Mediaboss Marketing

In February 1992, a small, graying man in a slightly wrinkled suit eased himself into a seat across from the television host Larry King. Larry King Live was the hottest show on cable newsmostly because it was the top-rated show on CNN, the only cable-news channel widely available in the U.S. at the time. And so it was there that a reedy-voiced Texan announced that he would run for president if and only if his supporters got him on the ballot in all 50 states.

Thus began the improbable rise of Ross Perot, the billionaire presidential candidate who threw the 1992 presidential campaign into disarray, first by entering as an independent, then by dropping out just a few months before the election, and finally by jumping back in with only a month left to go. Despite his erratic campaign, he captured nearly 20 percent of the vote: the best showing for a third-party presidential candidate in 80 years.

From the May 1993 issue: Ross is boss

The Perot phenomenon was more than a curiosity of the 1992 campaign. It revealed a political culture in crisis, one reeling from the end of the Cold War, profound economic shifts, a rapidly transforming media landscape, and a newly empowered generation of women and nonwhite Americans. It also revealed a frustrated and malleable electorate with loose ties to the major parties and their platforms.

It was a moment that mattered because of both the discontent and the possibilities it highlighted. And although Perot was an independent, his run sheds light on the current state of the Republican Party. People curious about the dramatic changes in the party over the past several years often start with the 2016 election, but they would do better to look back to 1992. In that election, as well as in the years that followed, the party sketched out a path designed to attract disillusioned voters not through the flexible, heterodox politics of the Perot campaign but through a hard-right, reactionary politics made palatable by a new style of political entertainment and a deepening anti-establishment posture. That path led to the election of Donald Trump, which by the 2010s was not only a possible outcome of the choices the right had made in the 1990s, but one that had been a long time coming.

The 1992 election, the first after the end of the Cold War, came after a decade of Republican successes. Ronald Reagan won two terms as president in back-to-back landslides, and his vice president, George H. W. Bush, won in 1988 in a landslide of his own. But by the early 1990s, the electorate was frustrated, if not furious. The adrenaline spike of the Gulf War, which sent Bushs approval rating into record-high territory, vanished as the economy stuttered into a recession.

That recession was compounded by broader domestic shifts and the new geopolitical reality of the postCold War world. California, which had been particularly reliant on the Cold War to fuel its universities and aerospace industry, felt the collapse the hardest. But the pain was also felt by factory workers, who were caught in a decades-long shift to service and information-sector work. Added to the frustrations of the recession was genuine uncertainty about what role, if any, the U.S. should play in the world now that the Cold War was over. The Gulf War had been a short, triumphal affair, but as it faded from the headlines, it offered few answers about what should follow.

But Pat Buchanan did have answers. Buchanan, a former communications director in the Reagan White House and a popular television personality, felt unconstrained by party orthodoxies. He had long professed his belief that the biggest vacuum in American politics today is to the right of Ronald Reagan, and he set out to prove that in his 1992 campaign for the Republican nomination. He ran well to the right of Bush, not just taking hard-line positions on issues such as immigration (he called for a Buchanan fence at the border) and affirmative action but also resurrecting themes of the Old Right of the 1930s and 40s: a closed, cramped vision of an America that needed to be protected from foreign trade, foreign people, and foreign entanglements. He carried out an America First campaign that argued against U.S. involvement abroad and denounced free-trade deals such as the newly negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement.

From the February 1996 issue: Right-wing populist

He also brought a dark note to the campaign, calling for a revolution against a whole slew of enemies: liberals, feminists, immigrants, even Republicans such as George Bush. Running against Bush for the nomination, Buchanan took to calling him King George, promising that his supporters, the Buchanan brigade, would lead a new American revolution if Buchanan won. Even Buchanan was stunned by how well his message resonated. When reports came in on the day of the New Hampshire primary that he and Bush were neck and neck, Buchanan, who was in the middle of typing his speech withdrawing from the race, looked around his hotel room and asked, What the fuck do we do now?

Buchanan lost that night, but his unexpectedly strong showing suggested two things: first, that an incumbent president could be vulnerable to a challenger, and second, that the challenger didnt need to be a political insider. Buchanan had never held elected office before, and neither had the man who, two days later, sat down on Larry King Live to announce that he would welcome efforts to draft him into the 1992 race.

