The progressive group Patriot Majority has started running an ad throughout Colorado invoking Schaffer's acquiescence to human rights abuses that occurred in the Mariana Islands--a U.S. territory. The ad is refreshingly strong, though the near-implication that Bob was somehow a proponent of forced abortions might be a bit hyperbolic.
Bob Schaffer came under heavy fire from two anti-abortion groups, Colorado Right to Life and American Right to Life Action, this past April after alegations that he brushed aside evidence of extensive human rights abuses (including forced abortions) taking place in sweatships in the Mariana Islands.
Schaffer has said he found largely satisfactory conditions for factory workers when he visited the islands on the 1999 trip paid for by the California-based Traditional Values Coalition. The organization, which bills itself as "the largest nondenominational, grassroots church lobby in America," often worked as the political arm of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose clients included garment manufacturers in the Marianas.
Factory workers were often smiling during his visit, Schaffer has said. And in a recent interview with The Denver Post, Schaffer said the guest-worker system in the islands — a territory of the United States — could serve as a "model" for immigration policy on the mainland.
[...]
Schaffer's appraisal of the Marianas Islands contrasts with a litany of government reports, investigations by human-rights groups and findings by journalists in the 1990s that portrayed near-slavery conditions where, in addition to forced abortion, allegations of child prostitution and the prohibition of religious activities were common.
I think that the ad presents a fairly salient message, and does an effective job of hitting Bob in a number of sensitive areas: both the general vulerability of the GOP on issues of the economy, as well as the GOP's gradually increasing alienation from the faith based community. My sense is that this controversy has fallen fom most Coloradan's political consciousness, and its about time they be reminded of it
I know its been a while since I last updated this blog, but I assure updates will come more regularly now that I have smoothed a few things out.
Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight just released a new projection for the Senate race here in Colorado. Including a number of recent polls, he finds that Udall has a fairly safe average lead of close to 6 percent. Nate's model has Udall winning in 81 percent of the scenarios, with a projected win margin of 5.9 percent.
This past Thursday Al Gore sent out an email to MoveOn.org members calling on their help funding the Senate races of a few important environmentally conscious candidates. He wrote,
Trust me, Barack can only succeed if we also elect more champions in the Senate to stand up to the incredibly powerful oil lobby. Those leaders are emerging—and three of them are in close Senate races. Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Mark Udall in Colorado, and Al Franken in Minnesota are all real, clean-energy heroes who need our help to win. And they're fighting against Republicans who have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the oil industry.
Of course, Republicans like nothing less than a nationally recognizable and popular environmental icon meddling in Senate races they are involved in. They prefer meddling be done on their own terms.
And so, Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams hammed it up, saying that, "It shows [Udall] is still held in high regard and absolutely trusted by the far, far left of the Democratic Party as epitomized by MoveOn.org and Al Gore."
Wadhams really needs to come to grips with the fact that this sort of Karl Rove-ian attempt to pigion-hole Udall as a "boulder liberal" isn't a particularly effective strategy in Colorado. In every press release Dick the Ham refers to Congressman Udall as "boulder liberal mark", since the first debate (though toned down in later debates) Schaffer consistently depricated Mark's constituency as all just boulder liberals. And yet, despite that and millions of dollars of targeted attack ads, for some reasons Schaffer's numbers just aren't getting any better. Stop condescending to us Coloradans Dick, we're smarter than that.
Meanwhile, Democrats need to stop shying from the word "left." Because lets face it, there is no natural political center, its just a contingency reflecting arbitrary media framing, a vague approximation of public opinion, and the strident voices of neocons repeating the word "liberal" like a montra.
What it comes down to is this. When 80% of Americans believe that global warming is happening, and 68% believe that the US government should take more action to curb it even if other world governments do not; when 94% of American believe that U.S. Oil Companies are a direct cause of the recent increase in energy prices, I think it is fair to say this: Al Gore, and MoveOn's environmentalism is centrism.
Memo to the GOP: in the parlance of yourtimes, perhaps our advocacy was Left; but in the parlance of our times, we are the norm--you are the radicals.
It looks like Democrat Mark Udall will be debating Republican Bob Schaffer this Sunday on Meet the Press. The debate will, of course, be moderated by Tom Brokaw.
On the one hand, I think this could be a very good opportunity for Mark to reach the Colorado public give that more people are likely to see this debate than they were to see the other debate aired on local news stations. Alas, I'm always a bit scared going into these debates. Schaffer has been trained in a particular school of Roveian politicking that I think is more foreign to Udall. Basically, Schaffer is hands down the better debater. I don't think that that means he's in the right (though certainly in the far "Right"), it just means that, for the interlocutor, cerebrally he usually comes out a bit on top. To Mark's credit, he certainly has been getting better.
