Last Thursday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn and Congressmen Keith Ellison and Jim Himes delighted a new group of students and interns from across DC in the latest installment of 21st Century Democrats' Youth Leadership Speaker Series!
I've been exploring the League of Conservation Voters and how it makes endorsements. One of the consistent criticisms is that single issue endorse Republican moderates when these people take votes to put Republican extremists in leadership positions. This criticism disputes how these single issue groups create checklists as prioritizing the wrong values; for instance, Alito and Roberts are not on the LCV scorecard, and they should be since their judgments affect the environment in very significant ways.
Still, I wanted to look at something slightly different, which is whether according to their own criteria the League of Conservation voters is fair to Democrats. The LCV scorecard is the major scorecard for the environmental movement, this is their measure of how friendly to the environment a candidate is, a selection of key votes that set goals for the large and sprawling set of green groups. So one would expect them to treat all candidates the same and judge them strictly according to votes (with some wiggle room based on the type of district). If you are a Democrat and the LCV endorses a Republican, too bad, the Republican is good on the environment and LCV looks at politicians without fear, favor, or partisanship. We wanted to test whether that's actually how LCV operates.
Here's how we went about understanding the real criteria for the LCV. Adam Terando compiled LCV scores for all endorsed Republican and Democratic candidates. I excluded all but the endorsed incumbents in general elections, so that there's an apples to apples comparison. We then compared scorecards of the Democrats and the Republicans.
Basically, what the data suggests is that LCV has two sets of standards, one for Democrats, who have to meet a certain bar for support, and one for Republicans, who have to meet a lower bar for support.
Democratic Mean LCV lifetime score: 88 Republican Mean LCV lifetime score: 66
+22 advantage for Republicans
Republican Mean 2008 score: 68 Democratic Mean 2008 score: 85
+17 advantage for Republicans
Republican Mean 2007 score: 81 Democratic Mean 2007 score: 93
One of my consistent themes on OpenLeft has been the tendency of progressive advocacy groups to help Republican candidates or conservative Democratic candidates when there's an alternative in the race. There are many reasons why they do this, and today it happened again. Kate Sheppard has a piece on the League of Conservation voters endorsing Republican Susan Collins. LCV is the most important environmental group when it comes to politics; it is actually the 'political arm' of the environmental movement, set up as a collaborative venture among all major green groups to go after bad votes on the environment.
It's curious then that LCV helps Republicans. The full list of LCV endorsements is here, and includes such odious figures as Chris Shays, who has a relatively low lifetime environmental score and is running against progressive Jim Himes, and Chris Smith, the near white supremacist running against progressive Josh Zeitz in NJ-03. There are many races where the non-involvement of the DC environmental community is a signal, such as WA-08, where the Sierra Club decided not to endorse, after endorsing Darcy in 2006.
I have a small research project going to look at their endorsement procedure with a bit more rigor. One interesting nit is that the group has made most of its endorsements over the past few months, but only released its scorecard for 2008 today (as opposed to a rolling scorecard). Another nit is the vote choices in the scorecard (the 2005 version leaves out the Alito and Roberts cloture votes), but I'm not really going to go there.
If you have an hour or so and want to help out with a bit of relatively easy research, drop me an email at stoller at gmail.com or leave a note in the comments.
... Thanks Adam Terando for grabbing the ball and running with it. If you want to help out, email me.
My notes and commentary from two debates in Connecticut's 4th Congressional District on Tuesday, October 14th.
I grew up in the 4th CD, but moved away in 1994 - I spent a few days in town for a family reunion and did some volunteering for the Coordinated campaign. On Tuesday I attended the first and second of the Himes vs Shays debates, I'm told there are 7 in total scheduled.
See my notes after the flip, transcribed and edited in flight from CT to FL last night. Sequence of events in the debates is not linear.
Cross posted on DailyKos - I am not affiliated with any candidate or campaign
In the last couple days, there have been several posts across the blogosphere citing what various candidates running for Congress have said on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms. But so far, it's been all over the map. I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.
First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill. They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.
Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.
As DavidNYC noted in his Orange-to-Blue endorsement post of Jim Himes yesterday, Chris Shays has a history of pretending to be a "moderate" while voting again and again for Bush's policies.
This morning, Shays joined many in both parties in Congress by standing with Bush again on the FISA "compromise".
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., today introduced a bill which would provide four consecutive years of funding to strengthen existing programs already underway to foster reconciliation among Iraq's societal factions...
Shays said H.R. 5925, based on a recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, would allocate $20 million annually for four years to the USIP, which since 2004 has been working to prevent sectarian violence at the local level; develop leaders in schools, universities, government, and civil society; promote the rule of law; engage women in public life; and increase regional stability.
So is this post-partisanship? It's a good and necessary bill, but Lynn Woolsey is helping Chris Shays retain his Republican seat where he is free to vote against real progress in Iraq. Is this what you mean by post-partisanship? Let's cosponsor a bill and keep a seat in the hands of a Republican instead of a progressive Democrat like Jim Himes? There is no way this bill is passing until at least 2009, when Himes could be in office.
Since we've been discussing whether to ban or simply regulate private military contractors, it's worth pointing out that Blackwater actually has a PAC called the Professional Services Council. This is a political incentive for increased use of mercenaries in hot zones and disaster areas by the US government. Of course, there's no reason these skilled workers couldn't be hired by other governments or even wealthy interests, which is why the use of armed military contractors is generally a very bad idea. The Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq defunds Blackwater in Iraq for precisely this reason.
