Friday, October 17, 2014

Fred Upton Cancels The One Debate He Had Agreed To With Paul Clements-- And It Wasn't Even About A Fan

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Fred Upton only agreed, reluctantly, to one debate— and only after Paul Clements started gaining tremendous traction in the southwest Michigan 6th congressional district. Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune that once— but no longer— was the biggest employer in the area, doesn’t like being questioned or reminded of his record. Shipping all those Whirlpool jobs— i.e., Republican-backed “outsourcing”— doesn’t go over well with his constituents.

Western Michigan along the 94 in towns from Three Oaks, New Buffalo, Sawyer up through Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, and over to the 196 through Lake Michigan Beach, South Haven and Saugatuck is one of the most environmentally sophisticated areas of the country and they are not supporters of Upton’s GOP agenda of despoiling the natural beauty of one of America’s most beautiful areas for the benefit of a few wealthy corporate exploiters.

Yesterday, though, Upton suddenly canceled the one debate. He claims it interfered with the Ebola hearings in his committee, which ended at 3pm and had been scheduled almost 2 weeks ago. Yes, the hearings ended in plenty of time for Upton to hustle his ass back to Lake Michigan College— if he wanted to— for the 8:15 PM debate. Mark Miller, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party's 6th District Committee: “Last month, he ducked a debate request in Kalamazoo, and now he's cancelled the debate he agreed to over a month ago in Berrien County. The hearing he cites as a conflict started at noon, and he's known about it for two weeks. The debate was scheduled to being at 8:15 PM. I'm not a travel agent, but a quick search online shows multiple flights available that could have allowed Congressman Upton to keep his commitments to the people of southwest Michigan. I am sure that Congressman Upton has more than enough money for a flight after taking millions from the special interests, including over one million dollars from the health insurance industry. Members of Congress should be able to do more than one thing at once.”

Upton is starting to unravel in the face of the first campaign to ever give him a real challenge. He had been counting on his fellow Establishment shill, DCCC chairman Steve Israel, to protect him again— and Israel has put tremendous effort into preventing Democratic donors and PACs from helping Paul Clements. But the slimy Israel was unable to stop Lawrence Lessig’s non-partisan, good government, crowd-sourced operation, the MayDay PAC, from jumping into the race to finally let MI-06 voters know the truth about what Upton has been doing in DC and how he’s changed since they first elected him in 1986.

Upton has now focused his campaign on inchherent attacks against Lessig, calling him— falsely— “a Harvard billionaire,” whatever that’s supposed to convey. This race is turning into the single most important House race in the country— one that pits The People against the Beltway Establishment (Upton’s GOP crooks and Israel’s Democratic crooks).

Republican heavyweight Mark McKinnon, the former George W. Bush adviser, who co-founded MayDay PAC with Lessig: “Fred Upton obviously couldn't sit still while we told the truth about his record of putting the big-money special interests ahead of the people so he put up this misleading ad. At least he's wasting a bunch of that special interest money he has raised over the years. Chairman Upton is welcome to air all the ads he wants, and we intend to keep telling the voters of Southwest Michigan that we can't afford Fred Upton anymore." 
Yesterday, Fred Upton’s campaign released a new ad making provably false claims that Fred Upton has protected seniors’ access to Medicare and worked to secure coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

The truth is that Fred Upton is not on the side of regular people:

        Upton has taken nearly $10 million in special interest money from PAC’s.
        Upton voted against legislation that would have allowed lower drug prices and later voted in favor of the Ryan Budget, which was described by ABC News as the ‘end of Medicare as we know it’.
       Upton has also been steadfast in support for changing federal health insurance law to eliminate insurance coverage for some of the most vulnerable patients.

MYTH: “Fred Upton has always been on our side.”

FACT: Upton has received nearly $10 Million from special interests.

According to records maintained by CQ Political MoneyLine, Upton had received $9,996,939 from PACs during his career.

MYTH: Upton is “Working to protect seniors’ access to life-saving medications.”

FACT: In 2007 Upton Voted against Medicare Prescription Drug Negotiation Act. According to Govtrack.us, the bill “require[s] the Secretary of HHS to negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers the prices that may be charged to prescription drug plan sponsors and Medicare Advantage organizations [Roll Number 23, 1/12/07; Govtrack.us]

FACT: According to the New York Times, this proposal “would allow medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for millions of older Americans.” [New York Times, 4/18/07]

MYTH: Upton is “Fighting for and winning a Medicare prescription drug plan that saved seniors money on prescription drugs.”

FACT: In 2011, Upton Voted for the Ryan Budget, which would have turned Medicare into a voucher Program. [House Vote 277, 4/15/11]

FACT: According to ABC News, “Critics Have Called Ryan’s 2011 Proposal, the ‘End of Medicare as We Know It,’ and That’s True...Individuals Would Have to Pay More under His Plan.” [ABC News, 8/11/12]

FACT: In 2011, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that the typical 65-year-old’s out-of Pocket Expenses would more than double— from $6,150 to $12,500—in first year vouchers would apply. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/7/11]

MYTH: Upton is “fighting to ensure those with pre-existing conditions can stay covered. That’s the real Fred Upton, fighting for us.”

FACT: According to Upton’s Website, he “Supports Full Repeal of Obamacare…” [Upton.House.gov, 5/16/13]

FACT: According to the Kaiser Family Foundation “Obamacare Bars Insurers from Denying Coverage to People with Pre-Existing Conditions…Or Conditions that Began before Coverage Began.” [Kaiser Family Foundation, 10/1/13]
Right now Clements looks like he’s going to win handily in the Kalamazoo area. His campaign needs help with field operations in the western part of the district, where the Michigan Democratic Party isn’t doing anything. If you can volunteer, here the place. If you can contribute, this is the page.


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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Fred Upton Can't Hide From His Record-- Although He's Trying... As Well As Threatening Campaign Donors

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There are a lot of reasons Fred Upton should be replaced as the congressman from southwest Michigan (MI-06). Not the least of them is the calibre of Paul Clements, the progressive Democrat running for the seat. But polling shows is that the two reasons that most resonate among the district’s voters are that Upton has changed since they first sent him to Congress in 1986— and not for the better. He’s twisted himself into knots trying to stay on the good side of the Confederate extremists who have so much say over the House Republicans. So much so, that his voting record is now far too extreme for a moderate district like the sixth.

And worse than his voting record itself, is his record of leadership— or lack of leadership— in the crucial issues that come before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that John Boehner gave him to chair. He’s taken immense sums of money from corporate lobbyists and directly from the very special interests over which he’s supposed to being exercising oversight. He truly has become the fox guarding the hen house.

Before the House Republicans shut down the government, Upton said he thought it would be a mistake and correctly predicted that it would hurt the most vulnerable Americans the worst. His predication came true but he didn’t even have the courage of his convictions to oppose it. He went right along with the Tea Party fanatics like Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, Steve Stockman and Paul Broun in voting to shut down the government.

Now that polls show that 56% of MI-06 voters are less likely to vote for Upton because of that vote, he keeps trying to turn the discussion in a different direction— how he voted to reopen the government, never mentioning he had voted to shut it down over his crazy anti-Obamacare mania. Media in the district has been very clear that he made a big mistake. He refuses to acknowledge it and refuses to tell the voters he won’t do it again.

This week Blue America began another Google ads campaign reminding voters in MI-06 that Upton has changed and has already voted to shut down the government— and that he can’t be trusted to not do the same thing again after the midterms. The ad is up top and Blue America doesn’t get charged for the thousands of people who see it, only for the people in the district who watch at least 30 seconds of the spot itself. It’s a very cost-effective way to get the message out and we want to ask you to consider chipping in for the effort. We want to keep it running right up until November 4th. If you’d like to help, our Independent Expenditure Committee is right here… and there are no limitations on the amount you can contribute.



