Obama just needs to trust The People. They'll figure it out. Tell us the truth. Show you care about us (but don't call us "little people" cause we are equal to the BP Mega-Buckers). Watch out for us in a way that we can tell you care about us beyond your term of office, win or lose re-election. Even the numbskulls in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida will see that the guy who just kicked BP's ass is on their side, more than the GOBP that apologized to BP today for having to deposit the money they owe the people in those states.
Here is a link to Democrat Rob Miller's website in his race for South Carolina Congressional seat. Miller is Republican Joe ("You Lie") Wilson's opponent. Please pass this around. https://secure.actblue.com/con...
(We all love numbers. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
County Tax Collector Nelda Spears' Office just put out some interesting statistics about the Travis County Primary election turnout. 185,703 people voted in the Democratic Primary, over four times as many as voted (40,911) in the Republican Primary. This was a huge turnout of 226,614 voters.
What I found particularly interesting is that the Republican Primary also had a lot of new voters and, believe it or not, some cross-over Democrats. To me, these statistics show that while we are a deep Blue county, the election this year is drawing a whole lot of folks to the ballot boxes in both parties. And those folks are voting differently than they have in the past.
1. Only about 1/3 of voters (34.7%) in the 2008 Democratic Primary had voted in the Democratic Primary in the past.
2. Over 11% of Democratic Primary voters had voted in the Republican Primaries in the past. 5.3% of Democratic Primary voters had voted only in the Republican Primary in the past. There was an addtiional 6.1% who were "switch-hitters," voters who had voted in both Republican and Democratic primaries in (different) prior years.
3. Over 15% of Republican Primary voters had voted in the Democratic Primaries in the past. 4% of Republican Primary voters had voted only in the Republican Primary in the past. There was an additional 11.4% who were "switch-hitters," voters who had voted in both Republican and Democratic primaries in (different) prior years.
4. 53.9% of Democratic Primary voters had not voted in any party primary in the past. Only 14.8% had not voted before at all, and 39.1% had voted only in General or City elections in the past.
5. 42.3% of Republican Primary voters had not voted in any party primary in the past. Only 11.6% had never voted, and 30.7% had voted only in General or City elections in the past.
Here are the numbers:
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
1st Time Voters: 27,540
1st Time Primary: 72,627
Past Democratic: 64,397
Mixed Dem/Repub: 11,362
Past Republican: 9,777
TOTAL: 185,703
REPULBICAN PRIMARY:
1st Time Voters: 4,734
1st Time Primary: 12,568
Past Republican: 17,310
Mixed Dem/Repub: 4,658
Past Democratic: 1,641
Editor note: My name is Phillip Martin, I'm a senior adviser for BOR. If you read this diary, please read my response in the comments. As an editor of BOR, I have the right to make these kind of editorial injections onto posts. The rest of this post is the author's words/ideas. -- Phillip
First, BOR writers neglected to write anything after the election on the results of the high-profile Tax Collector's race, even though the race itself had been highly discussed on BOR. One might suspect that the omission was because BOR-writer Glen Maxey got trounced 3-to-1 by incumbent Nelda Spears despite Maxey's dirty, deceitful campaign.
Then, when I tried to make up for that glaring omission by writing a user post, that post was mysteriously deleted. Instead of explaining the mystery of how the supposed computer glitch selected only certain posts to permanently delete, Karl-Thomas sidestepped the implications of BOR censorship by suggesting all was okay because he said he was sorry for the deletions.
Then, instead of reporting on the Tax Collector's race himself, Karl-Thomas edits my resubmitted user post (without promoting it) and posts a front-page note of his own lecturing us, in effect, of how Maxey's dirty politics should be forgotten now because the Primary is over.
I supposed, with that "logic," it was not okay with BOR for supporters of Barack Obama to be discussing Bill Clinton's behavior in the South Carolina primary because that primary was over. Why is it any different for Nelda Spears after being slimed for 9 months by Glen Maxey?
Karl-Thomas goes on to explain that BOR is justified in censoring posts on this blog if Karl-Thomas thinks "it's wrong." Interesingly, Karl-Thomas leaves off the link to his note so readers cannot post comments directly to his note. Hence, I offer this user post to ask these questions:
1. If a writer for BOR makes a high-proflie run for office, runs a dirty campaign against an incumbent Democrat, uses BOR posts as a second-echo website for his campaign, gets beat 2-to-1 and doesn't carry a single one of the 210 precints, can that be discussed on BOR?
2. Can the results of the election even be reported on BOR if the BOR-endorsed candidate got beat?
3. Is it really "gracious" for a losing candidate to refuse to make a personal congratulatory phone call to the winning Democrat and, instead, to issue a press release (dutifully posted verbatim on BOR) designed merely to recoup from the damage Maxey did to his political consulting business among many Democrats because of the nasty, losing campaign he ran against an incumbent Democrat?
