GOP candidate who blamed tornadoes on same-sex marriage stymies party leaders

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GOP candidate who blamed tornadoes on same-sex marriage stymies party leaders

Jeff Bell, Dark Horse Candidate in New Jersey

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Jeff Bell, Dark Horse Candidate in New Jersey

Oprah Winfrey Backs House Candidate in Va.

Oprah Winfrey will bring her considerable political clout to Virginia next month when she headlines a campaign fundraiser for Lavern Chatman, a Democratic candidate in the state’s 8th Congressional District.

“Oprah is a good friend and we both share a passion for empowering women and girls for leadership,” Chatman said in a statement posted on her website. The event will take place April 5 in Arlington.

The former president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Urban League has worked with a number of community- and faith-based social service organizations. She is one of nearly a dozen candidates running for the seat of retiring Rep. James P. Moran Jr.

Former Lt. Gov. Don Beyer is considered the favorite for the nomination, given his recognition and high-profile governmental experience. But Winfrey’s endorsement could well boost Chatman’s chances in the district composed of affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs. The TV talk show host’s very public backing of Barack Obama — her first-ever endorsement — was considered instrumental in the freshman senator’s upset win over  Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and his eventual nomination. Appearing in Des Moines during a December 2007 campaign appearance, Winfrey famously declared her fellow Illinoisan “the one.”

According to economists Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore, the television pioneer’s support helped Obama win approximately 1 million additional votes during the Democratic primaries.

In July, Winfrey helped raise money for Cory Booker’s successful run for U.S. Senate in New Jersey.

Jose R. Gonzalez is an intern for RealClearPolitics.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Oprah Winfrey Backs House Candidate in Va.

70-Year-Old GOP Candidate In Texas Arrested For Assaulting Man With "RINO" Signs

A candidate for the Orange County, Texas GOP chairmanship was arrested on Tuesday for attacking a man who was putting up signs with “RINO” written on them, KDFM reported.

Jerry Wilson told KDFM that a long-time rival started pulling up his campaign signs near an early voting location and replaced them with ones that told people “not to vote for RINO Jerry.” The term “RINO” is short for Republican In Name Only.

“I’ve been in politics a long time,” Wilson told KFDM. “If your sign you’ve meticulously placed is pulled up and replaced by somebody else’s signs–I was so damn mad and he was sitting there. This feud has been going on long enough. I’m 70 years old. I try to be as good a part of my community as I can.”

Wilson was charged with assault and released from jail on a $ 1,000 bond, but he claimed that both men were throwing punches.

“I walked over to him and said ‘you’re pulling up my signs and destroying them.’ He said ‘what are you going to do about it?’ It was a fight. He was landing punches, too. I can tell you this-he will remember the day,” Wilson said about the brawl. “Whatever my punishment is, I’ll take it. If I had to do it over again I don’t think I’d change one thing. He deserved what he got.”

Wilson told KDFM that he will not withdraw from the race.

[H/t Raw Story]

Image via Shutterstock/Joe Belanger

All TPM News

70-Year-Old GOP Candidate In Texas Arrested For Assaulting Man With "RINO" Signs

Report: NYPD Top Cop Candidate Used Stop-and-Frisk in LA

Former Los Angeles Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton, who is now a leading candidate to head the New York City Police Department under newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio, expanded the use of “stop and frisk” while in California, a practice de Blasio has vowed to end in New York.

The New York Daily News reports that in 2002, the year Bratton began his tenure at the LAPD, police stopped 587,200 suspicious pedestrians and drivers.

Six years later, with Bratton in office, The Daily News said, the number climbed to 875,204, marking a hike of nearly 50 percent, according to a May 2009 report from the Harvard Kennedy School.

And while critics, including de Blasio, complain that under New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, blacks and other minorities are targeted under stop-and-frisk laws, minorities were also being stopped by Bratton’s police officers under the same laws in Los Angeles.

When stop and frisk was at its peak under Bratton in 2008, 23 percent of all the people police stopped were black, even though African-Americans only represented about 9 percent of the city’s population at that time. Meanwhile, non-Hispanic whites, or about 30 percent of all Los Angeles residents, were stopped 15 percent of the time, but Hispanics, who represented nearly half the city’s population, were stopped about half the time.

Meanwhile, in New York in 2008, when civil rights groups launched their class action lawsuit against the city over the stops, 53 percent of those being stopped were African-Americans, who made up a quarter of the city’s population. Another 32 percent of those stopped were Hispanic and 11 percent were white. However, whites made up about 44 percent of the city’s population, while Hispanics represented 28 percent.

But unlike in New York, more stops resulted in arrests in Los Angeles. According to the New York Civil Liberties union, only about 6 percent of the NYPD stops ended up in arrests. However, the Harvard study said in Los Angeles, 30 percent of the stops brought an arrest.

“The pattern (in L.A.) suggests that police officers stopped people for good reasons and were willing to have the district attorney scrutinize those reasons,” the study said.

