Democrats Hope For Big 2010 Election Wins In West: CA, NV, WV

Early Vote A Bad Omen For Harry Reid

Early-voting numbers out of Nevada’s two biggest counties could spell trouble for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his tough contest against Republican Sharron Angle.

In Reno’s Washoe County and Las Vegas’s Clark County, Republican turnout was disproportionately high over the first three voting days, according to local election officials. The two counties together make up 86 percent of the state’s voter population.

The sparsely populated counties outside Clark and Washoe, which have yet to report complete early-voting results, are strongly Republican.

Some 47 percent of early voters in the bellwether Washoe County so far have been Republicans, while 40 percent have been Democrats, according to the Washoe County Registrar. Nearly 11,000 people had voted in Washoe over the first three days of early voting, which began Saturday.

Voter registration in the county is evenly split, 39 percent to 39 percent. The disproportionate turnout is a concrete indication of the Republican enthusiasm that is expected to portend a nationwide GOP wave.

In Clark County, which is heavily Democratic, more Democrats than Republicans have voted, but Republicans are outperforming their share of the electorate.

Out of the nearly 47,000 votes cast in Clark County, 46 percent were Democrats, 39 percent Republicans, according to the Clark County Election Department. But while Democrats make up 46 percent of the county's registered voters, Republicans constitute just 33 percent.

Washoe County is home to Angle, a former Reno state legislator, whereas Reid's hometown of Searchlight is in Clark County.

Democrats disputed the notion that these numbers represented a boost for the GOP, noting that more Democrats than Republicans had gone to the polls overall in the two counties.

“Republicans have a small lead in terms of raw votes cast in Sharron Angle’s backyard and after a day in which Sarah Palin hosted a GOTV rally,” Reid spokesman Jon Summers said of the Washoe numbers. He added that focusing on Washoe “ignores that this is a statewide election.”

But the Democrats’ overall raw-vote advantage in Clark and Washoe is up against their likely deficit in the yet-uncounted rural counties and among independent voters, whom polls have shown heavily favoring Republicans this year.

"This makes for a pretty significant uphill battle for Democrats," Las Vegas-based Republican consultant Ryan Erwin said. "It's still early, but we're seeing that the enthusiasm gap is certainly real in Washoe County, especially when you factor in that Clark County Republicans are overperforming as well."

In the suburban Las Vegas-based 3rd Congressional District, where Democratic Rep. Dina Titus faces a challenge from Republican Joe Heck, the parties are nearly tied in early turnout despite Democrats' registration advantage. Early voters were 43 percent Democrats, 41 percent Republicans, while registration was 42 percent Democrats and 36 percent Republicans.

Reid's campaign sees its extensive get-out-the-vote infrastructure as crucial to the senator's prospects in a contest polls have shown to be deadlocked. Angle hopes the pro-GOP national climate and voters’ dislike for Reid will sweep her to the Senate.

Democrats said they are confident they are hitting their targets.

"The Democratic Party is feeling good about turnout," state party spokeswoman Phoebe Sweet said. "While we're taking no vote for granted, what we're seeing is on par with our expectations thus far."

Statewide, Democrats have an edge of about 60,000 registered voters more than Republicans, but that represents a decline from 2008, when their advantage was over 100,000.

The Democratic turnout machine that powered President Obama to a 12-percentage-point victory in Nevada was kept in place after the 2008 election to work for Reid's reelection this year. But early figures in the first few days of the 2008 voting strongly favored Democrats.

"Harry Reid has spent millions of dollars on the Nevada Democratic Party turnout machine, and it's really, really good," Erwin, the GOP consultant, said. "But with independents breaking heavily for Republicans, Democrats are going to have to overperform their registration advantage to win this year."

Nevada’s two-week early voting period, which tends to account for half or more of total election turnout, ends on Oct. 29.



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Sources: Politico, Zimbio, Youtube, Google Maps

Meg Whitman & Jerry Brown: Incumbents, "Whores" & Governor's Race

Did Final Meg Whitman-Jerry Brown Debate Change Anything?


The liveliest of three debates, yet still light on economic specifics. Meg Whitman still relies on script and is not concrete enough. Jerry Brown ahead on facts and particulars.

Those are a few of the assessments by political analysts after the final debate between California gubernatorial candidates Mr. Brown (D) and Ms. Whitman (R).

With three weeks until election day and Californians casting mail ballots now, this last matchup was seen as crucial to Whitman forging a comeback or to Brown cementing his fresh lead in Polls.

“Voters have a clear choice, but does Whitman come off as another Arnold [Schwarzenegger] who tried but ultimately fell short? And do voters see Brown a career pol who has done the job but is he 'old news and ancient history?' ”says Hal Dash of Cerrell & Associates, a Democratic strategy consulting firm. “Overall, Whitman and Brown had passion, a decent amount of specifics, but clearly both are struggling with a real economic recovery plan for California.”

Brokaw hits scandals head-on

Veteran moderator Tom Brokaw confronted the scandals hanging over each candidate’s head directly.

