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*********************************************************************************** Electoral College campaign still needs signatures Backers of plan to alter California's winner-take-all vote miss deadlines.
By Dan Morain December 1, 2007 Los Angeles Times Staff Writer that could affect the 2008 presidential election continued struggling Friday to gather enough signatures to place the measure before voters. drive, but said they had not raised the roughly $2 million needed to pay petition circulators. Secretary of State Debra Bowen had recommended a deadline of Nov. 29. weekend to obtain the 434,000 valid signatures required to put the Electoral College initiative on next June's ballot and that he expected to submit the names by midweek. names, a number allowing leeway for signatures that might be disqualified. awarding its 55 electoral votes. Instead, electors would be allocated based on which candidate captured majorities in individual congressional districts. With Republicans holding 19 congressional seats, the GOP nominee would presumably win at least that many districts, giving the candidate 19 electoral votes, almost as many as Ohio has. districts, despite losing to Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry in California 44.4% to 55.4%. district, the state would join just two others using that method: Maine and Nebraska, which combined have nine electoral votes. fund-raising goal. the actual figure won't become public for several days. But Gilliard said $200,000 to $250,000 more was needed to pay circulators for the signatures they have gathered. the target date is risky. Once signatures are submitted, local elections authorities must verify them and send them to the secretary of state, who certifies the measure for the ballot. of its national implications. could not win the White House without winning all California's 55 electoral votes. This state accounts for more than 10% of the 538 electoral votes nationally, by far the biggest block of any state. for June, they would try to place it on the November 2008 ballot. It is unclear what that would mean for that month's presidential election. team, including its author, Sacramento attorney Thomas Hiltachk, abandoned the measure in October. Hiltachk also became angry when the one donation he received -- $175,000 from Wall Street mogul Paul E. Singer -- took a circuitous route through a Missouri attorney and a hitherto unknown corporation. That route hid, at least for a time, the true source of the contribution. Supporters portray it as a way to make California's elections fair. Republican circles for years. Republicans approached the Republican National Committee about it. Bush could win the election without the added boost that such a move would bring. ### ************************************************************************
NEW ! LEADING A MOVEMENT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE Richard K. Wagner, President, Lincoln Club of Orange County
The Lincoln Club of Orange County Board of Directors has voted decisively to endorse and support the California Counts Electoral College Reform initiative. Agreeing to contribute $100,000 to the cause, the Board felt that for far too long, too many voters in California have not been counted in Presidential elections.
For over 45 years the Lincoln Club has been at the forefront of most of the major issues confronting California. It was initial support and funding of club members that helped launch Ronald Reagan's 1966 gubernatorial campaign. In 1978 early seed money and support by the club helped allow for Proposition 13 to proceed to the ballot.
In 2003 it was a $200,000 commitment along with the club's good name that helped to launch the recall of Gray Davis. In most instances, the club acted only after substantial, and sometimes heated, debate, and this vote was no exception.
The greatest cause for concern by some club members was the idea of reforming the Electoral College process in California. Taking the state from a winner-take-all to one where electors are chosen by Congressional district caused great angst. In fact only a month ago most board members were against this initiative for just this reason. However the debate established some solid arguments as to why this initiative should be considered and supported, and the reasons had nothing to do with trickery or slight of hand with regards to the election process.
First, California is an aberration in relation to the rest of the country. There are 38 million people in the state of which 22 million are eligible to vote, and around 15 million are actually registered. About 43% or 6.5 million of these are Democrats, and about 36% or 5.5 million of these are Republicans. In a winner-take-all scenario, 5 to 6 million Republican votes in the nation's largest state are as good as uncounted in every Presidential election, and this greatly bothered the board.
Second, most candidates for President do not campaign in the state for votes and simply use it for raising money. By establishing a process whereby electors are chosen by Congressional district, California then sets itself up as a number of states within a state, thus forcing candidates to spend time here. For example, Orange County incorporates roughly five Congressional districts, or as many Electoral College votes as West Virginia. In effect, Orange County becomes a state, as does San Diego, L.A., the Inland Empire area of San Bernardino/Riverside, the Central Valley, and the Bay area.
Third, the idea that all states will follow suit and begin diluting down the effect of the Electoral College doesn't make sense. Why would West Virginia, with only five Electoral College votes, make itself less attractive by not having a winner-take-all process? The idea of a winner-take-all process was not something board members had a problem with. It just seemed that in the mega-nation state of California, it no longer makes sense.