That said, I think that seeing Bob covered in mud and oil, compared to the more dignified Udall might help reenforce a sense that Bob is just an artifact of the Bush years, thus cementing his second-place status in the polls.
Meetings this past week between business and union leaders on how to deal with an extensive battery of ballot initiatives appear to be yielding promising results.
As Salazar arrived at his office on 15th Street, he told the Rocky he expected a formal agreement "by next week." He declined to elaborate. "We're working on it," Salazar said. The latest offer that sources say is on the table: businesses would kick in about $5 million to help fight three measures unions are trying to defeat [...] In exchange, unions would pull four measures that businesses would otherwise have spent money fighting until Election Day on Nov. 4.
The measures in question include 3 anti-union amendments--they are 47, 49, and 54--as well as the 3 pro-union ballot initiatives 53, 55, and 56. This is an important development in what was shaping up to be a business/labor bloodbath in November no matter which way you cut it.
Just like with Ref C and D we have unions and business working together while there's a far fringe element in Jake Jabbs, the Coors family, and the Independence Institute who are hell-bent in remaking this state in their conservative self-image.
My bet is that if this deal goes through it will take much of the wind out of the sails of anti-union activists that have been pounding Udall for months on his traditionally pro-labor stances such as his support for the Employee Free Choice Act. This will likely help Udall come election day for a couple reasons.
1. On an ideological level, it will demonstrate that strong unions and strong business are not mutually exclusive phenomena, and that their issues can be worked out without the strong hand approach of the GOP, hopefully making it easier for some independents to warm up to Mark.
2. More importantly, ballot measures like these traditionally help get-out-the-vote of conservative activists. Their not being on the ballot might mean that anti-union activists otherwise ambivalent about the Republican candidate won't get to the polls. A similar phenomenon has been seen in other states with anti-choice initiatives on the ballot.
Side Note: it also means that the millions of dollars spent by republican 527s running anti-union ads were wasted, which just makes me feel sorta warm and fuzzy inside.
Good news for Colorado: Nate of FiveThirtyEight is projecting a 5.1% win for Udall this coming November. His most recent analysis has Udall winning in 77% of total scenarios run. That said, he also suspects that the likely hood of obtaining a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats in the Senate has decreased.
The Democrats still retain one fairly clear path to 60 seats, assuming that Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders are counted with the majority [...] This path would involve flipping Virginia, New Mexico and New Hampshire -- all of which remain near locks for the Democrats -- along with Colorado, Alaska, Minnesota, Oregon, North Carolina, and Mississippi.
It looks like Colorado will remain in the national political limelight for some time as now the second most contentious US senate race next to Alaska according to FiveThirtyEight's analysis.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) hill committee launched a new ad criticizing Big Oil Bob for his close ties to the Oil and Gas Industry. I think that the ad is fairly effective and certainly plays to Colorado voters' concerns about the rising cost of energy, and the general distrust of the oil corporations.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll conducted at the end of July asked voters to "Please tell me whether you think each of the following is a major cause of the recent increase in gasoline prices, a minor cause, or not a cause at all." Of the variouse options (speculators, the bush administration, foreign countries etc), more people (68%) believed that U.S. oil companies were a "major cause" than any other option.
Given that, I think that the Schaffer campaign's attempt to spin his high paying job with an oil company as a perk will be pretty hard to swallow for voters. Especially with its spectre always looking over his shoulder.
I know that this blog is dedicated to looking at the Colorado Senate race, but Nate over at FiveThirtyEight has just reported on a veritable tsunami of new polling that is too pressing to ignore and certainly effects, and is affected by, Colorado. While just yesterday Nate's projection model had Obama winning the Electoral College only 45% of the time, in light of the flurry of recent polling his projection has swung to find Obama winning the election 61.2% of the time. Check it out here.
There is much that is noteworthy for Coloradans. One likely overstated poll indicates that Obama holds a 10 point lead in Colorado (another shows a smaller margin of +1). In either case, it certainly speaks to Colorado's swing-tasticness (for the past week or so McCain has had a lead of +2). Nate argues Colorado's importance in the event of a popular/electoral split:
Colorado remains the best bet; it's projecting eight-tenths of a point better than Obama's national numbers. What that means is that, theoretically at least, Obama would still be expected to have a winning elecotral map if he lost the popular vote by 0.8 points. That is why Colorado is so essential; it is the state most likely to be involved in a split result between the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Needless to say, Colorado is on political stratigists maps for good (though I guess if they didn't have Colorado on their maps initially they might want to get better made maps...).
