Tag Archives: Florida primary

Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

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Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

 They couldn’t work without an element of verite.

Talking Points Memo runs this piece on Florida today, reporting that Romney forces are outspending Gingrich forces there five-to-one.

“The Dems think these figures suggest something else: that it’s not Romney who’s winning votes in Florida, but the size of his wallet. ”

Point taken. However, these trend lines should not be over-simplified.

Certainly money has a devastatingly corrosive effect in politics. So do infamous ad campaigns–Willie Horton, the Osama bin Laden attacks on Max Cleland in Georgia, etc. This writer opposes on constitutional grounds any notion that a) money is speech, or b) corporations are persons.  The effect of the unanswered ads against Gingrich in Iowa is now part of the history of election 2012.

But the success of that ad campaign went beyond money. The ads were devastating because they showed Gingrich in live and still footage doing things he actually did, because they revived press accounts of Gingrich’s actual deeds.

Romney ads are not the only ones playing in Florida. As another local source points out, pro-Gingrich ads are running every ten minutes in Miami, in rush hour–in Spanish. The line is always the same. The ads attack not Romney but Obama.

“Same ad.  The ad attacked only Obama–the theme was broken promises–jobs, housing. ”

At a guess, it is aimed at Hispanics facing either foreclosure or pink slips, or who know someone who does face either one, betting the farm that the voters will blame the president and will see Gingrich as the GOPer best poised to oppose the White House.

Gingrich

It is hard to imagine Gingrich flying high in the Latino demographic. This has less to do with Cuba than with how he comes across–as disrespectful and presumptuous. Aiming over Romney’s head at the Rose Garden is liable to look much the same way, as far as I can tell.

‘Broken promises’ looks to be the line against Obama in the general election, at this point. They must be hoping for an awful lot of amnesia, even more than usual, given the state of the economy at the end of the GWBush administration and the GOP opposition to every improvement since.

One big question about election 2012 right now is whether the amnesia will be facilitated, or how much, by news media predisposed to a ‘close election’.

2004 election revisited, part 6: Florida

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2004 election revisited, part 6: Florida

Monday night’s GOP debate in Tampa ( NBC) may not have produced much warmth or light, except for Ron Paul’s comments on the Strait of Hormuz. But it further highlighted reason to look back at the 2004 campaign. These guys are going to need all the help they can get in the general election. Citizens United notwithstanding, half a billion in paid political ads goes only so far when the the other ticket is Newt Gingrich. He says his message is that of Washington outsider because he was detested in Washington.

Gingrich is campaigning on a claim to be about “changing Washington.” It’s like the fat, intemperate, unreliable old Falstaff yelling, “They hate us youth!”

Shakespeare

Déjà vu all over again

The issue went nowhere in the political press at the time, but there were striking anomalies in the Florida vote count in 2004. The headlines were different from 2000. The problems were less blatant. No tiny white-collar mob of Republican congressional staffers and lobbyists raised fists against the vote counters. But even after all the attention directed to Florida’s electoral process in 2000, there were still problems in 2004.

Take a look at the numbers on the ground, including party registration. Unlike South Carolina, Florida registers voters by party.

Florida counties 2008 election

Of Florida’s 67 counties, in 2004 Republicans constituted more than 50 percent of registered voters in only eight. This fact might surprise readers who get their information from the national political press, which represents Florida as a red state. But eight it was:

  • Collier
  • Indian River
  • Martin, Clay
  • Okaloosa (57.2%)
  • Santa Rosa
  • St. Johns
  • Walton (barely)

Population of the eight red counties in 2000:  1,083,846.  Population of Florida:  15,982,378.

In contrast, Florida had 31 counties where Democrats constituted more than 50% of registered voters. In 21 counties, Democrats constituted more than 60% of registered voters. In thirteen of them more than 70% of registered voters were Democrats, and in four of them more than 80% of registered voters were Democrats.

Population in preponderantly Democratic counties:  2,700,000+.

This is a red state?

In 28 counties where neither party registered more than 50%, nineteen had more Republicans and nine had more Democrats. The biggest plurality county was huge Miami-Dade (pop. 2.3 million, 43% Dem). The smallest was Highlands (pop. 87K, 45% GOP).

Population in counties where GOP registration was heaviest, over 50 percent, totaled less than majority-Democratic Broward County alone. Population in counties with a less lopsided Democratic majority totaled 8.4 million.

A bigger anomaly

The biggest divide between Florida counties in the 2004 election was not red and blue but touch-screen and op-scan.

As in voting machines.

Fifteen counties used touch-screen voting machines, produced by ES&S or Sequoia. The other 52 counties used paper ballots, BUT not counted manually. Instead, the paper ballots were processed by optical-scanning equipment similar to that used by supermarkets, manufactured by ES&S, Diebold and (in one county) Sequoia.