That outsider, anti-establishment ethos coursed through the 1992 campaign. It was most obviously present in Perots independent runthe first efforts to draft him came from a group called THRO, Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Outbut it was also part of the Buchanan campaign. Bill Clinton, the young Arkansas governor running for the Democratic nomination, also tapped into the outsider aesthetic, playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show and fielding questions from an MTV audience on everything from his youthful drug use to his underwear preferences. But for Clinton, this shake-things-up approach was mostly superficial, playing into the sentiment of the moment without offering much of substance to address it and not as novel as it appeared: Presidential candidates had been dabbling in those sorts of cameos for decades, including Richard Nixon, who popped up on the sketch-comedy show Laugh-In during the 1968 race.

The real media innovators on the trail in 1992 were Buchanan and Perot. Neither man had ever held elected office; both built their following through regular media appearances. Buchanan, who had been an editorial writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before he joined Nixons 1968 campaign, rose to national fame as the host of CNNs Crossfire and a regular panelist on PBSs The McLaughlin Group. Perots path was more deliberately plotted: He sold himself as a swashbuckling billionaire, and his antics, including a daring rescue mission to pluck hostages out of Iran, became the stuff of legendand of the 1986 miniseries On Wings of Eagles (starring Richard Crenna as Perot). He then transformed himself into a political figure through frequent ratings-spiking appearances on Larry King Live.

Politics in the United States had always been full of artifice, but presidential candidates had nevertheless found it necessary to construct their personas around experiencetime spent in elected office or military leadership. For Buchanan and Perot, the new age of interactive media (both Crossfire and Larry King Live started as call-in radio shows) infused their candidacies with a sense of novelty and authenticity. And the potent anti-establishment anger coursing through the country meant that they wore their inexperience as a feature, not a flaw.

Neither Perot nor Buchanan won in 1992, but they left a lasting impact on politics. At first, Perots vision appeared to be winning out. As the 1994 midterms approached two years later, both Democrats and Republicans fretted over how to capture the Perot vote. It was a hard segment of the electorate to pin down. Perots personality was mercurial, his leadership style authoritarian, and his views heterodox. He opposed free trade and abortion restrictions and supported gun regulation and balanced budgets. Unlocking the key to his appeal, which attracted Republicans and Democrats in roughly equal numbers, would not be easy.

Todd S. Purdum: Were all living in the world Ross Perot made

On the Republican side, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich leaned into the challenge. He brought aboard Frank Luntz, who had worked as a pollster first for Buchanan and then for Perot, to crack the Perot code. Luntz argued that Perot appealed to so many people because he was explicitly nonpartisan and devoted to reining in the excesses and privileges of political elites. If Republicans wanted to win over his voters, they would have to focus less on attacking Democrats and more on developing a robust reform agenda.

That advice was an awkward fit for Gingrich. He had built his reputation by weaponizing ethics charges, which left an air of scandal around Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright that eventually led to his resignation. He had also spent the past few years using the organization GOPAC to train Republicans in rhetorical tricks for demonizing Democratspart of an ongoing effort to polarize the parties.

Eager to build a coalition that would put Republicans in the majority and himself in the speakers office, Gingrich worked with Luntz to create the Contract With America, a document that made no reference to President Clinton or either political party, and that was ostensibly designed to promote only 60 percent issuespolicies that polled with at least 60 percent support.

Gingrich, the Contract, and Republicans all won in 1994, a historic victory that ushered in a new freshman class further to the right than that of any other House in modern U.S. history. Yet if pursuit of the Perot vote shaped Gingrichs rise to the speakers office, he quickly abandoned it for his preferred path of polarization. Under pressure from the True Believers, as the right-wing hard-liners in his caucus dubbed themselves, he shifted focus from reform to a series of innovative obstructionist maneuvers, including endless investigations, lengthy government shutdowns, and an unpopular impeachment effortnone of which spoke to the frustrations and angers of postCold War Americans.

As Perots popularity suggests, those frustrations and angers could have attached themselves to any of a number of political figures and agendas. But the agenda that the right built over the course of the 1990s would be far more Buchanan than Perot. When an anti-government militia movement gained power in the early 90s, the right saw it as an opportunity, not a warning. Republicans such as Representative Helen Chenoweth of Idaho embraced the causes and conspiracies of her militia constituents, and the NRA played into attacks on federal agents in fundraising letters that called the agents jack-booted government thugs. (After the Oklahoma City bombing, George H. W. Bush resigned from the NRA in response to those comments.)

On other issues, too, the party lurched to the right. Republicans and Democrats both took a hard turn toward restricting immigration, opening the door for Buchananite calls to build a border wall, end birthright citizenship, restrict nonwhite immigration, and cut off nearly all nonemergency public services, including education, to undocumented migrants. And although the party had been moving toward a more hard-line position on abortion for two decades, there still seemed to be room to maneuver: After a significant number of Republicans voted for Perot, they then briefly flocked to Colin Powell, who also supported abortion rights, in the lead-up to the 1996 presidential primaries. But the party ultimately chose a hardline position on reproductive rights.

