by 3-1. Hagan got 156,533 votes in Mecklenburg, or 59.2 percent to Tillis' 38.1 percent.

Durham and Mecklenburg counties alone delivered 50,000 more votes for Hagan than were cast there for Democratic nominee for Senate Elaine Marshall in 2010.

Exit polls showed black voters were 21 percent of the North Carolina electorate this year, which equaled their numbers in 2008, when Barack Obama narrowly won North Carolina, and only slightly down from 23 percent in 2012. Fully 96 percent of them chose Hagan.

But their numbers fell short, because:

(2) Partly due to a relentless attack ad barrage funded by right-wing outside groups, Hagan's support shrank among white voters.

Hagan got just 33 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls, a drop from the 39 percent she received in 2008 when she was first elected to the Senate. That year, Hagan won white voters age 18-29 by a margin of 60 percent - 36 percent, but in 2014, they voted for Republican Thom Tillis by 56 percent - 32 percent. White voters who didn't attend college made up 35 percent of the electorate, and they backed Tillis by a crushing 69 percent - 25 percent.

Through most of the summer, Hagan maintained a small lead in the polls by hitting Tillis hard for his role in cutting the state's education budget. In early October, Tillis threw everything he had at Hagan in a bid to improve his poll numbers among white voters. He began attacking her over foreign policy, exploiting voters' fears about the Islamic State's military gains in Iraq and Syria and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He also tied her to a phony controversy over stimulus grants that went to a company co-owned by her husband.

Tillis started gaining traction with ads that called Hagan out for missing an Armed Services Committee hearing back in February where the Islamic State was discussed. Karl Rove's dark money group Crossroads GPS followed suit. One featured the mother of a Marine who told viewers, "It makes me so mad to see how the President's weakness has allowed the Islamic State to grow. And Senator Hagan? She just goes right along with him." The ad closed with a hard-hitting plea: "We can't let our kids die in vain. We have to change our Senator."

   

   

In a state with a strong military presence, polls showed the message had an impact. Support for Tillis ticked slightly upwards. Exit polls revealed the 16 percent of N.C. voters who were veterans chose Tillis over Hagan by 55 percent - 43 percent. The 11 percent of voters who thought foreign policy was the nation's top issue went with Tillis by a 68 percent - 31 percent margin.

The Tillis campaign tried to spin their win as due to their targeting of "GOP areas where their voters turned out in past elections but they felt more could vote." Tillis' chief campaign strategist Paul Shumaker "pointed to places such as Rowan, Cabarrus and Catawba counties."

Actually, in these three heavily white counties, Tillis received 1500 less votes than N.C.'s senior Republican Senator Richard Burr in 2010, and nearly 7500 more votes were cast for Hagan than for Burr's challenger Elaine Marshall.

The areas supposedly key to Tillis' victory instead illustrate how statewide, Tillis did worse than the last Republican to win a Senate race in a midterm election by about 35,000 votes, and Hagan got nearly a quarter million more votes than the last unsuccessful Democratic Senate candidate. Tillis didn't turn out more white voters than in 2010, but he benefited because too few white Democrats were fired up enough about Kay Hagan to vote this year.

(3) Not enough young voters turned out.

All 18-29 year-olds backed Hagan 53 percent - 39 percent, but they only made up 12 percent of voters, down from 16 percent in 2012. Voter support for Tillis roughly increased with age levels, and senior citizens age 65 and older favored him by a margin of 57 percent - 42 percent. Senior voters made up 23 percent of the electorate, with nearly twice as many casting ballots as 18-29 year-olds.

One reason for such low turnout by young voters was the state's new restrictive voting laws. As part of their strategy to suppress the Democratic vote, N.C. Republicans made special efforts to discourage students from voting. Under the new Voter ID statute, college student ID's are unacceptable. Students now need a North Carolina driver's license or special state-issued ID in order to vote, which created huge obstacles to participation by out-of-state students. Republican-controlled local election boards in counties with large universities moved early voting sites off campuses and pushed through other changes that made it harder for students to get to the polls.

The state's abolition of same-day registration during early voting left untold numbers of people unable to vote simply because they had moved within N.C. since the last time they voted. They were turned away from the polls when they went to update their addresses during early voting, a practice that had been allowed for years before this election.

This deliberate attempt to make it harder to vote disproportionately affected young people, students and non-students alike, because they move more often. But it also disenfranchised older citizens like disabled veteran Bryan McGowan, who served 22 years in the Marine Corps, including four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was prevented from voting on October 23 in Western North Carolina.

What happened this year to Bryan and other N.C. voters like him is a mockery of democracy. But the GOP can't be sure of winning races any other way. And their attempts to fix the game further in their favor in North Carolina have now led to a truly unfortunate election result for America.

