North Carolina Repubs Fight Open Primary

OPEN PRIMARIES

• GOP suit seeks closed primary - Questions linger about who can vote, who will get bill (By Eric Connor, Greenville Online) U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs has given the state Republican Party and the State Attorney General until Dec. 15 to file arguments over whether the state’s open-primary laws are constitutional.
• Editorial: Invite All N.M. Voters (By Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board) Nearly one in five registered New Mexico voters doesn’t declare a major party allegiance — a number that has grown significantly. And while that status as an independent voter keeps them from having to swallow the so-called dogma of the D and R extremists in partisan primary elections, it also keeps them out of the voting booth until the general election rolls around.
• What’s wrong with Washington? Two perspectives  (By Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post) Interviews with Mickey Edwards [How to turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans] and David Walker [president and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative] Walker: But how are we going to get it done because we have a dysfunctional democracy? Our politics have been taken over by the wingnuts — on both ends. And they are dominated by career politicians who may or may not have had a real job in their life but once they get elected they don’t have one and they want to keep it for life. And so the fact is is that we’re going to need political reforms, too. We’re going to need redistricting reform. We’re going to need integrated, open primaries. We’re going to need campaign finance reform. And we’re going to need reasonable term limits, 12 to 18 year term limits. And we better do it sooner rather than later.
• A biting look at D.C. in 'Patriocracy' - 'Patriocracy' will have its 'world premiere' on November 5. (By PATRICK GAVIN, Politico) Seventy minutes into the 90-minute film, some daylight appears in the form of former Rep. Mickey Edwards, whose “insider’s six-step plan to fix Congress” published in the Atlantic earlier this year, serves as the basis for a way out of the wilderness. The plan involves greater civic participation, reform of the campaign finance laws, increased transparency, open primaries, non-partisan congressional districting, a reform of committee appointments and a forfeiture of party allegiance.
• La. Gov. Bobby Jindal wins re-election (USA Today) The 40-year-old Republican overwhelmed nine competitors in the open primary, where a candidate wins the race outright if he or she receives more than 50 percent of the vote. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Jindal had received about 66 percent of the total vote.

New York Democrats: Voters Be Damned!

Do catch the editorial in yesterday's New York Daily News Editorial about the anointment by the Queens DP of David Weprin to fill the scandalized-out-of-office Anthony Weiner (guilty of showing too much flesh on Facebook or something...) -- and by the way, when the NY media uses the term "open primary" what they mean is an election where there is a Republican running... Hmmm.... And in other parts South and West, real open primaries are being discussed and implemented!


OPEN PRIMARIES

• Republican or Democrat? You decide (Natchez Democrat) “It is kind of frustrating the way the process is,” Massey said… “I feel like open primaries would be more representative of public opinion,” Massey said.
• La. poised for return of open primaries (Written by Mike Hasten, The Town Talk - Baton Rouge) Walsworth argued "this is complete change. This is going to make total change in what independents do. It throws our entire election this year into the Justice Department," which must approve election law changes for them to go into effect. Under the closed primary system, voters who were independent and those belonging to other organized political parties were banned from voting in Republican primaries. Independents were allowed to vote in Democratic primaries.

VOTING RIGHTS

• Chafee Signs Voter ID Law, Touts Minority Support For Photo Requirement (Ryan J. Reilly, Talking Points Memo) Chafee's announcement came the day that former President Bill Clinton compared the Republican-lead efforts to pass new restrictions on voting to the Jim Crow laws of the past.
• Critics challenge ‘Voter ID’ plan (By GINA SMITH, The State) Called the Voter-ID bill, the measure will require all voters to present a picture ID at the polls, such as a passport, military ID card or a valid S.C. driver’s license. Without a complete birth certificate, Freelon and others like her cannot get an S.C. driver’s license. 

