Archive for the ‘Sheldon’ Tag
It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
Follow us on twitter: @DemocratAmazing
“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
It’s not as though Trump didn’t lay out a vision. In fact, he often laid out more than one. On the same issues.
Trump criticized U.S. allies for taking advantage of American security assistance — and criticized President Obama because, he said, U.S. allies no longer felt they could rely on American security assistance. He said his foreign policy would replace “randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace” — and that the United States would “have to be unpredictable…starting now.”
But he detailed no plans likely to spark opposition…mostly because he didn’t really offer any details at all; a “senior campaign official — who requested anonymity to keep the spotlight centered on Trump, said [the] positions were ‘politics, not policy,’ and that the goal of the speech was ‘to give his vision, in his words.'” – The Washington Post – April 28th, 2016.
Follow us on twitter: @DemocratAmazing
“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
Democrats and “Hillary’s People” need to seriously wake up to the most dangerous man for America on the planet and could even have a chance of being our next President of the United States. Donald Trump is not only America’s number one clown around the world, he is also a very dangerous man. The Amazing Democrats have remained silent these past few weeks as we are very disappointed with the direction of the Hillary Clinton campaign. We mentioned time and time it needs a massive shake up campaign staff wise and still (even with the new television commercials for Hillary Clinton’s campaign this week), we see the same old, same old boring save approach messages.
This has never worked against the GOP and we certainly wouldn’t have had a hope in hell re-electing Obama against Romney in 2012 if we had taken that approach. We took our gloves off and played in the dirt with the GOP and we did what we set out to do, we won. The fact the Clintons are friendly with Trump (or Jeb Bush for that matter) makes no odds. Trump threw the first punch when recently (in the South) he brought up Bill’s sex life. So Hillary time to get serious. Shake up your campaign staff from top to bottom and don’t be such a stick in the mud by not hiring some of Obama old campaigners as remember we won for Obama in 2012. There were no rules and there simply aren’t when you are up against the GOP, they don’t play fair and Trump certainly won’t. You and your campaign are giving Trump too much of a head start and you will regret this big time should he be nominated as the GOP candidate. Didn’t you make that same mistake with an unknown Senator called Obama in 2008?
The secret with Trump’s weakness is his business deals in the past. Dig and dig hard. In the 1980’s in New York, who did he do business with then? Follow the money. Follow his treatment of people who got in his way. For example take the poor people of Scotland and what he did to the locals there who were just trying to make a living. Trump is not just a man about greed and stupidity, he is a very dangerous man for America and the world. Wake up Ms. Clinton please and start the fight today and shake up your campaign staff and campaign. Don’t repeat the mistakes of your 2008 campaign – Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, SARAH COHEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Since late last year, presidential hopefuls have been romancing donors, hiring staff and haunting the diners and senior centers of Manchester and Dubuque.
But on paper, most of the candidates spent virtually no money exploring a presidential bid until very recently. According to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission last week, the much-promoted campaign staff they hired had other jobs. And their many, many trips to New Hampshire and Iowa had nothing to do with running for president.
Such accounting — which the campaigns defended as perfectly appropriate but some election lawyers said violated the law — has allowed would-be candidates to spend months testing the presidential waters while saving cash to use later in the primaries.
It also let them tap their most loyal donors for additional funds that will not count against the limits on contributions to their official campaigns. And it has contributed to what some experts described as a kind of campaign Wild West, with candidates and their lawyers testing or crossing legal boundaries stretched thin by the advent of “super PACs” and by Federal Election Commission deadlocks.
“We’re in uncharted territory,” said Kenneth Gross, a Washington election lawyer and former Federal Election Commission general counsel. “This campaign cycle more than any other, we’ve seen more pre-announcement activity being paid for through essentially unregulated money.”
Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have billed hotel rooms in New Hampshire and consulting fees for Iowa strategists to their re-election campaigns in Texas and Kentucky. Gov. Scott Walker billed fees to a Texas-based fund-raiser, hired in March, to his Wisconsin state campaign, months after he was re-elected governor and years away from a potential 2018 Statehouse bid.