Brown apologized directly to Whitman and called a remark by a campaign aide caught on voice mail calling Whitman a “whore” "unfortunate." But he also bristled at Mr. Brokaw's suggestion that to women the word is as offensive as the "n-word" is to African Americans.

Whitman pounced, shaking her head and saying, "Women know exactly what's going on here," and called the word a "slur."

But Brokaw also put Whitman on the hot seat when he asked about her employing an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper for nine years. Brokaw asked Whitman how she intended to make good on her promise to hold businesses accountable for hiring undocumented workers when she couldn't do so herself.

She defended the hiring, saying it was through an employment agency and added that "this is one reason why we need a very good e-verify system" that will hold employers accountable.

A 'fresh approach' vs. a pragmatic veteran

Throughout the one-hour debate, Whitman tried to portray herself as the political outsider that would bring “a fresh approach, a different approach” to California’s entrenched problems and insisted Brown was a failed, lifelong politician. Brown kept touting himself as the pragmatic veteran with the experience to navigate the state’s intransigent budget process.

“I did eight budgets, I know how this is done,” said Brown.

When the debate turned to cutting state taxes, Brown turned to Whitman and asked: "Ms. Whitman, I'd like to ask you, how much money would you save" if investment and business startup taxes were cut, as she has proposed.

Whitman said: "I'm an investor, and investors will benefit from this, but so will job creators.

"My business is creating jobs, and yours is politics. You've been doing this for 40 years ... and you've been part of a war on jobs for 40 years," she said.

"If he goes to Sacramento, it will be the same old, same old," Whitman said at another point. "I've got a very detailed plan, and I think that's part of leadership."

Brown's comeback: "She doesn't have a plan. She said $14 billion in cuts, she doesn't say where; she says 40,000 layoffs, she doesn't say (where) ... and by the way, you've got to get the Legislature on board" or none of it will happen, he said.

Can Whitman close the gap?

On the factual level, “Brown won,” says Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento. She says Whitman petered out at the end and was “engaged but often not directly responsive to Brokaw’s questions … Brokaw fact-checked her twice.”

How will the debate effect Whitman's chances? “Depends how closely people were listening and how much they know,” says Ms. O’Connor.

After the first debate, several commentators noted that Whitman passed up the opportunity to go after Brown for judicial appointments. “This time, she hit the issue more than once,” says Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College.

However, he felt the studio audience was intrusive.

“The cheers and groans were an unnecessary theatrical touch and detracted from the substance of the debate," he says. "Fifty years ago, Nixon and Kennedy engaged in debates without any studio audience – a format better suited to a real exchange on the merits of policy.”


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Sources: Christian Science Monitor, CNN, NBC, Youtube, Google Maps

"Mama Grizzlies" Break Political Glass Ceiling: GOP's Secret Weapons

Sarah Palin The Pack Leader As "Mama Grizzlies" Roam US Political Landscape

It's cubbing season in the United States and all over the country mother grizzly bears are on the attack, tearing their foes limb from limb and gorging on the carcasses. It's a bloody business, American politics.

The concept of the "mama grizzlies" was first introduced into the political debate in 2008 by vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as one of her homely campaign trail mantras – alongside "hockey moms" and "First Dude".

Since May this year she has been using it nonstop. She seems almost ready to launch the Mama Grizzly party.

"Here in Alaska I always think of the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody's coming to attack their cubs," she said at one conservative rally.

"You thought pitbulls were tough, well you don't want to mess with the mama grizzlies."

When she first started projecting the metaphor, critics within both the Democratic and Republican parties ridiculed it as just another marketing gimmick to disguise Palin's lack of policy substance.

But the curious thing is, the more she deploys the expression the more it appears to be coming true.

Across the US a growing number of female politicians have indeed broken through the glass ceiling of local obscurity to become nationally recognised figures.

Many are on the right or members of the Tea Party eruption to which Palin has attached herself.

In part the phenomenon can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Palin used her star power to back mama grizzlies, helping them to come into existence.

Nikki Haley, the Republican nomination for governor in South Carolina; Carly Fiorina, the anti-abortion former Hewlett-Packard boss standing for the Senate in California; Sharron Angle taking on Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, in Nevada; and the volatile Christine O'Donnell in Delaware all bear the Palin mama grizzly stamp.



Having coined the expression, Palin helped make it real. But that only goes so far as an explanation. For Palin not only helped make the trend happen, she has also ridden on the back of it.

Recent polls suggest that more than half the followers of the Tea Parties are female.

Several of the most important Tea Party leaders, who have risen from nowhere to become significant names on the national stage, are women.

These include Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots and Amy Kremer who is chairman – her title – of the Tea Party Express.

Palin cleverly spotted that times were changing. Conservative American women are no longer satisfied with organising cake sales and potlucks.

They are starting to feel their own power, and they are in for the kill.


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Sources: CBS News, Guardian.co.uk, Huffington Post, Politico, Youtube, Google Maps