Dirty Tricks Watch

Every year the Republican Party sends a flier into minority or poor neighborhoods telling people to vote on the wrong day. This one is even more efficient, because it claims that Virginia modified their laws to have Republicans vote on November 4 and Democrats on November 5. That way, they don't lose one vote! Good work, Virginia GOP! There's a copied logo from the Commonwealth of Virginia on the flier, too, making it look all official-like.

But as far as crude fliers go, this one from Wisconsin, distributed in a heavily white area, wins the prize.



"Change means...BLACK!" Mmm, that's some delicious ratfucking!

And then there's this, a pretty novel case of ballot-stealing.

Three Hialeah voters say they had an unusual visitor at their homes last week: a man who called himself Juan, offering to help them fill out their absentee ballots and deliver them to the elections office.

The voters, all supporters of Democratic congressional candidate Raul Martinez, said they gave their ballots to the man after he told them he worked for Martinez. But the Martinez campaign said he doesn't work for them.

Juan "told me not to worry, that they normally collected all the ballots and waited until they had a stack big enough to hand-deliver to the elections department," said voter Jesus Hernandez, 73. "He said, 'Don't worry. This is not going to pass through the mail to get lost.'"

Hernandez said he worries his ballot was stolen or destroyed. He and two other voters told The Miami Herald that the man was dispatched by a woman caller who also said she worked for Martinez. But the phone number cited by the voters traces back to a consultant working for Martinez's rival, Republican congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Martinez's campaign manager, Jeff Garcia, has asked the Miami-Dade state attorney's office to investigate.

Wow. That's breathtaking criminality.

The Republicans are going to do everything they can to make sure that if you're a Democrat, you don't vote this year. Not all of it will work - the stories of young workers who probably need the money walking off the job at call centers rather than read smear call scripts against Barack Obama are inspiring. And the GOP is consistently losing in the courts. But they clearly have other means, as you can see above, and some will be effective. The best way to stop it is to bring them out into the sunlight.

Dirty Trick Flatlines

This thing is done.

The initiative to change how California's Electoral College votes are awarded in the race for the White House will not appear on the June statewide ballot, according to campaign officials.

In a brief statement e-mailed to reporters this afternoon, the California Counts political team said they are now shooting for the November ballot after being unable to gather enough signatures in time for this week's drop-dead June deadline.

"Due to the tight calendar we are operating under and the challenge of raising money and gathering signatures during the Holiday season," says the statement, "we understand that submitting signatures and having them counted in time to make the June ballot, is no longer a realistic goal."

It will get slaughtered if it makes the November ballot. The whole point of the Dirty Trick was to ready it for June, a low-turnout election with a lot of other Republican initiatives up for grabs. In November, there will be a Presidential race and an expected high turnout. I'd actually sign a petition to get it on the ballot in November. I'd LOVE to give a reason for progressives and Democrats to get out to the polls and energetic to beat back a Republican dirty trick. It would be a great help down-ballot, especially in those close Congressional races.

Fantastic. And you have to wonder whether a ballot measure that managed to only gather 500,000 signatures in a state of 38 million people is all that popular, anyway. The Dirty Tricksters would be better off cutting their losses and packing it in. I sincerely hope they don't.

UPDATE: Here's the full story in the Sacramento Bee.

California Counts has until Feb. 4 to submit their signatures. Gilliard's statement said his group had collected more than 500,000 signatures; political strategists believe they need about 700,000 to ensure they have enough valid ones to meet a state threshold.

"CalCounts will continue with its fundraising and signature drive because we believe Californians deserve the right to vote on this important initiative to reform the Electoral College and to make our state count again in presidential elections," Gilliard said in the statement.

Bwahahahahahahaha!

Dirty Tricks on Life Support

This Dirty Tricks Initiative nail-biter is finally starting to make more sense to me, thanks to Kevin Yamamura at the Sacramento Bee. There is indeed a firm deadline to make the June ballot, January 24. Secretary of State Bowen recommended an early deadline for signatures, because local election boards basically have no time to do all the random counting needed to qualify the initiative between now and then. By missing that deadline the dirty tricksters risk missing the June ballot, as election boards must ramp up for the February 5 primary and that takes priority. The SacBee article is one of the first to inform what's really going on here.

