Someone Punch Me In My Gut Feeling

I think I have a candidate for my most embarrassing prediction: back when Michael Bennet was selected as Colorado's newest Senator to replace Ken Salazar, I said that he would be a great appointment. It was based on some things I read about his education reform in Denver, not about his substantive positions on issues, which were somewhat unclear. In the weeks since, Bennet put himself right in the middle of the "Axis of Centrists" who wrung concessions and cut funding out of the stimulus package. And now, he refuses to say whether or not he supports the Employee Free Choice Act, which, considering that Colorado Democrats have a lot of union members and he's almost certain to face a primary, is a form of political suicide in addition to being terrible policy.

When asked, Sen. Michael Bennet either "doesn't know" if he supports The Employee Free Choice Act or "hasn't decided" yet. Truly amazing. Bennet, who, you'll recall, was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Bill Ritter (D-CO) to replace Sen. Salazar, hasn't had to be accountable to the people of Colorado so I guess doesn't see any reason to ruffle any feathers by actually taking a stand on one of the most important pieces of legislation he's likely to vote on in the coming year.

Great work by Darcy and CO-06 challenger David Canter for applying pressure on Bennet and the entire Colorado congressional delegation to come out strongly and vocally in support of The Employee Free Choice Act.

Todd Beeton notes that the difference between 2007, when Bennet's partner in centrism in Colorado Mark Udall was a co-sponsor of Employee Free Choice, and 2009, when Udall is wavering, is that "the President supports it now, so there's actually a possibility of its getting passed." As well it, you know, should. Steven Greenhouse's formulation of what Employee Free Choice would do is accurate:

Any doubts that union leaders might have had about Mr. Obama dissolved several weeks ago when, in announcing a new Task Force on the Middle Class, he said: “I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it’s part of the solution. You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement." [...]

Labor is pinning its biggest hopes on the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that unions hope will add millions of new members by giving workers the right to union recognition as soon as a majority of employees at a workplace sign pro-union cards. The bill would take away management’s ability to insist on a secret ballot election.

This isn't about stripping the rights of workers. It's about stopping management's stranglehold on the process. And Bennet hasn't said who's side he's on - labor or management.

My apologies to the blog for saying this guy was a comer.

Senate Campaign News!

Yes, with around 650 days until the next election, there's no reason not to do a roundup of Senate campaign news!!!

• KY-Sen: Dan Mongiardo, the Lieutenant Governor who nearly knocked off Jim Bunning in 2004, will seek the seat again in 2010. Bunning, who compared Mongiardo to Saddam Hussein in 2004 because he has olive skin, is being begged to retire by the GOP leadership and can't raise any money. I think Mongiardo would beat him pretty badly, but we'll see if Bunning takes the hint.

• IL-Sen: Roland Burris, who by the way is responsible for Barack Obama's Presidency, should draw a primary challenge in 2010, and the opponent could be an Obama ally:

One of President Obama’s close friends and basketball buddies is considering a campaign against Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) in the Democratic primary.

Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is holding conversations with leading Illinois Democrats in preparation for a possible candidacy, according to a Democratic operative familiar with his decision-making process.

“He’s been talking to a lot of Democrats in Illinois who believe that this seat is gone is if Burris is the nominee. If it’s Mark Kirk or a rich Republican, we’ve got to hold this seat. That’s enough to encourage him to take a very serious look,” said the operative.

At 32, Giannoulias has been on the fast track in Illinois politics since leaving his job as a bank vice president to run for state treasurer in 2006. Inspired by Obama’s Senate campaign, he ran against the Democratic candidate backed by the party establishment and, aided by Obama’s endorsement, prevailed.

Burris and really all of these Senate appointees should get a primary challenge. If they're worthy of representing the people of their state they ought to earn it.

• CO-Sen: Interesting profile on Michael Bennet, the youngest member of the Senate who's been sleeping at his mom's house while setting up shop in Washington. He's kind of a blank slate, and I hope he gets a primary challenge as well, but something tells me that this guy can weather the uncertainty. Universally the reaction to him is that he's smart, which is something you don't hear about many Senators and which may just be enough.

...Colorado's Attorney General John Suthers, the only statewide office holder in the Rocky Mountain State, just declined the option of running against Bennet in 2010. That'll make it easier both for Bennet to win or for a Democratic challenger to primary him.