Related Stories:

• Stop-and-Frisk Ruling ‘Deeply Flawed,’ NYC Tells Judges
  


• NYPD Police Commissioner: Stop-and-Frisk ‘Saving Lives’
  

© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Newsmax – America

Report: NYPD Top Cop Candidate Used Stop-and-Frisk in LA

Mississippi tea party candidate for U.S. Senate connected to secessionists and neo-Confederates

By David Ferguson
Wednesday, October 23, 2013 11:51 EDT

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Tea party candidate for U.S. Senate Chris McDaniel hopes to unseat current Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R) in the 2014 election. According to Mother Jones magazine, McDaniel addressed a neo-Confederate ball two months ago alongside speakers who called President Abraham Lincoln a “Marxist” and alleged that the “Birther” argument about the birthplace of President Barack Obama “hasn’t really been solved.”




In spite of the tea party’s historic unpopularity with the public at large, McDaniel is hoping to topple Cochran by attacking him as insufficiently loyal to the conservative cause and the values espoused by the tea party.




Cochran has received support from Washington think tank The Club for Growth and an endorsement from the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee headed by Republican Senator turned Heritage Foundation director Jim DeMint (SC). Mother Jones‘ Tim Murphy marveled that the tea party is embracing a man who has advocated for secession and who consorts with groups and individuals who still maintain that the Confederates should have won the U.S. Civil War.




In August, McDaniel spoke at the grand ball of the 2013 Heritage Conference in Laurel, MS., an event that capped off days of costumed revelry by Civil War re-enactors and pro-Confederates. Described as a “Southern Heritage Conference” for “politically incorrect folks,” an invitation to the event urged attendees to wear “Confederate uniforms and antebellum ball gowns or wee kilties.”




The event was sponsored by the Rosin Heels, Laurel’s chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group whose literature declares that secession is “a [truth] of natural law and human experience.” In September, the group’s newsletter direly warned that “we are living in the times that Jefferson Davis predicted would one day come.” Secession is inevitable, the organization said, comparing the Obama presidency to the ravages of post-Civil War Reconstruction, a persecution which “(o)ur people have had to put up with for the last FIFTEEN DECADES!!!”




Mother Jones contacted the Rosin Heels’ spokesperson George Jaynes, who is the editor of its monthly newsletter. Jaynes said that McDaniel spoke at the antebellum-style ball because the state senator is “just proud of his heritage and grateful for it, and that’s the reason we wanted him to come in and speak a couple of times. We’re mainly here to remember the Confederate soldier, our Confederates beliefs, our culture, our civilization. We’re here to remember their good names upheld them to tell the truth and to give the facts of the war whether it falls on our side or the other. We’re here to tell the truth — that’s what the SCV’s about and that’s the kind of speaker we bring in.”




Other speakers at the conference included Louisiana historian Al Benson, author of the book Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists. Benson posited in his work that Lincoln’s actions during the U.S. Civil War were heavily influenced by classical Marxist doctrine.




“Was Abraham Lincoln influenced by communism when the Union condemned the rights of Southern states to express their independence? It’s shocking to think so,” wrote Benson in Red Republicans. Benson calls himself a “true Copperhead,” a war-time nickname for Northerners who supported the Confederacy.




Another speaker at the conference was Ryan Walters, a University of Southern Mississippi graduate student who believed that Pres. Obama is readying tanks to invade Texas and that the “great controversy over Obama’s birth certificate” actually “hasn’t really been solved.”




Cochran — a more than 30-year Senate stalwart and solid Republican vote — earned the ire of tea partiers and other hard-right conservatives when he voted to reopen the federal government and raise the debt ceiling earlier this month, ending the 3-week shutdown of the federal government. In spite of the effort’s lack of success at getting the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — defunded, many on the right believe that establishment Republicans didn’t fight hard enough for the effort.




[image of Chris McDaniel via Chris McDaniel for U.S. Senate"s Facebook page]














The Raw StoryPost id = does not exist.



Mississippi tea party candidate for U.S. Senate connected to secessionists and neo-Confederates

Why is This Candidate for Virginia Governor Being Shut Out of Debate?

Most people continue to believe that there are only two parties in the United States, Democrats and Republicans. More and more, people are starting to question if they really aren’t, in many ways, the same party. In the race for governor in Virginia, the Democrats and Republicans are looking to shutout a third party candidate from their debate, even though he is polling at 12%.

The Democrat candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial race is Terry McAuliffe, and the Republican candidate is Ken Cuccinelli. However, there is a third candidate from the Libertarian Party, Robert Sarvis.

The debate is scheduled for Friday, the 25^th of October. However, Sarvis’ campaign has just found out that he will not be allowed to participate in the debate.

Why?

According to those running the debate, Sarvis did not meet the threshold to enter the debate. That threshold is 10%. In case you were wondering, yes, Sarvis is polling at 12% as I stated at the beginning. So why isn’t he being allowed in the debate?