###

Why Kay Hagan Lost In North Carolina

The Huffington Post, 11-13-14

   

   |

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- When the smoke cleared, the most expensive contest of 2014 had become the costliest Senate race in U.S. history. More than $111 million was spent by both sides in the North Carolina battle for incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan's seat.

Hagan ultimately came up short, losing by 45,608 votes out of 2.9 million cast to Republican N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis.

So what happened? As a sitting Senator running for re-election at a time when the recovering economy still hasn't translated into income gains for most voters, Hagan faced historical headwinds, and President Obama's deflated approval ratings didn't help. But beyond those national factors, here are two critical reasons why Hagan lost her seat:

(1) Wealthy right-wing outside groups led by the Koch brothers and Karl Rove spent tens of millions on attack ads and get-out-the-vote efforts against Hagan.

Big money was put up to poison the well of Hagan's support among North Carolina voters. Hagan had a huge target on her back, described in one news story after another as one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats. The Koch brothers' political machine began pummeling her with attack ads over her support for the Affordable Care Act before it was even signed into law in early 2010.

The pace intensified in 2013, and by February of this year, the Koch brothers' dark money group Americans For Prosperity had already expended $8.2 million on TV, radio and digital ads designed to defeat her. At that point in the cycle, it was an unparalleled sum to have been spent in one state, more than all Democratic outside groups had sunk into every 2014 Senate race in the country combined.

   

   

N.C. voters couldn't escape the attack ads, which carpet bombed the state. "If anyone hasn't seen those ads, they haven't just been under a rock," said Vanessa Johnson, a voter from Winston-Salem. "They've been down in Bedrock with the Flintstones!" According to the Wesleyan Media Project, fully two-thirds were negative, the highest percentage of negative ads aired in any Senate race this year.

Crossroads GPS (the dark money group co-founded by Karl Rove) piled on, falsely claiming Hagan cast the "deciding vote" for the Affordable Care Act, and blaming her for the discredited myth that the law cut over $700 billion from Medicare. "That means North Carolina stands to lose over $16 billion in Medicare payments," one ad warned.

Other Crossroads GPS ads were full of similar distortions, accusing Hagan of wanting to "raise (the) social security retirement age," "reduce (the) home mortgage interest deduction," "increase out-of-pocket Medicare expenses," and "give us cuts to our Medicare."

   

   

In her own campaign ads, Hagan stressed her moderate, centrist philosophy, but the Koch brothers and Karl Rove defined her as a Barack Obama puppet from early on. Outside groups reported spending $34.5 million by election day to tear down Hagan and prop up Thom Tillis.

Besides financing a deluge of attack ads, the Koch brothers realized they needed to compete with the Democratic Party's ground game. So Americans For Prosperity greatly expanded its field organizing this year in North Carolina and others states with key Senate races. They announced plans to put half of the $125 million they would spend on the midterms into a stronger ground campaign, hiring 500 field staffers nationwide. In the Tar Heel state, this built on AFP's earlier organizing efforts.

A top priority of the group for years, North Carolina was one of the first states where it set up local chapters, helping build what (AFP President) Tim Phillips says is one of its "deepest state infrastructures," with more than 130,000 activists that helped defeat a Medicaid expansion in the state Legislature last year and now is singularly focused on defeating Hagan. - Politico, 2/12/14

Hagan pushed back, making the Koch brothers' attempts to buy the election a campaign issue in her ads and campaign speeches. "The people of North Carolina need to know what their agenda is," Hagan said last February. "They want to have tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and, at the same time, put that burden on the middle class and the poor."

But her counterattacks may not have resonated with voters. "It's utterly ineffective. Elections have to be about voters and what candidates will do for them," argued Thomas Mills, a top advisor to the state's unsuccessful Democratic Senate nominee in 2010, N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall. "And this strategy is more about the candidates. It says, 'Look at me! Help me -- they are spending money against me.' There's no connection between that and voters."

____________________________________________________________________________

(2) Democratic voters were fired up about opposing Thom Tillis and the GOP agenda in North Carolina, but not overwhelmingly behind Kay Hagan.

Overall turnout was 44 percent of North Carolina's registered voters, the exact same percentage of voters who cast ballots in 2010, the last time there was a midterm Senate battle. It was nowhere near the state's record in modern history for midterm turnout, when 62 percent of registered voters showed up for the hotly contested 1990 Gantt-Helms race.

With 1.42 million votes in all, Tillis fell slightly short of the 1.46 million ballots cast in 2010 for Richard Burr, North Carolina's senior Republican Senator. But it was enough to beat Hagan's 1.38 million total, even though that was 230,000 more votes than the 1.15 million received by Burr's Democratic challenger Elaine Marshall.