Several candidates, including former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, reported to the Federal Election Commission that they spent almost nothing to explore a presidential bid until a few days before they jumped into the race. Federal law requires declared candidates to retroactively report “exploratory” expenses once they enter the race.
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, reported hundreds of thousands of dollars of exploratory spending, dating to May last year, on political and legal advice. But he did not report any travel expenses before June, though he traveled extensively during the winter and spring to meet with donors and attend town-hall-style meetings in early primary states.
Mr. Bush and some other White House contenders say those expenses are unrelated to their presidential campaigns and were paid for by other political organizations — typically not subject to the same disclosure rules and contribution limits as presidential candidates. The campaigns argued that any costs paid for by such groups were unrelated to exploring a presidential bid and did not need to be repaid once the candidates announced their bids.
One such group, Conservative Solutions Project, a nonprofit set up by allies of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, picked up the tab for extensive research of Republican primary voters, the kind of expense that would-be candidates bore in the past.
Other White House contenders have assigned months’ worth of expenses to campaigns for other offices.
Last summer, Mr. Paul hired Steve Grubbs, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and an expert on the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, to assist with his national political efforts.
Mr. Grubbs indicated in an email that he is currently advising Mr. Paul about Iowa, and Mr. Paul’s presidential campaign paid his firm, Victory Enterprises, about $200,000 during the second quarter of 2015.
But during the first quarter of 2015, Mr. Grubbs’s fees — about $15,000 — came out of Mr. Paul’s Senate account. A spokesman for Mr. Paul, Sergio Gor, said those earlier payments were unrelated to the senator’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Cruz is not up for re-election in Texas until 2018. But his Senate campaign committee was billed thousands of dollars in meals, hotels, car services and other travel expenses in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Mr. Cruz’s Senate committee also paid $12,903 in April and May to a company controlled by Bryan English, the Iowa campaign director for Mr. Cruz’s presidential bid. Mr. English’s LinkedIn profile states that he began working for Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign in April.
Another payment, billed to his Senate campaign in early March, appears to correspond with Mr. Cruz’s trip to Iowa for the Iowa Agriculture Summit. The gathering is described on its website as “a unique forum for potential and likely presidential candidates from both major parties to discuss issues of vital importance to the Iowa and national economies.”
Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz, said his presidential campaign intended to reimburse his Senate committee for any 2016-related expenses once they had all been identified and calculated. She also said that the dates on Mr. Cruz’s reports did not necessarily reflect the actual dates the expenses were incurred, and that it was “standard practice to use the credit card payment date for all the ultimate vendors.”
“We are well aware of the expenses, as they will be part of a larger reimbursement from the presidential committee to the Senate committee that will be disclosed on our next F.E.C. report,” Ms. Frazier said.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced in April that she would seek the Democratic nomination, was among the more conservative candidates in accounting for her spending. Her campaign reported $278,821 in exploratory expenses, including office rent, staff travel and employee salaries and benefits, which she paid for out of her own pocket.
And unlike other candidates, Mrs. Clinton maintained a low profile before entering the race in April: A tally kept by the National Journal showed only five public trips before April, four of them for paid speeches and none in the early primary states.
Mr. Walker did not enter the campaign until after the period covered by the most recent federal filings. But the committee for his campaign for Wisconsin governor, Friends of Scott Walker, collected $6 million from January to July, according to reports filed with regulators in Wisconsin.
His state committee, bound by Wisconsin law, was entitled to raise far more money per donor than a presidential campaign would be. And during the first six months of his second term, when Mr. Walker made more than 30 out-of-state trips, Friends of Scott Walker spent $5.7 million, more than five times what the committee spent during the equivalent six months of Mr. Walker’s first term.
With any Wisconsin re-election bid at least three years away, Mr. Walker’s committee paid out nearly $500,000 in salaries and benefits. Friends of Scott Walker also spent $114,000 on fund-raising events, 10 times what it spent on fund-raising during the equivalent period during his first term.
