chrisishardcore.com

Middle of the Road

Here is the latest Survey USA 50 State Job Approval Rating poll for Georgia. What do we learn? Sonny's gas-tax stunt has worn off, he's now basically at the same place he was before his approval skyrocketed that month. He is also literally in the middle of the road -- 25th out of all of the governors in the 50 states. Well behind such mega popular governors as Mark Warner, Brian Schweitzer and John Hoeven, but well ahead of governors considered "in danger" such as Arnold, Jim Doyle and Rod Blagojevich.

I pay attention primarily to the breakout of white voters in the Survey USA polls. In order to win, Sonny probably needs about 64% of the white vote. Right now he's at 61-35 on job approval with white voters. Something tells me that a substantial number of the 37% of African Americans and Democrats who approve of the job he's doing won't vote for him, and that pads his overall numbers quite a bit. Should be a close race.

Looking Back on a Bad Year

Many people forget that the first major hurdle Bush faced in his second term was the nomination of a mobster to be homeland security chief. Bernard Kerik withdrew his nomination because of a "nanny problem" but an article in today's NYT hints that he may have a few more skeletons in his closet yet.

If being a social liberal doesn't doom Rudy's chances in a Republican primary, surely this type of stuff will. Here you have a guy who recommends to Bush that he pick an associate of his for a very important cabinet position, a guy whose friends refer to him as "top shelf" and who basically turns out to have pretty evident mob ties. I'm guessing the deeper you dig (if the media decides to ever dig) on Giuliani, the more things like this that stink will emerge.

We forget that before September 11th, America's Mayor was more aptly known as America's least popular mayor. He showed some great leadership during that period, which allowed a lot of people to overlook his attempted power grab -- remember he thought term limits should be waved so he could continue on as mayor -- but great leadership at one moment of time does not necessarily make a great leader or someone the country should entrust to put us back on the right track.

I think both Giuliani and McCain should keep in mind that there is nothing the media likes more than to knock someone down who has a long way to fall. Giuliani was getting his fair share pre 9/11, and McCain never progressed far enough in the primaries to get beyond the glowing profiles and into some critical looks. But regardless of all that, reading that piece on Kerik reminded me that Bush was having pretty bad luck getting his way well before Katrina hit.

More AJC non-coverage

Almost as soon as I wrote the previous post, I checked Creative Loafing and found this article about the AJC bowing out of issuing endorsements in the Atlanta races this year. I didn't know they had made that decision, but I suspected as much searching the site trying to find their picks in the local races.

I think endorsements in down ballot races are pretty important and helpful. Even if you don't want to do whatever the paper tells you, which most folks don't, you still know the general bias or agenda of a paper's editorial board and you can kind of tell why they're supporting one candidate or the other. If you agree with the paper's vision for Atlanta, you can back their chosen candidates, if not, then don't.

But still, an editorial paragraph is sometimes the only thing written about a race during the whole campaign, especially one that isn't attracting much attention. Take the Atlanta school board race that Brenda Muhummed won. The AJC editorial writers probably knew that Chris Vaughn is a perennial candidate who has tried his hand up and down the ballot in DeKalb county and was now running in Atlanta. But did the people in the district know that? Perhaps a paragraph or two on the editorial page could have spread some light on that.

Overall, they really dropped the ball on that one. What is the use of a local paper if they won't even cover the local races even if it is just a paragraph of ink about what their editorial board thinks.

3 votes

You wouldn't know it from reading the AJC, but there is a city council race in Atlanta that is either the deadest heat or the hottest dead heat (take your pick) I can remember. 3 votes separate District 6 contenders Anne Fauver (the incumbent) and Steve Brodie, out of about 5,000 cast.

But that's not even the only oddity in this race. With about 30 votes left to be counted, it is almost guaranteed that the loser will be within 10 votes of the winner. If the uncounted provisional votes split like the other votes, it could very likely end up in a tie. Here's the potential legal angle: There were 9 write-in votes cast in this race. That means that unless the winner outpolls the loser by more than 9 votes, neither candidate will have technically reached 50% of the vote, which is required to avoid a runoff.

Like most election law, I'm guessing the law is a little unclear on this point. Election officials want to throw out those votes because there were no registered write in candidates, but I'm guessing the the candidate who comes in second will disagree and ask at least one judge their opinion on the matter.

Personally, I can agree with both sides of what could be our little version of the 2000 Florida recount: In a two person race, someone could have written in a third name because they didn't feel as if they had enough information to make a decision yet. That's pretty selfish, as runoffs are expensive for both the candidates and election officials, but it could be legitimate.