If you watched the now-notorious interview Upton did with the editor of the Kalamazoo Gazette your jaw may have dropped at many of Upton's self-serving lies. But there was one moment Ryan Grim caught yesterday for HuffPo readers that wasn't a lie-- Upton's pique at donors to Lawrence Lessig's crowd-sourced PAC. Some of the crowd were Silicon Valley tycoons and Upton has been treating them and their special interests very well on his important committee and is now threatening retaliation for the contributions to MayDay PAC. Ecuse me... Upton is too nice a guy to threaten anyone-- at least directly. He has a well-known political thug who's doing it for him, GOP slime bucket, former and future crooked lobbyist, Gary Andres. "Andres," wrote Grim, has been "personally... calling the CEOs of major Silicon Valley tech companies, hammering them for coming after Upton and spooking Mayday's donors, who worry their companies will get rougher treatment when and if Upton survives." Maybe they should double down. Blue America is going after Upton too-- and we can accept unlimited amounts here.
Upton himself has reached out to the donors, he told a local editorial board during a livestreamed interview on Friday. "I do know some of the folks that funded the PAC and, as I've talked to them, they are, or they were under the illusion that this was a group that was trying to focus on dysfunction and taking it out, getting people that can work together. And the people that I've talked to, some of them have put six figures into this PAC. They are really ashamed," Upton said in the interview. "They are distraught. They said they were taken for a ride. It's too late. They bought the stuff and it came out of the blue."

They may indeed be distraught. Upton has significant power as the chairman of the committee that regulates Silicon Valley, and the tech CEOs didn't anticipate having him on their bad side when they chipped in to the PAC. Yet any major effort to challenge the status quo was bound to run up against one power center or another.

..."Who do you think orchestrated Shayes-Meehan, the bipartisan bill? It was Fred Upton," Upton told the Kalamazoo Gazette editorial board. "I'm not a lawyer. I'm sorry that the Supreme Court struck quite a bit of it."

An adviser to the Mayday PAC countered that Upton, whatever his past support, has not signed on to any of the campaign finance reform bills, either Democratic or Republican ones, now in Congress. Upton also voted against the DISCLOSE Act, which would have rolled back some of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision he says he disagreed with. (The Mayday adviser added that while the super PAC's spending against Upton has been reported as $1.5 million, it is in fact closer to $2 million.)

Upton told the editorial board he'd soon be willing to give the names of the CEOs who were ashamed of their contributions. "I don't wanna give you names yet. I'll be glad to," he said.

In his interview, Upton noted his support of immigration as well, adding that the super PAC's aim is inconsistent. "This is a PAC that's allegedly taking big money out of politics, yet they're spending a million and a half dollars against me. That's a little bit contrary to start with," he said.

The irony doesn't stop there. Upton was asked whether the sizable amount of corporate PAC contributions he takes makes him unable to independently oversee those corporations. He cited the Mayday PAC's spending, which is aimed at reducing the overall influence of money in politics, as an example of why he needs to raise so much money.

"I have to be prepared. I've always said, in a campaign, you've gotta be like a Boy Scout," he said. "We've gotta be prepared. We didn't know that this PAC was gonna come back with a million and a half dollars against me, literally in like a two week span, but we had to be ready for it, and you know what? We are."

What kind of campaign finance reform would Upton support?

"We need maybe a code of ethics," he said, in which organizations would pledge not to run negative ads.

Help us keep that ad up top in front of MI-06 voters right through election day. Any amount will help-- right here but Silicon Valley moguls, can I suggest $5,000 increments?


UPDATE: Clements Responds To Upton's Shady Tactics

"Chairman Upton's actions and those of his government employees are unacceptable. It's not enough that Fred Upton raises millions of dollars from the very companies he regulates, he then has the staff director of the Energy and Commerce Committee threaten the leaders of those companies when they support efforts to fix our broken campaign finance system.

"Members of Congress bullying the very companies they regulate to influence the political process is the definition of corruption. Fred Upton's behavior is a prime example of how our system is broken and a case study in corruption.

"It's no surprise that Congressman Upton refuses to debate me in Southwest Michigan, when he is spending his time in Washington making phone calls to Silicon Valley CEOs in order to chide them for donating to a good government group that supports me. Every day on the campaign trail, I hear how Congressman Upton has changed. This is just another example of how he is more concerned for his own future than the future of his constituents. Fred Upton needs to stop shaking down corporate donors and answer to the people of Michigan."

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Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Will Michigan's Whirlpool Plutocrat Get So Fed Upton That He Retires?

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The old Fred

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) has had a very cushy life and a very cushy political career, both based on being born into the 1%. He's the son of one of Michigan's wealthiest families, self-styled aristocrats with a sense of entitlement that stretches from the peak of Mount Arvon to Luna Pier in Monroe County. Fred is the poster child for someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth and his political rise inside the GOP was always based on family connections, never based on anything remotely resembling merit or talent. His grandfather founded Whirlpool, once the biggest employers in the southwest Michigan-- and a major employer throughout the Midwest-- and his heirs took that to mean that they were the feudal barons of the area. Fred's political career began with a patronage appointment for the 23 year old to the staff of local Congressman David Stockman. In 1986, he won his seat by beating Stockman's successor, fanatic right-wing sociopath Mark Deli Siljander, who was indicted for a role in Islamic terrorism (and eventually pled guilty).

Early on Upton took on the pose of a social moderate. He never cared about anything like that-- just about protecting the 1% from having to pay a fair share. Starting in 2002, right-wing extremists-- usually religious fanatics-- became disenchanted with Upton. State Senator Dale Shugars, another far right psychopath, primaried him and lost. Last year former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, an anti-Choice fanatic, and a deranged perennial candidate for anything that comes up, primaried Upton with Tea Party and Libertarian backing and won 43& of the GOP vote. Scared for his life, Upton immediately moved significantly to the right, so far to the right that he's now completely out of step with the majority of Michigan voters.

Another big change is that Upton has never had a serious, well-financed Democratic opponent-- even though the Kalamazoo-based district gave majorities to Obama (54%), Levin and other Democrats. The DCCC has always protected Upton-- valuing his faux moderation-- much the same way they always protected Paul Ryan in Wisconsin. This year, DCCC or not, Upton has pulled a real populist, New Deal Democrat opponent, John Waltz.
Over the weekend Politico reported on what they called The War On Fred Upton. "The ferocious yearlong debate over the nation’s fiscal woes has put Rep. Fred Upton in the political crosshairs, with attacks coming from all sides," writes Alex Isenstadt. "Liberals castigate the Michigan Republican as a tool of corporate interests hellbent on eliminating entitlements while protecting the rich from tax increases. Conservatives torch him as a closet liberal who isn’t on board with the GOP’s single-minded push to slash federal spending.
As one of 12 members on the high-powered, deficit-cutting supercommittee, Upton has been thrust into the national spotlight. But the stakes are decidedly higher for him than for the other lawmakers on the committee. None of the panel’s six senators will face reelection in 2012, and unlike Upton, none of the other five House members occupy districts that are even remotely competitive.

“Because a lot of people have placed a lot of hopes and aspirations on what the supercommittee will do, those hopes and aspirations will be projected on the people serving on the supercommittee,” said Grover Norquist, the influential conservative activist and Americans for Tax Reform president, who has been complimentary of Upton. “There will be people shouting at folks like Upton.”

On popular liberal blogs like DownWithTyranny, Upton, whose family founded Whirlpool Corp., is slammed as a “plutocrat” and accused of jumping into bed with the “radical right.” On RedState, a widely read online conservative bulletin board, posters lament Upton’s presence on the panel, with one writing that the Michigan Republican is afraid of being “portrayed as robbing seniors.”

The new Fred

The supercommittee doesn’t have to reveal its recommendations until just before Thanksgiving, but whether the panel cuts spending in a way that pleases conservatives will go a long way toward determining Upton’s political fortunes. This week, the liberal-aligned Michigan Nurses Association launched a radio and billboard ad campaign slamming Upton for being “in Wall Street’s pocket.”

But pressure has also come from conservatives. On Thursday, Club for Growth, the Washington-based anti-tax group that frequently supports primary challenges to GOP incumbents, huddled with Republican Jack Hoogendyk, a former Michigan state representative who performed unexpectedly well against Upton in 2010 and is considering running again.