His Wisconsin re-election campaign paid for hotels and meals in Iowa and New Hampshire from January to April. The committee has paid $2.5 million to his direct mail fund-raising firm this year, more than Mr. Walker spent with the company during his entire 2014 re-election campaign.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, Kirsten Kukowski, said the Iowa and New Hampshire expenses covered employees who “continued to assist in staffing and fund-raising for the Friends of Scott Walker committee.” The direct mail firm, she said, was raising money only for his campaign for governor.
Mr. Bush’s schedule in the months before he announced his candidacy was packed with the kind of appearances that would-be candidates typically use to explore their chances in a presidential race. He made three trips to New Hampshire, two to Iowa and two to South Carolina from January to May, according to public reports, and held numerous meetings with donors around the country.
But while Mr. Bush’s presidential campaign reported spending more than $300,000 on “testing the waters” activity as far back as May 2014, he reported no travel expenses for himself before June 15, the day of the official announcement.
“He was traveling constantly in what appears to me to be ‘testing the waters’ if not actually campaigning,” said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel to the Campaign Legal Center, which has filed complaints with the Justice Department about Mr. Bush’s early fund-raising and spending.
Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, said the travel expenses were covered by Right to Rise PAC, a political committee of which Mr. Bush was “honorary chairman,” and were not related to his presidential bid. “Governor Bush has attended events as a featured guest for organizations that have a mission and philosophy he shares,” Ms. Campbell said.
Mr. Jindal reported only $21,000 in spending before his official announcement on June 23, mostly on facility rentals shortly before the announcement. Yet before that date, the Louisiana governor took high-profile trips to New Hampshire and Iowa to explore a possible run.
Curt Anderson, the chief strategist for Mr. Jindal’s campaign, said in an interview that those trips were paid for by two other groups, one of them a nonprofit policy organization that Mr. Jindal founded in 2013. The campaign’s own low burn rate, Mr. Anderson suggested, was merely an indication of Mr. Jindal’s thrift.
“We’ll run a very lean operation for some time and get a foothold in the early states,” Mr. Anderson said. “We’re going to want every dollar.”
by Richard Cohen (The Washington Post)
If you’re old enough to recall how the landslide election of Lyndon Johnson over the hapless Barry Goldwater supposedly spelled the end of the Republican Party, or how Ronald Reagan’s election amounted to a revolution that put the Democratic party on the mat until — more or less — the end of time, then you will understand my caution in saying that while the Republican Party may well survive its recent difficulty, Republicanism itself is dead. I think.
The recent difficulties consist of taking the wrong side in the great health-care debate, not only opposing what came to be called Obamacare, but also refusing to produce an alternative. People are worried about their health, and the party comes up with buffoons such as Sarah Palin who invents death panels and trivializes the whole debate. Obamacare is not only the law of the land, but it is also the inevitable next step toward universal health care — just like many countries have, even the poorer ones.
The party’s other recent difficulty is being on the wrong side of just about every social issue you can think of. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage throughout the land, and Republican after Republican stepped forward to denounce the decision and prattle on about what God intended — as if any of them know.
Some, such as Chris Christie, reached for that hoary cliche about unelected men in black robes. Christie is hardly the first person to discover the awesome power of the American judiciary and, when you Google the matter, he turns out to be using similar language as school desegregation opponents did in 1954. Then, too, an alleged and simply horrible dictatorship of the judiciary was denounced — but the nation moved on.
Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism. The other was best articulated by one of the many Bushes in American life, George H.W., who vowed at the 1988 GOP national convention, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” This was a clear — if extorted — articulation of the First Principle of Republican Life as received, possibly in fire and other Cecil B. DeMille effects, by Grover Norquist.
The no-new-taxes mantra has now been applied in several states and found wanting. In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback has taken a weed whacker to the tax code, lowering rates and waiting for the promised economic miracle to occur. It didn’t, and now he’s working on raising some revenue — through the sales tax, for instance — because there’s a hole in the budget.