Optical scanning in voting has been used for years, generally without the checking that turns up mistakes about 5 percent of the time in supermarket scanners. Mathematician and independent researcher Kathy Dopp tabulated differences between touch-screen counties and op-scan counties.

The difference? A simple and blatant pattern:

  • In touch-screen counties, the county’s vote for president went with its majority party almost always.
  • In op-scan counties, the county’s vote for president went opposite to its majority party most of the time.

If this sounds like a small difference, it’s not. Whatever problems the touch-screens had, 14 out of 15 counties using touch-screen equipment had an outcome at least in line with registration. Counties with more Republicans went Republican. Counties with more Democrats went Democratic. Plant a tomato, get a tomato.

Of the 52 counties using op-scanned ballots, 21 voted in the direction predicted by their voter registration–fewer than half. The other 31 counties went opposite their own voter registration. The kicker is that almost always, they went to Bush.

In the 21 op-scan counties where the vote ran with party registration, it was often skewed. Somehow Democrats there did not vote Democratic, and Kerry also picked up NO percentage from independents and unaffiliated–in a national election where the independent vote trended toward Kerry.

How it works

If an operative wanted to help a candidate win, in a state like Florida with many counties, the way to do it would be subtly so as not to affect the outcome of any individual county. That way, no local challenges would be provoked; the only way to examine the outcome would be to challenge the entire state. A few hundred or a few thousand votes in a lopsided county would not be missed, or suspect.

This process would be aided by the predominant media focus on red and blue.

Access to county statistics on population, demographics, and voter registration is already in the hopper, remember. Source code does not control turnout, but the political experts could weigh in on that little problem; look at the lines in big touch-screen counties inadequately supplied with voting machines, the problems with provisional ballots and early voting, the misleading flyers and robo-calls, etc. In the op-scan counties, I wouldn’t need help with turnout; I would need primarily to be able to work without scrutiny.

This is not to say that touch-screen machines are off the hook. If as a shady operative I wanted that badly to help my man win, odds are that I would overreach once in a while.

Florida counties 2004

More later

“An avowed Muslim . . . get him out of our government”

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More lying in Republican circles in Florida, and some of it probably naive.

Woman in Rick Santorum’s audience just said the president is “an avowed Muslim.” Her question: “why isn’t anything being done to get him out of our government?”

N.b. the MSNBC caption missed/omitted the “our” part.

Pressing on

Santorum, a senator, did not correct her.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that other people in the audience clapped when she said it. Wonder how many of them actually believe it. That anyone could believe it is not a tribute to the press in our time.

YouTube catches the exchange here.

Also here.

This is backwoods politics at its worst. It is heartbreaking that rural Florida, and other places like it, have been left to the tender mercies of the hard right for thirty years now. This is the result.

Not that there haven’t been worse comments, like this one from a hard-liner in Florida calling openly for violence against the president. Fortunately other Jewish leaders swiftly condemned the remarks. If they had been Santorum types, maybe not.

The only bright spot in those remarks caught on video is that the lady referred to the U.S. government as “our government.”

It’s a wonder GOP leaders haven’t already jumped down her throat for that.

South Carolina behind (way behind), Florida ahead

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Two days after

South Carolina behind again, Florida ahead

The Florida GOP primary next up—Jan. 31—is the newest make-or-break or Big Moment, the newest primary event characterized as shaping up to be important or crucial. Gingrich won South Carolina’s heart by acting like a ghastly creep–SC is, after all, the state of Joe “You Lie!” Wilson. Question: What face will Gingrich turn toward Florida?

Newton Leroy McPherson

Partial answer: The day after South Carolina, Sen. Lindsay Graham appeared on Face the Nation, making Gingrich sound halfway decent and humane on the topic of undocumented immigrants. Florida, we are reminded, has a large Latino population. Graham suggested that Gingrich as president would favor extending something like amnesty (although not called that) and legal status to some undocumented immigrants. Graham spoke becomingly about a hypothetical combat veteran with Hispanic name coming home from war, only to see his mother or grandmother deported.

Every little bit helps.

South Carolina polls were mostly right

Back to South Carolina—

Gingrich’s win vindicated most polls leading up to the primary, although it probably didn’t do much for all the experts who shortly before had been writing and talking about Mitt Romney as inevitable.

Rick Santorum made a cogent point on the air Sunday, by the way. Santorum reminded his host that it was not necessary, after all, for religious or social conservatives to ‘coalesce’ behind one candidate, in order for Romney to be beaten.

But on Gingrich–

As a Southerner who has consistently defended the not-David-Duke parts of the South, I would not have thought South Carolina could sink any lower. Shows me. It is scant consolation to reflect that Gingrich probably would have lost to David Duke, if Duke had been running in the primary. If only the pollsters would conduct a poll on a hypothetical match-up of Obama and Duke. It would be instructive to see how many states Duke carried.

There is still time for Duke to jump into the Republican race.

