California electoral scheme unravels

September 28, 2007

It seemed like a clever little scam. California Republicans, far-right activists, and Swiftboat financiers, under the guise of “fairness,” would split California’s 55 electoral votes by congressional district, as opposed to the current winner-take-all system. There’s no real mystery behind the effort — the goal is to deny Dems about 20 fairly reliable electoral votes, making it extremely difficult for the party to win a presidential election.

For a few months, it’s looked as if Dems would have to invest heavily in making sure this initiative failed. Now, however, it appears they’ve already won.

A proposed California initiative campaign that could have helped Republicans hold on to the White House in 2008 was a shambles Thursday night, as two of its key consultants quit.

Unable to raise sufficient money and angered over a lack of disclosure by its one large donor, veteran political law attorney Thomas Hiltachk, who drafted the measure, said he was resigning from the committee.

Hiltachk’s departure is a major blow to the operation because he organized other consultants who had set about trying to raise money and gather signatures for the initiative. Campaign spokesman Kevin Eckery said he was ending his role as well.

“‘Shambles’ is the wrong word,” said strategist Marty Wilson, who curtailed his fundraising efforts weeks ago. “The campaign never got off the ground.”

It’s possible that some major GOP donor could swoop in at the last minute and throw a bunch of money at this scam, but time is very short (proponents need hundreds of thousands of signatures by the end of November), and even supporters acknowledge that the measure appears to be dead.

Democratic consultant Chris Lehane, who has been helping lead the opposition to the scheme, is cautiously optimistic. “We want to make sure this is not the Freddy Krueger of initiatives that comes back to life,” Lehane said. “We’ll continue to monitor it. We thought it was a debacle from the beginning and seems it suffered from its own internal dysfunction.”

It couldn’t have happened to a better group of people.

Just in case anyone has any doubt who/what these scum are, the “major donor” who wouldn’t allow any disclosure was Texas traitor Bob Perry, financier of the Swiftboat Liars, and a man who is the personal embodiment of what is meant by that old Texamnism, “he needed killin’.”

Looks like Orangutang County needs to secede from California for the white boys to have any power left. They couldn’t even keep Chemerinsky out of their local law school.

  • The liberal Cherminsky, new dean of Irvine law school, will be monitored. Sounds like a short leash for him.

    This collapse of “fair distribution” is good news. I hope everything the Repubs touch turns to dust.

  • Well, the signature gatherers were still out in front my local Trader Joes trying to get people to sign this petition yesterday. Of course, they’re paid drones. Hopefully this will stop before the petition drive gets enough signatures to put it on the ballot! Just because the head of the beast implodes, doesn’t mean the legs won’t keep running from it’s own momentum…

  • “Unable to raise sufficient money and angered over a lack of disclosure by its one large donor, veteran political law attorney Thomas Hiltachk, who drafted the measure, said he was resigning from the committee.”

    The Richard Mellon Scaife divorce proceedings must have dried-up the river of money. So nice to have fate intercede in a positive way for a change.

  • Beware, these folks never give up. Look for hundreds of thousands of Rethug Xtian Fundies to make the march to California to relocate this week, barefoot and pure. It’s what Jesus would want.

  • They might be trying to head-fake the Democrats. I can see this strategy–if the Dems know that we’re going forward, they can put up their own ballot measure that is far less objectionable, such as “California will only apportion its electoral votes when a majority of other states enact comparable legislation, etc.” So let’s make them think it’s dead and then pull it out at the last minute, when they have no chance to react with their own alternative.

    Am I being paranoid? I hope so, but I wouldn’t put anything past these slimeballs.

  • I don’t trust these people either, and I would be surprised if we don’t see another incarnation of this idea later. These people are true thugs, without any moral principle, and unable to envision winning without cheating. Vigilance is the only answer. If Republicans had their way, the entire public university and higher education system would be de-funded, and only entitled rich white boys would get a college education. That has been in the works since Reagan became governor. The reason for that is simple: they don’t want an educated and informed electorate. They want to palm this petty deceitful nonsense upon us as often as they can get away with it.

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