News Release Archive - Electoral Issues

CHIP BERLET
Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates. He recently wrote the piece “Tea Party Loyalists Biased Against Blacks, Latinos, Immigrants and Gays.”

Berlet also recently delivered the talk “Reframing Resentments in the Tea Party Movement,” which states: “The signs, slogans, stories, and tropes of the Tea Party troops are often incomprehensible to many observers. A frequent response is to rely on outdated social science models to describe the Tea Party Movement participants as stupid, ignorant, or crazy. What else could explain the ‘extremist’ idea that Obama is both Hitler and Stalin? Who but a ‘wing-nut’ on the ‘lunatic fringe’ would claim that government reform of healthcare could result in a bureaucrat unplugging grandma?

“The underlying frames and narratives which produce these seemingly absurd claims popular in the Tea Party Movement are common in conservative, economic libertarian or Christian evangelical households; and they have been for decades. The signs and statements at demonstrations might reflect garbled prose, but the ideas have a clear textual pedigree.

“The Tea Party Movement is the latest extension of a campaign by the political right launched in the 1930s to roll back the social welfare policies of the Roosevelt administration. This campaign has always been a loose-knit coalition of large corporate interests, small business owners, economic libertarians, anti-union activists, conservative Christians and moral traditionalists. They all share an antipathy to collectivism in general. Their opposition to taxes, however, is selective. For example, they tend to support funds for the military and law enforcement, but tend to oppose government programs that weave a social safety net. …

“The Tea Party Movement largely has been mobilized using fear-based frames and narratives in which liberal and left ideological opponents are demonized and scapegoated as consciously or unconsciously destroying the America of liberty and freedom. Ask Tea Party activists where they get their news and political information and they mention Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Fox News, AM talk radio, and internet sites such as Free Republic and World Net Daily. …

“Too often major liberal media pundits frame the Tea Party movement as populated by a lunatic fringe of irrational, uneducated, and ignorant rubes. Liberals then dismiss the grievances of Tea Party supporters without engaging them in a discussion that could illuminate issues the nation needs to address.”

Berlet is co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

ROBERT WEISSMAN, via Angela Bradbery
KEVIN ZEESE
President of Public Citizen, Weissman said today: “American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS [created by Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie] are this year’s poster children for everything wrong with our campaign finance system in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision paved the way for unlimited corporate spending on elections, and more generally signaled that Wild West rules now prevail for elections. Yet Crossroads GPS manages to transgress the modest rules still in place, failing to register with the Federal Election Commission as a political committee. We need the FEC to act to redress this apparently wrongful activity. More than that, we need Congress to pass the DISCLOSE Act, so we know which corporations and billionaires are behind the attack ads now polluting our airwaves. We need Congress to pass the Fair Elections Now Act, to replace the private election financing system now poisoning our democracy. And we need a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision and get corporate money out of elections.”

Zeese, attorney and spokesperson for Protect Our Elections, added: “This is the first election since Citizens United allowed unlimited spending by corporations on elections. They have abused this already too broad power by misusing the tax laws and avoiding campaign finance laws. It is a violation of federal election laws to launder anonymous donations for electioneering activity through nonprofit groups that are allowed to receive anonymous contributions only if their primary purpose is non-electoral activity.” See full statement: Citizen.org

ERIC HENSAL
WILLIAM KLEIN
Earlier this year, Murray Hill Inc. became the first corporation to run for Congress. Klein is Murray Hill’s campaign manager; Hensal is its “designated human” representative. Their campaign announcement video was widely covered in the media.

Now, Murray Hill is running ads for other candidates. See news release

Ads are available online

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

GREG MITCHELL
Mitchell wrote the book The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics. A new edition has just been released. Excerpts of the book and relevant videos are available

Mitchell, who writes the Media Fix blog for TheNation.com, just wrote the piece “Upton Sinclair’s EPIC Campaign: His 1934 California gubernatorial run helped push the New Deal to the left,” which states: “Nearly two years after a Democrat promising hope and change entered the White House, amid an economic crisis left behind by an unpopular Republican, unemployment remained at century-high levels. Despite vast expenditures on new stimulus programs, recovery seemed far off. Opponents in the GOP (and even some in the president’s own party) called for cutting spending to reduce an exploding budget deficit. Democrats were split: was the president acting as boldly as possible — or was he not nearly bold enough? Pundits on the left who once gave him more than a fair break now accused him of dithering or caving in to ‘big business.’ Yet as a midterm election approached — one that might decide whether the president and his programs had much of a future — right-wing demagogues on the stump and in the media accused the White House of imposing socialism on America.