On issue after issue, the right developed a politics of resentment. Feminism was to blame for flooding the workplace with women who not only competed for wages but raised complaints about harassment and unequal treatment. Immigrants were to blame for overcrowded schools, high housing costs, and lower wages. Government agents were coming for your guns, your land, your money, and your rights, using immigration policy and affirmative action to ensure that white men would not have the resources or the power they once enjoyed.

These were not popular politics in the 1990s. Outsider candidates such as Perot and even Clinton offered an alternative vision to the exclusionary populism of Buchanan. But voters who subscribed to these politics were always there, and the party chose them and cultivated them, slowly over the next decade and then very quickly once Barack Obama took office. That choice gave us the politics of white-male resentment and the new generation of pundit-politicians we have today.

In that sense, the party had been preparing for a quarter century for a figure like Donald Trump: a bombastic television personality whose solutions to voter frustrations involved pointing at the very same groups that Buchanan once had. Trump was not an exception; he was simply the next step on a path the right had started down almost three decades before.

See more here:
The Republican Party Was Trumpy Long Before Trump - The Atlantic

With the 2022 midterms little more than two months away, Republicans and their allies have blitzed the nations courts with election-related lawsuits, with more than half the legal actions attacking mail-in balloting.

Republican-affiliated groups filed 41 lawsuits through Sept. 16, compared to seven last year, and 13 by the same point in 2020,according to a new reportbyDemocracy Docket, a group spearheaded by Democratic elections attorneyMarc Elias.

The number of lawsuits filed by Democrats and their allies has remained relatively constant, with 35 actions filed so far this year, and 52 in 2021, the analysis showed.

But there has been a jump in the total voting cases between years (76 so far in 2022 and 52 in 2021), the analysis notes, adding that the difference is explained by an increase in GOP activity in the courts (41 lawsuits so far in 2022 and seven in 2021).

While Republicans and their allies proactively filed lawsuits in just seven instances last year, they were far from idle. Eighteen states enacted restrictive voting laws in 2021, sparking immediate litigation from civil and voting rights organizations, the Democratic Party, and theU.S. Dept. of Justice. National and state Republican organizations filedmotions to intervene in nearly every case, the analysis showed.

Through Sept. 16,Democracy Docketsanalysts said theyd tracked 76 voting and election-related lawsuits. Of those cases more than half (41) were filed by Republicans and their allies, a 486 percent increase in new lawsuits by GOP-affiliated groups from 2021 to 2022, the reports authors wrote.

Half of the lawsuits (22) filed this year include challenges to mail-in voting, which is legal in Pennsylvania and has faced repeated legal assaults by the GOP and its allies.

The legal actions filed this year includecases that challenge absentee ballot deadlines, the use ofdrop boxes, signature matching rules, andballot curing procedures,which allow voters to fix errors with their ballots,according to the report.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

SUBSCRIBE

An[Associed Press] surveyrecently confirmed that even in 2020, an election year with a significant increase in drop box use due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no widespread problems with drop boxes, the reports authors wrote.

According to the report, a dozen Republican-led lawsuits filed this year have focused on the logistical aspects of running an election. That includes conspiracy-basedchallengesagainstvotingmachines, the analysis found.

Among the other lawsuits filed this year, one successfully blocked a pro-voting ballot initiative from appearing on Arizonas ballot this fall, two dealt with post-election results and four seek to limit voter registration opportunities, the reports authors wrote.

As the midterms near, Republicans have shifted their tactics, moving away from attacking from who can vote to which votes count, the analysis indicated.

On Sept. 1, for instance, theRepublican National Committeefiled a lawsuitchallengingthe authority of Pennsylvania county officials to notify voters of technical mistakes with their mail-in ballots and allow voters to fix simple errors to ensure their ballots are counted, a routine process known as ballot curing, according to the report.

Based on the litigation so far, analysts say they expect to see an even greater number of legal actions filed in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 8.

Even though the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique legal environment where a number of voting laws were litigated prior to the general election, 2022 GOP-filed litigation is significantly outpacing 2020 already, the reports authors wrote.

Visit link:
Republicans, allies have blitzed the courts with voting, election lawsuits | Tuesday Morning Coffee - Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Part of The power and potential of Latino voters, from The Highlight, Voxs home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

Anna Paulina Luna is ready for people to get to know the new GOP.

