West Virginia Blue
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Despite the efforts of wingnuts in the state to draft him to run in place of Betty Ireland (who they feel isn't conservative enough), it appears the Florida Republican is staying out of West Virginia's special election.
Raese, who was the Republican nominee in the special U.S. Senate race last year, but lost to Joe Manchin in the General Election, said he was flattered by the amount of encouragement he has received to run, but he is not going to get in the race.
And in other perennial candidate news, the Mountain Party's Jesse Johnson has filed precandidacy papers to make his seventh bid for office.
Shorter Phil Kabler of the Charleston Gazette: Joe Manchin campaigned dirty by stating the truth about John Raese's crazy policy ideas and Florida residency but John Raese ran a clean campaign by lying about Manchin and President Obama's policies.
Kabler is another mainstream pundit who is not as good as West Virginia Blue blogger Clem at predicting results. Like Hoppy Kercheval, Kabler had predicted a Raese win and thought Jesse would be more of a factor unlike our very own Clem who nailed it.
Kabler also makes the erroneous claim that newspapers across the state did not report on the federal investigation into the Manchin administration. The stories were in newspapers across the state. Voters also just don't care about the gossipy non-issues that Kabler pushes regularly in his column.
The Senate race to fill the seat vacated by the death of Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-Big Daddy) between Gov. Joe Manchin and Florida Republican John Raese (R-Palm Beach) has led to a higher than usual turn out in the Mountain State, according to the Secretary of State's office.
"We know it's pretty heavy," said a spokesman for Secretary of State Jake Glance. "We were expecting mid-40s."
Uh, Politico? The Secretary of State in West Virginia is Natalie Tennant (D-Beloved).
It's election day, and perhaps we should note our experiences voting and whether anything noteworthy happened.
Here in Charleston, it is a quiet day, and you wouldn't know it was Election Day 2010. I'm heading after work to vote in my first major election in the state and will be voting mostly Democratic, including the wonderful Virginia Graf -- with the exception of voting Jesse Johnson for U.S. senate.
Many other folks I know have either voted in person via early voting at the Kanawha Court House or voted early this morning. I'm heading to my South Charleston firehall to vote this afternoon.
One interesting race to watch out of Kanawha will be the County Circuit Judge race between Carrie Webster and Dan Greear, which has been particularly nasty. I can't imagine Greear, a Republican, winning the seat, but it isn't impossible.
What's going on your neck of the woods? Any local elections that you're keeping your eye on?
* If you haven't voted yet, please vote on Tuesday. I urge everyone in West Virginia to vote a straight party Democratic Party ticket. In the congressional races, the choices are starkly clear. A Republican victory makes it that much harder for future progressive policy advocacy.
For example, if Raese wins the discourse shifts to arguments about whether whether climate change is real and if work place safety and environmental regulations should exist at all.
If Manchin wins, at least we're starting from a more rational place to fight our battles.
* This is one of those years when I really wished we had instant runoff voting. Instead of voting for the candidate whose views were closest to mine, I was stuck voting for the least worst option with a chance to win.
* If Joe Manchin pulls off a victory, one of the many people he can thank is Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. In a year when Republicans are picking up seats all over the country, the weak WV GOP bench is a major liability for WV GOP chances.
Since her election in 2000, Capito has worked hard to make sure she's the only viable state GOP candidate. Even in this election, with her best chance ever to welcome aboard fellow Republicans to the WV delegation in DC, Capito has been MIA. If Raese or McKinley squeak out a victory, it'll be no thanks to her.
* The most famous political science model for predicting US House election outcomes says the Republicans are expected (based on the economy and historic conditions like party in power) to win 45 seats. Nate Silver's current model estimates a Republican margin of 55 seats--not far off. As Atrios recently put it, "I think the ignored true narrative of this election season is that as horrible as the economy is, it's a miracle the Dems are seeming to do as well as they are and especially that Obama remains relatively popular." (We'll see on Wednesday is that's really true.)
The outcome of WV-01 will be one of the indications of how the national wind is blowing. I have no idea how it, or the composition of the House, will end up.
The only predictions I'm prepared to make for tomorrow are that Manchin, Capito, and Rahall will all win. No major changes will happen in the composition of the WV state house.
Whatever the election outcome, there's a rocky road ahead.
Ted Nugent appeared with John Raese in Charleston on Saturday, October the 30th to support him (Raese) for the U.S. Senate.
It is interesting that John Raese stated that he (Raese) is "a great admirer of Ted Nugent", who is a poacher.
Ted Nugent is not permitted to purchase a West Virginia Hunting License due to the State of California revoking his deer hunting license on August the 13th after he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of deer-baiting and not having a properly signed tag.
Investigators found that the deer Nugent had killed had been eating bait called "C'mere Deer." Baiting wildlife is legal in some states but illegal in California.
Nugent originally faced 11 charges, but his attorney entered the two no-contest pleas as part of a deal with Yuba County prosecutors.
Nugent's loss of his California deer hunting license through June 2012 allows 34 other states to revoke the same privilege under the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact.
West Virginia is a member of the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact, so Nugent is banned from purchasing a license in West Virginia.