Bennet's Campaign Against Dropouts

This New Yorker profile of Michael Bennet and the Denver school system makes for interesting reading. Bennet came in promising major reforms. One high school, Manual, was such a reclamation project that he decided the best practice would be to close it. This sparked outrage in the community, and veiled charges of racism against Bennet from the majority-minority community. It seemed liked the 558 students transferring out of Manual to other schools would simply drop out and resort to a life on the streets. Bennet cared about this, he recognized his mistake in being too hasty with the school's closure, and he set out to reach the kids, one by one, one door at a time.

Driving through his neighborhood one Saturday with all this on his mind, he passed an election sign with a familiar name on it. One of his friends in Democratic politics had started a run for the state senate. From past experience, Bennet could envision how the candidate would spend that summer weekend, and every other one until November: studying maps marked by colored pins showing clusters of voters, then going out to knock on hundreds of doors. He called an aide, a veteran of political campaigns, and asked, Could we capture some children this way?

A strapping boy named Pedro, half-awake, half-naked, stared perplexed through a torn screen door. “Sorry to wake you up,” Bennet said. It was a Saturday morning last fall. “We’re from the schools. Can we come in?” The boy put on a shirt, and Bennet and Jaime Aquino, his chief academic adviser, walked into a living room crammed with beds [...] School had started five weeks earlier, but Pedro had not shown up, according to the printout that Bennet held in his hand. “So you’re a senior,” he began, over the barking. “Can I sit down?” For a moment, the boy studied the man settling in on a sofa between some boxer shorts and an aquarium that reeked of decay. And then, in a Spanish somewhat different from what Bennet recalled from St. Albans, Pedro began to map the distance between Bennet’s ideas and his own economic obligations.

First, Pedro wanted it noted: his younger sister, one of the five hundred and fifty-eight, was continuing high school, and he was proud of her. But because of family finances, he had dropped out to work the night shift at McDonald’s—a job he’d held for a year despite not having a car to get him home at two in the morning. Mentors and college fairs were beside the point. Pedro looked expectant when he finished, as if hoping for a thanks and goodbye, but Bennet and Aquino had begun to confer. After a year, the boy was a proven employee, and there was another McDonald’s within walking distance of a high school that offered evening classes. If he transferred to that restaurant and switched over to the day shift—what were the hours of the day shift, exactly? It would work, then: Pedro could attend school after his shift, and get work-study credit for the job. Bennet’s aides could call the managers of both restaurants, and get things moving along.

For nine weeks, Bennet and two dozen aides and volunteers had been fanning out across neighborhoods like Pedro’s, trying to sell school to skeptical kids. The campaign had been harder to start than a political one, since many of its targets were illegal and didn’t want to be found, and the goal was not just a trip to the polls. Still, with the help of Julissa and seven other students who were hired as peer counsellors and part-time sleuths, the district managed to locate all but ten of the former Manual students. Weekend visits began, and hundreds of reclamation projects got under way. “Oh, I’m in school, it’s going great,” said almost every child to whom Bennet spoke, especially on the days when Univision sent a cameraman to accompany him. Then he got better at asking the questions.

In the first month of school, four hundred and sixty-three former Manual students showed up—a better rate of return than after previous summers, and a number that averted a public-relations debacle. The first weeks meant little, though: math had not yet become confusing and term papers weren’t due. Bennet and his people kept pounding on doors and shaking chain-link gates—better not to surprise the dogs, they’d learned. And the number of children in school held steady.

I know that there's a lot of outcry about the Bennet appointment, and I've made my views on the topic of Senate appointments very well known. But my gut tells me that this guy is going to be a great Senator. The concern expressed in this episode, the belief that every child can achieve and that government has a role to play in expanding their opportunity, the bellief in the connection of the very poor and the very rich in America's progress and continued success, these are the hallmarks of a superior public servant.

Now, applying himself to children who had self-perpetuating birthrights of their own, he was undaunted by the fact that more experienced superintendents had failed at reforms less ambitious than his. “Well, one of these days someone’s going to pull it off,” Bennet said to me last spring. “Besides, I really don’t see how you can hold both propositions to be true: that these urban public schools aren’t fixable and that the America of a decade or two from now is going to be a place where any of us would want to live.”

Obviously, education isn't the sole portfolio of a US Senator. But the more people with practical experience on the ground, the better. I'm very intrigued by this guy.

Senator Bennet

Some states have significantly less drama around their Senate appointments than, say, Illinois. Take Colorado, where Governor Bill Ritter has engaged in a low-key search to replace incoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Rocky Mountain News is reporting that Michael Bennet will get the job.

Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet is expected to be named Saturday as the future U.S. Senate replacement for Interior Secretary nominee Ken Salazar, according to two Democratic sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Bennet was a reformer superintendent in the Joel Klein mold, who instituted a pay-for-performance plan on the city's schools and got the teachers to agree to it. The plan raised starting salaries for teachers and provided bonuses for student achievement. This does move the balance of power in the internal debate between reformers and teacher advocates in the Democratic Party. At one point he was considered a leading candidate for President-elect Obama's education secretary. He was also Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's chief of staff at one point.

Bennet was very close to being an Obama cabinet member, so one presumes his voting record would line up pretty well with the President-elect. Of course, Ken Salazar IS an Obama cabinet member, so it's unclear whether or not this is an improvement. One worry is that he's fairly unknown outside of Denver and may have trouble in a statewide race in 2010. Two years of incumbency should help that, however.

And of course, this is the complete wrong way to handle a Senate vacancy, which should clearly be done by special election, allowing the people to determine their own representation.

...I'm assuming that the Senate sergeant-at-arms will bar the door and refuse Bennet entry into the Senate chamber, as per current practice.

House And Senate Report

Just a few things I've seen around.

• NC-Sen: Elizabeth Dole is the subject of the worst profile I've seen of a candidate in a while. It starts with her saying that she's been in her home state a lot lately. Um, it's kind of your job to be connected with your constituents all the time. Then there's this amazing statement:

Dole said she also supports drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, where drilling would have a small footprint that wouldn’t harm much wildlife.

“Even the caribou like to snuggle up to the pipeline,” she said.

This flavor of crazy leaped from right-wing Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota over to Dole. The idea that Liddy Dole can read the minds of caribou - and that PLAYS INTO HER POLICY THINKING - is just incredible. If I'm Kay Hagan I play that for the next 11 weeks.

• AK-Sen: Ted Stevens is going to be standing trial in Washington, losing his battle for a change of venue in his corruption case to Alaska, where he has been providing everyone with their own personal bridge for 40 years. Sound judicial decision. So he'll be spending September and October in DC while fighting for his political life back at home, returning on weekends to campaign after a 8-hour flight. And he's in his 80s. Those will be some energetic rallies.

• CO-Sen: VoteVets has gone up with a very good ad basically calling Bob Schaffer a war profiteer for negotiating oil contracts in Kurdistan in the middle of the Iraq war. It's gotten some local coverage, where you can see Schaffer's campaign manager blowing a gasket.

Schaffer's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, demanded the group apologize to the candidate.

"That is the most reprehensible and disgusting attack that could be leveled," Wadhams said, adding that three of Schaffer's five children are officers in training in college and will be deployed within a few years [...]

Wadhams challenged VoteVets.org to release its list of donors to prove it is not funded by "labor unions and leftist organizations."

Touchy, touchy!

• MS-Sen: This race between Roger Wicker and Ronnie Musgrove is far closer than you would expect for a race in Mississippi. So it's time for the Bush Administration to step in and sabotage the election.

When the Democrats and their attorneys began claiming last year that the Bush administration was using its prosecutorial might to target opposition candidates and their major financial supporters, I greeted the allegation with a skeptical eye.

I’m not so sure anymore.

This past week’s developments in the four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant seem timed to help derail Democrat Ronnie Musgrove’s bid to snatch one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats from Republican hands.

Read the whole thing.

• FL-13: CREW has filed an FEC complaint against Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan, and there are a couple interesting signatories to the complaint - Buchanan's own employees.

Today, CREW and Florida citizens Carlo Bell and D.J. Padilla (both of whom worked for Buchanan's car dealerships) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) against Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) alleging serious violations of campaign finance law. The complaint and affidavits of Bell and Padilla can be found here.

Rep. Buchanan owns several car dealerships in Florida. In September 2005, dealership employees were pressured into contributing to Rep. Buchanan’s congressional campaign and some were reimbursed for making contributions. Former employee Carlo Bell was called into a manager’s office and told that if he was part of the “team” he would make a contribution. Fearing for his job, Bell agreed to make the donation and was handed $1,000 in cash. Bell also saw two other employees, Jack Prater and Jason Martin take cash in return for promising to write checks and FEC reports confirm that both men made $1,000 contributions to the Buchanan campaign.

• MN-03: It's Blog Day for Ashwin Madia, a former Marine corpsman and solid progressive. He also ended up writing a great piece about Sen. Lieberman and Iraq today.

Today, the Republican Party announced that the loudest defender of status quo policies on Iraq, Senator Joe Lieberman, will be a prominent speaker at the Republican National Convention in my home state of Minnesota. Senator Lieberman and I do have one thing in common. We’ve both changed political parties. I left the Republican Party in 2002 after it replaced “balance our budget” with “borrow and spend” and after we started a war without a plan for success; a war we did not need.

