Posts Tagged ‘U.S. Senate’
I have heretofore refrained from spending much time thinking, talking, blogging or otherwise about the primary between Senator John McCain and former sportscaster, former Congressman, former radio host J.D. Hayworth.
However, as we are getting closer to the election and the rhetoric is heating up, I am compelled to weigh in and offer my perspective as someone who has worked fairly closely with both of these men for more than 15 years.
Let’s start with some of the rhetoric that the average voter doesn’t see coming from the daily press releases churned out by the Hayworth campaign. I am on Hayworth’s press release list, I suppose because I blog.
Before a few weeks ago I generally deleted the emails without reading them (like most political emails lately). However, lately the emails have projected a different tone. Was it sharper messaging? Was it more focused? Actually, no. It was growing desperation. Here is a sample (my commentary in bold italics):
McCAIN FEELING HEAT FROM HAYWORTH, JUMPS ON THE ANTI-OBAMACARE TRAIN LATE AND AMONG THE LAST
This headline is so absurd that it barely warrants a response. McCain was on the anti-ObamaCare train while Hayworth was still on the radio whining about losing to Harry Mitchell.
Phoenix, AZ (June 2) - The spokesman for U.S. Senate Candidate J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) said his candidate was pleased McCain took Hayworth’s advice and finally signed up against ObamaCare.
“He’s just a day late and a dollar short,” said spokesman Mark Sanders. “While his colleagues began signing Sen. Jim DeMint’s measure to repeal ObamaCare on March 23rd, McCain waited until April 20th to join.
Speaking of a day late and a dollar short, did it really take the Hayworth campaign from April 20th until June 2nd to notice that McCain had signed onto DeMint’s bill? The timing of when McCain joined as a cosponsor is immaterial to his position on repealing ObamaCare, and having served in Congress, Hayworth knows this, which makes this comment ridiculous and petty.
“And that was after Hayworth challenged him to do so on APRIL 9th, according to a news release issued that day by Hayworth’s campaign,” Sanders said.
He also noted that McCain was one of the last Senators to sign on as co-sponsors on April 20th.
“Like with most every issue in this campaign, McCain wants it both ways - he wants to be for ObamaCare and then against it, he wants to support amnesty for illegal aliens and then wants to complete the danged fence, he wants to oppose tax cuts and now wants them extended,” Sanders said.
Frankly, asserting that McCain ever wanted to be for ObamaCare is such a blatant lie it should disqualify Hayworth from even being in this race. If he is so blind to facts, how can we trust him to be a Senator?
Was Hayworth just not paying attention when McCain was offering multiple amendments to try to stop ObamaCare? Did he not listen to multiple floor speeches McCain made against the bill? Did he fail to even check the Congressional record and see that McCain voted against every amendment and procedural motion – and final passage – of ObamaCare when it went through the Senate?
Rather than burying the lede any further, I’ll cut to the chase: J.D. Hayworth is unworthy of holding the title “Senator.” Period. And especially when it would mean taking that title away from John McCain.
I know my position is going to surprise a lot of people. Particularly my friends who know how conservative/libertarian I am. I have ranted privately (and not so privately) about various positions and issues taken and championed by Sen. McCain over the years. I am a purest when it comes to the First Amendment, so I vigorously disagreed with McCain’s campaign finance bill.
I do not, in any way, believe that climate can be affected in any substantive way by human activity. So I have disagreed with him on climate and environment issues.
However, I am a hardcore fiscal conservative – and so is John McCain.
J.D. Hayworth is anything but. He championed the pork he brought back to his district. He got cozy with the power brokers of D.C. not only for his political gain, but for his personal gain, by raising money for his PAC which employed his wife.
I strongly oppose Indian gambling, not so much on moral grounds but on the inequality built into the system that has allowed small (and sometimes less than credible) tribes “game” the system enriching a very few, while the Native American population on the whole continues to exist in squalor. The federal government has a history of not fulfilling it’s treaty obligations and giving some tribes the “easy money” of gambling doesn’t do anything to fix the underlying system.
That all said, there was not a bigger booster for the few chosen tribes in Congress than J.D. Hayworth. I don’t mean booster in a complimentary way. In fact, he was Co-Chairman of the Indian Gaming Caucus in Congress with none other than… (you’re going to LOVE this one)… Patrick Kennedy. Yes, Ted Kennedy’s son.
Sidebar – one day years and years ago I was walking in the basement hallways of the Capital building when I heard a strange sound – someone imitating an Indian war chant – I turned around and it was the then-Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Archer. When he was done with the chant, I realized what he was doing, because he was calling out to Hayworth and yelled, “There goes the Indian gambling lover.” Can you imagine how out of line your conduct would have to be to have the Chairman of your own committee mock you?