2012

• Entitlement Cuts Divide Democrats (By JONATHAN WEISMAN, Wall Street Journal) Senior White House officials believe a bipartisan deal that cuts spending while ending narrow tax breaks would boost Mr. Obama's standing with independent voters, help his claim to be a "postpartisan" problem solver and buoy his re-election chances.
• GOP leader: Rise in unemployment rate could sink Obama (By Dave Cook, Christian Science Monitor) Mr. Gillespie is referring to a series of focus groups conducted among independent voters in June by Resurgent Republic… The focus groups included 41 independent voters. These independents – 31 of whom voted for Obama – don’t hold the president solely responsible for the economy’s problems, but are skeptical of his leadership and spending policies. They “don’t think he has made things better,” Gillespie said.
• THE UNTRANSFORMATIONAL PRESIDENT (The Daily Beast, in msnbc/PowerWall) Oh, I know the arguments. He has to win back independent voters, and they'll be impressed if he is seen as having orchestrated a deal.

NEW YORK
David Weprin is the bosses' choice -- not the people's -- to replace Anthony Weiner in Congress (EDITORIALS, Daily News) Weprin's father, Saul Weprin, was a product of the Queens machine who rose to be Assembly speaker. When he died in 1994, the party anointed David's brother Mark in a special election.

California: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; Without the Good

The economic disarray continues in California, which faces a $28 billion deficit. They aren't the only ones in the "red", so to speak, as Bloomberg's approval rating reaches the lowest since his initial election in 2002 and President Obama faces similar disapproval as he finds himself in the precarious position of trying to prove his body of work over the last three years to set himself up for re-election next year. All this however takes place in the midst of tragedy; the deadly shooting in Arizona which killed six, one of which was U.S. District Judge John Roll, and injured 12, including Rep. Gabrielle Gifford (D-AZ-8)

OBAMA

• New, big challenges confront Obama the candidate (By LIZ SIDOTI, By The Associated Press, Bloomberg.com) Obama owns the slow-to-recover economy and is the face of a Washington he once campaigned against. Polls show his diverse voting coalition from 2008 cracked and his support among independents weakened. His path to Electoral College victory in 2012 is tougher. And he doesn't have George W. Bush's unpopularity paving the way for a Democratic victory.

IDAHO

• New York Times Publicizes Idaho Republican Party Lawsuit on Primaries (Ballot Access News)

LOUISIANA

• Federal approval of Louisiana open primaries expected within a month (By Cathy Hughes, The Times-Picayune) State lawmakers voted overwhelmingly during the 2010 regular session to switch from party primaries for the 2012 election cycle, and Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the measure over the opposition of both the Louisiana Democratic and Republican party committees.The move would return Louisiana's federal elections to the same system the stat used for decades until opting for party primaries in 2008. State, parish and municipal elections have continued under the open-primary system.

CALIFORNIA

• Personal Politics (By David Mas Masumoto, Fresno Bee) We face a maturity test: how to frame problems in the context of real life and daily impact. We will now need to do the dirty work of determining how to live with less, pay for what we want to keep and fix broken political structures. We started the process years ago by lowering the school bond passage threshold to 55%, then with redistricting reform and, in November 2010, with open primaries and legislative budget vote reform.

• Make That 8 Candidates for the State Senate Seat (By Paul Chavez, Manhattan Beach Patch) Two candidates for the vacant seat in the state Senate's 28th District have been disqualified from the Feb. 15 special election, cutting the field to eight candidates.

RHODE ISLAND

• A second act - Four years after losing his US Senate seat, Lincoln Chafee returns to lead R.I. as its governor (By Brian C. Mooney, Boston Globe) Chafee called for an end to political finger pointing and the beginning of “an era of political collaboration, of cultural and ethnic acceptance, of shared sacrifice, and, most importantly, of faith and trust in each other."

NEW YORK

• Bloomberg's Reputation Takes a Hit (By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL, Wall Street Journal) Some critics, though, have begun to compare Mr. Bloomberg with former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who left office this week with mixed reviews. Three years ago, Time Magazine lauded Messrs. Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger as "The New Action Heroes." But time appears to have hurt both men's images.

LAST WORD

• Violent Political Language Did Not Cause Representative Giffords' Shooting (By Solomon Kleinsmith, WNYC/It's a Free Blog) People like Sarah Palin and Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga (the founder of Daily Kos) are political firebrands that stoke the flames of the insane culture war that is causing so much damage to our great nation. But they are no more responsible for the violence of an insane listener who takes their hyperbole literally than the Pope is for some insane Catholic who thinks he hears Jesus tell him that his neighbor needs to be sent to hell.