Deleted member 141906
How much did Rich Whitney get in 2006? Did he swing the election to Baar Tompka?
Green Revolution on the Golden Gate
- Thread starter wilcoxchar
- Start date
I never decided on an exact figure, just "over 10%", so better than OTL but less than 15%. Probably like 12 point something, not enough to swing the election, but enough to give the Greens a bit more to build on. Illinois is probably going to be a state to watch for 2010.
I was going through the list of Senators to make the 111th Congress Senate maps, and I literally just now realized I completely glossed over the fact that since 2007 there have been two concurrent black Senators for the first time in the country's history. Barack Obama (IL-D) and Harold Ford Jr. (TN-D).
‘Big Four’ Cabinet Posts Filled As Wendy Sherman To Be Nominated For Secretary of State
December 22, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC - Hillary Clinton announced another round of nominations for Cabinet picks today as the transition between President Bush and President-Elect Clinton continues to take shape. The announcement included Wendy Sherman as Clinton’s appointment for Secretary of State. Sherman served in multiple roles in the administration of Bill Clinton. She was the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs for three years under Warren Christopher and later was counselor for Madeleine Albright. The extensive experience made Sherman a valued confidant for Hillary Clinton, and the two have been close since the days of the Bill Clinton administration.
With the announcement of Wendy Sherman at the State Department, President-Elect Clinton has rounded out what is known as the “Big Four” Cabinet appointments - State, Treasury, Defense, and Attorney General. In keeping with Clinton’s campaign promise to have a Cabinet made up equally of men and women, Sherman will join Lael Brainard at the Treasury Department. Brainard is another veteran of the previous Clinton administration in an economic advisory as well as being Bill Clinton’s representative to the 2000 G8 summit. Since 2001, Brainard has been an economic research chair at the Brookings Institution. The other two Big Four appointments have been filled by Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as Attorney General and the continuation of Bush appointee Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Salazar would become the second Hispanic Attorney General and alongside Alberto Gonzales would share the highest ranking Cabinet position ever held by a Hispanic individual. Aside from Salazar, the appointments to the Big Four positions have come mainly from the civil service and more technocratic areas of the departments rather than political appointments, which may be a sign of how Hillary Clinton will structure her administration. However, Sherman’s appointment appears to be more of a compromise between both. Prior to the administration of Bill Clinton, Wendy Sherman made her name in the campaign side of government. She managed Barbara Mikulski’s successful 1986 campaign for Senate, was director of political action committee EMILY’s List, and directed Washington and DNC operations in the 1988 Dukakis campaign.
The choice of Sherman and Brainard for State and Treasury continues the theme of a gender parity Cabinet, a powerful message accompanying Hillary Clinton’s election as the first female president. Clinton’s other appointments today carry the theme further, including the appointment of Inez Tenenbaum, former South Carolina Superintendent of Education, as Education Secretary and Sylvia Burwell, another veteran of the Bill Clinton administration, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Sherman’s nomination following Condoleezza Rice would also make her the first female Secretary of State to succeed another female Secretary of State[1].
While several of Clinton’s Cabinet appointments so far have been from inside the departments themselves, there have been a few appointments that have come from political positions like Ken Salazar. Notably, Clinton transition director and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has been tapped to continue in the Clinton administration proper as Agriculture Secretary. Washington governor Christine Gregoire has been announced to lead the Department of Energy, and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a long speculated pick for Clinton’s running mate throughout the campaign, has been selected to head the Commerce Department. As has seemingly become standard for an incoming presidential administration, there is also a gesture of bipartisanship in the appointment of token members of the other party. For Clinton, these have shown in the nominations for the military departments. Along with the continuation of Gates in Defense, Representative John McHugh of New York’s 23rd district has been selected as Secretary of the Army, and while the selection has not been made yet, speculation is that retiring New Mexico congresswoman Heather Wilson may be nominated as Air Force Secretary after losing her run for the Senate this year.
The nomination of Wendy Sherman does settle some other more prominent speculative chatter coming out of Washington in the past week. With eyes on the Big Four, rumors floated around that Clinton would nominate longtime Delaware Senator Joseph Biden as Secretary of State. The Clinton team made a statement last Friday that media reports on Biden as a potential Cabinet nominee were false, and that Biden was not in consideration for Secretary of State. However, the weekend muddled the waters as online postings reportedly from aides in Biden’s office indicated that Biden was offered the job as Secretary of State but declined[2]. If these reports are true, it may have pushed the unveiling of Clinton’s Secretary of State nominee up to before the Christmas break if that was not already the plan. However, Sherman’s nomination as well as the previous nominees for Treasury, Defense, and Attorney General as well as Clinton’s intent on gender parity likely dispel the Biden rumor as it would seem the shortlist would have been mostly if not all women. However, speculation on remaining Cabinet appointments is not likely to go away, as the quieting of official actions over the next few days will lead to more speculation among the pundits and media.
***
Unusual Party Situation Gives Democrats Trifecta in Montana
January 6, 2009
HELENA, MT - Today, as Brian Schweitzer begins his second term as governor and the Montana legislature begins its new session in Helena, the awkward result of the 2008 state legislative elections takes center stage. Montana has had tied legislative chambers previously, most recently the House following the 2004 elections when the House was tied with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. However, it has not had both legislatures tied at the same time, nor in any way like this. Rick Jore moved from the state house to the state senate and M. Neal Donohue entered the house representing the Constitution Party. Addrien Marx and Kathleen Williams were elected to the state senate and house for the Green Party. With that, the chambers are both tied between the Democrats and Republicans but with neither party having even half the seats in either chamber.
In other states, this would be almost certain to lead to deadlock and indecision over even the most trivial matter of choosing the Senate Majority Leader or the Speaker of the House. In this case, there is some good news for Montana. The rules of the state legislature do not require an outright majority vote for control of either legislative chamber. Rather, in the case of a tie, control of the chamber falls to the governor’s party[3]. As Brian Schweitzer is governor, this meant that by a quirk of rules, without having a technical majority in either legislative chamber, the Democrats have control of both houses of the legislature. Senate Majority Leader Mike Cooney maintains his position as leader of the senate, and in the house, Republican Speaker Scott Sales is replaced by Democrat Bob Bergren.
While some may have been hoping for a contracted fight for control of the legislature, it will come as a breath of relief to many Montanans after the turmoil of the previous legislative session. For the past two years, the legislature has been deadlocked with battles over most bills. For the 2007-2008 session, the state house had 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats, and 1 Constitution Party member. This gave Constitution Party member Rick Jore an outsized influence in deciding bills in the house. The Democrats had controlled the state senate during that time, with Schweitzer having amendatory veto power. That split in the legislature caused a headache last year when the house failed to craft a budget in the regular session on how to spend the state’s $1.4 billion surplus. The budget was only ironed out in a closed door retreat between Schweitzer administration officials and 13 house Republicans hammering out a deal before a special session[4]. Notably, Speaker Scott Sales was not one of those 13 Republicans, and the budget headache may have been one of the reasons for the Sales’ ouster as Republican leader in the state house. With the state house even more divided now, the more bipartisan tack of both incoming Speaker Bergren and Republican minority leader Dennis Himmelberger[5] will hopefully lead to a more cooperative chamber in the months to come.
That said, the control of the chamber automatically falling to the governor’s party did not lead to a lack of power for the lone representatives of the Green and Constitution parties. Last session during their control of the state house, the Republicans appear to have set a tradition of appointing a friendly third party member to chair a committee with their surprise appointment of Jore to chair the House Education Committee. In turn, the Green Party members have received appointments to chair both senate and house committees. Kathleen Williams has been made chair of the House Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Committee, with Speaker Bergren praising her previous work as a water program manager for the state’s Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Department. Addrien Marx will chair the Local Government committee in the senate. While both are third class committees, which mean they only meet twice a week, this is a grand gesture to the Green Party members to keep them on side of the Democrats. Even so, it may be considered part of the normal process. The Speaker controls all appointments in the state house, but the senate committee appointments are decided by a six member Committee on Committees, which in the case of a tied chamber has three members of each party. The Democrats were able to keep Rick Jore from gaining another committee chairmanship, but with the committee chairs split between the two major parties, it came at the cost of Republican senate leader Robert Story being made chair of the powerful Senate Taxation Committee. Given the circumstances, Montanans and governor Schweitzer will be in for another rocky session.
***
2008 Was Another “Year of the Woman” As Milestone Reached In The Senate… For a Few Weeks At Least
January 6, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - The election of Hillary Clinton as the first woman president of the United States in 2008 marked a major milestone for the advancement of women in American politics. With Clinton’s inauguration, the New York Senator and wife of former president Bill Clinton will have broken the highest glass ceiling in the country nearly nine decades after women gained the constitutional right to vote. However, that was not the only threshold for women reached as a result of the 2008 elections. As the Senate meets today for its first session in the 111th Congress, for the first time in its history twenty women will be present in that chamber. In 1992, commonly titled the Year of the Woman for how many women were elected Senator that year, the number of women in the Senate increased from four to seven, with five of those women winning election or reelection that year. In 2008, the number went from fifteen to twenty, with eight women elected or reelected last November alone.
To commemorate the election of the milestone of women holding one fifth of the seats in the Senate, Senate officials arranged for a photo to be taken of the twenty Senators in the days before the opening of the incoming session. That photo, taken on the steps outside the Capitol and including Senator and President-Elect Clinton, quickly spread around the media and became a front page feature of many of the nation’s leading newspapers yesterday. Separate photos were also taken of the incoming women joining their colleagues in the Senate today and of the eight women elected last November, by far the most of any election year. Those eight women are Fran Ulmer of Alaska, Christie Vilsack of Iowa, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Barbara Buono of New Jersey, Kate Brown of Oregon, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Lummis won election to a full term after being appointed in 2007 to replace Craig Thomas following Thomas’s death. Vilsack, while first elected in November, was appointed to serve the remaining months of Tom Harkin’s term following his resignation to head Clinton’s presidential transition. Landrieu and Collins won reelection to their offices. The other four - Ulmer, Shaheen, Buono, and Brown - begin their careers in the United States Senate today during the Senate’s initial meeting.
As the Senate begins its session, there will be an interesting quirk with President-Elect Clinton continuing to serve in the chamber into the new Congress. Assuming she does not resign her seat by Thursday, Clinton will be present in the Senate during the official joint session count of the electoral votes to confirm her election as president. However, Clinton’s move from the Senate to the presidency means the landmark twenty women Senators is likely to happen for a brief moment. The vacancy created by Clinton’s resignation from the Senate will drop the number down to nineteen, and it is uncertain if New York governor Bill Weld or South Dakota governor Mike Rounds will appoint a woman to replace Clinton or Vice President-elect Tom Daschle. The top names Rounds has indicated to replace Daschle do not include any women, with John Thune, Lieutenant governor Dennis Daugaard, and state senate leader Dave Knudson as the three most likely choices. The speculation around Weld’s appointment to replace Clinton does have a few potential women. Ann Marie Buerkle, Betsy McCaughey, and Sue Kelly have been talked about as potential replacements for Clinton, but Weld’s office has been silent on whether he is making gender a priority in choosing Clinton’s replacement.
While the Senate’s achievement is remarkable and the comparison to 1992 has been the main talking point in calling 2008 another Year of the Woman outside of Clinton’s election, the result of the House elections offer yet another line for making the case. Going into the 111th Congress, the House cadre of women has increased from 71 to 78 since the end of the previous Congress. This may not be the largest increase in the number of women in the House since 1993 (there was an increase of 8 between the 108th and 109th Congresses), it does have the largest number of freshmen women in the House since then. While 1993 saw a record 23 women enter their first terms in the House of Representatives, 2009 comes close with 15 women entering their first terms. In a possibly troubling sign for Republicans, only two of those fifteen incoming women, Lynn Jenkins of Kansas’s 3rd district and Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania’s 4th district, are from the GOP. Even more worrying for the GOP, including Jenkins and Hart only 14 of the 78 women in the House at the beginning of this Congress are Republicans. The election of President Hillary Clinton could place women in more of a spotlight on running for office, and if the Republican Party is unable to recruit or nominate candidates they may be at a disadvantage in future elections. This has already come to pass in areas where Republicans are thought to be strong such as rural New York. While the election of Tracey Brooks in the Albany area 21st district was the result of retaining a safe Democratic district, Samara Barend’s win in the 29th district and Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2006 gain in the 20th district show an increasing affinity for Democrats and particularly Democratic women in the region over the past few years. Time will tell if that is a larger trend or if it is merely part of the recent Democratic wave elections. However, with 78 Representatives and 20 Senators, the total number of total women in Congress is tantalizingly close to reaching triple digits. That milestone could be resting in the back of the minds of voters going into the next election, and if it is, it should be on the minds of state parties and candidate recruiters as well. Now that the ultimate glass ceiling has been shattered, others might start looking more fragile.
[1] In OTL, that distinction would of course be held by Hillary Clinton herself.
[2] While this is a baseless rumor ITTL, it's not so farfetched. In his OTL memoir Promise Me, Dad Biden says he would have rejected the offer of Secretary of State if Obama had offered it instead of the vice presidency because Biden didn't want to spend so much time traveling and away from his family.
[3] When I had originally set this up it was with the intent of having a drawn out deadlock over control of the legislature, but unfortunately Montana's rules aren't that exciting.
[4] There's a good article about the Montana budget deal here: https://helenair.com/news/local/bud...cle_e6737376-0454-5b0f-8386-2018e1bf1304.html
[5] In OTL, Sales defeated a challenge from Himmelberger for house GOP leader as Bergren was elected Speaker to replace Sales. Here, the different party situation leads to a more conciliatory tone on the GOP side and Himmelberger winning out over Sales.