Something similar has happened in Louisiana. There the governor, Bobby Jindal, is the personification of contemporary Republicanism. He’s opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion rights, the teaching of evolution in the schools and, of course, a reasonable fiscal program. His state is about $1.6 billion in the red, his popularity has plummeted, and in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll , he scored a zero as a presidential candidate. Perhaps he can carry Louisiana, where polls suggest most voters would like to see him somewhere else.
Not all Republicans are so doctrinaire in the application of the anti-government, anti-tax dogma. But the notion that government should be as small as possible and do as little as possible is generally accepted as undebatable. It persists even though America is in desperate need of repairing or replacing its sagging infrastructure. The country has Third World airports, highways and bridges as well as a groaning electrical grid that strains if too many people toast their English muffins at the same time.
The cost of revamping, repairing, restoring and just plain creating a 21st-century infrastructure is staggering — an estimated $3.6 trillion by 2020. But huge construction projects would put huge numbers of people to work and would, in the long run, result in savings. It costs money for a truck to sit idle in traffic. We do an awful lot of idling in this country.
Size can be a problem. Large government is inevitably inefficient, but so, too, is large private enterprise. (See the GM bankruptcy.) Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need. Private enterprise cannot rebuild the nation’s infrastructure or keep our research institutions vibrant. Government must do what only it can do. Only a semi-mystical Republicanism, deluded by its own dogma, cannot see the future. That’s why it may not have one.
Marco Rubio is playing to win The Sheldon Adelson Primary. The Florida senator, who has relentlessly sought the billionaire casino mogul’s backing for 2016, co-sponsored a bill yesterday afternoon to ban online gaming. It is not only Adelson’s top legislative priority, it could significantly boost his company’s bottom line. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another presidential hopeful who has assiduously courted Adelson over their shared hawkishness on foreign policy, is the lead Republican author on the legislation for a second year in a row.
by Nicholas Confessore and Eric Lichtblau (New York Times)
As the 2016 campaign unfolds, Hillary Rodham Clinton will benefit from one rapid-response team working out of a war room in her Brooklyn headquarters — and another one working out of a “super PAC” in Washington.
Jeb Bush has hired a campaign manager, press aides and fund-raisers — yet insists he is not running for president, just exploring the possibility of maybe running.
And Senator Marco Rubio’s chance of winning his party’s nomination may hinge on the support of an “independent” group financed by a billionaire who has bankrolled Mr. Rubio’s past campaigns, paid his salary teaching at a university and employed his wife.
With striking speed, the 2016 contenders are exploiting loopholes and regulatory gray areas to transform the way presidential campaigns are organized and paid for.
Their “campaigns” are in practice intricate constellations of political committees, super PACs and tax-exempt groups, engineered to avoid fund-raising restrictions imposed on candidates and their parties after the Watergate scandal.
Major costs of each candidate’s White House bid, from television advertising to opposition research to policy development, are now being shifted to legally independent organizations that can accept unlimited contributions from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions.
In this new world, campaigns are not campaigns. And candidates are not actually candidates. Though they sometimes forget it.
“I am running for president in 2016,” Mr. Bush said during a speech in Nevada last week, before quickly amending himself.
“If I run,” clarified Mr. Bush, whose political operation has already raised tens of millions of dollars — just in case.
Much rides on this apparent distinction. Because of it, Mr. Bush and several other contenders have delayed registering their campaigns with the Federal Election Commission, even as they travel the country, meet with voters, attend candidate forums and ask donors for money. That allows them — or so their representatives argue — to personally raise money for and coordinate spending with super PACs.
By law, a campaign and an independent group cannot coordinate their activities. But since there is no campaign, the representatives argue, there is nothing for the groups to illegally coordinate with.
Not everyone agrees. In March, theCampaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, two groups that favor stricter enforcement of campaign regulations, filed complaints with the election commission alleging that Mr. Bush; Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin; Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania; and Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, all met the legal definition of being a candidate and were raising tens of millions of dollars in violation of federal rules.