In fact, Hayworth used his position on Ways and Means to cut special deals for tribes (usually siding with the Democrats to get those done) and influence the executive branch to favor one tribe over another. That’s abuse of power.
And even though Hayworth touts his record as a tax-cutter, he authored the largest airline ticket tax in history and got it passed as an amendment to the 2001 tax bill with support from nearly every Democrat on the committee and only a handful of Republicans. Why the ticket tax? His amendment killed a proposed tax on gambling proceeds on Indian Reservations. So, he passes legislation that gives preferential treatment to a small group of people and sticks it to the average traveler. Even gambling operations in Vegas and other states pay taxes.
Then there is the immigration issue. All that I will say about the issue is that McCain sees the issue similar to Ronald Reagan - America is the place of freedom, the shining city on a hill. Hayworth would just as soon put out the lights of the city and paint it in dull colors and make it as unattractive as possible. I do not, for a second, believe that he has a sincere bone in his body when he talks about legal immigration. If our forebears had his attitude, he wouldn’t even be here.
Does McCain deserve to be re-elected because he was a war hero and P.O.W.? Just that alone gives him more credibility to represent us in the Senate than Hayworth, but he has done much more to deserve my support. He not only led the charge against a government take-over of health care, he used his influence to help keep every single Republican together in opposition to the bill. And, he was helpful in the election of Republican Scott Brown to the bluest of all blue states, Massachusetts, in Ted Kennedy’s seat no less.
However, putting all the policy and politics aside, the main reason I support McCain over Hayworth is character. McCain has character, and Hayworth is a character. And an angry, bitter character at that. And, without going into specifics, Hayworth is the most selfish person I know – and given the number of politicians I know, that’s saying something. And, it turns out he’s a huckster to boot.
The bottom line is that McCain has done more to protect our freedom than even Hayworth could bloviate about… and that’s a lot. And for me, I follow Goldwater’s maxim, “are we maximizing freedom?” In this case, McCain exceeds Hayworth on the test of freedom. I’m voting for McCain.
This editorial in the Wall Street Journal is too good to not post in full. Dead on.
The 60th Senate Vote
The special election in Massachusetts and the Democratic agenda.
When Ted Kennedy died last August, Democrats said they’d honor him by finally passing the national health care he had long campaigned for. What an irony it would be if the race for Kennedy’s successor in Massachusetts denied Democrats the 60th vote to ram their federal takeover into law on a partisan basis.
That prospect isn’t as implausible as it once seemed in that most liberal of states, as Republican Scott Brown has closed to within striking distance of Democrat Martha Coakley in the January 19 special election. A Boston Globe survey released this weekend showed Ms. Coakley with a 15-point lead, but a survey by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling found the race a dead heat, with Mr. Brown up 48% to 47%. The scary prospect for Democrats is that the race is even this close on their home ideological turf, and turnout is always difficult to predict in special elections.
That’s especially true in midwinter and with a voting public that is increasingly opposed to the Democratic agenda in Washington. The Public Policy Poll found that likely Bay State voters oppose the Democratic health plans by 47% to 41% and that they give President Obama only 44% job approval. This in a state he carried by 26 points only 14 months ago. It also found Republicans much more motivated to vote than Democrats.
Mr. Brown, a state senator who is little known state-wide, has been running against Washington’s blowout spending and has called for a freeze on the wages of federal employees. “It’s not right that less-paid private sector workers suffering through a recession have to pay for expensive government salaries,” he says, noting Ms. Coakley’s many union endorsements.
He’s also hit on taxes, including Ms. Coakley’s comments in November that “We need to get taxes up.” One of his TV ads shows film of Massachusetts son John F. Kennedy describing his 1962 tax cut bill, saying that “The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy.” It’s been a long time since any national Democrat said anything like that.
Regarding ObamaCare, Mr. Brown notes that 98% of the state is already insured so any national bill will hurt Bay Staters. He’s right, with the sweetheart Medicaid deal that Ben Nelson cut for Nebraska being Exhibit A. But more fundamentally, the Democratic bills would impose federally mandated rules and benefit limits that would strip states of regulatory flexibility.
Ms. Coakley is the state attorney general and ran to the left of other Democrats to win the Senate primary. She would be a reliable liberal vote for Majority Leader Harry Reid on every issue. These columns have a particular interest in Ms. Coakley’s judgment from her days as district attorney for Middlesex County when she inherited the child molestation case against Gerald Amirault long after it had been shown to be fictional.
When the Governor’s Advisory Board on Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to commute Amirault’s sentence in 2001, Ms. Coakley went to great lengths to see that he remain in prison. The same woman who organized protest meetings to ensure that Amirault stay behind bars now argues that would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab and other jihadists should not be held as enemy combatants. She is more zealous for politically correct causes than for national security.