Counties are slammed with duties that include mailing ballots to overseas voters, preparing ballot guides, training poll workers and gearing up for absentee voting that begins Jan. 7. At the same time, many county election offices are juggling staff vacation time around the holidays.

"They're risking it, honestly," Weir said of Gilliard's initiative effort. "They're risking it. They're up against a tidal wave of programming ... You can't miss deadlines when you have a live election going."

Dave Gilliard, now the head trickster for the initiative, again reiterated that he'd push ahead for the November 2008 ballot if his efforts to make the June ballot were unsuccessful. That does not sound like someone who's confident. Not to mention the potential investigation over shenanigans with the signature gathering itself, which could present challenges to the count. I'd say this thing is about 75% done for the June ballot. And in November, it gets slaughtered in a high-turnout Presidential election, PLUS it excites Democrats to go to the polls, helping us in every other race.

Gilliard did not return repeated phone calls Monday, but wrote in an e-mail, "We are still hopeful of making the June ballot but understand we are at the mercy of the calendar."

Yes, you're at the mercy of something.

Still Trickstin'

The forces trying to put the Dirty Tricks Initiative on the June ballot in California had a deadline of November 29 to gather signatures. That has passed and they still need signatures and money, but somehow the movement rages on:

Organizers had set this week as a deadline for wrapping up their petition drive, but said they had not raised the roughly $2 million needed to pay petition circulators. Secretary of State Debra Bowen had recommended a deadline of Nov. 29.

Campaign manager Dave Gilliard said that agents would work through the weekend to obtain the 434,000 valid signatures required to put the Electoral College initiative on next June's ballot and that he expected to submit the names by midweek.

Gilliard was less than certain that he would reach his goal of 700,000 names, a number allowing leeway for signatures that might be disqualified.

"We won't know until they're collected," he said.

Man, the whole initiative structure in California is weird. Bowen RECOMMENDED a deadline? Does that have any force of law? Guess not.

Initiative backers are already floating that they'll push off efforts to November, which would be fantastic, because it wouldn't come close to passing compared to catching everyone napping in a low-turnout June election. So obviously there's a lot of weakness here.

My favorite part was at the very end:

The idea of altering California's system has been discussed within Republican circles for years.

It became so serious in the 2004 campaign that California Republicans approached the Republican National Committee about it.

But the GOP and President Bush's political team concluded that Bush could win the election without the added boost that such a move would bring.

Even the BUSH campaign thought this idea was too hot to handle. Soon, these chumps will find out the same thing.

Bigger Than Dirty Tricks: The Corruption of Direct Democracy

So I edited this video for Courage Campaign about the dirty tricks initiative. Erik Love went up to UC-Santa Barbara and explored the foul underbelly of paid signature gatherers.



There's no smoking gun here, and yet there's a lot of smoke. Clearly the petitioners are luring potential signers over there with the prospect of helping kids survive cancer, and then the dirty tricks initiative is sprung upon them. I think the most damning bit is when the signature gatherer admits that he has nothing to do with the procedures and he is just told how many signatures to get. There's a "by any means necessary" approach that goes beyond this initiative and to the signature gathering process as a whole. It's a scummy, dirty business, and this gives it a little bit of sunshine.

Erik has more at DKos.

UPDATE: And more shenanigans.

The chairman of a committee formed to fight a ballot initiative to change how California’s electoral college votes are apportioned has asked the city attorney here to investigate a report that a group collecting signatures for the initiative has offered food to homeless people in exchange for signing the petitions [...]

Mr. Steyer’s letter, dated Nov. 19, stems from an article in The Los Angeles Downtown News that detailed reporters’ observations of signature gatherers asking homeless people on the city’s notorious Skid Row for their signatures to help qualify the electoral vote initiative and three others, as well as asking them to fill out voter registration cards.

In exchange, the paper reported, homeless people and those in nearby shelters were given Snickers bars, instant noodles and other snack foods.

If California outlawed initiatives tomorrow, I don't think I'd miss them.