Fourth, the Founding Fathers, in framing the Constitution, were specific that the states, not the federal government, could each individually determine how their respective Electoral College votes would be apportioned. Club members felt that this in and of itself was a built-in check and balance on the Electoral College process, whereby a state has the ability to adjust and change as required to ensure the proper representation of its voters. This is a Federalist approach, and the Lincoln Club believes that the time to adjust has arrived.
Fifth, and last, one of the prominent ideas behind the formation of the Electoral College was to level the playing field between states so that the larger states would not be able to impose their will time and again over the smaller states. The situation we find ourselves in today is that a few extremely large states in the winner-take-all column are having a greater impact on elections than ever before. Club members felt that the Founding Fathers would be aghast at the size and influence of just a small number of states, and that they would be in support of the kind of political readjustment that the California Counts initiative proposes.
The Lincoln Club believes that California is just too big for a winner-take- all process, and that the California Counts initiative solves the representation problem without compromising the integrity of the Electoral College process. We think that the Founding Fathers would approve of this initiative - one that makes votes count. _________________________________________________________
NEW!! Electoral change is hope for GOP November 26, 2007 03:29:39 AM
There used to be a phrase to describe a certain breed of California voter: INITIATIVE UPDATE ! Just two weeks ago, the Reform Initiative was destined to join many other great ideas that never made the ballot due to lack of money, organization or time. Today, thanks to the generous support from donors and herculean efforts from everyone working on the measure, I am very happy to inform that we are well on our way to qualifying the Electoral Reform California Initiative 07-0032 for the June 3, 2008 ballot. Here is the update: We have gathered a total of nearly 400,000 signatures is proving enormously successful – so much so that we were able to decrease the price we are paying circulators on the street – an almost unprecedented situation for an initiative campaign working on a deadline. by congressional district. Only 34% of voters want to keep the current winner-take-all system. The more voters are informed about the initiative, the stronger they support it. Thank you! **************************************************************
by James Lacy, Attorney -Politcal Law 11-2-2007 and 10-29-2007 There is a report in the Sacramento Bee today that Art Torres, Chair of the California Democratic Party, is claiming that the PERA initiative, O7-0032 which would reform California's apportionment of electoral college votes to recognize regional diversity and make our state relevant again in Presidential elections, is unconstitutional. Long established U.S. Supreme Court case law (see Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355 (1931) and Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U.S. 565 (1911) ) provide strong logic and support for the initiative. Those cases establish rock-solid support for the proposition that the word "legislature" in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, dealing with apportionment of state as determined by its particular "polity." In these cases, "legislature" in Article 1 was interpreted to include not only the state legislature itself, but the full lawmaking process, including the Governor's veto, and the people's power of referendum. In California, all power, including the power to act as the "legislature," is reserved to the people in our state constitution. The "polity" of our lawmaking process includes initiatives, and the initiative process in California was placed in the state constitution about the time of the Smiley and Davis cases. Court's are compelled to follow Supreme by the Supreme Court under Article 1 to Congressional elections will be applied under a review of the "California Counts" initiative under Article 2 for Presidential elections of the Constitutionally coequal Executive branch. In other words, these same rules apply to the coequal Congressional and Executive Powers, and if the Supreme Court already has determined that referenda is action of the "legislature" in Ohio (under Article 1), then Courts will find that initiative is action of the "legislature" in California (under Article 2). Loyola Law Professor Rick Hasen is quoted in the article. Rick provides a fine service for election lawyers through his blog. And Rick is a brilliant lawyer. Rick states the law accurately in the news report. Rick tries to be neutral, but he has been associated with liberal legal causes in the past, and I believe he has greatly underplayed the Article 1/Article 2 "coequal" analysis, which is such a strong argument that even reluctant observers who understand the law should agree that even in a close call (which it is not), the likelihood is a reviewing court will uphold the California Counts initiative, and California will be relevant again in Presidential elections. The Federal Constitution states at Article II, Section 1 that states shall "appoint, in any manner as the Legislature therof may direct, a Number of Electors" for the purpose of electing the President and Vice-President of the United States. inherent political power" to act as the legislature through the initiative process to "propose statutes and amendments..." and to "adopt or reject them." constitution also includes the people's powers of initiative and