Terry Goddard

The Top Two blackmailing of AZ Democrats begins!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Open and Honest Elections filing

From the AZ Capitol Times comes this teaser for their January 12th edition of the Yellow Sheet:

Top two and anti-dark money rolled into one

By: Yellow Sheet Report January 12, 2016 , 4:18 pm

The campaigns for dark money disclosure and a “top-two” style primary election system have officially joined forces under the aegis of Open and Honest Coalition. In a news release today, the coalition announced the filing of “separate, but aligned” proposals to amend the Arizona Constitution.

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GOP chair paints Top Two Primary and anti-Dark Money initiatives as the work of dirty hippies

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Robert Graham
Robert Graham

Per AZGOP Chair Robert Graham in the AZ Capitol Times:

The Arizona Capitol Times recently reported the same people behind the failed jungle primary initiative in 2012 plan on taking another run at it in 2016. Only this time jungle primary supporters intend to team up with another group of liberals pushing an aggressive regulatory agenda designed to relieve Arizonans of our free speech rights—all under the guise of eliminating so-called dark money.

Ouch! That’s bound to leave a mark on the carefully-crafted “we’re so above the extremists on both sides!” image of the Open Primaries people. Graham’s oped is clearly signalling how conservatives plan to defeat both Top Two primaries and Terry Goddard’s Dark Money initiative – by painting both as acts of desperation by sore loser leftists.

No, really, Graham says so (though he admits the two measures are unrelated):

The supporters pushing this initiative are losing candidates who have proven incapable of winning elections in Arizona. Paul Johnson and Terry Goddard, the two people behind the jungle primary and the attack on free speech, have a combined staggering six losses in statewide races.

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What is Terry Goddard thinking??

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

open primaries dark money
Already trying to make them look similar. Except they’re not. Not even remotely.

Ugh. (Emphasis mine.)

“They both help each other,” [Paul] Johnson said. “The polling was very clear. If they both end up on (the ballot), even through independent efforts, they both help each other.”
More public support may be just what Open Primaries Arizona needs. When Johnson ran a top-two primary measure in 2012, it suffered a landslide defeat. Two-thirds of Arizonans rejected the plan, which garnered only 33 percent of the vote. Johnson’s group is making some changes to the top-two plan, which he said will make it more palatable to voters.

Open Primaries Arizona has commissioned several polls on the top-two primary and other election reforms, including requiring dark money to be disclosed, as other election spending is. Chuck Coughlin of HighGround, which Johnson’s group has retained (!), said polling has shown a lot of support for both ideas.

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LWVGT video “Is Democracy for Sale?”

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  “Zona Politics” host Jim Nintzel highlighted today a recent League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson program which featured three Arizona political consultants David Leibowitz, Barrett Marson and Max Fose, and  two former candidates  Christine Jones (only woman who ran for Arizona Governor in the August primary of 2014 as a Republican) and  Democrat … Read more

Why don’t Democrats win in Arizona? Answer: Not enough Democratic voters

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

canvassingPhoto: IPrecinct.us

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns & Money wants Democrats to stop trying to woo old white people who hate them:

So what’s up? I think there are a few really important points. Democrats need to just stop trying to appeal to old white people. White men voted for the GOP 64-34. It is a loser strategy. This demographic overwhelmingly votes GOP. Alison Grimes, who ran an utterly pathetic and embarrassing campaign, refusing to say whether she voted for President Obama is the prototype of how not to do it. No one is going to believe you. Heard a bunch about the North Carolina race last night and all the discussion about how Ebola, ISIS, and immigration dominated voters’ agenda. When I hear those three things in this context, I hear three words: racism, racism, and racism. And the Supreme Court supporting racist policies to restrict blacks from voting by eviscerating the Voting Rights Act allowed racists to indeed restrict black voting in meaningful ways that may well have swung North Carolina to the execrable Thom Tillis. Developing entire political campaigns to swing a few of these voters to the Democrats isn’t going to work–as we saw quite clearly last night.

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