He may have also violated South Dakota Hunting License Laws by Pheasant Hunting there after his license was revoked in California.
Come on John Raese, should you really "admire" a poacher who has no ethics when it comes to hunting and the outdoors and should you really have brought him to West Virginia?
As I've said before, Palm Beach elites don't like to get their hands dirty like the "hicky" people.
Politico covers what we've talked about for ages about John Raese:
To anyone who listens to Kercheval, that might not be a big surprise. Kercheval is an employee of Raese, a major donor to his campaign and an unabashed supporter, who takes pains to disclose his friendship to Raese early and often on the air.
"The first thing is, what I do isn't 'Meet the Press,'" said Kercheval, the dean of political reporters in West Virginia. "It's going to be an opinion-based show. The second thing is to be completely candid with the audience and not insult the intelligence of the audience. To say: 'You understand that John Raese owns our company. You also understand that John Raese is a friend of mine, and also that I have donated to him in the last two elections.'"
Manchin's campaign, in turn, is equally blunt.
"We have chosen not to go on Hoppy's show during this time because, as an employee of John Raese's and a major donor to John Raese's campaign, it's impossible for Hoppy to be unbiased during the campaign," Manchin spokeswoman Lara Ramsburg said.
It's one of the most curious aspects of one of the most competitive Senate races in the country: The Republican candidate happens to be one of the largest media owners in the state.
What Politico does not point out is that much of the rest of the media is also owned by Republicans. One of the reasons President Obama is unpopular in this state is the nonstop flow of newspaper columns and radio blaring out rightwing propaganda against him. That doesn't work against Manchin or against many local Democrats because people can see them for themselves.
There's a sarcastic expression used by the left, "It's OK if you are a Republican," that captures it well because Republicans are caught at such hypocrisy constantly.
The national economic was driven into the ditch by President George W. Bush and the deregulation obsessed Republicans. Economists are pretty much united that without the federal stimulus, the nation would have sunk into another Great Depression.
At the debate, Florida Republican John Raese tried to claim the federal stimulus did nothing for nobody and the federal government never helped him. Turned out that was a lie as he got $32 million in business from the feds.
WV-01 Republican candidate David McKinley has railed against the federal stimulus. Turns out McKinley's firm also has benefited from the federal stimulus.
And since much of the federal stimulus actually came in the form of middle class tax cuts, are they opposed to tax cuts now?
I never heard a word from McKinley or Raese about federal deficits when Bush was racking them up, but they whine about the deficit of President Obama.
Except they ignore or ignorant of the fact (the eternal question of today's Republicans: are they stupid or lying?) that under President Obama the deficit has not "tripled" as they've claimed, but that he's reduced it from what it was under President Bush's last budget. Bush's last budget left a Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit while Obama's first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
Then there is Spike Maynard, the former judge who Democrats ousted because of his corrupt ties to his Monaco-traveling vacation buddy Don Blankenship. Maynard claims Nick Rahall has an association with terrorists because of a campaign contribution made in 1996 from the same man who contributed to the Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquidst in 1998, then presidential candidate George W. Bush in 2000, and the Republican National Congressional Committee in 2002. By Spike's reasoning, Grover Norquidst, President Bush and the RNCC also have associations with a terrorist. Both Rahall and Bush rightly got rid of the donations the man had made to them after he was arrested in 2003. But Norquidst and the RNCC kept the money and have contributed it to Spike. As far as we know, the very dollars the man gave to Grover Norquidst and the RNCC are the very dollars that paid to air Spike's advertisements about Rahall's supposed association!
She voted with Bush about 90% over those eight years, yet stands with The Pledge shocked, shocked I tell you, about the state of the economy.
And don't even get started about the ethics of a Citi/investor hubby, sitting on Financial services and their increase in wealth over those eight years. All approved by GOP House leadership.
Florida Republican and federal government hypocrite John Raese's glass conservatory was approved at his Palm Beach mansion (the one with the polished pink peach, according to Raese, marble driveway). From an email:
DSCC EXTENDS CONGRATULATIONS TO JOHN RAESE AS PALM BEACH COMMISSION GIVES HIM THUMBS UP ON MANSION EXPANSION
In Meeting Today, Palm Beach Architecture Commission Approves Transforming Giant Dollhouse Into "Victorian Conservatory"
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is officially extending congratulations to John Raese this afternoon, after the Palm Beach Architecture Commission finally granted the Raeses permission to build a 14x15 foot "glass conservatory" in place of a giant dollhouse on their property in Palm Beach, Florida.
"Congratulations to John Raese on his big win in front of the Palm Beach Architecture Commission," said DSCC Communications Director Eric Schultz. "If your home is where your heart is, John Raese's heart is in Palm Beach. We wish him the best with this new solarium."
As Politico first reported, the Town of Palm Beach's Architecture Commission met today to consider whether to grant the Reaeses permission to build a 14x15 foot "glass conservatory" on their property. At a hearing last August, commissioners were unimpressed with the plans for the conservatory, with one saying it looks like a "people cage." Politico noted that the Raeses' planned expansion has "been a matter of some local controversy since last year, when the Commission turned down a larger version of the project."