referendum. Professional Engineers in California Government v. Kempton (2007) 56 Cal.Rptr.3d 814, 40 Cal.4th 1016, 155 P.3d 226. Rossi v. Brown (1995) 38 Cal.Rptr.2d 363, 9 Cal.4th 688, 889 P.2d 557. All presumptions favor the validity of initiative measures. California Family Bioethics Council v. California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (App. 1 Dist. 2007) 55 Cal. Rptr.3d 272, 147 Cal.App.4th 1319, review denied. The initiative power must be Tobacconists v. State of California (App. 4 Dist. 2003) 135 Cal.Rptr.2d 224, 109 Cal. App.4th 792, review denied. The voters' power to decide whether or not the Legislature can amend or repeal initiative statutes is absolute and includes the power to enable Professional Engineers in California Government v. Kempton (2007) 56 Cal.Rptr.3d 814, 40 Cal.4th 1016, 155 P.3d 226. The Presidential Elector Reform Initiative is a needed reform that will guarantee that California's diversity will be represented in the Electoral College, and also make California relevant in the presidenital election process. Other states, such as Maine and Nebraska, have similar laws. The proposed California initiative, as stated above, is also strongly supported by the legal authorities and the Federal and state constitution. All voters need to do to make this necessary reform happen is sign the petition and then vote "Yes" in June! ******************************************************************************
Art Torres: The big bad wolf! ______________________________________________________ are more accurately represented.By Alexander Keyssar The effort by some California Republicans to alter the way the state's electoral votes are distributed in presidential elections has been miraculously resurrected. The proposal -- which would replace the winner-take-all system with an allocation of electoral votes by congressional districts had stalled last month in the wake of a strangely surreptitious financial contribution to the cause from a Rudy Giuliani backer. The proposal had also faced a ferocious assault from Democrats (especially Clintonians) who fought it with money, focus groups, radio ads and red-hot rhetoric, insisting that the proposed reform was nothing but a "power grab" by Republicans, a dangerous and blatant ploy designed to rig an election through procedural trickery. But now it's back. Last week, a new group of experienced organizers said not only was it reviving the initiative but it would spend "whatever it takes" to get the proposal onto the June ballot. Democrats began crying foul again, worried that Republican electoral votes from California in the 2008 election could go from zero (under the winner-take-all system in this majority Democratic state) to as many as 19 (the number of districts that have elected GOP members of Congress). But this partisan battle for short-term advantage between Democrats and Republicans in California ought not obscure the larger truth: The strange method of electing presidents under which we currently operate needs to be fixed. The way the system works is, in fact, subject to partisan manipulation that could be decisive in a close election. Florida. Right now, any state legislature could legally decide to apportion its state's electoral votes in almost any way it wants -- "winner take all" (the system currently used in most states), or by district (as happens in Maine and Nebraska), or in some other as-yet-undetermined fashion. In late November 2000, for instance, Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature seriously considered ignoring the disputed popular vote altogether and choosing electors by itself. A bit of history suggests that this should not surprise us. The winner-take-all system of allocating electoral votes -- which we now accept as normal and which awards all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who wins a majority of the popular vote in the state -- was itself the product of partisan maneuvers, put into place by politicians of different parties, including our revered founding father and democratic hero, Thomas Jefferson. The Constitution drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 said (and says) nothing about how a state should choose its electors or apportion electoral votes. It leaves that decision to the legislature of each state. Not surprisingly, when political leaders were first trying to erect the institutions that the founding fathers had sketched on paper in Philadelphia, different states adopted different methods of choosing presidential electors. In some, the legislatures appointed electors by themselves (without holding any popular election); others developed a winner-take-all system in which they held "general ticket" elections, granting the winning candidate all of the state's electoral votes; still others allocated the electors by district. Numerous states changed systems from one election to the next. The most progressive political thinking of the era favored the district plan -- because it would most closely link the preferences of voters to the selection of electors. As Jefferson observed, "All agree that an election by districts would be best, if it could be general." Yet Jefferson proved more than willing to let partisan advantage trump what "would be best." As the 1800 election approached, his Republican supporters in Virginia, mindful that their opponents in the Federalist Party had won five of the state's electoral votes in 1796, replaced the district system with "winner take all" -- thereby guaranteeing Jefferson all of Virginia's electoral votes. (Massachusetts, the home of Jefferson's rival, John Adams, retaliated by entrusting the selection of electors to the Federalist- dominated legislature.) A few years later, Jefferson, as president, backed