TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS 9/9/10

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Independents continue surge, now make up 30 percent of Arizona voters (Cronkite News - Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.)  VIDEO
• Letter: Looking for failure (Topeka Capital Journal) I am an independent voter, and I think most members of the Republican Party and the tea party have no common sense at all.
• Pueblo Politics: Independent voters show interest in GOP (Rhonda Bodfield, Arizona Star) Forget what women want. The million-dollar question in political circles is what independents want, followed closely by how early voting is changing the political scene.
• Tribune/WGN-TV poll: Illinois voters don't trust government (Chicago Tribune/Chicago Breaking News) A warning to Illinois politicians cranking up their post-Labor Day hype machines to woo voters: They're blasé at best about you, and they sure don't think the state or federal government is going to help them through uncertain times. Yet they're also not ready to jump into the arms of tea party advocates, a new Tribune/WGN-TV poll found.

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Open primaries could
help close partisan divide (By BILL KING, Houston Chronicle)
• Tea parties push GOP to right, for now (The Advertiser - LA) In the 3rd District, as in the rest of the country, the tea parties thrived within a closed party primary system. But the scheduled second Republican primary Oct. 2 will be the last such election Louisiana holds because the Legislature has acted to return to nonpartisan open primaries in all future state and federal elections. It will be much more difficult for the tea parties to enforce conservative rigor in primaries when Democrats and independents are voting.

MIDTERM RACES

• CNN/Time Poll: KY Senate race all tied up (CNN/Political Ticker) Paul holds an 11 point advantage among independent voters, according to the survey.
• You need to register for this do or die election (by Bill Howard, Carolina Peacemaker) The reason Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America, was due to the massive turnout of young people, liberal, independent and minority voters. This must occur again in November 2010. If the Far Right Wing wins in November 2010, Obama’s major role could be reduced to the use of his “veto” pen.
• House Dems Pushed To The Tipping Point - It's Now Likely That The GOP Will Reclaim The House, And The Gains Could Be Big (by Charlie Cook, National Journal) President Obama's job approval rating among the key bloc of independent voters, which was in the 60s before Memorial Day of last year, dropped to the 50s over the course of the summer and into the 40s around Labor Day. That number has hovered around 38-40 percent over the last few months. Independents voted for congressional Democrats by 18 points in 2006 but by 8 points in 2008.
• Hizzoner? Emanuel must decide fast (By: Josh Gerstein and Matt Negrin, Politico) Will Rahm Emanuel run for Mayor of Chicago? The election will also be the city's first of note since a 1995 law switching to a non-partisan, open primary with a runoff if no candidate gets 50 percent ...
• Will Murkowski Run as an Independent? (By ANDREW RESTUCCIA, Washington Independent)
• Tim Cahill plans to vote in Democratic primary (Boston Herald) "That’s the beauty of being an independent. You get to pick the ballot, depending on the races," he said.
• Why run as an independent? (LETTER Southeast Missourian) from Larry Bill, indie Congressional candidate - Conventional candidates go to Congress owing the party, so they must follow the party line.
• Daley out, Black candidates could vie for mayoral seat (by Wendell Hutson, Chicago Defender) The only declared Black mayoral candidate is William “Dock” Walls, a community organizer who has unsuccessfully run for elected office – including mayor – several times. Walls had most recently campaigned as an independent candidate for governor, but recently suspended that campaign to announce his intentions to run for mayor.
• Candidate questions lack of debate invite (BY MARIANN MARTIN, Jackson Sun - MS) "We understand that there are two independent candidates in the race as well," Ellsworth said. "But from the beginning of this process we knew we wanted a two-man format because we have two political student groups represented on campus in the College Republicans and the College Democrats, and those groups will be involved with the debate."
• Lawsuit seeks to oust Tancredo (by Joe Hanel, Durango Herald Denver Bureau) Two Republican voters filed a lawsuit Tuesday to kick Tom Tancredo out of the race for governor, citing the same body of law that kept La Plata County Commissioner Joelle Riddle off the ballot. Tancredo switched from the Republican Party to the American Constitution Party July 26, after proclaiming that neither GOP candidate at the time, Dan Maes nor Scott McInnis, could win the race against Democrat John Hickenlooper.

NEW YORK

• Finger-pointing Senate candidate needs a mirror (Crain's New York) Vivia Morgan's U.S. Senate campaign is off to a rough start. The unheard-of candidate, who filed petitions to run on the “Freedom Party” line against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, has repeatedly declared herself and gubernatorial running mate Councilman Charles Barron, D-Brooklyn, to be the only statewide candidates of color.
• Cuomo open to running on Working Families line (Buffalo News/Politics Now) "I'm only interested in heading a party that has my agenda as its platform," Cuomo said on the radio show this morning.
• Minor parties in peril? NY gov race raises concern (WCAX - Vermont) the possibility Lazio might abandon his spot on the Conservative Party line if he loses, a move that could cost the minor party its automatic ballot line.
• Battle over DNA order (By BRENDAN J. LYONS, Albany Times Union) The investigation centers on allegations that dozens of absentee ballots were forged or contained false information attributed to voters when the documents were submitted to the Rensselaer County Board of Elections during last September's Working Families Party primary elections in Troy.

WORKING FAMILIES PARTY

• George joins lawsuit over abbreviations (By: Amanda Newman, Newberg Graphic - OREGON)
• The Survival of New York Is at Stake (Andrew Cuomo, Huffington Post) The business community (often New York City focused) must take a more active role in state government. I urge public employee unions and their groups -- NYS United Teachers, 1199 SEIU, Working Families party, among others, to take to heart the legacy of public service and adopt a long view by doing what is best for their members and the state they serve -as they did during the 1970's NYC Fiscal Crisis -- by joining our coalition.

LAST WORDS

• Ultra-Rich in Finance Are Meaner Than Rest of Us: Matthew Lynn (By Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg Opinion) But it was also an insight into the way the rich have changed over the past decade. They are, it turns out, a nasty bunch of people who are only getting nastier. And the banking industry only has itself to blame.
• Dem base told: Fear Tea Party (By Shane D’Aprile and Bob Cusack, The Hill)