December 22, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC - Hillary Clinton announced another round of nominations for Cabinet picks today as the transition between President Bush and President-Elect Clinton continues to take shape. The announcement included Wendy Sherman as Clinton’s appointment for Secretary of State. Sherman served in multiple roles in the administration of Bill Clinton. She was the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs for three years under Warren Christopher and later was counselor for Madeleine Albright. The extensive experience made Sherman a valued confidant for Hillary Clinton, and the two have been close since the days of the Bill Clinton administration.
With the announcement of Wendy Sherman at the State Department, President-Elect Clinton has rounded out what is known as the “Big Four” Cabinet appointments - State, Treasury, Defense, and Attorney General. In keeping with Clinton’s campaign promise to have a Cabinet made up equally of men and women, Sherman will join Lael Brainard at the Treasury Department. Brainard is another veteran of the previous Clinton administration in an economic advisory as well as being Bill Clinton’s representative to the 2000 G8 summit. Since 2001, Brainard has been an economic research chair at the Brookings Institution. The other two Big Four appointments have been filled by Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as Attorney General and the continuation of Bush appointee Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Salazar would become the second Hispanic Attorney General and alongside Alberto Gonzales would share the highest ranking Cabinet position ever held by a Hispanic individual. Aside from Salazar, the appointments to the Big Four positions have come mainly from the civil service and more technocratic areas of the departments rather than political appointments, which may be a sign of how Hillary Clinton will structure her administration. However, Sherman’s appointment appears to be more of a compromise between both. Prior to the administration of Bill Clinton, Wendy Sherman made her name in the campaign side of government. She managed Barbara Mikulski’s successful 1986 campaign for Senate, was director of political action committee EMILY’s List, and directed Washington and DNC operations in the 1988 Dukakis campaign.
The choice of Sherman and Brainard for State and Treasury continues the theme of a gender parity Cabinet, a powerful message accompanying Hillary Clinton’s election as the first female president. Clinton’s other appointments today carry the theme further, including the appointment of Inez Tenenbaum, former South Carolina Superintendent of Education, as Education Secretary and Sylvia Burwell, another veteran of the Bill Clinton administration, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Sherman’s nomination following Condoleezza Rice would also make her the first female Secretary of State to succeed another female Secretary of State[1].
While several of Clinton’s Cabinet appointments so far have been from inside the departments themselves, there have been a few appointments that have come from political positions like Ken Salazar. Notably, Clinton transition director and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has been tapped to continue in the Clinton administration proper as Agriculture Secretary. Washington governor Christine Gregoire has been announced to lead the Department of Energy, and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a long speculated pick for Clinton’s running mate throughout the campaign, has been selected to head the Commerce Department. As has seemingly become standard for an incoming presidential administration, there is also a gesture of bipartisanship in the appointment of token members of the other party. For Clinton, these have shown in the nominations for the military departments. Along with the continuation of Gates in Defense, Representative John McHugh of New York’s 23rd district has been selected as Secretary of the Army, and while the selection has not been made yet, speculation is that retiring New Mexico congresswoman Heather Wilson may be nominated as Air Force Secretary after losing her run for the Senate this year.
The nomination of Wendy Sherman does settle some other more prominent speculative chatter coming out of Washington in the past week. With eyes on the Big Four, rumors floated around that Clinton would nominate longtime Delaware Senator Joseph Biden as Secretary of State. The Clinton team made a statement last Friday that media reports on Biden as a potential Cabinet nominee were false, and that Biden was not in consideration for Secretary of State. However, the weekend muddled the waters as online postings reportedly from aides in Biden’s office indicated that Biden was offered the job as Secretary of State but declined[2]. If these reports are true, it may have pushed the unveiling of Clinton’s Secretary of State nominee up to before the Christmas break if that was not already the plan. However, Sherman’s nomination as well as the previous nominees for Treasury, Defense, and Attorney General as well as Clinton’s intent on gender parity likely dispel the Biden rumor as it would seem the shortlist would have been mostly if not all women. However, speculation on remaining Cabinet appointments is not likely to go away, as the quieting of official actions over the next few days will lead to more speculation among the pundits and media.
***
Unusual Party Situation Gives Democrats Trifecta in Montana
January 6, 2009
HELENA, MT - Today, as Brian Schweitzer begins his second term as governor and the Montana legislature begins its new session in Helena, the awkward result of the 2008 state legislative elections takes center stage. Montana has had tied legislative chambers previously, most recently the House following the 2004 elections when the House was tied with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. However, it has not had both legislatures tied at the same time, nor in any way like this. Rick Jore moved from the state house to the state senate and M. Neal Donohue entered the house representing the Constitution Party. Addrien Marx and Kathleen Williams were elected to the state senate and house for the Green Party. With that, the chambers are both tied between the Democrats and Republicans but with neither party having even half the seats in either chamber.
In other states, this would be almost certain to lead to deadlock and indecision over even the most trivial matter of choosing the Senate Majority Leader or the Speaker of the House. In this case, there is some good news for Montana. The rules of the state legislature do not require an outright majority vote for control of either legislative chamber. Rather, in the case of a tie, control of the chamber falls to the governor’s party[3]. As Brian Schweitzer is governor, this meant that by a quirk of rules, without having a technical majority in either legislative chamber, the Democrats have control of both houses of the legislature. Senate Majority Leader Mike Cooney maintains his position as leader of the senate, and in the house, Republican Speaker Scott Sales is replaced by Democrat Bob Bergren.
While some may have been hoping for a contracted fight for control of the legislature, it will come as a breath of relief to many Montanans after the turmoil of the previous legislative session. For the past two years, the legislature has been deadlocked with battles over most bills. For the 2007-2008 session, the state house had 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats, and 1 Constitution Party member. This gave Constitution Party member Rick Jore an outsized influence in deciding bills in the house. The Democrats had controlled the state senate during that time, with Schweitzer having amendatory veto power. That split in the legislature caused a headache last year when the house failed to craft a budget in the regular session on how to spend the state’s $1.4 billion surplus. The budget was only ironed out in a closed door retreat between Schweitzer administration officials and 13 house Republicans hammering out a deal before a special session[4]. Notably, Speaker Scott Sales was not one of those 13 Republicans, and the budget headache may have been one of the reasons for the Sales’ ouster as Republican leader in the state house. With the state house even more divided now, the more bipartisan tack of both incoming Speaker Bergren and Republican minority leader Dennis Himmelberger[5] will hopefully lead to a more cooperative chamber in the months to come.
That said, the control of the chamber automatically falling to the governor’s party did not lead to a lack of power for the lone representatives of the Green and Constitution parties. Last session during their control of the state house, the Republicans appear to have set a tradition of appointing a friendly third party member to chair a committee with their surprise appointment of Jore to chair the House Education Committee. In turn, the Green Party members have received appointments to chair both senate and house committees. Kathleen Williams has been made chair of the House Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Committee, with Speaker Bergren praising her previous work as a water program manager for the state’s Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Department. Addrien Marx will chair the Local Government committee in the senate. While both are third class committees, which mean they only meet twice a week, this is a grand gesture to the Green Party members to keep them on side of the Democrats. Even so, it may be considered part of the normal process. The Speaker controls all appointments in the state house, but the senate committee appointments are decided by a six member Committee on Committees, which in the case of a tied chamber has three members of each party. The Democrats were able to keep Rick Jore from gaining another committee chairmanship, but with the committee chairs split between the two major parties, it came at the cost of Republican senate leader Robert Story being made chair of the powerful Senate Taxation Committee. Given the circumstances, Montanans and governor Schweitzer will be in for another rocky session.
***
2008 Was Another “Year of the Woman” As Milestone Reached In The Senate… For a Few Weeks At Least
January 6, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - The election of Hillary Clinton as the first woman president of the United States in 2008 marked a major milestone for the advancement of women in American politics. With Clinton’s inauguration, the New York Senator and wife of former president Bill Clinton will have broken the highest glass ceiling in the country nearly nine decades after women gained the constitutional right to vote. However, that was not the only threshold for women reached as a result of the 2008 elections. As the Senate meets today for its first session in the 111th Congress, for the first time in its history twenty women will be present in that chamber. In 1992, commonly titled the Year of the Woman for how many women were elected Senator that year, the number of women in the Senate increased from four to seven, with five of those women winning election or reelection that year. In 2008, the number went from fifteen to twenty, with eight women elected or reelected last November alone.
To commemorate the election of the milestone of women holding one fifth of the seats in the Senate, Senate officials arranged for a photo to be taken of the twenty Senators in the days before the opening of the incoming session. That photo, taken on the steps outside the Capitol and including Senator and President-Elect Clinton, quickly spread around the media and became a front page feature of many of the nation’s leading newspapers yesterday. Separate photos were also taken of the incoming women joining their colleagues in the Senate today and of the eight women elected last November, by far the most of any election year. Those eight women are Fran Ulmer of Alaska, Christie Vilsack of Iowa, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Barbara Buono of New Jersey, Kate Brown of Oregon, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Lummis won election to a full term after being appointed in 2007 to replace Craig Thomas following Thomas’s death. Vilsack, while first elected in November, was appointed to serve the remaining months of Tom Harkin’s term following his resignation to head Clinton’s presidential transition. Landrieu and Collins won reelection to their offices. The other four - Ulmer, Shaheen, Buono, and Brown - begin their careers in the United States Senate today during the Senate’s initial meeting.
As the Senate begins its session, there will be an interesting quirk with President-Elect Clinton continuing to serve in the chamber into the new Congress. Assuming she does not resign her seat by Thursday, Clinton will be present in the Senate during the official joint session count of the electoral votes to confirm her election as president. However, Clinton’s move from the Senate to the presidency means the landmark twenty women Senators is likely to happen for a brief moment. The vacancy created by Clinton’s resignation from the Senate will drop the number down to nineteen, and it is uncertain if New York governor Bill Weld or South Dakota governor Mike Rounds will appoint a woman to replace Clinton or Vice President-elect Tom Daschle. The top names Rounds has indicated to replace Daschle do not include any women, with John Thune, Lieutenant governor Dennis Daugaard, and state senate leader Dave Knudson as the three most likely choices. The speculation around Weld’s appointment to replace Clinton does have a few potential women. Ann Marie Buerkle, Betsy McCaughey, and Sue Kelly have been talked about as potential replacements for Clinton, but Weld’s office has been silent on whether he is making gender a priority in choosing Clinton’s replacement.
While the Senate’s achievement is remarkable and the comparison to 1992 has been the main talking point in calling 2008 another Year of the Woman outside of Clinton’s election, the result of the House elections offer yet another line for making the case. Going into the 111th Congress, the House cadre of women has increased from 71 to 78 since the end of the previous Congress. This may not be the largest increase in the number of women in the House since 1993 (there was an increase of 8 between the 108th and 109th Congresses), it does have the largest number of freshmen women in the House since then. While 1993 saw a record 23 women enter their first terms in the House of Representatives, 2009 comes close with 15 women entering their first terms. In a possibly troubling sign for Republicans, only two of those fifteen incoming women, Lynn Jenkins of Kansas’s 3rd district and Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania’s 4th district, are from the GOP. Even more worrying for the GOP, including Jenkins and Hart only 14 of the 78 women in the House at the beginning of this Congress are Republicans. The election of President Hillary Clinton could place women in more of a spotlight on running for office, and if the Republican Party is unable to recruit or nominate candidates they may be at a disadvantage in future elections. This has already come to pass in areas where Republicans are thought to be strong such as rural New York. While the election of Tracey Brooks in the Albany area 21st district was the result of retaining a safe Democratic district, Samara Barend’s win in the 29th district and Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2006 gain in the 20th district show an increasing affinity for Democrats and particularly Democratic women in the region over the past few years. Time will tell if that is a larger trend or if it is merely part of the recent Democratic wave elections. However, with 78 Representatives and 20 Senators, the total number of total women in Congress is tantalizingly close to reaching triple digits. That milestone could be resting in the back of the minds of voters going into the next election, and if it is, it should be on the minds of state parties and candidate recruiters as well. Now that the ultimate glass ceiling has been shattered, others might start looking more fragile.
[1] In OTL, that distinction would of course be held by Hillary Clinton herself.
[2] While this is a baseless rumor ITTL, it's not so farfetched. In his OTL memoir Promise Me, Dad Biden says he would have rejected the offer of Secretary of State if Obama had offered it instead of the vice presidency because Biden didn't want to spend so much time traveling and away from his family.
[3] When I had originally set this up it was with the intent of having a drawn out deadlock over control of the legislature, but unfortunately Montana's rules aren't that exciting.
[4] There's a good article about the Montana budget deal here: https://helenair.com/news/local/bud...cle_e6737376-0454-5b0f-8386-2018e1bf1304.html
[5] In OTL, Sales defeated a challenge from Himmelberger for house GOP leader as Bergren was elected Speaker to replace Sales. Here, the different party situation leads to a more conciliatory tone on the GOP side and Himmelberger winning out over Sales.
As opposed to the three we have in OTL 2020: Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Tim Scott.
And the overall Senate map as of the first meeting of the 111th Congress on January 6, 2009.