One of the key allies of Blackwater is so-called moderate Republican Chris Shays, who is facing a stiff challenge from Democrat Jim Himes in Connecticut. Shays has repeatedly praised Blackwater's CEO Eric Prince, saying in one committee hearing that the company was doing a 'perfect job'. Just one week early, on 9/26/07, Shays had received $1000 from the Professional Services Council PAC.
So far, the PAC is not particularly large, but it has the potential to grow into a real political malignancy. The country is slowly acclimatizing to the open use of private military contractors, an extraordinarily dangerous development for our republic, as even Barack Obama does not necessarily want to defund them. On the other side, there was tremendous organizing going on among rural conservatives in Portrero, California against Blackwater's possible new facility near the Mexican border, supplemented by the Courage Campaign's organizing of progressive activists around the country. Blackwater was prevented from opening their new facility, blocked by a major local zoning fight.
This kind of momentum against the privatization of the military is extremely useful, and I'm quote hopefuly that Himes will use Blackwater and its links to Shays as a political issue in his race, so that the public has the opportunity to weigh in on the use of private military contractors.
As New Hampshire Republicans - unsatisfied with their terribly flawed candidates - start to glumly trickle into their voting booths today, a few may recall having seen Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays barnstorming around their state for the past week in support of John McCain.
This sight must have been particularly jarring: the former member of the Peace Corps, proudly displaying a reminder of that episode of his past life, while fighting for a candidate who wants a permanent American troop presence of Iraq:
Up in the McCain headquarters on the third floor of an old mill building, Connecticut's 4th District Rep. Chris Shays is sitting among the troops in a suit and Peace Corps cap, making the same get-out-the-vote telephone calls as everybody else. McCain has been using the Republican congressman as a surrogate at the smaller events he can't reach. Shays takes on the role a bit in headquarters at the lunch break...
Shays tells the workers their candidate is a reformer who can't be intimidated. He's got two things going for him, Shays says. "One is his character. The other is what we all hunger for in this country: straight talk."
"He has more positions on Iraq than Mitt Romney has on abortion," says Soltz, a veteran of the Iraq and Kosovo wars. "You never know where he sits on Iraq. He can tell you what he wants, but he is lined up with George Bush on this war."
"He likes to brag about how many times he's been to Iraq," Soltz adds, "but he's never served, and he doesn't really know how the military works...."
Fighting for endless occupation of Iraq... while hearing a Peace Corps cap. That pretty much says it all:
(Ilustration by Danny Hellman for Fairfield County Weekly.)
'Tis the season to support Jim Himes, share a drink with you fellow Democrats, and show off your mad trivia skillz.
What: That's right. It's time for another end of quarter blograiser. You don't have to be a trivia whiz - just have a good sense of humor, an interest in history, politics, or current events, and a strong desire to work for better leadership in Washington by electing Jim Himes to Congress.
Our September event was attended by over 60 people and raised over $4500 for the the Himes campaign. Relive the magic at the official liveblog thread, including a play by play of the game and plenty of pictures.
Lieberman and Shays have aligned on many issues, most notably the Iraq War. Longtime Lieberman adviser Dan Gerstein said the two men have a "long-standing friendship and working relationship."
Lieberman's communications director, Marshall Wittmann, concurred, saying in a statement the Senator "enjoys a longtime personal friendship and strong working relationship with Congressman Shays."
Shays campaign manager Michael Sohn said the campaign was not thinking about endorsements yet, instead focusing on fundraising. But Sohn said the two men have been "good friends for a long time" and "politically, they have a lot of things in common."
And to top off their working relationship, Lieberman's office confirmed he recently moved back to Stamford, Conn. - into Shays' district.
"I know for Joe it's all about Joe," said former Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan. "But for [Lieberman] to stab Shays like that after all Shays did for him would be shocking even for Joe."
More important, perhaps, is the organization that a Lieberman endorsement would bring with it to either candidate in what many consider the most Republican district in the state. State Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo said Farrell could have won last time if New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former Republican turned Independent, did not come into the race last year.
"It's that he sent people in," she said. "It's my understanding that he sent people in to help Sen. Lieberman, but while they were here they helped Chris Shays."
Furthermore, many suspect Shays will have a much tougher campaign this cycle because his district remains the sole Democratic target in the state, there is an increasingly unpopular war and the presidential race will be at the top of the ticket. Swan predicted that Himes would win the race this time...
"I think if you look at the outcome, if the outcome of the election in the Senate race in the 4th district is any indication, then I would say it would benefit a Democrat running for Congress to have his endorsement," Wood said.
Wood said Lieberman's Senate campaign won in the 4th district, which has the highest number of unaffiliated and Republican voters in the state. It's also the lone remaining Republican Congressional seat in the state after voters chose not to re-elect his moderate Republican colleagues in 2006, former Reps. Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons.
"Based on the numbers, that Sen. Lieberman won the 4th district, it would be advantageous," Wood said. "Part of it was driven by the fact that Sen. Lieberman is from the 4th district, and a lot of his base resides there."
Lieberman's endorsement probably doesn't matter, though there is a slight chance that he will remind voters of how he betrayed them and pull people towards Himes should he endorse Shays. But it's amusing that he's playing the Hamlet role.
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