2006

Kirk’s Thugishness

He’s such a nice moderate boy. Not.

Then, in August, Schrayer, who was recently named chairman of the Tel Aviv University American Council, became aware that Caryn Garber, a Kirk staffer, had e-mailed Sam Witkin, president of the council, asking him to contact Itamar Rabinovich, the university’s president, to request that he call Schrayer “and tell him that his actions can have a very bad effect on the University.”

Your new Chicago TAU ‘chief’ … is working overtime to defeat Mark Kirk. The community is not pleased with his out front actions,” Garber wrote. The e-mail continued: “We understand that Schrayer hates Bush … that has NOTHING to do with Mark Steven Kirk. Revenge is a dish best served cold. I know that you and Itamar would not want TAU to be sullied by (Schrayer’s) out of control actions. .. believe me, HE is the talk of the Federation leadership and NOT the kind of talk you’d like.”

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A story in the Chicago Sun-Times reported the e-mail and included a statement by Kirk, who said that Garber’s letter “does not reflect my view. When I heard about it, I was upset.” He told the Sun-Times that he reprimanded Garber and told her she would be fired if it happened again.

That response was not good enough for Schrayer, who said he wrote Kirk originally in August, as soon as he found out about the e-mail. Kirk replied and asked for a copy of the letter, which Schrayer sent him, he said.

“Since then I have written him five e- mails, which he has ignored, asking him what he was doing” about Garber, Schrayer said. “Now I found out he said if she did it again, he would fire her. I just don’t understand why if somebody committed a crime like that, why they would wait until the next time to fire her.

“I think it’s terrible-a sham. We should be encouraging people to vote for whoever is their best candidate. We shouldn’t be trying to intimidate people as to how they vote,” he said.

When the thugishness goes to the offices of the supposed voices of reason, it’s time for a change.

Had enough?

Back Off Darin

Apparently the geniuses over at the Green Party campaign want to attack Jack Darin and the Sierra Club for endorsing Blagojevich. In their words:

Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate for Illinois Governor, and Julie Samuels, the Green Party candidate for Lt. Governor, today responded to an open letter, written by Illinois Sierra Club Director Jack Darin, in which Darin praises and urges voters to support the same candidate that recently appointed Darin to serve on two taskforces, both designed to “assist in implementation” of that candidate’s very own energy plan.

The Governor’s office issued a press release on September 8, 2006, indicating that Darin had been appointed by the Governor for membership in the “Coal Gasification & Carbon Sequestration Working Group” and the “Clean Car and Energy Efficiency Working Group” along with representatives of organizations including the Office of Coal Development, ConocoPhillips, Eastman Chemical, Ford Motor Company, Z Frank Chevrolet, and various others.

So essentially because Jack and the Sierra Club are actually showing up to meetings that have the chance to actually improve things, they have a conflict of interest. These aren’t paid positions, these are positions on an adisory council. The implication of conflict of interest clearly suggests differently and it’s a load of crap.

The biggest failure of the Blagojevich administration if one reads the Illinois Environmental Council’s Midterm Report on him is the funding of programs and given it covered his first two years, even I’d give him a break on this. That said, he still hasn’t delivered adequate funding. Looking at his record, however, I’d say I completely understand the endorsement. He has a strong record on regulations and alternative energy comparatively and probably is the strongest Governor environmentally Illinois has had.

Compare that to this quote:

“That’s the old stereotype: tree-hugging, spotted-owl-loving Green Party. It doesn’t apply. We’re not that easy to pigeonhole,” Whitney told me in a lengthy and cordial phone interview.

As I’ve pointed out before, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Spotted Owl understand that it’s importance isn’t that of one species, but being an indicator species that tells you how well the ecosystem is surviving. So to make fun of that being a big issue is a big slap in the face to environmentalists. It’s something that should be relatively well understood by hunters as well so it’s not a hard point to get across–if you want game left in an area, the indicator species needs to be thriving.

When we read the Whitney web site, light pollution gets greater coverage than feedlots or preserving ecosystems in parks. That’s telling. It’s also telling that they’d attack Jack for participating in a process to actually do something about environmental problems instead of just taking his ball and going home.

About that VFW Endorsement

From the Spring VFW PAC publication (you can also find the October dated endorsement list):

When it comes to endorsements, the VFW-PAC Director, SalvatoreCapirchio, says “words aren’t enough.”

According to Capirchio, the VFW-PAC is exploring a number of changes to the 2006 endorsement
process—designed to take a more hard-line approach on which candidates to select.

“It’s not enough to say you plan to vote favorably for veterans—you must have a proven track record of being a strong ally,” continues Capirchio.

“We must know candidates’ in-depth perspectives on important issues.

Wehope to send ever eligible candidate a detailed questionnaire to probe the key issues. If they don’t respond to our questions, there should be no chance for an endorsement. A VFW-PAC endorsement speaks volumes about a candidate, and for that distinction, we will accept nothing but our strongest advocates.”

Capirchio says they are also discussing other changes, including changing the Endorsement Policy
so VFW-PAC can support challengers (as well as incumbents).

“The goal is to allow VFW- PAC to evolve with the changing dynamics of political landscape,” he
explains. “These issues will be explored further at our board meeting in March.”

Huh, sending out questionnaires to all eligible candidates? Seems like a strange standard given the Roskam campaign tried to sell it as being something they sought out and that’s how it occurs. Oops.

Another strange thing:

From the Sacramento Bee on September 10th:

Endorsements by the VFW PAC, however, are made on the basis of answers to questionnaires. Capirchio said the PAC is trying to broaden its coverage of veterans issues and this year sent a more elaborate series of questions to members.

Because Doolittle did not reach the threshold on the questionnaire, he was dropped from the endorsement list.