Democrats cast 49 percent of all early votes, with the GOP accounting for only 31 percent. But on election day, just 36 percent of voters were registered Democrats, versus 35 percent Republicans. The 29 percent of independent voters broke for Tillis by a margin of 49%-42%, and helped push him over the top.

Why didn't more Democrats turn out for Hagan?

According to Mark Chilton, a veteran elected official in liberal Orange County, N.C. who won his first election in 1991 as a 21-year old undergraduate, "Hagan made the strategic choice to run as a centrist and the tactical decision to run a Beltway-approved, paid TV-oriented campaign." As a result, it was harder for voters to feel part of a popular movement devoted to electing her. "The Democrats needed a different electorate to show up at the polls," said Chilton. "But the same-old strategy got us the same-old electorate, and the same-old results."

Quoted in Mother Jones, an unemployed former construction worker from Raleigh expressed the lack of enthusiasm many low-income voters may have felt about their Senator, even those who planned to vote for her. "Kay Hagan, to me she's wishy-washy, she's two-faced," said Michael Curtis. "But Tillis is an out-out crook."

Hagan is no populist. Rather, she has been a centrist, business-oriented Democrat from the time she entered public office, when she was first elected to the N.C. Senate in 1998. Although she settled in North Carolina after attending law school at Wake Forest University, Hagan grew up in Florida. She is from one of the wealthiest and most politically connected families in the southwest central part of the Sunshine state, and her uncle was former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles.

Before public life, she was a corporate lawyer and eventually a vice president at North Carolina National Bank, which was later bought by Bank of America. She ran for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008 "with backing from the business and political establishment," as noted by a profile at the time.

Once elected, Hagan supported enough of President Obama's first-term agenda to be accused by Tillis and his billionaire backers of voting with Obama 96 percent of the time. She voted for the 2009 economic stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, and against extending the Bush tax cuts.

   

But she also veered to the right on several issues. She endorsed the Keystone XL pipeline, and in the election's closing weeks made the unfortunate decision to support a West African travel ban, after getting hammered by Thom Tillis' truly shameless attempts to whip up Ebola hysteria. He was the first Senate candidate to call for a travel ban, and opened the floodgates to a wave of GOP demagoguery over Ebola.

Hagan turned her back on the DREAMers when she was one of only five Democratic Senators to vote against the DREAM Act in 2010. Latino activists swore they would remember when Hagan faced re-election, and they did, disrupting some of her rallies and erecting billboards around the state denouncing Hagan's immigration-related stands. Yet their efforts may have been a wash, helping inoculate Hagan against Tillis' charges that she was too pro-immigration. Exit polls showed Latino voters only made up 3 percent of the N.C. electorate in 2014, with inconclusive results as to which candidate they preferred.

With her corporate background and a campaign that stressed her centrism, many low income voters in North Carolina, be they white, black, or brown, may not have felt Kay Hagan was leading the fight on their issues. It would explain why voters who earned less than $30,000 a year only made up 19 percent of the 2014 electorate, down from 25 percent in 2012. This was a body blow to Democrats, because the ones who did vote backed Hagan 63%-30%. By contrast, 24 percent of all voters made more than $100,000, and went for Tillis by a 59%-39% margin.

And it left an opening for the GOP to try and convince voters that Thom Tillis would do the most to look out for their economic interests and create jobs.

   

44 percent of North Carolina voters named the economy as the top issue facing the country, and split 52%-44% for Tillis. 64 percent of N.C. voters who cast ballots this year favored a higher minimum wage, according to exit polls. But 29 percent of them voted for Tillis, even though he explicitly opposed it, and Hagan wanted to raise it to $10.10 an hour. The minimum wage was one of the few economic issues where she drew a sharp contrast between herself and her opponent, but an insufficient number of low-income voters noticed.

During a presidential year with substantially higher turnout, Hagan more than likely would have been re-elected. When she won her first Senate term in 2008, Hagan outperformed Barack Obama in North Carolina by over 100,000 ballots, leading the statewide ticket with 2.25 million votes.

In this year's midterm election, with opposition to her party's sitting President giving Republicans all the motivation they needed to vote, enlarging the electorate was Hagan's only hope of surviving the onslaught of right-wing money determined to take her down. Her campaign ran the largest field operation ever in an N.C. Senate race, with 40 offices, 100 staffers, and an estimated 10,000 volunteers.

Yet by the time the polls closed, not enough Democratic voters had gotten excited enough about Kay Hagan to save the day. "I don't think a field operation can create enthusiasm - it can mobilize enthusiasm," observed Democratic strategist Gary Pearce.

No one should count Hagan out of politics too soon. She could still make a comeback run in two years for Republican Sen. Burr's seat. But Mark Chilton sums up what's on the mind of many North Carolina Democrats right now.

"We can lazily chalk up this result and many others across the country to 2014 being a bad year for Democrats," said Chilton. "Or we can seriously ask ourselves whether we need a new approach - on policy, on style, and on demography."