It’s the Republicans and Democrats that are setting the rules. Both the McAuliffe and Cuccinelli campaigns want to take average polling data from the past three weeks via Real Clear Politics. They then discovered that Sarvis only averaged 9%. See how that works? Sounds vaguely similar to the shenanigans the RNC pulled last year to coronate Mitt Romney and disenfranchise Ron Paul. This means that neither of these men will be seriously challenged on their views and voters will be the real losers in the debate.

Before you take me on about that though, understand that this isn’t about taking votes from Cuccinelli, and it isn’t about stopping McAuliffe. Both candidates want Sarvis out of the race.

As Ben Swann points out, Democrats and Republicans think they own our elections. They don’t, but as long as people will sit back and allow them to run the show; that’s all they care about. The voter should have real choices, and they have a right to hear what each candidate will do for the state.

Freedom Outpost

Why is This Candidate for Virginia Governor Being Shut Out of Debate?

NYC Lesbian Candidate Struggles to Win Women"s Vote

At Cubbyhole, a popular New York lesbian bar, for every two revelers who praised City Council speaker Christine Quinn in her race to become the city’s first woman and first openly gay mayor, one complained about her style and political policies.

“Just because she’s a lesbian, it doesn’t mean I’ll vote for her,” said Veronica Gonzales, 32, who works for a non-profit organization. “She is not socially liberal enough, and she has this air about her like she is above it all – like she is above us.”

While fellow candidate Anthony Weiner’s extramarital sexual transgressions have dominated the headlines, a perplexing reality of the race for mayor of the nation’s largest city is Quinn’s failure to lock up the votes of women and gays, even though she herself is both.

Quinn is the only woman in the race, and the only openly gay candidate, yet she scored only 30 percent support from women in a survey by Quinnipiac University published on July 29. Polls do not break down voting preferences by sexual orientation.

The presumed front-runner of the six candidates vying to succeed Michael Bloomberg has failed to crack the 40 percent level of overall support, the percentage needed to win the Democratic primary on Sept. 10 and avoid a runoff between the top two finishers.

In a runoff with black candidate William Thompson, Quinn would lose 50 percent to 40 percent, the Quinnipiac poll found.

Despite its progressive reputation, New York City has elected few women to citywide office. The best known was Elizabeth Holtzman, who held the top financial post of comptroller from 1990 to 1993. The most recent was Betsy Gotbaum, public advocate until 2009, although Quinn as speaker of the city council is considered the most powerful official after the mayor.

VOTERS AMBIVALENT

In New York’s Greenwich Village, with its significant gay and lesbian population, support for Quinn was mixed.

Gonzales plans to vote for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who she said is “more straightforward about his agenda.”

The ambivalence has contributed to a sense that Quinn is unable to close out the race, and one of the other candidates could overtake her, even as support wanes for Weiner.

“Right now, all signs point to a runoff, and with voters not connecting with anyone in particular, it’s going to be a fluid race,” said Lee Miringoff of the Marist poll. “It is very important for Quinn to sharpen her message so that she starts to get into a better shape to do better down the road.”

Voters critical of Quinn most often mention her style, which some view as brash and calculating. Quinn’s backing of a temporary change in the city’s term-limits law, which allowed Bloomberg and other lawmakers to run for a third term, has also been used against her.

De Blasio has positioned himself as a liberal alternative to Quinn on issues such as funding for universal pre-kindergarten programs and preventing hospital closings.

“She needs to do better in the long run with women voters,” Miringoff said. “If she is going to be successful she needs to create a greater appeal among women voters. And to do that, she needs to put her campaign in an historical context.”

In recent weeks, Quinn, long an outspoken proponent of gay marriage, has sought to portray her candidacy as an historic opportunity for New York women.

This week, the Quinn campaign rolled out endorsements from the National Organization of Women and feminist political activist Gloria Steinem.

At the annual Gay Pride parade in Greenwich Village, Quinn marched alongside Edie Windsor, the New Yorker whose U.S. Supreme Court case paved the way for gay couples to receive federal benefits this year, leading more than 1,000 backers.

Quinn’s campaign said it planned targeted advertisements on Facebook asking women to “Make history with Chris Quinn,” and targeting women voters through house parties and phone banks.

Mike Morey, Quinn’s spokesman, noted that she had fought to save education jobs, keep firehouses open and expand access to pre-kindergarten during difficult fiscal times.

“She will continue making the case through Election Day that she is the only candidate who has a real record of results delivering for the middle class,” Morey said.

Back at the Cubbyhole, as a performer clad in black leather shorts and a red wig danced in the background, Jaimie Ho, 35, a structural engineer, said she was not sold on Quinn.

Ho remembered seeing Quinn at the pride parade: “She didn’t seem accessible. She had a ton of body guards around her.”

“I like her background. I like the work she has done in the City Council,” continued Ho. “But I ask myself: Is it fair to vote for her simply because she is gay? There needs to be more substance.”

© 2013 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.

Newsmax – Politics

NYC Lesbian Candidate Struggles to Win Women"s Vote