Hoogendyk, who held Upton to 57 percent of the vote in 2010 despite being outspent nearly 18 to one, told Politoco that he will make a decision on whether to challenge Upton after the panel completes its deliberations. “What comes out of the supercommittee will obviously be a factor on a lot of things, including whether I run,” he said.

Barney Keller, a Club for Growth spokesman, said the group came away from the meeting impressed by Hoogendyk. Keller said that Upton “has a very long record of voting for bigger government that is inconsistent with our policy goals.”

What do Club for Growth and the clownish Hoogendyk want? Well, Hoogendyk wants a job of course, but the nuts at the Club for Growth have agreed to back him if Upton compromises with conservative Democrats and goes for Obama's "grand bargain," which tears huge, deadly holes in the social safety net in return for some paltry and very temporary tax increases on a small part of the 1%. Yesterday Chuck Schumer predicted the SuperCommittee would fail, mostly because Upton is too scared to move in a mainstream direction. Even with this week's Washington Post-ABC News poll reporting that most moderates and independents now agree that the Republican Party is sabotaging Obama's good faith attempts to fix the economy-- an economy, remember, that was driven into the ditch by Republican anti-regulatory mania-- Upton is, basically, hiding under his desk hoping the whole mess will just disappear and he can continue to rack in immense amounts of money from lobbyists and corporate PACs looking to trade some campaign cash for his services. If you'd like to help retire Upton and replace him with a blue collar, New Deal Democrat, please consider contributing to John Waltz's campaign through ActBlue.

SuperCommittee-oids Fred & Patty want you to eat their shit-- and smile

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Monday, November 28, 2011

Fred Upton Has To Decide-- Is He More Incompetent Or More Corrupt?

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K Street's sleaziest lobbyist, Gary Andres (l), found the perfect home with Fred Upton

For all I can I can tell, economist and author David Korten may have never heard of Michigan plutocrat Fred Upton. I haven't noticed that he's mentioned Upton in his newest book, Agenda For A New Economy. But I did notice that in a subchapter, "Winning The Class War," he couldn't have done a better job in describing Upton's political career. The fortunate son of the family that founded Whirlpool generations ago, Upton has devoted his political life entirely to the service of the one percent. Korten doesn't flinch from describing characters like Upton as being engaged in a brutal class war against the rest of us.
Wall Street has been engaged in class warfare pure and simple. It uses its control of the money supply and its political influence to ensure that Wall Street players capture virtually all the benefits of productivity gains in the Main Street economy as interest, dividends, and financial service fees...

This effort to achieve an upward redistribution of wealth was so successful that, from 1980 to 2005, the highest earning 1 percent of the U.S. population increased its share of taxable income from 9 percent to 19 percent. Most of that gain went to the top tenth of 1 percent and came from the bottom 90 percent. In 2007, the top 400 U.S. tax returns reported an average annual income of $345 million; $12.7 million was the average for the top 427 returns in 955, adjusted to 2007 dollars.

The measures used to achieve this remarkable outcome included managing monetary policy to maintain a target level of unemployment, managing trade and tax policies to facilitate the corporate outsourcing of jobs to low-wage economies, suppressing labor unions, limiting the enforcement of law against hiring undocumented immigrant workers, and using accounting tricks that understate inflation to suppress inflation-indexed Social Security increases.

<--- Yep, that's Fred Upton. And just as the NY Times was reporting that this year wage and salaries as a percentage of American GDP hit a new low: 43.7%-- the lowest since 1929-- the Kalamazoo Gazette opened Upton up to a whole new line of criticism. Upton is front and center in one of the most grotesque instances of revolving door corruption in modern American history. Meet Gary Andres, the Solyndra lobbyist-- one of K Street's sleaziest operators-- who Upton persuaded to take a $235,500 a year paycut to go from working at Dutko (for $418,000 annually) to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (as chief of staff for $172,500 annually).

And Upton knew exactly the kind of slimy operative he was engaging.
Upton said in his new role, Andres will take a lead role on the Republicans' efforts to repeal the White House's healthcare bill. The GOP is also expected to fight any new climate change regulations, and the committee should serve as ground zero for those confrontations.

"For over two decades, Gary has been a leading voice in Republican policy, always seeking solutions to advance our principles to limit the size and scope of government," Upton said in a statement.

"Gary knows how to focus like a laser beam to get the job done. He is one of the most respected, most knowledgeable individuals in Republican policy who has advised Presidents and Republican Leaders through the years and has the demeanor and relationships to help advance our agenda."

Andres previous served as deputy assistant for legislative affairs to the first President Bush and was an adviser to President George W. Bush's transition team. He currently services as vice chairman of public policy and research at the lobbying firm Dutko World Wide.

Andres has contributed over $100,000 to Republican politicians-- including Upton-- since 2008, particularly to Members of Congress with suspect ethical standards who were in positions to further the special interests of his clients, like Boehner, Upton, Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Connie Mack (R-FL), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Dave Camp (R-MI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Joe Barton (R-TX), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and John McCain (R-AZ). Previous to that-- from 1990 to 2006-- he contributed over a quarter million dollars to the same calibre of corrupt congressmen willing to sell out their constituents for a few thousand dollars. He donated tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing PACs and thousands directly to a rogues gallery of corrupt Republicans from Tom DeLay (R-TX), Don Young (R-AK) and John Ensign (R-NV) to George Allen (R-VA), J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) Ed Schrock (R-VA), and Mark Foley (R-FL), each of whom has been involved in shocking-- even by Washington standards-- ethics scandals. Most of the biggest recipients of his legalistic bribes have been driven from office for their criminal and/or ethical conduct. And, now he works for Upton.

Upton... the guy who has, along with career criminal Darrell Issa, made trying to blame Solyndra's bankruptcy on Obama. I wonder why he's so hysterical about it-- or I used to wonder. Now I think I know why... that old subterfuge of getting people misdirected and off the scent. Yeah, I forgot to mention: Upton's boy Andres was a top Solyndra lobbyist. And now Upton has to decide if he's going to plead incompetence or corruption when he's investigated about why he hired someone as conflicted as Andres. Of course, Upton's pretty conflicted himself... always has been. In fact, while he was criticizing the administration for the Bush-initiated failed loan guarantee to the firm Solyndra, he pressured the Energy Department to approve funding assistance for a Michigan solar company, United Solar Ovonics, that said last week it's halting operations.
The loan was never approved by the Energy Department, but Upton’s advocacy for United Solar stands in contrast to his recent skepticism about the government’s clean-energy loan guarantee program.

“It is not the role of government to pick winners and losers,” Upton said in a statement in September regarding Solyndra. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

In 2009, Upton had also signed letters asking the Energy Department to provide financial assistance to automakers, a wind turbine maker, a biofuels refinery, a smart-grid project, a battery company and a water wave energy firm.

The Energy Department’s “job is to scrutinize applications and identify the best participants, and that’s what the Michigan delegation asked them to do,” said Alexa Marrero, a spokesman for Upton. “Many in Congress questioned whether the stimulus would produce the promised jobs. At the same time, members on both sides of the aisle wanted to see jobs created and folks put back to work, especially in Michigan.”

Congressional Republicans and the administration have sparred for weeks over Solyndra, with many lawmakers charging that the government has been wasting millions of taxpayer dollars funding businesses that never stood a chance.

Last September the Huffington Post reported on Andres' glaring conflict of interest which Upton completely ignored. Early this morning the Kalmazoo Gazette and the Huffington Post broke the story about the Upton/Andres shenanigans. I'll let you know when the House Ethics Committee gets to work on Upton. It's clear that federal prosecutors should also be made aware of the movements involving both Upton and Andres to determine if their actions warrant criminal conspiracy charges. Andres denies knowing Dutko was lobbying for Solyndra; Upton refuses to discuss anything about it with the press (suddenly.) Waltz's comment to the Gazette:
“Congressman Upton knows that Gary Andres was a lobbyist for Solyndra. He has not disclosed that nor has he asked Andres to recuse himself from leading investigations into this matter. We feel that Congressman Upton is guilty of a house ethics violation and should be investigated.”

