DNC TV ad on Iraq

Here's the new DNC ad on Iraq. The five year anniversary is this week. As someone mentioned to me the other day, the Civil War only lasted 4 years and our part in WWI lasted only four years.

Democrats Bring Sweeping Ethics Reform

The US Senate has passed Senate Bill 1 and it will become law unless George Bush vetos it; which he is not expected to do.

Here are some of the highlights of the bill courtesy of CQPolitics:

- Senators will no longer be able to take gifts or junkets from lobbyists.

- Senate spouses will be banned from the lobbying business, unless they were lobbyists before their spouse’s most recent election or before they married a senator.

- Senators and their top aides will have to notify the Ethics Committee within three days when they begin negotiating new jobs.

- Some of the bill’s provisions have already been put into practice. Senate appropriators, for example, have begun including lists of earmark sponsors in committee reports. New Senate rules will require appropriators to continue doing that.

- Senators will be able to attack earmarks on the floor with a point of order triggering an hour of debate, and it will take a three-fifths majority vote to retain the provision.

- Another new point of order will be available to challenge “dead of night” provisions — items that show up in a conference report but did not appear in either the House or Senate versions of the legislation. Unless a three-fifths majority wants to keep such a provision, the offending language would be removed.

- Matching a House rule, the new law would prohibit senators from influencing private hiring based on party affiliation — an effort to prevent future dabbling in decisions by lobbying firms along K Street.

- And lawmakers in either chamber convicted of felonies including bribery and fraud would see their government pensions reduced, receiving only the portion they contributed.

- New restrictions on free travel would ban many trips but allow senators to enjoy one-day journeys at others’ expense. Also still legal: trips financed by nonprofits and universities.

- Senators will still be able to anonymously block a request for unanimous consent, but only for six days. After that, the senator’s name would be disclosed unless the objection was withdrawn.

- After Dec. 31, senators, top aides and top administration officials would have to wait two years after leaving office before lobbying Congress. The House chose to keep its one-year “cooling off” period.

- When former members of the House or Senate begin to lobby, they will lose their access to their former chamber’s floor and gym.

- Also starting with the new year, lobbyists would be required to report their activities quarterly to the House clerk and Senate secretary. Those reports are now required twice a year.

- The bill would give the Federal Election Commission six months to draft regulations requiring campaign committees to report bundled contributions from lobbyists and their political committees that total at least $15,000 during any six-month period. The first round of those twice-yearly reports would most likely cover activity during the first half of 2008.

- Another provision of the legislation would be evident at next year’s national political conventions. Lawmakers would not be permitted to participate in events honoring them and funded by lobbyists, unless they are presidential or vice presidential candidates.

- Senators will have to certify that the funding they request would not financially benefit themselves, their spouses, children, parents, siblings and parents-in-law.

“That will really shut down the junkets,” said Craig Holman, a Public Citizen lobbyist. “Those are some sweeping bans.”

“This is really the first time that the American people are going to get a peek at how the bundling system works,” said McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center. “It is a foot in the door.”

Dan Gilgoff, John Arthur Eaves, and the way the National Stuff Works

I just posted the article from this Sunday's Dallas Morning News about John Arthur Eaves, and it seemed necessary to talk about the article in one post and do the analysis in another.

Dan Gilgoff is a widely respected author who puts a lot of rubber on the road. I think however, that he's missing the angle on this one and attributing to The National Democratic Party a thing that is inherently local. He makes the assumption that the DNC is involved in recruiting for the Governorships in the way that they're involved in recruiting Congressional and Senate candidates. It's not entirely the same.

I don't want to be misinterpreted as saying that the Eaves campaign doesn't have the support of the DNC or DGA or whatever. That is a separate conversation. Although I hear that he and Gov. Dean do have a good relationship.

Legislative calculus goes on for months or years. Thus legislating is a team sport. In 2006 the DCCC in conjunction with (at the time) Rep. Pelosi's office put together a national policy plan. They said, this is what our team is going to do. And the folks who were top and second tier congressional candidates got on board with that package. They became the local representatives of the larger national organizations. "We're going to be on the Anti-Iraq, pro environment, minimum wage raising team," they said. Senate races work the same way. Sen. Schumer gets on the phone and says "Mr. Webb, this is what we're going to do and it's a great way to sell yourself to the folks back home in Manassas." And in order to get those agendas passed, those organizations are heavily invested in each targeted race. There are weekly, and then nightly conference calls with staff and the DSCC or DCCC folks assigned to your race.

Gubernatorials don't work that way. They're races about leadership and character and completely determined by the local political circumstances. In Ohio, Ted Strickland got elected by saying "Ohio Republicans are corrupt. They steal your money, falsify elections, and have for sale signs sitting on their desks. And the national Republican party has the same problems" among other things. There's a harder time nationalizing elections for state offices. If the problem is in Jackson, talking about DC probably won't get the job done.

So the DGA, DLGA, DAGA, and all of the other state office associations function differently than DCCC and DSCC. My experience with them is that they serve primarily as information clearing houses. They store institutional memories. If you need a good media guy, you call and get a recommendation. You need advice on how to target your field plan, they can talk to you about what's worked in the past. They serve other functions, but that's how my involvement with those organizations has gone. My impression has always been that my campaign was a box on a grid. Their purpose is not to be heavily invested in the local political circumstances. It's resource allocation.

The reason that's important to know is that although the DNC and the DGA will be involved in this election, the Eaves candidacy is ultimately a thing generated, sustained by, and ultimately judged by local circumstances. The fact that there's a guy running as a Pro-Life, Pro-School Prayer, Baby Baptizing Democrat in Mississippi says more about Mississippi than it does the National Democratic Party. That's a point that Dan Gilgoff seems to ignore.