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Election Night: Keep Your Eyes On BallotBlog

Hi everyone. Welcome to BISC's Election Day coverage. We will be keeping you in the loop on all of the ballot initiative results tonight, so stay tuned right here.

More to come later today...

1:30

    TABOR (Howie Rich's initiatives) fails in Maine, Oregon, and Nebraska.

   

California renewable energy has been defeated.

    Montana’s lobbying reform initiative passes.

   

Oregon Roundup
    Eminent domain reform passes.
    Federal personal tax exemption for state tax credit fails.
    TABOR fails.
    Two inter-related campaign finance reform measures split.

12:45 PM

    Colorado
    No legalized marijuana.
    Yes to restricting elected officials from becoming lobbyists.
    No to the restrictive “65% solution” for funding education.
    No to allowing initiatives at all levels of Colorado government.

    Arizona
    Yes to a real smoking ban
    No to the tobacco-industry measure meant to confuse voters.
    Yes to Howie Rich’s regulatory takings measure.

    South Dakota
    Yes to a tobacco tax.
    No to revoking judicial immunity, allowing criminals to sue judges and juries.

    Idaho
    Yes to a gay marriage ban.

11:45 PM

    South Dakota rejects the draconian abortion ban passed earlier this year!

11:25 PM

    Arizonans do not want to give $1,000,000 to one lucky voter, just for voting.

    But they do want to raise their minimum wage.

11:15 PM

    Florida looks like it will increase to 60% + 1 the passage of all future constitutional    
    amendments (initiatives and referenda).

11 PM - Good news.

    Montana and Nevada will raise their states' minimum wage.

10:45 PM - Bad news.

    Tennessee and Wisconsin will ban gay marriage.

    Michigan will ban affirmative action in education and hiring. Michigan has rejected annual         public education increases tied to inflation.  

    Ohio will maintain its prohibition on slot machine gambling.

    Banning Kelo-style eminent domain (not to be confused with regulatory takings) will pass in         New Hampshire and South Carolina.

9:30 PM

    Banning Kelo-style eminent domain (not to be confused with regulatory takings) will pass in         Georgia and Florida.

     Florida tobacco settlement money for tobacco prevention will likely pass.

9 PM

    Exit polling projects that Arizona's English as the official language amendment will pass. 

8:30 PM

    SC same sex marriage ban wins.

8 PM: Wow, CNN is calling this stuff early. So take these with a grain of salt:

    MO minimum wage wins.
    OH minimum wage wins.
    TN same sex marriage ban wins.
 

7 PM: CNN is projecting that Virginia will be making gay marriage (and all domestic partnership benefits) illegal.

National Politics: Clubbin'

Read Chris Cillizza's profile of the Club for Growth's primary victories.

Excerpt:

May seems to be the Club For Growth's month.

The Washington, D.C.-based political organization, which is dedicated to supporting laissez faire capitalism, has scored a slew of GOP primary victories so far this month. It began in Ohio on May 2 where the group backed state Sen. Jim Jordan in the open 4th District House race and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in the governor's race.

A week later, state Sen. Adrian Smith -- the Club-endorsed candidate -- won a crowded Republican primary in the western Nebraska 3rd District. On May 16, Club for Growth President Pat Toomey and the club's Pennsylvania chapter helped organize conservatives to vote against GOP state legislators who had approved a pay raise for themselves. Seventeen legislators members wound up losing their primary races, 13 of whom were Republicans.

Then, last night, another Club-backed candidate, state Rep. Bill Sali, won a six-way GOP primary to claim the nomination in Idaho's 1st District.

"The month of May is validating the new model we have developed," said Toomey. "[We] go in early and go in massively when we make an endorsement."

OK, fine. But while much is made of the horserace aspects of the Club for Growth's primary successes (money raised, incumbents removed, etc.), I wonder what the "primary purity" will mean when the Club's candidates hit the general election. Conservatism isn't exactly winning friends and influencing people in 2006. Not only are we seeing the national Republican Party split and crumble under the weight of corruption and deep unpopularity, but the state issues that would seem to be popular with the Club's candidates are suddenly losing steam as well. Grover Norquist's TABOR tax limitation is becoming increasingly toxic (see Blackwell in OH) as voters and legislators learn more about it. Ditto for the right's newer gimmick, the so-called 65% Solution, which purports to put more money in the classroom but which favors football teams over libraries. Six states have said no thanks to 65%. May seems to be the Club's month, alright, but primary purity often means general malaise.