Alabama
Richard Shelby (R)
Jeff Sessions (R)
Alaska
Tony Knowles (D)
Fran Ulmer (D)
Arizona
John McCain (R)
Jon Kyl (R)
Arkansas
Blanche Lincoln (D)
Mark Pryor (D)
California
Barbara Boxer (D)
Dianne Feinstein (D)
Colorado
Ken Salazar (D)
Mark Udall (D)
Connecticut
Chriss Dodd (D)
Joe Lieberman (I)
Delaware
Tom Carper (D)
Joe Biden (D)
Florida
Mel Martinez (R)
Bill Nelson (D)
Georgia
Johnny Isakson (R)
Saxbee Chambliss (R)
Hawaii
Daniel Inouye (D)
Daniel Akaka (D)
Idaho
Mike Crapo (R)
Jim Risch (R)
Illinois
Barack Obama (D)
Dick Durbin (D)
Indiana
Evan Bayh (D)
Bart Peterson (D)
Iowa
Chuck Grassley (R)
Christie Vilsack (D)
Kansas
Sam Brownback (R)
Pat Roberts (R)
Kentucky
Jim Bunning (R)
Mitch McConnell (R)
Louisiana
David Vitter (R)
Mary Landrieu (D)
Maine
Olympia Snowe (R)
Susan Collins (R)
Maryland
Barbara Mikulski (D)
Ben Cardin (D)
Massachusetts
John Kerry (D)
Ted Kennedy (D)
Michigan
Debbie Stabenow (D)
Carl Levin (D)
Minnesota
Amy Klobuchar (D)
Norm Coleman (R)
Mississippi
Thad Cochran (R)
Roger Wicker (R)
Missouri
Kit Bond (R)
Robin Carnahan (D)
Montana
Jon Tester (D)
Max Baucus (D)
Nebraska
Ben Nelson (D)
Scott Kleeb (D)
Nevada
Harry Reid (D)
John Ensign (R)
New Hampshire
Judd Gregg (R)
Jeanne Shaheen (D)
New Jersey
Bob Menendez (D)
Barbara Buono (D)
New Mexico
Jeff Bingman (D)
Bill Richardson (D)
New York
Chuck Schumer (D)
Hillary Clinton (D)
North Carolina
Richard Burr (R)
Jim Neal (D)
North Dakota
Byron Dorgan (D)
Kent Conrad (D)
Ohio
George Voinovich (R)
Sherrod Brown (D)
Oklahoma
Tom Coburn (R)
Jim Inhofe (R)
Oregon
Ron Wyden (D)
Kate Brown (D)
Pennsylvania
Arlen Specter (R)
Bob Casey Jr. (D)
Rhode Island
Lincoln Chafee (I)
Jack Reed (D)
South Carolina
Jim DeMint (R)
Lindsey Graham (R)
South Dakota
Tom Daschle (D)
Tim Johnson (D)
Tennessee
Harold Ford Jr. (D)
Lamar Alexander (R)
Texas
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)
John Cornyn (R)
Utah
Robert Bennett (R)
Orrin Hatch (R)
Vermont
Patrick Leahy (D)
Bernie Sanders (I)
Virginia
George Allen (R)
Mark Warner (D)
Washington
Patty Murray (D)
Maria Cantwell (D)
West Virginia
Robert Byrd (D)
Jay Rockefeller (D)
Wisconsin
Russ Feingold (D)
Herb Kohl (D)
Wyoming
Cynthia Lummis (R)
Mike Enzi (R)
Richard Shelby (R)
Jeff Sessions (R)
Alaska
Tony Knowles (D)
Fran Ulmer (D)
Arizona
John McCain (R)
Jon Kyl (R)
Arkansas
Blanche Lincoln (D)
Mark Pryor (D)
California
Barbara Boxer (D)
Dianne Feinstein (D)
Colorado
Ken Salazar (D)
Mark Udall (D)
Connecticut
Chriss Dodd (D)
Joe Lieberman (I)
Delaware
Tom Carper (D)
Joe Biden (D)
Florida
Mel Martinez (R)
Bill Nelson (D)
Georgia
Johnny Isakson (R)
Saxbee Chambliss (R)
Hawaii
Daniel Inouye (D)
Daniel Akaka (D)
Idaho
Mike Crapo (R)
Jim Risch (R)
Illinois
Barack Obama (D)
Dick Durbin (D)
Indiana
Evan Bayh (D)
Bart Peterson (D)
Iowa
Chuck Grassley (R)
Christie Vilsack (D)
Kansas
Sam Brownback (R)
Pat Roberts (R)
Kentucky
Jim Bunning (R)
Mitch McConnell (R)
Louisiana
David Vitter (R)
Mary Landrieu (D)
Maine
Olympia Snowe (R)
Susan Collins (R)
Maryland
Barbara Mikulski (D)
Ben Cardin (D)
Massachusetts
John Kerry (D)
Ted Kennedy (D)
Michigan
Debbie Stabenow (D)
Carl Levin (D)
Minnesota
Amy Klobuchar (D)
Norm Coleman (R)
Mississippi
Thad Cochran (R)
Roger Wicker (R)
Missouri
Kit Bond (R)
Robin Carnahan (D)
Montana
Jon Tester (D)
Max Baucus (D)
Nebraska
Ben Nelson (D)
Scott Kleeb (D)
Nevada
Harry Reid (D)
John Ensign (R)
New Hampshire
Judd Gregg (R)
Jeanne Shaheen (D)
New Jersey
Bob Menendez (D)
Barbara Buono (D)
New Mexico
Jeff Bingman (D)
Bill Richardson (D)
New York
Chuck Schumer (D)
Hillary Clinton (D)
North Carolina
Richard Burr (R)
Jim Neal (D)
North Dakota
Byron Dorgan (D)
Kent Conrad (D)
Ohio
George Voinovich (R)
Sherrod Brown (D)
Oklahoma
Tom Coburn (R)
Jim Inhofe (R)
Oregon
Ron Wyden (D)
Kate Brown (D)
Pennsylvania
Arlen Specter (R)
Bob Casey Jr. (D)
Rhode Island
Lincoln Chafee (I)
Jack Reed (D)
South Carolina
Jim DeMint (R)
Lindsey Graham (R)
South Dakota
Tom Daschle (D)
Tim Johnson (D)
Tennessee
Harold Ford Jr. (D)
Lamar Alexander (R)
Texas
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)
John Cornyn (R)
Utah
Robert Bennett (R)
Orrin Hatch (R)
Vermont
Patrick Leahy (D)
Bernie Sanders (I)
Virginia
George Allen (R)
Mark Warner (D)
Washington
Patty Murray (D)
Maria Cantwell (D)
West Virginia
Robert Byrd (D)
Jay Rockefeller (D)
Wisconsin
Russ Feingold (D)
Herb Kohl (D)
Wyoming
Cynthia Lummis (R)
Mike Enzi (R)
Next update will come in the next couple weeks, I've been managing to keep to a monthly schedule for now.
In the meantime, one more wikibox. Another bit I didn't get a chance to cover in the text.
In the meantime, one more wikibox. Another bit I didn't get a chance to cover in the text.
Last edited:
Deleted member 109224
You mean like New York's?
Would this be a bunch of Republicans caucusing with the Democrats here? It looks like the Senate President is an R.
With Green Board of Supervisors, Mayor Gonzalez Targets Housing In Outlining Agenda
January 8, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - Matt Gonzalez’s first five years in office as mayor of San Francisco have been groundbreaking for the Green Party. The mayor has begun work on the new Transbary Transit Center and expanding BART service in the city, overseen the legalization of same sex marriage in the city and seen that effort lead to same sex marriages being legalized throughout California, and has already made a significant change in the city’s skyline with the construction of the Rincon Hill residential towers. However, they have not been without their challenges. While San Francisco’s status as one of the most liberal cities in the country would lend itself to adopting a Green agenda, Gonzalez has still faced pushback from supervisors throughout his first term in office on some issues. The congestion pricing plan for the city, despite being supported by both Gonzalez and governor Schwarzenegger and undergoing a test in 2005 through bridge tolls, had stalled during the rest of Gonzalez’s first term. It is now making progress again, but the two year delay
With Gonzalez’s election to a second term in 2007 in a rematch with supervisor Gavin Newsom, however, the winds of popular support seemed to be shifting in Gonzalez’s favor. November’s elections confirmed that shift in a whole new way. The new San Francisco county board of supervisors has three new Green friendly members - public safety and anti-gentrification activist Quintin Mecke in district 3, San Francisco Board of Education member Mark Sanchez in district 9, and legislative aide to Chris Daly John Avalos in district 11 - the Greens now have a majority of six of the eleven members of the city’s Supervisory Board. In addition, Ross Mirkarimi opted to not run for reelection in Gonzalez’s old supervisory district 5 to launch a failed Green Party challenge to Daly in the assembly, which ended up putting avowed socialist Gloria La Riva in the board seat. There is no doubt that the Board of Supervisors has moved left by a lot in the new term and should be more friendly to Mayor Gonzalez’s agenda.
In outlining his agenda for the upcoming year, the mayor put a strong focus on addressing San Francisco’s housing policy in the wake of the recession. The city has not been affected as much by the housing crash as others across the nation or even in the Bay Area, but the existing affordability crisis in San Francisco has only been exacerbated by the crash. Foreclosures have topped 600 in the city with little sign of slowing down. Gonzalez again reiterated a call for the repeal of the Ellis Act in a refrain often heard from him this past five years, but as the act is a state law that would be more in the state legislature’s wheelhouse, and any local challenge to the act would likely be mired in years of court wrangling. However, Gonzalez did offer up a list of strong progressive policies that San Francisco could do now that the supervisory board is more friendly to him. Gonzalez proposed the creation of a housing trust funded by municipal bonds and that would help low income rental or first time homebuyer households in making up a financial shortfall. Gonzalez also proposed that the city look into purchasing foreclosed properties and converting them to city owned or subsidized affordable housing. The creation of more multi-unit rental properties or subsidized affordable homes through converting existing properties, Gonzalez said, would help alleviate the crisis in the city faster and without relying on the great expense and long construction time of larger scale development projects. Gonzalez explicitly stated that he wanted to avoid using “urban renewal” methods, citing the decades long debacle that was the Western Addition project that was recently turned over by the San Francisco Residential Development Agency and has been near universally deemed a failure[1]. He also noted that spreading low income and subsidized properties throughout the city would mitigate and even could negate any downward push on surrounding home values[2]. These proposals and others for city subsidies or purchase of existing properties would be discussed in the coming months at a committee he was creating this month that would include district representatives, Fred Blackwell who was recently named executive director of the RDA, and others including members of the African-American, Chinese-American, and other minority communities in the city. Gonzalez said he hopes to place a ballot measure to the city in this year’s elections on issuing the necessary bonds to begin funding a program the committee comes up with.
While a large-scale property redevelopment may be further down the line, Mayor Gonzalez also proposed several ordinance changes that would help alleviate the high housing prices for San Franciscans. Gonzalez said many of these proposals arose in part out of his own experience as a renter in the city. These included reducing or waiving parking requirements for housing in some areas of the city, requiring rental property owners to offer a reasonably reduced rate for renters if they wish to forego a parking space, splitting larger rental units or single family dwellings into more rental units or multi-unit dwellings, and easing restrictions and regulations on homesharing and accessory dwelling units. Gonzalez cited the fact that fewer than half of San Francisco’s households own more than one car and nearly thirty percent do not own a car at all[3] the mayor counts himself as one of those thirty percent - as a reason for reducing the requirement for parking spaces in rental properties and in new residential construction. Better facilitating homesharing and ADUs would also not just increase the housing supply, but naturally make housing more affordable for both the renters of the additional units and the homeowners renting out the new units by providing cheaper housing and also providing homeowners with a potential new source of income to offset the housing costs. Gonzalez said he hopes the board of supervisors will enact some of these measures soon to address some of the more immediate issues of the housing affordability crisis facing San Francisco.
However, there is one gaping hole in many of these housing affordability plans. They do not address the problem of rampant homelessness in San Francisco. By both the measure that San Francisco uses and that the federal government uses, there are currently estimated over 5,800 homeless people in the city[4]. The mayor did offer some radical suggestions to alleviate the issues facing the city’s homeless population. He called for an end to the city’s camping ban, and a more immediate end to the ordinance banning people from sleeping in their cars. While the county government is likely in support of at least the end to a ban on sleeping in one’s car, both these ordinance amendments would require a ballot measure that would be voted on by the public, and public support for either measure, especially for an end to the camping ban, is a whole other matter. Additionally, the status of homeless shelters in the city is not improving. In speaking on the issue of homelessness in the city, Gonzalez recalled a personal anecdote. Gonzalez is known for giving away some of his possessions, and once offered a homeless man the keys to a car so the man could camp in it[5]. In recalling the anecdote, the mayor reiterated that in these times the government needs to lead the way in what means it can, but that people also need to step up and help each other out. “The current economic situation is not going to be fixed overnight,” the mayor said, “and in these times we need to come together and do what we can to help our neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens out. Together, we can and must do better.” Those closing words perhaps put best the overarching sentiment behind Gonzalez’s mayorship and the Green Party is trying to achieve. Now it might be up to the people to respond if they are up to the challenge.
***
Clinton Resigns From Senate After Economic Recovery Bill Passes
January 11, 2009
ALBANY, NY - The clock has been ticking for months, but we shall now refer to Senator Hillary Clinton for perhaps the last time in a current news article. Clinton’s days in the Senate are finally over as she announced that, with just over a week left before she is inaugurated as President of the United States, she is resigning from the United States Senate effective today. Clinton chose to remain in the Senate into the new session in order to continue collaborating on the ongoing economic stimulus package “in the field directly with my colleagues” as she put it in her resignation statement. Throughout the deliberations, many commentators condemned Clinton’s decision as a way to have more control over the direction of the country even before she entered the Oval Office. Some claimed she and Senate Democrats were playing with the fate of the nation in delaying the economic recovery bill to purposefully sink the economy even further and to prevent President Bush from putting his signature on the legislation and allowing a newly inaugurated President Clinton to take all the credit for the recovery herself.
