Shooting of Dallas officers spurs acts of kindness to police
The Dallas shooting that killed five officers has spurred an outpouring of support for police, not only in Texas but hundreds of miles away. Around the country, people have showed up at local departments with flowers, sent social media messages or called to say thanks. They delivered coffee, pizzas, cakes and moments of solace for officers grieving after the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. SHARED SORROW One after another, members of the public lined up to hug uniformed officers at a community prayer service Friday in Dallas. Two patrol cars serving as a memorial outside of police headquarters were adorned with flowers, signs and flags by some of the people pausing to pay their respects to the five officers killed and seven wounded. John Fife, with his ball cap in hand, passed a red rose to an officer sitting in a vehicle guarding those headquarters. In another corner of the country, a Seattle officer accepted a matching flower from Jasen Frelot, one of several people from the faith community there who set out to show police support. ‘WE NEED THEM’ Officers also received roses in the Cleveland suburb of South Euclid, where they found single stems on their cruiser windshields Friday morning. The Rev. Carmen Cox Harwell, a Beachwood pastor and a former police chaplain, said she put flowers on Beachwood and South Euclid officers’ cars as a sign of gratitude. “I just want them to know that they’re loved and they’re supported and we need them,” she told WOIO-TV. COMFORT FOOD Abigail Bullard had similar thoughts while home with her 6- and 10-year-old sons in suburban Philadelphia, where the younger boy’s fascination with emergency services personnel has developed into a friendship with a few Radnor Township officers. Bullard had observed the kinship within their profession and knew they’d be affected by this week’s news, so she and her sons delivered cookies and soft pretzels as comfort. “It was important to me to say, here we have two young black children that are trying to do the right thing because friends of ours have had a death in the family,” she said. When she shared the story on Facebook, she concluded it simply: “Not all young black men are bad, and not all police officers are bad.” A few miles down the road, the Lower Merion Police Department said its officers had heavy hearts but full bellies after another woman and her son delivered a stack of pizzas Friday. They also received coffee and doughnuts, a gesture reported by numerous police departments this weekend. One of them, the Voorhees Police Department in New Jersey, said such actions “have made us feel better during a very sad time to be a police officer.” STOPPED FOR THANKS Still others simply stopped officers on the street to chat or offer hugs. “It’s just been amazing. Our guys can’t go out this morning without getting stopped by people wanting to thank them,” Dustin Dwight, a spokesman for Louisiana State Police Troop L, told NOLA.comThe Times-Picayune on Friday. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, officers were getting extra handshakes from strangers at a local concert Friday night. “They always comfort and, I guess, wrap their arms around us, to protect us as well as we protect them,” Chattanooga Sgt. Tommy Meeks told WRCB-TV. ‘ROUGH FEW DAYS’ In Ballwin, Missouri, where a suburban St. Louis policeman was shot and critically hurt during a Friday traffic stop, Andrew Kulha brought the investigators water. He told KMOV-TV he thought it had “been a rough few days to be an officer.” The Dallas shooting occurred during a Thursday night protest over fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana earlier in the week. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Kevin Sweeny: Ground game — do or die
In the election of 1840, Abraham Lincoln served as a Whig presidential elector in Illinois. In his push to elect the “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too” ticket, he sent a ten-point edict to all committee members containing a field plan of operations. Much has changed in the landscape of political campaigns since 1840, but the importance of a well-organized, strong field operation has never waned. It is a mainstay in the campaigning ecosystem and part of a successful formula to forge a path to victory and campaigns which ignore its impact, do so at their own candidate’s peril. A generation ago, many political scientists were signaling the death of the ground game. TV, mail and even the Internet would render such campaign expenditures obsolete. However, over the last few election cycles, the opposite has proved true. Moreover, deeply established ground games have had a tremendous impact in municipal and state elections, local referendums and state ballot initiatives, to federal elections. Recent cycles have confirmed staffing a field operations campaign with a well-trained and competent workforce to help a candidate interact voters still matters. From getting petitions signed, voters registered, identifying early voters, canvassing door to door, and staffing the polls on Election Day, field campaigns still