Friday’s political round-up

June 15, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* The deadline for Wyoming Republicans who want to fill the late Sen. Craig Thomas’ (R) seat was yesterday, and 31 people submitted applications. Lynne Cheney, Dick’s wife, was not among them. Next Tuesday, the Wyoming’s GOP Central Committee will winnow the number from 31 to three.

* All of the Democratic presidential candidates will appear in an Univision debate in August, but the field will hear questions in English and English responses will be translated simultaneously into Spanish. Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, both of whom are fluent Spanish speakers, are disappointed. A spokesperson for the Richardson campaign said, “This is a disservice to Univision’s viewers. It is a Spanish-language network and candidates who speak Spanish should not be penalized because other candidates do not.” He added that doing the debate in English is a “new wrinkle” that “detracts from the original intent” of the event, and as a result, Richardson may boycott.

* Rudy Giuliani took an indirect shot at Bush’s presidency yesterday, telling a Flag Day audience in Delaware, “What we’re lacking is strong, aggressive, bold leadership like we had with Ronald Reagan.”

* Speaking of Giuliani, the Jerusalem Post is going to stop distributing fundraising mail for the former mayor’s presidential campaign.

* Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel appeared on the Laura Ingraham radio show yesterday, although he didn’t know it at first. “He came on, and he thought he was actually on the Dr. Laura show,” Ingraham’s producer said yesterday.

* And n a setback for DSCC recruiting, Alabama State Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks (D) announced this week that he will not take on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) next year.

All of the Democratic presidential candidates will appear an Univision debate in August, but the field will hear questions in English and English responses will be translated simultaneously into Spanish. Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, both of whom are fluent Spanish speakers, are disappointed.

What a joke. Did they think the other candidates on stage would not be given a chance to respond to what they said? Or perhaps they were hoping the other seven candidates would boycott?

  • Any action recently by Democratic legislators in “blue” states with Republican governors (like CA, HI, CT, VT) to put in place a law similar to Wyoming’s, so the Dems aren’t at risk of losing their Senate majority by pure chance?

    (crickets)

    (crickets)

    (sound of the Democratic Senate majority slipping away)

  • He added that doing the debate in English is a “new wrinkle” that “detracts from the original intent” of the event, and as a result, Richardson may boycott.

    That’s unfortunate – what an opportunity for the accomplished linguists to appeal to an important group of voters! Nothing stops Richardson from answering in Spanish and having it translated into English – it would be an excellent example of the power of language, and I think would be very appealing to the non-Hispanic vote as well.

    -GFO

  • “This is a disservice to Univision’s viewers. It is a Spanish-language network and candidates who speak Spanish should not be penalized because other candidates do not.”

    BS. How’s Richardson “penalized”? Doesn’t he speak English as well as Spanish? If the debates were conducted in Spanish, the others would have been penalized for not knowing the language. Which would have been unfair, since, the last time I looked, Spanish was not yet an official second language, which one *has to* study in school. We’re not Canada or Belgium where there are two oficial languages or Switzerland, where there’re three.

    And I betcha that half of the Univision viewers won’t even need the translations and won’t mind the debates being conducted in English. Richardson and Dodd just wanted to score off the other candidates and are now peeved to be deprived of the chance.

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