###

How You Can Help Save the Senate

The Huffington Post, 11-3-14

   

   |

The battle for the Senate has been a cliffhanger for months. Races in at least ten states that will decide the balance of power have remained too close to call, despite corporate pundits' haste to forecast a GOP victory. Now, on the eve of Election Day, it's tempting to throw up your hands, sit back and wait for the returns to come in.

That's exactly what Republicans are hoping we'll do. Give up hope and do nothing.

What's the alternative?

How can progressives channel our outrage over the possibility of the GOP ruling both houses of Congress for the remaining two years of Obama's presidency? Pushing whatever legislation they want to further their far-right agenda and keep our country from moving forward? Holding the power to control the nation's courts by blocking judicial nominations, including seats on the Supreme Court?

If you can, take tomorrow off from work. Call your local Democratic campaign office, and show up to volunteer. Don't fool yourself into thinking one more volunteer won't make a difference. It will, and they need us. Bring your cell phone. Whether it's making phone calls to voters or going out to knock on doors and flush folks out who haven't voted yet, your efforts will pay off.

If your state is true blue or red and doesn't have a close Senate or House race, it's even easier to make a difference. From the comfort of your own home, or wherever you happen to be, the number one way you can help is to call voters in other states.

Through its Voters Rising campaign, MoveOn.org has helped volunteers around the country make over five million calls to progressive voters in targeted states so far, voters who are on the fence about voting in the midterms. You can help reach even more. There are still calling shifts available that you can sign up for right now.

Calling voters is empowering for both you and the people you'll talk with. Make a little time to do it. You'll speak with good-hearted citizens in other states who share your views and may have just been waiting for the extra push you'll give them in order to vote this year.

The reality is that there's never a better time than the few days immediately before an election to call voters and remind them to go to the polls. In 2004, I worked to elect John Kerry in North Carolina. Our office was overrun with volunteers in the campaign's closing days, spread out in every room and hallway with cell phones and call sheets. But there's always more phone calls to be made than there are volunteers available to make them.

With control of the Senate hanging in the balance, the stakes are high in 2014. Spend some time between now and tomorrow night dialing for voters, and you'll go to bed on Tuesday knowing you helped make a difference in this election.

###

GOP Voter Intimidation Efforts Are In Full Swing

The Huffington Post, 11-4-14

   

   |

With the Nov. 4 elections now days away, last minute voter intimidation tactics intended to benefit Republican candidates are being reported nationwide.

In Kentucky, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's campaign has sent out official-looking mailers that scream, "ELECTION VIOLATION NOTICE." The mailers claim to contain "facts related to a possible fraud being perpetrated on citizens across Kentucky," and warn voters that "You are at risk of acting on fraudulent information."

Inside, the text of the mailers reads as if they were sent from election boards, claiming "information that has been red-flagged as 100% false is being purposely spread by the campaign of the federal candidate named below: Alison Lundergan Grimes."

Haven King, the Clerk of Perry County, Kentucky, contacted WYMT News about the mailers on Halloween. "This means nothing; I don't know what people are trying to do," said King. "There's nothing fraudulent to my knowledge going on and the people in Perry County if you are registered to vote, you will be able to vote and you will be able to vote at your precinct."

McConnell's Democratic challenger, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, immediately filed suit seeking to stop the mailers from being distributed, and called for a state and federal investigation. The mailers appear to have violated at least two Kentucky statutes that are punishable by felony charges.

Also in Kentucky, the Attorney General's office has received a complaint about voter intimidation directed towards college students. A full page ad was published in the Berea Citizen warning students that their right to vote is "subject to be challenged" if they go to the polls this year, and students who are found to be registered improperly "could face significant penalties."

The vice president of Berea College Student Government, Jacob Burdette, called it "an attempt at voter suppression," and told students not to be discouraged from voting. "Our message is, if you consider Berea home and you've taken steps to make it such, with regards to voting, go vote." The group behind the ad was labeled "Concerned Citizens of Berea," and the newspaper's publisher would only identify them as a "group of private citizens."

Groups like Claim Your Vote have been fighting back against this sort of phony information being used to mislead students, which comes on the heels of GOP-led efforts to block the student vote in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

One particular type of voter intimidation cropping up around the country this year is voter shaming.

In Iowa, Republican National Committee-sponsored ads are appearing in Facebook users' news feeds, implying that their neighbors will know if they don't vote Republican. Which is, of course, totally false.

In Florida, where incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott is locked in a tight battle with former Governor Charlie Crist, an Orlando-based PAC called Citizens for a Better Florida Inc. has sent out mailers that threaten to reveal who voted in the group's next mailing, to be delivered after the election. The front of the mailers state, "Your Neighbors Will Know. It's Public Record."