Mr. Bush’s comment in Nevada was “a slip of the mask, not a slip of the tongue,” said Paul S. Ryan, a senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. “The rules apply to you as soon as you start spending money to determine whether you will run. Simply denying that you’re a candidate doesn’t get you around these campaign finance laws.”
No potential candidate has been more aggressive in using the new model than Mr. Bush. In recent months, his advisers have created a traditional political action committee — the kind that can accept contributions of only a few thousand dollars per donor — along with a super PAC that can take unlimited contributions and is expected to handle the bulk of the advertising on Mr. Bush’s behalf during the primaries. There is also a nonprofit organization, based in Arkansas, that can raise unlimited contributions and is not required to disclose its donors.
All share some variation of the name “Right to Rise,” and Mr. Bush has headlined fund-raisers for the groups, even putting his name on invitations to more than 300 donors who attended a Right to Rise conference in Miami in April.
Technically, however, the super PAC is controlled by a Republican campaign lawyer in Washington. The regular PAC is run by a Florida accountant who has also prepared Mr. Bush’s taxes. (Mr. Bush is merely the PAC’s “honorary chairman.”) And the nonprofit group is controlled by a former Bush aide who is widely described as the head of Mr. Bush’s policy team, but who has said the nonprofit will merely be “engaged in policy generation that is consistent with Governor Bush’s optimistic, conservative message.”
The non-campaigns reject the idea that their non-candidates are doing anything wrong.
“Right to Rise PAC and Honorary Chairman Jeb Bush are fully complying with the law and F.E.C. precedent in all of our activities,” said Tim Miller, who is often described in news accounts as a Bush spokesman but is technically only a consultant to the Right to Rise PAC.
If there is little risk to candidates in pushing the envelope, the benefits are substantial. Outsourcing campaign expenses to a super PAC, for example, allows would-be presidents to avoid the kind of cash-flow problems that can doom their bids even before the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Traditionally, a candidate who waited too long to hire a campaign staff risked losing all the best talent to rival candidates. Hire too early, and the campaign’s payroll costs quickly balloon, burning through contributions that are capped at $2,700 per donor.
Now candidates set up super PACs and other vehicles before entering the race and fill their bank accounts with six- and seven-figure checks from wealthy supporters. Those groups, in turn, can employ the candidate’s campaign staff-in-waiting.
Mr. Walker’s operation, for example, has hired advisers to handle fund-raising, Christian conservative outreach, polling and more. These advisers are not working for his campaign, which does not yet exist. Instead, all are on the payroll of a tax exempt organization, Our American Revival, for which Mr. Walker has already raised more than $5 million.
“Governor Walker does not sit on O.A.R.’s board or otherwise control it,” said AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the group. “He is simply working with us to advance a big, bold conservative reform agenda across the country.”
The outsourcing even extends to the daily work of “rapid-response,” or reacting to criticisms in the news media or from other candidates.
When a Washington Post fact-checker sought clarification from the Republican campaign of Carly Fiorina about claims she had made about her business career, he was directed to an independent super PAC for some of the answers. The name of the super PAC: Carly for America.
“The super PAC has just been very vocal in defending her, so I thought that they’d be good to talk to,” explained Ms. Fiorina’s spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores. Ms. Flores works for the campaign, which is registered as Carly for President.
Campaign lawyers in both parties say their efforts to circumvent the candidate contribution limits, however suspect they may appear, are fully consistent with existing laws and regulations. And to some extent, the model being pioneered in 2016 is merely a culmination of piecemeal efforts undertaken in past campaigns
Richard L. Hasen, a professor and campaign finance expert at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, said it had become hard even for him to know what is legal anymore.
“You see some of these things and you have to do a double take; things we thought were established as red lines are no longer red lines,” Mr. Hasen said in an interview. “It’s all a mess.”
That extends to the rules that govern what candidates can do after they formally enter the race. Each cycle brings new tactics for candidates to collaborate with independent groups while trying to steer clear of illegal “coordination.”