away from supporting a constitutional amendment mandating a district system throughout the nation -- a strategy that would have eliminated the potential unfairness of having a district approach in some states and the winner-take-all system in others -- because "winner take all" appeared to be benefiting his party. Indeed, "winner take all" became, and endured as, the primary method of choosing electors precisely because of partisan dynamics. Regardless of the broader democratic principles at stake, dominant parties in nearly all individual states had embraced the short-run advantages of "winner take all" by 1830; since then, few states have had an appetite for dividing up their electoral votes while everyone else was using "winner take all" -- in part because doing so would appear to lessen the state's clout in national politics. (Democrats in Michigan made the change in the 1890s and were severely punished for their pains after Republicans regained control of the state legislature.) National efforts to impose a district plan (or a similar system that would allocate electoral votes in proportion to the distribution of the popular vote within a state) have occasionally garnered widespread support (several times winning passage through one branch of Congress), but, so far, partisan opponents of such a change have successfully prevented such a constitutional amendment from receiving the necessary two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. All of which has left us with a winner-take-all system that was never voted on or designed as a matter of national policy and has numerous intrinsic defects (such as transforming presidential elections into nonevents in the many states where candidates don't bother to campaign because the outcome is not in doubt). We are also left with a constitutional framework that remains vulnerable to partisan machinations. That framework, created by men of the 18th century who could barely imagine mass political parties, permits the rules of the game to be changed in midstream by any one state or any collection of states. The largest states, of course, would be particularly inviting targets. If the Republicans truly believe that it would be fairer and more democratic to choose electors by district, then instead of introducing such plans piecemeal in states where they would benefit, they should introduce a constitutional amendment to create a national district system -- one that would apply to Texas and South Carolina as well as California. And if the Democrats truly want to prevent procedural "power grabs, " they should sign on to such a proposal -- or offer a "proportional plan" or (better yet) actively back a national popular election that would eliminate the electoral college altogether. If both parties worked together on such legislation, jointly committing themselves to remedy a design flaw in our Constitution, they might even succeed in dissipating a bit of the cynicism that the electorate so frequently expresses about political parties that seem far more interested in their own welfare than the fate of the nation. Alexander Keyssar is a professor of history and social policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. ************************************************************************** Will changing the how we elect presidents be the latest California trend? BY RHODES COOK Wall Street Journal Wednesday, October 17, 2007 12:01 a.m. It would not be surprising if the most important single primary in 2008 takes place in California. But don't look for it to be the presidential primary on Super-Duper Tuesday Feb. 5. Look instead to the state primary on June 3, up to now a low-profile event that could become fraught with significance if some California Republicans succeed in getting a highly controversial proposition on the ballot. If successful, it would ensure the party's nominee 20 or so electoral votes from California next fall, even if the GOP candidate loses the state for the fifth straight election. And if the 2008 election is as close as the last two have been, that could be enough to keep the White House in Republican hands. The political weapon of choice for the GOP is a plan that would distribute electoral votes to congressional district winners (one per district, plus two to the statewide winner of the popular vote) instead of the winner-take-all format that nearly every state currently favors. The plan was submitted as a ballot proposal to California election officials in July by a law firm that has represented the state Republican Party. The district plan has been employed for years by two small states, Maine and Nebraska, with results consistently the same as winner-take-all. But if the plan were applied in California in 2004, the state's electoral vote would have shifted dramatically--from 55-0 for Democrat John Kerry (a 10 percentage point winner in the state's popular vote) to 33-22 Kerry, with Bush taking one electoral vote for each of the 22 congressional districts that he carried. In one swoop, Bush would have won more electoral votes in California than he did in capturing the highly priced battleground state of Ohio (worth 20 electors). And in one instant, the nationwide electoral vote tally would have shifted in Bush's favor from 286-251 (with one "faithless" Democratic elector in Minnesota) to a more commanding 317-221. The district plan would have transformed Bush's narrow Electoral College victory--where Kerry could have won the election by taking Ohio--into a decisive triumph. If applied nationally over the last generation, the district plan would have reversed the outcome of the 1960 election, electing Richard Nixon rather than John F. Kennedy, would have produced a 269-269 electoral vote tie between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976, and would have consistently tightened the Electoral College outcomes in every presidential election from 1960 to the end of the 20th century--with the winning candidate losing electoral votes and the losing candidate gaining some each time. However, in both 2000 and 2004, the district plan would have actually expanded George W. Bush's electoral vote margins--from a razor-thin five in 2000 to 38, and from 35 in 2004 to 96. ***************************************************** The Hillary's gang of pirates know that this
