Andy Schmookler: American Values and the Christmas Season
Holidays offer us a chance to put our usual pursuits aside. But often, also, holidays provide a light to illuminate the meaning of our usual pursuits. So it is with this Christmas season and with our efforts to meet the challenge of the present crisis in America.
Over the generations, the holiday of Christmas has become deeply woven into American culture, expressing both the nature of our country and its ideals. Aside from the commercialization of the holiday, which of course reflects an important part of what America is about, there are also the deep moral values that gain expression in America during the Christmas season. Continue reading “Andy Schmookler: American Values and the Christmas Season” »
Candidate discusses campaign for Democratic Party nomination in the Sixth
Award-winning author and blogger Andy Schmookler has thrown his hat into the ring for the Sixth District Democratic Party congressional nomination.
Schmookler, 64, said he wouldn’t be running for Congress “if these were normal political times,” but the Harvard and Cal-Berkeley grad and NPR and PBS commentator sees in the recent policy drift in Washington a disturbing trend that he feels he needs to bring attention to.
Increasing income inequality and the increasingly hollowed-out American middle class “aren’t a function of how the 21st century economy works,” Schmookler said. Rather, the trends toward the rich getting richer and the poor and middle class struggling more and more are due to the “nature of the policies that are getting implemented” in Washington.
Draconian djustments to Medicare and Social Security being contemplated now on Capitol Hill are “frauds” to Schmookler. “Back when Reagan was president, we already knew that people who were born the year I was born were going to turn 65 this year. There’s nothing surprising about that,” Schmookler said.
The focus of leaders in Washington should be on creating jobs and building on the country’s economic base, Schmookler said, not on budget cutting.
“What we need to close the budget isn’t cutting off programs like Head Start or heating help for the elderly that Republicans are going after. We need to get the economy out of the hole,” Schmookler said.
But “we don’t talk about that.”
“We talk about cutting the budget. We talk about cutting Social Security. Now there are proposals that are essentially designed to eliminate Medicare as we know it. We as an American society are moving toward taking away the protections for average people, the opportunities for average people, and hollowing out America,” Schmookler said.
Both major parties – Republican and Democrat – are part and parcel to the problem. The GOP, to Schmookler, is a “destructive force,” while “Democrats have let us down because they have been wimps in terms of standing up and defending.”
“My message is simply to try to tell the truth,” said Schmookler, who concedes that the 2012 race will be an uphill battle, but says it’s “not impossible” for a Democrat to win in the Sixth District.
“The only way that today’s Republican Party can get any power at all is by deceiving people about the nature of what it is,” said Schmookler, who hopes his campaign can play a role in “awakening the American people” to those realities.
Interview: Andy Schmookler talks with AFP editor Chris Graham
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Vanke defends release of push poll
Independent candidate Jeff Vanke is defending his campaign’s release of a two-question push poll that was touted in e-mail as showing him within four points of incumbent Sixth District Congressman Bob Goodlatte.
“My campaign is not ’tilting at windmills,’ as one journalist asked me about,” Vanke wrote in an e-mail to members of the media Thursday morning in reference to the push poll, which presented more than 1,000 respondents with information about Vanke’s central campaign message of balancing the federal budget and criticisms of Goodlatte’s support from the agribusiness sector in terms of campaign donations and his support for the agribusiness sector in his voting record.
Given that information, respondents to the push poll still favored Goodlatte in the race, but only by a 46 percent-to-42 percent plurality.
Vanke said most of those polled knew little about him before receiving the phone call, “and yet nearly half were willing to support me against Goodlatte based on just a couple of facts that I selected, and that I represented accurately.”
“I won’t pull even with Goodlatte in neutral polling unless my current fundraising acceleration accelerates fast enough. But he is certainly beatable by an independent, based on his big-spending record, and he can be beaten on a fraction of his own funding,” Vanke said in the e-mail.
The Goodlatte campaign has not had any comment on the Vanke poll. The campaign of Libertarian Stuart Bain issued a press release on Wednesday offering the observation that the poll “mimics the same type of poll that telemarketers use when they are calling to ask you ‘Press 1 if you want a product that won’t leave you streaks when you mop the floor or Press 2 if you prefer streaks.’”
