All Articles Tagged "elections"
Charges of Racism in Redistricting Debate
(American Statesman) — A group of plaintiffs made up largely of Latinos and African-Americans is accusing Texas Republican lawmakers of racial discrimination in their effort to secure GOP political power at a time when the state is experiencing significant growth among minorities. In a case set to begin today , lawyers for minority groups will argue that lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Legislature drew new district boundaries for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Texas House that would dilute the representation of Texas’ Latinos and African Americans, keeping the racial and ethnic groups’ often Democratic voices muted. ”They did it on the backs of the Latino community,” said Jose Garza, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. The Legislature must go through the process of redistricting — and redrawing boundaries for Congress, the state House, state Senate and State Board of Education — once every 10 years after the collection of census data. But historically, the redistricting cases always end up in court.
Gray Aide Voted in D.C., Lived in Md.
(Washington Post) — Andi Pringle, the new deputy chief of staff to D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, voted in the District’s primary election last year even though she had moved to Maryland. The voting irregularity was revealed Thursday by community activist Dorothy Brizill on the Web site dcwatch.com. Brizill is known as a government watchdog and is considered well-versed in election law. “Anyone who has been in the District for a long time is concerned about people voting from outside the city,” she said. “It came to have a name, as voting from Ward 9.” Brizill said that she routinely checks the voter registration of new government hires and that she was “somewhat shocked” to learn the information because Pringle and new chief of staff Chris Murphy wereannounced this week as a fresh start for the Gray administration.
Barack Obama: Black, White and Other
(New York Times) — The next time you see Barack Obama gliding into a White House press conference, take note of that jazzy walk. It is a dead ringer for the strut that was the bearing of choice among inner-city cool guys in the 1960s, when Barry Obama was still a tyke growing up in the exotic precincts of Hawaii and Indonesia. The Obama glide represents his embrace of a black aesthetic that was not his by circumstance of birth. It speaks on an intimate frequency to African-American men, who have been smiling in recognition and rating it for style ever since he stepped into the national spotlight. President Obama is acutely aware of how to deploy the physical self to excellent effect. If we looked back closely at 2008, we would no doubt notice him amping up the glide for black audiences and dialing it back elsewhere. Every campaign enlists its own meta-language. As Randall Kennedy reminds us in his provocative and richly insightful new book, “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency,” the Obama forces disseminated several messages intended to soothe the racially freighted fears of the white electorate.
Ward 8 Residents Split on Barry Re-election Bid
(Washington Informer) — Les Johnson of Historic Anacostia in Ward 8 is not sure that D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry should serve another term in the District’s legislature. ”When people ask me whether I support Mr. Barry for another term, I honestly do not know how to answer that question fairly,” Johnson, 43, said. “As a councilmember, he can only do so much because he is operating in the winds of the economy. He is dealing with issues that anybody in public office is dealing with.” Johnson feels that the ward needs to move forward and would look at Barry re-election to office in 2012 as “a step backward.” Pho Palmer of Congress Heights respectfully disagrees.
Ward 8 Residents Split on Barry Re-election Bid
(Washington Informer) — Les Johnson of Historic Anacostia in Ward 8 is not sure that D.C. Council member Marion Barry should serve another term in the District’s legislature. ”When people ask me whether I support Mr. Barry for another term, I honestly do not know how to answer that question fairly,” Johnson, 43, said. “As a council member, he can only do so much because he is operating in the winds of the economy. He is dealing with issues that anybody in public office is dealing with.” Johnson feels that the ward needs to move forward and would look at Barry re-election to office in 2012 as “a step backward.” Pho Palmer of Congress Heights respectfully disagrees. ”I think Barry deserves to be re-elected because he is doing a really good job and there is a lot of need in the community,” Palmer, 44, said. “Being a D.C. council member is a hard job and I would anyone who is challenging Barry, could you do a better job?” The differences of opinion on Barry by Johnson and Palmer is an example of an ongoing debate among the resident of Ward 8, the city’s most economically-challenged jurisdiction that is located exclusively east of the Anacostia River. On Tue., April 3, voters in Ward 8 will decide in the Democratic Party primary for D.C. Council member who will represent them until 2017.
GOP Redistricting Plan Would Tighten Grip on Congressional Delegation
(AJC) — Republicans, already holding a majority of the state’s congressional delegation, could strengthen their grip under proposed congressional maps released Monday as part of the redistricting process. For the first time in modern memory, Republicans would represent a portion of the city of Atlanta in the U.S. House with the placement of a piece of Buckhead in the 11th Congressional District, which is represented by Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Marietta. The maps also would leave Rep. John Barrow, one of the few remaining white Southern Democrats in the U.S. House, drawn out of his district. The plans released by Georgia’s Republican leadership in the General Assembly also would create a new congressional district that would lean toward the GOP. The release is the final major piece of the redistricting puzzle, the process following the U.S. census where lawmakers redraw the state’s congressional boundaries.