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer Sunday, October 7, 2007
They called themselves "The Lincoln Brigade." Even as Democrats feared having to spend as much as $40 million for a bruising, bloody fight expected to drag on for months, this makeshift group of California Democratic operatives needed just weeks to pummel a Republican-funded push for a ballot measure that threatened to change the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. The ruthlessly effective battle plan of the California Democrats' group raises the specter that, as the 2008 election looms, Republicans may have to confront a far more aggressive Democratic ground game that has revived the old "Clinton war room" philosophy. "We need to fight back and not be reluctant - that if they come after you with a knife, to pull out a gun," said California Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, former spokesman for President Bill Clinton's White House and Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. The group took aim at the Presidential Election Reform Act, a proposed California ballot measure that would change the way the state apportions its Electoral College votes and likely benefit the Republican nominee. After two terms of Republican control of the White House - and angered by what they perceived as a history of electoral "dirty tricks" by GOP strategists such as President Bush's key adviser Karl Rove - the Democrats' response in California could serve as an indication of what lies ahead in the 2008 battle for the White House. "We ran it like a military operation," says Margie Sullivan, a former chief of staff to three Clinton Cabinet secretaries who was closely involved in the effort. "You had this SWAT team of talented, hyper-engaged people. ... It was: boom, boom, boom." Lehane and Sullivan are some of the lead players in the group, which includes many former insiders from the Clinton administration. They named their group after the brigade of American volunteers who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. After events such as the 2000 Florida presidential election recount, the 2003 California recall election that ousted Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign against Sen. John Kerry, "Democrats are waking up to reality, " said Doug Boxer, the son of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and a Bay Area consultant who was political director for the effort against the ballot measure. "It doesn't mean (Democrats are) jettisoning their values system ... but the Clinton administration played hardball on a lot of things, and we'd gotten away from that," Boxer said. "We're back to the Clinton era." Veteran California Republican strategist Dan Schnur conceded that the recent Democratic effort against the ballot measure was astonishingly effective. But he argued that the result - Republican supporters have for the most part backed away from the measure - may have been due more to the high stakes and a hunger to get back into the White House than brilliant campaign strategy. "There's an old saying: Nothing concentrates your attention like the prospect of your own destruction," Schnur said. "They correctly identified this as a mortal blow to their Electoral College prospects next year. If they hadn't mobilized with everything they had, they would have been signing their own death warrant." Interviews with lead players in the effort last week reinforced that scenario: Democrats from local to national levels shifted into gear almost as soon as rumors surfaced in May that Republicans might try to "steal the election" in the Democratic-leaning state with a ballot measure to benefit the GOP nominee. Instead of the winner-take-all system used in all but two states, the measure provided that 53 of California's 55 electoral colleges votes would go one-by-one to the presidential candidate who wins each of the state's 53 congressional districts. Analysts said such a change could swing about 20 of California's Electoral College votes - about as many as key states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania - from the Democratic candidate, who would be favored to win the statewide popular vote, to the Republican candidate who could win Republican-dominated congressional districts. By the time the GOP-backed group called "Californians for Equal Representation," led by attorney Thomas Hiltachk - who has represented Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state GOP - submitted the ballot measure to the state attorney general's office on July 17, the ad-hoc Democratic group was already engaged in a flurry of action. Lehane had contacted Sullivan and Tom Steyer, a longtime major party donor and lead fundraiser for Kerry who heads San Francisco-based Farallon Capitol. "He said, 'We've got to stop this - now' ... and immediately kicked in $150,000," Lehane recalled. They roused a crew of party operatives including Peter Ragone, longtime aide to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who acknowledged that many believed the GOP effort was a longshot. But "we'd seen that movie before," Ragone said. "We had learned ... that when Republicans start with these shenanigans, you