Meanwhile, though, I want to be clear that Blue America endorsed John Waltz because of who he is, not because of how terrible is opponent is. Sure we've pointed out Upton's cascade of flaws all year, but the reason Blue America continues urging people to contribute to Waltz's campaign is because John is an ideal candidate for ordinary working families. He'll never be part of the conservative consensus of transpartisan corporate shills that have run the country into the ground on behalf of their 1% paymasters... like Fred Upton. Remember, Waltz was the only candidate endorsed by Blue America who "ex"-Blue Dog/DCCC Chair Steve Israel didn't invite to a candidates' forum in Washington last month. Israel's power flows from his ability to aggregate dirty cash from Wall Street, K Street and the institutions of the 1%. He probably doesn't feel especially comfortable when Democrats say things like what Waltz told us about OccupyWallStreet:
"What started out with a handful of folks on a windy day in Kalamazoo ended up growing into a protest with over 200 people as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talking to several folks I could tell that they were frustrated that the top one percent of this nation is being coddled while the rest of us are getting trampled on. I heard concerns that ranged from economics to education and they were focused on making a difference.

"It was an honor to take part in this day of action in Kalamazoo. While we marched the streets with the sound of chants and drums there were several folks who were honking in support. It appears that the sleeping masses have awoken and there is a sea change coming. Question is whether this can be sustained and the answer I heard was a resounding yes."

You won't hear anything like that from the Fred Uptons or the Steve Israels of the world.

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Thursday, January 24, 2019

Did Biden Cost Us A Seat In Michigan?

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Joe Biden by Nancy Ohanian

Matt Longjohn was a good solid progressive candidate last year in MI-06, the southwest Michigan district that is centered on Kalamazoo and includes all or part of 6 counties: Kalamazoo (the biggest and overwhelmingly blue), Berrien, Allegan, Van Buren, St. Joseph and Cass. Upton only managed to get 50.2% of the vote, his worst showing ever. Not one poll leading up to the election showed Upton hitting 50% and the last poll, from Change Research, had Longjohn beating him 42-40%. The Change Research polling for half a dozen tight races was extremely predictive, except in MI-06.

Upton, a hereditary multimillionaire, out-spent Longjohn $3,527,274 to $1,443,894. The DCCC largely ignored the race, as they did with nearly all progressive candidates, spending just $219,564. Did the DCCC kill the chance to replace Upton with a progressive? They had a role-- but apparently not as much as Joe Biden's! According to Alexander Burns' report, Biden's Paid Speech Buoyed The GOP In Midwest Battleground, Biden, well known as a virtual gaffe machine-- worse now that he's been getting increasingly senile-- stumbled into the MI-06 race and screwed it up for Longjohn, not on purpose, of course, but because he's still an asshole.

It was just before the election in November in one of the biggest and most crucial towns in the district, Benton Harbor in swingy Berrien County. Burns wrote that Biden "took the stage at Lake Michigan College as Representative Fred Upton, a long-serving Republican from the area, faced the toughest race of his career. But Mr. Biden was not there to denounce Mr. Upton. Instead, he was collecting $200,000 from the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan to address a Republican-leaning audience, according to a speaking contract obtained by the New York Times and interviews with organizers. The group, a business-minded civic organization, is supported in part by an Upton family foundation."


Biden stunned Democrats and elated Republicans by praising Mr. Upton while the lawmaker looked on from the audience. Alluding to Mr. Upton’s support for a landmark medical-research law, Mr. Biden called him a champion in the fight against cancer-- and “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with.”

Mr. Biden’s remarks, coming amid a wide-ranging discourse on American politics, quickly appeared in Republican advertising. The local Democratic Party pleaded with Mr. Biden to repair what it saw as a damaging error, to no avail. On Nov. 6, Mr. Upton defeated his Democratic challenger by four and a half percentage points.

As Mr. Biden considers a bid for the presidency in 2020, the episode underscores his potential vulnerabilities in a fight for the Democratic nomination and raises questions about his judgment as a party leader. Mr. Biden has attempted to strike a balance since leaving office, presenting himself as a unifying statesman who could unseat President Trump while also working to amass a modest fortune of several million dollars.

But Mr. Biden’s appearance in Michigan plainly set his lucrative personal activities at odds with what some Democrats saw as his duty to the party, linking him with a civic group seen as tilting to the right and undermining Democrats’ effort to defeat Mr. Upton, a powerful lawmaker who in 2017 helped craft a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Ac

Eric Lester, a retired physician who chaired the Democratic Party in Berrien County, Mich., during the midterms, said he viewed Mr. Biden’s supportive remarks about Mr. Upton as a betrayal. Mr. Lester, who attended the speech, said he had confronted an aide to Mr. Biden in the hallway, telling him the former vice president had badly damaged the Democratic cause.

“It just gives Fred Upton cover and makes it possible for him to continue to pretend to be a useful, bipartisan fellow,” Mr. Lester recalled saying, adding, “I entered the hall with positive feelings about Mr. Biden and felt very frustrated.”

Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and veteran of several presidential campaigns, said it was an open question whether voters in the party would punish candidates they see as overly friendly or cooperative with Republicans. He suggested that could be one of the defining pressures for Mr. Biden if he announces his candidacy.

“I really believe the country does not want to be at war with each other,” Mr. Trippi said. “But there is also the polarization going on, where people say: Damn it, I want to fight.”

Several people involved in planning the event said Mr. Upton, 65, had no role in arranging Mr. Biden’s appearance, and Mr. Upton said he was not involved. There is no evidence Mr. Biden was motivated to praise the lawmaker by anything other than sincere admiration, stemming from Mr. Upton’s role in crafting the 21st Century Cures Act after the death of Mr. Biden’s elder son, Beau, from cancer in 2015.

Bill Russo, a spokesman for Mr. Biden, said the research-funding legislation was the foundation of Mr. Biden’s relationship with Mr. Upton.

“It was one of the few bipartisan bills passed in an otherwise deeply divided and gridlocked Congress,” Mr. Russo said. “Vice President Biden believes to his core that you can disagree politically on a lot and still work together in good faith on issues of common cause-- like funding cancer research.”

Regarding Mr. Biden’s decision not to endorse Mr. Upton’s Democratic challenger, Matt Longjohn, Mr. Russo said the former vice president “received hundreds of requests for endorsements from all over the country and endorsed in 135 races this cycle where his impact could be greatest.”

Since leaving office, Mr. Biden has sought out opportunities to earn substantial income-- mainly through paid speeches and a multimillion-dollar book deal-- and his newfound wealth would be closely scrutinized in a presidential race. Mindful of Hillary Clinton’s stumbles in the 2016 presidential race, Mr. Biden has attempted to set guidelines for his activities that would minimize any political sensitivity, declining to give paid speeches to big banks or to accept foreign contributions to several nonprofit organizations he controls.

Mr. Biden has continued to pursue commercial activities while he is in the final stage of making a 2020 decision; he is scheduled to give a talk in Grand Prairie, Tex., a suburb of Dallas, on Thursday, as part of an extended tour promoting his 2017 book, Promise Me, Dad.

The speaking contract for Mr. Biden’s October appearance in Michigan suggests that the popular Democrat would have known he was addressing a Republican-leaning crowd. The speaking series was underwritten in part by organizations connected to Mr. Upton’s family: Among the biggest sponsors listed on the Economic Club’s website are the Whirlpool Corporation, which was co-founded by Mr. Upton’s grandfather, and the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, a family charity named for the same man.

The contract for Mr. Biden’s visit shows he was paid $200,000 for his appearance, including a $150,000 speaking fee and a $50,000 travel allowance. It also specifies that the audience would be “primarily older, conservative Republicans and local community members.” The document was disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request made by America Rising, a Republican group that conducts research on Democratic candidates.

It is unclear whether the fees Mr. Biden received in this case are standard for all his speeches. Mr. Biden’s aides have declined to confirm what his rates are for paid appearances, including the appearance in Michigan, or how much he has earned through paid speaking since leaving office. In at least one instance, his speaking bureau, Creative Artists Agency, offered a reduced rate of $100,000, plus travel expenses, to the University of Utah.