matter. Their greatest impact is at the local and state levels. Despite this, field operation’s budgets pale in comparison to advertisements. However, in-person mobilization appears to be one of the more effective expenditures a campaign can make with limited resources, increasing voter turnout by as much as 10 percent according to a recent study. Contemporary political campaigns utilize a broad set of tools and methods for finding and contacting voters, more than at any point in electoral history. Much has been written about the roles of technology, big data and social media in recent campaigns. However, at the same time, there has been a corresponding rise in old-fashioned campaign techniques, particularly establishing a competent ground game. Field offices, typically but not always placed in strategic locations around a district or state help to transform basic campaign information into real voter contacts. Field offices often serve as the first and last point of contact between a political campaign and the electorate. A campaign’s headquarters gathers important and timely information on voters and in turn relays such information to the field manager. They, in turn, instruct their field workers to pinpoint a calculated message to a structured group of voters. Typically, the most effective of these field workers are well-trained volunteers who live locally. While campaigns rely on a certain percentage of outside paid field workers, by far these local volunteers are most successful in distributing campaign information. Campaign volunteers are typically true believers in a cause, person or organization. They usually act purely on the belief they are making their community a better place. While obviously paid workers are vital to a campaign, no one was ever paid to start a real revolution. A first-rate example of the impact of a competent ground game is best illustrated by recent presidential elections and field work impact. Because the Democratic Party keeps better field data than the Republican Party, I will use them as an example. In a recent experiment, the 2012 presidential election was replicated with all things being equal. However, in this replication, Obama had no real field offices for volunteers. The results showed Obama would have lost 248,000 votes nationwide. A further dive into these numbers points to Obama losing Florida and therefore the presidency. Continued runs by political scientists Seth Masket, Josh Darr and Matthew Levendusky show running the same field simulations in the 2008 election gave Obama his victory in North Carolina, Florida and Indiana. Recent claims of Obama being able to win the presidency without a ground game simply do not hold water. After a recent election, a British Election Study showed one-on-one field contact made all the difference in local campaigns, by as much as 14 percent. Furthermore, a simple face-to-face meeting at the door by a campaign or candidate yielded a 97 percent likelihood of the voter casting their ballot for those who made contact with them. Moreover, the study showed it is not just a one-time face-to-face contact which matters, the contact must be constant. Parties lost upward of 16 percent of those who were only approached at the door once and never followed up on. Suffice to say, field offices increase turnout and vote share for the candidates and organizations who take the time to adequately fund and staff them. Lastly, and one of my personal favorite incentives of producing a solid ground game on top of being able to ascertain if your campaign’s message is resonating among the electorate is it creates a legion of loyal volunteers who are prepared to carry on the legacy of the candidate or party. This legacy of political skill can prove to be invaluable not only to the volunteer but to the organization and the electorate as a whole. Well trained and passionate volunteers evolve into the next generation of campaign managers, consultants and operatives. They understand not only the complexities associated with running a political campaign, but they also make meaningful connections with the governing, consultant and economic classes. Moreover, they gain a broader understanding of the issues faced by the electorate and the campaign they represent. Some will even eventually step into the fray and become candidates themselves. Two examples of this evolving legacy quickly come to mind. The first is the losing “YES!” campaign for Scottish independence which morphed its field operation into a supportive role for the SNP (Scottish National Party). In return, the field campaigns for “YES!” handed the SNP the most seats in their party’s history and now the SNP is the outright ruling party in Holyrood. Another example much closer to home is Jeb Bush’s grassroots push on education issues dating as far back as his first unsuccessful run for Governor in 1994. The political initiatives are still pushed by a network of
Donald Trump has a ‘plan B’ for convention – outside help