Luna, 33, is an Air Force veteran, political activist, and likely future Congress member representing Floridas 13th District, a seat that got safer for Republicans in the latest round of redistricting. Shes also a granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and one of a record 43 Republican Latina candidates who ran for House seats this year, 17 of whom have won their primaries so far.

I think that the new GOP that exists is not your stereotype of what it used to be, she tells Vox. Weve had to really push back against this narrative that Republicans are just older white males, which to be clear, theres nothing wrong with that. However, its false. I mean, were so diverse.

The new GOP Luna references doesnt sound all that different in its policy goals from the one of years past. But if she and other members of her cohort win, the party will certainly look different. Currently, just 16 percent of House Republicans are women, while 9 percent are people of color. Should Luna and other Latina GOP candidates win this year, it would mark major progress for Republican efforts to broaden the partys slate of lawmakers and appeal to voters an existential issue in a country thats poised to be majority-minority by 2050.

Other Latina candidates vying for competitive seats include former Sen. Ted Cruz staffer Cassy Garcia in Texass 28th, former Happy Valley Mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer in Oregons Fifth, and Prince William County official Yesli Vega in Virginias Seventh.

There are two big factors driving the surge in Republican Latina candidates this year, says Olivia Perez-Cubas of Winning for Women, a group dedicated to electing Republican women.

There has been a concerted effort on the right to focus on the Hispanic and Latino community, and to recruit more diverse candidates who are reflective of their district, she tells Vox. Theres also growing frustration in the Hispanic community that Democrats no longer reflect their values, and were seeing more candidates willing to run because of it.

Both factors contributed to Lunas candidacy. She was formally brought into GOP politics after being recruited to lead Hispanic engagement for Turning Point USA, a right-wing advocacy group. And she feels the Democratic Party hasnt spoken to her views, particularly on border security or the economy.

Luna and other candidates also say that Democratic missteps including poor outreach and first lady Jill Bidens comments comparing the Latino community to breakfast tacos have shown just how out of touch its leaders are with Latino voters.

I think the pandering that theyve done to how theyve treated us, you know, were not stupid, and they dont own our vote, she says.

The GOP has been laying the foundation to become more diverse since 2012 and its accelerated these efforts since last cycle.

After losing the presidential election in 2012 when candidate Mitt Romney won just 30 percent of Latino voters the Republican National Committee commissioned a postmortem report. It concluded the RNC needed to make certain that we are actively engaging women and minorities in our efforts when it came to candidate recruitment and that we need to strengthen our farm team to ensure that we are competitive in up-ballot elections in the future when the electorate will be considerably more diverse.

The idea was that electing a more representative pool of officials to state and local office could help Republicans reach a broader base of voters, and establish a deep bench for federal seats down the line.

That RNC report boosted efforts like the Republican State Leadership Committees Future Majority Project, which is dedicated to identifying and backing women and people of color for Republican seats at the state level. The project had some success including wins by 43 of 240 recruits in 2014, and some participants like now-Rep. Young Kim (R-CA), going on to higher office.

Such progress looked likely to be squandered in 2016, when Donald Trump entered the Republican primary and trounced the competition on a message that seemed tailor-made to put off Hispanic voters: He infamously described some immigrants from Mexico as rapists, questioned a federal judges ability to fairly make decisions because he is Mexican American, and pledged harsh border enforcement and a wall along the US border with Mexico.

Despite Trumps xenophobic and racist rhetoric, his campaign invested in connecting with more religious Latino voters, and ended up seeing numbers consistent with Romneys.

All the while, Republicans at the state and federal levels continued to work on efforts like the ones recommended in the 2013 report. As chair of House Republican recruitment in 2018, Rep. Elise Stefanik focused on bringing on more women, Hispanic, and African American candidates, who she described as often more effective than white, male candidates in swing districts. And in 2021, the RSLC established the Right Leaders Network, which is dedicated to providing mentorship and training for women and candidates of color.

Ahead of 2020, Trump and the Republican National Committee made key investments in wooing Latino voters as well, including opening up field offices in predominantly Latino areas. This cycle, the RNC has set up more than 30 community centers including at least a dozen focused on Hispanic voters. These centers serve as key locations for campaign events and voter registration, as well as other social gatherings, according to RNC spokesperson Danielle Alvarez.

Such investments appeared to pay off in 2020; Trumps share of Latino voters grew by 8 percentage points compared to 2016, according to data from Catalist, a Democratic firm. And several places saw rightward shifts: Zapata County in South Texas flipped from previously voting Democratic to voting for Trump, while multiple counties in that region and in South Florida shifted right, with Joe Biden winning by much smaller margins than former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did. Florida Reps. Maria Salazar and Carlos Gimenez, both of whom had support from Republican leadership, flipped Democrat-held districts.