In 2012, aides to the Republican candidate Mitt Romney were wary of acknowledging that he attended donor gatherings for a super PAC backing his campaign. This time, there is less sensitivity. Mr. Bush, other Republicans and Mrs. Clinton will all be attending donor events organized by super PACs. (Their attendance is legal so long as someone else asks for the money.)
And they are openly courting the donors who will finance the groups: Mr. Rubio frequently speaks with Norman Braman, who has said he and Mr. Rubio are “close personal friends.” Mr. Braman, a billionaire auto dealer who was a major contributor to Mr. Rubio’s past campaigns, helped cover the cost of his teaching job at Florida International University and employed his wife to advise the Braman family’s philanthropic foundation, has pledged at least $10 million to a pro-Rubio super PAC.
Supporters of Mrs. Clinton announced the creation last week of a super PAC, Correct the Record, that would serve as a communications “war room” and coordinate directly with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
Federal law prohibits a candidate from controlling super PACs, and such groups cannot coordinate expenditures such as paid advertisements.
But Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the super PAC, said the coordination restriction would not apply because Correct the Record’s defense of Mrs. Clinton would be built around material posted on the group’s own website, not paid media. Ms. Watson also ventured a further distinction that she said would keep Correct the Record on the right side of the law: The group will collaborate with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, but will not be controlled by it.
“While Correct the Record can legally coordinate with the Clinton campaign, the campaign will not be telling us what to do,” she said.
by Matea Gold (The Washington Post)
In the last presidential contest, super PACs were an exotic add-on for most candidates. This time, they are the first priority.
Already, operatives with close ties to eight likely White House contenders have launched political committees that can accept unlimited donations — before any of them has even declared their candidacy. The latest, a super PAC called America Leads that plans to support Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, was announced Thursday.
The goal is simple: Potential candidates want to help their super PAC allies raise as much money as possible now, before their official campaigns start. That’s because once they announce their bids, federal rules require them to keep their distance.
Official candidates can still appear at super PAC fundraisers, but they cannot ask donors to give more than $5,000. And they cannot share inside strategic information with those running the group.
“Once someone becomes a candidate, there will be some very important guardrails you have to abide by,” said Michael E. Toner, a Republican campaign finance attorney who served on the Federal Election Commission.
But for now, there are few guardrails for most of the 2016 hopefuls. That’s why former Florida governor Jeb Bush is headlining $100,000-a-head fundraisers for a super PAC already ballooning with tens of millions of dollars in donations. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s political committee is soliciting corporate money and six-figure checks. And on Monday in New York, former New York governor George Pataki was the guest of honor at a fundraiser for his super PAC at a private Manhattan club, where co-chairs were asked to contribute $250,000 each.
[Why Jeb Bush is asking donors to stop at $1 million — for now]
The aggressive and open manner in which many White House hopefuls are embracing super PACs has startled many campaign finance experts, who say they are venturing onto untested legal ground even as undeclared candidates.
“We’re seeing a bending and an abuse and an evasion of federal campaign contribution limits to an extent that we’ve never before seen,” said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which seeks tougher campaign finance restrictions.
Candidates took pains to steer clear of their big-money allies in public during the past few election cycles, but there is little such distancing now.
Bush’s leadership committee and super PAC share the same name, Right to Rise, and were set up by the same GOP election law attorney, Charlie Spies. Walker’s Our American Revival political committee — registered under section 527 of the tax code, allowing to collect unlimited donations like a super PAC — is being run by Rick Wiley, the veteran Republican strategist who is expected to helm his official campaign. We the People Not Washington, the super PAC backing Pataki, features his photo and bio prominently on its Web site, along with a form to request a meeting with him. And a new super PAC launched last week to back former Texas governor Rick Perry called the Opportunity and Freedom PAC is being run by Austin Barbour, brother of Perry adviser Henry Barbour.
In meetings with top political contributors, representatives of the presumptive candidates regularly lay out a menu of options that include making donations to a super PAC, according to multiple people familiar with the sessions. And unlike before, that no longer sets off alarm bells.