Donald Trump has a Plan B if he’s faced with a contested convention, and it involves the sort of outside groups that he’s called “corrupt.” While the billionaire businessman might lock up the Republican presidential nomination in the next five weeks of voting, he and his allies are simultaneously undertaking a parallel effort in case he falls short. Outside groups, including one led by longtime Trump political ally Roger Stone, and a loose collection of colorful supporters such as “Bikers for Trump” are organizing ahead of the July convention in Cleveland. They’re soliciting money to pay for their transportation and housing, and they’re already trying to influence the mood of the convention with a social media campaign saying that anything short of a Trump nomination would be “stealing.” “Our principal focus right now is Cleveland,” Stone said of his group, called Stop the Steal. “We want to bring as large a contingent as possible to demonstrate the breadth of Trump’s appeal so that the party can see graphically what they’re going to lose if they hijack the nomination from him.” Stop the Steal and other groups are gaining steam even though Trump has insisted he wants no donor help for his bid and is beholden to no one. Super political action committees “are a disaster, by the way, folks,” Trump said at a Republican debate in March. “Very corrupt.” Stop the Steal is not technically a super PAC, but it operates under very similar rules. This past week, Trump’s lawyers sent the Federal Election Commission a letter renewing the campaign’s disavowal of groups using his “name, image, likeness, or slogans in connection with soliciting contributions.” All the groups planning Cleveland activities repeatedly use his name in their literature. Trump set the stage for what the outside groups are doing by making provocative comments about the complex way Republicans pick a nominee — “rigged,” he calls it. Voters weigh in, but each state has its own rules about what delegates go to the convention and how they must vote on a presidential candidate while they’re there. Stop the Steal and other Trump fans are pushing a similar message on social media and websites. “The big steal is in full swing,” one online letter says, calling unfriendly delegates “stooges.” The Stone-led Cleveland coalition includes We Will Walk, Bikers for Trump, Citizens for Trump and Women for Trump. Stone said the goal is to bring thousands of people to march peacefully in the streets. “We are prepared to bring the Republican Party down if they mess with Trump and try to take it away from him by doing the dirty tricks,” said Paul Nagy, a New Hampshire Republican. He runs We Will Walk, a group that has collected more than 41,000 online signatures of people who say Trump deserves the nomination. The public relations offensive is a counterpart to GOP rival Ted Cruz‘s carefully crafted, labor-intensive strategy of recruiting friendly delegates in hopes he can win if Trump falls short on the first ballot of voting. This weekend in Arizona, Cruz won another strategic victory over Trump, getting numerous friendly delegates elected to head to Cleveland while the Trump backers appeared to be virtually shut out. Those delegates are required to first vote for Trump at the convention because he won the state, but they could later switch their votes to Cruz. While Cruz is playing within the party’s rules, Trump’s claim that what Cruz is doing amounts to “stealing” resonates with voters. In mid-April, after Cruz swept Colorado’s elected delegates, stay-at-home mom Erin Behrens said she felt sick about what was happening to her candidate. So Stop the Steal helped her organize protests in the state. Stone and an ally, Greg Lewis, flew in to help Behrens answer email and arrange a rally. At the April 15 event in Denver, about 200 demonstrators waved banners that read “Banana Republicans” and chanted “Stop the Steal!” Behrens said in an interview last week that she’s continuing to organize Trump supporters in Colorado. “If there’s funny business and they make it clear they’re going to not give it to Trump, Stop the Steal Cleveland will be one thing,” she said. “But we will have protests, events across the United States. Count on it.” A good chunk of what the outside groups are doing now is fundraising. “Bottom line we need to raise $262,000 in the next two weeks,” Stop the Steal’s website says. “If you can’t make it to Cleveland will you help those who can? Will you send $500, $200 or even $100 to this crucial effort?” A different pro-Trump group, Great America PAC, also is raising money for a Cleveland effort. This one is led by William Doddridge, chief executive officer of the Jewelry Exchange. Its commercials warn that “party elites” will try to seize the nomination from Trump at the convention and suggest that people stop that from happening by calling an 800 number and giving money. It needs the help. The group’s latest fundraising report, covering through the end of March, shows it is more than $600,000 in debt. The super PAC can take unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions. Trump’s lawyers have specifically asked it to cease operations. Stop the Steal isn’t a super PAC, the category of outside group that attracts the most ire from Trump, Stone said. But it’s a distinction without a difference. It is organized as a political nonprofit “527” group that files periodic disclosure reports about its donors and spending with the Internal Revenue Service rather than the Federal Election Commission. Like an FEC-monitored super PAC, a 527 can take unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations and unions. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Steven Kurlander: Faux unité avec Paris — ditching internationalism to protect the American Dream