Nunes, McCarthy want to facilitate big bucks for dirty tricks

Buried inside this Politico article about Rudy Giuliani's many ties to the Dirty Tricks initiative is this nugget:

There are actually two potential ballot initiatives. One would allocate California’s Electoral College votes proportionally, as opposed to the current winner-take-all format. The other affects redistricting.

Where they connect? California Republican Reps. Devin Nunes and Kevin O. McCarthy have asked the Federal Election Commission for a legal opinion on whether they can raise unlimited donations to help the redistricting initiative. But a money-and-politics watchdog group argues that would blow a hole in the 2002 campaign finance reform law that bans federal officeholders from soliciting such big checks — and pave the way for presidential contenders to urge their supporters to shovel money into the proposed Electoral College initiative.

Nunes and McCarthy may be the safest two GoOPers in the state. They are acting as the battering rams to knock down the walls of campaign finance reform, not just for the Dirty Tricks initiative but a whole host of pernicious ballot measures.

In a way, they're trying to retroactively immunize people like Rudy and Darrell Issa for their already-questionable efforts. It's just a hop, skip and a jump from soliciting for signatures, which both campaigns have done, to soliciting for money.

As for the bait and switch techniques being employed to gather signatures, there's going to be a LOT more on this to come.

Uh, Issa's Breaking the Law, Too

Bill Cavala knows what he's talking about.

In a story printed in today’s Sacramento Bee, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa is said to be “sending out letters to the same voters who signed the recall position in 2003”.

But that’s against the law. California Elections Code 18650 states clearly that, “No one shall knowingly or willfully permit the list of signatures on an initiative, referendum, or recall petition to be used for ANY PURPOSE other than qualification of the initiative, referendum or recall”. [Emphasis added] Violation of this section is a misdemeanor.

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you expect a Member of Congress to know the law? Well, maybe we can’t expect a Republican Member of Congress to obey the law??

Somebody alert Jerry Brown. Darrell Issa is breaking the law, and look what the result could be:

While the violation involving the use of the data is only a misdemeanor, providing the signatures, database, and anything else owned by the Recall Committee is an "in kind contribution"-- an unreported contribution. The Recall committee needs to approve it in order to provide this asset to the "California Counts" committee that is trying to qualify the Electoral College scheme on the ballot. Such a use could be in violation of the trust provisions that govern ballot measure expenditures (felonies). And the unreported contribution and the person controlling the committee could be prosecuted under the criminal misdemeanor provisions of the political reform act. (Where the penalty is loss of office) (emphasis mine)

I don't think that you could remove someone from federal office at the state level, right? But dare to dream. Would that be some sweet justice for the architect of the California recall, or what?

Horrible Numbers For Re-Animated Dirty Tricks

While the turnout model for a June non-Presidential primary is unknown, this should cheer people who don't want to see California's electoral votes stolen by an unbalanced dirty trick.

When voters are read the title and summary of the proposed initiative, a solid majority opposes the measure - 53 percent would vote NO if the election were held today and only one out of five voters (22%) support the initiative while a quarter of the electorate (25%) is currently undecided. This is one of the lowest levels of support we have ever seen in our polling for a statewide initiative in California.

It doesn't sound like this is a tilted poll designed to get a certain result. It sounds like the months of harping on this both through the netroots and in the media are having an impact. They may yet get this dud on the ballot, but we'll crush it on Election Day.

Of course, we wouldn't even be talking about this if it weren't for the splitting of the primary races allowing for a low-turnout election in the middle of the summer to be an inviting target for Republican dirty tricksters. The real reason for moving up the Presidential primary was not just to keep up with the Joneses and "make California heard" in the Presidential process - if that was the goal they're failing miserably - was to ensure that termed-out lawmakers could serve again in the Legislature, by putting the term limits change on the February ballot in time for them all to run again in June. And now that initiative is starting to falter. So the Legislature created the conditions for any number of pernicious Republican ballot measures because they wanted to stay in power - and now they may not even accomplish that.

Dirty Tricks Initiative - Giuliani Campaign In Trouble?