The other night I was being haunted by attack-ad memories, and out of pure frustration and lack of sleep I couldn't help but revisit one of the most irksome, launched by now all too familiar 501 (c) Freedom's Watch.
To recap: Udall was only "seconds" away from being able to cast his vote on whether or not to go to recess, and despite having called the clerk to ask that the vote be kept open, and having gotten the earliest possible flight back to Denver the vote was closed. He then went on the congressional record to say that this,
I was not present for the vote on this resolution (H. Con. Res. 398), despite my best efforts to reach the House floor in time to do so. Had those efforts been successful, I would have voted ``no,'' because I think we should not adjourn or recess this week until completing action on legislation to revise our national energy policies--something that has not yet occurred.
Then when the vote came up as to whether or not to enact said resolution and go to recess, he was present and voted to NOT go to recess, so upholding his infamous debate promise.
When I looked into it a little bit more, it turns out that Big Oil Bob was the real congressional slacker. The Rockey Mountain News reported in March that,
In 2002, when Schaffer's self-imposed, six-year term limit was running out, he missed about one in every eight votes, starting with the first "quorum call" of the year. Schaffer's 13 percent absentee rate that year was more than two times his career average - about 5 percent. His rival in this year's U.S. Senate race, Rep. Mark Udall, missed 2.5 percent of the 484 votes scheduled in the House in 2002.
Apparently, these included final votes on promoting peace in war-torn Sudan, making payments to fallen soldiers exempt from taxes, and one regarding the moratorium on oil drilling off the coast of California.
And I appreciate that saying they support the troops then abandoning them once they have served their purpose is pretty standard fare for the GOP.
But really? Skipping the vote on the whether or not to ban drilling off the coast of California? He didn't even vote on the very issue that has become the hallmark of his campaign, the very issue that he has been blasting Mark for having accidentally missed a vote on?
Come on now Skip, I knew most of your rhetoric was hallow, but for some reason I figured as an oil exec you'd have the myopic self interest to stand behind at least this one bit of advocacy.
This is fairly old news, but I'm a fairly new blog so it seems only sensible mention this given that it is a good reminder of just how intense this race really is. Politicker.com's Pindell Report ranked our Senate race the 2nd most competitiveive in the nation, just behind Minnesota. You can find their brief here.
Tomorrow morning Obama will be holding a rally in Grand Junction--his first visit to our little state since his historic acceptance speech at Invesco field. Obama's choice of location speaks to the Western Slope's importance in determining the outcome of many Colorado elections. The Aspin Daily news looks at this phenomenon:
Both parties point to past wins decided by Western Slope voters when Front Range votes seemed to cancel each other out. Republicans credit Western Slope voters with helping put former Gov. Bill Owens over the top. Democrats credit them for helping elect Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Ken Salazar and his brother Rep. John Salazar [...] Western Colorado is thin when it comes to voters. With some 600,000 people in the 3rd Congressional District, it’s vastly outnumbered by the Front Range [...] Despite its small population, its independent streak can serve as a tie-breaker in elections where Democratic Boulder and Denver counteract Republican suburbs and Colorado Springs.
An independent group by the name of Freedom's Watch has begun running this ad on stations across Colorado:
The truth of the matter is that Freedom Watch's ad is filled with nothing but hot air--an apt metaphor for a party content to float up, up and away from facts. Or perhaps indicative of panic in a campaign whose own hill committee couldn't cook up a poll that puts Schaffer in the lead.
While I would like to see Democrats putting out a response ad of their own, Politico reports that the Udall campaign's lawyer is pushing TV stations to pull the ad. Attorney Douglas Friednash writes,
Because Freedom [sic] Watch does not let the facts get in the way, this does not provide you with the ability to ignore them and the obvious legal issues created by this advertisement [...] The offensive representations and slanderous image directly tie Mark Udall to the use and promotion of marijuana.
CBS4 has done a fairly good job of fact checking the ad, but apparently this wasn't enough for some in neocon blogosphere. "A Watcher", of the anti-Udall attack blog SchaffervUdall, refuses to believe CBS4 conclusion that the claim that "Udall voted against funding for our troops" was false, she argues that,
If memory serves, he wanted billions taken out of the defense department budget and he didn't care whether it meant fewer bullets, fewer uparmored vehicles, or less care for wounded soldiers.
She also mentions that, "I think they are wrong, but don't have the time to do the research to prove it." How convenient. Well fortunately I do.
