Hankster First Read: Colorado Open Records Act Goes to Senate

CORA [Colorado Open Records Act] black-out bill goes to senate (Center Post Dispatch) Despite concerns voiced by election activists, a Senate committee passed a bi-partisan bill last Wednesday that will black out Colorado elections, preventing reporters and concerned citizens from viewing voted ballots and election records during the two-month election cycle... Election integrity activists Marilyn Marks of Pitkin County, Harvie Branscomb of Eagle County, Joe Richey and Mary Eberle of Boulder County, Kathleen Curry of Gunnison County and others also testified against the bill.  


INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Make independent voting easier  and Independents don't want partisan candidates:  Independents speak out about the election process in letters to the editor, while American Prospect puts its head in the sand...
• Linda Killian, Independent Rock Star! Maine Festival of the Book: Read on! (By Bob Keyes, Press Herald) With Snowe's announcement, Cecil found herself with a hot topic and a timely talking point for the festival. On Saturday, former U.S. Rep. Tom Allen and Washington political insider Linda Killian will present a panel discussion, "Politics Today: Swing and Independent Voters, Party Divides and Ideological Convictions."

OPEN PRIMARIES
Keep open primaries in S.C. (Post and Courier - SC) The hard-core party faithful might approve of legislation to require party registration in primary elections, since eliminating open primaries could strenghten their influence over the outcome. But it would remove a moderating influence that South Carolina needs as it elects its leaders.


WFP AND ALL THINGS NEW YORK

• Working Families Party raises for Hakeem Jeffries against Towns, citing CAFTA and Issa (By Reid Pillifant, CAPITAL NEW YORK)
• Pension and redistricting dominate the Albany conversation (By STEPHON JOHNSON, Amsterdam News)
• Boro pols slam new district lines - Accuse Gov. Cuomo of retreating on promise to veto (by Anna Gustafson, Senior Editor, Queens Chronicle) Some good government groups, including Citizens Union and the League of Women Voters, have praised the constitutional amendment, though Citizens Union has emphasized it did not support the 2012 lines as drawn. "Given the long standing resistance to enacting redistricting reform, and the high stakes involved, we applaud them in finding common ground on an issue that is at the core of political power in Albany and results in the legislature giving up power in the drawing of lines," Citizens Union said in a prepared statement.
  

PARTY-ISM
Have "outside" interested PR men hijacked the Republican Party? Kevin Baker explores the outsourcing of the body and soul of the Repubs...

EDUCATION
Eva Moskowitz expands Success Charter Schools network into middle-class Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods.


INDEPENDENT CULTURE
Charles E. Rogers, Amsterdam News, sez: Trust me you, your family and friends don’t want to miss the Castillo Theater’s fantastic “Sally and Tom (The American Way).”
   Full disclosure: The Hankster is a very big BIG fan of the Castillo Theatre and I could not agree more with Charles Rogers -- trust us, you do NOT want to miss this show -- and the run has been extended, so you get another chance. Watch for new dates in April/May

Working Families Party Leader to Challenge Brooklyn Councilman Dilan?

NEW YORK

• From City Hall News (via email) John Duane, brother to State Sen. Tom Duane, is making moves towards running for the City Council seat held by Republican Dan Halloran, two sources say.
• WFP Honcho Mulling Dilan Challenge (By Chris Bragg, City Hall News) Larancuent has deep ties in progressive labor circles and among immigrant rights groups. He has run the 5,000-member, largely immigrant Laundry, Dry Cleaning and Allied Workers Joint Board for the past 11 years, has been a key player in the national labor movement, and helped devise the strategy for the WFP’s considerable successes in the 2009 election cycle.

Working Families Party Organizing Campaign in Support of Taxing Wealthy

OCCUPY WALL STREET
Pressure to Raise Taxes - Democrats, Labor Push Cuomo to Drop Opposition to New Levy on the Wealthy (By JACOB GERSHMAN, Wall Street Journal) Entering the ring is the labor-backed Working Families Party, an influential force in state politics that stood on the sidelines during budget season last spring. Its detente with Mr. Cuomo appears to have ended, as party officials say they're organizing a media and field campaign in support of taxes on the wealthy. "We're in this fight full-throttle because the times simply demand no less of us," said Dan Cantor, the party's executive director.