A top official of the effort to steal up to 20 electoral votes in California sent out an email to supporters of the Rudy Giuliani campaign asking them to sign petitions to get the measure on the ballot. This could be a violation of federal election law, which prohibits coordination between Presidential campaigns and separate ballot issues. Top of the Ticket has the latest.

The missive, obtained by The Times' Dan Morain, is addressed, "Hello Fellow Rudy Supporter!" Its author, Tony Andrade, is a Republican activist who helped draft the electoral college initiative. Previously, he was among those who helped place the ultimately successful recall of Gov. Gray Davis on the ballot in 2003 [...]

Chris Lehane, a Democratic activist who is organizing the campaign to block the measure, said of the Andrade e-mail: “It sounds like something that the Federal Election Commission and Department of Justice will be very interested in seeing.”

Maria Comella, spokeswoman for Giuliani’s White House bid, previously has stressed that neither he nor his campaign has had anything to do with pushing the ballot initiative.

It's unclear how Andrade would have gotten a list of Giuliani supporters in California without some form of coordination. The initiative's new backers, most of them connected to Giuliani in one way or another, are running from this as fast as possible.

Veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins, who is overseeing the attempt to put the initiative before voters, distanced himself from Andrade’s note.

“None of us has anything to do with any [presidential] campaign; we understand the law very, very well,” Rollins said. Pledging to try to “make sure that [the e-mail] gets stomped,” Rollins added, “We need to be very sensitive to the fact that people have speculated that this is part of the Giuliani campaign.”

The email included a link to the petition and asks signers to get 10 other people to sign it as well. A campaign confident in their ability to get the necessary signatures wouldn't rely on an email ask, and they certainly wouldn't come this close to violating election law.

This is not the first time that a link has been uncovered between the Giuliani campaign and the dirty tricks initiative. In fact, almost every connection we've seen has gone in this fashion. You'll remember that the first incarnation of the measure was derailed when a murky donation from a shell group in Missouri was eventually traced to Paul Singer, Giuliani's northeast finance director.

These are serious charges, and the Federal Election Commission needs to address them immediately. Steve Benen has more.

They're Baaaaaack

They don't have much time, and they can only afford $2 a signature, but the dirty tricksters trying to steal California's electoral votes are back. Hm, that's one way to avoid the spotlight that practically the entire Democratic Party had been shining on them.

Veteran GOP consultants said Monday that they were relaunching a drive to change the way California allocates its electoral college votes, aimed at helping the 2008 Republican presidential nominee capture the White House.

Political strategist David Gilliard said he was taking over the ballot initiative campaign, along with strategist Ed Rollins and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore. Consultant Mike Arno will oversee the signature-gathering effort.

"Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot," said Gilliard, who played a key role in getting the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis onto the 2003 ballot.

I think the GOP poohbahs had a consultation and realized they had nothing to lose. Of course, they're wrong. Nothing will do more to energize Democrats statewide than this ballot initiative. Prop. 187 resonated for a decade; I believe this measure has the same possibility.

And what do you know, the Giuliani connections are back, too:

Until recently, Dunsmore oversaw fundraising for Rudolph W. Giuliani's presidential campaign -- prompting Democrats to charge that the former New York mayor was behind the initiative drive. A major Giuliani benefactor, Wall Street mogul Paul E. Singer, donated $175,000 to fund the original effort.

Giuliani's campaign has denied any involvement. Gilliard said he was not associated with any of the presidential campaigns and predicted that donors to all of the major Republicans would chip in for the initiative drive.

Good, then they can all be tarred with the same brush.

The vital stats are this: they have about 3 1/2 weeks to gather about half a million more signatures to qualify for the ballot. The deadline is November 13. I used to think that this will cost so much money from the Presidential nominee that it would be a negative. Now I'm persuaded that this will be fine. We'll crush this if it gets on the ballot, all the while unifying our caucus, and that will slingshot against Republicans for years to come.

False Equivalence

The New York Times decides to wade into the growing Rudy Giuliani scandal regarding his campaign violating election law to fund the Dirty Tricks initiative, but they wanted to be all fair and balanced, so they framed it as some kind of Rudy vs. Hillary battle royale, calling it a "taste of '08" (apparently the primary season is over. The NYT said so!). Which I guess it is; the Democrats will marshal support legally while the Republicans will fight dirty:

Rudy versus Hillary, the West Coast edition — it’s on.

