All Articles Tagged "campaigns"
D.C. Council Quiet on At-Large Race
(Washington Post) — D.C. Council member Sekou Biddle’s friends in the John A. Wilson Building have proved a key issue in Tuesday’s special election, helping fuel criticism from Biddle’s opponents in the race that he’s too connected to the political establishment. As controversy mounted this spring, Biddle was forced to try to distance himself from D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) and Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), both of whom were early supporters of the former school board member from Ward 4. But some of Biddle’s other-high profile endorsers on the council still seem as if they could be assets in trying to round up voters in an election that could be decided by a few hundred votes. In addition to Gray and Brown, Biddle is being supported by council members David A. Catania (I-At Large), Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), all of whom have proved they have effective political operations.
Uncertainty Surrounds At-Large Race
(Washington Informer) — Days before residents flock to the polls on April 26 to vote in the special election for the at-large council member seat, none of the nine hopefuls appear to have outshined the other. Sekou Biddle, 39, currently holds the seat, having assumed it in January after Kwame Brown took over as City Council chairman. Biddle, who has served on the D.C. State Board of Education, also taught for eight years. He is strong on academic issues and, in addition to the support of his predecessor and Mayor Vincent Gray, has the backing of several of his colleagues on the Council. Though Biddle has been an early favorite, his incumbency alone is not necessarily going to snare him a win. “I am focused on issues that are most important to District residents and they include education and employment. I bring a unique background in educational reform and I feel like my continued presence on the Council can really continue to move that issue forward,” Biddle said.
Biddle Can’t Escape Campaign Ties to Brown
(Washington Examiner) — At-large D.C. Councilman Sekou Biddle can’t escape the deep connections between his campaign and Council Chairman Kwame Brown and Brown’s family, despite Biddle’s best efforts to do so. Biddle landed his interim position on the D.C. Council in large part due to the behind-the-scenes efforts of Brown and Mayor Vincent Gray. They used their influence with the D.C. Democratic State Committee to get members to back Biddle’s bid for the seat left vacant by Brown when he became chairman. The two then endorsed Biddle’s campaign to retain the seat in the April 26 special election.
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Obama’s Reelection Bid Might Reach a Billion
(Christian Science Monitor) — Is anybody surprised that Barack Obama will run for reelection next year? Of course not. For months, Republican presidential hopefuls have been angling toward challenging him next year, and he’s the man to beat. And given how well organized his campaign was in 2008 (not to mention the wake-up his 2010 midterm shellacking provided), you can be sure the last run in his political life will be just as efficient and even better financed. The fact that Obama will make it official this week starts the clock ticking toward November 6, 2012 – a mere 583 days from now. As soon as Monday, he’s expected to file papers with the Federal Election Commission for a campaign operation now forming in Chicago. “Former West Wing staffer Jim Messina, Obama’s likely campaign manager, has been holding donor meetings around the country, and the president is scheduled to hold a series of fundraisers in New York and California over the next few weeks,” reports Politico.com. “The campaign is expected to raise $750 million to $1 billion.”
City Council Candidates Raised $1.6 Million Since Feb. 22 Election
(Chicago Tribune) — Candidates in Chicago’s 14 aldermanic run-off contests have reported raising $1.6 million in big-dollar contributions since the February election, including more than $200,000 from Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel’s New Chicago Committee, a review of campaign disclosure reports showed today. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform said Emanuel’s New Chicago Committee is the largest direct donor to candidates in the April 5 run-off contests with more than $215,000 in contributions spread among seven contenders, followed by the Service Employees’ International Union with nearly $170,000 in funding spread among eight candidates. The union coalition Unite Here gave four candidates a combined $83,000 and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees dropped more than $78,000 among six contenders, campaign reports showed.
City Council Candidates Raised $1.6 Million Since Feb. 22 Election
(Chicago Tribune) — Candidates in Chicago’s 14 aldermanic run-off contests have reported raising $1.6 million in big-dollar contributions since the February election, including more than $200,000 from Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel’s New Chicago Committee, a review of campaign disclosure reports showed today. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform said Emanuel’s New Chicago Committee is the largest direct donor to candidates in the April 5 run-off contests with more than $215,000 in contributions spread among seven contenders, followed by the Service Employees’ International Union with nearly $170,000 in funding spread among eight candidates. The union coalition Unite Here gave four candidates a combined $83,000 and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees dropped more than $78,000 among six contenders, campaign reports showed.