The PAC's money comes from the Realtors Political Advocacy Committee, which shares the same address with Citizens for a Better Florida.

According to the Tampa Bay Times:

Records show the group formed in 2008 and has raised more than $2 million, much of which it has used to assist the campaigns of Gov. Rick Scott and other statewide Republican candidates.

Over the past month alone, the Realtors Political Advocacy Committee raised almost $1 million, including $795,000 from the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

Voter intimidation tactics like these recall the ugly ways that African-American votes in the South were suppressed during much of the twentieth century. As recently as 1990, postcards were mailed to 125,000 black voters in North Carolina threatening them with jail if they voted. The postcards went out in the closing days of the hotly contested U.S. Senate race between incumbent GOP Senator Jesse Helms and his Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte, a race Helms won by 107,000 votes.

N.C. students protesting apartheid cross paths with Helms, 1984

Why do the Republicans feel a need to engage in such shady voter intimidation schemes year after year? Why are they so afraid of letting people go to the polls and choosing whichever candidates they prefer, free from interference with their right to vote?

Maybe they realize that if voters were allowed to make up their own minds, too many of them might refuse to be intimidated by GOP scare tactics any longer.

###

How The Koch Brothers Are Bait And Switching Voters

Huffington Post, OpEdNews, 11-3-14

   

   |

As the midterm elections approach, the volume of attack ads is deafening. Spending on broadcast TV and national cable ads for U.S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial races has now topped $1 billion for the 2014 election cycle, according to a report released Oct. 29 by the Wesleyan Media Project.

Of the 2.2 million political ads TV viewers have seen since early last year, 600,000 were aired by outside groups, not candidates themselves. Almost 40% of these came from so-called "dark money" groups, which are not legally required to reveal their donors.

Two years ago, big money Republican donors thought dark money funneled through Karl Rove's political operation was going to send President Obama packing and install a GOP Senate. Things didn't quite turn out that way. Nearly $175 million six of the eight Republican Senate candidates they tried to elect.

Karl Rove hasn't gone away, and this cycle, his groups have already spent a combined $31 million on TV ads alone. But in light of Rove's disastrous 2012 results, this year's mega-rich GOP donors initially flocked to the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, who promised a different approach. And the Koch network has stuck to this new strategy, which involves using non-ideological appeals to convince independent voters to support Republican candidates, even if these voters don't agree with the GOP candidates' right-wing policy agendas.

It is on display in the Koch-produced ads that have been pouring from TV screens in some of the nation's most closely contested Senate races.

     

     

The "closing argument" ads shown above have been airing in six states (Alaska, Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire) since October 22. They will run through election day in a $6.5 million ad buy from Freedom Partners Action Fund (FPAF), the super PAC launched last June by the Koch brothers.

Here's how USA Today described them:

Instead of going on the attack, the ads use a gentle, testimonial style. They feature voters against a backdrop of classic Americana scenes, explaining how disappointed they are that the Democratic incumbent has strayed from local values.

Besides Charles and David Koch, who kicked in $2 million each, top donors to the FPAF super PAC include New York hedge fund mogul and rising GOP kingmaker Robert Mercer ($2.5 million), who was sued last year for allegedly stiffing his household help; Texas oil billionaire Paul Foster ($1 million), whose association with the Koch network has previously caused controversy because of his position as chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents; and Arkansas poultry magnate Ronald Cameron, who gave $1 million.

FPAF is on track to spend nearly $25 million to influence the 2014 elections, part of $290 million that Koch-backed groups claim they will spend altogether. It is more than either national party committee spent during the 2010 election cycle.

The Koch brothers' latest twice-annual retreat for big donors to their shadowy political network was held in California last June. Rising GOP stars came to audition and preen for a crowd of super wealthy right-wingers, knowing the cash these multi-millionaires and billionaires wield could be instrumental to turbo-charging their campaign funds. Senate Minority Leader and fierce campaign finance reform opponent Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addressed the crowd. Three Republican U.S. Senate candidates also spoke: Iowa state senator Joni Ernst, and Congressmen Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Cory Gardner of Colorado. In August, secret tapes were released of what was said behind closed doors at this gathering, as the conservative plutocrats plotted how they could most effectively buy elections and advance their far right-wing agenda.

Of particular note were the remarks by top Koch brothers strategist Richard Fink, recently dubbed "Charles Koch's Brain" by Politico when he made #16 on their list of the 50 most influential thinkers, doers, and dreamers of America in 2014. He explained that by tailoring messages to the "non-ideological middle third of voters," they could sway them to support the fatcats' preferred candidates a lot easier than by using past methods.