With all respect to Senator Lieberman, talking tough about Iraq is not brave. Bravery is not demonstrated through words but instead through action.

A Brief Election Roundup

Here's a few things I saw in some of the downballot races that interest me in this election:

• CA-04: Charlie Brown, a patriot in the strictest sense of the term, has been running his campaign for Congress based on some simple directives - to help those in need, to work in their own community, and to lead before ever getting to Washington. This week, in the wake of the California wildfires, he has provided supplies and relief to evacuees in Butte County, one of the hardest-hit areas.

• VA-05: This kind of volunteerism and early leadership is something we're also seeing in the campaign of Tom Perriello, who's facing Rep. Virgil Goode in the general election. This is about service, but it's also about raising the bar for activism as an outgrowth of a political campaign.

Early on, Perriello set aside 10 percent of the time and resources of his campaign staff to work on local projects. Larry Campbell, assistant pastor at Bible Way Cathedral in Danville, Va., says he was surprised that Perriello's campaign wanted more than a photo op when they visited his food bank.

"I've had many political candidates come through, but I've never had any work along with us in the area of social-action changes," he says, citing ongoing help from Perriello volunteers. "Most candidates who are running for national office have more programs just getting people out voting for them, but to give back to the community is a heavy statement for social change."

• TX-Sen: The DSCC is hammering John Cornyn for only changing his vote to halt Medicare cuts after the bill was assured of passage. He already lost the Texas branch of the AMA's support over this vote. His opponent, Rick Noriega, is going to need a lot of cash to catch up to Cornyn, but he has raised $1M online, making him the "largest (non-presidential) online fundraiser with ActBlue since its inception." Unfortunately, Texas is such a big state that you probably need LOTS more than Noriega has been able to raise to run a solid challenge.

• CO-Sen: Bob Schaffer, the Republican vying for this open seat, can't stop stepping in scandal. The latest is that he helped negotiate a lucrative oil deal in Iraqi Kurdistan, against the wishes of the State Department, and it's causing major problems for Iraqi efforts to negotiate a hydrocarbon law. Tied to Big Oil and putting personal benefit over country; quite a feat! Mark Udall is the Democrat here.

• MN-Sen: I thought Al Franken's latest ad was pretty good, and represented some outside-the-box thinking:

"In Washington, they debate whether former members of Congress should wait one year or two years before they become registered lobbyists. How about never? I'm Al Franken, in Washington I'll fight for a new law to prevent members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists."

It's a sharp message, picking up on anti-Washington sentiment. What's more, it's not off the typical shelf of "Democratic issues" we hear over and over again.

• AK-Sen: In other ad news, Mark Begich's latest uses the culture of corruption which has consumed Alaska politics and contrasts it with his personal integrity.

Begich says how he's made all his finances public, so the people can know what he's up to. "But it's not that way in Washington, DC," Begich says. "It's time to end the secret deals for special interests, and the special favors for elected officials."

There's nowhere that will work better than Alaska.

• GA-12: The primary between John Barrow and Regina Thomas is this Tuesday. Blue America has been running ads in the district, and Barrow is peeved.

Howie Klein of Los Angeles, a retired music industry executive and one of Blue America's founders, said the PAC got behind Thomas because of Barrow's votes supporting the war in Iraq, President Bush's signature tax cuts and a recent bill to protect telecommunications companies that help the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines.

"He's in a Democratic district and he's still voting worse than anyone else," Klein said. "If we can somehow harm to his chances of being elected, there is a state senator who seems very progressive and intelligent who could do the job." [...]

Barrow responded with a statement saying his support for an increase in the minimum wage and opposition to cutting veterans benefits and privatizing Social Security, among other issues, have put him at odds with Bush plenty.

"Apparently the only way to persuade some people that I'm not a rubber stamp for George Bush is to become a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi," the Democratic House speaker, Barrow said. "And I refuse to be a rubber stamp for anyone."

Attacking liberals and dismissing Democrats seems to be an awkward strategy for a primary, but he is the incumbent and Thomas hasn't raised much of her own money. Frankly if we can make this competitive it'll be a win.

CO-SEN: Bob Schaffer's Excellent Adventure

A few days ago, wingnut Senate candidate Bob Schaffer suggested that a sensible guest-worker program could be modeled along the lines of the Marianas Islands.

He did not appear to be kidding. Apparently the words "Jack Abramoff," "slavery" and "forced abortions" have escaped him.

Or maybe this 1999 fact-finding trip just slipped his mind.

Just before boarding a plane to the Mariana Islands in 1999, then-Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was embarking on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of repeated allegations of labor abuse in the American protectorate.