However, it looks like those fears have not been realized as the House and Senate were able to pass the Omnibus Economic Recovery Act this week, and the bill will go to President Bush on Monday. While there were originally hopes that an economic bill could be passed easily thanks to the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and were boosted by the increased Democratic control of both chambers after the November elections, even a strong Democratic majority had difficulty corralling the votes necessary among the party to pass a comprehensive bill. The 60 votes needed for a supermajority in the Senate were fleeting. Senator Ted Kennedy was absent for much of the lame duck session due to a seizure he suffered in September. The transition from Daschle to Nevada Senator Harry Reid as senate majority leader led to some Democratic Senators testing the elevated whip on his newfound position which caused bumps in the negotiations on the bill. Even when the herd of cats that is the Democratic Party could be corralled, both moderates and leftists dragged their feet with debate and voted no on some amendments that stalled the passage of the bill. The two independents caucusing with Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, often split from the majority of the Democratic Party on minor details of the recovery bill.
The main element of the Omnibus Economic Recovery Act is an over $900 billion stimulus package that will attempt to kickstart the economy again through government projects and provide some economic relief for every American during the recession. The act includes $150 billion for a $500 per person or $1,000 per couple immediate tax credit for everyone earning under $80,000 a year or $160,000 for couples. More targeted tax credits included in the bill are a homebuyer credit for $7,000 for any home purchased in 2009 and $4 billion for an up to $2,000 credit for anyone receiving unemployment compensation in 2009. For companies, the OERA set up provisions for companies to use losses incurred during a nine month period between October 2008 and June 2009 to offset any profits made over the past five years in addition to the existing two year provision to be eligible for tax refunds. The major portion of the act aside from the immediate tax credit, however, came in a package of government spending authorizations including $100 billion for Medicaid, $130 billion for infrastructure spending on federal, state, and local projects of which $30 billion is dedicated to rail and other mass transit projects, $20 billion in spending on federal housing assistance, and $100 billion for education spending[6].
Now, as the OERA is expected to become law and Clinton is resigning from the Senate, the question turns to who will replace her. There will likely be four quick replacements in the Senate in the coming months as Clinton and Daschle take their posts and Ken Salazar and Evan Bayh are confirmed for their Cabinet positions. This almost certainly means that Democrats will lose their sixty seat supermajority in the Senate, though it’s questionable if it did them much good in the first place with the conflict within the party we have seen in the past weeks. However, Clinton’s replacement is certainly the most interesting and important of these Senate replacements and has deservedly garnered the most national attention. New York may be a solid Democratic state at the presidential level now, but it has been much more amenable to Republicans at the state level. Democrats have not held the governorship since 1994, and we must remember that not even a decade ago the great Al D’Amato was representing the GOP in the Senate. A special election in New York could certainly be winnable by a strong Republican incumbent, and Bill Weld has no shortage of candidates to choose from. There are current and recent members of Congress such as Randy Kuhl, Sue Kelly, and Peter King. There are veterans of the Pataki administration like former Housing Commissioner Joseph Holland, Assistant Attorney General Ann Marie Buerkle, former lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey, or Secretary of State Randy Daniels who if picked would become New York’s first black Senator. Even Pataki himself may be offered the position. New York City mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg have been talked up for the appointment. Giuliani may be considered damaged goods due to his failed presidential campaign, but Bloomberg has recently been seen talking with Raymond Harding so there is reason to believe the mayor is looking at running for a higher office once his mayoral term is up. Two new additions to the speculative roster have gained credibility in recent weeks, both from Monroe County as a potential appeal by governor Weld to the western edge of the state as he turns his mind toward reelection: Monroe County executive Maggie Brooks, a conservative mainstay of Monroe County politics, and former state GOP committee chair Stephen Minarik, who was one of the first establishment figures to support Weld’s run for governor in 2006[7]. Needless to say, as the list of potential appointees grows, Weld’s decision is being watched closely as the best hope for the Republican Party to make a significant play for what some see as a Democrat stronghold.
***
California Budget Crisis Enters New Urgency As State Furloughs Loom
January 16, 2009
SACRAMENTO, CA - The state of California is officially in a budget crisis. Concern over the state’s budget grew last October when as a result of the recession state tax revenues were significantly lower than expected. In November, governor Schwarzenegger made several recommendations to state departments and the legislature on how to solve the budget deficit, including furloughs and eliminating holidays for some state employees, changing overtime rules to remove leave time from hours worked and changing working holiday pay to holiday credit instead of time and a half pay as an emergency cost saving measure, eliminating redundancies in certain departments to eliminate waste. However, lawsuits from state employers unions have held up the implementation of the governor’s recommendations. With legislators still unable to agree on a budget for the next two years, the state is now looking at a prospective shortfall of $42 billion as the legislative deadlock continues.
While Democrats hold a majority in both chambers of the California legislature, budget bills require a two thirds majority to pass. The two third majority was already a substantial roadblock to Democrats passing a budget in recent months due to Republican obstruction in both chambers. The November elections only increased the difficulty with Democrats losing two seats to the Green Party. In the assembly, despite gaining three seats, Democrats lost one of the Greens and are still four seats short of the 54 needed for a two thirds majority. In the senate, Democrats are now five seats short after losing two seats to the Greens. This has forced Democrats to negotiate both to their right and their left, and has made a consensus between members of all three parties regarding where budget cuts and be made or extra revenue found nearly impossible. Angela Davis, the former Black Panther who is now the sole Green member of the assembly, has denounced any cuts to welfare programs or social services, despite Republicans and even Democrats in state leadership agreeing that some cuts to services need to be made in order to make up the drastic budget shortfall. Meanwhile, Republicans have blamed the budget deficit on the implementation of the 2003 California Health Insurance Act and some have called for its repeal, despite financial reports from the state showing the combined costs and savings of its implementation on the overall budget amounted to a wash[8].
Schwarzenegger has ramped up calls for the state legislature to get a budget passed quickly in recent weeks, as the governor’s directive of furloughs for state employees looms more and more. Labor groups and employee unions have filed lawsuits in an attempt to stop or delay the furloughs with the arguments that the governor is overstepping his authority in issuing payroll cuts on state employees, but it is looking like they will be shot down in the courts. The governor does likely have the authority to issue furloughs and payroll cuts during an emergency, and even State Controller John Chiang, who manages the state’s payroll and has been friendly with the state employee unions throughout the debacle, said yesterday that California could face a cash flow shortage that would limit its ability to pay employees[9]. The furloughs as currently directed would require state employees to take off two days every month, and depending on how and when a court ruling is made could be in effect by the end of January if no budget is passed. The furloughs would affect nearly all state departments from DMV clerks to CalTrans and emergency vehicle maintenance workers to nurses and teachers. California Highway Patrol would be exempt as their union contract specifically prohibits them from being subject to furloughs.
State workers being hit by furloughs would be difficult for many at any time, but especially now when the country is still largely in the midst of a now global recession. Even worse, Controller Chiang warned, if the budget crisis continues and no budget is passed, it could hit everyone in the state during tax season as tax refunds and other state payments may have to be cut or completely suspended if legislative deadlock continues over the budget deficit and cash shortfalls are not solved. However, at a $42 billion deficit, that is a lot of ground for the state to make up in such a short amount of time, especially when so many in the legislature are balking at either cutting spending or increasing taxes to close the gap. The Democrats seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one, but it is also questionable how long governor Schwarzenegger can stay above the fray. With Schwarzenegger’s directive on the horizon, he may have to join in the bickering. If he does so and the state’s budgetary problems continue, the governor would not just risk the voters placing blame on him rather than the legislature, but he might also risk retribution from his own party. Schwarzenegger has already called for the legislature to approve a sales tax raise to help cover the shortfall earning him a rebuke from a few of the more fiscally conservative members of the California GOP. However, it might just be what is necessary to break the stalemate and get the state back on track.
[1] You can read about the Western Addition and Fillmore Street urban renewal project here: https://hoodline.com/2016/01/how-urban-renewal-destroyed-the-fillmore-in-order-to-save-it
[2] Source: https://furmancenter.org/files/media/Dont_Put_It_Here.pdf
[3] Source: https://www.spur.org/publications/s...housing-costs-rethinking-parking-requirements
[4] Source: https://abc7news.com/homeless-homelessness-bay-area-number-of-people/5260657/#:~:text=In 2019, San Francisco reported,highest in the Bay Area.
[5] Per this article on Gonzalez, it’s a true anecdote: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Gonzalez-Newsom-What-makes-them-run-After-2546878.php
[6] Most of these are modified sections included in the discussion around the OTL American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
[7] If this seems like a lot of candidate speculation for a Senate appointment, check out how long the potential list was for the appointee to replace Clinton in OTL was.
[8] Since the Proposition 72 fiscal impact statement concluded that "in summary, [there are] unknown net savings or costs to state and local governments," I went with broadly equal savings and costs, at least in the implementation phase for the state government.
[9] The furloughs and payroll shortage did impact California during the early stages of the state's late 2000s budget crisis. Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jan-30-me-budget-workers30-story.html
January 8, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - Matt Gonzalez’s first five years in office as mayor of San Francisco have been groundbreaking for the Green Party. The mayor has begun work on the new Transbary Transit Center and expanding BART service in the city, overseen the legalization of same sex marriage in the city and seen that effort lead to same sex marriages being legalized throughout California, and has already made a significant change in the city’s skyline with the construction of the Rincon Hill residential towers. However, they have not been without their challenges. While San Francisco’s status as one of the most liberal cities in the country would lend itself to adopting a Green agenda, Gonzalez has still faced pushback from supervisors throughout his first term in office on some issues. The congestion pricing plan for the city, despite being supported by both Gonzalez and governor Schwarzenegger and undergoing a test in 2005 through bridge tolls, had stalled during the rest of Gonzalez’s first term. It is now making progress again, but the two year delay
With Gonzalez’s election to a second term in 2007 in a rematch with supervisor Gavin Newsom, however, the winds of popular support seemed to be shifting in Gonzalez’s favor. November’s elections confirmed that shift in a whole new way. The new San Francisco county board of supervisors has three new Green friendly members - public safety and anti-gentrification activist Quintin Mecke in district 3, San Francisco Board of Education member Mark Sanchez in district 9, and legislative aide to Chris Daly John Avalos in district 11 - the Greens now have a majority of six of the eleven members of the city’s Supervisory Board. In addition, Ross Mirkarimi opted to not run for reelection in Gonzalez’s old supervisory district 5 to launch a failed Green Party challenge to Daly in the assembly, which ended up putting avowed socialist Gloria La Riva in the board seat. There is no doubt that the Board of Supervisors has moved left by a lot in the new term and should be more friendly to Mayor Gonzalez’s agenda.
In outlining his agenda for the upcoming year, the mayor put a strong focus on addressing San Francisco’s housing policy in the wake of the recession. The city has not been affected as much by the housing crash as others across the nation or even in the Bay Area, but the existing affordability crisis in San Francisco has only been exacerbated by the crash. Foreclosures have topped 600 in the city with little sign of slowing down. Gonzalez again reiterated a call for the repeal of the Ellis Act in a refrain often heard from him this past five years, but as the act is a state law that would be more in the state legislature’s wheelhouse, and any local challenge to the act would likely be mired in years of court wrangling. However, Gonzalez did offer up a list of strong progressive policies that San Francisco could do now that the supervisory board is more friendly to him. Gonzalez proposed the creation of a housing trust funded by municipal bonds and that would help low income rental or first time homebuyer households in making up a financial shortfall. Gonzalez also proposed that the city look into purchasing foreclosed properties and converting them to city owned or subsidized affordable housing. The creation of more multi-unit rental properties or subsidized affordable homes through converting existing properties, Gonzalez said, would help alleviate the crisis in the city faster and without relying on the great expense and long construction time of larger scale development projects. Gonzalez explicitly stated that he wanted to avoid using “urban renewal” methods, citing the decades long debacle that was the Western Addition project that was recently turned over by the San Francisco Residential Development Agency and has been near universally deemed a failure[1]. He also noted that spreading low income and subsidized properties throughout the city would mitigate and even could negate any downward push on surrounding home values[2]. These proposals and others for city subsidies or purchase of existing properties would be discussed in the coming months at a committee he was creating this month that would include district representatives, Fred Blackwell who was recently named executive director of the RDA, and others including members of the African-American, Chinese-American, and other minority communities in the city. Gonzalez said he hopes to place a ballot measure to the city in this year’s elections on issuing the necessary bonds to begin funding a program the committee comes up with.
While a large-scale property redevelopment may be further down the line, Mayor Gonzalez also proposed several ordinance changes that would help alleviate the high housing prices for San Franciscans. Gonzalez said many of these proposals arose in part out of his own experience as a renter in the city. These included reducing or waiving parking requirements for housing in some areas of the city, requiring rental property owners to offer a reasonably reduced rate for renters if they wish to forego a parking space, splitting larger rental units or single family dwellings into more rental units or multi-unit dwellings, and easing restrictions and regulations on homesharing and accessory dwelling units. Gonzalez cited the fact that fewer than half of San Francisco’s households own more than one car and nearly thirty percent do not own a car at all[3] the mayor counts himself as one of those thirty percent - as a reason for reducing the requirement for parking spaces in rental properties and in new residential construction. Better facilitating homesharing and ADUs would also not just increase the housing supply, but naturally make housing more affordable for both the renters of the additional units and the homeowners renting out the new units by providing cheaper housing and also providing homeowners with a potential new source of income to offset the housing costs. Gonzalez said he hopes the board of supervisors will enact some of these measures soon to address some of the more immediate issues of the housing affordability crisis facing San Francisco.
