FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS-- REALLY GOOD NEWS: THE REPUBLICANS MAY STILL TRY TO STEAL THE ELECTION, BUT IT WON'T HAPPEN IN CALIFORNIA
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It looks like all that work by the Courage Campaign and the Calitics netroots has paid off-- big time! This evening the L.A. Times reported that the dirty tricks initiative to split up the California electoral votes by counties (without a corresponding split up of the electoral votes in Florida and Texas) has failed. I had heard that polling for it shows that only one in five Californians would vote for it. But the Times says the backers are pulling the plug because they have no money to hire people to get their petitions signed. and, believe me, this was never going to be a volunteer effort.
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 Times, of course, tries assigning credit to some big money/Insider Hillary backers. It has more to do with the grassroots action against it, the organizing efforts of the Courage Campaign and the fact that the shady Republicans behind it, Californians For Equal Representation are a bunch of cronies of David Dreier's from Missouri and their actual agenda was the theft of the election for Giuliani.
THIS CAN'T SHOCK ANYONE WHO HAS FOLLOWED GIULIANI'S CAREER
Although his staffers are professing ignorance, it was a Giuliani pal and fundraiser, NY hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who was putting up the money to rig California's electoral system. Singer has donated well over a million dollars to Republicans and right wing outfits... and to Joe Lieberman.
Labels: California, Republican dirty tricks
5 Comments:
This is actually pretty big news. I was convinced that the Repugs in CA were going to pull this off. Congrats to the Courage Campaign.
I had the same feeling, Lisa. And while it cost a pile o' cash to beat the savages back, it LOOKED like it was going to take many, many such piles, not to mention all the time and energy that would have been devoted to this.
Ken
One Burning Question: Do we know that the initiative is truly dead?
While I'm relieved at this news, I think we must continue to watch for signs of a "revival." According to the LA Times article, "There remained a chance that the measure could be revived, but only if a major donor were to come forward to fund the petition drive. However, time is short to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed by the end of November. And backers said Thursday that they believed the measure was all but dead, at least for the 2008 election." They could still find a major donor for the 2008 election cycle or restart the effort for 2010.
Silly me, I thought Republicans HATED the Initiative & Referendum Option--good heavens, we can't let the SHEEPLE decide things, can we?
Thanks for highlighting this story. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a billionaire GOP supporter and member of Giuliani's finance committee was the big money behind the initiative. [[LINK]]
I've also written a blog post on some interesting tidbits about the other major players Hiltachk and Hurth, both veterans of electoral shenanigans. Mr. Hurth was also involved, believe it or not, in an ass-biting incident. [LINK]
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