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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Democrats dissect Lamb's win with an eye to November's races

U.S. Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb is greeted by supporters during his election night rally in Pennsylvania’s 18th U.S. Congressional district special election against Republican candidate and State Rep. Rick Saccone, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, March 13, 2018. (Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

With Democrat Conor Lamb holding on to a margin of a few hundred votes in Tuesday’s special election to fill a Pennsylvania House seat, strategists from both parties were frantically seeking lessons in the outcome that will help them in the midterms this fall.

What combination of Lamb’s personal qualities, his positions, grassroots organizing, labor-union support and disaffection with Donald Trump led to the apparent victory by the 33-year-old first-time candidate over Republican state representative Rick Saccone, in an overwhelmingly Republican district on the West Virginia border?

Lamb’s local supporters credit his support from labor unions and a resistance movement that began organizing the district almost a year ago, long before the incumbent congressman resigned in a sex scandal. But the parties also are taking note of Lamb’s biography, as a former prosecutor and Marine veteran, and his moderate positions on hot-button social issues. “We can win even the reddest districts if we recruit candidates who fit them,” Democratic strategist Lis Smith said Wednesday. “We cannot and should not expect Democrats who run in Western Pennsylvania to espouse West Village political views.” Republican National Committee spokesperson Kayleigh McEnamy expressed the views of many on the right when she said Lamb “has essentially run as a Republican.”

But as important as Lamb’s views were — personally opposed to abortion, but a supporter of existing abortion rights laws; for stronger gun purchase background checks, but against a new assault weapons ban – the nature of the mixed suburban-rural district itself made his victory possible. That means that any lessons drawn from Lamb’s victory may well be applicable in similar districts — but not necessarily in ones that lack a strong union base.

Supporters of U.S. Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb react to the results coming in during Lamb’s election night rally in Pennsylvania’s 18th U.S. Congressional district special election against Republican candidate and State Rep. Rick Saccone in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., March 13, 2018. (Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

“The boots on the ground of grassroots activists and reinvigorated labor organizers…won back a Trump +20 district door by door, call by call,” an elated Valerie Fleisher, a leader of 412 Resistance, a suburban Allegheny County activist group begun shortly after Trump’s 2016 victory, told Yahoo News. “It was such a great night for the grassroots activists that had been organizing in the district for 14 months.”

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Lamb had a lead of fewer than 1,000 votes of the more than 226,000 cast, with provisional ballots not due to be counted until Friday. Lamb claimed victory Tuesday night but Saccone had not conceded as of Wednesday morning. A recount would not automatically be triggered under such circumstances but the Saccone campaign could petition for one and Republicans may well do so.

“We followed what I learned in the Marines – leave no one behind. We went everywhere; we talked to everyone; we invited everyone in,” Lamb told supporters at his victory party.

Should the election results be certified as is or confirmed on recount, Lamb would succeed eight-term Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who stepped down from his spot representing the 18th district in October following news reports the married Pro-Life Caucus member had suggested his mistress consider getting an abortion. Lamb will represent a district that is set to disappear under a court-ordered redistricting plan that breaks up the population of the 18th district just in time for the fall’s midterm elections. As an incumbent who overcame a huge Republican advantage to win the 18th he would be strongly positioned to retain his new title in a face-off against Rep. Keith Rothfus in the new 17th district, which will be more Democratic than the 18th, this fall. Saccone, who campaigned on a promise to be Trump’s “wingman” in Congress has indicated he is likely to seek election in the new 14th district, which will be an open seat expected to favor Republicans.

President Donald Trump, right, talks with Republican Rick Saccone during a campaign rally on March 10, 2018, in Moon Township, Pa. (Photo: Keith Srakocic/AP)

The victory is the first by a Democratic special election candidate in a hotly contested Republican-held district since Trump won office, after a string of narrow defeats in which Democrats substantially outperformed historical patterns in their districts. Trump won the district by a nearly 20-point margin, and both he and Vice President Pence had campaigned for Saccone. Democrats gleefully suggested that the rally Trump hosted on Saturday, where he gave a meandering speech that touched an array of inflammatory topics, had backfired. In the end, neither Trump’s last minute appearance nor his controversial – though welcome in the district – announcement that he would impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum was enough to overcome his unpopularity and the weakness of the Saccone campaign. Support for Trump in the district fell 20 points over the course of 2017, according to one poll, and while Saccone did better than many had predicted, Lamb’s ability to overcome the structural disadvantages of the district shows what can happen when Democratic distaste for the president matures into an organized electoral force.

“I think most Republicans realize we’re running into a very serious headwind — hurricane-force wind,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Penn.) said early Wednesday of the improbable victory.

The much discussed blue wave or Democratic headwinds GOP candidates are seeing is not a force of nature like the weather, however, but something being built painstakingly from the ground up by grassroots Democratic volunteers. In Pennsylvania’s 18th district, they began organizing against Murphy, who had not even had a challenger the last two election cycles, shortly after Trump’s election, holding weekly rallies and protests at his district offices. Once Lamb joined the race they tapped an existing power structure that had been allied in recent years with Murphy: the old-line industrial labor unions.

“What’s really powered this, the viability of the campaign, is two separate forces that have managed to work well together,” Lara Putnam, the chair of the history department at the University of Pittsburgh who has been studying the resistance organizing in Southwest Pennsylvania since it began, told Yahoo News. Voters in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Alleghany County powered Lamb’s win, even as he lost to Saccone in the more rural and industrial parts of the 18th district. Turnout was higher in Allegheny County than in the GOP stronghold of Westmoreland.

Supporter of Conor Lamb, the Democratic candidate for the March 13 special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, Judy Kramer of Bavington, Pa., arrives early for Lamb’s election night party in Cecil, Pa. on March 13, 2018. (Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)

“We were already organized to flip this district so [Lamb] had a base of volunteers from the first minute of this campaign,” said Mykie Riedy, the lead organizer of Progress 18 PA and the 18th District Campaign Coalition, which worked to forge a coalition out of the new resistance groups. “The unions getting behind him helped build on that base.”

“And I also think we had a great candidate who ran a smart campaign,” she added, speaking Tuesday from her Mount Lebanon home, where she’d been running a get out the vote staging location for the Lamb campaign for the past week.

“The fact that Lamb reached out to labor and labor reached out to Lamb —the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers, United Mine Workers, Retired Mine Workers of America — the fact that unions were supporting Lamb and saw in Lamb someone who respected them, respected the work they did, respected the promises made to them — issues around pensions are really critical — that was profoundly impactful,” said Putnam. “Those informal networks — the communications sustained by the unions — are super powerful.”

About 23 percent of workers in the 18th district belong to unions, compared to less than 10 percent of the private sector workforce nationwide.

Republican outside groups spent heavily on the race, pouring more than $10.7 million into the contest. Most of that money came from Paul Ryan-backed Super PAC the Congressional Leadership Fund and the National Republican Campaign Committee. The Lamb campaign spent $3.1 million and drew a further $2.6 million in support from outside Democratic groups.

“The race that Conor has run has been representative of our district and not some cookie cutter mold that you can then apply to races all over the country,” said Fleisher, who spent 14 months doing organizing work in the district. “I think if there is a blue wave it will be because the Democratic candidates are relying on these new Democratic groups to really understand their districts and their issues and they are talking to voters about really specific priorities.”

Conor Lamb, the Democratic candidate for the March 13 special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District celebrates with his supporters at his election night party in Canonsburg, Pa., early Wednesday, March 14, 2018. (Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)

Resistance groups from outside the district also sent in volunteers. “We have shown we can overcome geographic disadvantages…and get out to the suburbs and rural districts that will decide the 2018 midterms. That’s what we did tonight in Pennsylvania. That’s what we’re going to do across the country in November,” predicted Ethan Todras-Whitehill, executive director and co-founder of Swing Left, a national group founded after Trump’s election to funnel blue state and blue city energy into organizing and fundraising for potentially flippable neighboring red districts.

The group did phone-banking and canvassing for Lamb, as did a number of smaller resistance and women’s activist groups from the regional Democratic stronghold of Pittsburgh.

That progressives in the district backed Lamb despite his stances opposing an assault weapons ban and abortion was partly a reflection of the intensity of their desire to elect a Democrat. But it also reflected what they learned from knocking on doors and encountering moderate-to-right-of-center voters who were open to supporting Lamb.

“Speaking for myself, coming from the left wing of the party, I started off this whole enterprise more than a year ago — before I ever heard of Conor Lamb — having a checklist of policies I wanted, and I learned a lot this year about my district and the issues that mattered to them,” said Riedy, who was also a Bernie Sanders delegate in 2016. “I just really came to see that the candidate’s character — his honesty, his willingness to have a conversation with people, his general leadership skills — turns out to be more important than any checklist.”

_____

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#_revsp:Yahoo! News #_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #_uuid:a8bf97d1-dfa1-342c-bc6f-a7f3023a3e68

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Guns, Trump and steel: Next week's Pennsylvania special election will be a referendum on 2018's hot-button issues

Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty

A March 13 special election in the heavily Republican-voting southwest corner of Pennsylvania has turned into referendum on an array of hot button issues, and the outcome could shape how candidates campaign around the country and affect debates over American trade policy in the year ahead.

The contest is between Republican Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb for the 18th District seat that opened when eight-term Rep. Tim Murphy resigned last October. Murphy, a member of the Pro-Life Caucus, quit following reports he had urged his mistress to consider an abortion. The special election has the potential to upend expectations about how safe even the reddest of Republican congressional districts will be in 2018, with implications for control of the House — and the fate of possible impeachment resolutions.

Trump won the district by nearly 20 points, and at the time of Murphy’s resignation National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers boasted, “The NRCC is undefeated in special elections this year and I’m supremely confident that will continue.”

But newly energized activists had begun organizing against Murphy and other local Republicans shortly after Trump’s victory with the long-shot goal of taking back the district, which extends from the suburbs of “Steel City” to the West Virginia border. With Murphy out of the way, they found in Lamb, a telegenic 33-year-old former prosecutor, a first-time candidate to embody their hopes.

Republican Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb in the PA 18th Congressional District. (Photos: Keith Srakocic/AP)

Saccone, 60, is a state representative and former Air Force special investigator who improbably won his party’s nomination last fall after a falling out between two other candidates. He is know for his pro-gun and conservative social positions, and has said he wants to come to Washington to be Donald Trump’s “wingman.”

With just a few days to go until the election, Democrats are closer than they ever expected. In late February the venerable Cook Political Report moved the race from “leans Republican” to “toss up,” and recent public polling shows the candidates neck-and-neck – leading to cautious predictions that Lamb might become the first Democrat to win a hotly contested House special election since Trump took office. Republicans notably lost the special election for Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat, and have lost three dozen state legislative seats across 2017 and 2018. Although Democratic House candidates have generally improved, often by large margins, on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote, heavily gerrymandered, highly conservative House districts have proven a formidable seawall against the predicted Democratic wave. If that wall fails here, the wave could become a tsunami.

“I promise if you, if he wins you’re going to see probably another half a dozen Republicans say they’re not running again,” former vice president Joe Biden, a native son of Scranton, said Tuesday during a series of appearances in the district to stump for Lamb. Already a record number of Republican representatives have announced plans to retire, creating openings for the record number of Democratic challengers vying to run in the fall. Incumbent House members had a 97 percent reelection rate in 2016.

Former Vice President Joe Biden points at Conor Lamb, right, the Democratic candidate for the March 13 special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, during a rally at the Carpenter’s Training Center in Collier, Pa., March 6, 2018. (Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)

President Trump will hold a rally Saturday night in the district and is sure to use the opportunity to tout his newly announced steel tariffs. Vice President Pence has also visited the district. Lamb has proved an adept fundraiser and outraised Saccone 2-to-1, but the candidates’ own spending has been dwarfed by outside money; groups supporting Saccone have poured more than $10 million into the race, giving him a substantial overall financial edge.

The hard dollar discrepancy partly reflects fundraising skill and donor enthusiasm for the candidates, but it also stems from a difference in approach between the two parties in the upcoming cycle. Democrats are unusually focused on funneling funds directly to new-to-the-scene candidate committees for advertising and organizing operations, while Republicans continue to rely heavily on a sophisticated, data-driven party organizing infrastructure and well-established outside groups who have tested and honed their anti-Democratic messaging efforts across multiple successful House elections.

The deployment of on-the-ground volunteers, trained by the Republican Leadership Initiative to bring targeted messages in person to specific individuals identified as persuadable, helped boost Trump in 2016 in Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Party strategists attribute their continued success in holding GOP House seats in part to their ongoing operations. Democrats have may have dozens of new resistance movement groups to turn to, but the GOP has a centralized program with a proven record of fueling high Republican turnout. That could make the difference in a toss-up contest.