The Facts
Mark Udall was one of over 40 cosponsors of the original bill, HR 2459, in 2001. The bill apeared again in2003 as HR1673, this bill mark initially cosponsored until he withdrew his cosponsorship on 3/17/04. This wasn't a move to apeal to the electorate as it was before any election pressures or attack ads, it was just him using his best judgement as a Represenative to decide that it was too expensive to create a new cabinate level position. The bill then reapeared in2007 in its current form as HR 808, which Mark has not endoresed.
The ad cites "2003 HR 3289 CQ # 562, HR 3289 CQ 501" as theas proof of his votes against funding. First, this is a petty attempt to make it apear as though there are multiple instances of voting against appropriations when in fact the two citations are for one bill at two different procedural levels.
Second, he opposed this bill not because he opposed funding the troops but because, as CBS4 notes, "he opposed giving $20 billion in direct grants for reconstruction to Iraq. Instead, Udall says he wanted the money to be transferred in the form of loans. He wrote an editorial to that effect back in 2003." In fact, that same year he also voted for HR 2559, The Military Construction Appropriations act, that would appropriate funds to the DOD for various military construction projects, base reallignment etc. Surely this speaks to the fact that Udall had no intention of shirking the troops in favor of a Department of Peace.
Third, the ad ignores the most important point. That is, that as a member of the House armed services committee he has consistently voted to appropriate funds for our forces in Iraq and Afganistan. He bucked his party and voted to fund the troops without a timeline with HR 2206 on 5/07, he voted again to appropriate funds to the troops with HR 4156 on 11/07, and then again with HR 2642 on 6/08. To accuse the congressman of not supporting our armed forces is totally ludacris.
"A Writer" seems to be argueing that even if this was the case, that there was some trade off in voting for the Department of Peace initiative in that funds would be comming out of the DOD. According to the bill,
There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this Act at least 1 percent of the total amounts appropriated annually for the Department of Defense.
So it is true that a small percent of total DOD funds would be going towards the Department of Peace, but the trade-of logic hust doesnt hold water. Appropriations for opperations in Iraq and Afganistan are specifically earmarked in in bills like HR 2206, and thus general funds for the Department of Peace would not be taking away from our honorable troops.
It was a good effort by the folks over at SchaffervUdall, we can only hope that maybe one day when they "have the time" to do their research, they might come to their senses.
Eli Sanders of The American Prospect ran an article the other day that painted a pretty good, though a little long-winded, portrait of the "blue-ing" trend of the Mountain West. She notes that,
Voters in the Mountain West still have a conservative bent, but [...] they've become tired of the wedge issues, the cultural crusading, and, most of all, the war. They're independent thinkers by nature, and they want answers from pragmatists, not pabulum from ideologues.
Once again, YouTube has come into play as an interesting netroot force in this years election cycle, this time in our own senatorial campaign. Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer's responses to five questions submitted by users were posted as part of the You Choose '08 spotlight series Tuesday. The questions drew on the recurring themes of this campaign--energy, unions, guns, water, and education--and were addressed with answers that have shown to be (on balance) equally worn.
Bellow are the candidates responses to the question, "would you consider implementing renewable energy tax credits?"
I think that there are a number of noteworthy things here.
YouTube Semiotics
In terms of aesthetics, which in such a venue translates to: "demonstrates web 2.0 literacy," Mark wins hands down. First, in terms of staging. Schaffer's backdrop is a ridiculously cluttered quilt of campaign viz signs (we get it, your name is Schaffer) that distract from the candidate himself, framed by two mostly off the screen flags. In contrast, Udall's set appears more professional, with a simple blue backdrop that emphasizes and pulls the candidate forward, while actually making the American flag and his sign more visible.
When looking at how the potential viewer sees the candidate themselves, once notices that Schaffer is positioned awkwardly low and to the left in the frame while the camera is, for some reason, located slightly to his right forcing him to look away from the viewer ("he was a shifty bloke, wouldn't look me in the eyes"). Udall, on the other hand, is shot strait on allowing him to "look the viewer in the eyes," and located centrally in the frame--just a natural bit left of the sign over his right shoulder.
The video and sound quality themselves are better in Mark's video than Bob's. Schaffer's video just looks washed out, while the sound has a sort of irritating echo-y metallic-y quality to it. The congressman's also shows the URL in the bottom of the screen, and goes to a clean "stand by your ad"-style closing slide. Bob on the other hand has to awkwardly tell the viewer to go to his website (and almost forgets to in the clip) at the end of each response, and ends with nothing but a smile. It's hard to maintain a narrative suggesting that Bob's experience as an oil executive indicates the sort of shrewd businessman we want in office when his campaign's output is this lo-fi.