Over the weekend, images of wanton bloodshed in Paris were conveyed to Americans. Unlike ISIS’ other barbaric attacks, including the horrific bombing of a Russian airliner about a week previous, this attack seemed to hit closer to home. The Paris attacks raised the level of concern and awareness of the ISIS threat to this country. An attack on a major U.S. city was feared next, and expected by many anxious Americans. Immediately, the coordinated attacks in Paris that killed scores of innocent civilians were described by the media and our political leaders strictly in terms of another act of barbaric terrorism against Western civilization. “The killing of innocent people based on a twisted ideology is an attack not just on France, not just on Turkey, it is an attack on the civilized world,” President Barack Obama said at the start of a G20 summit in Ankara, Turkey. In turn, millions of Americans showed solidarity with the people of France, many of us adopting the French tricolor flag as our profile picture on social media sites such as Facebook. We are supposedly all the same citizens of the same Western world. Unlike ISIS, we are, of course, civil people in the truest sense of the word. That mantra was confirmed in the Democratic debate Saturday night by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an architect and continued advocate of such international policies: “But it cannot be an American fight. And I think what the president has consistently said – which I agree with – is that we will support those who take the fight to ISIS.” It’s a mistake that Americans continue to be misled by Obama, Clinton, and their supporting cast in the mainstream press into thinking the fight against ISIS and Islamic radicalism is not strictly our fight to fight alone. Our continuous “internationalist” war against Islamic terrorism, wrapped in the guise of an united effort of “allies” in the Middle East to combat the spread of feudal radical Islamic governance and brutality, is not working. Paris shows that. Americans for too long have had troublingly false expectations of immediate gratification in terms of foreign policing. Internationalism fits that bill because it misplaces responsibility of security and strength onto allies who can’t bring the fight to a level that the United States can to defeat Islamic fascism. It’s easy to say invading Iraq was a mistake. But it wasn’t. It’s time to re-examine whether invading Iraq was truly a mistake in the long view of world events and history, and whether the premature withdrawal from Iraq was the real mistake indeed. The United States is losing a battle now not in terms of saving Western civilization, but in real terms of strictly preserving American borders, way of life, and economy. We have too long fought a half-assed war on terrorism where we’ve substituted expensive electronic gimmickry for boots on the ground, where we’ve made killing a single civilian in a fight against a merciless enemy a war crime, and where we’ve lost perspective of the necessary and proper goal of defeating totalitarianism in order to implant democratic virtues and economic opportunity around the world. It shouldn’t be politically incorrect any more to unleash the massive firepower we hold in our arsenal to actually win a war for a change. We need to begin fighting a real war for the American way of life, not for Western civilization. And it likely won’t be won overnight: It might take decades. Japan and Korea are prime examples of how we did it right. Our long-term occupation of those countries, still secured by American troops, are the model to use. Ideological radicalism died in those countries because we successfully helped build economies that allowed large middle classes to prosper. That relieved the unemployment and restlessness that characterizes the Middle East masses. Paris in the true sense exemplifies the massive failure of President Obama’s ananchronic internationalist foreign policies that have both diminished our power overseas and endangered our security at home. It’s time to fight a brutal war against ISIS and the citizenry who support them, occupy territories in the Middle East, and recreate and stabilize the boundaries to better reflect the tribal nature of the region, and to foster economic opportunity through capitalism in those regions. Instead of including the French flag in our online profiles to show our solidarity in the fight against ISIS, Americans instead should start flying Old Glory on their social media pages. Steven Kurlander blogs at Kurly’s Kommentary (stevenkurlander.com) and writes for Context Florida and The Huffington Post and can be found on Twitter @Kurlykomments. He lives in Monticello, New York.