“The year was 1934; the president was Franklin Roosevelt. The economic crisis FDR faced was far worse than what President Obama confronts today, but many similarities exist. Among the major differences: the grassroots activism getting all the attention this year comes from the right, not the left. And that’s one reason the outcome of the 2010 midterms will be quite different from the 1934 results, when Democrats gained seats in Congress, emboldening Roosevelt to propose landmark legislation establishing Social Security and other safety nets.

“Of all the left-wing mass movements that year, Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (EPIC) crusade proved most influential, and not just in helping to push the New Deal to the left. The Sinclair threat — after he easily won the Democratic gubernatorial primary — so profoundly alarmed conservatives that it sparked the creation of the modern political campaign, with its reliance on hired guns, advertising and media tricks, national fundraising, attack ads on the screen and more. Profiling two of the creators of the anti-Sinclair campaign, Carey McWilliams would later call this (in The Nation) ‘a new era in American politics — government by public relations.’ …

“Nearly three decades after his classic novel The Jungle (1906) exposed dangerous and abusive conditions in the meatpacking industry, Sinclair decided, ‘You have written enough. What the world needs is a deed.’ Sinclair, who had moved to California in 1916, had written dozens of influential books while finding time to spark numerous civil liberties and literary controversies, get arrested and become perhaps the best-known American leftist abroad.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

California’s Proposition 23 seeks to suspend a 2006 law intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As of October 8, oil company Valero has donated more than $4 million to the effort to suspend the law.

JAMIE COURT
Court is author of the new book The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell: How To Win Grassroots Campaigns and president of Consumer Watchdog, which just released the report “Valero Energy and its California Profit Pipeline.” He said today: “Environmentalists have been fighting Proposition 23 on the basis that oil companies want to keep polluting in the state. The bigger truth is that oil companies want to keep price gouging the state’s motorists, and suspending the law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a tool to allow the refiners to continue to charge too much for gasoline and make too much profit per gallon. It’s all about dollars and cents per gallon.

“The report shows Californians have endured higher gasoline prices than the rest of the nation while Texas-based Valero has averaged 37 percent higher margins on each barrel of oil it refined in California. The result — $4.5 billion in profits for Valero.

“Valero’s high profitability in California depends on regaining and keeping high refining margins in the state, which requires weak regulation of the industry and steadily increasing gasoline consumption by California drivers. As the public hears more from Valero through its political campaigns, it is important to understand this company’s role in California’s long struggle with unbearably high fuel prices, and its history of squeezing big profits by gouging California motorists.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The New York Times writes in an editorial today: “Four years ago, bipartisan majorities in the California Legislature approved a landmark clean energy bill [AB 32] that many hoped would serve as a template [nationally] … Now a well-financed coalition of right-wing ideologues, out-of-state oil and gas companies and climate-change skeptics is seeking to effectively kill that law with an initiative [Proposition 23] on the November state ballot. The money men include Charles and David Koch, the Kansas oil and gas billionaires who have played a prominent role in financing the Tea Party movement.”

MIKE BRUNE, via David Graham-Caso
Executive director of the Sierra Club, Brune said today: “This November, voters will have a chance to decide if we will continue to fight climate change, or if we are going to allow out-of-state oil companies to undermine California law.”

IAN KIM, via Abel Habtegeorgis
Campaign manager at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights , Kim said today: “Proposition 23 will hurt low-income communities and people of color first and worst. This Dirty Energy Proposition will make air pollution worse and jobs more scarce, especially in communities already burdened by too much pollution and poverty.”

See from the New Yorker, Jane Mayer’s recent piece “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama .”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The New York Times reported Sunday — in “A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists” — about “Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November.” Wrote the Times: “He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

“They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.”

CRAIG HOLMAN
also, via Barbara Holzer
Holman is government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen. He said today: “While there is little reason people outside the Beltway would know, the close relationship between Rep. Boehner and K Street is no secret on Capitol Hill. When Boehner and the Republicans were the majority party in the House prior to the 2006 elections, corporate lobbyists enjoyed the inside track in drafting legislation and setting the congressional agenda. The 2006 elections, in which voters sharply rejected the rampant corruption in the halls of Congress, came as a startling set-back for Boehner and his colleagues. But today K Street is almost giddy at the prospects of a new Republican majority and the rise of Speaker Boehner.”

The Public Citizen web page on government reform

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The Washington Post reports today: “House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said a D.C. voting rights bill will not come up this session, in part because of opposition to an amendment that would have eliminated most of the District’s gun-control laws.”

ANISE JENKINS
MALCOLM WISEMAN
Jenkins and Wiseman are with the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition (Free D.C.). Jenkins said today that the bill that Hoyer had planned on introducing “does not do enough to correct the lack of basic democratic rights in the nation’s capital.”