"Yeah, we want to decrease regulations. Why? It's because we can make more profit, okay? Yeah, cut government spending so we don't have to pay so much taxes. When we focus on decreasing government spending, over-criminalization, decreasing taxes, it doesn't do it, okay? We've been reaching (this) third by telling them what's important - what we think is important should be important to them. And they're not responding and don't like it, okay? Well, we get business - what do we do? We want to find out what the customer wants, right, not what we want them to buy."

Audio starts at 4:18 of Richard Fink's remarks

In the run-up to Nov. 4, North Carolina has seen 2014's most intense battle of the airwaves in a Senate race, as detailed by the Wesleyan Media Project's report. There were over 20,000 ads aired in the two weeks from October 10-23, with 36.3% of the ads coming from pro-GOP outside groups, and 30.2% from pro-Democratic outside groups. Freedom Partners Action Fund ads during this period have attacked incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan over non-ideological issues such as high wait times at VA hospitals and the Affordable Care Act's supposed negative effects on the quality of N.C. education.

     

Any voter who might be swayed by these ads would surely be interested in knowing the facts they left out. Namely, that Hagan's opponent Thom Tillis has consistently called for massive federal spending cuts and embraced Paul Ryan's budget plan, which would negatively affect the VA system. Or that as Speaker of the Republican-led N.C. House, he passed a budget last year that shortchanged education spending by $481 million, according to The New York Times.

Iowa has experienced the second most intense Senate TV ad war, with over 17,000 ads aired during the same two week period in October. Pro-Republican ads have accounted for 9,581 of them, vs. 7,835 pro-Democratic ads, with 51.2% coming from pro-Joni Ernst outside groups and 34% from groups supporting her Democratic opponent, four-term U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley.

     

     

FPAF ads have been running non-stop accusing Braley of "disrepecting farmers" when he warned donors that a Republican-led Senate would see "a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law" become the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was referring to Iowa's Republican Senator, Chuck Grassley. Another ad says Braley is setting "the wrong kind of examples for children" because he missed votes in Congress. An online ad labels him "not very Iowa" because he complained to his neighborhood association about a neighbor whose chickens were roaming freely into his yard, fowl which were also the subject of other residents' complaints. It appears to be part of a six-figure digital ad buy from the Koch brothers' dark money group Americans for Prosperity.

These ads don't say a peep about Ernst's extreme right-wing views. Or the undisputed facts that Ernst opposed the five-year farm bill that passed Congress earlier this year, and has stated she is philosophically opposed to "taxpayer subsidies" like the Renewable Fuel Standard - two things that directly benefit Iowa farmers. Or that as a state Senator, according to Politico, "Ernst missed nearly 40 percent of the votes in the Iowa state Senate during 2014," and "has also attended only a fraction of the meetings of the Iowa boards and commissions she has been appointed to since taking office in 2010."

And the chicken controversy is full of it, described by Slate as "how a guy mishandled the problem of chickens shitting on his lawn." At their Sept. 28 debate in Des Moines, Joni Ernst was ready to make hay over the issue. "Congressman, you threatened to sue a neighbor over chickens that came onto your property," Ernst said. "That's just not true," Braley replied. "I never threatened to sue anyone." Politifact rated Ernst's claim False, concluding "there is no material evidence that Braley threatened a lawsuit against the neighbor or was even considering one. Even the neighbor says that."

But as the Koch brothers and their ultra-wealthy cronies think they've figured out, a little chicken manure goes a long way when it comes to misleading voters into supporting the GOP.

###

12 Reasons Why Joni Ernst Is 2014's Most Extreme GOP Senate Candidate

The Huffington Post, 10-24-14

   

   |

As a female Republican candidate with extreme, far right-wing views and a love for guns, Iowa's U.S. Senate hopeful Joni Ernst is a lot like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. In fact, Ernst's top campaign strategist, David Polyansky, was Bachmann's deputy campaign manager during her 2012 presidential campaign.

Joni Ernst is different because she's more dangerous. Unlike those other two faded Tea Party stars, Ernst comes across as slightly less unhinged, and thus more electable. And she has worked tirelessly since her June primary victory to distance herself from the hard right positions she had previously taken on most issues.

But although she's done a good job of hiding them, Ernst's ideas are as far outside the mainstream as any of the nonsense that spews from Palin or Bachmann's Twitter accounts. An ad released over the summer by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee featured Ernst calling Palin the "type of people that we need in our federal government," and that she was "just absolutely ecstatic to have her endorsement" after Palin backed her in the Republican primary.

Ernst, a first-term Iowa state Senator, faces four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, founder of the House Populist Caucus, in a toss-up battle for retiring Senator Tom Harkin's seat. If she wins, the GOP will probably latch onto Ernst as its latest national figure. As the rise of Palin and Bachmann showed, the GOP desperately needs more women in its ranks to counter its image as the party of rich, old white men. Of the twenty current female U.S. Senators, sixteen are Democrats and only four are Republicans, out of 45 GOP Senators in total.

