Primaries // Current

Indicted Sen. Stevens of Alaska Wins GOP Primary

Senator Ted Stevens’s easy victory in Alaska’s Republican primary on Tuesday sets him up for two more fights this fall that are likely to be much tougher: one in the general election and the other in the courtroom.

The senator received 63 percent of the primary vote against six challengers, even as he faces a trial in September on charges that he concealed $250,000 in home renovations and gifts provided by an oil services company, VECO.

If the trial goes forward on schedule, Mr. Stevens, who has been in the Senate for 40 years and is revered in Alaska for bringing home billions of dollars in federal spending, will be defending himself in court while he also tries to hold off a strong general election challenge from a popular and well-financed Democrat, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage.

Mr. Begich led the senator by double digits in some polls before the primary, and he has received strong support from national Democrats who hope to strengthen the party’s Senate majority. Yet Mr. Stevens, who has long asserted that he alone has the seniority and effectiveness to keep projects coming to Alaska, is not expected to go down easily.

“We’ve got enough Democrats down there already,” Mr. Stevens said in a sometimes combative interview on KTUU television late Tuesday. “If we give them 60 votes, Alaska will never win anything again. I’m in this race to win, and I’m going to win.”

The senator said that Mr. Begich would ally himself with Senate Democrats like Barbara Boxer of California, Maria Cantwell of Washington and Charles E. Schumer of New York and that “they’re all against Alaska.”

Mr. Begich, who easily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, called that assertion “outrageous” in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“He has an old style of politics, which is divide and conquer, negative,” Mr. Begich said of the senator. “That’s not how I have served.” The mayor noted that he disagrees with national Democrats on issues like gun control and that he favors opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil production.

Mr. Begich has cast his differences with Mr. Stevens mostly as a matter of style, and he has not tried to use the senator’s legal troubles against him. He said he did not plan on changing tactics now.

“Just the media coverage alone, that’s going to create its own sphere of activity, and how Ted Stevens responds to that,” Mr. Begich said. “There will be times when I’ll be pulled in that direction, but I’m going to avoid it if I can.”Senator Ted Stevens’s easy victory in Alaska’s Republican primary on Tuesday sets... more

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Less than 20 percent of registered voters turned out for primaries

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Fewer than one in five registered voters cast a ballot in... more

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Obama wants full voting for FL, MI delegates

Now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, he wants... more

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Trouble in the Senate: will Lieberman go Republican?

What a difference a few years can make. Back in 2000, Al Gore had found in Joe... more

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Paris would storm the Bastille all over again for Obama

Yesterday was Bastille Day, the French equivalent of Independence Day. Having just... more

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Right-Wing Email Questions Obama's Citizenship

This came from a USNA alumnus. It'll be interesting to see how the media handle... more

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The Democratic Primary in 8 Minutes

handy dandy video from Slate.

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Video - 'No decisions tonight' says Clinton

Sen. Hillary Clinton tells supporters she will not be making a decision tonight about... more

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Clinton fanatics!

I saw an interesting article from Sam Stein of The Huffington Post. So funny and sad... more

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Dem panel votes to seat all Florida delegates with half votes

Members of a Democratic rules committee voted on Saturday to seat all of Florida's... more

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Obama used party rules to foil Clinton

Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul.
Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.

Obama's campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage—money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.

"Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. "They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not."

Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.

Obama used the Democrats' system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.

In a stark example, Obama's victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.

The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama's press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt's presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.

Obama won a majority of the 23 Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5 and then spent the following two weeks racking up 11 straight victories, building an insurmountable lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses.

What made it especially hard for Clinton to catch up was that Obama understood and took advantage of a nominating system that emerged from the 1970s and '80s, when the party struggled to find a balance between party insiders and its rank-and-file voters.
Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton... more

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Apathy, not ignorance elected George Bush

People like to say that Americans voted for George W. Bush because we ’re ignorant.... more

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Countdown special comment to President Bush: “Shut the hell up”

In an astoundingly ignorant interview with The Politico’s Mike Allen Tuesday,... more

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Obama: says sorry for 'Sweetie' comment

Barack Obama has personally apologized to a Michigan television reporter for referring... more

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New voters could redraw the electoral map!

During an April 25 conference call to unveil the Obama campaign's 50-state voter... more

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Obama heading to Michigan and Florida

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Barack Obama's surging presidential campaign announced Monday that he will visit politically neglected Florida and Michigan, as he focuses on a general election strategy with his primary race winding down.

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It will be Obama's first time in either state since signing a pledge nine months ago not to campaign in the two states that violated national party rules with early primaries. Obama will have to build relationships in the two critical general election battlegrounds if he wins the Democratic nomination.

The Obama campaign announced a five-state tour over the next two weeks that includes stops in remaining primary states South Dakota and Oregon but is dominated by swing states where he hopes to run strong against Republican John McCain once the marathon Democratic race ends.

Obama leads in delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, even though he's expected to lose badly on Tuesday to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in West Virginia. He'll try to move on from the loss by campaigning in Missouri, a state that President Bush won in 2000 and 2004.

On Wednesday, he plans to make two stops in Michigan — the swing Macomb County and the GOP stronghold of Grand Rapids. He plans to spend three days starting May 21 in Florida, with stops in Tampa, Orlando, Palm Beach County and Miami. The area is a popular stop for political fundraising, but the Obama campaign says the candidate will mostly be appealing for votes.

"Our schedule reflects the fact that we are still fighting for votes and delegates in the remaining contests but also that we are going to places that are going to be competitive in the fall," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "John McCain has gone unchallenged for far too long, and we're going to make sure that voters in competitive states know the choice in this election between changing Washington and the third term of George Bush's failed policies that McCain is offering."

All the Democratic presidential candidates agreed on boycotting Michigan and Florida. Clinton won both states, but no delegates were awarded. Restoring the delegates is a major part of Clinton's longshot strategy for the nomination.

As she campaigned in West Virginia on Mother's Day, Clinton rejected any suggestion that she's dropping out of the race. She used campaign stops to remind voters of women who didn't give up in difficult situations, who fought for equal rights, broke into male-dominated professions and succeeded when others told them to quit.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Barack Obama's surging presidential campaign announced Monday that... more