And then, of course, there’s the steel question. Southwestern Pennsylvania is dotted with steel plants and coal mines that have seen better days — and things haven’t improved since Trump’s inauguration, despite his promises. At least five manufacturing plants in southwestern Pennsylvania closed in 2017, leading to the loss of thousands of jobs across the already depressed region. In Westmoreland County, which overlaps in part with the 18th District, a steel plant went idle last year. In Mount Morris, the Mepco-owned 4 West coal mine is slated to close this month. “President Trump said he’s bringing back coal, but there’s not been any change in regulations, really, to make a significant difference,” Blair Zimmerman, chairman of the Greene County Board of Commissioners, told NPR when the closure was announced in January. The closing of the mine will cost the region 370 jobs. “We need help,” said Zimmerman.

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a signed proclamation on adjusting imports of steel into the United States next to steel and aluminum workers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on March 8, 2018. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Accordingly, Trump’s tariff announcement has been greeted with enthusiasm “Last week, a president stood up for Pittsburgh, and for the Mon Valley, and Weirton, and Youngstown, and all the small American towns that felt the ripple effect of unfettered trade and abandonment of a primary American industry. It was not Donald Trump’s dumbest hour, it was his finest,” opined the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an editorial hailing the president for keeping his word to protect the steel industry and issue tariffs.

The American Alliance of Manufacturers and the locally influential Steelworkers Union also cheered and thanked the president, while the AFL-CIO’s president Richard Trumka took to Twitter to defend him. “Tariffs won’t start a trade war…. People may not like how Pres Trump rolled these out, but I applaud him for trying,” he wrote.

But it’s far from certain that this late-in-the-game announcement, which already contains an exemption for Canada and Mexico and will almost certainly face court challenges, will be enough to make a difference against the felt reality of plant closures and job losses.

Nor is the race only a referendum on Trump, whose approval in southwestern Pennsylvania had dropped from 60 percent in May 2017 to 40 percent by last fall. Also at issue is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — and the enduring power of advertising against her. The Paul Ryan-affiliated Congressional Leadership Fund has made her a villain in advertising across congressional races for years, and she has figured prominently in their advertising against Lamb.

Lamb, for his part, has said that House Democrats need new leadership and he would oppose Pelosi’s reelection. But he would need to be joined by a majority of the caucus to have an impact, and that’s not a likely scenario, barring a Democratic collapse in the midterms. And whoever wins Pennsylvania’s 18th district won’t be able to keep the title of its representative for long, given the impending court-ordered redistricting. If the plan now under consideration survives further challenges, voters in the current 18th district would be split between a renamed 14th district and a renamed 17th district. The existing 14th district represented by Democrat Michael Doyle, which includes the Democratic stronghold of Pittsburgh, would be renamed the 18th.

Republican congressional candidate Rick Saccone meets with supporters at the VFW Post 4793 while campaigning on March 5, 2018 in Waynesburg, Penn. (Photo: Swensen/Getty Images)

In that scenario, Saccone would be a strong candidate to win the open seat in the new and even more conservative 14th district, while Lamb might be better positioned as a challenger to incumbent GOP Rep. Keith Rothfus in the new 17th district.

Lamb’s home in Mount Lebanon is in the new 17th district, and he has already begun to receive local Democratic endorsements for a possible fall race against Rothfus.

Republicans have sought to tie Lamb to the national party’s position on gun control, as well. Lamb, a former Marine captain, has said he does not support a ban on assault weapons, but the ads have continued. It’s a tactic that often works for Republicans but national polls show that support for some gun control measures is higher than ever before in the wake the Parkland, Florida, shooting.

“In the last two months, some of the biggest surges in support for tightening gun laws comes from demographic groups you may not expect, independent voters, men, and whites with no college degree,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, announcing the findings.

That might mitigate what in other years has been an effective line of attack. One thing is certain: both parties will be watching the results Tuesday closely for clues about how to position themselves for what could be one of the most consequential midterms in a long time.

A sign supporting President Trump stands bside the campaign signs for Republican Rick Saccone, outside a campaign rally on March 5, 2018 in Waynesburg, Pa. Saccone is running against Democrat Conor Lamb in a special election being held on March 13 for the PA 18th Congressional District vacated by Republican Tim Murphy. (Photo: Keith Srakocic/AP)

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Resistance activists look past Trump’s State of the Union speech to November

Andra Day, and Common perform their Grammy and Oscar-nominated song “Stand Up for Something” from the movie Marshall. At “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

“Social justice cocktails! Ice-cold water! You can’t have revolution without cold water!”

Mike, a refreshments vendor at the Town Hall theater in midtown Manhattan who declined to give a last name, tailored his pitch to the crowd Monday evening as he hawked water at $5 a bottle.

It was 24 hours before President Trump’s first State of the Union speech in Washington, and a mixture of well-heeled New Yorkers, boldface names, service and domestic workers, college students and activists had come out on a cold night for an event billed as the People’s State of the Union. Trump’s impending speech was the nominal occasion, but the event — which drew 500,000 views on a Facebook live stream that evening — was also a way for resistance movement activists to recharge for the coming struggle.

A broad array of social justice groups, backed by celebrity star power, had come together for three hours of speeches and music, hoping to buck up their spirits after a rough and tiring year — and looking ahead to the challenge of organizing to capture a majority in the House of Representatives and hundreds or even 1,000 additional state legislative seats this year.

Actor John Leguizamo speaks during the “People’s State of the Union” event at The Town Hall, in New York City, Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Darren Ornitz/Reuters)

“In 2018, with so many races fast approaching, it is vital that we work to elect progressive, diverse candidates for Congress and state legislatures across this country. But it is not just about voting — not anymore. Given the current state of the Union, fighting for our democracy is going to require all of us, everyday people, to step up and take action,” said actress Cynthia Nixon, who spoke from the New York stage in a lineup that also featured John Leguizamo, Mark Ruffalo, Lee Daniels, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, Kathy Najimy and Michael Moore, with musical appearances by Rufus Wainwright, Andra Day and Common.

“In 2018 each one of us has to do everything we can to reclaim our democracy from foreign and domestic threats that aim to imperil it. It is on us. There is no cavalry coming. We are the cavalry,” she continued, to applause.

More than anything new Trump said, or was likely to say, the State of the Union was for the resistance activist groups an opportunity to rally the troops, boost morale and point to the future. In Washington, Planned Parenthood and an array of women’s groups counterprogrammed against the president’s speech Tuesday night with a program of music and speeches at the National Press Club under the rubric “The State of Our Union.” It was the first time the organization hosted an event during a State of the Union, talking to supporters over the background distractions of the speech as it unfurled on social media. And there too the byword was 2018.

Mark Ruffalo speaks at “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

“We are laser-focused on winning a pro-women’s health majority in Congress. Laser-focused. I dream about it at night. I wake up thinking about it in the morning. I think about nothing else,” Deirdre Schifeling, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, told Yahoo News. “And at state level. It’s long overdue, and 2018 is our chance to do it.”

From the very beginnings of the resistance movement, it has sought to unite many different streams into a common cause of fighting back against Trump and Republican control of Congress. But the events this week around the State of the Union, a cacophony of online resistance movement speeches and live streams, showcased the progress that has been made in forging a unified front.

Across a year of marches and protests and grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts, the leaders of different groups have gotten to know each other. There have been Slack channels and conference calls and after-action working groups, endless call-your-congressman drives and letter-writing campaigns and difficult conversations about whose voices should lead. Celebrities who once made star turns at activist events and did a little fundraising have become activists inside their own industries, backed by the support of the new women’s movement and using their stardom to spotlight it. Minority rights groups that existed before Trump was elected — groups fighting police violence against African-Americans, the deportation of undocumented Latin American immigrants brought to America as children, and for LGBTQ rights — have been become a key part of the larger movement that has sprung up since the election, merging with the growing river of women’s activist groups and newly formed efforts to defend refugees and religious minorities.

“I think the most powerful thing that’s come from all the attacks that many of our communities are under is the strong unity that I feel … in my bones today,” said Christina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, the immigrant youth network, from the stage in New York. “I know that the state of our union — this union — all of these social justice movements coming together — is stronger than ever. And that’s what scares them.”

“Are you ready to hit the polls?” she cried, to cheers.

Christina Jimenez (C), co-founder of United We Dream, raises her fist alongside other so-called Dreamers at the “People’s State of the Union” event one day ahead of President Trump’s State of The Union Speech to Congress, in New York City, Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Darren Ornitz/Reuters)

“There is no more important day this year” than Nov. 6, said filmmaker Moore in New York. “Not your birthday. Not your wedding anniversary. Not flag day. … My friends, as much as I tried to warn the country that Trump was going to win by winning those four states, I am here tonight to tell you that I believe that we can accomplish this by a tsunami of voters overwhelming the polling places on November 6 so that no poll will be able to close at its stated time.”

He offered four things to do in 2018 so that there is “a widespread massive removal of Republicans from the House and the Senate the likes of which this country has never seen.” The starting point: “Over the next 10 months, I want you to identify 20 people who did not vote in the 2016 election and get them all to vote on Election Day, November 6.” Also on the list: running for office, demanding that Democratic candidates weigh in on the impeachment of Trump and not worrying about Mike Pence.

“The purpose of the 2018 election is we are electing the jury for the trial of Donald J. Trump,” said Moore.

Getting an additional 2 million nonvoters to vote would also help, he said. Registering an additional 1 million voters from traditionally disenfranchised groups in critical states is the big 2018 goal for the Women’s March. “Our undocumented brothers and sisters cannot vote, so we must vote for them,” said Paula Mendoza, a leader of the March organization.

Michael Moore speaks during the “People’s State of the Union” event one day ahead of President Trump’s State of The Union Speech to Congress, in New York City, Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Darren Ornitz/Reuters)

In New York, there was little mincing of words and none of the soft, polished phrases favored by D.C. advocacy groups. No one was worried about being mocked by conservatives for a too-bald focus on diversity or shamed on Twitter as unserious for raising, as Leguizamo did, the specter of Nazi Germany.

Leaders of indigenous rights, labor, immigrant rights, social justice and environmental groups were all there “to start to lay out the path for a greater victory in 2018. Because we’re winning back Congress,” Ruffalo proclaimed.

The evening was raw, angry and historically aware of its place in the decades’ — or centuries’ — long struggle for civil rights that sometimes involves elected politicians and sometimes doesn’t, but always, always involves figures from American culture. Singer Andra Day, who performed alone and with rapper Common at the People’s State of the Union, just as she had the night before at the Grammy Awards, urged the audience to have the resilience “to continue the fight, to finish the fight. Because it’s worth it even if you don’t see the results in this lifetime.”

The women’s event in Washington was a bit more upbeat and cheerful, perhaps because Planned Parenthood has succeeded over the past year in fending off congressional efforts to defund the organization or repeal the Affordable Care Act wholesale, while at the same time seeing an enormous outpouring of grassroots support and donations.

The anger and despair of the immediate postelection period has given way to a new excitement as the resistance movement has proved not just durable but bigger and stronger than many observers expected. “We are in an amazing movement moment, more than I have ever seen,” Ben Halle, press secretary for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told Yahoo News about the new “united front” on the left. The “Our State of the Union” event came together in a week and a half.

FILE – In this Tuesday, July 26, 2016 file photo, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards waves after speaking during the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood who recently announced plans to retire, spoke as Trump’s remarks wound down. “It’s not that women haven’t been speaking. For centuries women have been speaking out, right? But now we have found a new frequency, and folks are finally listening,” she said, echoing the words of Tarana Burke, who a decade ago founded the anti-sexual violence group Me Too whose name has since become a hashtag.

“While so many women have been empowered to speak up in this last year, this is not just about us finding our voices. We have been raising our voices. I’m talking about issues that plague us in our communities for decades. The real difference is our renewed commitment to working collectively across industries and across issues, like we are seeing tonight,” said Burke at the event. “We have no choice but to lean into our collective power” and move out of issue silos, she said.

Amid the fatigue of ceaseless activism, the uniting of once separate movements into something larger is something for the activists to hang on to. “It’s inspiring to see so many organizations and activists from a broad cross-section of movements coming together to review the state of the resistance,” the Women’s March said in a statement after Trump’s speech. “It’s time that we channel the energy and activism into tangible strategies and concrete wins in 2018.”