Here are the top twelve reasons Joni Ernst has had to battle the glaringly obvious perception that she's "too extreme for Iowa":

(1) Wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. In an April debate, Ernst called for shutting down all three federal government agencies.

(2) Opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, and believes doctors who perform abortions should face criminal punishment. In 2013, Ernst co-sponsored a fetal personhood amendment to the Iowa State Constitution that would have outlawed abortion, and contained no provisions allowing for rape or incest exceptions. In a May debate, Ernst said, "the [abortion] provider should be punished, if there were a personhood amendment."

(3) Believes "the UN is behind" a conspiracy that involves, in Ernst's words from a November, 2013 campaign event, "moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city sectors and then telling them, 'You don't have property rights anymore'." This right-wing theory has been widely debunked as a myth.

(4) Not only opposes raising the hourly minimum wage in Iowa from $7.25 to $10.10, as her opponent Bruce Braley has called for, but wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage altogether. At a candidates' forum in March, Ernst said she thinks "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa."

(5) Supports a flat tax on income, which would give enormous tax cuts to the super wealthy and shift the country's tax burden further onto middle class and low-income families.

(6) Wants to send U.S. ground troops back to Iraq. In the campaign's third and final debate earlier this month, Ernst said she agreed with those who had "advised that we keep troops on the ground." "There is overwhelming support coming from the American people," she claimed.

(7) Thinks President Obama "has become a dictator" who "is not following our Constitution," and that "he should face...repercussions, whether that's removal from office, whether that's impeachment." She expressed these views at a candidates' forum last January.

(8) Has repeatedly called for an Ebola travel ban, prohibiting all flights into the U.S. from West Africa, which experts and sane observers agree wouldn't work and would actually make the global outbreak worse, plus lead to more U.S. cases of the deadly virus.

(9) Believes George W. Bush's discredited fairytale that there were WMD's in Iraq when the United States invaded in 2003. "I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Ernst told the Des Moines Register's editorial board in May.

(10) Would support legislation to arrest government employees trying to administer the Affordable Care Act.

In response to a 2012 questionnaire from a libertarian-leaning group, Ernst replied "yes" to the question "Will you support legislation to nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the unconstitutional health care scheme known as ObamaCare?" - Salon, 10/3/14

(11) Wants to privatize federal student loans. At an Iowa State College Republican Forum in April, Ernst said, "our students...we need to ensure that they're able to find student loans at reasonable rates within private banking entities. So let's get the federal government out of the business of student loans." Asked about her views on college affordability in August, Ernst replied, "Perhaps all of our students don't need four-year degrees."

(12) Can't see a need to change current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech," as she stated at her third and final debate with Bruce Braley, who is a strong supporter of campaign finance reform. Interviewed by Rachel Maddow in 2012 about how Citizens United had unleashed a whirlwind of big money into politics, Braley warned that "very powerful, monied interests are trying to buy the government they want. And have no restrictions, literally, on what they can spend."

In the most recent fundraising quarter, Ernst raised more than any other U.S. candidate for office in a single quarter during this election cycle. From July to September, her campaign took in a whopping $6 million, outpacing Braley's $2.8 million haul by more than 2-1. By comparison, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell only raised $3.2 million during the same period, despite being the top Senate Republican and facing a competitive, well-funded challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Clearly, a lot of wealthy GOP donors very badly want Joni Ernst to be the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. And they are salivating at the possibility of her extreme right-wing views influencing the laws of our land at least through the year 2021. It's a thought that ought to give every sensible American cause for concern.

###

Top GOP Donor Robert Mercer Sued Over How He Treats His Help

The Huffington Post, 10-23-14

   

   |

The race for Iowa's open U.S. Senate seat is among the closest in the nation, and one of a handful that could determine control of the Senate this fall. In her final debate with four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst recently said she doesn't see a need to reform current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech."

Since the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision in 2010, big money has flooded into politics at levels never seen before, giving the ultra-wealthy the green light to use their megabucks to fund the kind of "political free speech" that's capable of drowning out everyone else's.

And that's the game being played by one of Joni Ernst's biggest donors, New York hedge fund co-CEO and near-billionaire Robert Mercer. Described by Bloomberg News as "one of the most powerful men in Republican politics that nobody is talking about," and ranked #6 on ABC News' recent list of 2014's "Mega-Donors," Mercer is fast becoming a GOP kingmaker.

Robert Mercer in 2012

By contributing $5,200 to Ernst this cycle, Mercer maxed out his legally permissible individual contributions to Ernst's Senate campaign. Yet, as revealed in a report released this week by the Brennan Center for Justice, Mercer's extensive support for Joni Ernst won him the dubious distinction of being 2014's "biggest-spending double-dipper." Double-dipping means donating the legal maximum allowed to a candidate, then supporting them with even more money by dumping cash into a super PAC set up solely to benefit that same candidate. Such super PACs can accept unlimited donations.