Supporters of Rudolph W. Giuliani and of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are embroiled in their first major affray of the political season over a ballot initiative on presidential electoral votes some 2,500 miles from the pancake houses of Skaneateles, N.Y., and the fire stations of Queens.

Uh, no they're not. Rudy's people financed a bid to rig the Presidential election, and the ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY fought back. Clinton was not even the first to officially denounce it. That was Dodd, followed by Edwards. No Democrat in their right mind was backing away from this fight. By contrast, NO prominent Republican was affiliated with the initiative other than Rudy, and even he was doing it in a shady, back-channel way that is only now being revealed.

The weird thing about this article is that one senses Chris Lehane WANTS this to be set out this way, as if to push that Hillary Clinton's team was the sole defender of the Democratic Party. That may be a good clipping for him to use when he eventually joins the campaign, but it sells way short the combined efforts of the entire party apparatus, from the grassroots on up.

Rudy's Fingerprints All Over This Dirty Trick

Frank Russo has so far had the best coverage of Rudy Giuliani's involvement in the since-imploded Dirty Tricks campaign to steal a bunch of California's electoral votes. It appears that practically everyone associated with this campaign had a tie to Rudy Giuliani in some form or another. We already knew that the lone funder, laundered through a hastily assembled LLC in Missouri called "Take Initiative America," was actually the chair of Giuliani's northeast funding operation named Paul Singer. What we didn't know was that this laundering, crafted to skirt the strict election laws in California, was part of a pattern of interlocking front groups that would hide who was behind this whole thing - perhaps even the candidate himself. This quote is from Chris Lehane, who was running the opposition to the Dirty Tricks campaign and was in a position to delve pretty deeply into what was going on here.

"Virtually everyone who was involved in this at every level had a Giuliani connection, and no real connection to the other Republican candidates. Two of the partners at the law firm at the law firm that was responsible for this were Giuliani contributors, including Charles Bell who contributed $1300 days before the initiative was filed and he's the deputy treasurer. You have Charles V. Hurth III, who does not have a history of political giving--I believe he had given a hundred dollars to a state senator prior to this and he gave $2,000 to Giuliani. You have John Wilcox, who was the spokesperson for Hurth, who comes out of the Bill Simon organization. Bill Simon is a Co-Chair in California for the Giuliani campaign as well as a policy advisor. Kevin Eckerly, the spokesperson for the effort is someone who has been quoted in the press being supportive of Giuliani and the Giuliani campaign. And again, when you went through all of these folks, each and every time, virtually every road ultimately led back to Giuliani.

"And, you know, I've said before, I'm originally from the state of Maine. You to bed at night, there's no snow on the ground, you wake up and there's snow on the ground. You can pretty safely conclude that it snowed. In an effort like this if everyone who is involved are connected to one Presidential campaign and they continue to gather signatures and you wake up the next day and find out that the person who in fact was funding it was indeed from the Giuliani campaign, I think one conclusion that one can safely draw is that it was the Giuliani campaign that was ultimately behind this.

"When you have a series of shadowy Nixonian front groups that are created to directly impact who the next President of the United States is going to be, then that's something that is a cause for concern, not only of voters here in California, but all across the country.

I think it's safe to say that the string-pullers in the Republican Party would be happy with Giuliani as a nominee, mainly because of his faux-moderate stances that play well outside the base, and his willingness to play as dirty as anybody this side of Karl Rove. "Nixonian" is the key word. This decade has been filled with ratfucking and voter suppression and all sorts of attempts to influence state and national elections. The Republicans have time and again seized on the creakiness of the election systems, which vary from state to state, and used everything at their disposal to turn the system against Democrats and toward their own candidates.