If Mr. Biden were to have charged a similar range of fees for all his comparable speeches since leaving office, he would most likely have collected between $4 million and $5 million through speeches over the last two years.

Representatives of Lake Michigan College, which recently took over management of the Economic Club speaker series, and the Fredrick S. Upton Foundation confirmed that the Upton organization was a major sponsor of the series. Both organizations said Mr. Upton had no role in proposing or choosing the speakers. Lisa Cripps-Downey, president of the Berrien Community Foundation, a nonprofit that administers the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, confirmed that the organization had given substantial funding to the Economic Club, with an annual grant of $80,000 over the last three years-- a total close to a quarter-million dollars.

“When we see the speakers, we’re just as surprised as everybody else,” Ms. Cripps-Downey said.

Mr. Russo said Mr. Biden’s team had been aware that the Frederick S. Upton Foundation helped fund the Economic Club. He said Biden aides had vetted the funding sources for the speaking series and concluded they met his standards.

Mr. Upton, who confirmed in a statement that he attended Mr. Biden’s speech at Lake Michigan College, said he had “no idea” that Mr. Biden would refer to him at all, let alone so favorably. The two men ran into each other briefly at the venue, before Mr. Biden’s speech, and they agreed to follow up to discuss the medical-research law’s implementation, an aide to Mr. Upton said.

“Being in the audience with my family and hearing Vice President Biden reference our work together was an immense honor,” Mr. Upton said. “He was warmly received by everyone in attendance who were thrilled to have him there, including myself.”

For campus speeches, Mr. Biden refuses to let schools pay him with funds that come from the government or from extra fees charged to students-- requirements that appear to have been met in this case.

Candice Elders, a spokeswoman for Lake Michigan College, said funding for the speaking series there “comes from private sources through ticket sales, memberships, contributions, grants, sponsorships and event proceeds.” She said the grant from the Frederick S. Upton Foundation is part of a fund designed to make up any difference between expenses for the speaker series and the revenue brought in by events. Ms. Elders estimated that the Upton grant makes up about 11 percent of the series budget.

Ms. Elders said that no public money was used for the event, and that Mr. Biden addressed a group that included several hundred college and high school students while he was on campus. “Young people from area schools and nonprofit organizations are routinely invited to attend Economic Club events at no cost,” Ms. Elders said.

The greatest impact of Mr. Biden’s speech, however, was outside the lecture hall. His remarks about Mr. Upton ricocheted through Michigan’s Sixth Congressional District. Mr. Upton alluded to Mr. Biden’s praise in a debate with Mr. Longjohn the next day, and his campaign sent out a mailer stressing Mr. Upton’s bipartisan streak, including Mr. Biden’s description of him as “the reason we’re going to beat cancer.”

A business-backed Republican group, Defending Main Street, ran digital ads on Facebook showing a grinning Mr. Biden and the crucial quote-- “Fred Upton is one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with”-- above a mock version of the former vice president’s signature.

Mr. Lester, the local Democratic chairman, said he strove to contain the damage. In an email to Mr. Biden’s staff, Mr. Lester implored the former vice president to back Mr. Longjohn: “Surely VP Biden did not intend to endorse Mr. Upton and slight the local Democratic candidate here,” he wrote.

Mr. Longjohn, the former national health officer of the YMCA, said in an interview that he had been disappointed to see Mr. Biden “clap Mr. Upton on the back in an establishment political way.” He said his campaign had reached out to Mr. Biden’s staff through an intermediary, seeking to discuss his involvement in the race.

“There was nothing but silence,” Mr. Longjohn said. “We had just requested a phone call and there was no response.”
Suggested follow-up reading: The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part IV, Joe Biden... or these 7 posts explaining why Biden should not be the Democratic nominee in 2020. It's hard to think of a worse next president to follow Trump-- but if pressed I can. Biden would be the Democrats' Warren G. Harding... and that turned out rather badly for everyone, especially the American people.


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Thursday, October 23, 2014

Grassroots Democrats Doing The Job The DCCC Refuses To-- In Michigan

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This week Blue America has been concentrating on our ads in Maine exposing Susan Collins (as of yesterday over 180,000 impressions in Maine with more than 20,000 Mainers watching the ad) and our advertising in southwest Michigan exposing Fred Upton, which counted over 90,000 voting age viewers in the district and close to 10,000 MI-10 eligible voters watching it. And that was just yesterday!

Thanks to Steve Israel's bungling, all the Michigan House seats the DCCC had targeted have been abandoned and left to the Republicans-- even while Gary Peters is cleaning up statewide against unqualified GOP lunatic Terri Lynn Land by wide margins. Luckily for Paul Clements, as it turns out, the most winnable seat in Michigan, Upton's, was studiously ignored by Israel, even after polling showed how vulnerable Upton was. Pelosi, who many say has been asleep at the wheel for some time now, should have fired Israel back then; but she didn't-- and Clements has run a far more vigorous and successful campaign than any of Israel's now-abandoned recruits. As a result, even Beltway pundits are now trying to find out where MI-06 is on a map.

No one is writing about Israel's Michigan CIA agent, Bobby McKenzie, Israel's Guantánamo gulag ex-commandante, Jerry Cannon, former state Rep. and EMILY's List priority Pam Byrnes or ex-congressional staffer Eric Schertzing, the bungled opportunity the Democrats had to win MI-08 when Mike Rogers decided to retire. Instead, all the attention is on the race Paul Clements is running against Upton with ZERO help from the DCCC. (In fact, Israel is still calling outside groups and trying to bully them into not supporting Clements against his pal Upton, as he did several days ago with the League of Conservation Voters.)

This week, Alex Brown at the National Journal assessed how deep the shit is that Upton-- who, thanks to DCCC protection, has never faced a real race before-- has now found himself in.
Upton, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is facing the most credible Democratic opponent of his career, and a late infusion of outside money has energized Democrats on the ground. Still, there's been little polling or non-anecdotal indicators to prove the race is winnable. But even if Upton prevails this year, his opponents hope to at least put him in the conversation of future Democratic targets-- and lay the groundwork for a better-financed 2016 campaign in a presidential year that offers a strong climate for Democrats.

And if, as some have speculated, Upton calls it quits in 2016 when term limits end his Energy and Commerce tenure, Democratic efforts this cycle could leave them well-positioned to contest what stands to be be a wide-open race.

Western Michigan University professor Paul Clements is the 13th Democrat to test Upton's electoral mettle, and, his backers say, the best. A newcomer to federal politics, he has more than doubled the fundraising of any previous Upton challenger. Veterans of previous Democratic campaigns in the district call Clements's operation the first "professional" challenge they've seen.

Clements's prowess has garnered interest both inside the district and out, but anyone who wasn't paying attention before certainly raised their eyebrows this month when an outside super PAC announced plans to pump nearly $2 million into efforts to oust Upton. The group, Mayday PAC, aims to target politicians beholden to moneyed interests. On Oct. 9, it named Upton among its handful of targets for the 2014 cycle.

The late swarm of money has excited local Democrats-- who say the race was competitive even before the cash infusion-- and left consultants wondering whether a district long excluded from any toss-up rankings could really oust its powerful incumbent without much warning.

...[L]ocal Democrats say his days as a little-contested, taken-for-granted incumbent are over. "Paul has a built a historic campaign here," said Clements spokesman Connor Farrell. "Any outside observer that looks purely based on data should see that this is a competitive race." But the campaign would not release any polling to back up its claims of a close contest, and no public polling has been conducted on the contest either, an indication of the district's longtime noncompetitive status.

Mayday PAC also sees a tight race. "We are only investing in races where we believe there's a path to victory," said spokeswoman Allison Bryan. "We've done internal polling that shows Fred Upton is vulnerable." Mayday PAC also declined to make those numbers public.

Still, Bryan said even making the race close could be considered a success. Mayday PAC is investing in only a handful of races this cycle, with the aim of making a statement and preparing a full-fledged operation two years from now. "The best way to describe it is setting us up for what we want to do in 2016," she said, asserting that efforts to damage Upton now-- even if he keeps his seat-- could pay dividends later.

