May 19, Special Elections Day in California & a Few Last Words on Judy Chu for Congress

[Previous entries in the Run, Mama, Run series on Judy Chu for Congress here.]

Today's Special Election will elect a replacement for the House seat once occupied by Hilda Solis representing California Congressional District 32, and determine whether ballot initiatives addressing our state's enormous budget deficit will go forward or be rejected.

So please do vote today--it's a low voter-turnout election. According to @lacrrcc, (Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's twitter handle), as of May 18, 2009, "With 273,418 by mail ballots returned, we are just over 6% overall voter turnout for tomorrow's election and 36% returned of ballots issued."

If you'll indulge me in some meta-commentary about the Chu-Cedillo race--some of the punditry has framed the 63% Latino/22% Asian/15% white/other 32d Congressional district as Latino candidate State Assembly person Gil Cedillo's race to lose. It's both a recognition that Cedillo's been active in local and state politics since 1970, but also predicated on the notion that Latinos vote for Latinos in a sort of simple identity politics paradigm. This also assumes that a near-complete turnout of Latino voters will largely go to the best-known Latino frontrunner, Cedillo, and make a runoff election unnecessary. (Whoever takes the majority on May 19 will be named the winner; if no one takes the majority, top finishers from both parties participate in the runoff in July.)

Obama, Blagojevich, and the RNC

Yesterday, electoral college electors from across the nation made history as they convened to officially name Barack Obama winner of the November 4th election, and declare him the next president of the United States. This morning, President-Elect Obama, who appears determined to hit the ground running on January 20th in the midst of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression, announced yet another appointment to his cabinet.

Meanwhile, Republican National Committee leadership seem to have forgotten the 2008 presidential election is over. The RNC is running a misleading anti-Obama attack ad that clearly attempts to implicate Obama in the Blagojevich pay-to-play senate appointment scandal.

And top Republican party officials haven't stopped there.

The official GOP.com blog posted a piece yesterday attempting to link Obama to Blagojevich, saying "Over the weekend, and indeed today, political news across the nation has continued to center on the scandal involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and contact that President-elect Barack Obama's team may or may not have had with him."

Kid-Friendly Election Night Party in Portland, Oregon

Here's the place to go if you're interested in hanging out with a bunch of fun families tonight.  If you're in the Portland area, there'll be a bunch of us at the BarackSpace (usually known as the BackSpace), doing it UP.  Kristin, who writes for Poliglots, Blue Oregon (and sometimes guest-posts for us, here, at MOMocrats), along with her fellow Poliglot, Shawn, have organized the event conjoined with the Activistas (otherwise known as Urbanmamas).  They were also gracious enough to invite me to join in as a sponsor; and I'm sweetening the pot with some kick-ass door-prizes from Black Wagon and Urban Bliss Design.  Woo!

Here's what you'll need to know about it all:

You are invited to an entirely kid-friendly election night party at the BackSpace Cafe (renamed the BarackSpace Cafe until Nov. 5th) at 115 NW 5th on November 4, starting at 5pm.

The BackSpace Cafe is huge, with lots of room for kids to run around and a full menu of vegetarian/vegan food for sale. It also has a big parking lot across the street.

It’s being hosted by Poligots, as well as Activistas and MOMocrats. We’re so excited!

The party will have:

**** Maps to color as the results come in (with LOTS of blue crayons :))

**** Balloons

**** Pin the tail on the Democratic donkey

**** Other games and kiddo diversions

**** Of course, lots of other great kids to play with.

And, it’s FREE. We just want you to come and celebrate what we hope will be a fantastic night for Oregon and our nation.

Have You Done Everything You Can?

This is a truly inspiring video.  Even though it was made for Virginia, it could be any state in this country.

GET OUT THE VOTE!

This is it, folks.  This is what the MOMocrats have worked for.  This is what we've all waited and worked so hard for. 

I'll be doing voter protection work tomorrow and GOTV work today, so I'll see you all on the flipside.

McCain Oopsapalooza Tour 13: Obama Train Leaving the Station Edition

Scarlet B Replaced By Scarlet L, Doesn't Reflect Well

John McCain's campaign representative in Pennsylvania, communications director Peter Feldman, overtly race-baited late Thursday when he pushed a false and incendiary hoax about a McCain volunteer supposedly being victimized by an Obama supporter. Instead, nothing of the kind happened. The mentally unstable woman in question claimed she was beaten and had a backwards "B" carved onto her face, most likely by herself or an accomplice. No Obama supporter was ever involved.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

Like much of the worst of the McCain-Palin campaign, the wounds were self-inflicted. The campaign's attempt to capitalize on the woman's plight was a disgraceful attempt to make a mentally unstable person a martyr for the campaign--yet blame always landed elsewhere.  Definitely some pants on fire here.

OOOPS.

H/T to Debbie for the TPM story.

Political Ads on Your Terms

Blue Star Families for Obama is trying out something that I think is pretty cool.  A new site, SaysMe.tv, will allow you to air political ads in the market of your choice.  Their network doesn't cover all of the states yet, but it does cover many swing states like Ohio, Nevada, and Colorado and some unexpected OhMyGodTheyMightTurnBlue states like North Carolina.

We've uploaded our recent video featuring military wives to SaysMe.  SaysMe, in turn, gets approval from its network of cable providers.  The approval process takes some time and we're currently only approved for Las Vegas, New York, and Los Angeles.  (HINT: Choose Las Vegas!)  But once you've chosen a market, you can choose from various cable networks (Lifetime, HGTV, Food Network, CNN, MSNBC, etc....) and make an ad buy.  The minimum order is only $100.

In future national elections, I think SaysMe.tv, or at least the idea, could change the face of political television advertising. 

If you want to try it out and air our BSF4O ad, the deadline for getting this commercial on air before election day is Tuesday, October 28th.  A BSF4O member has set up a chip in page to pool smaller amounts for an ad buy, but BSF4O is not managing that.  We have to comply with federal election laws!

Daughters and Sisters Against Palin

It's the future talking: listen to these bright young women and the reasons they have trouble with what Sarah Palin stands for.

H/T @MelSil via Twitter.

Cynematic hardly has time to blog at P i l l o w b o o k.

Has the Violence We've Feared Already Begun?

On October 17th, Joe Killian, a reporter for the Greensboro, North Carolina News & Record, was assaulted by a McCain-Palin supporter at a Palin rally.

While covering the rally at Elon University along with fellow News & Record reporter Mark Binker, Killian saw that about a dozen apparent Obama supporters had spread themselves throughout the crowd. In his blog entry about the incident, he writes:

As Palin got into her speech they began chants of “Obama” and screamed out rebuttals to the points in her speech. This angered some in the crowd — some responding with cursing, others chanting “U.S.A.” and “NObama” to drown them out. Eventually the cops came and escorted them off of the baseball field.

Intrigued by the incident, Killian went looking for the Obama supporters to ask about their reasons for attending the rally. He found one who was willing to be interviewed. Killian writes:

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.

As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

“Hey, hey,” I said. “I’m trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay?”

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of “U.S.A” by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

“Oh, you think that’s funny?!” the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. “Yeah, that’s real funny…” he said.

And then he kicked the back of my leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

This is not the first time the press have been threatened or harassed at a Palin rally.

McCain Oopsapalooza Tour 12: 0 for 3 Presidential Debate Edition

Pretty is as pretty does. Oops.

Video: Katie Couric's Interview with Hilary Clinton On The Pres. Debates

Hilary Clinton on last nights Presidental Debate: "Barack Obama won, and now it is 3 for 3"!