According to the report, Mercer spent $350,000 this year to "virtually fully fund" a super PAC called American Heartland, which is supporting Ernst. Despite its name, American Heartland is run out of Washington, D.C.

In this year's Iowa Republican primary, Mercer was outed as the money man behind American Heartland when the super PAC spent $140,000 opposing former energy company CEO Marc Jacobs, Ernst's closest rival for the GOP nomination. Jacobs' campaign manager said "Ernst has relied on out-of-state special interests" who were behind the attacks, and implored voters to "ask themselves, before they vote, will Joni Ernst represent them or a New York billionaire...something doesn't smell right."

But Mercer's generosity towards Republican political candidates and conservative super PACs he supports allegedly doesn't extend to his domestic help.

Last year, Mercer was sued by former members of his household staff for supposedly not paying overtime and docking wages when maids and other employees failed to promptly restock shampoo bottles, change razor blades in shavers, straighten pictures, or committed any of a laundry list of other offenses.

From the complaint:

Defendants deducted money from Plaintiffs' semiannual bonuses as a form of punishment or "demerits" related to Plaintiffs' alleged poor work performance. Demerits initially began at $10 and during the course of Plaintiffs' employment, rose to $20 per demerit. Plaintiffs received demerits throughout the work year for alleged poor work performance, including but not limited to the following:

failing to replace shampoos and other toiletries if there was an amount of less than one-third of a bottle remaining; failing to properly close doors; failing to leave extra towels in the bathroom; failing to change the razor blades in the shaver; failing to level pictures; leaving cleaning items out; leaving items in the refrigerator; and improperly counting beverages.

The lawyer representing Mercer's former domestic employees, Troy Kessler, said, "This is a social justice case. Domestic, low-wage workers are frequently taken advantage of and (in) this case it's particularly egregious."

According to Forbes, Mercer was the 16th highest paid hedge fund manager in the country in 2011, with a total pay package of $125 million. In 2012, he took home $90 million.

Entrance to Owl's Nest in Head of the Harbor, NY

In addition to his Owl's Nest mansion, located on a Long Island estate, Mercer owns a 186-foot luxury yacht named the Sea Owl.

Mercer was the 16th largest donor to super PACs in the 2011-12 election cycle, as estimated by the Center for Responsive Politics. During that period, he gave $5.5 million to pro-Republican super PACs, including $2 to Karl Rove's American Crossroads, and $1 million to Restore Our Future, the pro-Mitt Romney PAC. He also donated $600,000 to the Club For Growth's super PAC, whose attack ads were crucial to the rise of national Tea Party mouthpiece Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

This year, Mercer and his wife rank #6 on the list of the country's 100 top political donors, with $3.75 million in reported contributions to federal candidates and PAC's for the 2014 cycle.

Mercer is also 2014's highest single contributor to Freedom Partners Action Fund, the super PAC that the Koch brothers set up over the summer. Mercer wrote a check for $2.5 million to the fund, which was set up to bankroll ads that explicitly attack Democratic candidates and support Republicans.

Ernst probably first met Robert Mercer when she attended the Koch brothers' August, 2013 big donor retreat in New Mexico. At the time, Ernst was a little-known, first-term Iowa state Senator who had just announced her candidacy for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination against three male rivals.

As Politico reported, the Koch-sponsored twice-annual meetings "generally attract top conservative talent, for whom they can be quite useful, providing an opportunity to build rapport with some of the movements' deepest-pocketed backers."

Returning to this summer's retreat in California, Ernst was one of three GOP U.S. Senate candidates to address the donors, along with Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Colorado's Cory Gardner. "It started right here with all of your folks," said Ernst, offering her gratitude for the support of what she termed "this wonderful network" of wealthy, right-wing multi-millionaires and billionaires. A few days after her appearance, Charles Koch, his wife, son and daughter-in-law all gave the maximum legal contribution to Ernst's campaign, $2,600 apiece. Koch Industries also kicked in $5,000.

Ernst has lots of extreme views that probably find favor with her right-wing donors. She wants to abolish the EPA, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. She opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, believes "the UN is behind" a thoroughly debunked conspiracy to relocate farmers from rural lands into cities, and opposes a federal minimum wage (because she says "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa").

But most pleasing to their ears must be the fact that Ernst supports a flat tax on income.

If Joni Ernst goes to Washington, Robert Mercer's support for her candidacy will have earned huge dividends. He'll be one step closer to paying taxes on his enormous fortune at the exact same rate as the domestic workers he's been accused of nickel and diming over shampoo bottles and razor blades. For one of 2014's top "Mega-Donors," that would count as a great return on investment.

###