Former Senator Mike Gravel Pushes National Initiative

Guest blogger Professor Dan Smith is currently the Senior Research Scholar at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Foundation.

Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (D, AK) announced this week that he is throwing his hat into the 2008 presidential ring. As reported in the Washington Post, the 75-year-old two-term ex-lawmaker, who left office in 1981 after losing his reelection bid in the 1980 primary, is using his momentary front-runner fame to bring attention to his long-held pet project: a constitutional amendment permitting national ballot initiatives. “Our three branches of government,” Gravel proclaimed at a press conference kicking off his quixotic presidential bid, “have become like an unstable chair.”

National Politics: Old Habits Die Hard

The New York Times wonders whether conservative turnout strategies - specifically the initiative kind - will continue to work in 2006, or whether issues like gay marriage have lost their punch. Definitely worth a read...

National Politics: Fusion Voting

Scott Shields at MyDD discusses fusion voting, including some good examples of its effect on recent contests and why it might be a better tool for progressives than for the Right. Here at BISC, we are looking at fusion voting as a potential arrow in our strategic quiver, so this conversation interests us for very practical reasons.

National Politics: Populists and Progressives

Guest post by pollster Brad Bannon, of Bannon Communications Research.

The victory of initiatives in Florida and Nevada in 2004 to raise the minimum wage is a strong indication of the success that Progressives can have in 2006 pushing a populist economic agenda.

Thomas Frank argued convincingly in his bestselling book, What’s the Matter with Kansas, that Democrats have lost the support of blue collar voters because the party that has compromised its positions on economic issues so much that it is difficult for working class voters to tell the difference between the two parties on key bread-and-butter issues. According to Frank, the lack of difference between the parties on economic issues has led blue collar voters to support Republicans because of their comfort with the GOP’s positions on social issues like gay marriage. 

 The 2004 Election Day exit poll supports Frank’s thesis. Voters in middle income households ($30,000-$50,000) split right down the middle between Bush and Kerry. The Democratic Party and the Progressive Movement need to do a lot better with these financially squeezed voters. These barely middle class voters were not rich enough to benefit from the Bush tax cuts and their financial situations have grown worse in the last year and a half.

Despite the conservative spin that President Bush is not getting enough credit for improving the economy, the marketplace is a mess and the time is right for Progressives to build on the good work they started with the successful minimum wage initiatives that they won in 2004. The August 5^th edition of the Wall Street Journal was an eye opener. Political reporter, John Harwood wrote that despite rosy economic projections “wage increases lag behind despite low unemployment, and high gas prices dampen consumer spirits”. On the same day that Harwood’s article appeared in the WSJ, the paper ran this headline which reflected consumer unease: “U.S. retail Sales Wilt in July.” And finally the bible of corporate America reported that Exxon/Mobil had churned out “a record profit of $25.3 billion last year as oil prices soared.”

National Politics: And You Thought We Were Sunk

The Center for Policy Alternatives has just released their report Progress in the States: A Report on Proactive, Progressive Victories in 2005, and lo and behold, it turns out to be much more than a sheaf of blank pages!

In all seriousness, the report details 144 measures passed by state legislatures that help advance core progressive values: civil rights, economic justice, environmental protection, access to discount drugs, and others. Not only that, but many of the new laws have been passed in deep red states, like Kansas, South Carolina, Kansas, North Dakota, Texas and Utah. Yes, even Utah.

The steady whinging and moaning of DC-based progressives is not without some merit. Tough times abound for us in the nation's capital. But out in the nation's capitals, the progressive train keeps rumbling forward. Top-level Dems, pundits, and especially the Right, take notice: the country is not quite as conservative as you think it is.

National Politics: Labor Split

How will the split in the AFL-CIO affect ballot initiative campaigns this year and in 2006? What will be the long-term effects of the split on initiative coalition-building?

Add your two cents in Comments below.