dark money

Why Don’t Americans Vote? We’re Repeatedly Told Not To (video)

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John Nichols
John Nichols of ‘The Nation’ addressed progressives and unionists at a recent Tucson event.

The United States is the world’s largest democracy, we spend an obscene amount of money on elections–more than any other country–and we have the lowest voter turnout. The trend has been: the more money that is spent, the lower the turnout.

Since the 2014 election– which had the lowest voter turnout since 1942– many people have been asking: Why aren’t Americans voting? When you consider the horrible financial mess the Tea Party is making of red states like Arizona, there also been a lot of non-voter bashing and shaming. But does that do any good? I think not.

At a recent John Nichols event, hosted by PDA Tucson and the Pima Area Labor Federation, Nichols shed light onto the inverse relationship between money spent and votes cast.

Nichols told the crowd of approximately 130 progressives and unionists that Americans don’t vote because negative television commercials repeatedly tell us not to. Check out this excerpt from his talk below.

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Close the Meth Lab of Democracy: Vote Blue Today

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Fred DuValIt’s time for Arizona to stop being the brunt of jokes on Comedy Central and time to close the Meth Lab of Democracy.

Meth– like dark money from the Koch Brothers, ALEC, and Arizona Public Service– is addicting and #Bad4AZ. We need politicians who are clean and not addicted to or swayed by dark money.

To do your part, here are the top 10 things you should do on Election Day:

1- Vote for Fred DuVal, Terry Goddard, Felecia Rotellini, David Garcia, Jim Holway, Sandra Kennedy, Ron Barber (or Raul Grijalva, Ann Kirkpatrick, Mikel Weisser, or James Woods, depending upon where you live), and your Legislative reps (like Victoria Steele, Randy Friese, and Steve Farley) if you haven’t done so already.

2- Vote “No” on Props 122 and 303 because they are all about challenging the federal government and sparking new costly and unnecessary lawsuits. Not #Good4AZ.

3- Vote “Yes” on Prop 415 to build the new animal shelter. It’s only $3/year to treat animals humanely.

4- Take your early ballot to your polling place if you still have it. Volunteer to drive friends to the polls or to drop off their mailed ballot.

5- Ask everyone you see if they have voted and encourage them to follow steps #1, #2, #3, and #4 if they have not.

6- If you have adult children, contact them and encourage them to vote.

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Dark Money

Move #AZForward with DuVal, Goddard, Rotellini, & Garcia (video)

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Vote for the party of the people– the Democratic Party– not the party of dark money. Gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal and candidate for public instruction David Garcia will be doing a “thank you” tour of Pima County on Sunday, Nov. 2. Here are times and locations. Find out about volunteer opportunities here.

Randy Kendrick will have none of your guff on dark money, peons!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

dark moneyPhoto: Arizona Republic

Terry Goddard has made “dark money” the signature issue of his Secretary of State campaign and Arizona news people are raising the alarm over millions of anonymously raised dollars being poured into races from Governor down to the state legislature. Charles and David Koch are the source of much of this money and, boy, do they have a friend in Randy Kendrick, who serves on the board of the Goldwater Institute and is married to Ken Kendrick, co-owner of the AZ Diamondbacks (the Diamondbacks organization has a history of funding Republicans and right wing causes).

Here’s Randy’s letter to the AZ Republic editor on Tuesday (annotated by yours truly):

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Sonoran Alliance says ‘grassroots effort’ (not dark money) defeated Props 121 &204

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by Pamela Powers Hannley

Sonoran Alliance— a conservative mouthpiece– has reported that a "strong grassroots effort" by staunch Arizona conservatives defeated Proposition 121 (open primaries) and Proposition 204 (permanent 1 cent sales tax to fund education) in the recent election.

The video accompanying the story features dark money king Robert Graham lauding volunteers for making phone calls, writing letters, and talking to their friends about the two propositions and thus triumphing on election day.

This a great fairy tale to make the base feel good. Too bad it's not true.

Both propositions were defeated by huge dark money donations by Americans for Responsible Leadership, who funneled $900,000 in out-of-state money into Arizona to defeat Prop 204 and $600,000 to defeat Prop 121. The same group also funneled $11 million worth of dark money into two California campaigns.  Talking Points Memo reported that Americans for Repsonsible Leadership admited to "campaign money laundering" related to the California donations. 

Former Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams is the president of Americans for Responsible Leadership, and Graham is the director. Graham has a vested interest in making Arizona's Republicans feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He wants to be their next statewide chair. 

Having a dark money Koch Brothers puppet as head of the Arizona Republican Party– now that is scary. Watch the Graham video after the jump.