The group says its sole purpose is to oust politicians too close to special interest money, and it calls Upton the "worst of the worst." Its backers say they recognize the irony of spending big money to get money out of politics, but they hope groups like theirs won't be necessary if they can elect enough politicians who support campaign finance reform.

Mayday PAC founder Mark McKinnon said earlier this month his group plans to "give Fred Upton the fight of his political life" and "perhaps we can be a giant killer."

That enthusiasm hasn't been shared by national Democrats. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted four other Michigan GOP-held seats this cycle (they've since pulled out of all four races), but has not put its weight behind Clements's campaign.


The 6th is "the most Democratic seat in Michigan that's held by a Republican," said Mark Miller, the Michigan Democratic Party's district chair. "Why the DCCC has been unwilling to invest in this district is perplexing."

The Cook Partisan Voting Index rates the district as a +1 Republican seat.

"[Clements has] raised money without a lot of institutional support from the Democratic Party," said John Curran, who managed Democrat Don Cooney's 2010 campaign against Upton. "It's always been considered this Republican bastion.… Our activists, donors, and candidates feel left out in the statewide and national picture."

The financial picture isn't too great for Democrats in the district, either. One national-level Democratic operative noted that while Upton still has $1.6 million in the bank, Clements has already spent almost all of the $700,000 he's raised this cycle, leaving a heavy burden on any outside group looking to make a late money surge. The operative also said the district's split-ticket voting tendencies didn't necessarily spell vulnerability for a political institution like Upton.

A source familiar with Democratic polling of the district said Upton held a substantial 54 percent-to-35 percent lead in June, before the Mayday PAC investment. Most analysts consider incumbents polling above 50 percent to be in relatively safe position.

"On both sides of the political spectrum, they put the money where they hope to have the most impact," said Victor Fitz, who chairs the Michigan GOP's efforts in the district. "If the [DCCC is] not putting it in the 6th District, you can read something from that."

Upton's campaign says they've never taken the race for granted, and the Mayday PAC money infusion doesn't change their calculus. "From Fred's perspective, there's two ways you can run—unopposed or full speed ahead," said campaign manager Tom Wilbur.

"Most of of us on the ground look at this with a smile on our face," Fitz said. "I don't see any traction in this at all. [Mayday PAC] can spend their money, but I don't think it's going to have much of an impact."

While Upton maintains the super PAC attacks haven't changed his strategy-- or made him any more vulnerable-- his opponents see a candidate on the defensive. Mayday's first ad targeted the incumbent on Medicare drug prices and failing to protect patients with preexisting conditions. Days later, an Upton ad lamented the "lies" opponents were spreading and touting his efforts to help seniors on Medicare and patients with preexisting conditions. It's an unusual tack for a Republican who has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Obamacare.

Wilbur acknowledged the ad was a response to the Mayday PAC attacks. "When the Mayday folks start spreading lies, it's important that we start spreading the truth," he said. That's a far cry from the campaign's apolitical, feel-good first ad from two weeks before.

Clements' allies see it as something more. "We think that he's responding," Mayday PAC's Bryan said. "He's obviously threatened by what we're doing." Added Curran, who ran the 2010 campaign against Upton: "His latest ad is a pretty strong deviation from what we've seen from him so far."

Another Democratic operative in the district agreed. "He's absolutely defensive on it," the operative said.

And while Upton finds himself unexpectedly defending certain tenets of Obama's signature law, Democratic message discipline on the other side has been strong. To a person, Clements' supporters characterize Upton as a good moderate who lost his way in Washington as big-money oil and insurance groups financed his rise through the House GOP ranks and pushed him to the right each step of the way.

Upton's camp argues that as chair, he's given precedence to bills that have bipartisan sponsors. They also point to his role in the bipartisan "Gang of 12"--a group of legislators who tried and failed to break Capitol Hill's impasse over the federal debt in 2011.

Whether or not Clements can upset the near three-decade incumbent, his backers says he's opened some eyes. Curran contrasted this cycle with previous Democratic campaigns, including his own work on Cooney's 2010 campaign as a 20-year-old who "didn't really know what I was doing." Typically, he said, "we've been scrambling in April or May of the election year to get someone on the ballot."

When Clements launched his bid in early 2013, "a lot of people laughed at him," Curran said. But the early start gave him time to fundraise, and while he hasn't matched the cash numbers of his well-connected opponent, he's come far closer than any previous challenger. Even if the Mayday PAC money isn't enough to put him over the top, Democrats in the district say the race has ensured the the 6th won't be left behind in the next cycle.
If you'd like to help us keep our ad up until election day, please consider contributing what you can on this special page for Independent Expenditures.





UPDATE: More Trouble For The Corrupt Upton

The American Democracy Legal Fund has requested the Office of Congressional Ethics investigate whether Upton violated federal law and House rules by improperly threatening with retribution those who contributed to a super PAC that supports his challenger in the upcoming election.

Upton thug Gary Andres, who is being paid with taxpayer money, threatened the CEOs who contributed to the MayDay PAC with harsher regulatory treatment from the House Energy and Commerce Committee if they don't back Upton. Steve Israel and his DCCC are still working overtime to protect Upton, who the L.A. Times called the most dangerous man in the United States when it comes to destroying the country's environment. Who's side is Steve Israel on? Good question!

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Monday, November 03, 2014

Blue America's Final Stretch-- South Dakota, Maine, MI-06, CA-33

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For our final push, Blue America ran independent expenditures in 4 races, two for Senate seats and two in House races. When Adelson and his slimy allies jumped into the CA-33 race with a million dollars worth of racist smear against Ted Lieu, we decided to reach likely voters with a full page ad in the L.A. Times, which we think has worked very well. Early vote returns from Democrats started spiking very sharply as soon as the ad ran. Ted Lieu is now significantly ahead of the Adelson puppet in the race. The two Senate races are both long-shots, one in South Dakota against Mike Rounds and one in Maine against Susan Collins. Both are songs running for voting age adults in those two states only. If you click on the links, you'll hear the two songs. As of yesterday, 39,886 South Dakotans have opted to listen to at least 30 seconds of the song. In Maine-- maybe because of a lingering fondness for The Beatles, 74,987 voting age adults have decided to listen to at least 30 seconds of the song. The experts are betting against both of our candidates, Rick Weiland and Shenna Bellows, each of whom has been running a valiant grassroots effort against Big Money interests.

The national parties in DC have largely ignored both races, although in South Dakota perhaps "ignoring" would have been better than the undermining that actually took place. Rick Weiland, the progressive there, has urged his fellow Democratic Senate candidates across the country to vote out Reid as leader and replace him with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Dick Durbin. This is a letter he sent out to the other candidates running for the Senate:
Today I am contacting you to report that, while my reasons for opposing Senator Reid, and the issues in my state, may both be different than those in yours, I thought you would be interested in what has happened in my campaign since I pledged to work for new leadership in the Senate.

There are obviously a host of factors at work in any political campaign at the end. Nevertheless, it is a fact that our tracking polls have tightened dramatically since that time, and that the effort to replace Senator Reid is being seen as an important indicator of a commitment to change and of the courage to challenge the powers that be on behalf of that change rather than as a procedural move with regard to a Senator they barely know.

I wish you the very best of luck in your campaign, and I look forward, should we each be fortunate enough to succeed in our campaigns, to working with you to bring new leadership to our party, the Senate, and the country at large.

Sincerely,

Rick Weiland
Democratic candidate for United States Senate
Sioux Falls, SD
Reid, who has worked consistently to sabotage Weiland since he decided to run had his spokesperson, Adam Jentleson, shoot back immediately, "Desperation is an ugly thing, and it’s sad to see Rick Weiland ending his ill-advised campaign and brief political career by attacking fellow Democrats."