Jesse White: I’ll Run Again in 3 Years
(Chicago Tribune) — Secretary of State Jesse White made it clear a year ago that his 2010 race would be his last, but he announced Wednesday that he’s running for re-election again — in 2014, when he’ll be 80. The popular 77-year-old statewide official, first elected in 1998, will become the longest-serving secretary of state at the completion of his current, fourth term. White’s declaration at a breakfast sponsored by Democratic county chairmen was unusual for its timing on two counts: coming so soon after he ruled out a fifth term and years before the next campaign will start. The former paratrooper said he decided he still had a “mission” to improve his office.
Why Are The Rednecks in Congress Calling All The Shots?
Watching Capitol Hill these days is like watching a neo-modern remake of “Gangs of New York,” the rhetoric flying back and forth as forceful and as bloody as the make-shift, handmade daggers, knives and other kitchen utensils defining the nasty Irish immigrant gang fights during the Civil War. It’s not as bad in Congress as it was prior to the Civil War, but its ugly enough to cause some pause and nostalgia on the part of historians and careful students of the most devastating war in our country’s history.
That conflict was defined as much by geography as it was by party or ideology. Where you were from said a great bit about how you would vote or what stand you would take. What we’re not talking about and making sense of in the current breakdown of institutional sanity is the same thing: geography. A closer look at the reviled Tea Party Caucus – whom even red-faced geriatric and 2008 loser Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) lashed out at the other day – reveals what’s going on.
The uncomfortable fact is that the rednecks are calling all the shots. A quick examination of the 60 official Members of the Tea Party Congress clears that up: most from very rural and exurban states like Alabama, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Missouri, Kansas, etc. These are the folks currently setting the tone and direction of debate on a number of critical policy issues.
That’s odd considering they represent 11% of the entire U.S. Congress, including both House and Senate chambers. But, at this stage, they are running the show.
In Congress, some ran farms and ranches or unsuccessful small local businesses; others are very well-to-do and wealthy, and are in a position of proving to their less endowed constituents that, yes, they are down with “the people” (one reason behind constant references to old, dusty documents like the Constitution). Stuff can’t move unless some rural hickness representing a Congressional district of “guns and religion” – as then-Candidate Obama surmised – says it can. These are folks coming from states or locations where only 16 percent of the population resides – telling the other 84 percent of us, mostly from cities, what to do.
It’s not that they want default, or fewer social programs or a total collapse in basic functions of government services. It’s that they are from places where they don’t know exactly what that is. Where purchase of a shiny, new pick-up truck is considered a major symbol of upward mobility and dial-up Internet is still a norm in some parts. There are fewer government services – which is odd considering these are populations that need it most – leading to a perspective and culture that ridicules and resents those who do have that “luxury.” We need not get into the wretched racial details and segregationist history which is popularly cited.
Not to say these folks are backwards. Simply put, they just don’t know. And, the attitude is that if they can manage surviving with less then so can the rest of us.
The other 84 percent of the U.S. population which is centered in and around urban metropolitan areas is too pre-occupied with the latest digital tablet trends, plucking away at smartphones and getting into the newest club to even notice. That could explain why much of the Northeastern U.S. has lost much of its political clout. Clout, instead, appears to be shifting South and Southwest thanks to population shifts.
Charles D. Ellison is Chief Political Correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune, author of the critically-acclaimed urban political thriller TANTRUM and a nationally recognized, frequently featured expert on politics.
For Prince George’s, Redistricting Prompts Questions of Identity
(Washington Post) — Black, white, Democrat and Republican, residents of Prince George’s County on Monday delivered a single unifying message to the redistricting commission of Gov. Martin O’Malley (D): Keep a proud county whole. Don’t slice and dice Prince George’s reliably Democratic population to help elect congressmen from less blue parts of the state, residents said. And to reelect incumbents to Annapolis, don’t carve up natural communities and neighborhoods, limiting residents’ ability to have a representative who fully understands their needs. The sentiment drew applause repeatedly from the nearly 200 people who attended Monday night’s hearing at Prince George’s Community College, the first in Washington’s Maryland suburbs intended to help shape the redistricting plan that O’Malley must release this fall.
Gray Cash Donations Exceeded Legal Limit
(Washington Post) — D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s campaign accepted cash contributions above the city’s legal limit and in some cases recorded donations from people who say they didn’t contribute to his mayoral bid, according to a Washington Post review of District records and interviews. The Post found several instances of cash donations that exceeded the city’s $25 limit. Gray campaign workers then improperly exchanged that cash for money orders, which carry a higher donation limit. The campaign officially reported the money-order donations and not the cash, The Post found. Money-order donations totaled more than $56,000 — primarily from the city’s taxi industry — and are part of the $2.7 million war chest the Gray campaign amassed in last year’s defeat of incumbent Adrian M. Fenty, who spent nearly $5 million on his reelection bid.
