Craig Johnson

The Little Special Election that Could!

We did it people! Craig Johnson WINS!!

STATE SENATOR-7TH SD-UNEXPIRED TERM
264 EDS COUNTED 264 EDS IN RACE
CANDIDATE NAME PARTY RESULTS CANDIDATE TOTAL

CRAIG M JOHNSON D 24,915
CRAIG M JOHNSON W 1,537
26,452

MAUREEN C O'CONNELL R 18,988
MAUREEN C O'CONNELL I 1,689
MAUREEN C O'CONNELL C 2,252
22,929


liza's picture

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Democrats need to win back the New York State Senate

[Note: This is an abridged version of an earlier post.]

A little known fact : even though New York has had its fair share of Democratic governors, its state government has been in the clutches of the Republicans for 150 years. The only two times the state government was all blue were in 1932 and 1964. Teddy Roosevelt said once that 'the state Senate is constitutionally Republican'; it's not, but it's been reliably Republican since that party was founded in the 1850s.

It's probably the main reason so many groups have come together to support Craig Johnson.

Another little known detail about the Albany political machine : Incumbency has become the product of anti-democratic redistricting shenanigans.

It is outrageous that NYC, the single
largest demographic in the state, does not have proportional representation in Albany. This is because for years Republicans have been able to pass legislation that favors their districts.

Only in New York would you have majority white and Republican districts inflate their demographics by counting their prison population. This is what The New York Times has to say about the practice [Ending the Prison Windfall — New York Times editorial | Prisoners of the Census]:


liza's picture

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Today is "D" Day : Calling all Democrats from Nassau County to vote in the special election


If you are a Nassau County (NY) blogger or reader or know of anybody who lives there, make sure you get out the vote by 9 pm tonight.

Keep up with what's happening online and off at The Daily Gotham. We have information on phone banking. If you want to drop by their campaign office, give them a call at 516-393-0700.

Just to underscore the importance of this race, we have word that this special election has broken all records in New York, costing a whopping $5,000,000.

It has also prompted The Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause/NY, DEMOS, League of Women Voters/NYS, NYPIRG to create a task force, hotline and blog to monitor voter suppression in the county. Yes, because even though this is a majority white county, the 20% of minority voters in the district could decide the election.

So hop over to The Daily Gotham to keep up on all what's happening.


liza's picture

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Raising New York with Eliot Spitzer

Where are we going to be offline?

Prey NYC
Feb 1 2007
6pm
4 West 22nd Street
http://preynyc.com

How about online?
Check out our new chatrooms at the culturekitchen CAFE. I am going to open them at 7pm.

All you have to do to register is to use your ID at either culturekitchen or The Daily Gotham or any other Drupal site, the name of the site and your password. So you would sign-in like this :

username : your_user_name@culturekitchen.com
password : your_password_at_culturekitchen.com

And so on for all the other sites.

For those who find this too cumbersome, just hop over to The Daily Gotham. Michael and I will be liveblogging over there as well.

Any questions?
Hollaback.

We're gonna rock the house anyway you want it.


liza's picture

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Choice on the Ballot

Liza blogged about it this morning, but I thought I'd weigh in on the race that's presently consuming all of us.

As Liza lays out, there are several reasons to be interested in what at first glance appears to be simply a by-election of little relevance beyond the borders of one district. However, the circumstances surrounding this election are far-reaching.

New York State has a bicameral legislature, the lower House of which is held by Democrats, the upper, the state Senate, by republicans. They have held this body largely without challenge or interruption (there were two, in the last century, in 1932 and 1964 respectively) for one hundred and fifty years. In the 2006 election, for the first time in memory, Democrats won the popular vote for the Senate; it is ripe for a takeover.

This special election is for a seat in the state Senate. A few weeks ago, Governor Sptzer tapped a republican Senator, Michael Balboni, for a seat in his cabinet. To replace him, the other side nominated one Maureen O'Connell, presently the Nassau County Clerk and formerly a member of the State Assembly.

It's her record that puts choice on this ballot.


Michael Bouldin's picture

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A blograiser to chat, mingle and change New York history

A little known fact : even though New York has had its fair share of Democratic governors, its state government has been in the clutches of the Republicans for 150 years. The only two times the state government was all blue were in 1932 and 1964. Teddy Roosevelt said once that 'the state Senate is constitutionally Republican'; it's not, but it's been reliably Republican since that party was founded in the 1850s.

It's probably the main reason so many groups have come together to fundraise on Thursday, February 1st, for Craig Johnson.

Organizations like NARAL, PFAW, the Human Rights Campaign, Democracy for NYC, the Council for Urban Professionals and others are working together for this event. It's the first time though, that the local blogosphere is an active participant in an election of this kind. The Albany Project, On NY Turf, Rochester Turning, Swing State Project, our labor of love The Daily Gotham and others are stepping in from the outside to help anchor an event like this. Which, may I add, is in and of itself unprecedented.

Another little known detail about the Albany political machine : Incumbency has become the product of anti-democratic redistricting shenanigans.


liza's picture

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Words to live by

Intellectual Property Rights block technology transfer and TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) promote monopolies on seeds and medicines and piracy of Third World biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.

That is why we had to fight WR Grace and USDA to revoke the Neem Patent, we had to fight Ricetec to prevent them claiming our basmati as their invention. And we have successfully fought

The rules of The World Trade Organization were designed to impoverish poor people and poor countries, transform their biodiversity and water commons into corporate property so that seed multi-national corporations like Monsanto could sell us our seeds for $1 tr. per year and water giants like Suez and Bechtel could sell us our water for another trillion. And the free trade rules of agriculture are robbing Indian peasants of $1 trillion per year through falling prices because of $400 billion subsidies in rich countries distorting trade by distorting prices.

This is not just a recipe for poverty, it is a recipe for genocide. In the free trade world that Bhagwati upholds, peasants sell kidneys to pay debt for poisons, displaced rural women sell their bodies to feed their children, hospitals become centers of organ theft, and India which sold the finest fabrics and tastiest spices to the world becomes the dumping ground for the toxic wste of 9/11 and the exploded and unexploded shells from the war in Afganistan and Iraq.

Free trade is becoming a mechanism to take our wealth, our biodiversity, our minerals, our brains and give us trash and toxic in exchange. It is an exchange of "bads" for "goods". This is not comparative advantage, it is loot. Which is why we say, "Our World is not for sale".


— Vandana Shiva, ecofeminist activist
ZNet Commentary: An Attack On People's Movements


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