We’ve seen one of them already. Turnout in the primary was record:

 “South Carolina’s Republican voters set a new primary turnout record Saturday when more than 600,000 of them went to the polls, shattering the previous mark set in 2000.

With 13 precincts still uncounted Sunday morning, 601,166 votes already were recorded, topping 2000’s turnout of 537,101 and well ahead of 2008’s 445,499 voters. Earlier in the week, officials had projected a moderate turnout about equivalent to the 2008 primary.

And the vote totals for the individual candidates were just as intriguing. Saturday’s winner, Newt Gingrich, collected 243,153, and second-place finisher Mitt Romney won 167,280. Both of them exceeded 2008 winner John McCain’s total.

And that also means Mr. Romney did far better than his own 2008 performance here, when he won just 68,142 votes en route to a fourth-place finish.”

The 600K+ turnout exceeded even that of South Carolina’s Democratic primary in 2008, an all-time high 532,468 voters, when Barack Obama bested Hillary Clinton. Of course, many people believe that a lot of the Clinton voters there were actually Republicans looking to slow down or hurt Obama. The GOP primary in 2008, as mentioned above, involved 445,499 voters.

John McCain, who got under 200K votes in that primary, went on to get 1,034,896 votes in the general election against Obama’s 862,449–a clear gain of over 800,000 votes for McCain in ten months. McCain must have climbed mightily in many people’s estimation during that time. Maybe somebody gave the populace refresher courses on Vietnam.

Presumably South Carolina voters will turn out in equal or greater numbers to vote against the president this year.

Gingrich won across the state, losing only three counties to Romney—Beaufort, Charleston, and Richland. Of these three, only Beaufort was among highest-turnout counties. Gingrich won in 43 of 46 SC counties.

State election board results show that turnout was 20 percent to 30 percent for most counties. This is high for a primary and especially high for a place in the condition of South Carolina, with close-to-the-bottom per capita readership and number of newspapers, libraries, and bookstores.

Still, it would be distortion to call the primary a landslide, as the example of York County shows. Turnout in York was higher than in 2008, and voter registration is up by 30,000 according to the local press—but turnout in the county was still 23 percent. Nor did women give Gingrich landslide treatment, cat-fight representations notwithstanding. Gingrich won the women’s vote with a plurality of 30 percent. Thus he lost 70 percent of women voters, which strikes me as about where he would stand in a general-election match-up. Women also were only 47 percent of the primary voters. So more of them voted with their feet.

Gingrich benefited mightily from his treatment by ‘media elites’. Wonder whether there might be a grain of truth in the Gingrich accusation that ABC wanted to help Romney. (“ABC acted as an arm of the Romney campaign.”) Either way, calling ABC “liberal” is hooey. ABC,  another union-busting corporation, might want to help Romney as plausible GOP contender, but there’s nothing liberal about it if so.

South Carolina has not benefited from its treatment by educated people who should know better, who have tossed No-prestige-land away, leaving it lying on the floor of a seldom opened closet. A public discourse that ropes off any part of the polity does harm to the whole.

If Matt Kibbe’s bunch have their way, things will get even worse for SC. They’re trying to get a publicly funded ‘school choice’ act on the books. H.4576 would assist, at public expense, any parent willing to pay to put his/her children into a  for-profit school. This would mean that the depleted public schools would shoulder even more of the burden of the poorest children, from the poorest families. So much for opposing an entitlement society. Any time you have a proposal to harm the greatest number, and get the taxpayers to pay for it, you have a good chance of lining up the GOP on your side.

How do they pull off this kind of thing? Well, for one, they call a for-profit school an ‘independent school’ and they include the same taxpayer-funded gift for home schooling, to sweeten the deal. Also, as summarized by supporters, the bill would send the taxpayer money to charity—‘Non-Profit Scholarship Granting Organizations’. Those orgs would then be obligated to pay over the money for tuition, books, etc.—to a private school, if the parent ‘chooses’:

“This bill will encourage parents to have a more direct impact on their child’s education as they will have a stronger voice in deciding how their child is educated. At the same time, the parent or legal guardian will have more money to save and put towards the child’s education. One of the most important aspects of the bill is that it does not favor any independent school or form of education in particular, but rather lets the parent decide what is best for their child. The Department of Education, Department of Revenue, or any other state agency can’t regulate the operations of a not-for-profit scholarship granting organization. Same rules follow that these state agencies can’t regulate the educational program of an independent school that accepts students who receive grants from the not-for-profit scholarship granting organization, except for the school’s compliance with the requirements of the bill. This bill will encourage school competition while engaging the parent directly in their child’s education.”

The legislation is introduced by Rep. Eric Bedingfield (R-Greenville), a staunch defender of one’s right to be poor. Bedingfield also crafted legislation enabling a former state Republican Party director to become a six-figure lobbyist for the University of South Carolina. The legislation was supposed to crack down on taxpayer-funded lobbying.