You can absolutely see that Giuliani's core message that he wants played in the media is that he's electable. His strategy memo specifically lists California as one of the states which would suddenly become competitive were he the nominee:

More importantly, the Mayor puts blue states like Connecticut, New Jersey, Wisconsin, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington in play. Pat Toomey, President of the Club for Growth, states that "If Giuliani wins the nomination, he would be a fascinating candidate in that he really re-draws the map." Toomey points out that Giuliani could carry New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania ‘"so he changes the political calculus of the Electoral College dramatically."9 And Mayor Giuliani may be the only Republican candidate that can now compete and win in Ohio against Hillary Clinton.

If that were the case, he wouldn't need to finance a dirty trick from behind the scenes that would deliver 20-odd electoral votes to him. If the states were truly in play, he would play by the rules. No, this is an attempt to put this map-changing bug in the ear of the media so they're not surprised by a victory in some blue state, whether it came about legally or not. It's the classic strategy of an ultra-confidence public veneer, combined with manipulating results behind the scenes.

There's already an FEC complaint filed, along with a request to refer the matter to the US Justice Department. But those investigations will go nowhere, even in the off chance that they are initiated. This is something that will have to be investigated and dug up. Take Initiative America was created in one day and suddenly received a $175,000 infusion of cash from a Giuliani fundraiser (and the date of this transaction was - and this is precious - September 11). Considering that this initiative would impact the Presidential election, no agent of a campaign could contribute more than $2,300. Furthermore, he violated disclosure requirements. Here's some highlights from the press conference following the formal FEC complaint.

So we would very much like the FEC to look into this, to determine what Mr. Giuliani knew, when he knew it, what conversations he and Mr. Singer had about the contribution, about Take Initiative America; how Take Initiative America was created, whose idea was it? Did Mr. Hurth talk to Mr. Singer? How did it come about that $175,000 was transferred the day that the corporation was established? There had to be some coordination there and we'd like the FEC to into it.

The other thing we'd like the FEC to ask is: Where did the $175,000 come from? Did it come from Mr. Singer personally" Or did it come from a corporation that he controls?

If it came from a corporation that he controls, then that too would be impermissible because Federal candidates prohibited under Federal law from soliciting or accepting a contribution from a corporation.

We're also concerned that there may have been coordination between the Giuliani campaign and Californians for Equal Representation. In fact, Marty Wilson, the chief fundraiser for Equal Representation, who resigned just last week, was quoted in the press as saying that he had "heard" that the Giuliani people were interested in the effort in California, and that they were praying that it would commit--it obviously refers to the money.

This feels like one of those things that starts small and just balloons. Paul Singer has a colorful past; he's known as a "vulture," someone who buys up debt from poor countries and demands payment at a substantial markup. I'm certain more can be gleaned about this guy, his connection to the Giuliani campaign, and what Rudy himself may have known about his involvement with the Dirty Tricks campaign in California. These are the kind of things that take down political careers.

California Notes

Here are some notes from a few stories I'd been meaning to get to all week.

• Frank Russo had a good recap of the initial hearing from the three-judge panel charged with finding a solution to California's prison crisis. This panel may result in the early release of thousands of prisoners to reduce overcrowding. The panel does not appear to be able to be swayed by political expediency (unlike the Legislature for the past 30 years), saying "This is a judicial and not a political process." It is clear that the torturous conditions in California jails and the inability to deliver even basic medical care violates the Constitution and will be dealt with swiftly. Even the Correctional Officers union has come around to the point of view that reductions in the prison population are needed. Only a cowardly, leadership-challenged political class refuses to face reality.

• Here's a fun tale of health care at the Tribune Company, parent of the LA Times and local TV station KTLA:

The Tribune Company has come up with a new tactic to cut costs and annoy the hell out of its employees — again. It seems that everyone on the staff at the L.A. Times (and so I assume KTLA) has to prove that their spouses and children really are theirs, and thus eligible for medical benefits. Though wasteful and mildly insulting it sounds easy enough, but apparently it's not. They call it a "Mercer Audit" and its demands have some staffers in an uproar.

They're demanding documentation (a birth certificate or marriage license, I guess) with a deadline of days from actually giving employees notice. I'm sure in the boardroom this is considered "sound business sense."