“The one silver lining in Trump is that we have created the mother of all movements,” Ruffalo had said, opening the People’s State of the Union in Manhattan. “We have come together. It’s a transformational, international movement of decency. Our eyes wide open. We are wide awake. And we are looking around at each other for the first time in probably decades.”

A guest in the audience wears an “Impeach” jacket, at “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

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#_revsp:Yahoo! News #_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #_uuid:1b4892ac-699e-35fe-b2b4-e6f81be584ae #SOTU #resistance

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

Text

Resistance activists look past Trump’s State of the Union speech to November

“Social justice cocktails! Ice-cold water! You can’t have revolution without cold water!”

Mike, a refreshments vendor at the Town Hall theater in midtown Manhattan who declined to give a last name, tailored his pitch to the crowd Monday evening as he hawked water at $5 a bottle.

Actor John Leguizamo speaks during the “People’s State of the Union” event at The Town Hall, in New York City, Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Darren Ornitz/Reuters)

Mark Ruffalo speaks at “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

“Are you ready to hit the polls?” she cried, to cheers.

“The purpose of the 2018 election is we are electing the jury for the trial of Donald J. Trump,” said Moore.

A guest in the audience wears an “Impeach” jacket, at “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

Read more from Yahoo News:

Skullduggery Episode 3: Who did you vote for?

‘What will it change?’ Rural Iowa has better things to watch than a State of the Union

Trump’s 1st State of the Union vs. Obama’s: By the numbers

Military blames ‘human error’ for hidden Afghan war data

Photos: 2018 State of the Union

#_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #sotu #_revsp:yahoo_news_photo_staff_536 #resistance #_uuid:3de20f7e-b111-394a-95bb-86c6ad8784c0

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Resistance activists look past Trump’s State of the Union speech to November

“Social justice cocktails! Ice-cold water! You can’t have revolution without cold water!”

Mike, a refreshments vendor at the Town Hall theater in midtown Manhattan who declined to give a last name, tailored his pitch to the crowd Monday evening as he hawked water at $5 a bottle.

Actor John Leguizamo speaks during the “People’s State of the Union” event at The Town Hall, in New York City, Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Darren Ornitz/Reuters)

Mark Ruffalo speaks at “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

“Are you ready to hit the polls?” she cried, to cheers.

“The purpose of the 2018 election is we are electing the jury for the trial of Donald J. Trump,” said Moore.

A guest in the audience wears an “Impeach” jacket, at “The People’s State Of The Union” at The Town Hall theater in New York City, NY, on Jan. 29, 2018. (Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto)

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‘What will it change?’ Rural Iowa has better things to watch than a State of the Union

Trump’s 1st State of the Union vs. Obama’s: By the numbers

Military blames ‘human error’ for hidden Afghan war data

Photos: 2018 State of the Union

#_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #sotu #_revsp:yahoo_news_photo_staff_536 #resistance #_uuid:3de20f7e-b111-394a-95bb-86c6ad8784c0

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Trump's State of the Union will be answered by a cacophony of resistance voices

Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Michael Dwyer/AP, Delegate Elizabeth Guzman via Facebook, Faye Sadou/MediaPunch/IPX/AP, Craig Ruttle/AP, AP.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrats announced last week that Rep. Joe Kennedy III, the fresh-faced 37-year-old grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, would give their party’s formal response to President Trump’s first State of the Union address Tuesday night.

But his speech, which will air on major networks such as CBS, ABC, and NBC, won’t be the only voice offering a Democratic response.

Resistance groups that formed in response to the 2016 elections, longtime D.C. advocacy institutions, activist celebrities, and even another member of Congress are all planning to talk back to the president before and after the State of the Union address. The Democrat’s Spanish-language response will be given by Elizabeth Guzman, who was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in November amid Democrat’s surprisingly strong showing in the off-year down-ballot elections in the state. These events have the potential to amplify and expand on whatever Kennedy has to say and raise the profiles of a diverse group of movement leaders, but also to potentially complicate or distract from the party’s central message.

The night before Trump speaks to Congress and the nation, an array of celebrities — including Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Michael Moore and Lee Daniels — will be appear at an “inspirational” evening billed as the People’s State of the Union at the Town Hall theater in Manhattan. The event will be streamed live on Facebook. Backed by the activist groups MoveOn.org Political Action and Sean Eldridge’s Stand Up America, it will be the launch event for a new group, We Stand United that grew out of pre-Inauguration protest against Trump in New York last year.

On Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., there will be a protest along President Trump’s State of the Union motorcade route. A grassroots social media effort launched in mid-January has been urging liberals to deprive the ratings-conscious president of high TV numbers using the hashtag #SOTUblackout. “Watch SOTU online after it airs via YouTube, MSNBC, or CNN. Don’t DVR or watch it live,” tweeted one early proponent of the idea. It’s unclear how this would work in practice, since audience estimates are compiled by Nielsen Media Research based on a small sample of households, numbering in the thousands. For the rest of the country, their decision to watch or not won’t affect the ratings.

After the speech Tuesday night, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who has repeatedly called for the president to be impeached, will address the nation at the top of a special report on BET. Jimmy Kimmel – one of the most vigorous television critics of the president for his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act — also will interview porn star and former Trump mistress Stormy Daniels on his late night show. Alyssa Milano, who helped popularize the #MeToo hashtag, is asking followers to share short videos and tweets “describing your dream for America” along with the hashtag #StateOfTheDream to show their support for the young immigrants covered by DACA and the advocacy group United We Dream.

And a grassroots group of activists will live stream a collection of responses to the president on NowThisNews, using the hashtag #PeoplesSOTUResponse. Activist Brittany Packnett will host the event, which will feature appearances by more than a dozen leaders of liberal groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, the abortion-rights group NARAL, the immigrants rights group United We Dream and Run for Something, an organization that enlists young progressives to run for office.

The livestreamed “People’s SOTU Response” Tuesday — not to be confused with the People’s State of the Union Monday in New York — grew out of a Twitter conversation between activists who launched a petition demanding that the anti-Trump resistance be given airtime on CNN for a State of the Union response. The petition was the brainchild of Shannon Watt, the founder of gun control group Moms Demand Action and Board Chair of Right to Rise, which trains young women to run for office.

The petition cited the precedent that CNN aired the first Tea Party response to Obama’s State of the Union in 2011, following the Tea Party-fueled wave in Republican victories in the 2010 mid-term elections. Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minn.), who would go on to run for the GOP presidential nomination the following year, delivered the response live from the National Press Club in Washington, in an event put together by the Tea Party Express and the Tea Party HD political action committees. Her performance was amateurish; critics noted she did not appear to be looking at the right camera during her remarks.

CNN was the only cable network to air Bachmann’s speech, which also streamed live online on the websites of the tea party groups.

As of Sunday morning, CNN had not responded to the petition requesting airtime. The network declined to comment to Yahoo News on how it would make its decision, or on what basis it chose to air Bachmann’s speech in 2011. But at the time, its political director cited the Tea Party’s impact in America.

“The Tea Party has become a major force in American politics and within the Republican Party,” CNN’s Sam Fiest said in 2011. “Hearing the Tea Party’s perspective on the State of the Union is something we believe CNN’s viewers will be interested in hearing and we are happy to include this perspective as one of many in tonight’s coverage.”

Watt argues that the resistance movement and women’s activism are similarly powerful within the Democratic Party and the United States.

“The Resistance is a bigger and more influential than the Tea Party ever was. We call on CNN and other news networks to air a response from The Resistance after the State of the Union on January 30. Activists working to change America at the grassroots level should have an opportunity to respond to the President’s speech, and their voices should be bolstered by the same mainstream media that lifted up the Tea Party’s position in 2011,” the petition read.

By weekend’s end, the petition had gathered more than 7,000 signatures. That’s not a high number compared to other petitions hosted on the same petition platform, which MoveOn makes available to all its members. The effort has likely been hampered by organizers’ last-minute planning and inability to coalesce around a single individual to represent them. But Watt believes it represents a nascent movement that will grow stronger if Democrats continue to do well in special elections and prevail in the midterms.

“If you look at recent elections it shows we have significant traction. Millions and millions of women have marched since the election. Obviously this is an energized movement. There’s no way you can argue that it’s not,” Watt told Yahoo News about the petition. “This is just a way of saying this voice needs to be recognized.”

“This is really coming up organically, which is at its best, what we can leverage social media for,” added Packnett. “We have never let traditional or mainstream outlets dictate our truth and I don’t anticipate that this will be any different.”

_____

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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'Grab ‘Em By The Midterms': The Women’s March on Washington rallies for the 2018 elections

Kristen Floyd, Stephanie Voith and Renee Voith with their sign. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tessa Fowler turned nine today, and thousands of women sang happy birthday to her.

The daughter of newly-elected Virginia Del. Kelly Fowler, 36, Tessa was born on the day of Barack Obama’s first inauguration and had been eagerly looking forward to America inaugurating its first female president on her eighth birthday. After President Trump won the election November of 2016, though, something happened at school that turned her away from politics. “There was a little bit of bullying that went on. … She did come home different. She came home telling me that she was going to go back to playing with dolls,” her mother recounted Saturday in front of the Lincoln Memorial before the Women’s March on Washington. “I knew that I needed to do something for her.”

So her mother took her to the Women’s March the day after her birthday — and Trump’s inauguration — last year. It turned out to have a transformative impact on them both. A public school teacher turned home renovator and real estate team manager, the Virginia Beach resident from a military family had begun calling her local representatives after Trump’s win, without much response. “It changed both of us,” she recalled of the March. “The next week I said, we need to do something about this representation that doesn’t listen.”

“As much as the march was for her, I thought, it was for me. And it was everybody,” she said. And thus began her nine-month journey of running for office and moving from the streets to the statehouse. In November, Fowler became one of 15 Democrats to win a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, 11 of them women.

On Saturday, she addressed the 2018 Women’s March on Washington holding a sign that read, “I marched. I ran. I won.”

A scene from the Women’s March on Washington. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

After she spoke, the crowd, at that point not yet at half-strength, spontaneously began to sign “Happy Birthday” to Tessa, stumbling and laughing when they came to the line with her name, thousands of female voices raised in unison and directed toward one little girl.

It was a far, far smaller March on Washington this year, sponsored not by the Women’s March Inc. based in New York City, but by March Forward Virginia, a state-based organization that sent a contingent to the last march on D.C. At peak, the gathering around — and, despite many warnings from stage to please step off the melting ice — on the frozen Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the mall numbered in the thousands, and interviews with those in the crowd showed most came from the Potomac region of stretching from Northern Virginia to Southern Maryland.

While few of them had run for office, many had spent that past year doing organizing work in their communities. “When the Women’s March started in 2017 it was more of a moment, right? It hadn’t really become a movement,” said marcher Renee Greenwell, now an organizer with Indivisible Arlington. “I guess we got to see the birth of a movement. … We have gotten substantially more engaged. I talk to the staff of my congressional and senate representatives pretty regularly, to the point where they recognize me.”

In front of the Washington Monument. (Photo: Garance-Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

The pink knit pussy hats were out in force, and so were hand-crocheted snowflakes and ones pinked out of paper. The idea, said Susie Ana Paula Velasco, 19, is that even though conservatives taunt liberals as snowflakes to suggest that they are “soft,” when the snowflakes get together they turn into “a big storm, a big blizzard.” Ann Lalicker, 19, who attends George Washington University with Velasco, carried a sign that said, “And though she belittle she is fierce,” with snowflakes on it. Kristen Floyd, 36, Stephanie Voith, 23, and Renee Voith, 25, kept their eyes on the prize and had come down from Baltimore sporting signs reading “Grab ‘Em By the Midterms.”

The march was just one of 250 around the country organized by March On, the coalition of 2017 sister marches that took place around the country on the same day as the first Women’s March on Washington. In Las Vegas, the leaders of the New York City-based Women’s March organization launched an effort to register 1 million new voters from historically disenfranchised groups. Marches in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City drew enormous crowds.

The goal of the day was to further encourage women to run for office, highlight the need for year-round voter registration and civic engagement efforts, and work to lift the voices of community groups, March Forward Virginia co-founder Emily Patton told Yahoo News.

Cutouts of pink sharks — an apparent reference to the 2011 claim by a porn star, who said she was Trump’s mistress, that he hates sharks — floated above the crowd in Washington amid the signs and banners. “Trump Scared of Sharks? Wait for the Blue Wave,” taunted the sign of a person dressed in a shark costume.

Seen at #WomensMarchDC #WomensMarch2018 pic.twitter.com/YZ5XGzKeKN

— Erin Ruberry (@erinruberry) January 20, 2018

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and an array of Democratic House leaders spoke, using the opportunity to decry the government shutdown, as did Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y, who had emerged even before Trump’s election as a leading advocate against sexual violence and has since cemented her position as the most vocally feminist United States senator.