“Perhaps in his next ‘poll’ he should tell voters to ‘Press 1 if you want to vote for Jeff Vanke and receive an extension on your retirement age and a decrease in your Social Security benefits or Press 2 if you want to vote for Stuart Bain and shrink the size of the overbloated, overregulating federal government and take strong actions to cut the federal budget and growing federal deficit,’” the release continued.
“Stuart Bain has attended any number of public events. His public recognition and support has increased significantly after each event. At every event, Stuart or members of his staff have been asked, ‘Who is Jeff Vanke?’ Obviously Jeff has not polled any of these people,” the release concluded.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Fun with poll numbers in the Sixth
A poll commissioned by Sixth District independent congressional candidate Jeff Vanke has him within four points of Republican incumbent Bob Goodlatte.
OK, yes, there’s a catch. The two-question poll, conducted on Tuesday, resembled a push poll, pushing respondents on Vanke’s central campaign message of balancing the federal budget, and taking shots at Goodlatte over campaign contributions from the agribusiness sector and making a claim that Goodlatte backs costly agribusiness subsidies.
The 1,040 respondents to the poll still gave Goodlatte a 46 percent-to-42 percent lead over Vanke. Libertarian Stuart Bain polled at 4 percent.
Vanke will hold a press conference in Roanoke Wednesday afternoon to discuss the results with the news media.
Reporting by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Bain: Goodlatte misleads voters with fundraising letter
Sixth District Libertarian congressional candidate Stuart Bain is raising issue with a recent mailer put out by the campaign of incumbent Republican Bob Goodlatte that Bain thinks crossed an ethical line.
“Goodlatte’s efforts to mislead voters are laughable. He is partly to blame for this economic disaster we’re in, and now he claims to fight against it? Too bad his actions to sustain the Washington, D.C., establishment and status quo politics contradict his words. I’m running to give the voters of the Sixth District an opportunity to vote for a true conservative. Not Goodlatte’s watered-down version,” Bain said in a statement released Tuesday.
The mailer in question was a standard campaign letter to supporters. Bain questions the wording wherein Goodlatte asks supporters for campaign contributions to fight the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda with the implication that his two opponents in November, Bain and independent Jeff Vanke, would vote to sustain the efforts of Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Bain, as a Libertarian, is running to the right of Goodlatte on most issues, and Vanke has made a balanced federal budget a centerpiece of his campaign.
Bain also takes issue with the push for the cash-rich Goodlatte campaign to appeal to voters for more money.
“Any politician that sees himself needing in excess of $800,000 for the last 50 days or so of a campaign is questionable, especially given the circumstances of this race we are in,” Bain said. “Bob Goodlatte has professed that he will likely win, and if that is the case, why would he be groveling for more money? Maybe he will use those funds to go into hiding so he can continue to dodge my requests for a debate.”
More detail
Bain’s campaign staff posted copies of Goodlatte’s letter, and a Bain campaign staffer’s personal response, on the campaign website at http://bainforcongress.org/.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Sam Rasoul: Why I am not running
Over the past several months I have received scores of emails and inquiries as to why I am not running for Congress this election cycle.
As many of you know, I was married for about nine months before I began my two year endeavor to give a voice to those in need across our district and our great country. Upon the completion of the wonderful experience of running for public office, my wife, Layaly, and I decided it was time to start a family.
Along with over 100 volunteers and paid staff, many of you got to know my family who were an integral part of my campaign. Family is very important to us, so when it came time for me to become a father and a better husband, I poured everything into what I believe to be the most important responsibilities I will ever have.
Link to column on WhenVirginiaWasBlue.com.
Independents face uphill battle against Goodlatte
The Sixth District is a safe one politically, so safe that Republican incumbent Bob Goodlatte does not have a Democratic Party opponent on the ballot in the November elections, though there are two independent candidates vying for the seat.
The challenge ahead for Stuart Bain, a Libertarian, and Jeff Vanke, a self-described “Independent-Centrist,” is pretty substantial.
“This would be a difficult race even for a Democrat,” said Isaac Wood, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Bob Goodlatte has never gotten under 60 percent of the vote. He’s been elected nine times. This is a district that goes heavily Republican at all levels. But when you’re an independent candidate, those challenges are even greater.”
Major-party candidates have built-in access to campaign donors and volunteers, Wood points out, something that independents like Bain and Vanke have to build for themselves.