• At our Calitics Quarterly event, I talked with Digby about her contention that the GOP is targeting California as the big blue state where Rudy Giuliani can break through and get the paradigm-shifting win they need. It's true that the big hitters in the state have all come out for him - although the Pete Wilson endorsement garnered all of three reporters to the announcement.



• Continuing on this theme, a new SUSA poll shows head-to-head general election matchups for all of the top three candidates on either side, and in California, it shakes out like this: against Romney or Thompson, all the Democrats win by between 15 and 33 points. Against Giuliani, Clinton beats him by 20, but Obama wins by only for and Edwards by only 2. Wow. Of course, Giuliani is still riding the name ID coattails. However, his clear penchant for wanting to be competitive in California is evidenced by the fact that the mystery fundraiser for the dirty tricks initiative was the chairman of Giuliani's northeast fundraising operation.

• Rik Hertzberg had an interesting footnote to the possible demise of the dirty tricks initiative:

Why would Schwarzenegger want to shoot down a proposal that has the potential of delivering the White House to his party next year?

My guess is that he isn’t losing any sleep over the probability of a G.O.P. Presidential rout, which would make him the indisputably most important Republican in America. His current port tack, on issues like health care and climate change, suggests that he knows which way the wind is blowing. Doubtless he would rather be swept along than swept away.

Then there’s this. Anybody remember the first Republican debate, on MSNBC back in May? I’ll bet Arnold does. He was in the front row at the Reagan Library when Chris Matthews asked the ten candidates if they would support changing the Constitution ever so slightly to make naturalized citizens eligible for the presidency. The vote onstage was eight to one against. (The one was Giuliani; McCain said he’d “seriously consider it,” which I count as an abstention.) Eight to one, in other words, in favor of crushing the ultimate and perfectly legitimate dream of the distinguished Governor of California.

If I were Schwarzenegger, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help these bozos.

• Finally, tonight at midnight, the UAW Local 2865 contract runs out. While the United Auto Workers settled their contract dispute with GM, Local 2865, which covers over 12,000 academic student employees at UC campuses (TAs, for example) has made little headway with UC. You can read all about it here. The whole idea of student employee unions gets lost in the shuffle, but they are being royally screwed, and are planning to file lots of unfair labor practices charges, in addition to keeping negotiations going and reserving the right to strike. We ought to support their efforts.

The Power Of Activism

The LA Times is reporting on its website that the dirty tricks campaign is dead in the water:

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California's 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday's print editions, The Times' Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

The reality is hundreds of thousands of signatures must be gathered by the end of November to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot.

That's actually not quite true, the signatures have until February, I believe, so there's plenty of time for them to restart this. But the money coming in to fund this thing was extremely dirty, and once it was exposed maybe they said "to hell with this pipe dream."

If this holds, it's important to note that we did this. The Democratic Party, a big-money independent campaign, and the 'roots all worked toward the same goal on this one, for once. This got about 200x the attention that any initiative I've ever seen pre-ballot. The governor was repeatedly put on the spot. The media was alerted over and over. The netroots rose up to fight this from day one and a lot of very talented people put in a lot of early effort. I think that the backers recognized that this fastball wasn't going to slip by the outside corner.

Making noise early WORKS. This doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal to begin with - it was. But they understood that they were about to arouse a sleeping giant, and energize California Democrats like never before. Hopefully, we can STILL do that, dirty trick or no dirty trick.

UPDATE: The full story is now up. Here. Hiltachk and spokesman Kevin Eckery apparently didn't like the undisclosed nature of contributions.

The campaign received only one sizable donation -- $175,000. That is less than one-tenth of the $2 million typically needed to gather sufficient signatures to qualify a measure for the California ballot.

The donation arrived on Sept. 11, one day after Missouri attorney Charles A. Hurth III created a company called TIA Take Initiative America that served as the vehicle for the donation. But the individual donors to the organization were not known.

Hiltachk said he had demanded that "Take Initiative America fully disclose the source of its funds," and said he was assured it would make such a disclosure soon.

"Nonetheless," Hiltachk said, "I am deeply troubled by their failure to disclose prior to my demand and by their failure to disclose to me or to our committee that Take Initiative America had been formed just one day prior to making the contribution. . . .