Expressions of solidarity for France in red, white and blue
Social media was awash Saturday in the red, white and blue of the French flag as people worldwide expressed their solidarity with a nation in mourning in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris. Users of Facebook shaded their profile pictures in the French Tricolor, and on Twitter and Instagram, people posted vacation photos, teardrops and a peace symbol with the Eiffel Tower inscribed in the center as they expressed their grief over the carnage. People also harnessed the power of social media in the search for their missing loved ones as Parisians desperate to get in touch with family and friends missing since Friday’s wave of gun and bomb attacks posted heart-breaking messages and photos under the hashtag #rechercheparis — Paris Search. Scores remain unaccounted for in the aftermath of the coordinated attacks on a rock concert, a soccer stadium, bars, restaurants and other popular nightspots that killed at least 129 people. “Waleed is missing,” read one post. “We last contacted him at the match, Please share & contact me if u have any info. #rechercheParis.” “I’ve been looking for my cousin since last night,” read another. “He’s 25 and 1m75. He’s called Younes. #rechercheParis.” The photos and messages garnered hundreds of retweets from users eager to help in the search for survivors. Across the globe, people joined in to offer sympathy and share a nation’s pain. Many posted the poignant video of the Eiffel Tower — the beacon of the City of Light — going to black in memory of the dead. Some of the world’s most recognizable buildings and monuments — the Sydney Opera House, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, One World Trade Center in New York, the Mexican Senate — were shaded in the colors of the French flag. Sports teams also expressed their solidarity. The Washington Capitals splashed the red, white and blue of the Tricolor across the team’s ice rink before Friday night’s game against the Calgary Flames. “The National Anthem is playing, but tonight our thoughts are with Paris,” a caption on the Capitals Twitter feed read. The images and sentiment, shared under the hashtags #prayforparis or #parisattacks, mirrored the outpouring of emotion that followed the Charlie Hebdo attacks 10 months ago. One of the most shared was a peace symbol by Jean Jullien, a French graphic designer living in London, that showed a stark image of the Eiffel Tower rising in the center of a peace sign. Jullien said the design came to him by simple association of Paris and peace. “I was overwhelmed that so many people used it,” he said in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “It’s a communication tool for people to share their solidarity. It’s a message for peace.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Twitter offers new cash stream for presidential candidates
Think of it as tweeting for dollars. The social media service Twitter on Tuesday introduced a feature that enables political candidates and advocacy groups to raise money directly via its mobile application, making it quicker and easier to harvest small donations from followers. Campaigns already aggressively use Twitter to spread their message, particularly during live political events such as Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate. The company says that tweets about the August 6 debates on Fox News were viewed more than 1 billion times on Twitter and across the web. And in a race likely to cost more than the $2 billion spent in 2012, why not look for cash in every corner? At least a dozen presidential candidates will begin using the new fundraising technique right away, said Jenna Golden, Twitter’s director of political ad sales. While the White House seekers are early adopters, Golden said the fundraising service is also available to local and state-level candidates. “We think about donating to a campaign as an old-fashioned, traditional process, a cumbersome process,” she said. “This was an incredible opportunity for us to simplify and streamline.” Political candidates have been able to raise money through Twitter by linking to the web-based online donation forms. But for people on mobile devices — and that’s 80 percent of Twitter’s audience — it can be clunky to click through different applications and web pages. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, among the savviest digital fundraisers in the GOP presidential field, has tweeted links to campaign swag, including a red T-shirt that says, “The NSA knows I bought this Rand Paul t-shirt.” His campaign and the Democratic National Committee are among the groups that say they’ll make use of Twitter’s new in-message fundraising. Twitter is working with Square Inc., a financial services company, to collect the money and the information that the Federal Election Commission requires from political donors. Would-be givers fill in their identifying information and link to a debit card. A couple of clicks later, the Twitter user’s contribution is headed straight for the candidate of their choice, and they can “share” news of their financial support to their own Twitter followers. The candidates also can pay Twitter to promote their fundraising-linked tweets. “Twitter has been a successful avenue of fundraising for campaigns in the past, and this will make it even more attractive to campaigns as they look at how to allocate precious dollars,” said Vincent Harris, a digital strategist for the Paul campaign. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Scott Walker reminds voters of union wins as he enters 2016 race