However, there is one gaping hole in many of these housing affordability plans. They do not address the problem of rampant homelessness in San Francisco. By both the measure that San Francisco uses and that the federal government uses, there are currently estimated over 5,800 homeless people in the city[4]. The mayor did offer some radical suggestions to alleviate the issues facing the city’s homeless population. He called for an end to the city’s camping ban, and a more immediate end to the ordinance banning people from sleeping in their cars. While the county government is likely in support of at least the end to a ban on sleeping in one’s car, both these ordinance amendments would require a ballot measure that would be voted on by the public, and public support for either measure, especially for an end to the camping ban, is a whole other matter. Additionally, the status of homeless shelters in the city is not improving. In speaking on the issue of homelessness in the city, Gonzalez recalled a personal anecdote. Gonzalez is known for giving away some of his possessions, and once offered a homeless man the keys to a car so the man could camp in it[5]. In recalling the anecdote, the mayor reiterated that in these times the government needs to lead the way in what means it can, but that people also need to step up and help each other out. “The current economic situation is not going to be fixed overnight,” the mayor said, “and in these times we need to come together and do what we can to help our neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens out. Together, we can and must do better.” Those closing words perhaps put best the overarching sentiment behind Gonzalez’s mayorship and the Green Party is trying to achieve. Now it might be up to the people to respond if they are up to the challenge.
***
Clinton Resigns From Senate After Economic Recovery Bill Passes
January 11, 2009
ALBANY, NY - The clock has been ticking for months, but we shall now refer to Senator Hillary Clinton for perhaps the last time in a current news article. Clinton’s days in the Senate are finally over as she announced that, with just over a week left before she is inaugurated as President of the United States, she is resigning from the United States Senate effective today. Clinton chose to remain in the Senate into the new session in order to continue collaborating on the ongoing economic stimulus package “in the field directly with my colleagues” as she put it in her resignation statement. Throughout the deliberations, many commentators condemned Clinton’s decision as a way to have more control over the direction of the country even before she entered the Oval Office. Some claimed she and Senate Democrats were playing with the fate of the nation in delaying the economic recovery bill to purposefully sink the economy even further and to prevent President Bush from putting his signature on the legislation and allowing a newly inaugurated President Clinton to take all the credit for the recovery herself.
However, it looks like those fears have not been realized as the House and Senate were able to pass the Omnibus Economic Recovery Act this week, and the bill will go to President Bush on Monday. While there were originally hopes that an economic bill could be passed easily thanks to the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and were boosted by the increased Democratic control of both chambers after the November elections, even a strong Democratic majority had difficulty corralling the votes necessary among the party to pass a comprehensive bill. The 60 votes needed for a supermajority in the Senate were fleeting. Senator Ted Kennedy was absent for much of the lame duck session due to a seizure he suffered in September. The transition from Daschle to Nevada Senator Harry Reid as senate majority leader led to some Democratic Senators testing the elevated whip on his newfound position which caused bumps in the negotiations on the bill. Even when the herd of cats that is the Democratic Party could be corralled, both moderates and leftists dragged their feet with debate and voted no on some amendments that stalled the passage of the bill. The two independents caucusing with Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, often split from the majority of the Democratic Party on minor details of the recovery bill.
The main element of the Omnibus Economic Recovery Act is an over $900 billion stimulus package that will attempt to kickstart the economy again through government projects and provide some economic relief for every American during the recession. The act includes $150 billion for a $500 per person or $1,000 per couple immediate tax credit for everyone earning under $80,000 a year or $160,000 for couples. More targeted tax credits included in the bill are a homebuyer credit for $7,000 for any home purchased in 2009 and $4 billion for an up to $2,000 credit for anyone receiving unemployment compensation in 2009. For companies, the OERA set up provisions for companies to use losses incurred during a nine month period between October 2008 and June 2009 to offset any profits made over the past five years in addition to the existing two year provision to be eligible for tax refunds. The major portion of the act aside from the immediate tax credit, however, came in a package of government spending authorizations including $100 billion for Medicaid, $130 billion for infrastructure spending on federal, state, and local projects of which $30 billion is dedicated to rail and other mass transit projects, $20 billion in spending on federal housing assistance, and $100 billion for education spending[6].
Now, as the OERA is expected to become law and Clinton is resigning from the Senate, the question turns to who will replace her. There will likely be four quick replacements in the Senate in the coming months as Clinton and Daschle take their posts and Ken Salazar and Evan Bayh are confirmed for their Cabinet positions. This almost certainly means that Democrats will lose their sixty seat supermajority in the Senate, though it’s questionable if it did them much good in the first place with the conflict within the party we have seen in the past weeks. However, Clinton’s replacement is certainly the most interesting and important of these Senate replacements and has deservedly garnered the most national attention. New York may be a solid Democratic state at the presidential level now, but it has been much more amenable to Republicans at the state level. Democrats have not held the governorship since 1994, and we must remember that not even a decade ago the great Al D’Amato was representing the GOP in the Senate. A special election in New York could certainly be winnable by a strong Republican incumbent, and Bill Weld has no shortage of candidates to choose from. There are current and recent members of Congress such as Randy Kuhl, Sue Kelly, and Peter King. There are veterans of the Pataki administration like former Housing Commissioner Joseph Holland, Assistant Attorney General Ann Marie Buerkle, former lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey, or Secretary of State Randy Daniels who if picked would become New York’s first black Senator. Even Pataki himself may be offered the position. New York City mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg have been talked up for the appointment. Giuliani may be considered damaged goods due to his failed presidential campaign, but Bloomberg has recently been seen talking with Raymond Harding so there is reason to believe the mayor is looking at running for a higher office once his mayoral term is up. Two new additions to the speculative roster have gained credibility in recent weeks, both from Monroe County as a potential appeal by governor Weld to the western edge of the state as he turns his mind toward reelection: Monroe County executive Maggie Brooks, a conservative mainstay of Monroe County politics, and former state GOP committee chair Stephen Minarik, who was one of the first establishment figures to support Weld’s run for governor in 2006[7]. Needless to say, as the list of potential appointees grows, Weld’s decision is being watched closely as the best hope for the Republican Party to make a significant play for what some see as a Democrat stronghold.
***
California Budget Crisis Enters New Urgency As State Furloughs Loom
January 16, 2009
SACRAMENTO, CA - The state of California is officially in a budget crisis. Concern over the state’s budget grew last October when as a result of the recession state tax revenues were significantly lower than expected. In November, governor Schwarzenegger made several recommendations to state departments and the legislature on how to solve the budget deficit, including furloughs and eliminating holidays for some state employees, changing overtime rules to remove leave time from hours worked and changing working holiday pay to holiday credit instead of time and a half pay as an emergency cost saving measure, eliminating redundancies in certain departments to eliminate waste. However, lawsuits from state employers unions have held up the implementation of the governor’s recommendations. With legislators still unable to agree on a budget for the next two years, the state is now looking at a prospective shortfall of $42 billion as the legislative deadlock continues.
While Democrats hold a majority in both chambers of the California legislature, budget bills require a two thirds majority to pass. The two third majority was already a substantial roadblock to Democrats passing a budget in recent months due to Republican obstruction in both chambers. The November elections only increased the difficulty with Democrats losing two seats to the Green Party. In the assembly, despite gaining three seats, Democrats lost one of the Greens and are still four seats short of the 54 needed for a two thirds majority. In the senate, Democrats are now five seats short after losing two seats to the Greens. This has forced Democrats to negotiate both to their right and their left, and has made a consensus between members of all three parties regarding where budget cuts and be made or extra revenue found nearly impossible. Angela Davis, the former Black Panther who is now the sole Green member of the assembly, has denounced any cuts to welfare programs or social services, despite Republicans and even Democrats in state leadership agreeing that some cuts to services need to be made in order to make up the drastic budget shortfall. Meanwhile, Republicans have blamed the budget deficit on the implementation of the 2003 California Health Insurance Act and some have called for its repeal, despite financial reports from the state showing the combined costs and savings of its implementation on the overall budget amounted to a wash[8].
Schwarzenegger has ramped up calls for the state legislature to get a budget passed quickly in recent weeks, as the governor’s directive of furloughs for state employees looms more and more. Labor groups and employee unions have filed lawsuits in an attempt to stop or delay the furloughs with the arguments that the governor is overstepping his authority in issuing payroll cuts on state employees, but it is looking like they will be shot down in the courts. The governor does likely have the authority to issue furloughs and payroll cuts during an emergency, and even State Controller John Chiang, who manages the state’s payroll and has been friendly with the state employee unions throughout the debacle, said yesterday that California could face a cash flow shortage that would limit its ability to pay employees[9]. The furloughs as currently directed would require state employees to take off two days every month, and depending on how and when a court ruling is made could be in effect by the end of January if no budget is passed. The furloughs would affect nearly all state departments from DMV clerks to CalTrans and emergency vehicle maintenance workers to nurses and teachers. California Highway Patrol would be exempt as their union contract specifically prohibits them from being subject to furloughs.
State workers being hit by furloughs would be difficult for many at any time, but especially now when the country is still largely in the midst of a now global recession. Even worse, Controller Chiang warned, if the budget crisis continues and no budget is passed, it could hit everyone in the state during tax season as tax refunds and other state payments may have to be cut or completely suspended if legislative deadlock continues over the budget deficit and cash shortfalls are not solved. However, at a $42 billion deficit, that is a lot of ground for the state to make up in such a short amount of time, especially when so many in the legislature are balking at either cutting spending or increasing taxes to close the gap. The Democrats seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one, but it is also questionable how long governor Schwarzenegger can stay above the fray. With Schwarzenegger’s directive on the horizon, he may have to join in the bickering. If he does so and the state’s budgetary problems continue, the governor would not just risk the voters placing blame on him rather than the legislature, but he might also risk retribution from his own party. Schwarzenegger has already called for the legislature to approve a sales tax raise to help cover the shortfall earning him a rebuke from a few of the more fiscally conservative members of the California GOP. However, it might just be what is necessary to break the stalemate and get the state back on track.
[1] You can read about the Western Addition and Fillmore Street urban renewal project here: https://hoodline.com/2016/01/how-urban-renewal-destroyed-the-fillmore-in-order-to-save-it
[2] Source: https://furmancenter.org/files/media/Dont_Put_It_Here.pdf
[3] Source: https://www.spur.org/publications/s...housing-costs-rethinking-parking-requirements
[4] Source: https://abc7news.com/homeless-homelessness-bay-area-number-of-people/5260657/#:~:text=In 2019, San Francisco reported,highest in the Bay Area.
[5] Per this article on Gonzalez, it’s a true anecdote: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Gonzalez-Newsom-What-makes-them-run-After-2546878.php
[6] Most of these are modified sections included in the discussion around the OTL American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
[7] If this seems like a lot of candidate speculation for a Senate appointment, check out how long the potential list was for the appointee to replace Clinton in OTL was.
[8] Since the Proposition 72 fiscal impact statement concluded that "in summary, [there are] unknown net savings or costs to state and local governments," I went with broadly equal savings and costs, at least in the implementation phase for the state government.
[9] The furloughs and payroll shortage did impact California during the early stages of the state's late 2000s budget crisis. Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jan-30-me-budget-workers30-story.html
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She only switched in 1997 so she could run for governor against Pataki, and has always had pretty conservative views even during the time she was a Democrat. She switched back to Republican between the POD and now, possibly around 2007 or 2008 when it started looking like the Senate seat might open up and a Republican governor would fill it.
Just a heads up to everyone, after this month's update I will be taking a brief hiatus (planned this time!) of hopefully just a few months. Part of this is to prioritize some other projects that I want to focus on. But the main reason is that I have finally caught up to the buffer I had laid out on the my outline for the timeline, and the TL has now gotten big enough that outlining just a couple updates in advance and planning as I go is not really working as well as I'd like anymore. I've definitely left some plot threads hanging for a while now. So during the hiatus I am still going to be working on the timeline, but I want to have a good outline for at least through the 2010 elections and hopefully have a good buffer of completed updates by the time I start updating again. It also dawned on me that the next update is actually a nice sort of chapter end in the TL so it's probably the best opportunity for me to take time from updating to do some proper planning.
President Clinton Faces Hurdles From Republicans, Democrats At Outset
January 24, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - We are not even a week into the Hillary Clinton presidency, and Clinton is already facing stiff hurdles to her governing plans. Not the least of which has been that due to her Cabinet appointments, the Democrats have lost a supermajority in the Senate not even a month into the 111th Congress. President Clinton and Vice President Daschle’s resignations from the Senate first opened up the holes in the Democratic defense of their vital 60 votes in the Senate as they were each replaced by hand-picked appointments by Republican governors. New York governor Bill Weld selected New York Assistant Attorney General Ann Marie Buerkle as Clinton’s replacement, while South Dakota governor Mike Rounds appointed state senate leader Dave Knudson to replace Vice President Daschle. Both Buerkle and Knudson took office on January 21, 2009 and dropped the number of Democrats in the Senate down to 59 including the two independents caucusing with the Democrats. It was a good thing the Omnibus Economic Recovery Act was passed when it was as the 111th Congress’s H.R.1 and S.1 because if the bill had stayed in debate for another few weeks, it is a question if it would have been passed as bills since then have run into difficulties in the Senate already.