While Capirchio said the VFW is trying to expand its endorsements to include worthy challengers, this year its questionnaire didn’t make it out to all challengers. He said he doubted that Brown would have gotten one.

As a consequence, there is no VFW PAC endorsement in the race.

Roskam’s camp claims they didn’t know about the endorsement until November 1st yet the endorsement list is from October and other candidates started their announcments in early/mid-October.

The letter to Hulsoff in the above link is actually dated October 4th. It’s possible that the letters were staggered, but most places do their endorsements at meetings at one time so this is, let’s say odd. In fact, the 2004 endorsements made it into the VFW Magazine for October. On top of that, Bernie Sanders has been touting his endorsement since at least mid-October so something isn’t adding up here from the Roskam camp response that Rich Miller has up.

The Prediction Post

Going race-by-race in the House gets me more switches than going with an overall model, but here are my predictions for US House, US Senate, and Governors. I also add in my Illinois predictions.

For the House, IA-2, IL-10, and CO-5 are the longer shots, but almost all the other are what happens with a 2-1 split on undecideds to the challenger. If I had to do an estimate based on a generic number I’d probably put the pick-up between 30-35 so going race by race I end up with more. The wave seems to be uneven so I’m betting Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, Colorado, and Ohio will have the races playing off of each other. We then have some spectacularly badly run races (Hayworth) and some scandals such as in California. Otherwise, just a little nudge in places where incumbents haven’t been tending to the District well and they’ll get blindsided.

The thing about waves is that they don’t take out the most entrenched, they take out those who aren’t paying attention and are in swing or leaning seats. Nearly all of the above except the Nebraska seats fit those categories. There’s something in the water in Nebraska this year.

In the Senate, the only long shots are Pedersen and Lamont. Obviously some of these races are not definitive, but with the national winds, the ties should go to the Dems.

For Governor, I think mine are all the conventional wisdom except Alaska and Nevada. Nevada has the scandal going on and somehow Knowles has some weird mojo that’s made him competitive.

Illinois. I still don’t get why Hynes doesn’t have the biggest margin–then again, the guy just had twins and has hardly campaigned and is headed to a 2-1 margin. Rutherford has laid a big egg during this race. He’s barely, if at all, raised his profile which was the entire point. Stu Who? did even worse.

The other three races, well, those are predictions, not wishes.

The Illinois Senate isn’t one I’d bet my life on, but looking at the races that are competitive and the national wave interacting with local dynamics, the Dems should have some pickups.

The House–everyone’ll think I’m crazy, but despite playing almost all defense, the national wave and Congressional races will pick up three races is my guess. I have pretty low confidence in that one.

* Indicates a pickup.

House District ArchPundit Senate ArchPundit Governor ArchPundit
AZ-01 Renzi AZ Pedersen* AK Knowles*
AZ-05 Mitchell* CA Feinstein AL Riley
AZ-08 Giffords* CT Lamont AR Beebe*
CA-04
Brown*
DE Carper AZ Napolitano
CA-11 McNerney* FL Nelson CA Schwarzenegger
CA-50 Busby*
HI Akaka CO Ritter*
CO-04 Paccione* MA Kennedy CT Rell
CO-05 Fawcett*
MD Cardin FL Crist
CO-07 Perlmutter* ME Snowe GA Perdue
CT-02 Courtney* MI Stabenow IA Culver
CT-04 Farrell* MN Klobuchar ID Brady*
CT-05 Murphy* MO McCaskill* IL Blagojevich
FL-09 Bilirakis MT Tester* KS Sebelius
FL-13 Jennings* NE Nelson MA Patrick*
FL-16 Mahoney* NJ Menendez MD O’Malley*
FL-22 Klein* NM Bingaman ME Baldacci
GA-08 Marshall NV Ensign MI Granholm
GA-12 Barrow NY Clinton MN Hatch*
ID-01 Grant* OH Brown* NE Heineman
IL-06 Duckworth* PA Casey* NH Lynch
IL-08 Bean RI Whitehouse* NM Richardson
IL-10 Seals* TN Corker NV Titus*
IL-11 Weller TX Hutchison NY Spitzer*
IL-17 Hare UT Hatch OH Strickland*
IN-02 Donnelly* VA Webb* OK Henry
IN-08 Ellsworth* VT Sanders OR Kulongoski
IN-09 Hill* WA Cantwell PA Rendell
IA-01 Braley* WI Kohl RI Carcieri
IA-02 Loebsack* WV Byrd SC Sanford
IA-03 Boswell WY Thomas TN Bredesen
KS-02 Boyda*
+7 52-48 TX Gov Goodhair
KY-03 Yarmuth8 VT Douglas
KY-04 Lucas* WI Doyle
MN-01 Walz* WY Freudenthal
MN-06 Wetterling* +10
 32-18
NE-02 Moul*
NE-03 Kleeb*
NV-03 Porter
NH-02 Hodes* IL Races
NM-01 Madrid* Madigan 70-28-2
NY-19 Hall* White 68-30-2
NY-20 Gillibrand* Hynes 67-31-2
NY-24 Arcuri* Giannoulis 50-44-6
NY-25 Maffei* Blagojevich 48-40-10-2 Other Nieuked – Stufflebeam
NY-26 Davis* Stroger 55-45
NY-29 Massa*
IL
SEN
+3 D 34-24-1
NC-11 Shuler* IL
House
+3 D 68-50
OH-01 Cranley*
OH-02 Wulsin*
OH-12 Shamansky*
OH-15 Kilroy*
OH-18 Space*
PA-06 Murphy*
PA-07 Sestak*
PA-08 Murphy*
PA-10 Carney*
TX-22 Lampson*
TX-23 No Runoff
VA-02 Kellam*
WA-08 Burner*
WI-08 Kagen*
WY-AL Trauner* +51 254-181