primaries

I am throwing down the gauntlet: if Majority Leader Hoyer passes the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826) out of Congress, I will drop out of the race. This bill, which focuses on removing the influence of special interests from our elections, has 156 co-sponsors including Maryland’s own Elijah Cummings, Donna Edwards, Dutch Ruppersberger, John Sarbanes, and Chris Van Hollen.

I am not a single issue voter or candidate: I want to hold Hoyer accountable for his cowardly vote to invade Iraq, I believe that young people should have a hand in shaping our futures, I want to pass climate change legislation, I want to pass a law mandating net neutrality, I want to place increased focus on improving our schools, I want to pass comprehensive legislation that focuses on building healthy and economically diverse communities, I want to pass an infrastructure bill that will bring our nation forward for the next century and create jobs now, I want to curb excessive deficit spending, and I want to change our tax system to encourage entrepreneurship and close unfair loopholes. Nonetheless, I am running first, and foremost, because I want to create as much positive change as possible, and I believe the greatest change we can make is to change how our elections are financed; this is the reform that will pave the way for all other reforms to happen.

The Fair Elections Now Act sets forth a path for public financing of elections to address the quid pro quo politics of privately funded elections. Currently our system skews our free market system toward wealthy entrenched interests, limits the opportunities for regular working people to hold elected office, and costs American taxpayers billions of dollars through paybacks to corporate donors via subsidies, no-bid contracts, pork, regulatory loopholes, and tax breaks. To get politicians to serve the public interest instead of focusing on pleasing their corporate donors, we need public financing of elections.

Noticeably absent from the long list of Maryland congressmen that support Fair Elections Now is Majority Leader Hoyer. If Hoyer had- like the majority of Democrats- voted against invading Iraq, or not lied about his intentions to cut a deal with companies that spied on American citizens, or been a strong supporter of Fair Elections Now, I wouldn’t be challenging him in the Democratic Primary. Unfortunately he did vote for the unnecessary war in Iraq, and he did hypocritically cut a deal to prevent telecommunications companies from going to trial, and he continually fails to stand up to the undue influence of special interests in our political process. Hoyer’s rise to Majority Leader was primarily predicated upon his ability to raise tremendous sums of money which he, in turn, lavished upon other legislators to build allegiances. As such, he is perhaps the greatest symbol of status quo politics- a status quo politics where politicians such as Hoyer get money from corporations like Goldman Sachs in order to push legislative agendas that are in line with said corporation’s interests. This play-to-pay politics works great for wealthy, entrenched companies such as AIG, but does little to cure the ills of the common man or move our country forward in a coherent fashion.

As a clear benefactor of the current system of quid pro quo politics he has no incentive to change how our politics currently work. He has no reason to challenge a political system dominated by moneyed interest. He has no interest in wresting away political control from these interests and restoring our democracy to one of the people by the people for the people. As an outsider and a regular American citizen that cares about the future of my county, I, on the other hand, do. Consequently, I am challenging Hoyer to shift the balance of power away from corporate interests toward the public good.

I want to be as clear as I can: I am not interested in self-aggrandizement, but rather in creating as much positive change as possible. My proof is in the pudding of my offer to drop out. I view Fair Elections Now as the most effective way to create positive change- whether I create this change by becoming the next Congressman for Maryland’s 5th District or by dropping out, is of no consequence to me. Representative Hoyer, I have now provided you with incentive to join the other 156 co-sponsors to pass H.R. 1826. If you do, I will gladly drop out of the race; if, on the other hand, you make no concerted effort to move forward with this bill, I will take it as further proof that you are more interested in personal political gain than creating the change our country needs.

Sincerely,

Andrew Gall
Democratic Candidate for Congress (MD-05)
www.andrewforcongress.org

The DNC Youth Council is petitioning the Democratic Change Commission for a more youth-friendly primary and caucus process. You can read the text of the letter sent to the commission below:

DNC Youth Letter

CIRCLE has finally released their fact sheet summary of youth turnout in the presidential primary contests. The numbers are much the same as what we reported last week. Here's what you need to know:

• In the states for which data is available, 6.5 million young voters (17 - 29) participated in either the Democratic or Republican Presidential primaries.
• Overall turnout rose from 9% (recorded in 2000, the last comparable cycle), to 17%.
• This is the third consecutive cycle in which youth turnout increased.
• This is the first time youth turnout has increased three cycles in a row since 18 - 20 year olds were first granted the right to vote in 1971.
• In the 17 states for which comparable exit polling is available from 2000, all but one state (New York) saw an increase in youth turnout.
• Of those 17 states, 10 saw at least a 10 point jump in youth turnout (NH, MA, GA, MO, TX, TN, IA, MS, OH, OK).
• Obama captured the Democratic youth vote 60 - 38%.

Also remember from the Rock the Vote's fact sheet and last week's post mortem that young voter's share of the electorate rose from 9.4% in 2004 to 14.3% in 2008, and young voters participated in the Democratic primary over the GOP primary at a rate of 2 - 1.

The most interesting piece of new data in the CIRCLE report is the candidate breakdown in the GOP contest. More young Republicans voted against John McCain than voted for him, and he barely inched out Mike Huckabee to capture a plurality of youth votes among the top 4 candidates. As for Ron Paul - the so-called GOP youth candidate, he only received 10% of the youth vote. Can we finally put to rest the fiction that Ron Paul is the conservative youth candidate? At best he had a highly tech savvy core of youth supporters that amounted to very little at the polls.

It was reported yesterday that Congressman Paul is holding his own "shadow convention" this year. It will be interesting to see who shows up.

The AP just reported that Obama has clinched the nomination based on their calculations. It's the beginning of the end . . . finally.