Some might say the appointments of the replacements to Attorney General Ken Salazar and Commerce Secretary Evan Bayh were a surprise boon to Clinton’s administration in comparison to the choices to replace her and her vice president. The arguments for this are mainly that both appointments were Democrats and did not end up costing the party more Senate seats. The devil, however, is in the details. The choice of Denver schools superintendent Michael Bennet to replace Salazar was not bad but not a surprising pick either. Colorado’s governor right now is Democrat Bill Ritter, so choosing a Democrat was really a foregone conclusion. The real surprise came with the Indiana seat. Governor Mitch Daniels, possibly in a surface show of bipartisanship due to being the only Republican governor of Indiana since 1989, picked a Democrat to replace Bayh and keep the seat in the same party. However, the Democrat he selected, Representative Baron Hill, is a smart choice by the Republican governor. Hill had been a fairly conservative Blue Dog in his nearly 20 years in the House, so he is likely to be friendly to some Republican attempts to block bills in the Senate. Additionally, Hill’s 9th congressional district in the state’s southern counties is trending Republican. Hill even lost the seat in the 2004 elections and only regained it back in the 2006 Democratic wave by a narrow 10,000 vote margin. A special election for the seat would be a highly targeted Republican pickup, especially for Mike Sodrel, who has faced off with Hill for the 9th district in every election since 2002 and served as Representative in between Hill’s two stints.
The difficulty faced by the Clinton presidency even just a week in can be seen in the first bills that have fared in Congress now that Hillary Clinton is president. While the OERA was sent to Bush’s desk quickly by the Democratic House and Senate due to the urgency of the economic situation in the country, the next few bills on Congress’s agenda have not been so quick to reach Clinton’s desk. H.R. 2, the reauthorization bill for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, passed the House easily with several Republicans joining Democrats and only a few Democrats, mainly Southern conservatives such as Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith in Alabama and Travis Childers and Gene Taylor in Mississippi, voting against. In the Senate, however, getting cloture on the bill was difficult. The first cloture vote failed with 59 votes out of the 60 necessary. While Kay Bailey Hutchison crossed party lines to vote in favor, Baron Hill and Max Baucus voted nay and Ted Kennedy was absent for the initial cloture vote for medical reasons. The bill was voted on again in the Senate yesterday and passed with a bare 61 votes as Senator Kennedy attended and Senator Baucus switched his vote. The bill is now expected to pass the House and reach President Clinton’s desk next week.
Despite the headaches in the Senate, there have been some successes President Clinton can attest to this early on. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was H.R. 3 on the 111th Congress’s docket. The legislation amends the Title VII protections in the 1964 Civil Rights Act so that the 180 day statute of limitations on filing an equal pay discrimination suit against an employer resets with each paycheck affected by the discriminatory action. A similar bill failed last year, but since the 2008 elections the new Congress has been much more favorable to the bill. It easily passed the House with a nearly party line vote. However, in the Senate, the bill faced opposition from once again not just Republicans but from some of the more conservative Democrats. However, new Senate Leader Harry Reid was able to whip the Senate Democrats into line this time and get a full party backing of the bill. The Lilly Ledbetter Act passed with 65 votes, as 5 Republicans and independent Lincoln Chafee joined the Democrats. The Republicans were Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. The yes votes from Snowe, Collins, Hutchison, and Lummis made New York’s Buerkle the only woman in the Senate to vote against the Ledbetter Act. The act was signed by Clinton in a televise ceremony today in which Clinton, flanked by Lilly Ledbetter and the bill’s Senate sponsor Barbara Mikulski, gave a short address on the importance of the first woman president signing the bill and the bill’s importance for women’s rights in the workplace.
***
South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson Emerges as Next RNC Chair in Down and Dirty Election
January 30, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - After the drubbing the Republican Party took in the 2008 elections, the sharks began to circle around Republican National Committee chair Mike Duncan. Duncan, who has been RNC chair since 2007, ran again, but he faced heavy criticism from big shot Republican names. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the Republican Party outmatched and lamented the rise of the “modern left.”[3] Gingrich did not criticize Pataki, who he said performed much better than the circumstances would have foreseen, but still said the lack of resonance from Republicans “has led to another Clinton in the White House and a further move away from the values that our country is built on.” While Gingrich avoided direct criticism of Duncan, the former Speaker said that if the Republican Party is to succeed, it needs to look at what went wrong in the election and fix what went wrong.
The criticism from Gingrich and others quickly led to a number of Republicans throwing their names into the ring to contest Duncan’s campaign for the chairmanship. Former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele was the first to jump in in late November and quickly became the front-runner in the contest as Duncan’s star continued to slip..He and former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell entered the race seeking to become the first African-American chairs of a major party committee. Texas Republican Party chair Tina Benkiser was the lone woman in the race, but her profile was boosted as a chairmanship for her could be seen as a direct response to the election of Clinton as the first female president. Other contenders like Benkiser also came from the state parties, who put the fault of 2008 on the national focus of the GOP and say the power needs to be put back in the hands of the state parties. These included South Carolina chair Katon Dawson, Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, and former Tennessee GOP chair Chip Saltsman.
The debate over which candidate had the best path to lead the Republican Party quickly devolved into attacks on the various candidates. In December, Chip Saltsman, who had been endorsed by a number of Tennessee leaders including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, came under fire from the party after he sent committee members a Christmas CD that included a parody song called “Barack the Magic Negro.” Saltsman withdrew his name from the contest shortly after the controversy. In January, another controversy arose regarding another of the Southern candidates in the race, this time against Katon Dawson. Opponents of Dawson’s campaign pointed to an article from September 2008 indicating that Dawson had left a whites only country club where he had been a member for twelve years as an indication that Dawson as chair would perpetuate the modern image of the Republican Party as a white, Southern party. Dawson’s spokesman Rod Godfrey rebuked the criticism, calling the country club membership a “gotcha” and citing that Dawson left after attempting to push the club to drop the policy. Additionally, Godfrey and Dawson’s campaign had been pointing to the promotion of black politicians in the South Carolina Republican Party, including Glenn McCall as the state’s first black RNC member, and electing Tim Scott as the first black Republican in South Carolina’s general assembly since Reconstruction[4].
The worry of the Republican Party being seen as an increasingly white Southern party was a constant concern throughout the campaign and ballot process. Four of the candidates - Dawson, Saltsman, Benkiser, and Duncan himself - are from the South. Mississippi governor and former RNC chair Haley Barbour that the GOP’s opponents “want to attack us for being too Southern,” and that in the selection of chair he “[doesn't] think we ought to make it easier for them.”[5] As the balloting commenced, it soon became clear that Duncan would not return to his position, and Duncan dropped out after the third round of balloting as Steele took a lead. Blackwell withdrew on the next ballot and backed Benkiser[6], but Benkiser did not gain enough to be within reach of either Steele or Dawson. After the sixth ballot, Benkiser withdrew. While the Blackwell votes that had gone to her broke for Steele, the majority of her votes broke for Dawson and Dawson won on the eighth round of balloting.
The question of where the Republican Party goes from here is still a very open one. Dawson particularly praised Steele and Blackwell in a statement following his selection, and said he wanted to work with them in an unofficial capacity as he placed an emphasis on expanding the Republican Party’s ability to recruit African-Americans to run for political office if the party is to have any future. Dawson spoke to his efforts to do so in South Carolina during his chairmanship in the state, saying he wanted to bring those efforts to the country as a whole. It is clear that Dawson’s direction of the party will attempt to tap into the African-American vote as a way forward, but with Dawson’s controversial history and being a white Southern face for the Republican Party, it remains to be seen as to whether Katon Dawson is the man who has the real skills and desire to do that.
***
Hailed as ‘Architect of Green Success’, California Party Chair Peter Camejo Passes Away
January 31, 2009
FOLSOM, CA - Political activist and longtime fixture of the California Green Party Peter Camejo died on Wednesday at the age of 69. Camejo was a political activist throughout his life, helped pioneer the financial practice of socially responsible investing, and was a frequent candidate for office and served as chair of the California Green Party from 2007 to his death. Camejo was the Socialist Workers Party nominee for president in 1976, ran for governor of California twice in 2002 and 2003, ran for United States Senate in 2006, and was Ralph Nader’s running mate in 2004 in the states where Nader was the Green nominee for president. Camejo had been fighting a battle with lymphoma for several years and died at his home in Folsom, California.
Peter Camejo was born in Queens, New York to Venezuelan parents and held dual US-Venezuelan citizenship. He spent the first years of his life in Venezuela, but moved back to Long Island at age 7 with his mother after his parents divorced. Camejo often said that seeing the poverty in Venezuela as a child led him to fight for social and economic justice. He attended MIT to pursue a mathematics degree and later transferred to UC Berkeley, but never received his degree. While at Berkeley, Camejo became active in the Free Speech Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War. Camejo’s involvement in the protest activity and in the Socialist Workers Party led governor Ronald Reagan to put him on the list of 10 most dangerous people in California and pushed the Berkeley administration to expel him. Even though he never finished his degree, Camejo took his experience at Berkeley with him in how to organize and lead mass movements. He would use that knowledge when he helped found the Green Party of California and eventually rose to become the party’s chair. Matt Gonzalez, one of the most prominent Green elected officials as mayor of San Francisco and a good friend of Camejo, commented that Camejo was always a proponent of creating an active third party in the United States.
For much of his life, Camejo made most of his living as a financial analyst and consultant. He worked at Merrill Lynch for a time, and according to Gonzalez was one of their star employees and created the first environmentally screened investment fund for a major Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch’s Eco-Logical Trust. However, after running for president for the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 and being arrested for protesting, Merrill Lynch pushed Camejo out despite his success. Camejo continued to work in the financial sector, founding investment firm Progressive Management Asset Inc. where he continued to develop and pioneer a strategy of investing in socially responsible companies and organizations. Camejo later founded the Council for Responsible Public Investments and wrote the book “The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially.”
In the 1990s, Camejo became active in the early years of the Green Party, He ran for office four times between 2002 and 2006, though only received over 5 percent of the vote during his first run for governor of California in 2002. Camejo was committed to helping create a third party in the United States that could compete with the Democrats and Republicans, and while he never achieved elected office at any level, he did leave his mark. In a prepared statement, Ralph Nader said “Peter used his eloquence, sharp wit, and barnstorming bravado to blaze a trail for the Green Party and for 21st century third party politics in the U.S.” His activism took many forms, but Camejo also gained a reputation for fighting for impoverished and marginalized communities. Nader also described Camejo as a “politically courageous champion for the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere.”[7] Camejo also never forgot his Venezuelan heritage and was active in many Latino groups including La Raza Unida and in the broader Chicano Movement. One of those friends, state senator Gil Cedillo, said Camejo “understood the movement and always attempted to integrate his leftist views in the context of the Latino struggle.” In 2002, while a state assemblyman, Cedillo was one of fourteen Latino legislators to refuse to endorse governor Gray Davis over his veto of a bill that would give California drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. Cedillo endorsed Camejo in that election.
Camejo described himself as a “watermelon” - red on the outside, green on the inside - but while frequently associated with socialist movements he rarely used the lofty language that many others who shared his ideology use. In Camejo’s involvement in the Green Party from 2002 on, he frequently mentioned that he took his cues from the successful Latin American leftward movements. “The ones that found success didn’t try to model themselves after a European identity; they didn’t speak of ‘socialism’ or ‘Marxism’. They used clear understandable words and a message built on the living history of their countries and the consciousness of the people they are talking to. They take these universal issues of inequality and justice and place these issues in the culture, the history, and the language of the people they are trying to reach. That is how they convince people and find success.”[8] During the last decade of his life, Camejo ran into tension with other California Green Party leaders like Mike Feinstein over the direction of the state party, but the success of the Gonzalez campaign and others gave credence to Camejo’s message and saw him rise to the chair of the Green Party of California in 2007. From that position, he no longer ran for office himself, but instead championed others, and in 2008 oversaw the election of the Green Party’s first members of the state legislature elected in a general election - state senators Jerry McNerney and Norm Solomon and state assemblywoman Angela Davis. Earlier this month in his last public appearance congratulating the new Green members of the state legislature, Camejo spoke to his message. “When you look at the full historical and political landscape of the United States - the great traditions of our struggles for justice, our symbols, our language - so many in power today in both the Democratic and Republican parties have become disconnected with that reality. Even on the left, many have turned away from the struggle of the farmer or the service worker or the undocumented immigrant and become lost in ivory tower academic rhetoric.”[9] Camejo’s push for a more populist message from the Green Party broadened its appeal and helped lay the path to the party’s recent victories.
In the last months of his life, Camejo finished writing his autobiography, currently titled “North Star,” which will be published by Haymarket Books[10]. Camejo is survived by his wife, Morella Camejo, by his stepchildren Alexandra Baquera and Victor Baquera, and three brothers. The family will hold a private funeral, but a public memorial service will be announced at a later date.