Haiti Awaits New President
(Christian Science Monitor) — Polling stations opened late due to lack of supplies. Voters’ names didn’t appear on registration rolls. In other cases, citizens were even unsure of where to vote. But for Haiti, Sunday’s election was deemed a success overall, as Haitians cast ballots in what could be their nation’s most important presidential elections. On top of handling billions of dollars in foreign aid, the new president will be tasked with leading the country through the reconstruction from last year’s earthquake that has left the capital covered in debris: Some 800,000 people live in tent camps in the capital, still displaced from the January 2010 earthquake that damaged or destroyed 188,383 homes and killed some 230,000 people. A cholera epidemic that began last fall continues to spread. Preliminary results are not expected until March 31 from the second-round election that pitted former First Lady Mirlande Manigat against flashy musician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly. Final results are scheduled to be confirmed April 16.
To a lesser degree, Sunday’s run-off vote was marked by many of the same problems as those voters experienced in a first round that culminated with 12 of 19 candidates asking for the vote to be annulled due to widespread fraud, although this time violence was avoided. “They want to choose for us, they don’t want us to vote, it’s a game,” says Jaybe Alias, who lives in Camp Corail, one of the only government-organized displacement camps. Thousands of people showed up to vote in the camp’s polling station, just north of Port-au-Prince, but election officials had just 40 names on voter rolls. None were his. “There are thousand of people here,” Mr. Alias says. “How come only 40 people can vote?” Stories similar to Alias’s were common.
House Opens Probe into Alleged Gray for Mayor Campaign Violations
(Washington Examiner) — A House committee has started a probe into charges by a former mayoral candidate that he was paid by members of the Gray for Mayor campaign so he could remain on the trail and attack then-mayor Adrian Fenty. The announcement by Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform comes just one day after D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray fired his chief of staff, Gerri Mason Hall, less than an hour before she was scheduled to answer questions by the D.C. Council about how Sulaimon Brown landed a city job paying $110,000 a year. Brown met with investigators from the California Republican’s committee last week. The probe is being started because the House committee feels Hall, and others, have not been responsive, Issa said in a statement.
Records Reveal Holes in Campaign-Finance Law
(New York Times) — The highly acclaimed state campaign-finance law that took effect seven weeks before the Feb. 22 mayoral election declares that no individual can give more than $5,000 to a candidate, and no company can donate more than $10,000. But the Puig family wanted to see Gery Chico elected mayor, and members found a simple and apparently legal way to get around the new restrictions. The Puigs, longtime masonry contractors, pooled $30,000 for Mr. Chico’s ultimately unsuccessful campaign in one day in early February, writing $5,000 checks in the names of six separately incorporated, family-owned businesses, state and city records show. A review of campaign-finance reports found that loopholes in the new regulations on political donations emerged almost immediately.
The campaign for mayor became the test case for how a “how a state that is reform-averse adapts to reform,” said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonprofit based in Chicago that helped draft the law. “It’s not like this is Vermont or Minnesota,” Ms. Canary added. The new law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, in the middle of the race to succeed MayorRichard M. Daley, capped donations in Illinois campaigns for the first time. But the mayoral campaign exposed some of the reform effort’s shortcomings. In the case of Mr. Chico and the Puigs, campaign-finance reports show that Mr. Chico, a former school board president, received $5,000 from each of four Puig-run businesses at a building on the Near North Side. A fifth $5,000 came from a Puig company that the Chico campaign listed at an address in Lincolnwood, though state records place the business in the same building as the other four companies, on West Willow Street. The sixth $5,000 donation on Feb. 3 came from a Puig company at another address on the Near North Side.
Rahm Emanuel Wins Chicago Mayor’s Race; Black Candidate Does Worse than Latinos
(Chicago Now) — So it’s Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel. I had hoped we’d see a runoff so voters could get a closer look at the top two candidates. But Chicagoans have voted. What I find most interesting is the turnout. What fascinates me is that both Latino candidates, Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle, garnered more votes than the African-American candidate Carol Moseley Braun.
Emanuel won with more than 317,000 votes. Chico had more than 138,000 and del Valle had more than 53,000 votes. But Moseley Braun came in fourth place with just over 50,000 votes. (This is with 98 percent of the precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press.)