I think that the "optics" of this video suggest more than just the banal truism that Republican candidates aren't particularly tech savvy. For Schaffer, the composition of this video emphasizes his lesser stature, and makes him appear shifty, bouncing around but never looking the viewer in the eye, hiding in the corner of the frame: this of course signifying--and likely triggering ripe memories of--8 years of lies that served only to promote the interests of a ruling elite whose wallets were saturated with oil. The aforementioned low video and sound quality itself recalls all the other slipshod government outputs of the last 8 years: the Katrina response, the Iraqi reconstruction contracts, Walter Reed etc.
A new poll released yesterday by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) suggests a statistical dead heat in the CO Senate race, far narrower than was found in polling done in mid august. PolitickerCO reports:
In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Mark Udall held a one-point lead over Republican Bob Schaffer, the poll found. The poll, conducted among 495 "likely" registered voters in Colorado between Sept. 2 and Sept. 3, has a margin of error of +/- 4.5 percent.
It's important to take into account however that the poll was commissioned by the the Republican hill committee working to elect Bob Schaffer, and that unlike any reputable polling agency (such as Rasmussen or PPP) it failed to provide ALL the essential information used to judge such a poll's acuracy:
1. The wording of the questions asked
2. Whether these "likely voters" were actual registered voters
3. Any data about how representative the sample actually was, i.e. about how the sample was proportionally composed in terms of party affiliation
I'm skeptical about how much weight should be given to this poll on these grounds alone. But even if we give the NRSC the benefit of the doubt, I think that the daft conclusion reached by RealClearPolitcs' Reid Wilson (and likely many mainstream news outlets to come) that "despite the free press [provided by the DNC] Rep. Mark Udall didn't benefit at all" is simplistic at best.
Especially given that this poll was conducted smack dab in the middle of the RNC, and 4 days after the Palin veep pick. The temporary bounces that result from both events effect the whole of the republican party, and its effects would inevitably trickle down to this poll to a greater or lesser degree.
Though the traditional narrative paints Colorado as a thoroughly red state, its independent streak cannot be underscored enough. Historically, it has been considered a safe state for Republican presidential hopefuls: since 1964 it has consistently voted for the Republican presidential candidate, with the exception of Bill Clinton's 1992 bid, when he took the state by a margin of only 4 percentage points. Meanwhile, Colorado has seen Democratic Governors elected for 22 of the past 30 years. In many ways, as the National Journal points out, Colorado politics can be seen as a contest between the twin, ideologically opposed poles of Denver-Boulder (generally liberal) and Colorado Springs-Eastern Planes (generally conservative).
The Political Status Quo
With 9 electoral votes up for grabs in a presidential race that CQ Politics rates as too close to call, and an important US Senate seat vacated by Republican Wayne Allard, it should be no surprise that Colorado has proved to be one of the most competitive states in the nation.
The Senate race has become particularly divisive--it is nearly impossible for a tv comercial break to pass without having to sit through several 527 sponsored smear ads in a row. The Washington Times notes that:
"we're having a record year overall [...] political advertising has jumped by as much as 50 percent since 2004, the last presidential year. Campaign ads constitute about 20 percent to 25 percent of most Denver television stations' advertising time, managers said."
The CQ Politics rating for Colorado's Senatorial race is "leans democratic", and despite the heated ad campaigns and the Democratic National Convention's proximity, the race's trend has been relative stable as can be seen bellow (graph courtesy of Pollster.com):
Nate of Fivethirtyeight.com has compiled a large number of more recent polls and similarly finds that Democrat Mark Udall maintains an average 6.2 % lead over his Republican opponent. It goes without saying that, these numbers bode fairly well for Congressman Udall lending hope to many democrats of gaining an important foothold in the American West.
As a Denver native I fully appreciate both the gravitas of this election cycle for the people of Colorado, as well as its wider political implications for the Rocky Mountain region and Nation as a whole. It goes without saying that as the political landscape of the West is in the throws of chromatic change (be its hue red, purple or blue) those close to the region are bound to have a vested interest in the outcome; thus in the interest of full disclosure, though a registered independent (like most Coloradans) I am progressively inclined.
That said, I don't intend this to be a partisan blog. I will be focusing on the race between Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Bob Schaffer, but will likely touch on other topics of political interest to Colorado.
My aim is to explore various important happenings within the Colorado political landscape, focusing on the Senate race between Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Bob Schaffer. My main interest is in providing a revealing perspective on, and (oft-absent) informed critique of, Colorado's omnipresent Grand Old Party machine.
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