Beltway trade papers were happier to cover the spat than they were to cover Weiland's actual campaign. "Reid himself," one wrote, "always preferred Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, and he successfully pushed for retiring Sen. Tim Johnson’s son Brendan, who is a U.S. attorney, not to run last year. But Weiland got in at the encouragement of former Sen. Tom Daschle, his onetime boss. That caused Herseth Sandlin not to run. National Democrats then sat on the sidelines for more than a year, until some internal polling showed that a four-way race-- and a visa-for-cash scandal made former Republican Gov. Mike Rounds look vulnerable. But now Weiland is making Democrats regret the play. He’s attacking Reid as a tool of big money interests. 'We need to stick a thumb in the eye of the corrupt old politics that has sold out to the highest bidder,' Weiland said in a press release today," a reference to Reid. With Weiland's super-corrupt GOP opponent, Mike Rounds, joined at the hip to Mitch McConnell, South Dakota voters are seeing what real independence from the Beltway power structure looks like.

The second House race Blue America is spending money in is one of this year's real cliff-hangers. Our ad running in southwest Michigan for the MI-06 seat Fred Upton has been occupying since 1987. As of yesterday, 41,535 voting age Michiganders living in the district had chosen to watch at least 30 seconds of it. Again, the DC power-mongers-- this time DCCC chairman Steve Israel in the lead-- have actively opposed the progressive Democrat, Paul Clements. Progressive champion Alan Grayson, though, made a compelling case for Clements. Lawrence Lessig, the reformer who's MayDay PAC has put over $2 million into exposing Upton is the hero of this campaign, stepping in to do the job the DCCC should be doing. Lessig:
A month ago, Rep. Fred Upton might have thought he was cruising to another landslide re-election, and then everything changed.

On Wednesday morning, a new internal poll from challenger Paul Clements shows Upton’s lead has been narrowed to just 4 points. And Wednesday afternoon, the Cook Political Report, one of the most respected political handicappers in the nation, downgraded Upton’s chances from “solid” to “likely.”

To be sure, Upton has reason to be concerned. On October 9th, MAYDAY.US, a Super PAC fighting to fundamentally reform the way campaigns are funded, announced it would spend $1.5 million to defeat Upton and elect reformer Paul Clements. MAYDAY has since announced its commitment to spend $2.15 million in this race.

Paul Clements is running the most competitive race against Upton in a decade in a district President Obama won by 8 points in 2008 and narrowly lost in 2012, when Upton won reelection by the smallest margin of his career.

When it comes to Fred Upton, the link between the people who fund his campaigns and the way he votes in Congress is crystal clear.

Upton has taken $10 million in special interest PAC money over his career. He took $2.1 million from Big Oil and energy interests, and he voted to give away billions in subsidies for oil and gas companies. He took $1.4 million from drug and insurance companies, and voted to make seniors pay more for the prescriptions they need.

Once MAYDAY started its campaign to inform voters in Southwest Michigan, Fred Upton’s campaign went into panic mode. Upton:
Lobbed inaccurate attacks against MAYDAY
Hastily threw together a response ad
Abruptly cancelled his only scheduled debate with Clements
Dramatically escalated his campaign spending
Possibly violated House ethics rules by reaching out to MAYDAY donors
In the last week of the campaign, Upton has bought approximately 4,000 gross ratings points in the Grand Rapids market alone-- and half of those ads are in direct response to MAYDAY’s campaign.

In the midst of the Upton campaign’s scramble, a series of unforced errors by the congressman and his staff have started a simmering scandal that threatens to boil over in the closing days of this campaign. On October 17th, Upton told the Kalamazoo Gazette he had talked to several of MAYDAY’s major donors about our campaign against him. Three days later, the Huffington Post reported Gary Andres, Upton’s top committee aide, had reached out to “spook” MAYDAY donors whose businesses are regulated by the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee that Upton chairs.

Since then, the Upton camp’s story has, shall we say, evolved. After admitting that he spoke with several donors, Upton’s campaign first called the allegations “ hogwash,” then said Upton spoke to only one MAYDAY donor, who happened to call Upton. Following the Huffington Post report, Andres first denied “making angry calls,” but later told the Herald-Palladium he sent messages to a MAYDAY donor through the donor’s lobbyist in Washington.

This Upton saga is straight out of the pages of Peter Schweizer’s book Extortion, and serves as a perfect example of how politicians legally extort money from big corporations for personal and political benefit. It may also contribute to Upton’s undoing. I’ve recently written to the House Office of Congressional Ethics requesting an investigation into the reports that Upton and his staff tried to intimidate MAYDAY’s donors and the American Democracy Legal Fund has filed a similar request.

MAYDAY decided to work to defeat Fred Upton because he is the epitome of the modern corrupt politician and because we believed voters in the 6th Congressional District of Michigan care enough about taking big money out of politics to support a reformer like Paul Clements. Our own polling has shown significant movement in Upton’s job performance and favorability ratings since our campaign began.

As we enter the final days of this campaign, it looks like MAYDAY’s work and Upton’s unforced errors may results in a surprising result on Election Day.


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Thursday, September 12, 2013

I Wonder Why The DCCC Keeps Overlooking Michigan's 6th CD And Fred Upton

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Fred Upton, Steve Israel-- corrupt cronies in Congress

The DCCC announcement this week of another batch of candidates has been called their "worst recruitment effort in history." No one should be surprised that most of Steve Israel's picks for their Jump Start program could be barely described as "the lesser of two evils" in comparison to their opponents. Of the 9 new candidates, there appear to be two worthwhile ones, Erin Bilbray (NV) and Martha Robertson (NY). And on top of being inherently bad-- take anti-Choice, antigay gun loon Jennifer Garrison (OH)-- they're also a bunch of losers.

Let's look at a comparison of the races in OH-06, where Israel is backing Garrison against hapless and ineffectual Republican backbencher Bill Johnson, and MI-06, where Israel isn't even seriously considering grassroots progressive Democrat Paul Clements, who is running against Israel's crony, the powerful and destructive chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton. First, let's look at the two districts:

OH-06 has a PVI of R+8 and MI-06 has a PVI of R+1. Last year Democrats lost every race in an R+8 district (or redder), with the exception of four long-term incumbents who vote with the Republicans on nearly everything, Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Nick Rahall (WV) and Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC). That's 154 districts with R+8 PVIs or worse that the Democrats lost in. There are 11 districts with PVIs of R+1. Last year Democrats won 5 and only one was an incumbent. Democratic challengers can win in R+1 districts. In fact, of the 6 R+1 districts the Democrats didn't win last year, 2-- Upton's and Peter King's-- were under the protection of Steve Israel and the DCCC only made a serious effort in one district, CA-10, where they spent serious bank (over $3 million) on Jose Hernandez against Jeff Denham but lost anyway. They did not seriously contest NJ-03 (Jon Runyan), NY-02 (Peter King), PA-08 (Michael Fitzpatrick), MI-06 (Fred Upton), WA-08 (Dave Reichert), or FL-13 (Bill Young). Here's how Obama did in these districts. Oh, first OH-06, where Garrison is facing off against Johnson next year. In 2008, McCain beat Obama 53-45% and Last year Romney did even better, beating Obama 55-43%. But Steve Israel finds this anti-Choice, antigay, right wing nutjob who is known as the Sarah Palin of Ohio, so compelling that he's betting (your money) on her in this district. So here are the 7 districts with GOP incumbents and PVIs of R+1:
MI-06 (Upton)- Obama beat McCain 53-45% and lost to Romney 49-50%
FL-13 (Young)- Obama beat McCain 51-48% and beat Romney 50-49%
WA-08 (Reichert)- Obama beat McCain 51-47% and beat Romney 50-48%
CA-10 (Denham)- Obama beat McCain 50-48% and beat Romney 51-47%
PA-08 (Fitzpatrick)- Obama beat McCain 53-46% and lost to Romney 49-49%
NY-02 (King)- Obama beat McCain 51-48% and beat Romney 52-47%
NJ-03 (Runyan)- Obama beat McCain 51-48% and beat Romney 52-48%
Refocusing on just OH-06 vs MI-06, Obama did well in the Michigan district and miserably in the Ohio district. Despite spending $2,086,390 plus $397,242 from their House Majority PAC last year, the DCCC lost a rematch between Blue Dog/New Dem Charlie Wilson, a former congressman, 53-47% in OH-06. And Wilson isn't even hated by the Democratic grassroots the way Garrison is. The district has 18 counties and Johnson won 14 of them, including biggies Mahong, Columbiana, Washington, and Lawrence and effectively tying in Jefferson, a must-win for Democrats.

