Independent Voters, 2012, and Party Insiders

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
GOP leaders likely to drop social issues in budget compromise (BY DAVID LIGHTMAN, Miami Herald) "There's a Republican economic agenda, and there's a social agenda. The problem for the party is that independents by and large do not share the social agenda," said Steven Smith, the director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.

PARTY INSIDERS V. PROP 14
Race for Congress: No Candidate Gains California Democratic Party Endorsement - None of the Democratic candidates in the upcoming election for a vacant seat in Congress are going to be officially endorsed by the California Democratic Party. (By Paul Chavez, Hermosa Beach Patch)

2012
Jon Huntsman, the rock 'n' roll years (By: Ben Smith and Kasie Hunt, Politico) Huntsman’s conventional ascent began in 1987, when he graduated from the Wharton School of Business, went to work for the family manufacturing giant, and moved between top industry and government posts. People who know him, however, say his unconventional appeal was crafted in the nine previous years, beginning in 1978, the year he left Highland High School without enough credits to graduate.

NEW YORK
Mike's maneuvers fail in Albany, NYC (By ERIK ENGQUIST and JEREMY SMERD, Crain's New York) The state budget that passed last week contained nothing from his wish list: no changes to the teacher seniority rule known as last-in, first-out; no relief from the $600 million “Christmas bonuses” that the city must pay retired police officers and firefighters annually; and not a dime of the city's former $300 million state revenue-sharing allocation, for the second straight year.

NORTH CAROLINA
GOP must balance agenda with desire to win re-election (By Paul Woolverton, Fayyetteville Observer) Out of North Carolina's 6 million registered voters, 2.7 million are Democrats - or 45 percent. About 1.9 million voters are Republican. And 1.45 million belong to no party. That means roughly 25 percent of the voters are unaffiliated.