While I was in Nashville, I didn't get a chance to watch the RBC meeting (seemingly streamed live via every broadcast and independent media outlet on the planet). Everyone at the conference was buzzing about it - making phone calls, checking their email and trying to keep up with the latest twist and turn.

Since I missed the whole thing, I'll turn you over to two very capable people who did watch it. First, watch Joe's always interesting take:

Then go read Emptywheel at FireDogLake, who was at the RBC meeting and live blogged the whole event. She has a great recap on exactly what the Michigan delegate compromise means and how it was reached.

• First, I've been remiss in reporting that Mike Lux at Open Left is calling on all netroots progressives to work their asses off to register high-school seniors before they graduate. He's even got some ideas on how it might work. - Open Left
• Hillary Rosen, former head of the RIAA (and proponent of taking students, seniors, and assorted toddlers to court over filesharing) is now running the political operation at Huffington Post. WTF? - Boing Boing
• The Democrats are proposing that we pay soldiers who are stop-lossed into service (aka back door draft). Sounds good to me. - Daily Kos
• Ben Adler gives us a brief history of Drinking Liberally on the week in which the organization celebrates its 5 year anniversary. Congrats to Justin and Matt for all their accomplishments. - The Politico
• Georgia10 takes a stab at outlining what Ted Kennedy means to the Millennial Generation. - Daily Kos
• What can we expect from Generation "Z" ? - Profy.com
• Google: Viacom's YouTube lawsuit threatens the net. - Mashable!
• And finally, Joe gives us a run-down on the state of the race and why it's OK that the Clinton campaign keeps chugging along. And congrats to Joe on scoring the AlterNet gig. I believe this means that all 3 people who served as Web/Communications Director at MFA are now in the employ of AlterNet.

As we wind down the primary season, there is less and less reliable data about youth turnout and pretty much no comparative data from previous cycles. It's been a long time since we've come this far into the process.

Nevertheless, here's what we do know from CIRCLE and CNN exit polling:

I'll note that while there is no comparative data, the youth "share of the electorate" in both states is higher than the 2004 average of 9%.

Clinton won the youth vote handily in Kentucky, pulling in 54% of the 18 - 29 vote to Obama's 41%. 2% were "uncommitted." She won even greater margins among white youth.

Obama won the youth vote handily in Oregon, pulling in 71% to Clinton's 29%. He won by the same margin among white youth.

Political junkie that I am, I cannot wait for this thing to be over. Just a few more weeks . . .

So there were some elections yesterday (the madness never stops), and I figure we should at least mention them here.

In West Virginia, Sen. Clinton won in a landslide (as predicted). She defeated Obama 67 - 26%, and she even captured young voters who chose her 59 - 35%. I haven't checked, but I believe this is only the third state in which Clinton won the 18 - 29 demographic. Young voters were 14% of the Democratic electorate. Unfortunately, there is no data from previous cycles against which to compare that, however, based on averages, it is likely that young voters increased their share over previous cycle.

In a race that saw major coverage in the netroots, Scott Kleeb won his primary agains uber-DINO (Democrat in Name Only) against Tony Raimondo. Scott will now compete for the seat vacated by Chuck Hagel in November. This was a good win for Democrats and for young voters. Scott is a huge friend of the youth organizing community and many of you are probably familiar with his wife, Jane Fleming Kleeb, who is an all around youth-organizing rock star and blogs here at Future Majority occasionally under the name of her organization, the Young Voter PAC. Jane blogged the race all day yesterday and you can read her dispatches here.

Finally, we also won a long-shot race in Mississipi. In a deep-red distrinct, Travis Childers defeated his Republican opponent Greg Davis. This was the third special election in a row in which a Democrat defeated a Republican in a red district, and it's an indication of just how big a wave we might see in November. It's also another reason why we need to maximize the youth vote in every state. If victories like this are possible in the deepest or red districts, 50 million Millennials can help make this one of the biggest landslides we're likely to see in our lifetime.

For more, don't miss Joe's take on yesterday's elections and what it all means:

• Will Ralph Nader poach youth votes from the Democrats this year? - Chronicle of Higher Education
• Will John McCain poach youth votes from the Democrats this year? - The Politico
• Kat Barr from Rock the Vote interviews me and reviews Youth to Power. - WireTap
• Tim Fernholz has a tough but fair review of Youth to Power. - Campus Progress
• 17 year old Pennsylvanians are fighting for the right to cast primary ballots if they will be 18 by election day. - Fair Vote
• Obama hits McCain for failing to support the Webb GI Bill. - TPM Election Central
• Bob Herbert gets hip to the economic plight of Millennials - New York Times
• Former candidate George McGovern has an interesting solution to bring the primaries to an amicable end. - New York Times
• Along a number of indicators, the civic engagement gap between college and non-college youth has widened since the 1970s. - Peter Levine
• Hip Hop youth organizing is going local and deeper in 2008. - Boston Globe

Two states and our nation's capital all head to the polls today to cast their ballot for the Democratic nominee. Here's the baseline for each state, courtesy of CIRCLE:

Washington D.C.: (pdf)

Youth Population: 99,440
Youth Share of Population: 25%
White Youth: 44%
Black non-Hispanic: 48%
College Student: 19%

Maryland: (pdf)

Youth Population: 804,880
Youth Population Share: 21%
2004 Share of the Electorate: 8%
White Youth: 54%
Black non-Hispanic: 36%
Other: 9%
College Student: 24%

Virginia: (pdf)

Youth Population: 1,057,799
Youth Population Share: 20%
2004 Share of the Electorate: 8%
White Youth: 67%
Black non-Hispanic Youth: 24%
Other: 9%
College Student 18%