Of the 14 Democratic-held House seats that Republicans flipped last cycle, 13 of those were won by a candidate that was either a woman or person of color, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Additionally, Republicans more than doubled the number of women in their House caucus, from 13 to 29.

That meant Republicans narrowed Democrats control of the House to a super-slim margin, a feat they chalked up to the strength of candidates in swing districts. Essentially, one big lesson Republicans took from 2020 was that diverse candidates can provide electoral advantages.

We learned that we could overperform in new kinds of districts by recruiting compelling candidates with interesting stories and different profiles that reflect the districts they are trying to represent, says Calvin Moore, a spokesperson for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a political action committee endorsed by House Republican leadership.

In practice, that has led the GOP, and notable outside groups, to put more resources behind a wide range of candidates.

For minority candidates who are not in the political industry whatsoever, it can be really intimidating to jump in and run for office if you have the passion, but you dont have the infrastructure to do that, says Lorna Romero, an Arizona-based Republican strategist who previously served as a communications director for John McCains 2016 Senate campaign.

Such efforts have significant support from the most powerful Republicans.

I think that Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, the Republican leadership, has been the most receptive leadership group on these issues, of making sure were recruiting good candidates in every part of the country, says Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), a founder of the Hispanic Leadership Trust, a political action committee started in May thats dedicated to supporting Hispanic and Latino candidates. For example, McCarthy has personally backed Juan Ciscomani, a former adviser for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, while party leaders advocated for Chavez-DeRemer to run in Oregon.

Other candidates like Luna, Vega, and Garcia have been elevated as part of the National Republican Congressional Committees Young Guns program, which highlights strong campaigns to donors and provides national exposure.

Theyre very much encouraging all candidates from different walks of life to step up to the plate, Luna told Vox.

The mentoring and attention provided by initiatives like the Young Guns program and Right Leaders Network have helped candidates build out their infrastructure, but so has money from a slew of political action committees.

In addition to the Hispanic Leadership Trust, theres been an explosion of PACs dedicated to funding Republican women candidates as well as minority candidates. Both Stefaniks Elevate PAC and Winning for Women were started to bolster the number of women in the GOP conference. Catalyst PAC was also founded by Republican strategists Larissa Martinez and Rina Shah in 2019 to promote candidates who are underrepresented in the Republican Party including people of color and LGBTQ candidates.

Together, these PACs as well as the Congressional Leadership Fund have spent heavily to boost Latina candidates. For instance, CLF spent $164,000 on ads to support Monica De La Cruz in Texass 15th District and $200,000 to support Mayra Flores in Texass 34th District during their primaries.

This influx of money and infrastructure make the process of running for office more feasible for candidates who were previously reluctant to take it on.

Those candidates including at least 17 Latina candidates whove won House primaries this year span the GOPs ideological spectrum. Some, like Flores, are more conservative and have backed hardline immigration policies much like Trumps. Others, including lawyer and former radio host Yuripzy Morgan, in Marylands safely Democratic Third District, are closer to the center and more focused on pocketbook issues.

I know it is a bit of a dirty word in politics. But you know what, the majority of Americans are moderate, I am moderate. And Im not afraid to say it, Morgan tells Vox.

Multiple Republicans emphasized the importance of backing candidates with authenticity and connections to their communities. Among those running in Texas, for example, Monica De La Cruz is a small business owner, Flores is a respiratory care therapist who worked with Covid-19 patients, and Garcia is a former congressional staffer. Some, including Luna and Vega, also have experience in the military or law enforcement; Flores and Irene Armandariz-Jackson, a real estate agent and anti-abortion activist running in Texass 16th District, are married to partners whove worked as border patrol agents.

Several candidates are running in swing districts, where Republicans hope they will be more appealing to independent and moderate voters. In 2022, at least 10 of the most competitive battleground House districts the ones that have been listed as toss-ups by Cook Political Report as of early September have Republican challengers that are either women or people of color. The GOP has a good chance of retaking the House this fall, and its counting on candidates like De La Cruz, Garcia, and Chavez-DeRemer to make that happen.

Republicans are likely looking beyond 2022 with their recruitment efforts as well.

The partys ability to connect with different minority groups is becoming more critical as the country becomes increasingly more diverse: In 2000, Hispanic voters made up 7 percent of the US electorate. In 2018, they comprised 13 percent. According to a US Census projection, the US population will be majority-minority by 2045.