have to hit them hard. Our attitude was: Not in our state." The goal, Sullivan said, was to "strangle the baby in the cradle" and kill the ballot measure early, rather than let it qualify for the ballot - where it would be much tougher and more expensive to beat. As the campaign in favor of the measure prepared to circulate the petitions and get the voter signatures needed to qualify it for the ballot, Doug Boxer contacted every major Democratic elected official from mayors to state legislators to California's U.S. senators and urged them to speak publicly against the Electoral College plan. Steyer and Sullivan hit the phones, rounding up financial backing and commitments from deep-pocketed donors like Nancy Parrish, a leading supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign and Hollywood producer Norman Lear, who put up $50,000. Also at the ready: producer Steven Bing and major Democratic donor and developer Walter Shorenstein, Sullivan said. Pollster Paul Maslin's early focus groups found that a slim majority of Californians initially backed the Republicans' call for an end to "winner take all," so the Democrats began a daily drumbeat aimed at the media - press conferences, meeting with the state's leading editorial boards and outreach to Internet Web sites and blogs. The Democrats wanted to "tell our side of the story" additionally through TV and radio ads to erode public support and scare off potential GOP donors, Lehane said. At one point, "Norman Lear pitched in on a script change," Lehane said. "That made us nervous ... it's was kind of like Picasso giving you advice on painting." Frank Russo, publisher of the California Progress Report, a popular Democratic Web site, said the strategy achieved "a clarion call that went out to all the troops," prompting netroots activists such as the Courage Campaign and Daily Kos loyalists to pound the issue to the grassroots. "It was like the old Who song: We won't get fooled again," he said. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean flew to San Francisco for a press conference with labor leaders to "make it very clear from the beginning that the new Democratic Party is not going to take it lying down - we still stand and fight," said DNC spokesman Karen Finney. Editorial boards lined up against the measure. Then came a turning point - Schwarzenegger's public slap at the measure, which he said suggested a "loser mentality" by his party and an attempt to change election rules in the middle of the game. Democrats still felt they had a big challenge: unmasking the money people behind Hiltachk's group - which by early September had said it had collected 40,000 signatures to put the measure on the June 2008 ballot. Many of the original backers of the GOP ballot measure also were supporters of GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Then came the news that the single $175,000 contribution to Hiltachk's Sacramento group was from a separate organization run by a Missouri GOP attorney named Charles Hurtt III - another Giuliani donor. But Hurtt's group wouldn't reveal its donors. Democratic attorney James Harrison announced the party would file a complaint with federal election officials alleging money laundering - and the state's Fair Political Practices Commission acknowledged looking into the issue. Quickly, the GOP ballot measure drive collapsed. Hiltachk resigned - as did his group's spokesman, Kevin Eckery and the chief fundraiser, Marty Wilson. They said they didn't want to accept money from anonymous donors - and support and funding had dried up for the measure. In the last week, the money man behind the Missouri group was revealed to be Giuliani policy adviser and top fundraiser, billionaire New York hedge fund executive Paul Singer. That has prompted Harrison to pledge that Democrats will continue demanding answers regarding Giuliani's links to the effort - right into the 2008 primary season. Eckery, the former spokesman for the ballot measure group, said that while the experience served as "a tune-up for the Clinton machine in California," Democrats shouldn't get overconfident from the result. "Politics is a contact sport," he said, "and the presidential election is the Super Bowl." Cast of characters Some of the key Lincoln Brigade players and their Clinton connections: Chris Lehane: former White House spokesman for President Bill Clinton and 2000 spokesman for Al Gore's presidential campaign. Lehane is supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential effort. Doug Boxer: consultant and son of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California. Tom Steyer: founder of San Francisco's Farallon Capital Management, one of Sen. Clinton's biggest donors and a leading fundraiser for 2004 John Kerry campaign. Margie Sullivan: Farallon Capital management analyst, Democratic fundraiser and former chief of staff to three U.S. Cabinet secretaries during the Clinton administration. Ari Swiller: Democratic fundraiser and "kitchen cabinet" insider of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Hillary Clinton backer. Peter Ragone: a former aide in the Clinton administration and Gore spokesman. He is former spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Clinton endorser. Bill Carrick: longtime Democratic strategist for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Paul Maslin: veteran Democratic pollster, formerly for Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and now for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate. Sean Sullivan: opposition researcher formerly with the San Francisco firm of Averell "Ace" Smith, who is now Hillary Clinton's California campaign manager. E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com. Sept 2, 2007 SFGate by Matthew Yi |