“It used to be that donors were very concerned that the super PAC was independent of the candidate,” said Robert Kelner, a Washington election law attorney. But now, he said, “candidates appear to be essentially establishing their own super PACs. In the absence of enforcement or even serious media scrutiny, donors will tend to conclude that they don’t have to worry.”
The presumptive Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is so far keeping her distance from a network of super PACs and advocacy groups that are gearing up to back her campaign.
[The Koch network plans to spend nearly $1 billion in the run up to 2016]
But on the GOP side, presumptive candidates have been engaged in a frantic hunt for wealthy political patrons for their super PAC allies. During the past two months, their schedules have been packed with visits to the Manhattan offices of billionaire hedge-fund managers and appearances at private donor conferences, such as a January event in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for backers of a political network organized by the industrialists Charles and David Koch.
“It really is a charade that we have any semblance of campaign finance limits,” said Miles Rapoport, president of Common Cause, which seeks to lessen the influence of money on politics. “What we’re seeing is a wealth primary to the tenth degree, where what candidates are doing is chasing a very small number of people who can make or break their candidacies from day one.”
Even some of those writing the big checks are uncomfortable with the new order.
“I do not like the super PACs,” said Chicago private-equity executive Bill Kunkler. “I think it’s the lowest return on investment.”
Nevertheless, Kunkler recently donated $25,000 to Bush’s super PAC. “I want to support the presumptive candidate, and that’s the vehicle,” Kunkler explained, adding: “We have got to reform how our political system is being financed. It’s just crazy.”
Campaign finance lawyers said the close ties between the likely candidates and their super-PAC allies pose serious legal questions, including whether the groups could later be considered affiliated with the eventual campaign or viewed as an entity created by the candidate. That could limit their ability to spend money raised outside candidate contribution limits, which stand at $2,700 per person for the 2016 primaries.
There’s little chance, however, that such issues will be wrestled with at a sharply divided Federal Election Commission, which has deadlocked over whether to even open up enforcement investigations.
The intense super PAC fundraising is also viewed by some critics as evidence that the presumptive candidates are “testing the waters,” a legal term used by the FEC to refer to activities undertaken by a possible candidate, such as polling and traveling to key states to measure support for a bid. Such activities can only be paid for by money raised under the candidate contribution limit, but they do not have to be reported to the FEC unless the person testing the waters decides to become a candidate.
So far, only three contenders — Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), former senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and retired Maryland neurosurgeon Ben Carson (R) — have announced that they are testing the waters and have set up political committees to raise funds for that purpose.
Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said that his team is “fully complying with the law in all activities that Governor Bush is engaging in on the political front.”
“If Governor Bush engages in any testing-the-waters activities, they will be paid for appropriately under the law and reported at the required time,” she added.
One category of 2016 contenders cannot take part in the early super PAC rush: federal officeholders, who, like official candidates, can’t coordinate with the groups. That’s one reason there are no major super PACs yet for GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, all of whom are considering presidential bids.
After the campaigns officially kick off, candidate-specific super PACs are poised to be central to the 2016 race. The big-money groups are likely to fuel a protracted fight for the Republican nomination — a more intense version of what happened in 2012, when wealthy backers financed super PACs that helped former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania wound former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
This time around, GOP strategists believe that at least a half-dozen candidates could be flanked by super PACs sitting on millions as they head into the Iowa caucuses, including Bush, Christie, Cruz, Paul, Rubio and Walker.
“They could change the way we’ve always looked at the process for the nomination,” said Ron Weiser, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, noting that candidates who do well in the early primaries usually enjoy a rush of donations. “But what’s that mean when other candidates’ super PACs have amounts substantially in excess of that?”
It remains to be seen how the White House contenders will handle their big-money allies once they have no direct control over the groups.
Asked by reporters in Iowa on Saturday whether he would call on his aligned super PAC to refrain from running negative ads, Bush said, “My hope is that we’ll have a positive campaign. It’s possible a super PAC could be a positive message, as well.”
He brushed off the question when asked again: “That’s way in the future.”
Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, contributed to this report.
by Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times)
The symbolism was too powerful to ignore. As anyone who watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last week in Congress knows, one of the people prominently seated in the House gallery was the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a primary financial backer of both the Republican Party and Netanyahu. As The Washington Post’s Colby Itkowitz reported, at one point Adelson’s wife, Miriam, accidentally knocked her purse off the House gallery railing and it hit Representative Brad Ashford, a Nebraska Democrat seated below. The Post noted that Adelson had given $5 million to the G.O.P.’s Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, which had spent $35,000 in a failed effort to defeat Ashford in his 2014 race against Representative Lee Terry. Ashford later joked to The Omaha World-Herald: “I wish I’d opened the purse. Do you think she carries?
We certainly know that Mr. Adelson does. And when it came to showering that cash on Republican presidential hopefuls and right-wing PACs trying to defeat President Obama (reportedly $150 million in 2012), and on keeping Netanyahu and his Likud party in office, no single billionaire-donor is more influential than Sheldon. No matter what his agenda, it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away giant sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time.
Israel has much stricter laws on individuals donating to political campaigns, so Adelson got around that in 2007 by founding a free, giveaway newspaper in Israel — Israel Hayom — whose sole purpose is to back Netanyahu, attack his enemies in politics and the media, and enforce a far-right political agenda to prevent any Israeli territorial compromise on the West Bank (which, in time, could undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy). Graphically attractive, Israel Hayom is now the biggest-circulation daily in Israel. Precisely because it is free, it is putting a heavy strain on competitors, like Yediot and Haaretz, which both charge and are not pro-Netanyahu.
Adelson then bought the most important newspaper of the religious-nationalist right in Israel, Makor Rishon, long considered the main backer of Netanyahu’s biggest right-wing rival, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. Last March, in an interview with Israel Army Radio after the Makor Rishon sale, Bennett said: “It saddens me. Israel Hayom is not a newspaper. It is Pravda. It’s the mouthpiece of one person, the prime minister. At every junction point, every point of friction between the national interest and the interest of the prime minister, they chose the side of the prime minister.”
The Washington Post said that last November at a conference of the Israel American Council, a lobbying group Adelson has funded, he joked in a public discussion with another wealthy Israeli: “Why don’t you and I go after The New York Times?” Told it was family owned, Adelson quipped, “There is only one way to fight it: money.” At this same conference Adelson was quoted as saying that Israel would not be able to survive as a democracy: “So Israel won’t be a democratic state,” he added. “So what?”
Last March in Las Vegas Adelson organized his own private Republican primary. Politico wrote at the time: “Adelson summoned [Jeb] Bush and Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin to Las Vegas. … The new big-money political landscape — in which a handful of donors can dramatically alter a campaign with just a check or two.” When Christie, in his speech before Adelson, described the West Bank as “occupied territories,” some Republican Jews in the audience were appalled. So, Politico reported, Christie hastily arranged a meeting with Adelson to explain that he had misspoken and that he was a true friend of Israel. “The New Jersey governor apologized in a private meeting in the casino mogul’s Venetian office shortly afterward,” Politico reported. It said Adelson “accepted” Christie’s “explanation” and “quick apology.”
When money in politics gets this big, when it can make elected officials bow and scrape in two different countries at the same time, it is troubling. I’m sure Adelson cares deeply about Israel, but he lacks any sense of limits in how he exercises his extraordinary financial power — power he is using to simultaneously push Israel and America toward eliminating any two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, toward defunding the Palestinian Authority and toward a confrontation with Iran, not a diplomatic solution. People need to know this.
The most important bonds between Israel and America always emerged from the bottom up — a mutual respect between two democracy-loving peoples. Money can’t buy those bonds, but it can threaten them by going to excess — by taking Israel’s true good will in America and using it to help one party “stick it” to the president, one big donor drive his extreme agenda, one party appear more pro-Israel than the other for electoral reasons or one Israeli politician win re-election. People who go “all the way” like this will one day go over a cliff. They will regret it. So will the rest of us.
The Amazing Democrats 