Link to story on TheNewDominion.com.
Vanke joins Center Party to Modern Whigs
Sixth District congressional candidate Jeff Vanke has joined his new Center Party to the Modern Whig Party and has received the backing of the Whigs in his 2010 campaign.
“The Modern Whigs are inspiring to me in purpose, earnestness, and steadfastness,” Vanke said in a statement. “Knowing the party as I now do, I would join the party even if I were not running for office. The MWP is not the best thing just since Ross Perot, for whom I volunteered. It is better than Perot; it is the best political movement I have ever seen in this country. I am honored to join the ranks of such an outstanding group of people.”
Vanke is running against Republican incumbent Bob Goodlatte in the Sixth District in the November election. Vanke will be listed as an independent on the ballot.
Edited by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Another Dem-less year in the Sixth
It had been 10 years since the last Democratic Party nominee challenge to Republican Bob Goodlatte when Sam Rasoul made a run at the Sixth District seat in 2008. Goodlatte’s 61 percent showing in 2008 was convincing enough to convince Democrats not to field a candidate against the incumbent in 2010. The question today – is it too early to write off 2012 as well?
“The 2012 cycle is probably just as difficult, because you’ll have the president on the ballot, and it’s almost certain that the Republican presidential nominee will win this district, so the coattail effect would also be on Goodlatte’s side looking ahead to 2012,” said Isaac Wood, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Candidate recruitment can be tough in the Sixth, which stretches from Harrisonburg to Roanoke along the spine of Interstate 81 and juts over to Lynchburg along the Route 29 corridor in one of the more conservative congressional districts in the country.
Goodlatte received 61.5 percent of the vote in his re-election contest with Rasoul in ’08. GOP presidential nominee John McCain received 56.9 percent of the vote in the Sixth in ’08, and Republican Senate nominee Jim Gilmore picked up 40.8 percent of the vote in his race against Democrat Mark Warner, his best showing in a race in which Gilmore got only 33.7 percent of the votes cast statewide.
The best bet for Democrats, Wood said, would be “another Democratic wave year, like 2006 or 2008,” except that even in 2008, with Rasoul running a nearly two-year-long campaign, and polling better through early September than Tom Perriello was doing over in the Fifth in advance of Perriello’s eventual upset win over Republican Virgil Goode, Democrats were still bushwhacked.
Perhaps the best insight into Democrats’ chances in the Sixth comes from retired Bridgewater College history and politics professor David McQuilkin, who has long said that the best hopes for local Democrats to land one of their own in Congress would involve being redistricted into another congressional district.
Goodlatte appears infallible at this point, and thoughts of his retirement don’t make light appear at the end of the tunnel given the paucity of elected Democrats in the district.
“Recruiting can be difficult. You don’t have a deep Democratic bench in the Sixth,” Wood said. “There isn’t a slew of popular elected Democrats at the state level. You don’t have candidates who have been almost successful in the past running for Congress. That adds another set of challenges.”
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Bain: ‘I don’t think big-government solutions work’
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
One of the major parties, Sixth District congressional candidate Stuart Bain says, wants to tax and spend. The other “wants to spend, but they don’t want to tax.”
“Both of the major parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, have progressive government plans. It’s just a matter of, do they want to grow it to the left, or do they want to grow it to the right?” asks Bain, the Libertarian Party nominee on the ballot in the Sixth, challenging incumbent Congressman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, in the November general election.
“I’m a proponent of smaller government across the board. I don’t think big-government solutions work. I think we need to take a real strong look at how we can actually shrink our federal government back into the box that the Constitution had drawn around it to prevent it from becoming what it is today,” said Bain, a Marine Corps veteran and Roanoke native who decided to run for Congress after “taking a look at the economic issues that are challenging my generation and deciding that I really don’t want to see my children have to foot the bill for my generation’s poor choices.” Continue reading “Bain: ‘I don’t think big-government solutions work’” »
Andy Schmookler: People Power
Posted by afp on January 11, 2012 · Leave a Comment
There is hardly a policy issue more central to defining what America will be.
Will we be true to the democratic vision, in which every citizen is entitled to an equal say in determining our destiny as a nation? Or will the inequalities of wealth our economy produces be allowed to corrode that democratic sense of justice, and effectively put our government up for auction? Continue reading “Andy Schmookler: People Power” »
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