Working Families Party to Dismantle Campaign Consultant Firm

NEW YORK
Working Families Party Settles DFS Case (BY Celeste Katz, NY Daily News/ Daily Politics) “This is the death knell of DFS and a great day for our democracy because the Working Families Party will longer be able to so blatantly ignore our local campaign finance law,” Randy Mastro, the lawyer for the plaintiffs (who will collect $100,000, although he did the case pro bono) told our Erin Einhorn.

Here's the settlement document

Occupy Wall Street Hits a Stride

OCCUPY WALL STREET

• Tent Pressure (Gotham Gazette/ Wonkster) It is getting cold out there and the protesters at Occupy Wall Street are starting to notice. So, Bill Lipton of the Working Families Party sent out an e-mail to supporters this morning asking them to put pressure on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to allow tents  in Zuccotti Park.
• Occupational Therapy (By Lisa Fabrizio, American Spectator) However supportive he may be of their aims, Barack Obama and his messiah-like campaign of light did much to erase the memory of the left's propensity to participate in angry demonstrations against the American Way of Life and so attracted many independent voters to his side. But riding to the rescue like so many socialist cavalrymen come the largely unoccupied occupiers of Zuccotti Park, just in time to remind America what a nation where 99 percent of its population consisted of slackers and malcontents would look like. And if the Obama Administration makes the critical mistake of hitching their wagon to this group of losers, he will soon join their ranks.
• Poll: Election 2012 Shaping Up To Pit Doom Against Gloom (by Frank James, NPR) Seniors, who gave Romney an advantage in August, have begun to desert the Republican front-runner, who is now losing these voters by a 3-point margin. More dramatically, Romney was winning 52 percent of independent voters in August; he is now at 45 percent with this key bloc. His biggest drop has come among independent women—who swung for Romney by a 22-point margin in August. Obama is now winning independent women by 2 points.
• Occupy Politics (Democracy Corps, Carville-Greenberg) The biggest shift against the Republicans has come from independents, who are increasingly turned off by what they see and hear out of Washington.  According to exit polls, Republicans won independents last November by a 19-point margin.  Their advantage had narrowed to 17 points in August.  Strikingly, Republicans are now winning independents by just 7 points. Seniors have also pulled back from these Republicans in big numbers.  In last November’s exit polls, Republicans won seniors by a 21-point margin.  This advantage has completely disappeared, with the vote among seniors now basically even (45-46.)

Occupy Wall Street Grows

OCCUPY WALL STREET

• Wall Street Protests Have ‘Tea Party’ Potential, Professor Says (By Esmé E. Deprez, Washington Post) The coalition of thousands of anti- Wall Street protesters in New York and cities across the U.S. has the potential to grow into the “Tea Party of the Left,” said Brayden King, who’s written on social and political movements at Northwestern University.
• Anti-Wall Street Protests Grow in New York as Other Cities Join (By Esmé E. Deprez, Bloomberg Businessweek) “It’s very much evocative of Woodstock and all of the demonstrations against the Vietnam War and for civil rights,” said Richard Koral, 62, an attorney from Westchester County who joined hundreds of demonstrators yesterday in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.
• Occupy Wall Street Could be Disaster for Democrats (Abe Greenwald, Commentary magazine - "Since its inception in 1945, and increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970s…") With all these ill-suited messages and hypocritical messengers it’s easy to overlook the one timely half-truth among the Occupiers’ gripes: government and big business have grown entirely too close. I say half-truth because the protestors fail to understand that the road to change runs through Washington and not Wall Street.