4. (a) Are the BOR editors now going to start censoring any statement they consider to be "wrong" or just those statements that question how BOR operates?
(b) How will you decide what is so "wrong" that you'll censor it?
(c) Will you censor both statements of fact as well as statements of opinion that you consider to be "wrong"?
5. (a) What was "wrong" with this censored statement of fact: "Apparently, among the "few" posts that BOR was "forced" to delete because of heavy internet traffic was the only report on the results of the Tax Collector's race"?
(b) What was "wrong" with this censored statement of opinion: "That was a strange computer problem you had; one that was solved only by purging bad news about BOR-guy Glen Maxey. So I'll repost this one in case its deletion was just a coincidence"?
BOR is a great place for Democrats with varying ideas to meet and learn from each other...if BOR is a tolerant and fair place to begin with.
Nelda Spears got 74.28% of the vote to Glen Maxey's 25.72%. In this down-ballot race, Nelda got 115,322 votes. Once again, Nelda Spears got more votes than any other candidate in a contested race, except for Barack Obama who got 116,137 votes.
The Tax Collector's race was the 31st race listed on the ballot. As might be expected, there was some ballot drop-off from the Presidential race, where 185,596 people voted, but 155,322 people voted in the Tax Collector race.
There were more ballots cast in the Tax Collector's race--way down the ballot--than any other race except the Presidential race. There were more people voting in the Tax Collector's race than the 2nd-on-the-ballot race for U.S. Senator (139,537 votes) and the 27th-place District Attorney's race (140,310 votes).
Nelda won more than the election. She kept her integrity and her dignity. She stayed out of the dirty, deceitful political games that Glen Maxey wanted to play. The enormous turnout in this race and the trouncing Nelda gave Maxey is a testament to the standards that Democratic voters have set for their political candidates and for their office holders.
If Glen Maxey wants to sell anyone political consulting services in the future, he will have a lot of explaining to do about how he conducted his own campaign and why he lost so big. Maxey did not win a single one of the 210 precincts. Running against Nelda was a bad idea in the first place and Maxey's negative campaign tactics turned a bad idea into an unmitigated disaster for himself.
The big lesson for elected officials is:
Do your job well, and the politics will take care of itself.
(I have some additional analysis of the voter file, looking deeper into the data but from 2002 forward, which I'll try to post today. Both are an interesting read and express why no one in Travis County has a real sense of what is going on with their elections. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Here are some interesting statistics from Dusty Knight, Chief Deputy to Nelda Spears, Tax Collector, about early voting in the Democratic Primary:
96,801 early voted as Democrats in Travis County
47,531 were first time voters in a primary.
The "first time voters" means it was the first time to vote in a PRIMARY. Of the 47,531 first time primary voters, 34,622 had voted in a previous general or city election, leaving 12,909 (13% of the total)who have never voted at all before).
49,270 had a voting history in Primary elections:.
37,924 had only voted in Democratic Primary in the past.
4,768 had only voted in Republican Primary in the past.
6,578 had voted in either Democratic or Republican Primary in the past.
We've got a Democratic Primary in this Strongly Blue County that (so far) shows that
So:
13% have never voted before at all
36% are what we might call "independent" (i.e., General Election-only voters)
12% are former Republican voters (11,346 of the total)
That's means that 61% of the people voting in the Democratic Primary are not traditional Democratic voters.
"First time" (in a Primary) voters by age:
over 60 5,819
50 - 60 7,174
40 - 50 7,974
30 - 40 11,777
20 - 30 12,662
18 - 20 2,084
(Great time to be a Democrat in Texas - promoted by Matt Glazer)
Here's an interesting statment from the Quorum Report by Royal Masset, long-time Republican analyst here in Austin. He looked at the voter turnout statewide inspired, in part, by Barack Obama, with all-time disparity between Republican and Democratic turnout.
He warns that even Repubs (like in Williamson County) who won their past elections by 60% could still be in big trouble this November. He thinks that the mean rightwing dogma of his Party is driving potential allies (he focused on the Hispanic community, as an example)compared to the coalition that Ronald Reagan achieved for the Repubs. He says the Repubs' immigration stand for example is anti-liberty and anti-family values, particularly offending Hispanic families in Texas.
Masset says:
"I'm not feeling optimistic," he said. "This just shows we are a bankrupt party. Who would have ever imagined that the next Ronald Reagan would be a black Democrat?"
Some of the Republicans are looking down the road to November and see that they are like a bug flying right at a big flat windshield of the Democrats' 18-wheeler barreling down the highway.