The math just doesnt add up for Republicans in places like Texas if they cant bring people of color to their side. This is a last ditch effort to hold onto power without actually changing their policies, argues Cristina Tzintzn Ramirez, the executive director of progressive advocacy group NextGen America and founder of Jolt, an organization dedicated to mobilizing Latino voters in Texas.

Republicans see a major opening with Latino voters both because of the support theyve already received, and their belief that Democrats are neither doing sufficient outreach nor speaking to the top concerns that voters have.

We often hear ... minority voters feel like Democrats are taking their vote for granted, the RNCs Alvarez tells Vox. Strategists within the Democratic Party, too, have repeatedly warned the party that they needed to get involved in voter outreach earlier in the campaign cycle, rather than doing so just ahead of Election Day.

While Democrats are preparing to run campaigns centered on abortion access, their climate achievements, canceling student loan debt, and their success in lowering the cost of certain prescription drugs, Republicans argue voters including Latino voters are more worried about energy costs, education, and public safety. Many GOP candidates say that voters in their district are most concerned about the same issue: the economy.

This inflation affects everyone, says Armendariz-Jackson, who is running in Texass 16th. It doesnt matter if youre Black, brown, or white. Were all hurting.

Republicans believe focusing on the economy will pay particular dividends with Latino voters because its also a way to talk about shared values, says Geraldo Cadava, a Northwestern University political scientist and author of the book The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of An American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump.

I think Latino conservatives are doubling down on free enterprise, they are still preaching a prosperity gospel, that wealth creation is the specialty of the Republican Party, he tells Vox.

Broadly, Republicans feel Democrats still treat the group as a monolith, and have been using Jill Bidens breakfast taco gaffe to sell Latino voters on that idea. Garcias campaign, for example, is selling a line of merch that reads unique as a taco.

I think Democrats have put us in a box where if were Latino were supposed to be Democrats, were supposed to want illegal immigration, says Armendariz-Jackson. And that couldnt be further from the truth, especially those who have immigrated to the United States legally.

Latina candidates Vox spoke with were clear about why they felt the Republican Party was a good fit for them. But the rise of Latina Republican candidates has prompted debate about what such representation means when Republicans have promoted xenophobic rhetoric and harmful policies directed at Latino people.

Some Republicans argue that Trumps racist remarks arent offensive to Latino voters, and that theyve been taken out of context. You have many Latino conservatives flatly denying that Trump was saying anything racist against their community as a whole because they say that he was talking about a very specific group of immigrants who had broken the law by entering the country without papers, says Cadava.

Strategists and candidates note, too, that the GOP is bigger than Trumps particular views. Its a dynamic that reflects an ongoing tension in the party, which has tried to make its tent a little bigger, while being dominated by Trump and other leaders who espouse racist and xenophobic viewpoints.

Despite Trumps past rhetoric, the party is successfully diversifying. And that has led to the rise of candidates who are able to deliver Trumps talking points in bold new ways. Because Latino candidates share certain aspects of their identity with the voters theyre speaking to, they can sometimes be more effective messengers for Republican ideas than white men.

If you put Donald Trump and Mayra Flores side by side, they are largely saying the same thing, said Cadava. But for Latinos, hearing that same message from Mayra Flores would be more compelling to them than from Trump.

Critics of the GOPs effort to expand its Latino base argue its central problem is that the Republican platform does little to center the needs of Latino voters.

Republicans have done a great job showing off their Latina candidates, but theyve done a terrible job addressing the actual concerns of the Latino community, says Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, a group dedicated to turning out Latino voters, in a statement. Republicans have opposed policies like the Affordable Care Act and a $15 minimum wage, both of which would disproportionately benefit Latinos.

But Republicans including the partys Latina candidates say such points of view are shortsighted and narrow-minded. Most of all, they say, arguments like Kumars miss the genuine connection that Republican messaging has for a segment for voters.

Thats kind of offensive that just because youre of a certain descent, you need to vote a certain way. And if you dont vote that way, youre not representing your community, says Romero, the Republican strategist. Thats one of the things that upsets me most.

Originally posted here:
A record number of Latina Republicans are running for Congress in 2022 - Vox.com

The Society for the Advancement of Judaism, a Reconstructionist synagogue on the Upper West Side with the motto Judaism that Stands for All, has refused to rent space to the Upper West Side Republican Club for an event that would have featured former Bill Clinton advisor and current Donald Trump supporter Dick Morris. The event was scheduled to be televised on C-SPAN in late October.

While SAJ regularly rents space to schools and for private events, Board Chair Janet Brain and Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann told THE CITY in a joint statement that the Club was no longer welcome.