Round-Up From Tuesday Special Elections in New York

NEW YORK

• Opinion: Special Elections Show the Waning Power of the Party (By Justin Krebs, WNYC/It's a Free Blog) The Democratic Party in New York City should feel like it's being challenged on all sides -- because it is. This isn't just about sinking poll numbers on a national level, though that doesn't help.  It's about transforming loyalties in local and state politics.
• Working Families Party and Green Party Both Set New Record for New York Legislative Nominees (Ballot Access News) Gonzalez’ showing is the best ever for a New York WFP nominee for the legislature.
• NY-9: Winners and Losers (By Alex Isenstadt, NBC-NY from Politico) LOSERS: Downstate Democrats – With New York losing two seats in reapportionment, Weiner’s vacant seat was a perfect target for elimination – a way for Democrats tasked with redrawing the state’s congressional map to protect long-serving incumbents. But with the seat now in GOP hands, the ripple effect is that a downstate Democratic incumbent could now be axed.
• GIANARIS BILLS STRENGTHEN VOTING PROCESS (John Toscano, Queens Gazette/I On Politics) •S 1972 allows for Election Day Voter Registration so new voters can register to vote up to Election Day itself.
• Mayor To Testify In Haggerty Trial? (John Toscano, Queens Gazette/I On Politics)
• Democrats vow to pursue Medicare message after N.Y. and Nevada losses (By Felicia Sonmez and Paul Kane, Washington Post/2chambers) The main problem, Burton said, is that too many Democrats are not taking the Republican field seriously given some of the positions candidates have staked out - on Social Security and Medicare, for example - that could turn off crucial independent voters.
• The Rise of Democratic Discontent - After this week's election defeats, unhappiness with the president is sure to build. (By KARL ROVE, Wall Street Journal) Mr. Obama's main political challenge between now and November 2012 is winning back independent voters. After voting for him by a 52-to-44 margin in 2008, only 41% approve of his job performance and only 34% approve of his handling of the economy in the latest Resurgent Republic Poll. On big issues, independents look a lot more like Republicans than Democrats.

235 Years Later, One Man (and Now Woman), One Vote Achieves Judicial Legitimacy in New York!

Congratulations to the minor party coalition Conservative Party, Working Families Party and the Taxpayers Party that brought the lawsuit that reviewed the double-count "glitch" --  it took a lawsuit to correct a computer glitch? Ahh, the world we live in!

NEW YORK

• State Heeds Minor Parties on Voting-Machine Complaint (By SAM ROBERTS, NY Times/City Room) Under a consent decree signed approved Thursday by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, the board agreed to reprogram voting machines before the 2012 general election to prevent people from voting more than once for the same candidate.
• Editorials - The Daily News endorses Jesus Gonzalez to represent Brooklyn's 54th District in the Assembly
• Forget Rome: Jesus Gonzalez Takes on Brooklyn (Village Voice) Gonzalez, meanwhile, has the Working Families Party line, which is working to reestablish its political potency ahead of the 2013 citywide cycle after a rough few years with nearly losing its ballot line amidst an investigation of its apparent collaboration with Data and Field Services, a nominally independent private company that seemed to only work for WFP picks and at remarkable discounts.
• Democrats now likely to lose Anthony Weiner's seat (By Alex Pareene, Salon/New York City) Siena college now has Turner at 50%, with Weprin at 44%. That's within the margin of error, but it's obviously a bad sign for Democrats.
• NY-9: A referendum on Obama? (By Jennifer Rubin,Washington Post/Right Turn) Whaa?
• Turner blows past Weprin, leads by 6 points in latest NY-9 Siena poll (by Colby Hamilton, WNYC/The Empire)

Two Party System is a Disgrace

TWO PARTY SYSTEM
Building the Perfect Political Party: Oregon's Working Families Party (Kyle Curtis, Blue Oregon) For many people, the two-party system behind our country’s political system is a disgrace and actually is an impediment to the democratic process.

NY: Can We Make Progress Over Partisanship?

NEW YORK

• Working Families Party Demands More Probes Into News Corp.'s "Criminal Activity" (BY ALEX KATZ, Daily News) "It's time for the political class in New York to stand up to these bullies," he added. "The New York Post, Col Allen, and Roger Ailes have set the agenda for our state for far too long. It's time to move on."
• UPDATE: Bloomberg gives $10,300 to Independent Democrat Conference members (WNYC/The Empire) “He’s been very supportive of us when we formed and what we stand for, and certainly what we’ve done this session,” Azzopardi said. “Above all else we [all] value progress over partisanship.”
• Cuomo Plays Both Sides In Political Duel (By HENRY STERN, Queens Tribune) The reform movement in New York State public affairs, which consists of traditional, well-regarded government organizations, joined by Mayor Ed Koch’s New York Uprising, has made independent redistricting a priority for 2011. So far the legislature has ignored their wishes, instead convening its own instrument for redistricting, called LATFOR, an acronym for Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment.