News Headlines for Independent Voters: Today's Primaries Elections in Georgia, Colorado, Minnesota and Connecticut

 TODAY'S PRIMARIES

• What to Watch on Primary Day: Primary elections in Georgia, Colorado, Minnesota and Connecticut (Politico) NOTE: 

   Independents can vote in primaries in GEORGIA.
   Independents can vote in COLORADO, but you have to pick a party, and then you have to switch back...
   Indies can vote in MINNESOTA, but you have to pick a party...
   Independent voters cannot participate in primaries in CONNECTICUT.
     [See The Hankster Open Primaries page]

• GOP Strategist: Election to Be Won in the Middle (CBS News)
• Voters line up to cast ballots early (Fox News Tampa Bay) Florida is a closed primary state, meaning voters can only cast ballots for candidates in their registered party; independent voters can still vote in non-partisan races.
• Primary sprint to the finish: Bennet, Romanoff make Monday visits to Springs (WAYNE HEILMAN, The Gazette Colorado Springs) Colorado holds closed primaries, meaning only voters affiliated with political parties can vote in them. However, independent voters can jump in at the last minute by claiming a party affiliation at the polls.
• Linda McMahon widens lead in Connecticut GOP Senate race (HULIQ) The latest Quinnipiac University poll shows McMahon narrowly leading Blumenthal, 46 to 44 percent, among independent voters; three weeks ago, Blumenthal enjoyed a 19-point lead over McMahon among this group.
• On primary eve, Margaret Anderson Kelliher revs up election buzz before, during and after final debate (by Doug Grow, MinnPost) Kelliher also made her appeal to potential voters, saying she would be the party's strongest candidate in November because only she can appeal to independent voters and even moderate Republicans.

COLORADO

• Curry files lawsuit over finance rules (Aspen Times) Gunnison Rep. Kathleen Curry, whose district includes Aspen and Pitkin County, argues in the lawsuit that the state's campaign finance rules are unconstitutional and restrict how unaffiliated candidates raise money. That's because the major party candidates can collect the maximum contributions twice — once for a primary and again for the general election — but unaffiliated candidates can receive the maximum contribution once for the general election because they don't stand in primaries, according to the lawsuit.
• Write in the independents (LETTER Glenwood Springs Post Independent)

NEW YORK

• Independence Party chairman Dote indicted (By ROCCO LaDUCA, Observer-Dispatch) Independence Party chairman Dote indicted
• MALTESE FOR ELECTION BOARD (Queens Courier) Endorsement
• Morano Strikes Back (YNN/Capital Tonght) It wasn’t enough for longtime Independence Party activist and ex-state committee member Frank Morano to quit the party and publicly lambaste it on his way out the door, now he’s trying to get the organization investigated by the Board of Elections, claiming its coffers have served as a sort of piggy bank for the personal interests of its leaders.

NYC CHARTER REVISION

• Charter panel won't address local control (Peter N. Spencer, SI Advance) Non-partisan elections -- a pet issue for Bloomberg -- still has a chance on the ballot. Nonpartisan elections eliminate party primaries and let anyone run for city office in an open September election, with the top two finishers facing off in a November election.
• Mayor Bloomberg to end nonpartisan election push - $7 million later (BY ADAM LISBERG, DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF)
• Mayor Bloomberg + Nonpartisan-Elections Push = Splitsville (BY CELESTE KATZ, Daily News/Daily Politcs)
• NY1 Exclusive: Bloomberg Won't Seek To Eliminate Political Primaries (By: NY1 News)
• Independent Report on Nonpartisan Elections from New York City: The Media, the Mayor and the Message (POSTED BY NANCY HANKS, The Moderate Voice)

TODAY'S NEW HEADLINES for INDEPENDPENT VOTERS: Transition to Nonpartisanship

• David Plouffe acknowledges independent voters as critical to Obama leadership
  
• Minnesota Independent voters are least likely to want a new election in the Star Tribune
  
• The founding fathers sought to avoid where party loyalty sometimes obscures a sense of the greater good. Well, how's that going?
  
• Wilderness years for the GOP, The Hill's John Del Cecato wonders how independents figure
  
• Rush Limbaugh has become a pimple on the GOP, or not... at least it's selling newspapers... 
  
• Karen Harper down south thinks the Repubs need independents...
  
• David Frum informs us that independents have a  negative view of Limbaugh by a 45-22 margin.
  
• Repubs attack Obama at the risk of alienating independent voters...
  

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Zogby Poll: Obama Increases Favorable Rating Amid Modest Expectations (By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief, The Moderate Voice) Among independents, more than 50% express positive opinions in their ratings and confidence in Obama, his transition and every issue we asked about, with the exception of taxes.

POLITISOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

Obama Should Act Like He Won (By THOMAS FRANK, Wall Street Journal) There is no branch of American political expression more trite, more smug, more hollow than centrism.

LOCAL INDEPENDENT NEWS

• N.C. voter participation swelled in 2008 (News Observer) One of the state's most prolific bloggers has gone old-school. Liberal blogger James Protzman, one of the founders of the influential progressive group blog BlueNC, has written a novel called Jesus Swept.
  
• Daily Kos Affirmations (Hotline On Call) Franken has improved moderately among Dem and GOPers and seen a massive swing among Indies.... Barkley's 15% remains constant in hypothetical rematch.
  

LAST WORD

THE NEW LIBERALISM (George Packer, The New Yorker, from Nov. 17) Obama has his own grass-roots organization, on the Internet and in hundreds of field offices. This is new territory, because those earlier movements had independent identities apart from any President, whereas Obama's movement didn't exist before his candidacy; its purpose was to get him elected. Even so, it has the breadth, the organization, and the generational energy of other movements, and it can be converted into a political coalition if its leader knows how to harness it.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

OPEN PRIMARIES
New York County Lawyers Association forum on Open Primaries (by Nancy Hanks, VIDEO on The Hankster) Jackie Salit, Harry Kresky, David Seifman, Larry Mandelker, Jacob Weintraub, and audience members

POLITISOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

• Get back to basics, Republicans, and drop most social issues - Gummed-up Old Party (By Ross Kaminsky, Rocky Mountain News) Efforts to burnish McCain's social conservative credentials, particularly during a time of economic crisis, made him even less credible overall, hurting him among independent voters while not helping him with the religious right.
• New regime will be welcome change (LETTER from Hanne Hartmann-Phipps, Reeds Spring in Springfield MO News Leader)
• Loss creates opportunity for the GOP (by Jimmy E. Greene, Saginaw News) Now we'll have to ask if the Republican Party really wants the votes of blacks and Hispanics or if we just want to appear to want to in order to play to the moderate and independent voter.
• Obama: Principles & Pragmatism (James Zogby, Huffington Post) Presidents are most often defined as successful not by the agendas they set, but by how they adapt their agendas to respond to crises that unpredictable reality that sets for them.... I believe that those commentators, from the left and right, who are pushing President-elect Obama to lay out "grand strategies," "new global visions," or to set detailed priorities and timetables, are dead wrong.
• Obama policies pragmatic, geared toward long-term change (By Jesus Vasquez, Whitman Pioneer - WA) Obama supporters need to know that they should be in this for the long haul. Change can’t come overnight, and it can’t come without the support of the people.
• How Obama will govern: Strong team will test his skills (By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers) "But no alarm bells have gone off in conservative circles indicating he's picking a bunch of left-wing lunatics. These people are respected on both sides of the aisle. It looks like he's heading toward a centrist position on both foreign policy and the economic front."

INDEPENDENCE PARTIES

• * MN: Coleman keeps edge as hand recount wraps up (By BRIAN BAKST Associated Press Writer, West Central Tribune - Willmar MN) The very last ballot to be sorted, fittingly, didn't go for either Franken or Coleman. It was for Dean Barkley - the Independence Party candidate who ran a healthy third in the race and denied his rivals thousands of votes each.
• * MN: AG Mike Hatch targeting third-party candidates (By Kevin Featherly, Special to St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report) “I would prefer that the primary election simply narrow down the race to two candidates,” he said. “The two candidates would then conduct a campaign in the general election.”
• * NY: Beyond Cusick, perhaps Cuomo and O'Donnell (Posted by Tom Wrobleski, Staten Island Advance) Assemblyman Mike Cusick is flattered that someone thinks enough of him to suggest that he replace Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate. That was Independence Party member Frank Morano's plan this week in a letter to Gov. David Paterson, who will make the appointment.

NOTES FROM HARLEM
Milton Allimadi and his Black Star News BSN recently hosted its Annual Dinner Awards Gala (Black Star News) About 200 partygoers attended the BSN Awards festivities, many of them are Harlem paparazzi and cognoscente like Dr. Lenora Fulani, former Harlem BUF businessman Kermit Eady; WHCR Radio host Jeanne Parnell, businessman Fritz McLymont and Network Journal editor Rosalind McLymont.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

REFORM
The Parties Oppose The "Open Primary" (Steve Rankin, Free Citizen)

LOCAL INDEPENDENT NEWS
Poll: Many Minnesotans would support independents (Minneapolis Star Tribune) 77 percent of the state's likely voters say they would consider voting for an independent or third-party candidate

MEDIA

• Everyone Trashes The Media — Especially The Media (NPR.org) The press is trying to figure out what the heck it will look like as the previous economic models are disintegrating and major newspapers are falling apart.
• CNN Worries About 'Too Liberal' Democratic Convention (NewsBusters.org)

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Hillary Has Company - Some Women Who Have Run For President Before (Transported) Lenora Fulani is perhaps the most successful female Presidential candidate so far.

County voter numbers rise (Pauls Valley Daily Democrat - OK) “Because registered Independents have been able to vote for either party in Iowa and New Hampshire, some Independents here have been asking why they can’t vote on Feb. 5”

Hits and misses (Trenton Times Editorial) MISS: The continued shut-out of the state's 2.7 million independent voters from the primary process in New Jersey.

Two-party system does more to damage democracy than to promote it (Letter to Canton Repository)

Obama Rocks Iowa, Clinton, Mccain Battle Back In New Hampshire (By Chris Levister, Black Voice News Online) While Clinton won handily among registered Democrats, Obama outstripped her by an even larger margin among Independents, but he suffered from a drop in turnout among young voters compared with Iowa.

D.L.C. Leaders Cut Edwards Out (By Ariel Alexovich, The Caucus New York Times) Senator Obama’s appeal that he’s made very firmly and directly to independent voters, and Senator Clinton’s appeal to the forgotten middle class are going to add up to a very smashing Democratic majority in the fall.” - Al From

Idaho: Republican Party Chairman Wants ID Primaries Closed (By Vanessa Brown, 2 News TV - Boise ID) * ID: Closed Primary Bill Introduced (Boise Weekly)

Pennsylvania: Voting rights: New Hampshire results show the importance of having open primaries (Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times online)

Minnesota: Reformers want politics out of political mapping-Current system serves interests of politicians, not voters, reformers say. (By MARK BRUNSWICK, Star Tribune)

The Bloomberg Primary: Unity08 Loses, Independence (Party) Wins (by Azi Paybarah, NY Observer The Politicker) "I don’t care if God comes out of the sky, we’re going with Bloomberg.” - Frank MacKay (Bloomberg backer)

National Network Prepared for Bloomberg-Though Mayor Bloomberg insists he's not running for president, "Draft Mike" activists across the US are collecting thousands of signatures to get Bloomberg on the ballot. (by Bob Hennelly, WNYC)

Wanna know what The Hankster thinks about some of the efforts behind Mike Bloomberg's potential presidential campaign? See "Bloomberg Inching/Voters Itching" in OpEdNews.... "The independent movement needs rich people and big names who will do what ordinary people want them to do, and not cave into grandstanders and hack third party opportunists." And while you're at it, check out Jackie Salit's The Bloomberg Story....

Independence Party of Minnesota delegates will meet Jan. 26 in Bloomington to vote on the proposed national affiliation to back Bloomberg for president.

Calls Grow for Bloomberg to Make Up His Mind (By DIANE CARDWELL and RAY RIVERA, NY Times) “Mike Bloomberg has failed to make a case that he represents an independent movement." - Robert Zimmerman (Clinton campaign advisor)

Kucinich is excluded from NBC debates - Take Action (by Heather Wokusch, OpEdNews)

Regardless of the context and "what they really meant", the Clintons (Bill and Hillary) have an attitude and Jim Clyburn for one doesn't like it (By Carl Hulse, NY Times)