We were happy to rent our space to the Upper West Side Republican Club for many years, consistent with the communitys commitment towards civility and dialogue, the synagogue leaders said.

This recent request to use SAJs space was the first one by the club since before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the first request to televise their event for a national audience. The climate in our country has changed since the 2020 election and January 6, said synagogue leaders in a statement first reported by the West Side Rag.

We cannot abide any speaker in our sacred space whose words amplify and broadcast the anti-democratic ideas of the January 6 insurrectionists, or who condone or incite violence against our elected representatives, whether today or in a future election, they added.

While the statement did not name Morris, who has said that the 2020 election was absolutely stolen, West Side Republican Club President Marcia Drezon-Tepler told THE CITY that people need to leave Dick Morris name out of this and accused the synagogue of putting out misinformation.

Morris and his speaking agency did not respond to requests for comment.

Republican strategist Dick Morris

Gino Santa Maria/Shutterstock

In a statement on Monday night, Drezon-Tepler who told THE CITY that she was a lifelong Democrat who left the party because of what she said was the antisemitism of Democratic Squad Reps. Illan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tliab said that A Jewish institution more than others should realize what it means to marginalize any group, for thats what the Nazis and others throughout the ages have done to the Jews.

Drezon-Tepler told THE CITY that the synagogues statement was misinformation, while forwarding a September email exchange where its administrative director told her group that the Executive Committee of SAJ has determined that because of recent developments with respect to the Republican Party we are no longer comfortable renting space to the West Side Republican Club. We appreciate the relationship we had until March of 2020. However, it is not one with which we are able to continue moving forward.

In response, a member of the Republican Club wrote that Its very sad that an institution that claims to be open to everyone should be so prejudiced, even racist. I was so heartened that the SAJ had housed us for so long. Now, Im deeply disappointed.

Asked about their earlier email to the West Side Republican Club, SAJ officials said that their statement to THE CITY spoke for itself.

SAJ was founded in 1922 by Dr. Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, also the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, who was the first modern Jewish thinker to articulate that Judaism was not just a religion or a culture, rather an evolving religious civilization, according to the history detailed on the synagogues web page.

The page also notes that SAJ began affirming LGBTQ+ members and interfaith families in the 1990s, and stresses its founders conviction that believers should not check our minds at the door.

SAJs decision not to rent to the Republican group comes after the Museum of Jewish Heritage declined to host a conference in May by the Tikvah Fund that included Ron DeSantis as a speaker.

The group eventually moved that event to the Chelsea Piers, where the Florida governor who signed that states Dont Say Gay law gave a speech during Pride Month in June as many local elected Democrats condemned the venue for hosting him.

Many groups are wary of inviting lightning-rod right-wingers, one of those officials, Brad Hoylman, told THE CITY this week when asked about the synagogues decision not to rent to the Republican club for the event with Morris. Understandably, he said.

Marcia Drezon-Tepler said her club is working on finalizing another venue for Morris to speak at, and lamented that SAJ no longer welcomed them.

Their logo says Judaism that stands for all, said Drezon-Tepler. Apparently it stands for all except for Republicans.

Get THE CITY Scoop

Sign up and get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning

Thank you for your submission!

Go here to see the original:
UWS Synagogue Refuses to Rent Space to Republican Club for Speech by Election Denier - THE CITY

The growth of the ESG industry has led to some counterintuitive results, as companies have learned to game the metrics: Some private prison companies, for instance, score well on the criteria.

On Thursday, 14 state treasurers issued a joint statement condemning Republican efforts to combat investor advocacy, which has led multiple states, including West Virginia, Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida, to restrict state treasurers from doing business with funds that deploy ESG screens.

Disclosure, transparency, and accountability make companies more resilient by sharpening how they manage, ensuring that they are appropriately planning for the future. Our work, alongside those of other investors, employees, and customers have caused many companies to evolve their business models and their internal processes, better addressing the long term material risks that threaten their performance, the statement reads. The evolving divide suggests that there will be two kinds of states moving forward: states focused on short term gains and states focused on long term beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders.

The Chamber announced recently it would devote $3 million toward the election of Mehmet Oz who goes by Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and funneled it through the Senate Leadership Fund. The move was generally seen as an olive branch to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is linked to the super PAC. They have so far made no similar contribution to the House Republican super PAC.

Todays GOP war onthe Chamber of Commerce represents a stunning turnaround from just a few years ago, when House Republicans and the Chamber were aligned on just about everything. And it comes in the wake of the collapse of the National Rifle Association, leaving two of the GOPs most powerful outside armies largely disarmed. But as the Republican Party and the Chamber have polarized to opposite sides of the conservative movement, a deeper disagreement between the two dating back to the movement that formed around Barry Goldwater in the 1950s and 60s has been reawakened.