A year ago, “We saw the rebirth of the women’s movement,” said Gillibrand. “Men and women came together across the country and across the world for the single largest global protest in history. It was one of the most inspiring moments of my entire political career.”

She encouraged the crowd to stay active. “The only time our democracy has ever worked is when regular people just like you stand up and demand it. Do not wait for a white knight to march on Washington or the party to solve the problem. You will be waiting forever! It is the grassroots, it is you who will create the message!” she told the crowd.

Democratic lawmakers address the crowd. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

“Run for president!” a voice in the crowd cried out when she was done speaking.

Groups of students from Howard University and George Washington University in D.C. posed for pictures, and art students from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond hoisted aloft an enormous papier-machine bullhorn with the hashtag #MeToo on it.

“I’m 63. This is my Selma. That’s what I say to people back home,” said Laura Umphenour, who had missed the Women’s March on Washington last year and travelled all the way from Springfield, Mo., to catch it this year. “I was too young or too ignorant” to be part of the earlier civil rights movements, she said. But now she knows: “If you’re silent, you’re complicit.”

Read more from Yahoo News:

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Trump’s language on immigrants provokes a backlash in the pulpits

The ‘Sisterhood of the Van,’ one year after the Women’s March

Price hike would make national parks look like ‘exclusive club,’ resigning NPS board member says

Photos: 2nd annual Women’s March: A multi-city mass rally

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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The resistance is organized and ready in district where Trump is visiting

Conor Lamb reacts to winning the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania’s District 18 special election. (Photo: Jeff Swensen for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

MOUNT LEBANON, PA. — Former Marine Capt. Conor Lamb has been described as a central casting vision of a heartland American politician. A former assistant U.S. attorney general and novice political candidate, he’s running in a special election to replace eight-term Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned last fall following news reports that the family-values conservative had asked his mistress to get an abortion.

Pennsylvania’s 18th district, including affluent suburbs of Pittsburgh and working-class areas on the West Virginia border, has been the definition of a safe Republican district. Donald Trump won the district by 20 points. It’s not on the Swing Left map for flipping red districts to blue, and it’s not a priority red to blue district for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In fact it’s so red that in the last two election cycles, no Democrat even challenged Murphy there, allowing him to win each time with 100 percent of the vote.

But Donald Trump’s visit to the district on Thursday to shore up support for the Republican candidate, State Rep. Rick Saccone, a stalwart Trump defender and surprise victor of the GOP primary, shows just how much has changed since the reality TV star was elected president.

Public polling by Gravis Marketing at the start of the year showed Saccone with a 12 point lead, but internal polls show the race much closer, in the single digits. In a low-turn-out special election, in an environment where Democratic statehouse candidates in ruby red districts across the country are improving on their party’s 2016 performance by 15 to 27 points, a Democratic victory here no longer looks impossible, even if it the odds remain against it.

GOP Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone had announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, but after eight-term Rep. Tim Murphy stepped down switched gears and won the primary to run as the Republican candidate in the state’s 18th congressional district. (Photo: Marc Levy/AP)

But if Lamb has a shot in this race, any shot at all, it will be because of an uprising in the district that began long before his candidacy. Since the 2016 election, a grassroots rebellion has been upending politics as usual in Southwestern Pennsylvania and across the state, driven in large measure by suburban middle-aged women.

If a Democratic wave carries Lamb into office in the March 13 election, it will be one that has been building, drop by drop, since the day Trump was elected.

+++

The story of the fight by Democrats to retake PA- 18 doesn’t start with Murphy’s resignation on October 21, or even with the revelations over the summer that he’d had an affair.

It started a year ago, when women like Lara Huber, 40, went to the Women’s March in Washington D.C., taking their rage and disappointment over Hillary Clinton’s loss and Donald Trump’s victory to the streets. It was the beginning of a process of self-education and activism that has flowered across the state, even in the reddest precincts.

“I was not an activist prior to November 8th,” Huber told Yahoo News at one of the organizing meetings for the activist group 412 Resistance, held in an upstairs backroom at the public library in Dormont, a working-class suburb just outside of Pittsburgh that’s easy to drive to from across the South Hills. “I voted in every election. I read the newspaper. I thought that was good enough.”

After Trump was elected, though, it was clear that wouldn’t be good enough any more. As it did for women in communities across the country, the Women’s March had two powerful effects on her – it created a sense of solidarity and momentum when she was looking for a way to express her despondency over the election outcome, and it suggested concrete steps for action that took her life in a surprising new direction.

“We came off the march and we were like, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” said Huber, who lives in Castle Shannon. “And we all started creating these little groups.”

Nevertheless they persisted: Four members of 412 Resistance, including Valerie Fleischer (right) and Lara Huber (second from right) show off their tattoos. In the spring of 2017, the group hosted a fundraiser in Pittsburgh where women got tattoos of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellâs words, which have become a feminist rallying cry. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

Other women in the South Hills were following similar paths, using step-by-step instructions sent by older national groups such as MoveOn and new insurgent ones like Indivisible, along with emails from the Women’s March organization based in New York City.

“The first action was, have a postcard party,” recalled Huber of how 412 – the name refers to the Pittsburgh and Allegheny County area code — Resistance got its start. “And I created a Facebook event and I invited my friends and thought a few of them would show up and support me—and about 37 people showed up and most of them were not my friends, they were new people.” Today 412 Resistance counts more than 500 members, and is working to elect its most active members to district and county positions within the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, hoping to reshape and reinvigorate it from the inside. And its members are working to elect Conor Lamb – canvassing for him, phone-banking for him, putting up lawn signs and talking to their friends and neighbors about how their lives and communities might be affected by changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

Lynn Hughes, 34, a registered independent until Trump’s win radicalized her, tells a similar story. “Before the Inauguration, MoveOn.org called for community meetings all across the country to resist Trump at a local level. I was like, I have a house, I can just host a meeting,” she said after a meeting at a Panera in Mount Lebanon co-hosted by 412 Resistance and the group she founded in mid-January, Mount Lebanon Rise Up. “I never intended to be any kind of organizer really.”

But then she tapped into something, she recalls: “I thought maybe five people would show, and I think there ended up being 20 people, and then we had one person walk in from off the street. She saw my signs and she parked her car, and came in. So then we just started talking about what we should do at a local level. Someone mentioned the Indivisible Guide and so we kind of became an Indivisible group. People started finding us through there. At our next meeting we had 60 people, then the meeting after that we had over 100.” Today the group has more than 300 members, and there are at least eight Indivisible groups working in the 18th district to fight the Trump agenda and elect Lamb.

In the group’s early days, Hughes followed the MoveOn.org community meeting agenda instructions, which suggested forming committees. Then those took on a life of their own. The biggest ones focused on gerrymandering – Pennsylvania is one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country — and planning for the midterm elections. The goal from the start was to create enough momentum in the district to attract a strong Democratic challenger to Murphy, and provide a deep network of grassroots volunteers, and maybe even money, for that eventual candidate’s campaign to rely on.

They got their chance sooner than expected. “It came about eight months earlier than we had planned. But we were ready,” said Valerie Fleischer, 40, a mother of two and member of 412 Resistance who has since the election begun to consider running for office herself and is now taking a training class for would-be women candidates by Emerge America.

A meeting of 412 Resistance at the Dormont Public Library last spring. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

Another Mount Lebanon Rise Up committee spun off into a group called Mondays with Murphy, targeting Murphy’s field offices around the district with vivid, boisterous — and sometimes musical — protests every Monday that eroded support for him in the district even before his affair went from local rumor to national news.

“I thought, I’m not going to be standing on the sidelines when something so crucial is happening,” said Mykie Reidy, a former Bernie Sanders delegate and part-time copywriter who set up Mondays with Murphy’s planning committee and went on to emerge as a leading activist in the district. “I needed some more bodies on board, especially if we’re going to last until Nov. 2018. And as time went on every week there was another assault of some kind on people’s rights and their well-being and it really wasn’t that hard to keep it going because there was a new inflammation all the time.”

Mondays with Murphy morphed, after the congressman’s resignation, into Progress 18 PA. By that point it had more than 500 members. And when the time came for the Democratic Party’s convention to select a nominee, it threw its weight against the main primary competitor to Lamb, Gina Cerilli. A coalition of 10 of the new Southwestern Pennsylvania resistance groups, claiming collectively more than 20,000 members in the 18th district or near enough to it to be a source of volunteer labor for an eventual candidate, sent a letter to the Democratic Party announcing they would not do work on her behalf, owing to her anti-abortion position and other actions she had taken to alienate the progressive upstarts.

Protestors with Tuesdays with Toomey outside Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s Pittsburgh district office. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

Further flexing their muscle, members of the resistance groups had also been working to become Democratic committee members so they could attend the more than 500-person convention to select the party’s nominee. They succeeded in winning a small number of slots that allowed them to be in the room where the decision was made. Lamb led six other candidates on the first round of balloting and won overwhelmingly over Cerilli on the second round.

“We were ready to make it competitive in the general election. The fact that a shameful resignation — that he had to leave office in shame only sweetened the deal,” said Fleischer.

+++

Pennsylvania’s 18th district stretches from the gritty working class suburbs south of Steel City through a stretch of tony communities full of stand-alone homes where regional CEOs and business leaders reside, continuing south and west through coal mining communities and rural areas whose rolling hills are indistinguishable from those across the district’s southern and western borders with West Virginia. The residents are more than 90 percent white and substantially more suburban than rural.

It is an oddly shaped district, drawn in the last round of redistricting in the state in such a way as to be especially favorable to Republicans. It covers parts of Alleghany, Greene and Washington counties and a spur juts out to take in part of Westmoreland County to the east.

Activists groups in each of those counties are now doing grassroots volunteer organizing for Lamb — even in the GOP stronghold of Westmoreland County, where Voice of Westmoreland has grown from a lone man holding a banner outside the courthouse a year ago to a group of more than 200.

Angela Aldous, 37, a hospice nurse by day, is one of the lead organizers of Voice of Westmoreland, an issues-based organization that started early last spring when six people who had met protesting outside Murphy’s district office and the local courthouse against Trump’s refugee ban decided to build something more pragmatic and less “sporadic.”

“None of us knew what we were doing,” she said. “So we did that training through Harvard, the Resistance School,” an independent training project created by students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in the spring of 2017. The digital training tools national groups were providing became a huge part of their life. They did MoveOn’s Resistance Summer Online Trainings as well. “I don’t know how many teleconferences we’ve been on,” Aldous said. She’s also been listening in on conference calls from a local health policy group, and did a Sierra Club lobby day training.

Though formally non-partisan, the group finds its members casting their lot with Lamb, because Saccone did not answer the group’s policy position questionnaire and Lamb provided detailed answers.

An umbrella group of more than two dozen resistance groups across the state called Pennsylvania Together operated as another tutor. And the educating went both ways, as Aldous and her Westmoreland colleagues were able to provide a perspective from Trump country about what messages they think would work and what could be alienating in communities like hers, where Trump’s personality appeals to many voters. They may, for example, be worried about what impact changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act would have on the local opiate epidemic and people’s ability to get care, for example, she said, and be more open to a local issues based conversation than any direct attacks on the president.

Lamb, a former assistant U.S. attorney and U.S. Marine Corps veterans running to represent Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, leaves the American Legion Post 902 after a rally on January 13, 2018 in Houston, Pennsylvania in the southwestern corner of the state. (Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

“It really will be local people talking to each other that will make the difference,” in the special election, said Hannah Laurison, a Philadelphia-based leader of Pennsylvania Together and a force behind Tuesdays with Toomey, which has been targeting Sen Pat Toomey’s district offices with weekly protests since the winter of 2017. “The left is energized and organized in a way it hasn’t previously been and that makes races competitive.”

The Republican Party is meeting this new energy with more resources than it’s previously had to pour into the 18thdistrict. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan, has opened two offices in the district and committed to hiring 50 full-time door-knockers to get the vote out for Saccone. Trump’s visit puts the race on the national map, and makes it a fresh test of his ability to influence down-ballot elections after the Roy Moore debacle in Alabama. Mike Pence is scheduled to visit in February and continue the push for Saccone.

Even if Lamb loses on March 13, the resistance groups have no intention of disappearing. There will still be a general election in November, a second chance to elect Lamb or another Democrat, with a longer runway to build the organizing infrastructure they’ve been working to create.