On the flip side, we routinely have elections (for President, for example) where neither candidate gets 50% of the vote but we accept a 49-44 victory or even a 49.9-49.8 victory as legitimate. Alternatively, we have runoff elections when a single candidate fails to get to a specified threshold (50%, sometimes less) among more than two known candidates. In a race where one white candidate gets 40% and two black candidates split the other 60%, it becomes pretty easy to understand why a majority of voters may not want to elect a candidate that merely received a plurality of the votes. In this race, it is impossible to say what the write-in voters desired to accomplish. Did they mean to combine their votes with the second place candidate in order to prevent the first place candidate from having an outright victory -- and if so why not just vote for the second place candidate? Furthermore, should a small handful of voters who cast votes for candidates that were not registered in that race disqualify the votes of the close to 99.99% of voters who made a legitimate choice?

As I said earlier, its too bad you can't read about this story in the AJC. If you're looking for updates, the place to go is Southern Voice. Oh yeah, as if this story needed another twist, this race pits two openly gay candidates against each other -- apparently the only such election in the entire United States this year.

Crossover Voter?

Who farted?

Chrisishardcore.com's tip line hears that a high level Republican official might be voting for Mark Taylor in next year's Democratic primary. State Schools chief Kathy Cox, not to be confused with Secretary of State Cathy Cox is worried that voters may not pay too much attention to the spelling of potential attack ads aimed at her Democratic namesake by Republican party head Sonny Perdue.

Republican Cox (with a K) is miffed that Perdue won't guarantee a positive campaign in the event that he squares off against Democrat Cox (with a C) in the general election. Kathy fears that a barrage of negative attacks against someone with the same name as her could spell doom when voters head to the polls. And since she barely has enough money in her campaign account to buy a TV, much less television advertising to beef up her positives, we think that fear is justified.

It's speculated that Cox, the belle of the Republican statewide prom, might encourage her friends and family to crossover to the Democratic primary and support Mark Taylor. Sonny, we hear, has little sympathy. Live by the confused name identification, die by the confusing name association, as the old saying goes. Free Chrisishardcore advice: Spend less time practicing your "mug for the camera" face and more time raising money. Even Joe Bembry raises more money than you.

Judy Miller Moment

Just thought I'd mention that, in the words of Judy Miller, I was proved f*cking right!. About what, you might ask? Well, of course I refer to my Jim Crameresque financial advice. I pleaded with readers to short Karl Rove's indictment contract on Tradesports, if only for their own personal sanity, and yet my advice would have netted readers a return of over 100%, had they followed it.

Taking a page from Ken Lay's book, I (unfortunately) did not follow my own advice. As bearish as I was on Rove's indictment, I stayed out of the market and watched as two years worth of AdSense revenue evaporated before my eyes. Now, however, my trusted sources advise me that Karl Rove's indictment contract is attractively priced on the long (buy) side.

If you took my original advice, you could pocket a comfortable profit and have "spare change" to throw away on this new bet. Regardless of the outcome of the special prosecutor's re-examination of Rove, you'd go home with more money than you left the house with. If not, well now is your chance to step up and prove that you're a man. Or a lady with an Ace up her sleeve.

Comcast "Power Play"

Thanks to Tivo, I know when my cable provider moves channels around the lineup. Comcast owns the Outdoor Life Network, which until this year (when it snagged NHL broadcast rights) featured the Professional Bull Riders' circuit as its pinnacle programming. It was also stuck in some bad real estate, channel number 81 or something like that, way at the back of the basic lineup and over some wasteland cable "flyover" territory on the way to the premium channels in the 300 range.

Not anymore! The lowly Spike TV, with its Park Place like real estate at Channel 41 (right between the news networks and ESPN) was shifted to OLN's old home and OLN swapped with Discovery Channel (at 44) to be snuggled right next to ESPN.

Why should I care? Well, with Comcast's near monopoly like grip on my area's cable consumption, today it is the harmless moving of the OLN, but tomorrow it could be a choice between Comcast's news network and CNN (or Fox news). I watch maybe 30 channels, with a margin of error of +/- 10, but I pay nearly $77/month for those channels. I'm pretty sure the technology exists that I could just pick those 30 channels maybe for $50 instead of $77, and ironically OLN might be one of them, but I don't see that on the table.

Just thought I'd bring that up. Comcast wants you not just to pay them for cable, but to monopolize as much of your cable viewing as possible on Comcast owned channels like OLN. Deregulation should mean choice for cable consumers. We aren't getting it in terms of providers, and that may be justifiable if Comcast owns the line. But if we can't get it in providers (as Comcast has fought against) we should at least get it in choice of channels and the ability not to pay for "content" we don't want. Remember that the next time you hear some conservative extoll the virtues of deregulation that completely benefits the utility without offering anything of value to the consumer.