At the height of the New Deal era after World War II, Democrats and liberal Republicans were united in the belief that cooperation between big business, big labor, and government was the secret to the eras economic boom. John Kenneth Galbraith, the nations most famous economist and later President John F. Kennedys adviser, dubbed it The Affluent Society in a 1958 book that was both a cultural and a political sensation.

Arrayed against this coalition was an aggrieved and increasingly well-organized network of small and medium-sized businesses that felt they were getting squeezed by the big guys. What was good for General Motors, they said, was not necessarily good for them.

Big Labor and the New Deal coalition thought that they were living in a time of peace between capital and labor, but capital always knew that they were engaged in a strategic ceasefire, having been crushed by the Depression and unable to compete against the rising strength of the modern government.

But there was no real peace, and big business launched its counterattack on both labor and government in the 1970s, ushering in the neoliberal era. The Chamber, this time allied with small and medium-sized businesses, played a major role in the counterattack, with the heir to the Goldwater movement, Ronald Reagan, enacting a wish list of big business policies, deregulation, and tax cuts.

Jamie Galbraith, who followed his father into the economics profession, served as an aide to the Joint Tax Committee in Congress and recalled the Chamber at the time as an ultra supply-side, ultra Reagan revolution organization with essentially no compromisers. The Chamber was just down-the-line for the lowest possible taxes and most complete deregulation and privatization.

But the Chamber started drifting back to the center in the early part of the Clinton years, endorsing the administrations health care proposal known as Hillarycare,for the first lady.All of a sudden, the Chamber just became something wholly different than whatever I perceived them to be. And I know we were very upset about it, said former Texas Rep. Dick Armey, theNo. 3 Republican at the time.

In the wake of the endorsement, recalled one Republican operative, a member of House Republican leadership asked to meet with the Chambers board. Instead of delivering a standard political speech, he began by asking all the staff to leave the room. He just ripped them a new asshole, said the operative. How could you possibly go down this anti-free enterprise, left-wing trail, the GOP leader demanded. (The operative recalled it was Armey, but Armey said it may have been Tom DeLay.I couldnt track down DeLay in time for this story.)

The dressing down worked. Richard Lesher had run the organization since 1975, but after Republicans took power in 1995 after the Gingrich Revolution in 1995, Lesher was eased out.When we took the majority, of course, they came over, reminding us that we were the best friends we ever had yakety yak, Armey said. When you come into the majority, you have no shortage of newfound friends. The Chamber was a reliable Republican ally for the next roughly 20 years, up until just the last few.

(DeLay later launched what he dubbed the K Street Project, which was an effort to bring all of Washingtons lobbying industry under Republican authority, dictating that firms fire Democratic lobbyists or lose access to the GOP. That was a boneheaded idea, and you can quote me if you like. I mean, who in the hell did he think he was, telling people who they can hire and who they cant? said Armey. I objected to it in a leadership meeting. And my objections were not well received.)

The tensions between big and little businesses never fully subsided, and the same network of smaller businesses that aligned themselves with Goldwater, forming the more conservative wing of the GOP, organizing behind Donald Trump in 2016 and beyond. The small and medium-sized businesses, particularly manufacturers, have also long been opposed to free-trade policies, as they lack the capacity to offshore their own production and cant compete with cheaper products from overseas.

The conservative Republican member of Congress said that he didnt begin as an active opponent of the Chamber, but didnt see them as a natural ally either. Frankly, as a business guy, I couldnt join some of the efforts nationally, because they were at odds with small companies, he said. They were really pushing for a long time this pro-China trade policy, which was great for General Motors, but it was bad for everyone in the supply chain. And it was really gutting domestic manufacturing. And it was the same with NAM the National Association of Manufacturers a lot of their members had had an organization that was working against their interests. And the biggest, biggest members have certainly benefited from a lot of this stuff. And I think thats a big part of why Trump was so well received by the small and medium business community.

The Chamber is among the biggest spenders on lobbying activities in the country, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and leading Senate Republicans like John Cornyn of Texas regularly take public shots at them. The Chambers top lobbying job, typically one of Washingtons plummest K Street assignments, sat open for several months until it was filled by two-term, back-bench former Rep. Evan Jenkins, who, like many Republicans from West Virginia, began his career as a Democrat. He was most recently a judge in West Virginia, having left the House to pursue an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2018.

View original post here:
House Republicans Plan to Investigate Chamber of Commerce If They Take the Majority - The Intercept