And even if they lose then, every new Democrat they turn out and mobilize, every person who moves from a passive to an active participant in the process is one more person who can achieve one of their other long-term goals: rebuilding the Democratic firewall in Pennsylvania in time for 2020.

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Read more from Yahoo News:

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Can Jeff Flake turn the tide in the Republican war on the media?

New York’s Donald J. Trump State Park: A story of abandonment and decay

Photos: Activists protest against Trump’s immigration policies

#pennsylvania #congress #_revsp:Yahoo! News #_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #Conor Lamb #_uuid:661fff10-ff95-3ba9-9186-fba0eeaf884d #resistance #Rick Saccone

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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10 promises Trump kept in 2017

yahoo

Donald Trump in 2017 moved from being a chaos candidate to a chaos president. He shoots for the moon (literally), routinely says things that aren’t true, and often makes pledges that generate enormous attention but very little follow-through. Many of his signature policy efforts have been tied up in or blocked by the courts, his campaign is under investigation by the FBI, and his approval rating is at historic lows for a first-year president.

But the mind-numbing deluge of the Trump administration’s first-year controversies — the sheer number of misstatements and inflammatory tweets and abrupt staffing shifts — sometimes obscures the fact that Trump has achieved quite a number of the things he set out to do during the first year of his administration. He is, after all, the president. And Democratic resistance or no, that remains the most powerful post in the land — the ultimate government executive authority.

Here are 10 campaign promises Trump kept. Together, these achievements could form the nucleus of a reelection campaign.

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“Bomb the hell out of ISIS.”

Syrian Democratic Forces celebrate victory in Raqqa, Syria, Oct. 17, 2017. (Photo: Erik De Castro/Reuters)

This pledge, made over and over again at raucous arena rallies during the campaign and popularized on buttons and T-shirts sold across America, has largely come to pass. Trump promised old-school war, with its greater tolerance of civilian casualties, and delegated difficult targeting decisions to the generals. By May, the Pentagon was running low on small bombs, it had dropped so many. By July, the U.S.-led bombing campaign had killed more than 2,000 civilians in Iraq — as many as were killed during the entire Obama administration. The Syrian city of Raqqa was declared “liberated” in October, but had been nearly destroyed by the U.S.-backed fighters. In September, Newsweek declared, “Trump really is ‘bombing the s***’ out of ISIS just like he promised.” In December, the Iraqi prime minister declared Iraq “fully liberated” from ISIS. That’s an achievement that past experience shows may be hard to hold — and ISIS-inspired attacks in the West continue to pose a threat as well. But there’s no question that when it comes to having hit ISIS hard, Trump can declare with as much certainty and pride as George W. Bush once did: “Mission accomplished.”

_____

“The replacement for Justice Scalia will be a person of similar views and principles.”

President Trump looks on as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy swears in Judge Neil Gorsuch, April 10, 2017. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

On Jan. 31, Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, described by the New York Times as “a conservative in the mold of Antonin Scalia.” He was confirmed at the start of April on a 54-45 party-line vote after a bruising political campaign for and against his nomination, and the removal of the judicial filibuster and its 60-vote threshold in the Senate. This was the easiest campaign promise for Trump to keep — thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusing to open the confirmation process to an Obama nominee throughout 2016 — and Trump kept it.

Since taking office, Trump has nominated and the Senate has confirmed more appellate judges in his first year than any other president since the courts they sit on were created in 1891.

_____

Pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, “a potential disaster for our country.”

Trump signing an executive order early in his presidency, Jan. 23, 2017. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Trump promised to replace America’s multilateral trade agreements with one-on-one deals, and on his first full weekday in office he pulled America out of the 12-nation TPP agreement, a signature Obama accomplishment that Hillary Clinton had also expressed doubts about. Critics say U.S. withdrawal from the agreement governing trade with Asian and Pacific nations only strengthened the hand of China.

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“Cancel” the Paris climate deal.

President Trump mocks the data on climate change as he announces his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, June 1, 2017. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Trump vowed to “cancel” the Paris climate accord, which was ratified in October 2016, giving it the force of international law, and in June 2017 announced he would withdraw the United States from the now 197-country agreement to reduce carbon emissions. “We’re getting out,” he said. Of course the accord continues to exist, even without the official support of the world’s second-largest source of carbon emissions. And because the climate accord was ratified just days before Trump won election, the process of withdrawing from it is no simple matter: It will take four years and only become final shortly before the 2020 election. Nonetheless, Trump took all the steps he could to put “a checkmark next to one of his key campaign promises,” as CNN put it over the summer.

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“The Trump plan will lower the business tax rate.”

Protesters against tax reform, Dec. 1, 2017. (Photo: Yin Bogu/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Trump made an array of specific promises during the campaign on how he’d cut taxes as president. Among them: Lower the business tax rate from 35 to 15 percent, “collapse the current seven tax brackets to three brackets,” repeal the alternative minimum tax and eliminate the carried interest loophole, create a new child- and elder-care tax deduction, and eliminate the estate tax.

Of these promises, the one most clearly encoded in the tax bill hashed out by Congress in December was the lowering of the corporate tax rate, which was reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent. “This bill put corporate tax cuts first; that’s where roughly 70 percent of the benefits go,” noted Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus. The alternative minimum tax remains on the books, though with a higher income exemption level, as does the carried interest loophole and the estate tax. The new plan does not decrease the number of tax brackets at all, though it changes their income thresholds and rates.

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“Repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare.”

A rally against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, March 24, 2017, in Chicago. (Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)

Congressional Republicans were repeatedly thwarted in their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act’s many provisions in stand-alone bills, but the individual-mandate penalty for not carrying health insurance, which was legally permitted as a form of taxation by the U.S. Supreme Court, was repealed in the tax bill passed December 20. The mandate penalty is understood as one of the core provisions underlying the ACA’s health insurance exchanges, which need healthy as well as sick individuals to pay into the system.

The Trump administration sought to undermine enrollment in the exchanges in other ways too, such as cutting back on the advertising for them and the time to enroll. But Democratic and activist efforts to preserve Obamacare may have acted as a yearlong advertising campaign for the program, and enrollment in the exchanges in the end reached record numbers for 2018.

_____

Rolling back regulations.

President Trump with Bruce Adams, chairman of the San Juan County Commission, after signing a presidential proclamation shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, Dec. 4, 2017. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump has overseen what the Week has described as “the biggest regulatory rollback in American history.” As befits an antiregulatory agenda overseen by a former real estate developer, the major focus of that rollback has been undoing regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior — both of which govern land use — and rules that rein in the banking industry. The administration has also adopted a more lenient approach to enforcing those rules that remain on the books.

_____

“Drill, baby, drill.”

Advocates for protecting wildlife in the Arctic call on the Senate to drop Arctic refuge drilling from the Republican-crafted budget, Oct. 17, 2017. (Photo: Michael Reynolds/EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

This was originally a 2008 Sarah Palin campaign promise, but Trump stood next to her as she echoed it while supporting his campaign, and he promised to once again open America’s public lands and offshore areas to energy exploration. In April, Trump signed an executive order to allow offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, including in marine sanctuaries, declared off limits under Obama. He also ordered the Interior Department to review the Obama-era rules. The administration overturned an Obama-era ban on new coal mining leases on public lands as well.

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“By ending catch-and-release on the border, we will stop the cycle of human smuggling and violence. Illegal border crossings will go down.”

U.S Border Patrol agents detain a group of undocumented immigrants near La Grulla, Texas, March 15, 2017. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

Then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly declared on a visit to El Paso, Texas, in April, “We have ended dangerous catch-and-release enforcement policies.”

That was a bit of an overstatement, but the perception that the Trump administration had ended the policy of allowing captured undocumented border crossers to avoid detention while awaiting legal disposition of their cases led to a dramatic 58 percent decline in border-crossing attempts during the first half of 2017.

By June, the average monthly increase in those awaiting proceedings outside custody was about 7,500, compared with 20,600 during the final seven months of Obama’s presidency. In April, the Border Patrol caught a low of 11,100 undocumented immigrants, but by October it had become clear that there had not actually been a formal revocation of catch-and-release policies, despite statements to the contrary, and border crossings surged again, to 26,000. That said, Trump’s assertion that ending catch-and-release would decrease crossings was proved correct, and border crossing attempts declined sharply for a time.

_____

Recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

President Trump at the White House, Dec. 6, 2017. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

“While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering,” Trump said in making the announcement overturning seven decades of U.S. foreign policy in December. The administration went on to sign a waiver permitting the U.S. Embassy to remain in Tel Aviv for another six months, continuing the policies of previous presidents.

_____

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Democrats energized for uphill fight to reclaim state legislatures

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images

WASHINGTON — On November 15, a 26-year-old first-time candidate snagged a state Senate seat for Democrats in one of the reddest of red states: Oklahoma. Republicans had won the seat by 15 points in 2016, but Allison Ikley-Freeman – a lesbian social worker running in conservative West Tulsa County — flipped an open seat with a 31-vote victory in an under-the-radar and very low-turnout election.

“If you had asked us six months ago if she could have won, we would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’ But she did the work and she was a good candidate for that district,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits millennial Democrats to contest state races. “What we have seen in 2017 is that people with unconventional backgrounds can and often do win.”

That was true in Virginia that month, where Democrats picked up 15 House of Delegate seats, placing them within a coin toss of ending Republican control of the chamber in an unusually high turnout off-year election in which they also kept control of the governor’s mansion. In Washington state, a Democrat took a state Senate seat in a special election, flipping control of the narrowly divided chamber from Republicans to Democrats.

After years of losses at the state and local level, victories like these in 2017 have Democratic organizers excited about their chances of picking up legislative seats that in recent years they might not have even bothered to contest.

“Everything is on the table,” Jessica Post, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s main organ for organizing to win seats in state chambers, told Yahoo News. “That means districts and states that we thought might be tough to win or that we needed to win in two cycles, we now think we can win in one cycle.”

Coming off a dispiriting 2016, Democratic candidates lost five out of six contested congressional special elections in 2017, although in most cases by much smaller margins than predicted. And out of the spotlight, a year of unprecedented organizing for state legislative fights has begun to pay off in victories that have transformed the outlook of Democratic officials about prospects for down-ballot races.

“We’re very optimistic. I’m ready to order champagne for this whole staff,” said Post of her organizing team as 2017 wound down. “After Virginia, after Washington, after flipping now 34 seats from red to blue this year, we feel fantastic. And we know that we have the wind at our backs going into 2018. We’re excited about what the generic Democrat vs. Republican ballot looks like; we’re even more excited about what’s happening with candidates stepping up to run in numbers they never have before.”

Live interview generic ballot polls in December showed voters preferred a generic — i.e., unnamed — Democrat for Congress by between 11 to 18 points, the highest in two decades. President Trump had the lowest first-year favorable ratings of any post-World War II president. Congressional job approval was even lower than Trump’s, with just under 15 percent approving and more than 73 percent disapproving of the Republican-led chambers, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average.

Democrats are reaping a recruitment bonanza from the anti-Trump — and anti-GOP Congress — intensity. More than 25,000 women have contacted Emily’s List about running for office since Trump was elected — 25 times what the group saw in the previous election cycle. Now the group is looking to recruit pro-choice Democratic women to run for 598 state legislative seats across 26 states. There are eight legislatures the group is focusing on flipping from red to blue, and seven Democratic-majority ones it’s determined to help hold. Its “Change the Game” states include such key national battlegrounds as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.

The control of state legislatures will ultimately have an effect on redistricting, with implications for long-term control of Congress. An Associated Press analysis last summer found that Republicans, thanks to partisan gerrymandering, in 2016 won as many as 22 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives beyond what average vote share in congressional districts nationwide would have predicted. And with redistricting efforts coming up following the 2020 census, that advantage could grow in states where Republicans hold both chambers, especially if there’s also a Republican governor. “If we fail to win back the state legislatures … we’ll be disenfranchised out of power, and even if we win the House we’ll never be able to hold it,” said Vicky Hausman, founder and COO of Forward Majority, a political action committee dedicated to winning under-the-radar state legislative seats that was a major player in the Virginia wins.

A plethora of groups are working the state and local territory in 2018. The DLCC focuses on races where it can flip control of legislatures. There are seven chambers that are within a handful of seats of flipping. The Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota state senates are all within one seat of flipping control from red to blue. Virginia, New Hampshire, Arizona and Florida state Senates are also within five seats. Other bodies are bigger reaches, such as the Pennsylvania Senate, where Republicans held an 18-seat advantage after the 2016 election.

But Democrats will try. The DLCC has a 50-state program working with statehouse leaders. And Forward Majority is planning to home in on those fights that will make the biggest difference when it comes to the redistricting battles ahead, and battleground status in presidential years. That means places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia.