Stand Up! favors statehood for D.C., which the group says would be much sounder constitutionally. The group also states that the proposed imposition of gun laws by Congress is endemic to the undemocratic manner that the people of D.C. are treated.

Wiseman said today: “This bill only addresses voting rights — actually voting right, since it’s just one vote we’d be getting. But voting is just the tip of the iceberg for democratic rights; we need self-determination, we need statehood. We pay federal taxes and die in wars, but we in D.C. cannot determine our own budget — Congress does. We don’t have a district attorney. We don’t vote for anybody who prosecutes cases for us, or against us. When people from D.C. are sentenced to jail, they typically serve their time in California or North Carolina, further damaging families. However, I suspect that D.C. will get statehood some day — once it has been sufficiently gentrified.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

On Saturday, the Washington Post published a front-page story about the corporation Murray Hill running for Congress: “After the Supreme Court declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to funding political campaigns, the self-described progressive firm took what it considers the next logical step: declaring for office.

“‘Until now, corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence-peddling to achieve their goals in Washington,’ the candidate, who was unavailable for an interview, said in a statement. ‘But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves.’

“William Klein, a ‘hired gun’ who has been enlisted as Murray Hill’s campaign manager, said the firm appears to be the first ‘corporate person’ to run for office and is promising a spirited campaign that ‘puts people second, or even third.’”

WILLIAM KLEIN
ERIC HENSAL
Klein is Murray Hill‘s campaign manager; Hensal is its “designated human” representative.

See the video ad.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The following analysts are available for interviews about Obama’s State of the Union address. They will also be participating in a live blog about the speech at: ipaccuracy.wordpress.com.

GWENDOLYN MINK
Mink is co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy and author of Welfare’s End. She has also been following various aspects of healthcare reform legislation.

MARGARET FLOWERS, MD
Flowers is a pediatrician with Physicians for a National Health Program.

DOUG HENWOOD
Henwood is editor of Left Business Observer. He writes regularly at doughenwood.wordpress.com — and his books include Wall Street.

MAX FRAAD WOLFF
Wolff is an instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University. His most recent piece is “State of the Union, State of the Budget.”

KIM IVES
Just back in the U.S. from Haiti, where he has done extensive reporting over the years for Haiti Liberte and other outlets, Ives was recently interviewed, while in Haiti, by Democracy Now.

KATHY KELLY
Kelly is with the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence, which is organizing the Peaceable Assembly Campaign, pointing to alternatives to U.S. militarism.

DAVID SWANSON
Co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, Swanson is author of the book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

ERIC HENSAL
WILLIAM KLEIN
Following the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to allow unlimited corporate funding of federal campaigns, Murray Hill Inc. today announced it is filing to run for U.S. Congress. “Until now,” Murray Hill Inc. said in a statement, “corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence-peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves.” Murray Hill Inc. is believed to be the first “corporate person” to exercise its constitutional right to run for office.

“The strength of America,” Murray Hill Inc. said, “is in the boardrooms, country clubs and Lear jets of America’s great corporations. We’re saying to Wal-Mart, AIG and Pfizer, if not you, who? If not now, when?” Murray Hill Inc. added: “It’s our democracy. We bought it, we paid for it, and we’re going to keep it.” Murray Hill Inc., a diversifying corporation in the Washington, D.C. area, has long held an interest in politics and sees corporate candidacy as an “emerging new market.”

The campaign’s “designated human,” Eric Hensal, will help the corporation conform to “antiquated, human only” procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy paperwork. Hensal is excited by this new opportunity: “We want to get in on the ground floor of the democracy market before the whole store is bought by China.” Murray Hill Inc. plans on filing to run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.

Campaign manager William Klein promises an aggressive, historic campaign that “puts people second” or “even third.” “The business of America is business, as we all know,” Klein says. “But now, it’s the business of democracy too.” Klein plans to use automated robo-calls, “Astroturf” lobbying and “computer-generated avatars” to get out the vote. Added Hensal: “This is the next frontier of civil rights.”

See the just-released video ad.

JOHN BONIFAZ
“The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is an attack on our democracy,” says Bonifaz, legal director of Voter Action and director of FreeSpeechForPeople.org, a new campaign launched in response to the ruling. “In wrongly assigning First Amendment protections to corporations, the Supreme Court has now unleashed a torrent of corporate money in our political process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in U.S. history. This ruling demands a constitutional amendment response to reclaim the First Amendment and defend our democracy.

“While some may say it is absurd to think that a corporation would run for public office, the real fiction can be found in the Court’s ruling treating corporations as persons under the First Amendment. It is time to restore the First Amendment to its original purpose: to protect people, not corporations.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167