I opened my mailbox this afternoon to find something truly amazing--and something I just knew couldn't have been for a Democratic activist like myself: an envelope from California Counts, the organization funded by Darrell Issa to resurrect the Dirty Tricks Initiative from the dead. It turns out that, yes, the envelope was in fact directed to whatever Republican apparently dared to inhabit my apartment before my girlfriend and I arrived to dispel the traces of the dark side that must have apparently been lingering there.
Regardless, I considered it a stroke of good fortune that this thing fell into my lap--not only because it allows me an opportunity to give some insight into what they're up to, but also because it's downright hilarious. More below--including a picture!
A close friend and major fundraiser of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has identified himself as the mystery financer of the proposed California initiative to apportion the state's 55 electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-take-all.
He is New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. He said he provided the $175,000 to initially finance the petition drive to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot.
There'll be more to come once the full article is published. Giuliani is claiming his campaign had nothing to do with it. And Howard Dean is demanding more answers.
You killed it. All of the noise you made. The blog posts. The donations. The email forwards to friends. The petitions. The copies of the intiative you sent to Arnold. Everything. The netroots mobilized, and the right-wing backed down. This is a lone bright victory, in what has been a tough couple of weeks.
Absent some big rich right-winger stepping up with $2 million in the next few days, the attempt to put an initiative on the ballot to steal 20 of California's electoral votes is kaput. The main Republican lawyer for the California Republican Party, and the mastermind behind this has quit. They can't find anyone who is not a front group established in MO to donate. In short, the campaign is in disarray.
The campaign needed to collect at a bare minimum 433,971 valid signatures. In reality they needed to exceed that by 2/3rds to ensure that they would make the ballot. At last count they were only 40,000 towards getting that done. Remember they needed to be in by November to make it. The likelihood of them being able to recoup at this point and make it on the ballot is slim.
Arnold has had plenty of opportunities to read the dirty tricks initiative. After all, I did drop off 2,148 copies of it last friday. And we did fax him to make sure he acknowledged receiving them. When Arnold repeated again yesterday that he hadn't read it, it created the perfect opportunity to make this video. Matt Ortega and I stayed up late working on last night.
This is hot off the presses from the Secretary of State's office. The initiative is now cleared for signature gathering. They need to collect 433,971 valid signatures by Feb 4th to get on the ballot.
I will have more on this later, but look at what Arnold said today. Gah! What the heck do we have to do to get the man to read it!!
"To me, what we have in place right now works ... I feel like if you all the sudden in the middle of the game start changing the rules it's kind of odd, it almost feels like a loser's mentality, saying I cannot win with those rules, so let me change the rules. I have not made up my mind yet in one way or the other, because I haven't seen the details on it but basically I would say there is something off with this whole idea," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
Heh. Nehring says blah, blah, blah and Arnold calls it "a loser's mentality".
Courage Campaign has been working hard to beat back the dirty trick initiative. We have been collecting thousands of pledges to defeat it and sent 2,148 copies of the initiative directly to Arnold's office. We have a ton of other great ideas up our sleeves, but we need your support to put it into action.
Below is the email we just sent out to Courage Campaign members, including a video ask from Rick Jacobs.
[UPDATE] by Julia If folks are interested in being on our blogger listserv, so we can keep you updated on what we are up to and share things like blog badges please shoot me an email with your username and blog if you have one.
Chris Dodd was the first Presidential candidate to speak out against the dirty tricks initiative being pushed by Arnold Schwarzenegger's old lawyer, that could steal up to 20 electoral votes in a right-wing power grab. Now John Edwards has gone a step further, setting up a petition to oppose the ballot initiative. I've added the full text on the flip.
I'm not sure where this petition is meant to go, or why it's only being sent to Californians - presumably everyone would be interested in stopping the Republicans from stealing the election. But clearly, it's interesting to see which candidates are stepping up and joining the chorus of those who want to see the next Presidential election decided fairly and free of dirty tricks.
That was the title of a Courage Campaign email that just went out to their list. David Dayen (dday) and myself had the same idea, which turned into that email. Since Arnold said last week that he hadn't read the initiative, and therefore could not take a stance on it, we should send him a bunch of copies of the initiative. That way he had no more excuses the next time he was asked about it.
I am personally going to head up with a stack of emails to Arnold's office later this week and hand deliver them. Don't worry, I will report back with all of the details. We are working hard to marry the best of the netroots and online activism with this campaign and simultaneously build up long term progressive infrastructure in Courage Campaign. You can support this work by donating to Courage.