[1] OTL vote on 2009 CHIP Reauthorization: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2009/s31
[2] OTL vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2009/s14
[3] Gingrich’s statements except on president Clinton from here: https://www.nbcchicago.com/local/gingrich_says_gop_is_outmatched/1845162/
[4] Godfrey’s statements on Dawson’s controversy here: https://web.archive.org/web/2009020...msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/24/1687821.aspx
[5] Barbour quote from here: https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/2009-01-04-gopchair_N.htm
[6] Benkiser did not officially run for RNC chair in OTL, but she was part of Blackwell’s campaign in an alliance where Blackwell would be chair while Benkiser would be co-chair. This time, Benkiser launches her own campaign instead but is still friendly with Blackwell on cross-support in the balloting rounds.
[7] Nader’s quotes on Camejo are taken from his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle here: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Peter-Camejo-dies-helped-found-Green-Party-3269521.php
[8] This quote is cobbled together from various parts of Peter Camejo’s autobiography North Star: A Memoir. In his memoir he is specifically talking about the FSLN in Nicaragua, but Camejo says it was a turning point for him and from his experiences and his later approach to politics and activism, it’s a good general description of his approach.
[9] This quote is also partially based on how Camejo recounts how his experience with FSLN rallies affected his thinking. In his memoir it’s directed solely at the left and how the FSLN became successful while other leftist movements in the Americas at the time failed.
[10] Considering how useful his memoir has been as a source, I couldn’t not give it a bit of a shout out.
In OTL Camejo died in September 2008 when the manuscript was largely finished, but he was still working on the penultimate chapter when he died. In the publisher’s note, Haymarket says that Matt Gonzalez brought the manuscript to them following Camejo’s death from his lymphoma. For the timeline, I decided to give Camejo a few more months to live and see the Green Party have its 2008 breakthrough, and to let him finish the manuscript (which ITTL likely has an additional chapter or two on 2008)
January 24, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - We are not even a week into the Hillary Clinton presidency, and Clinton is already facing stiff hurdles to her governing plans. Not the least of which has been that due to her Cabinet appointments, the Democrats have lost a supermajority in the Senate not even a month into the 111th Congress. President Clinton and Vice President Daschle’s resignations from the Senate first opened up the holes in the Democratic defense of their vital 60 votes in the Senate as they were each replaced by hand-picked appointments by Republican governors. New York governor Bill Weld selected New York Assistant Attorney General Ann Marie Buerkle as Clinton’s replacement, while South Dakota governor Mike Rounds appointed state senate leader Dave Knudson to replace Vice President Daschle. Both Buerkle and Knudson took office on January 21, 2009 and dropped the number of Democrats in the Senate down to 59 including the two independents caucusing with the Democrats. It was a good thing the Omnibus Economic Recovery Act was passed when it was as the 111th Congress’s H.R.1 and S.1 because if the bill had stayed in debate for another few weeks, it is a question if it would have been passed as bills since then have run into difficulties in the Senate already.
Some might say the appointments of the replacements to Attorney General Ken Salazar and Commerce Secretary Evan Bayh were a surprise boon to Clinton’s administration in comparison to the choices to replace her and her vice president. The arguments for this are mainly that both appointments were Democrats and did not end up costing the party more Senate seats. The devil, however, is in the details. The choice of Denver schools superintendent Michael Bennet to replace Salazar was not bad but not a surprising pick either. Colorado’s governor right now is Democrat Bill Ritter, so choosing a Democrat was really a foregone conclusion. The real surprise came with the Indiana seat. Governor Mitch Daniels, possibly in a surface show of bipartisanship due to being the only Republican governor of Indiana since 1989, picked a Democrat to replace Bayh and keep the seat in the same party. However, the Democrat he selected, Representative Baron Hill, is a smart choice by the Republican governor. Hill had been a fairly conservative Blue Dog in his nearly 20 years in the House, so he is likely to be friendly to some Republican attempts to block bills in the Senate. Additionally, Hill’s 9th congressional district in the state’s southern counties is trending Republican. Hill even lost the seat in the 2004 elections and only regained it back in the 2006 Democratic wave by a narrow 10,000 vote margin. A special election for the seat would be a highly targeted Republican pickup, especially for Mike Sodrel, who has faced off with Hill for the 9th district in every election since 2002 and served as Representative in between Hill’s two stints.
The difficulty faced by the Clinton presidency even just a week in can be seen in the first bills that have fared in Congress now that Hillary Clinton is president. While the OERA was sent to Bush’s desk quickly by the Democratic House and Senate due to the urgency of the economic situation in the country, the next few bills on Congress’s agenda have not been so quick to reach Clinton’s desk. H.R. 2, the reauthorization bill for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, passed the House easily with several Republicans joining Democrats and only a few Democrats, mainly Southern conservatives such as Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith in Alabama and Travis Childers and Gene Taylor in Mississippi, voting against. In the Senate, however, getting cloture on the bill was difficult. The first cloture vote failed with 59 votes out of the 60 necessary. While Kay Bailey Hutchison crossed party lines to vote in favor, Baron Hill and Max Baucus voted nay and Ted Kennedy was absent for the initial cloture vote for medical reasons. The bill was voted on again in the Senate yesterday and passed with a bare 61 votes as Senator Kennedy attended and Senator Baucus switched his vote. The bill is now expected to pass the House and reach President Clinton’s desk next week.
Despite the headaches in the Senate, there have been some successes President Clinton can attest to this early on. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was H.R. 3 on the 111th Congress’s docket. The legislation amends the Title VII protections in the 1964 Civil Rights Act so that the 180 day statute of limitations on filing an equal pay discrimination suit against an employer resets with each paycheck affected by the discriminatory action. A similar bill failed last year, but since the 2008 elections the new Congress has been much more favorable to the bill. It easily passed the House with a nearly party line vote. However, in the Senate, the bill faced opposition from once again not just Republicans but from some of the more conservative Democrats. However, new Senate Leader Harry Reid was able to whip the Senate Democrats into line this time and get a full party backing of the bill. The Lilly Ledbetter Act passed with 65 votes, as 5 Republicans and independent Lincoln Chafee joined the Democrats. The Republicans were Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. The yes votes from Snowe, Collins, Hutchison, and Lummis made New York’s Buerkle the only woman in the Senate to vote against the Ledbetter Act. The act was signed by Clinton in a televise ceremony today in which Clinton, flanked by Lilly Ledbetter and the bill’s Senate sponsor Barbara Mikulski, gave a short address on the importance of the first woman president signing the bill and the bill’s importance for women’s rights in the workplace.
***
South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson Emerges as Next RNC Chair in Down and Dirty Election
January 30, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - After the drubbing the Republican Party took in the 2008 elections, the sharks began to circle around Republican National Committee chair Mike Duncan. Duncan, who has been RNC chair since 2007, ran again, but he faced heavy criticism from big shot Republican names. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the Republican Party outmatched and lamented the rise of the “modern left.”[3] Gingrich did not criticize Pataki, who he said performed much better than the circumstances would have foreseen, but still said the lack of resonance from Republicans “has led to another Clinton in the White House and a further move away from the values that our country is built on.” While Gingrich avoided direct criticism of Duncan, the former Speaker said that if the Republican Party is to succeed, it needs to look at what went wrong in the election and fix what went wrong.
The criticism from Gingrich and others quickly led to a number of Republicans throwing their names into the ring to contest Duncan’s campaign for the chairmanship. Former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele was the first to jump in in late November and quickly became the front-runner in the contest as Duncan’s star continued to slip..He and former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell entered the race seeking to become the first African-American chairs of a major party committee. Texas Republican Party chair Tina Benkiser was the lone woman in the race, but her profile was boosted as a chairmanship for her could be seen as a direct response to the election of Clinton as the first female president. Other contenders like Benkiser also came from the state parties, who put the fault of 2008 on the national focus of the GOP and say the power needs to be put back in the hands of the state parties. These included South Carolina chair Katon Dawson, Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, and former Tennessee GOP chair Chip Saltsman.
The debate over which candidate had the best path to lead the Republican Party quickly devolved into attacks on the various candidates. In December, Chip Saltsman, who had been endorsed by a number of Tennessee leaders including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, came under fire from the party after he sent committee members a Christmas CD that included a parody song called “Barack the Magic Negro.” Saltsman withdrew his name from the contest shortly after the controversy. In January, another controversy arose regarding another of the Southern candidates in the race, this time against Katon Dawson. Opponents of Dawson’s campaign pointed to an article from September 2008 indicating that Dawson had left a whites only country club where he had been a member for twelve years as an indication that Dawson as chair would perpetuate the modern image of the Republican Party as a white, Southern party. Dawson’s spokesman Rod Godfrey rebuked the criticism, calling the country club membership a “gotcha” and citing that Dawson left after attempting to push the club to drop the policy. Additionally, Godfrey and Dawson’s campaign had been pointing to the promotion of black politicians in the South Carolina Republican Party, including Glenn McCall as the state’s first black RNC member, and electing Tim Scott as the first black Republican in South Carolina’s general assembly since Reconstruction[4].
The worry of the Republican Party being seen as an increasingly white Southern party was a constant concern throughout the campaign and ballot process. Four of the candidates - Dawson, Saltsman, Benkiser, and Duncan himself - are from the South. Mississippi governor and former RNC chair Haley Barbour that the GOP’s opponents “want to attack us for being too Southern,” and that in the selection of chair he “[doesn't] think we ought to make it easier for them.”[5] As the balloting commenced, it soon became clear that Duncan would not return to his position, and Duncan dropped out after the third round of balloting as Steele took a lead. Blackwell withdrew on the next ballot and backed Benkiser[6], but Benkiser did not gain enough to be within reach of either Steele or Dawson. After the sixth ballot, Benkiser withdrew. While the Blackwell votes that had gone to her broke for Steele, the majority of her votes broke for Dawson and Dawson won on the eighth round of balloting.
The question of where the Republican Party goes from here is still a very open one. Dawson particularly praised Steele and Blackwell in a statement following his selection, and said he wanted to work with them in an unofficial capacity as he placed an emphasis on expanding the Republican Party’s ability to recruit African-Americans to run for political office if the party is to have any future. Dawson spoke to his efforts to do so in South Carolina during his chairmanship in the state, saying he wanted to bring those efforts to the country as a whole. It is clear that Dawson’s direction of the party will attempt to tap into the African-American vote as a way forward, but with Dawson’s controversial history and being a white Southern face for the Republican Party, it remains to be seen as to whether Katon Dawson is the man who has the real skills and desire to do that.
***
Hailed as ‘Architect of Green Success’, California Party Chair Peter Camejo Passes Away
January 31, 2009
FOLSOM, CA - Political activist and longtime fixture of the California Green Party Peter Camejo died on Wednesday at the age of 69. Camejo was a political activist throughout his life, helped pioneer the financial practice of socially responsible investing, and was a frequent candidate for office and served as chair of the California Green Party from 2007 to his death. Camejo was the Socialist Workers Party nominee for president in 1976, ran for governor of California twice in 2002 and 2003, ran for United States Senate in 2006, and was Ralph Nader’s running mate in 2004 in the states where Nader was the Green nominee for president. Camejo had been fighting a battle with lymphoma for several years and died at his home in Folsom, California.
Peter Camejo was born in Queens, New York to Venezuelan parents and held dual US-Venezuelan citizenship. He spent the first years of his life in Venezuela, but moved back to Long Island at age 7 with his mother after his parents divorced. Camejo often said that seeing the poverty in Venezuela as a child led him to fight for social and economic justice. He attended MIT to pursue a mathematics degree and later transferred to UC Berkeley, but never received his degree. While at Berkeley, Camejo became active in the Free Speech Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War. Camejo’s involvement in the protest activity and in the Socialist Workers Party led governor Ronald Reagan to put him on the list of 10 most dangerous people in California and pushed the Berkeley administration to expel him. Even though he never finished his degree, Camejo took his experience at Berkeley with him in how to organize and lead mass movements. He would use that knowledge when he helped found the Green Party of California and eventually rose to become the party’s chair. Matt Gonzalez, one of the most prominent Green elected officials as mayor of San Francisco and a good friend of Camejo, commented that Camejo was always a proponent of creating an active third party in the United States.
For much of his life, Camejo made most of his living as a financial analyst and consultant. He worked at Merrill Lynch for a time, and according to Gonzalez was one of their star employees and created the first environmentally screened investment fund for a major Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch’s Eco-Logical Trust. However, after running for president for the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 and being arrested for protesting, Merrill Lynch pushed Camejo out despite his success. Camejo continued to work in the financial sector, founding investment firm Progressive Management Asset Inc. where he continued to develop and pioneer a strategy of investing in socially responsible companies and organizations. Camejo later founded the Council for Responsible Public Investments and wrote the book “The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially.”
In the 1990s, Camejo became active in the early years of the Green Party, He ran for office four times between 2002 and 2006, though only received over 5 percent of the vote during his first run for governor of California in 2002. Camejo was committed to helping create a third party in the United States that could compete with the Democrats and Republicans, and while he never achieved elected office at any level, he did leave his mark. In a prepared statement, Ralph Nader said “Peter used his eloquence, sharp wit, and barnstorming bravado to blaze a trail for the Green Party and for 21st century third party politics in the U.S.” His activism took many forms, but Camejo also gained a reputation for fighting for impoverished and marginalized communities. Nader also described Camejo as a “politically courageous champion for the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere.”[7] Camejo also never forgot his Venezuelan heritage and was active in many Latino groups including La Raza Unida and in the broader Chicano Movement. One of those friends, state senator Gil Cedillo, said Camejo “understood the movement and always attempted to integrate his leftist views in the context of the Latino struggle.” In 2002, while a state assemblyman, Cedillo was one of fourteen Latino legislators to refuse to endorse governor Gray Davis over his veto of a bill that would give California drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. Cedillo endorsed Camejo in that election.