John Raese held no known public events today, and has yet to divulge to West Virginians if he attended the Commission's meeting in Palm Beach to plead his case in person.
It's clear that multi-millionaire John Raese just doesn't understand West Virginia values. Raese wants to eliminate the minimum wage and failed to pay workers compensation for on the job injuries. He's also faced questions about where he lives, after a report came out showing Raese owns homes in several states, including Florida, where his family lives in a 7,000 square-foot home with a peach colored marble driveway. Raese also faced heat when it was revealed that he tried paying West Virginians to write favorable letters to the editor to local newspapers on his behalf.
The conservatory is probably going to cost more than the average home in West Virginia. Of course he was in in Florida? That's where his priorities are.
While Florida Republican John Raese wants to attack Gov. Joe Manchin's policies, I return you to a time when Raese stepped all over the West Virginia GOP's "Unleashing Capitalism" messaging:
He also bashed Forbes magazine for knocking the state's business climate, recently ranking it 49th.
"My family has been doing business in West Virginia since 1905. A lot of people have done business and done very well in West Virginia," he said.
"We have more natural resources in West Virginia than all but two other states, Texas and Louisiana. We have the finest work force of anywhere in the United States."
At the time, the West Virginia Republicans were supposed to be criticizing the state's business climate and economy as a way to attack Manchin. I guess Raese did not hear about that in Florida.
Raese, whose lavish Florida home has been a favorite Democratic target, has applied to the board for permission to replace a giant six-foot by eight-foot dollhouse and replace it with a new fourteen-foot by fifteen-foot "glass conservatory."
The application by Raese's wife, Elizabeth, has been a matter of some local controversy since last year, when the Commission turned down a larger version of the project, and a neighbor, Elizabeth Marshall, offered emotional testimony against it at a hearing this August 25 (at 2:34 here), calling the Raeses "abusive" in destroying the "privacy and the intimacy" of her property, and complained both of "retribution" and of having spent $35,000 fighting it.
You know, if Raese and his wife lived in West Virginia, they could build any kind of "glass conservatory" they'd like at their mansion. I guess we're not good enough for them, seeing how Raese thinks we're "hicky" and all.
More on whether Raese would represent Florida or West Virginia here.
Update
ON TODAY'S AGENDA: PALM BEACH COMMMISSION CONSIDERS RAESE HOME EXPANSION - IS HE ATTENDING MEETING?
Today, The Palm Beach Architecture Commission Will Consider Whether To Grant Raeses Permission To Build 14x15 Foot "Glass Conservatory" In Place Of Giant Dollhouse
Raeses' Planned Expansion "A Matter Of Some Local Controversy" Since "Commission Turned Down A Larger Version Of The Project" Last Year
Although the election in West Virginia is less than one week away, John Raese has some pressing business to attend to back home in Palm Beach, Florida. According to Politico, the Town of Palm Beach's Architecture Commission will consider whether to grant the Reaeses permission to build a 14x15 foot "glass conservatory" on their property. At a hearing last August, commissioners were unimpressed with the plans for the conservatory, with one saying it looks like a "people cage." Politico notes that the Raeses' planned expansion has "been a matter of some local controversy since last year, when the Commission turned down a larger version of the project."
"Next week West Virginia will hold elections, but today, in even more pressing business for John Raese, the town of Palm Beach will decide whether to grant the Raeses permission to build a massive glass conservatory on their Florida property," DSCC National Press Secretary Deirdre Murphy said. "Will John Raese be campaigning in West Virginia today - or will he be at home defending his Florida mansion? It's no wonder voters in the Mountain State find John Raese to be out-of-touch."
It's clear that multi-millionaire John Raese just doesn't understand West Virginia values. Raese wants to eliminate the minimum wage and failed to pay workers compensation for on the job injuries. He's also faced questions about where he lives, after a report came out showing Raese owns homes in several states, including Florida, where his family lives in a 7,000 square-foot home with a peach colored marble driveway. Raese also faced heat when it was revealed that he tried paying West Virginians to write favorable letters to the editor to local newspapers on his behalf.
Opposes: Minimum Wage, Public Education, Social Security; Supports: Lasers
The Manchin for West Virginia campaign launched its latest television ad today, in order to let voters hear directly from John Raese himself since
they have heard nothing about his policy positions in Raese's own ads.
Raese opposes the minimum wage, wants to do away with public education and privatize Social Security, but the one concrete proposal he has made is to put 1,000 lasers in the sky.
(No, seriously, 1,000 lasers in the sky at a supposed cost of $20 billion)
"John Raese is right for once when he says that West Virginians have sent him a clear message when they have rejected his candidacy three times," said Lara Ramsburg, Manchin campaign spokeswoman. "The differences between the
two candidate could not be more clear. With every word he speaks, Raese proves how out of touch he is with the needs of West Virginia working families, probably from spending too much time in his Palm Beach mansion.
His ideas are not only crazy, they're irresponsible. Joe Manchin has been an independent voice fighting for our state and is the only candidate who will always do what's right for West Virginia regardless of political
party."
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