“There are races out there that are generally off the map for the majority of players that are very much winnable and could be competitive with enough attention,” said Hausman.

Another set of targets is Republican incumbents who have not been recently challenged but whose voting records are no longer in sync with their communities. “There is a set of extremist incumbent Republicans who effectively have gotten a pass, who haven’t had competitive race in years and who have a safe seat and who have been able to hide in the shadows of that safe seat and pass legislation that is completely out of touch with their constituents,” said Hausman.

Catherine Vaughan, founder and CEO of Flippable, also counts herself among the optimistic heading into 2018 — but guardedly so. “The blue wave [in 2017] was so much bigger than anyone expected, which is very exciting and which is what we’re seeing,” she told Yahoo News. “I would add an asterisk and say the caveat there is that especially in a state like Virginia, some of the gains we saw were in high-income, white, suburban districts. Not all of America looks like that, so it might to be harder to flip. Just as we were successful in Virginia, we might have challenges in Pennsylvania or Michigan where the population looks a little different.”

Flippable is seeking to flip 100 seats from red to blue in 2018.

Pennsylvania came up repeatedly as one of the tougher battlegrounds in the fight to flip state legislatures, thanks to the large number of seats that would need to change party hands, gerrymandering and the state’s solidly GOP interior. “We can’t sit back and count on a quote-unquote wave to deliver victories on the ground,” said David Cohen, founder and CEO of Forward Majority. “We’re going to have to fight tooth and nail to take back statehouses from Republicans in every corner of the country.”

For Litman, the target districts are those where the party can recruit outstanding candidates who can exert a reverse-coattail effect on up-ballot races for Congress.

“We need to invest in people, not geography, because in the new era, any district could be winnable,” she recently tweeted. In contrast to the DLCC, “We’re not thinking about this in terms of chambers that are flippable, or redistricting,” she told Yahoo News.

“I think if you’d asked in December 2016 how I was, I would have told you I was devastated and depressed — and I am currently so optimistic and so hopeful about what 2018 will bring,” said Litman.

_____

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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A partisan split on harassment charges: Dems resign, GOPers deny

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., center, arrives for a news conference on sexual harassment in the workplace. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers calling on Sen. Al Franken to step down Wednesday opened up a dramatic partisan divide in how the two major parties are responding to their members and candidates accused of sexual harassment or abuse.

By the day’s end, 30 lawmakers – and well over half the Democratic Senate caucus – had weighed in to say that Franken should resign. The one-time comedian turned senator from Minnesota announced he’d hold a press conference Thursday morning and was widely expected to announce he was leaving his seat.

The pressure on Franken to step aside has an element of political calculation, as Democrats seek to create a contrast with support by President Trump and the Republican National Committee for Alabama’s Roy Moore, who has refused to give up his bid for the Senate despite allegations by numerous women that he sexually pursued, or even molested, them when they were in their teens. But it’s also because Democratic and independent voters take seriously sexual harassment accusations while Republican voters, according to surveys, are more skeptical of their importance.

A Quinnipiac survey released Tuesday found a 26-point gap between the parties on this issue. Asked if an elected official should resign if accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault by multiple people, 77 percent of registered Democrats but only 51 percent of registered Republicans (and 60 percent of independents) said yes.

That gap in part reflects the gender gap in party identification. Women are more likely to be Democrats, and Quinnipiac found that 74 percent of women but only 54 percent of men say that elected officials accused by multiple women should step down.

Eight women have accused Sen. Al Franken of groping or trying to cadge unwanted kisses. Multiple women also accused Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) of pressuring them for sexual favors in workplace and work-related settings. Conyers, the only member of the House of Representatives whose tenure dates back to the 1960s, on Tuesday became the first federally elected official to step down in the recent wave of allegations. Freshman Rep. Ruben Kihuen of Nevada, a protégé of former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, also has been accused of harassing his 25-year-old campaign finance director; despite calls from Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to step aside, he’s indicated he has no plans to resign.

U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, left, kisses his wife, Kayla Moore after he speaks at a campaign rally this week in Fairhope, Ala. (Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)

“Franken is entitled to the Senate Ethics investigation process,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told reporters Wednesday, kicking off the day’s cascade of calls for his resignation from senators, but “it would be better for the country for him to offer that clear message that he values women, that we value women, and that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.”

Congress itself as an institution was, she said, ill-equipped “to do the kind of accountability the American people are searching for.”

“Public service demands higher standards – standards we choose to live by the moment we enter public life,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the third-ranking Democratic leader in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Moore pressed on with his campaign, this week drawing the robust support of Donald Trump and the renewed support of the Republican National Committee, which had cut ties to him after the charges first surfaced. “The president made that decision and he decided it was better to have somebody support his agenda than a Democrat that doesn’t,” said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Tuesday, explaining Trump’s reasoning.

A CBS News poll in the state found 71 percent of Republicans believed the allegations against Moore were false, with most blaming them on Democrats and the media. Alabama Republican supporters of Moore also backed Trump, who has himself been accused of unwanted sexual advances or assault by multiple women, at the rate of 96 percent.

And in the House, Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold, who reached an $84,000 settlement with former staffer Lauren Greene after she filed a sexual harassment and discrimination complaint in 2014, shows no signs of going anywhere. His now 30-year-old accuser, in contrast, has lost her job and is working $15/hour temporary gigs and babysitting to meet ends meet.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., speaks to the media last month on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have spoken out on the issue before today. “I had hoped that Judge Moore would resign, in other words withdraw from the race. That obviously is not going to happen. If he were to be elected I think he would immediately have an issue with the Ethics Committee,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday. Earlier he had suggested the Senate might not seat Moore, should he win.

In the House, Speaker Paul Ryan announced mandatory sexual harassment training for staffers and members in mid-November, “not only to raise awareness, but also make abundantly clear that harassment in any form has no place in this institution.” The Senate passed a resolution in early November mandating the same training for all members, staffers and interns. Rep. Jackie Speier and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have introduced legislation seeking to overhaul how harassment complaints are handled.

After first calling him an “icon,” Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi changed her mind and called on Conyers to resign. “No matter how great the legacy, it is no license to harass or discriminate,” she said after he stepped down.

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#Roy Moore #_revsp:Yahoo! News #Al Franken #sexual harassment #_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #_uuid:18dddb15-2f64-3306-902d-38b6daeaea1d

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Women’s anger transformed the 2017 elections. Get ready for 2018.

Activists march along 59th Street during a protest against President Donald Trump’s policies concerning women’s issues, April 28, 2017 in New York City. The protest was organized by the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Roiling anti-Trump sentiment. A massive grassroots mobilization by new resistance organizing groups. Women’s anger at politicians and record number of women candidates. To that list of contributing factors to last week’s bicoastal Democratic victories, add another that is certain to factor into the 2018 races: deferred accountability.

Voters weren’t just voting against Donald Trump; they were taking action on years’ worth of accumulated grievances that had no outlet in districts where the only candidates running were Republicans. And that has profound implications for Democratic organizing efforts in 2018.

Take the case of Virginia’s 73rd House of Delegates district, outside of Richmond.

In 2012, a proposed transvaginal ultrasound law in Virginia became a major issue in the presidential race and part of that year’s War on Women narrative. The bill, which would have required women seeking abortions to undergo an invasive and medically unnecessary test, eventually became law after it was revised to require external sonograms of women seeking abortions rather than internal probes.

But since 2009, and until this year, no one had challenged Republican Virginia House of Delegates Rep. John O’Bannon, who voted for the law.

In his 17 years in office, O’Bannon, a staunch social conservative, had only faced three challengers – and only one of them a Democrat.

This year, Debra Rodman, who runs the women’s studies program at Randolph-Macon College, decided to run for office.

“I think the silver lining in (Trump’s) election is that people like me, women like me … now the doors have opened for us,” Rodman said in May. “I think this movement of people, especially women like me, is not just about resisting. It’s about advancing,” she told a Roanoke paper.

She beat three other candidates in the June primary and then ousted O’Bannon in the district, despite being outspent by nearly $200,000. She ran on a platform of holding O’Bannon, a doctor, accountable for his record of opposing the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare — as well as his record on women’s reproductive health concerns, from contraception to the 2012 transvaginal ultrasound law.

Debra Rodman and John O’Bannon. (Twitter/johnobannon.com)

“John O’Bannon hadn’t seen a challenger since he voted for that bill when Debra Rodman stepped up to run,” said Ben Wexler-Waite, a spokesman for Forward Majority, a Democratic PAC founded by Obama campaign alumni to expand the field of contested state legislative races and a group that backed Rodman’s bid. “She proved him wrong and the issue of choice and his vote over that ultrasound bill was a major issue in that race.”

“No one’s been shining a light on these guys,” he noted.

Democrats won five seats in the House of Delegates, among the 15 they picked up in total, that were uncontested just two years ago — an astonishing feat that has acted as proof of concept for groups like Forward Majority that are seeking to expand the roadmap for 2018 and retake some of the more than 1,000 state legislative seats that Democrats have lost since 2009. The lesson is that even seats that a Republican won unopposed in the last cycle can be successfully contested in today’s political environment — especially seats like Rodman’s, in a district where voters backed Clinton in 2016.

They’ll have plenty of candidates to choose from as they go forward. Trump’s election had already created a banner year for candidate recruitment. Now the boost of the 2017 election results is turning the torrent into a tsunami.

“We usually get 10 folks a day signing up to run for office,” said Amanda Litman, a former Clinton staffer who founded Run For Something, a political action group dedicated to recruiting and training first-time candidates for lower-level offices. “We’ve had nearly 400 people sign up to run for office since Tuesday, so 6 times greater than our expected rate, than what we would have predicted.”

The group is sponsoring a National Run for Office Day on Tuesday, Nov. 14, along with 41 other groups, from Bernie Sander’s Our Revolution to Planned Parenthood, Swing Left and Flippable. The tagline of the day: “Uncontested elections are unacceptable.”

EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock waves from the podium during the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 27, 2016. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)

Since Trump’s election, Emily’s List has been contacted by more than 21,000 women interested in running for. “Since last Tuesday, that number has continued to skyrocket,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List.

Not all of them plan to run in 2018, or even in 2020. But the past year has created a substantial population of possible candidates for Democrats to draw from for years to come.

“The Democratic bench for at least a decade will be made up of these women,” predicted Alexandra De Luca, a spokeswoman for Emily’s List.

Everything is on agenda for the women: What the administration is doing, what their representatives are doing, what is happening in the culture at large.

“For women, the feeling of being under attack by their elected officials in a variety of ways is the most galvanizing, activating sentiment for them,” said Deirdre Schifeling, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, which ran a nearly $3 million digital campaign to turn out voters in Virginia and studied closely what motivated turnout. It is “the number one thing,” she said.

The current political moment for women is bigger than just Donald Trump. “We heard from voters repeatedly at the doors that their rights were under attack. The Me Too movement was just a continuation…of conversations we were already having about the importance of women’s issues and women stepping up and taking action,” said Jennifer Allen, CEO of Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC, describing the way October’s revelations about endemic male sexual harassment and abuse of women contributed to the female political upsurge.

Winning Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam was dramatically boosted by women voters: Exit polls showed that 91 percent of black women voted for him, along with 77 percent of unmarried ones, helping to lift him to a 22-point edge with women statewide. That’s a bigger margin among women than Hillary Clinton’s 17-point edge. Healthcare was Virginia voter’s top issue, too.

The results have Republicans on guard. “The numbers show Democrats spent millions more to fight in state and local races. Their money was invested in a network of over a dozen new and enhanced liberal, special interest groups, modeled after the RSLC’s successful 2010 REDMAP program,” said Republican State Legislative Committee President Matt Walter, referring to the Republican state legislative campaign committee’s sweeping 2010 program, right after the election. “Blue state majorities in Washington, Virginia and other states will remain targets in the coming years, but the results from last night indicate an elevated threat level…. We must be prepared for the Democrats’ enhanced organization and spending abilities.”

The political questions provoking female anger show no sign of abating. “If suburban women were mad on Tuesday when they turned out in droves, what happens when they hear R’s defending pedophilia?” tweeted conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, alluding to Republican statements of support for Judge Roy Moore’s senatorial bid in Alabama. Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old in the 1970s and pursuing relationships with other teenaged girls, and while Republican Senate leaders have sought to drive him from the race, he shows no sign of stepping aside before the Dec. 12 special election.

Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore waits to speak the Vestavia Hills Public library, Nov. 11, 2017, in Birmingham, Ala. (Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)

Already Moore has become the Todd Akin of political cycle – a regional candidate whose views and actions involving women create a controversy that tarnishes the national party and boosts Democrats. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama since 1992, but polling since the Moore controversy broke shows veteran prosecutor and Democrat Doug Jones has pulled even with or taken the lead from Jones in the contest for Attorney General Jeff Session’s old Senate seat.

In addition to state legislative races in key swing states, Democrats are looking forward to heavily contesting the 23 U.S. House of Representatives districts currently held by Republicans in districts Clinton won last year. Emily’s List is already backing 11 women in races in those districts, and 15 over all. A record 357 women have already declared their candidacies for 2018, according to the Rutgers Center on Women and Politics — 292 of them Democrats. Of them, a record 183 Democratic women are seeking to challenge GOP incumbents — while only 14 GOP women are seeking to challenge Democratic ones.

The hope is that by having candidates running down-ticket, the congressional races will get the same boost Northam did in Virginia. “Simply having a Democrats in these House of Delegates races increased turnout by 1.5 percent over the 2013 election,” said Litman, one of the chief proponents of the “reverse coattails” theory of organizing that was proven to work in Virginia.

“Our theory as an organization is if you run good candidates and you run them everywhere, they might win — and they’ll help turnout for Democrats across the board.”

Read more from Yahoo News:

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New York, Iraq, Myanmar: The endless calamity of religious war

Women tweet photos of when they were age Roy Moore’s accuser was

In the hands of Trump, the past is a political weapon

Photos: 2017 NYC Veterans Day Parade

#Bernie Sanders #Roy Moore #_uuid:ada6df2e-31c5-31a8-8424-2e0e5f20041d #Donald Trump #Hillary Clinton #_revsp:Yahoo! News #_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Women's anger transformed the 2017 elections. Get ready for 2018.

Activists in New York City protest President Trump’s policies relating to women’s issues, April 28, 2017. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Roiling anti-Trump sentiment. A massive grassroots mobilization by new resistance organizing groups. Women’s anger at politicians and a record number of female candidates. To that list of contributing factors to last week’s bicoastal Democratic victories, add another that is certain to factor into the 2018 races: deferred accountability.

Voters weren’t just voting against Donald Trump, they were taking action on years’ worth of accumulated grievances that had no outlet in districts where the only candidates running were Republicans. And that has profound implications for Democratic organizing efforts in 2018.

Take the case of Virginia’s 73rd House of Delegates district, outside of Richmond.

But since 2009, and until this year, no one had challenged Republican Virginia House of Delegates Rep. John O’Bannon, who voted for the law.

In his 17 years in office, O’Bannon, a staunch social conservative, had only faced three challengers —and only one of them a Democrat.

This year, Debra Rodman, who runs the women’s studies program at Randolph-Macon College, decided to run for office.

Debra Rodman and John O’Bannon. (Twitter/johnobannon.com)

“John O’Bannon hadn’t seen a challenger since he voted for that bill when Debra Rodman stepped up to run,” said Ben Wexler-Waite, a spokesman for Forward Majority, a Democratic PAC founded by Obama campaign alumni to expand the field of contested state legislative races and a group that backed Rodman’s bid. “She proved him wrong, and the issue of choice and his vote over that ultrasound bill was a major issue in that race.”

“No one’s been shining a light on these guys,” he noted.

“We usually get 10 folks a day signing up to run for office,” said Amanda Litman, a former Clinton staffer who founded Run For Something, a political action group dedicated to recruiting and training first-time candidates for lower-level offices. “We’ve had nearly 400 people sign up to run for office since Tuesday, so six times greater than our expected rate, than what we would have predicted.”

The group is sponsoring a National Run for Office Day on Tuesday, Nov. 14, along with 41 other groups, from Bernie Sanders’s Our Revolution to Planned Parenthood, Swing Left and Flippable. The tagline of the day: “Uncontested elections are unacceptable.”

EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock waves from the podium during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 27, 2016. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)

Since Trump’s election, EMILY’s List has been contacted by more than 21,000 women interested in running. “Since last Tuesday, that number has continued to skyrocket,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List.

Not all of them plan to run in 2018, or even in 2020. But the past year has created a substantial population of possible candidates for Democrats to draw from for years to come.

“The Democratic bench for at least a decade will be made up of these women,” predicted Alexandra de Luca, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List.

Everything is on agenda for the women: What the administration is doing, what their representatives are doing, what is happening in the culture at large.

The current political moment for women is bigger than just Donald Trump. “We heard from voters repeatedly at the doors that their rights were under attack. The Me Too movement was just a continuation … of conversations we were already having about the importance of women’s issues and women stepping up and taking action,” said Jennifer Allen, CEO of Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC, describing the way October’s revelations about endemic male sexual harassment and abuse of women contributed to the female political upsurge.

The results have Republicans on edge. “The numbers show Democrats spent millions more to fight in state and local races. Their money was invested in a network of over a dozen new and enhanced liberal, special interest groups, modeled after the [Republican State Leadership Committee’s] successful 2010 REDMAP program,” said RSLC President Matt Walter, right after the election. “Blue state majorities in Washington, Virginia and other states will remain targets in the coming years, but the results from last night indicate an elevated threat level. … We must be prepared for the Democrats’ enhanced organization and spending abilities.”

U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore waits to speak at an event in Birmingham, Ala., Nov. 11, 2017. (Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)

Already Moore has become the Todd Akin of this political cycle — a regional candidate whose views and actions involving women create a controversy that tarnishes the national party and boosts Democrats. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama since 1992, but polling since the Moore controversy broke shows veteran prosecutor and Democrat Doug Jones has pulled even with or taken the lead from Jones in the contest for Attorney General Jeff Session’s old Senate seat.

In addition to state legislative races in key swing states, Democrats are looking forward to heavily contesting the 23 U.S. House of Representatives districts currently held by Republicans in districts Clinton won last year. EMILY’s List is already backing 11 women in races in those districts, and 15 over all. A record 357 women have already declared their candidacies for 2018, according to the Rutgers Center on Women and Politics — 292 of them Democrats. Of them, a record 183 Democratic women are seeking to challenge GOP incumbents — while only 14 GOP women are seeking to challenge Democratic ones.

The hope is that by having candidates running down-ticket, the congressional races will get the same boost Northam did in Virginia. “Simply having a Democrat in these House of Delegates races increased turnout by 1.5 percent over the 2013 election,” said Litman, one of the chief proponents of the “reverse coattails” theory of organizing that was proven effective in Virginia.

“Our theory as an organization is, if you run good candidates and you run them everywhere, they might win — and they’ll help turnout for Democrats across the board.”

Read more from Yahoo News:

After the killings, shock and grief in a small Texas town

New York, Iraq, Myanmar: The endless calamity of religious war

Women tweet photos of when they were age Roy Moore’s accuser was

In the hands of Trump, the past is a political weapon

Photos: 2017 NYC Veterans Day Parade

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Democrats on verge of retaking Virginia House

Democratic nominee for the House of Delegates 13th district seat, Danica Roem, brings campaign signs as she greets voters while canvasing a neighborhood Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Manassas, Va. Roem is running against Del. Bob Marshall in the 13th House of Delegates District. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

WASHINGTON — Democrats romped in Virginia Tuesday, winning seats after seat in the state House of Delegates, where Republicans held a seemingly insurmountable 32-seat advantage as voters went to polls. As of 9:30, Democrats had a 47-46 edge in called races, with seven contests still too close to call, putting them on the cusp of a majority in the 100-seat chamber.

The Democrats retained control of the governor’s mansion by a surprisingly healthy margin. The upper house, which was not on the ballot this year, has a narrow Republican margin.

Call it the revenge of Obama’s America. Candidates straight from blue state central casting defeated longtime Republicans on the strength of high turnout, driven by campaigns that focused on local issues and took advantage of fierce Democratic anti-Trump sentiment to rack up impressive fundraising numbers– and get-out-the-vote help from outside groups.

Virginia voters elected the first openly transgender state legislator in the country, 33-year-old Democrat Danica Roem, who ran a campaign focused on transportation issues. She defeated 26-year incumbent and social conservative Bob Marshall, 73, author of a proposed “Bathroom bill” prohibiting trans people from using the bathroom of their choice.

They ousted Republican House Majority Whip Jackson Miller, replacing him with Dan Lee Carter, a member of the Democratic Socialists.

They elected Irish-Lebanese-Latina candidate Hala Ayala, the former president of her local chapter of NOW. She defeated Republican incumbent Rich Anderson in Prince William, who had sent out controversial mailers accusing her of wanting to give rights to “thugs, violent criminals, gang members, and child predators.” Ayala and Democrat Elizabeth Guzman, who also defeated a GOP incumbent, will be the first two Latinas in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Democrat Chris Hurst, whose reporter girlfriend Alison Parker was slain on live television in Virginia and ran on a gun control platform, unseated incumbent Republican Joseph Yost.

Before the election, organizers active in the statehouse elections had predicted pick-ups of up to eight seats. Nine if they were being optimistic.

It wasn’t a redistricting year, after all, and the state’s heavily gerrymandered districts are all still on the maps. But the blue wave Tuesday night that saw Ralph Northam declared the victor in the governor’s race shortly after 8 pm and Justin Fairfax win the lieutenant governor spot, becoming only the second African-American elected statewide in Virginia since the Civil War, lifted candidates in the House of Delegates contests far beyond what organizers expected.

The one thing they did know: You can’t win if you don’t run, and you can’t catch a wave if you don’t have candidates. In 2015, only 29 of the state’s House of Delegates elections were head-to-head Democrat vs. Republican contests; most of the races were not contested.

That changed this year, when 88 of the races featured head-to-head contests.

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Democrats are upping their game in local races this year

Kathy Tran, Danica Roem and Manka Dhingra. (Photos: You Tube/Facebook/

WASHINGTON — A Maine ballot initiative to expand Medicaid. More than a dozen contested seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. A lone Washington state Senate seat. Mayoral elections in Charlotte and Fayetteville, N.C., — and also in Albuquerque, N.M., Syracuse, N.Y., and St. Petersburg, Fla.

These are just some of the contests national Democrats will be watching Tuesday night after what an array of groups describes as the most intense and coordinated national effort to elect Democrats to down-ballot state and local offices in modern party history.

The Democratic National Committee, which under Chair Tom Perez has sought to revive Howard Dean-style investments in state parties in non-presidential years, has been sending money to state parties to assist with get out the vote efforts for mayoral elections.

“This is the first time the DNC has made investments in mayoral and down-ballot races. Our investments are unprecedented for the DNC,” said Sabrina Singh, a spokesperson for the national Democratic group. The DNC last week announced investments in the state parties in New Hampshire, Florida, New York, North Carolina, and New Mexico with the goal of boosting get-out-the-vote efforts for mayoral contests.

In Virginia, said Singh, there are 33 different outside groups doing work in addition to the Democratic committees and individual campaigns.

Among them is a group called Sister District, which was founded by a group of women who met on Facebook the day after the 2016 election. It’s funneled the energy and fundraising power of 25,000 volunteers across the country into 13 House of Delegates contests in Virginia and the Washington state contest, raising more than $350,000 for them and banking more than 100,000 calls. A Democratic win in Washington would flip control of the chamber, giving Democrats control of all three branches of Washington state government and painting the Pacific states from Canada to Mexico a line of unbroken blue.

Also on the ground in Virginia is a new to the Trump-era group called Flippable, which focuses on flipping seats in state legislatures, resistance movement group Indivisible and Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution. They are working side by side with more established groups such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL, SEIU and a host of other labor unions and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

The DLCC has raised a record $10 million since Trump’s election — a more than 450 percent increase from 2016 — and said it had knocked on more than a million doors to turn out voters for the Virginia House of Delegates contests, more than doubling last year’s efforts in the state.

The most closely watched contest Tuesday is the governor’s race in Virginia, where final polls continued to show a narrow lead for Democrat Ralph Northam over Republican Ed Gillespie in the race to replace departing Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Virginia political experts point out that while the state has trended blue in statewide elections, it is still very much a purple state, where Democratic wins are often narrow and hard-fought. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner beat Gillespie in 2014 with a 0.8 percent margin. McAuliffe won election in 2013 with a 2.6 percent margin over Republican Kenneth Cuccinelli. By all accounts from those doing on-the-ground-organizing, the result of today’s gubernatorial election is likely to be similarly tight.

But below the radar, say grassroots organizers, Northam’s effort is being aided by the intensive get-out-the-vote organizing for the freshly competitive House of Delegates races. This year, 88 of the 100 districts will see head-to-head contests featuring Democrats, compared to 29 districts in 2015. Democrats currently hold only 34 seats.

“In some ways the House of Delegates [fight] may carry the top of the ticket,” said Lyzz Schwegler, co-founder and director of communications of the Sister District Project. “There are some split ticket voters in Virginia, but by and large if someone is motivated enough to vote all the way down ballot, they’re going to be motivated enough to vote for the top of the ticket.”

Carolyn Fiddler, the political editor at Daily Kos and former communications director for the DLCC, is predicting a five to eight seat pickup for Democrats in the Virginia house, where Republicans currently hold a substantial majority and would need to lose 17 seats for the chamber to flip from red to blue. Thanks to redistricting, that will be hard to overcome no matter how strong the blue wave this year. Mara Sloan, a spokesperson for the DLCC, is predicting an up-to-eight seat gain. Catherine Vaughan, founder of Flippable, is predicting a gain of at least five seats.

“Even in big wave years you don’t see 17 seats flipping,” said Vaughan, noting that 97 percent of incumbents win re-election in Virginia and only two of the target seats are open contests.

But the small number of predicted pick-ups belies the extent of the organizing and fundraising going on. The combination of an expanded field and focused national attention has led to a boom in small-donor enthusiasm for the Virginia House of Delegates candidates, with three times as many donations of $100 or less going to them than in 2015 and eight times as many as in 2009. “And it’s thirteen times as many grassroots donors as Republican candidates mobilized this year,” said Vaughn.

Notably, many of the leading figures on the left doing work in the down-ballot space are female. So are the candidates. In Virginia, a record 43 women are running for House of Delegates seats. In Washington state’s 45th senate district, where there is a special election today, both the Republican, Jinyoung Lee Englund, and the Democrat, Manka Dhingra, seeking the open seat are female. The race there is neck and neck.

The new Democratic effort to contest every race possible, even in the face of daunting odds, has extended all the way to Georgia, where nine state legislatives seats are on the ballot in special elections Tuesday — and all are being contested. Last year, 83 percent of state legislative seats in Georgia were uncontested.

In Virginia, two of the most high-profile races are in the 13th district in Northern Virginia, where more than two-decade incumbent and staunch social conservative Republican Del. Robert Marshall is being challenged by Democrat Danica Roem, the first transgender candidate to run for office in the state. In Southwest Virginia’s 12th district, near Blacksburg, Democratic challenger Chris Hurst, whose reporter girlfriend was shot and killed on live television in 2015, is taking on incumbent Republican Joseph Yost.

The 2nd, 41st and 32nd districts will also be ones to watch. The DLCC is keeping tabs on 16 seats in Virginia — 13 of which are currently held by Republicans — and 10 seats in the New Jersey state senate and assembly, where it is hoping to expand the existing Democratic majorities and add up to six seats.

When the dust clears, the extraordinary coordinated campaign in Virginia could provide a model for other states in 2018, showing the power of an approach that runs the length and breadth of the ticket. And in many ways, the state is perfect territory for a test run between old and new groups, because of Virginia’s loose campaign finance laws, which allow a level of coordination between campaigns and committees and outside groups not possible in many other states.

While the groups may not be able to work so closely together going forward, what they learned this year will stay with them.

So, too, they hope, will the candidates who were recruited, most of whom are likely to lose their contests on Tuesday night. Retaking the Virginia House of Delegates will be a battle that could take several more election cycles, predicted Fiddler, but if this year’s first-time candidates run again in 2019 and 2021, when they are better known, and sharper, the Virginia Democrats may finally have a chance.

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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Facebook, Google won't commit to stop taking foreign cash for U.S. political ads

From left, Facebook’s General Counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter’s Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett, and Google’s Law Enforcement and Information Security Director Richard Salgado, are sworn in for a Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

WASHINGTON — Facebook and Google declined under repeated congressional questioning Tuesday to commit to stop taking Russian rubles and other foreign currencies as payment for American political advertisements, despite federal election law prohibiting payments from foreign nationals.

Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, a Democrat, hammered the companies on the question of accepting American political ads paid for in foreign currencies during a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing on Russian disinformation campaigns and the 2016 election. It was the first of three congressional hearings over the course of two days in which Google, Facebook and Twitter will appear for questioning.

“How did Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its users somehow not make the connection that electoral ads paid for in rubles were coming from Russia?” asked Franken. “Those are two data points. American political ads and Russian money, rubles. How could you not connect those two dots?”

“In hindsight, we should have had a broader lens. There were signals we missed,” said Colin Stretch, the general counsel for Facebook.

“People are buying ads on your platform with rubles,” Franken. “They’re political ads. You put billions of data points together all the time that’s what I hear these platforms do. They’re the most sophisticated things invented by man, ever. Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed. You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go like hmmm, those two data points spell out something bad.”

“It’s a signal we should have been alert to and in hindsight, it’s one we missed,” replied Stretch.

“Okay, okay yeah,” said Franken. “Will Facebook commit to not accepting political ads paid for by foreign money in the future?”

“Senator, our goal is to require all political advertisers regardless of currency to provide documentation and information that they’re authorized to advertise,” Stretch said, raising questions about utility of “the currency signal.”

“Our goal is to make sure we’re addressing all forms of abuse,” said Stretch.

“My goal is for you to think through this stuff a little bit better,” snapped Franken.

A poster depicting an example of a misleading internet posting is visible as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., left, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., right, listen to testimony. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

In his prepared testimony, Stretch noted that of the fake accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, which “spent approximately $100,000 on more than 3,000 Facebook and Instagram ads between June 2015 and August 2017,” “many of the ads were paid for in Russian currency, though currency alone is a weak signal for suspicious activity.”

Franken pressed again on this point later, turning his attention to Twitter and Google. Would they commit to stop running electoral ads on American political campaigns that are paid for by foreign actors, he asked.

“I don’t believe we do,” said Sean Edgett, acting general counsel of Twitter. “I don’t believe we take rubles.” He replied “yes,” to the yes or no version of Franken’s question.

Google was, like Facebook, more circumspect. “I would want to check to make sure it’s a good signal. If it’s a good signal, yes. If it’s not a good signal then it’s not a good approach,” said Richard Salgado, Google law enforcement and security director.

“You know foreign companies actually can’t legally do that,” said Franken.

“Right. Foreign companies can’t, that’s right. So the trick is to make sure it is a signal that gives us the right hit. It’s a very good signal and so it may be the right one to use,” Salgado said.

“Foreigners can’t use money in our campaigns, you know that right? It��s illegal,” asked Franken. “So you want to know if it would be a good signal to do something illegal or not?”

“It’s a very good signal,” agreed Salgado.

Overall the companies emphasized that while they have hundreds or thousands of people on staff to monitor content for terrorist threats and other violations, the first line of defense at all the companies is technology. They are good at seeing “signals” such as the creation of hundreds of new accounts in a short period of time, but as international companies that accept advertising paid for in an array of denominations, the trick going forward will be to identify U.S.-targeted political and issue-based ads paid for in all foreign currencies.

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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The #MeToo hashtag has reached nearly half the Facebook accounts in America. The consequences have just begun.

Original Me Too artwork by Victoria Siemer/@witchoria on Instagram.

WASHINGTON — The joke about social media is that Twitter is where we tell the truth to strangers and Facebook is where we lie to our friends.

This week, though, Facebook came through as a forum for truth as women across the country unspooled their tales of sexual harassment and abuse under the #MeToo hashtag — and the movement is already having real-world consequences.

It started with a post on Twitter from Alyssa Milano, but then it spread – and spread and spread – as women considered their own lives. They talked to their sisters and their mothers and their roommates and their friends. They saw the words of acquaintances and professional heroes and the whole vast network of thin relationships and scrunched up their courage and decided, yes, this time I will speak up, even if only to cut and paste the #MeToo language that was going viral, without any details.

Me too. If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too.” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Please copy/paste.

Within the first 24 hours of the hashtag, there were more than 12 million posts, comments and reactions from 4.7 million people, according to Facebook — and more than 45 percent of Facebook users in the U.S. were friends with someone who had posted, “Me Too.” Though the company said it does not have more recent data, there’s not question the ultimate reach of the hashtag was even larger, as fresh posts continued to appear well into Thursday.

And with #MeToo, a company under siege for its missteps on undisclosed Russian campaign advertising and content-neutral help for controversial social activists emerged as the platform for the latest twist in the women’s uprising that began with the marches in January.

Call it the ultimate Lean In circle. “Women accomplish amazing things when we support each other,” reads the tagline for the small peer groups envisioned by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that are a cross between 1960s consciousness-raising gatherings and 1720s mutual improvement clubs.

Now that supportive consciousness-raising has moved back online, validated with hearts and angry and sad face emoticons, in a textbook example of what Facebook can be used for when it’s working right.

While Twitter said there were more than 1.2 million tweets using the hashtag #MeToo between Sunday at noon and Wednesday at noon – and that’s not even counting retweets or non-hashtag mentions of “me too”– the Facebook conversation is what has made this moment so powerful.

And while some have criticized it as just another blip in the viral outrage factory, of sparking acts of performative allyship from men wanting to be seen as supportive and coercive confessions from women who might otherwise prefer to be silent, it has begun to have real consequences offline.

For the first time ever, there is a real solidarity around these questions. Not a performative solidarity — thought that certainly exists — but the real solidarity that comes from hearing the stories of your real-life friends. Men are chiming in in shock, wondering what to do. And women are learning things about their female friends, their colleagues, even their relatives, they did not know before.

Friends are the ultimate influencers, as any political operative will tell you. A political message coming from a friend is many times more powerful than a message coming from a politician or a volunteer. Friends are the ultimate endorsers of brands, recommenders of content, and validators of our views of the world. And the conversation about sexual harassment and abuse that the Weinstein story broke open is now taking place in friend circles – as well as friendly professional ones, as many workplace colleagues are also connected on Facebook.

The torrent of stories about Harvey Weinstein has opened up space for on-the-record stories about less well-known men and the writing of #metoo posts has encouraged some women to come forward publicly for the first time with older allegations. That’s led to a spate of accusations, resignations and firings in Hollywood and the media — where the scandal started — though the circle is slowly widening to encompass other sectors as well, such as politics and political advocacy.

A freelance journalist was dropped by Vice after an anonymous Facebook post inspired by #metoo publicly accused him of sexual harassment, which he then admitted and apologized for. British GQ canned political writer Rupert Myers following online allegations. Vox Media’s editorial director Lockhart Steele was fired after an old Human Resources complaint resurfaced in a Medium post by a female developer about the lack of consequences for sexual harassment at her old workplace.

Amazon Studios head Roy Price was suspended after being publicly accused of sexual harassment, and then quit the company. Andy Signore, creator of “Honest Trailers” and the Screen Junkies fan site that is part of Defy Media, was accused of sexual harassment by at least five women and fired after a brief investigation for his “egregious and intolerable behavior.”

“The Loud House” showrunner Chris Savino was fired by Nickelodeon following a brief suspension when allegations of sexual harassment, reportedly from a dozen women, surfaced. In France, the M6 television station suspended La France a un incroyable talent — a French version of America’s Got Talent — for the rest of the season after show judge Gilbert Rozon was accused of sexual harassment; Rozon also stepped down president of Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival.

Tech evangelist Robert Scoble was publicly accused of sexual harassment by three women and also, in a Medium post, of sexual assault. Weinstein’s brother Bob Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment by a female showrunner who worked on a Weinstein Co. project. A woman who in 2016 filed a police report alleging a 2004 rape by magician David Blaine told her story to the press. A top official at the Service Employees International Union was suspended.

In California, more than 140 female lawmakers, legislative aides and lobbyists issued a joint letter decrying the abuse they said they had been subjected to in the state capital. “Each of us has endured, or witnessed or worked with women who have experienced some form of dehumanizing behavior by men in power in our workplaces,” they said. And on Meet the Press this coming Sunday, female members of the United States senate are discussing their “me too” moments on camera. “I explained to him the bill I had, and did he have any advice for me on how I could get it out of committee. And he looked at me and he paused and he said, ‘Well, did you bring your knee pads?’” recounts Sen. Claire McCaskill of her days as young legislator trying to get her bill out of committee in the Missouri statehouse.

It seems certain that there will be many more stories told before all is said and done, and many more consequences.

The anger and the stories have been there all along. An ABC News-Washington Post poll released this week found that more than half of American women say they have been on the receiving end of “unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances,” 30 percent coming from male colleagues. The top emotion they felt about these advances was anger, according to the poll. The second most frequent reaction was feeling intimidated.

Now, supported by their networks of friends, they are speaking up.

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