Lead a Super PAC, lose your friends
It’s not like the old days with his former colleagues at the White House and friends from the Barack Obama campaign anymore for Bill Burton.
The co-founder of the Priorities USA Action Super PAC, which is prevented by campaign finance rules from collaborating with the Obama campaign, told the Reuters Washington Summit he may spend his days raising money to get Obama re-elected, but he has very little contact with his old friends who are actually working in the administration or the re-election campaign.
Asked if he and White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer were limited to talking about sports if they get together for a beer, Burton just laughed.
“We keep our communications very much in line with the rules and regulations that are laid out,” he said.
But in a hint that it may be a bit more lonely now that he’s out of the White House, Burton added: “For a lot of my very close friends who work at the White House and on the campaign, I haven’t seen or talked to them in a long time.”
“It came with starting this group,” he said. “But there are rules in place and we make sure we adhere to them.”
As for the president, Burton hasn’t spoken to him since he left the White House in February, 2011.
This time, some Democrats are embracing “Obamacare”
Fierce opposition to President Barack Obama’s healthcare bill helped propel Republicans to big victories in the 2010 mid-term elections, when they won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.
But this year, at least some Democrats are embracing the healthcare plan – touting their support for its popular provisions and attacking Republicans for opposing measures that polls show big majorities of Americans supporting.
North Dakota’s former Democratic attorney general, Heidi Heitkamp, who is running for the Senate, responded to a wave of attack advertisements against her over the healthcare law by creating an emotional advertisement of her own relating her own recovery from breast cancer to her support for the law.
“Twelve years ago I beat breast cancer. When you live through that, political attack ads seem silly,” she said in the advertisement, in which she speaks directly to the camera, wearing a soft blue jacket over a simple white top.
“I would never vote to take away a senior’s healthcare or limit anyone’s care. There’s good and bad in the healthcare law and it needs to be fixed,” she continues in the short spot, in which she criticizes her Republican opponent for failing to support the law.
“Rick Berg voted to go back, to letting insurance companies deny coverage to kids or for pre-existing conditions. I approved this message because I don’t ever want to go back to those days,” Heitkamp said.
Obama letter brings Democratic donors out of the woodwork
A fundraising appeal from President Barack Obama on Monday netted Democratic Congressional candidates their biggest online fundraising day ever, New York Congressman Steve Israel said at the Reuters Washington Summit.
Obama made an email appeal asking supporters to donate $3 or more to help the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The appeal raised $580,000, said Israel, chairman of the DCCC, which helps recruit and raise money for candidates for the House of Representatives.
“Our base is animated, engaged, writing checks,” Israel said. “Our grassroots participation is absolutely off the charts.”
Obama’s brief email contained the suggestion that “if you’re with me, then I need you right now. We’re just days away from the mid-year fundraising deadline — this is the biggest test yet of our commitment to win in 2012. We can’t fall short on this one.”
Israel said small checks have been flowing into the committee’s coffers recently. “A few weeks ago a guy sent us his World War Two war bond,” he added.
Democrats need a net increase of 25 seats in the November election to take back control of the House of Representatives.
Israel said he is buoyed by recent surveys – from Reuters/Ipsos, Bloomberg and CNN – showing that voters prefer Democrats over Republicans on a generic Congressional ballot but that the expected flood of spending from deep-pocketed Super PACs backing Republicans “keeps me up at night.” The DCCC has tried to counter that onslaught by reserving blocks of TV advertising time in 60 districts where it expects Super PACs to be active.
Will the “War on Women” have legs in November?
Democrats should not hold back from the “war on women” in campaigning for the Nov. 6 election, Senator Jeanne Shaheen said, even if the economy will be on voters’ minds as they head to the polls.
“I’m old enough to remember the ’50s and before … contraceptives were widely available to people, what my mother and other women were dealing with,” the New Hampshire Democrat said on Tuesday at the Reuters Washington Summit. “I’m old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade, and I think access to reproductive health services for women is critical. And I don’t think women in this country are planning to go back.”
Polls generally show Democratic President Barack Obama with an advantage over Republican candidate Mitt Romney among women voters, but some recent surveys have shown Romney gaining ground. Democrats have sought to maintain their advantage by advertising what they call a Republican “war on women,” which casts the party as insensitive on issues such as equal pay for women, healthcare, protection against domestic abuse and access to contraception.
Shaheen said the issue would be on voters’ minds in November if they were reminded about it and that they should be, after Romney skewed to the right while battling for the nomination against socially conservative Republican opponents.
“It depends on how those issues are talked about and to what extent people are reminded about where the candidates stand, and the fact that … when [Romney] was asked about those issues during the presidential primary process, he was where the right wing of where the Republican party was,” she said.
It will help in New Hampshire, she said. The New England state is small, offering only four electoral votes, but it is a battleground that swings between Democrats and Republicans in presidential elections and could make the difference in what is expected to be a close presidential contest. New Hampshire voters are generally fiscally conservative but libertarian on social issues.
And what marvelous things have the Democratic done to improve the disparity between income between the sexes?
It’s been just the opposite. The recent jobs report from the Labor Department had some alarming facts. The number of women employed in America declined last month as many dropped out of the work force, giving up on looking for work altogether. Of the 740,000 jobs lost since Obama took office, 683,000 of them were held by women. That is unsustainable.
I have heard nothing from the Democratic party except an all out assault that makes it sound as if the Republican party is at war with women. It’s bogus and an absolute fabrication to blame it on the Republicans. Of course, if you hear a lie often enough the public will believe it. I’d love to hear some hard facts if you have any.
President Obama’s desperate quest for re-election has led Democrats to embrace some very cynical and offensive tactics. One of them is perpetuating this myth of a “war on women.”
Claims of a Republican “War on Women” represent a new low for the Democratic Party, and it’s time for the insulting and disingenuous rhetoric to end.
For Portman, it all comes down to beer
Rob Portman is upset about the tax laws that make a real American beer hard to find.
The senator from Ohio, who is seen as a leading candidate to be Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick, spoke out at the Reuters Washington Summit against tax policy that puts American companies at a disadvantage.
“I’m a beer drinker and I’m particularly upset by the fact there is no big U.S. beer company any more,” said Portman, a former budget director who criticized the Obama administration for failing to overhaul corporate taxes in the United States.
“Sam Adams is now the largest U.S. beer company, with one percent market share. All the rest are foreign owned now and driven by tax policy.”
Portman called for a revamped tax system “so Budweiser can stay an American company.”
Photo credit: REUTERS/Nigel Roddis
Campaign 2012 goes a bit peanuts and crackerjack
Massachusetts may have a reputation as the bluest of Democratically blue states, but it is also resoundingly red — as in Red Sox nation. And President Barack Obama seemed to hit a nerve at a fundraiser in Boston on Monday night when he made a joke involving his favorite baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, at the expense of the suffering denizens of Fenway.
“Boston, I just want to say thank you for (Kevin) Youkilis,” Obama said at a fundraiser at Boston Symphony Hall, referring to the popular infielder, a fixture on two Boston World Series winning teams, who was traded from Boston to Chicago during the weekend.
The crowd, who had paid at least $250 per ticket, reacted to his comment with (friendly) boos.
But Obama continued: “I’m just saying. He’s going to have to change the color of his ‘sox,’” a comment greeted by more laughter and boos.
So Obama quickly backpedalled — perhaps like a first- or third-baseman (like Youkilis) chasing a popup — “I didn’t think I’d get any ‘boos’ out of here, but, I guess I shouldn’t have, I should not have brought up baseball. I understand. My mistake,” he said, to more boos.
“My mistake,” Obama said. “You’ve got to know your crowd.” That last comment was greeted by laughter, and a call of “We still love you,” from one audience member.
As things do during a heated campaign season, Obama’s comments quickly echoed throughout the world of social media, with a special resonance because Obama was speaking in the state where his Republican rival Mitt Romney was governor. A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee repeated Obama’s comment on Twitter and other Romney supporters accused Obama of mocking Bostonians when they were down.
Are Republicans also losing the Asian vote?
Republican struggles winning over Hispanic-American voters have been well documented this campaign season, but there is some concern about another fast-growing ethnic group – Asian Americans.
Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia, discussed the Republican Party’s difficulties connecting with Hispanic voters, but said it could change that. ”They are a group that is certainly gettable,” the moderate Republican said.
However, Davis said his party should also seek to win over Asian voters.
“More troubling for Republicans is the fact they’re not winning Asians. Asians are culturally much more like Republicans. They tend to be entrepreneurial, they tend to be very upwardly mobile groups and they ought to be winning those groups in spades,” Davis said at the Reuters Washington Summit.
He said Republican messaging was part of its problem. “The rhetoric plays across a lot of different lines. You want to be a welcoming party,” Davis said.
“I think sometimes we have elements who are more interested in purifying the party and that’s not the way you build coalitions. It might be a nice comfortable party, but you’ve turned the big tent into a pup tent,” he said.
Outside campaign groups can coordinate – with each other
Super PACs and other outside campaign organizations are barred from coordinating with the candidates they support or political parties, but there is nothing keeping a Super PAC from coordinating with another Super PAC, or several Super PACs. And indeed, some of them do.
Jonathan Collegio, director of public relations for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Karl Rove’s conservative Super PAC and non-profit, said outside groups on the right work together all the time.
“There’s a lot of coordination among outside groups on the right, all of which is allowed,” he said at the Reuters Washington Summit on Monday. “Starting in 2010, Crossroads started bringing together a lot of the organizations that were going to be spending a lot of money in the issue and election debate. The goal there was to maximize the efficiency of what everyone was doing.”
Although he would not list the groups, he said several have met to cooperate by sharing polling information and research, and also to minimize the risks that that the television advertisements they buy will compete with one another. ”Crossroads encouraged a number of the groups to share polling information, research and also to share the scheduling of their media buy information,” he said.
Media buying is an important aspect of an election season in which more than $1 billion is expected to be spent on television advertising. Collegio said he expected there might be so many ads in some areas that television stations will run out of airtime to sell.
“In some states they will,” he said.
Blunt says to keep an eye on Virginia
Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a Republican who is Mitt Romney’s point person in Congress, doesn’t think Ohio or Florida will be the main states to watch on election night. He will have his eyes on Virginia.
In an interview at the annual Reuters Washington Summit, Blunt was asked which state was the one to monitor in the run-up to the Nov. 6 election between President Barack Obama and Romney.
“Virginia,” he said. “If I was watching one state on election night, it would be a state I’d [watch].”
“I don’t think Romney has to carry Virginia, but if he carries Virginia he’s the president,” Blunt predicted.
Blunt said he thought Romney would beat Obama in Florida and Ohio – two swing states where Republicans and Democrats are campaigning heavily.
Then Blunt, who was careful to say at the beginning of the interview that he did not speak on behalf of the Romney campaign, waffled a bit so he didn’t sound too optimistic.
“I’m probably too close to that campaign to be much on the record on that topic,” he said. “I’ve probably already made a mistake here…They all three are critical.”
Romney changes style – not substance – on immigration
Mitt Romney took a dramatically softer tone on immigration in his speech to Latino officials on Thursday than his harsh rhetoric on this issue during the primary campaign, but the likely Republican presidential nominee’s remarks fell flat with immigration advocates, who want him to offer solid policy suggestions and are wary of his past tough line on the issue.
Romney tacked hard to the right on immigration during his nomination fight, as he sought to woo conservative Republican primary voters from rivals who took more moderate positions. During the primary campaign, Romney endorsed an Arizona state law giving the police expanded powers to stop anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, which many Latinos view as racial profiling. He also called for the “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants and promised to repeal the Dream Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for some young illegal immigrants brought into the country as children, if the measure were to pass Congress.
But the audience for the general election on Nov. 6 is more moderate on immigration than Republican primary voters. Romney also came under pressure to offer proposals on immigration when President Barack Obama announced a plan on Friday that will let hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people to avoid being shipped home.
“The political environment now requires that he say something sympathetic to immigrants. The political environment during the primaries required that he say something negative. Where he actually stands is still a mystery,” said Jennifer Gordon, a professor at Fordham University School of Law and expert on immigration law.
“Clearly, after Obama issued his order last week, it was on Romney to step up and say something,” she said.
Romney has not said whether he would overturn Obama’s policy.