"I am not willing to proceed under such circumstances," Hiltachk said. "Therefore, I am resigning my role in this campaign."

Eckery added: "There's no reason to be cute on campaign contributions. We had nothing to hide, and the public has every right to know."

No Dirty Tricks - The Movie

I was up half the night putting together this little video for the Courage Campaign's effort to fight this Republican dirty trick to split California's electoral votes and steal the Presidential election. We got a handful of semi-famous bloggers together (Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake, John Amato from Crooks and Liars, Howie Klein from Down With Tyranny, some Kos diarists, and more) and sent a message that we can fight this thing, energize California Democrats, and make the Republicans wish they never brought it up in the first place.



The Courage Campaign is setting up a conference call featuring Bradley Whitford of The West Wing to discuss the next steps. You can RSVP for it at the link.

From The People Who Brought You The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth...

The San Jose Mercury News has delved deeper (reg. req'd) into the connections between the GOP law firm pushing the dirty trick initiative to steal the 2008 Presidential election, and past ratfucking operations of years past. At the top of the list is the key financier from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Lawyers behind a California ballot proposal that could benefit the 2008 Republican presidential nominee have ties to a Texas homebuilder who financed attacks on Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Charles H. Bell and Thomas Hiltachk's (Arnold's former personal lawyer --ed.) law firm banked nearly $65,000 in fees from a California-based political committee funded almost solely by Bob J. Perry that targeted Democrats in 2006. Perry, a major Republican donor, contributed nearly $4.5 million to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that made unsubstantiated but damaging attacks on Kerry three years ago.

The Perry-financed committee in California, the Economic Freedom Fund, continued to spend money this year, mostly on legal expenses tied to an ongoing legal dispute in Indiana over phone calls made to voters in 2006. It lists the Sacramento law office's address as its home and its Web site directs contributions to the firm, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk. In addition, Bell serves as the committee's treasurer.

I highlighted that other bit because it's significant that Perry also financed the major dirty trick of the 2006 election: numerous illegal robocalls to voters in swing districts, pretending to be from Democrats. So the same law firm trying to split California's electoral votes have taken cash from the major Republican dirty tricks operations over the last several years.

It's unclear whether Perry has given to this current power grab. But with his name in the rolodex, it would be absurd to think he won't.

Here's a little more on the law firm, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk:

Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk is one of the most politically involved law firms in the state. According to a news story on its Web site, Bell keeps a life-sized cardboard image of President Bush in his office. Federal records show the firm does legal work for a host of political committees, most with Republican or business ties.

"It comes across as a power grab," said Republican analyst Allan Hoffenblum, who predicted the proposal would likely fail in the Democratic-leaning state. Even Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger offered a lukewarm assessment of the idea.

Here's Digby on the power grab.

They really couldn't be more obvious.

I suspect this is as much mind fuck as anything, and perhaps a simple desire to force Democrats to spend money on something they don't want to spend it on, but you cannot take that for granted. These people have no compunction about cheating. They've shown that. Look what it got us in 2000. And if they succeed again, the press will just laugh and giggle about haircuts and cleavage and tell everyone to get over it. Just like last time. And the time before. And the time before that.

This is about spending money, certainly, but I do think it could backfire by energizing California and national Democrats in a way that they are rarely energized about anything. If we build a broad-based movement around first fighting this dirty trick and then making them pay, they could rue the day they ever put this out. Courage Campaign is raising money to fight this at the grassroots level, with low-dollar, broad-based donations. They've already raised $7,000 from over 250 contributors within less than 24 hours. Let's get to 1,000.

This is something that impacts everyone around the country. A strong people-powered movement in California will resonate everywhere, and this can be the spark that will light that movement. Let's not let the type of tactics we saw with the Swifties predominate. Let's make these thieves pay.

UPDATE: It was a blogger, our own Frank Russo of the California Progress Report who exposed Bell, McAndrews and HIltachk's involvement with the Swiftboaters. If you want to see more digging like this, more people-powered exposure of these dirty tricksters, give to the Courage Campaign fund to stop this power grab in its tracks. You can give at the donation box to your right through my ActBlue page.