Camejo described himself as a “watermelon” - red on the outside, green on the inside - but while frequently associated with socialist movements he rarely used the lofty language that many others who shared his ideology use. In Camejo’s involvement in the Green Party from 2002 on, he frequently mentioned that he took his cues from the successful Latin American leftward movements. “The ones that found success didn’t try to model themselves after a European identity; they didn’t speak of ‘socialism’ or ‘Marxism’. They used clear understandable words and a message built on the living history of their countries and the consciousness of the people they are talking to. They take these universal issues of inequality and justice and place these issues in the culture, the history, and the language of the people they are trying to reach. That is how they convince people and find success.”[8] During the last decade of his life, Camejo ran into tension with other California Green Party leaders like Mike Feinstein over the direction of the state party, but the success of the Gonzalez campaign and others gave credence to Camejo’s message and saw him rise to the chair of the Green Party of California in 2007. From that position, he no longer ran for office himself, but instead championed others, and in 2008 oversaw the election of the Green Party’s first members of the state legislature elected in a general election - state senators Jerry McNerney and Norm Solomon and state assemblywoman Angela Davis. Earlier this month in his last public appearance congratulating the new Green members of the state legislature, Camejo spoke to his message. “When you look at the full historical and political landscape of the United States - the great traditions of our struggles for justice, our symbols, our language - so many in power today in both the Democratic and Republican parties have become disconnected with that reality. Even on the left, many have turned away from the struggle of the farmer or the service worker or the undocumented immigrant and become lost in ivory tower academic rhetoric.”[9] Camejo’s push for a more populist message from the Green Party broadened its appeal and helped lay the path to the party’s recent victories.
In the last months of his life, Camejo finished writing his autobiography, currently titled “North Star,” which will be published by Haymarket Books[10]. Camejo is survived by his wife, Morella Camejo, by his stepchildren Alexandra Baquera and Victor Baquera, and three brothers. The family will hold a private funeral, but a public memorial service will be announced at a later date.
[1] OTL vote on 2009 CHIP Reauthorization: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2009/s31
[2] OTL vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2009/s14
[3] Gingrich’s statements except on president Clinton from here: https://www.nbcchicago.com/local/gingrich_says_gop_is_outmatched/1845162/
[4] Godfrey’s statements on Dawson’s controversy here: https://web.archive.org/web/2009020...msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/24/1687821.aspx
[5] Barbour quote from here: https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/2009-01-04-gopchair_N.htm
[6] Benkiser did not officially run for RNC chair in OTL, but she was part of Blackwell’s campaign in an alliance where Blackwell would be chair while Benkiser would be co-chair. This time, Benkiser launches her own campaign instead but is still friendly with Blackwell on cross-support in the balloting rounds.
[7] Nader’s quotes on Camejo are taken from his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle here: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Peter-Camejo-dies-helped-found-Green-Party-3269521.php
[8] This quote is cobbled together from various parts of Peter Camejo’s autobiography North Star: A Memoir. In his memoir he is specifically talking about the FSLN in Nicaragua, but Camejo says it was a turning point for him and from his experiences and his later approach to politics and activism, it’s a good general description of his approach.
[9] This quote is also partially based on how Camejo recounts how his experience with FSLN rallies affected his thinking. In his memoir it’s directed solely at the left and how the FSLN became successful while other leftist movements in the Americas at the time failed.
[10] Considering how useful his memoir has been as a source, I couldn’t not give it a bit of a shout out.
In OTL Camejo died in September 2008 when the manuscript was largely finished, but he was still working on the penultimate chapter when he died. In the publisher’s note, Haymarket says that Matt Gonzalez brought the manuscript to them following Camejo’s death from his lymphoma. For the timeline, I decided to give Camejo a few more months to live and see the Green Party have its 2008 breakthrough, and to let him finish the manuscript (which ITTL likely has an additional chapter or two on 2008)Progress on the outline is going well. I think I'm still going to have the hiatus last til the end of the year to try and get a bit more of the outline done and to get a buffer of finished updates going. For now though, a little something I had an idea for while reading back through past updates.
Babel, Departed, Labyrinth Tie For Award Count At Oscars
February 26, 2007
LOS ANGELES - It’s not often in an Academy Awards that three films will tie for the most awards received. When four films tied last year with three awards each, it seemed like a fluke. Before last year’s ceremony,[1] the last time more than two films tied for most awards was the 2nd Academy Awards in 1930 when no film received multiple awards. The last time before last year that no film received more than three awards was 1948. But at last night’s ceremony, a near repeat of last year happened, and again no film received more than three awards. A sign that this might happen should have been seen in January when the nominees were announced, and critical darling and early contender Dreamgirls received 8 nominations but was not nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, or either Best Actor or Best Actress. Its big four award snub was the hot topic leading up to the ceremony, and in the end Dreamgirls took two Oscars for sound mixing and for Jennifer Hudson as Best Supporting Actress.
The biggest winner of this year’s Oscars is without a doubt Mexico. Not only did two of the country’s films tie for most awards, but Babel and Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Picture and Best Director. While the other awards for the Mexican films were technical – Pan’s Labyrinth lost out on Best Foreign Film to Germany’s The Lives of Others – the wins mark several historic moments for Mexican and Latin American cinema. Babel becomes not only the first Latin American film nominated for Best Picture but also its first winner, and Iñárritu gains the region’s first Best Director award on the third try[2]. Pan’s Labyrinth’s Guillermo Navarro becomes the first person from Latin America to win for cinematography, and Gustavo Santolalla now has back to back wins for original score; he also won last year for Brokeback Mountain. In addition to Iñárritu and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, another Mexican director has made his mark on what could be called the “Latin Oscars”[3] with 3 nominations for Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men.
While it was a big win for Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth, the other film tying for most awards will likely be seen as a loser despite joining at the top of the proverbial medal table. Martin Scorsese has lost out yet again on both the Best Picture and Best Director nominations. This is the sixth time a Scorsese film has been nominated for Best Picture and the sixth time Scorsese has been nominated for Best Director, but he still has yet to receive an Oscar for either. The awards for The Departed instead went for best adapted screenplay, best film editing, and possibly the most likely to be viewed as a pity award, Best Supporting Actor to Mark Wahlberg.
Two curious winners also made waves in some of the lesser talked about categories. The Best Feature Documentary category was jokingly talked up following the nominations as both An Inconvenient Truth featuring former Vice President Al Gore and An Unreasonable Man, a film about consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, were up for the award. Tongue in cheek comparisons to the nail biter 2000 election abounded among critics, but An Inconvenient Truth was still the favorite to win the award as the other nominees; Iraq in Fragments, Deliver Us From Evil, and Jesus Camp, were not seen as likely contenders. However, it looks as if Nader may have cost Gore another win as Iraq in Fragments, which is directed by James Longley and tells a narrative of the divisions within a post-war Iraq from Suni, Shi’a, and Kurdish perspectives, took the award[4].
The other unlikely winner comes from the Best Animated Feature category. It is the newest category at the Oscars and still struggles to even find enough nominees. For a category to have five nominees, it must have 16 films on the shortlist. That has happened only twice, in 2002’s films and this year. The nominees were also an odd bunch. There were the usual Pixar and Dreamworks offerings in Cars and Over The Hedge, but the other three were unusual. Happy Feet, a movie about dancing penguins, was directed by George Miller of Mad Max films and while co-produced by Warner Bros. is a largely Australian production. The category also nominated two science fiction films, Satoshi Kon’s Paprika and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly[5]. The animated winner was, in a surprise upset as both a science fiction film and an independent film, A Scanner Darkly. The film caught the eye of many critics for its use of rotoscoping, or transferring a live action image to animation by tracing frame by frame, to create the film’s unique, blurred look, and has evidently caught the attention of the Academy as well.
[1] In 2006, Brokeback Mountain, Crash, King Kong, and Memoirs of a Geisha all received 3 awards each.
[2] In OTL, a Latin American film wouldn't win Best Director until 2013 with Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity and wouldn't win Best Picture until 2014 with Iñárritu's Birdman.
[3] The "Latin Oscars" was a brief thing following the 2007 nominations.
[4] This is actually why I wrote this section. I originally wasn't going to do this and just have An Inconvenient Truth still win, at which point a bit on the Oscars wasn't relevant enough to to a whole thing on, but then I looked back and saw the other documentary nominees and it was too good not to add. An Unreasonable Man replaces My Country, My Country, another Iraq War documentary, which means the votes leaning toward an Iraq War film for this category aren't split between two films.
[5] Both Paprika and A Scanner Darkly were among the films shortlisted for the Animated Feature nomination that year. However, in OTL after Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invincibles was disqualified for not having the required amount of the film be animated, it left just 15 films in the shortlist so only 3 could be nominated. Over The Hedge also replaces Monster House here in the nominee list.
Babel, Departed, Labyrinth Tie For Award Count At Oscars
February 26, 2007
LOS ANGELES - It’s not often in an Academy Awards that three films will tie for the most awards received. When four films tied last year with three awards each, it seemed like a fluke. Before last year’s ceremony,[1] the last time more than two films tied for most awards was the 2nd Academy Awards in 1930 when no film received multiple awards. The last time before last year that no film received more than three awards was 1948. But at last night’s ceremony, a near repeat of last year happened, and again no film received more than three awards. A sign that this might happen should have been seen in January when the nominees were announced, and critical darling and early contender Dreamgirls received 8 nominations but was not nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, or either Best Actor or Best Actress. Its big four award snub was the hot topic leading up to the ceremony, and in the end Dreamgirls took two Oscars for sound mixing and for Jennifer Hudson as Best Supporting Actress.
The biggest winner of this year’s Oscars is without a doubt Mexico. Not only did two of the country’s films tie for most awards, but Babel and Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Picture and Best Director. While the other awards for the Mexican films were technical – Pan’s Labyrinth lost out on Best Foreign Film to Germany’s The Lives of Others – the wins mark several historic moments for Mexican and Latin American cinema. Babel becomes not only the first Latin American film nominated for Best Picture but also its first winner, and Iñárritu gains the region’s first Best Director award on the third try[2]. Pan’s Labyrinth’s Guillermo Navarro becomes the first person from Latin America to win for cinematography, and Gustavo Santolalla now has back to back wins for original score; he also won last year for Brokeback Mountain. In addition to Iñárritu and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, another Mexican director has made his mark on what could be called the “Latin Oscars”[3] with 3 nominations for Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men.
While it was a big win for Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth, the other film tying for most awards will likely be seen as a loser despite joining at the top of the proverbial medal table. Martin Scorsese has lost out yet again on both the Best Picture and Best Director nominations. This is the sixth time a Scorsese film has been nominated for Best Picture and the sixth time Scorsese has been nominated for Best Director, but he still has yet to receive an Oscar for either. The awards for The Departed instead went for best adapted screenplay, best film editing, and possibly the most likely to be viewed as a pity award, Best Supporting Actor to Mark Wahlberg.
Two curious winners also made waves in some of the lesser talked about categories. The Best Feature Documentary category was jokingly talked up following the nominations as both An Inconvenient Truth featuring former Vice President Al Gore and An Unreasonable Man, a film about consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, were up for the award. Tongue in cheek comparisons to the nail biter 2000 election abounded among critics, but An Inconvenient Truth was still the favorite to win the award as the other nominees; Iraq in Fragments, Deliver Us From Evil, and Jesus Camp, were not seen as likely contenders. However, it looks as if Nader may have cost Gore another win as Iraq in Fragments, which is directed by James Longley and tells a narrative of the divisions within a post-war Iraq from Suni, Shi’a, and Kurdish perspectives, took the award[4].
The other unlikely winner comes from the Best Animated Feature category. It is the newest category at the Oscars and still struggles to even find enough nominees. For a category to have five nominees, it must have 16 films on the shortlist. That has happened only twice, in 2002’s films and this year. The nominees were also an odd bunch. There were the usual Pixar and Dreamworks offerings in Cars and Over The Hedge, but the other three were unusual. Happy Feet, a movie about dancing penguins, was directed by George Miller of Mad Max films and while co-produced by Warner Bros. is a largely Australian production. The category also nominated two science fiction films, Satoshi Kon’s Paprika and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly[5]. The animated winner was, in a surprise upset as both a science fiction film and an independent film, A Scanner Darkly. The film caught the eye of many critics for its use of rotoscoping, or transferring a live action image to animation by tracing frame by frame, to create the film’s unique, blurred look, and has evidently caught the attention of the Academy as well.
[1] In 2006, Brokeback Mountain, Crash, King Kong, and Memoirs of a Geisha all received 3 awards each.
[2] In OTL, a Latin American film wouldn't win Best Director until 2013 with Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity and wouldn't win Best Picture until 2014 with Iñárritu's Birdman.
[3] The "Latin Oscars" was a brief thing following the 2007 nominations.
[4] This is actually why I wrote this section. I originally wasn't going to do this and just have An Inconvenient Truth still win, at which point a bit on the Oscars wasn't relevant enough to to a whole thing on, but then I looked back and saw the other documentary nominees and it was too good not to add. An Unreasonable Man replaces My Country, My Country, another Iraq War documentary, which means the votes leaning toward an Iraq War film for this category aren't split between two films.
[5] Both Paprika and A Scanner Darkly were among the films shortlisted for the Animated Feature nomination that year. However, in OTL after Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invincibles was disqualified for not having the required amount of the film be animated, it left just 15 films in the shortlist so only 3 could be nominated. Over The Hedge also replaces Monster House here in the nominee list.