The Democrat remains the favorite in such a liberal state, especially now that the unions and national Democrats have become alarmed by the polls. Bill Clinton will campaign for Ms. Coakley this week, and Mr. Brown can expect an assault linking him to George W. Bush, if not Herbert Hoover. But a sign of their worry is that Democrats are whispering that even if Mr. Brown wins, they’ll delay his swearing in long enough to let appointed Senator Paul Kirk vote for ObamaCare.
The mere fact that Democrats have to fight so hard to save Ted Kennedy’s seat shows how badly they have misjudged America by governing so far to the left.
The Liberal Lion of the Senate will be laid to rest today. With the numerous retrospectives in the papers, online and on TV, there isn’t much that I can add, other than the Left has lost its most effective and committed champion.
Senator Edward Kennedy, RIP.
One of my political heroes is Dr. Tom Coburn, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. I got to know Dr. Coburn when he was elected to the U.S. House as part of the 1994 Republican Revolution. For the next six years he led the charge against wasteful spending, health care reform and transparency in government. Then, holding to a self-imposed three-term limit, he retired from Congress and went back to the full-time practice of medicine (a family practitioner in Muskogee, OK).
In 2004 he decided to run for the open Senate seat vacated by retiring Sen. Don Nickles. I had the distinct privilege of spending the last two months of the 2004 election cycle in Oklahoma helping get Dr. Tom elected to the Senate in what became one of the fiercest Senate races in Oklahoma history. I used to joke with people in Oklahoma as I traveled around coordinating the campaign that “I don’t know anything about campaigning, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night!” It was relevant because I did, in fact, live in a Holiday Inn Express in Muskogee, OK for 62 nights in a row (I spent the last few nights of the campaign in Tulsa). I had a hard-boiled egg and a cinnamon roll nearly every morning.
My roommate and side-kick during that campaign was communications pro, Mike Steel (no, not that Michael Steele) who is now the Communications Director the U.S. House Republican Leader John Boehner. We spent an unhealthy amount of time together and I will never hear a Big and Rich tune without rollin’ across Oklahoma in a rented Monte Carlo running the campaign with a cell phone and a blackberry. (It was my work on the Coburn campaign that led to a Washington Post profile of my wife Julie in a story about the toll politics can take on families, and how my wife has earned sainthood for tolerating my work schedule.)
Coburn amassed a great team of people to help him in that race. The Oklahoma contingent included Mike Schwartz, Curt Price, Jerry Morris, Brian Treat, Greg Treat, Courtney Cox, Jane (now Treat), Martin Updike, John Hart, Tyler Faught, Tim Barr, Patrick Wyrick, Derek Sparks, and others who, embarrassingly, I can’t remember names. Chairing the victory operation was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known, Mike Willis, and he had Austin and some others helping him.
The out-of-towners included me, Steel, Jason Miller and also Jon Lerner doing the polling and John Brabender and Rob Aho doing the media. There were a ton of others that came in towards the end, and Congressman John Shadegg spent a lot of time on conference calls assisting with strategy.
All this walk down memory lane came as a result of Dr. Tom’s announcement on Monday that he will run for re-election. A video of his announcement is here.
All you need to know is in this video produced by the folks at Brabender Cox:
The best book ever written about campaign strategy and tactics was written by Stephen Shadegg, father of Congressman John Shadegg.
How To Win An Election is a timeless must-have handbook for anyone who ever even has a faint desire to run for public office. On occasion during campaigns reporters will ask me about this or that strategy and my response is always the same: we’re running by the book. They rarely ask the follow-up of what I mean, because they think I’m being coy, but I’m being honest - we run campaigns by the book How to Win an Election.
Chapter 14 of the book is entitled, “Don’t let them steal it from you.” In it, Shadegg points out that the best prevention of voter fraud comes by not allowing unqualified voters from getting a ballot in the first place. Here is a poignant paragraph:
Once a fraudulent vote has been cast and counted, it is difficult if not impossible to correct the error. The secrecy of the ballot in this country gives the dishonest as well as the honest vote equal standing once the tally has been made. It is relatively simple to prevent an unqualified voter from voting. It is almost impossible to change the outcome or even to detect the fraud after the ballot has been placed in the box or the voter has been permitted to use the machine.
The circus that is going on in Minnesota is yet another example the potential theft of an election. Al Franken (really? Al Franken?!?) is about to be declared the winner of the U.S. Senate race over incumbent Norm Coleman. However, the questions about ballots and votes means that this race will remain in the courts for weeks, if not months.
At a minimum, this spectacle should serve as a catalyst to coming up with some solutions to prevent voter fraud. A minimum in every state should be requiring identification when you show up at the polls.
Update: Thanks to Corey for the link to the book on Amazon.