So what about MI-06, where Clements has already been endorsed by Blue America? Steve Israel will not allow the DCCC to get involved because Upton is one of his old buddies for the Center Aisle Caucus and they've pledged not to fight each other-- which is something Pelosi should have considered before appointing and-- inexplicably reappointing-- Israel to head the committee charged with winning seats (not protecting GOP incumbent pals). This week Hannah Northey did the deepest examination of who Paul Clements is for the environmental community. The article is behind an E&E Daily paywall so I'll draw from it:
Paul Clements (D) is the furthest thing from a household name, but that's not stopping the college professor from trying to unseat one of the most powerful members of Congress.

In fact, Clements, a political scientist at Western Michigan University, is the earliest candidate in the state's history to announce his intention to oust the deeply entrenched and wealthy 26-year House veteran Fred Upton (R), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, from Michigan's 6th District. And he's planning to use the issue of climate change as a cornerstone of his campaign.

Idealistic? Some analysts think so.

"It would require a tidal wave election and every possible contention to go correct for a Democratic challenger for Upton to begin to be considered vulnerable," said Jake Davison, president of the Lansing-based political consulting firm Advantage Associates, which serves GOP clients.

Upton has held a political vice grip on the Republican-leaning district for years and last year took almost 55 percent of the vote against Democrat Mike O'Brien. Clements, in comparison, doesn't have Upton's deep pockets or well-sourced political campaign. According to the Federal Election Commission, Upton had $720,000 on hand as of June 30, whereas Clements had $47,000.

Some political wonks in the state haven't even heard of the professor.

But Clements says Upton's increasing extremism on issues like climate change makes him vulnerable. He accuses the congressman of pandering to donors and special interests and says the district-- made up of six counties straddling the shores of Lake Michigan on the border with Indiana-- is ready for something new.

"It was Upton's turnaround on climate change that pushed me into running for this," Clements said. "He used to say we needed to regulate greenhouse gases, but it seems to get promoted to the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, you have to cut a deal."

Clements, who studied at Princeton and Harvard and grew up in India and Hong Kong while his parents worked for the Methodist Church, says he wants to address income inequality, ensure Michigan manufacturers produce and export more clean energy technology and bolster education and health care in the state.

He also says he has already raised more than $100,000 and plans to get his name out through a grass-roots campaign.

...But the GOP and analysts in the state reject the notion that idealism is a match for Upton.

"I think this guy from Western, I don't know if he's the sacrificial lamb or running on his own accord," said David Worthams, chairman of the Republican Party of Kalamazoo County. "I honestly would be surprised if there's anything but a solid victory in November of next year" for Upton.

Bill Ballenger, a longtime Wolverine State political analyst who publishes the newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, said it would have to be the "perfect" storm for Democrats to successfully take on Upton, one that includes a "quality opponent," for the GOP lean of the district-- currently hovering around 54 percent-- to wane.

"It's almost laughable," Ballenger said. "The one thing about it is that he's announced it so early, but where he goes from here remains to be seen."

Although [Mike] O'Brien [who Israel sandbagged and sabotaged in 2012] recently announced his intention not to run against Upton again, Clements is taking a lesson from the previous Democratic nominee's handbook.

He's focusing on Upton's careful dance on the issue of climate change that all began when the congressman took the helm of the House Energy and Commerce Committee three years ago.

Notably, O'Brien attempted to paint Upton during their debates last year as a moderate who lost his independence to wealthy interest groups and the most conservative elements of his party. O'Brien made the point that Upton's website once featured the statement that "everything must be on the table as we seek to reduce carbon emissions."

These days, such language is absent from Upton's website and the congressman is better-known for his adamant opposition to a carbon tax, for his desire to stop the "war on coal" and for supporting legislation to strip U.S. EPA of its authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions linked to climate change.

The Los Angeles Times noted the change in 2011 when the newspaper's Opinion staff declared Upton the top "Enemy of the Earth," calling him the "gatekeeper for many of the disastrous anti-environment bills that have been approved or proposed in the House this year."

The newspaper went on to note the irony in that Upton was once known among his state's conservatives as "Red Fred" because of his "somewhat pro-environment voting record, but a recent electoral challenge from his right changed all that."

In the past two elections, Upton has been challenged in the Republican primary by former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, a conservative. Upton won the primary 57 percent to 43 percent in 2010, and by a 2-to-1 margin in 2012, outspending his challenger significantly in both contests.

...David Pawloski, chairman of the Kalamazoo County Democratic Party, said Upton at one time described himself as an environmentalist to voters, but that description no longer fits.

"Fred ran back in the '80s, he said he was a strong environmentalist, that's what he told people," Pawloski said. "But now that he's chair, people have noticed that he's not so much for the environment like he said."

Republicans reject the characterization.

"I don't think he's flip-flopped," Worthams said. "When you're in the majority in Congress, Senate Democrats or House Republicans, you have to find those policies that would protect our natural resources while not providing something that's overbearing on small businesses."

Worthams said Upton has protected the country against "an EPA that's overzealous in their mandate" and that he's seeing very strong local support for the congressman.

Joshua Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, suggested that Upton's stance on energy and environmental matters is a reflection of the modern GOP.

"The House Republican caucus these days is like driving on a very narrow, one-way street," he said. "One has very few options at all to deviate from the dominant path. That's seen in members' positions on climate, as well as a host of other issues, including spending and the budget, health care, gun safety, and on and on."

But Clements said Michigan voters want to see Congress take action on climate change, and Upton has failed them.

"I've met with farmers in Van Buren County," he said. "We completely lost our apple and cherry crops last year because of the weird weather going up to the 80s in March and freezing again."

NRDC Action Fund Director Heather Taylor-Miesle predicted that the issue will resonate with voters and said Clements is improving his chances by getting out early and attempting to frame the energy debate.

Just how vulnerable Upton is depends on whom you ask. When it comes to Clements, Democrats are hoping the early bird gets the worm.

Having a 14-month head start gives the party time to get Clements' name out, and the professor is already on track to raise as much as-- if not more than-- O'Brien's $200,000, which set a record for Democratic fundraising in the district last year, Pawloski said.

Clements can also campaign full-time, which is needed when running against a sitting congressman, he added.

"I think Fred's vulnerable simply because he's been there 26 years, he's been there forever," Pawloski said. "People are dissatisfied with the way things are going in Washington."

Clements is quick to point out that President Obama carried the district by 10 points in 2008, and the decennial redistricting process did little to change the district's political makeup. The district also voted for Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D) and Carl Levin (D).

...Clements said his past experiences have fostered a desire to tackle issues like poverty and cleaning up the environment, and that will shine through in his campaign.

He grew up in Hong Kong and India, where his father, Jesse Clements, was a social worker for the Methodist Church. Jesse Clements worked with refugees from China and started a social service agency in Hong Kong with Paul's mother, Mollie, who worked on economic and social development issues in the slums of Mumbai and in villages around India. Jesse Clements died last year; Mollie Clements is a retired Methodist minister.

"I did 10th and 11th grade in India and spent most of my holidays helping out in the village and slum projects," Paul Clements wrote in an email. "I figured that this kind of extreme poverty didn't need to happen."

Clements went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from Princeton University, and he's now the director of the master's program in international development administration at Western Michigan University.

In addition to tackling economic problems in Michigan, Clements said he plans to call for more energy efficiency and conservation and wants to see Michigan manufacturing windmills and solar equipment. He also believes federal incentives are a way to reach that goal, despite the debacle surrounding the bankruptcy of the government-backed Solyndra solar energy company.

Upton led a politically charged investigation into Solyndra that prompted the House to pass legislation that would have wound down the loan program.

"I appreciate the federal government doesn't get these things right every time, but Upton's response was 'If there's one bad apple, you should stop supporting clean energy,'" Clements said. "That's completely wrong."
If you'd like to help Paul Clements replace Upton, you can chip in at the Blue America ActBlue page.

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