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced on social media Monday morning that he’s running for president, tweeting “I’m in.” Walker, a Republican who built a national profile largely due to his clashes with labor unions, also released a campaign video at the same time declaring his entry in the race. The video is heavy on images of Walker speaking to a crowd in an Iowa cornfield, as well as his 2010 battle with unions. The video includes Walker speaking directly to the camera touting his willingness to take on big fights. “We didn’t nibble around the edges,” he says. Walker has a national profile largely due to his clashes with labor unions. He enacted policies weakening their political power and became the first governor in U.S. history to defeat a recall election. Now, on the eve of his campaign launch, Walker’s task is to remind Republican voters about the four-year-old fight and the recall election sparked by his efforts to weaken unions — and a series of lesser-known triumphs he says set him apart from the crowded Republican field. “If you could accomplish half of what he’s done in Wisconsin in Washington, D.C., you would go down as one of the greatest presidents ever,” said Walker’s top political adviser Rick Wiley. Walker cut income and corporate taxes by nearly $2 billion, lowered property taxes, legalized the carrying of concealed weapons, made abortions more difficult to obtain, required photo identification when voting and made Wisconsin a right-to-work state. His budget this year, which plugged a $2.2 billion shortfall when he signed it into law Sunday, requires drug screenings for public benefit recipients, expands the private school voucher program, freezes tuition at the University of Wisconsin while cutting funding by $250 million and removing tenure protections from state law. Such achievements may appeal to conservatives who hold outsized sway in Republican primaries, yet some could create challenges in a general election should Walker ultimately become the GOP’s nominee. Voter ID laws, abortion restrictions, liberal gun policies and education cuts are not necessarily popular among swing-state independents. “Ultimately Walker has to show all these victories and political successes have shown real results,” said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. Walker’s record is well-known to Wisconsin voters, a state where the second-term governor engenders fierce loyalty and fierce opposition. Protesters who first crowded the state Capitol in 2011 in demonstrations as large as 100,000 still gather daily, although only about a dozen or so at a time, to sing anti-Walker songs. Anger over Walker’s 2011 union law led to the failed 2012 recall. His team created a video this week, called “Recall the Recalls,” to tell that story again, especially for those who are taking their first serious look at Walker as a presidential candidate. And while he’s not yet a presidential candidate in the eyes of the law, the labor dispute helped give him a significant head start in the 2016 money race. Walker’s three governor’s races left him with a far-reaching donor database of more than 300,000 names. He shattered state fundraising records, collecting $83 million for his three Wisconsin elections, much of it coming from outside the state. He begins his 2016 presidential bid with at least $20 million to spread his message, raised by two outside groups not subject to campaign finance donation limits, according to sources with direct knowledge of the fundraising operation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss private fundraising strategy. Walker’s union clashes will be featured prominently on the day of his announcement, to be held in the same convention hall where he hosted his victory party after the recall election. “A lot of people, that was their first introduction to Walker,” Wiley said, calling the union battle and subsequent recall win “one of our biggest assets.” Yet the specific impact of Walker’s fight with labor unions is open to debate. The governor often highlights rising test scores and graduation rates as evidence that the 2011 union law worked. What he doesn’t mention is Wisconsin’s graduation rates were increasing for years before he took office, and the recent growth is not as strong as the national average. Wisconsin’s ACT scores have been among the best in the nation since before Walker was elected. They ranked third the year before he took office and ranked second in 2012. Walker also talks about how the 2011 union law saved taxpayers $3 billion as of late 2014, saying state and local governments have used “tools” he provided them to reduce spending on pensions and health benefits for public employees. While it’s true that the state and local governments have saved roughly that amount, the costs have been shifted to the employees who have to pay more for those benefits. Critics note that Walker too often ignores where he’s fallen short. The state’s chief economic development agency that Walker created, a hybrid public-private partnership, has been beset with problems, including handing out $124 million in loans without properly vetting the recipients. Walker was over 100,000 jobs short on his signature 2010 campaign promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs. Wisconsin’s job growth has lagged not only the national average but its Midwest neighbors as well. He’s also been dogged by two investigations, neither of which have yet to result in charges filed against him. The first resulted in a variety of criminal convictions, including misconduct in office, against six of his former aides and associates when he was Milwaukee County executive. The second investigation, currently on hold while the state Supreme Court considers a trio of lawsuits, centers on whether Walker’s recall campaign illegally coordinated with independent groups. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