"I plan to walk right into those factories and living quarters to see for myself what conditions exist," Schaffer said in a news release in August of that year.

What he didn't say was that the trip was partly arranged by the firm of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented textile factory owners fighting congressional efforts to reform labor and immigration laws on the islands and who was being handsomely paid to keep the islands' cherished exemptions.

Schaffer and his wife stayed for free at a palm-studded beach resort and, besides factories, also toured historical sites and met with clients of Preston-

Gates, Abramoff's firm, according to a copy of the trip's agenda archived in Schaffer's congressional papers.

He left believing that allegations of widespread abuse were largely unfounded -- blaming them on Big Labor's efforts to shut down a booming textile industry allowed to use the "Made in USA" label but dependent on tens of thousands of imported workers.

There's an extremely unfortunate photo of Schaffer parasailing while turning a blind eye to the abhorrent conditions in the factories on the island.



It was already going to be tough for Schaffer against Rep. Mark Udall. This is going to be the symbol of the campaign.

And to add insult to injury, today the Senate passed a bill to reform the immigration laws on the Marianas Islands that Schaffer said were so wonderful. It passed 91-4.

Talk about out of touch.

Prospects in the Senate

Eric Kleefeld did a nice analysis of the state of play in the Senate, where 23 Republican seats will be up for grabs in November, as opposed to just 12 Democratic seats. Of those 12, really only one of them, Mary Landrieu's seat in Louisiana, is seriously challenged, whereas as many as a dozen or even more Republican seats could be in play. Here's the initial list that Kleefeld references:

State GOP Candidate Dem Candidate Outlook
Alaska Ted Stevens Mark Begich Leans GOP
Colorado Bob Schaffer Mark Udall Tossup
Louisiana John Kennedy Mary Landrieu Tossup
Maine Susan Collins Tom Allen Leans GOP
Minnesota Norm Coleman Al Franken Tossup
Mississippi Roger Wicker Ronnie Musgrove Likely GOP
New Hampshire John Sununu Jeanne Shaheen Leans Dem
New Mexico TBD Tom Udall Leans Dem
Oregon Gordon Smith TBD Leans GOP
Virginia Jim Gilmore Mark Warner Likely Dem

In a follow-up post, Chuck Schumer maintains that we have leads in five seats currently, in Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado and Alaska, where Senator "Series of Tubes" Ted Stevens is in legitimate trouble against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Schumer also says we have a shot in Oregon, Minnesota and Maine. But there are other states where Republicans will at least have to spend a little money. Rick Noriega will make John Cornyn work in Texas, for example. We have good candidates like Greg Fischer in Kentucky, Scott Kleeb in Nebraska, Andrew Rice in Oklahoma, Ronnie Musgrove in Mississippi, Larry LaRocco in Idaho, Jim Neal in North Carolina and even Jim Slattery in Kansas. Schumer is claiming that we'll have good candidates in 17 of those 23 races, and Schumer's idea of a "good candidate" is one that is worth spending DSCC money on. That means that the field is very spread out, and Republicans will have a lot to defend.

I don't think people have a sense of just how dire it is for Republicans here. I think you saw a piece of it in many Republicans' combative stances in the Petraeus/Crocker hearings. Iraq is an anvil, and their attempts to spin themselves as independent voices is simply at odds with the reality of them being reliable rubber stamps. Even Oregon's Gordon Smith, who has voted in favor of withdrawal on more than one occasion, is twisting himself in knots trying to appeal both antiwar independents and hardcore Republicans, claiming that he practically authored the Responsible Plan to End the War while being unable to endorse it and turn his back on the base. I fully expect most of these Democratic Senate candidates to use Iraq as a vice and constrict their opponents inside their own rhetoric and spin.

Senate Guru has the best day-to-day information on these races.

CO-SEN: Score One For The Good Guys

It's terribly early, but at least one Democratic pickup in the Senate is looking pretty good:

In a move that could help pave the way for Dems to grab a key open seat in Colorado, the only announced Republican candidate for the seat is expected to drop out of the race, The Washington Post reports. The move by former GOP Rep. Scott McInnis leaves the GOP without a candidate for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Wayne Allard — a top target for national Dems in their quest to expand on their 2006 electoral successes in the West.

The Republicans will obviously have a candidate, but McInnis was the least hard-core Colorado Springs fundie conservative, and the most likely to present a real challenge to Rep. Mark Udall, who will have a clear field for the Democratic nomination. Udall was going to be formidable anyway; without McInnis it could be a blowout, especially if Colorado goes blue in the Presidential race.