[In the hopes that BOR will permit some news in favor of Nelda Spears on its lead pages, here goes:]
Endorsing Nelda Spears as "a quiet, dignified woman doing a quiet, dignified - and quite competent - job" the Statesman editors call out Glen Maxey for trying to create "manufactured controversy" just to get a steady paycheck.
The editorial lists just a couple of the bald-faced lies Maxey has used to try to explain why he's running against an incumbent Democrat who has created the best tax office in Texas and was Travis County's top Democratic vote-getter in 2004. Thank goodness more and more Democrats are realizing that Maxey is trying to trick them into voting for him even though he has no good reason to be running against Nelda Spears.
In short, it appears that Maxey is running because he wants a steady paycheck. It isn't up to Travis County taxpayers to provide him one, though. Maxey's résumé is not that impressive, nor is there anything on it to lead anyone to believe he would be effective in running an office whose principal job is to collect taxes.
The Statesman failed to mention that Maxey's campaign is now running robocalls with a new lie that Nelda Spears has failed to enforce a law that permits blocking vehicle license plate renewals for people who owe child support. But Maxey knows, or should know, that the only way a tax collector would know which license plates to block is when the tax collector is informed, through TxDOT, of which vehicles belong to people who are behind on child support. TxDOT depends on the Attorney General's office to get that information. The AG hasn't been reporting that information to TxDOT. No tax collector in Texas can stop renewal of license plates without this information. To make it sound like this is Nelda Spears' fault is outrageously deceitful.
Maxey has yet to explain why, if he's been thinking of running for tax collector for many years, he's been so quiet all these years--including during the raging, highly publicized battle that Nelda Spears waged in 2005 and 2006 to prevent privatization of tax collection. (In fact, from May to July last year, Maxey said he was neutral on that issue.) In all these years, not once did Maxey sit down with Nelda Spears and tell her his concerns or ideas or make any public comments about the office...until this campaign. Most likely, the answer is that Maxey's desperately trying to manufacture controversy where none really exists and values political craftiness more than good government.
Maxey's attempt to trick voters on the Eastside to vote him is especially ironic. As the Statesman reported:
Frank Ortega, a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, says that when Maxey was directing the party's coordinated campaign in 2006, he budgeted no money to turn out East Austin voters. Money was put into the East Austin initiative only after Ortega and others confronted party leaders about the slight.
That is just one reason why real progressives, like Gonzalo Barrientos, Jim Hightower, Sam Biscoe, Sarah Weddington, Labor, the Women's Political Caucus, and lots of others have stood up against Maxey and for Nelda Spears. Here is what Gus Garcia has to say in his recent robocall endorsement of Nelda Spears:
This is Gus Garcia asking you to join me in supporting and voting for Nelda Wells Spears, one of the best public servants in Travis County.
Nelda has served Travis County as our tax collector for several years and has done so with great integrity and honesty. Now she is running for re-election and facing a political consultant who is waging one of the most negative campaigns in recent history.
I hope you will ignore these false attacks and join me, Gus Garcia in voting for Nelda Wells Spears for Travis County Tax Collector, a truly great public servant.
We can only hope that people all over this county, especially in the university community of inquisitive minds, will see through the tricks and lies, and stand united with people from East Austin for Nelda Spears.
The tax collector should have a bond of trust with the voters and taxpayers throughout this community.
With the kind of deceitful campaign Glen Maxey has run, he has disgraced himself as much as Carl Rove has, and there will be little, if anything, he can do after this election is over to change that.
As a supporter of Nelda Spears, Tax Collector, BOR readers know that I've had strong disagreements with some of the BOR folks over that race. Many Democrats have great respect for the great job she's done, and some of us are pretty sensitive to the kind of false attacks BOR-guy Glen Maxey has heaped on her on BOR and elsewhere.
But as I see the high quality BOR articles and comments on other topics, especially statewide and national politics, and how BOR keeps stuff stirred up, I'm thankful that Democrats have such a lively place as BOR to clash and learn.
Democrats are energized because we are feeling that, finally, people have awakened and will change the course of this nation.
So, as we begin to vote today, I think all of us should cast a symbolic vote for BOR, the greatest meeting place for Democrats in the World.
Maxey supporters are spreading the mean lie that Nelda Spears refused to support the No Nonsense in November initiative against Prop 2 in 2005. Even Glen Maxey knows better than that. Y'all really ought to be ashamed of yourselves. When elected officials stand up for social justice, they should never be subjected to this kind of mean-spirited witch-hunt mentality just so you can support Glen Maxey's crazy campaign.
I joined other officials in opposing the Gay-Marriage-Ban, and Nelda Spears did too. Check it out:
