August 12 Special Municipal Election: More on Denver Referred Question 1A

In a follow up to my earlier post this week about Referred Question 1A that appears on Denver ballots, a reader emailed to say that after calling Denver's City Council, she got "confirmation that we'll receive the 'for and against stands' in the Nov election."

This gets confusing, though, because I thought that 1A, as we see it on the August 12 ballot, is the vote for or against this amendment to the charter, and not a vote to approve a November vote to amend the charter.

A phone call to Shelley Smith at the Denver City Council office reinforced my understanding. This is the vote. My original post (based on info also received from the city council office) was that the city council doesn't approve or reject, but simply reviews these petition items. Therefore, these items will go to the voters anyway, so why waste city council time reviewing/debating? Well, that was only half the story. Here's the rest.

It turns out that the city council is required to enact a petition item or make a ministerial vote in favor of putting said petition item before the voters. City council thinks this is ludicrous. These petitions were initiated outside the bounds of the city council, and so the city council doesn't understand why council members should have anything to do with the petitions at all. If the voters want to sign a petition to vote on something, the city council essentially says "let 'em vote. Whaddya need us for?"

The League of Women Voters adds to the conversation. Here's what they've published (click through for a .pdf):

Currently, residents must gather enough signatures to exceed 5 percent of the votes cast in the previous mayoral election to force the council to take up a measure.

Once that threshold is passed, which is currently about 4,000 signatures, then the council is required to either enact the proposal into law or submit it to voters.

The council has prepared this charter amendment to refer measures with enough signatures directly to voters and bypass the council entirely, similar to the process for State referred initiatives.

Those in favor say: Several council members believe the current structure places them in a precarious position politically because it requires them to affirmatively vote to place something on the ballot, even measures they dislike.

Those opposed say: There is no organized opposition.

Emphasis mine. The problem, as the LWV explained to me, is in the way the current charter binds city council to either a) enact an item brought by petition, or b) pass said item to the voters. There is no room to halt an item's progress, nor to express a vote of no confidence in a proposal or initiative brought by petition. In a nutshell, city council politicians are beholden to advance an item even if they disagree with it. And this is what the city council wants to get away from.

One interesting con: Smith says that, though there is no record of the city council doing so in the past thirty years, conceivably when a petition comes before the city council and bears a strikingly good idea, the city council has the means to enact it on the spot, thus saving the taxpayers money by not putting the petitioned item on the ballot.

Finally, a yes vote on 1A on August 12 will change the city charter to mirror that of the state. For whatever that's worth.

Anyone care to chip in?

McCain Tone Deaf in Ohio, Struggling with DHL/UPS Merger

John McCain has gone completely tone deaf to his own campaign stump:

"And that's the problem in our nation's capital. It's not just the Bush administration, and it's not just the Democratic Congress. It's that everyone in Washington says whatever it takes to get elected or to score the political point of the day," said McCain, who has served 26 years in Congress.

Emphasis mine. Kudos to the L.A. Times for following up the quote with the "26 years" tag line. The article, by the way, is especially interesting. In a nutshell, McCain backed a 2003 deal to sell cargo handler Airborne Express to German-owned DHL. Now, business is bad and DHL's owners want to cut losses and get out. According to an Ohioan quoted in the article, this could lead to a loss of 40,000 jobs in 9 southeastern Ohio counties.

Where it gets even trickier is that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, lobbied on behalf of DHL's owners back in 2003, and McCain ponied up. The senator actually helped deep six an amendment to a congressional spending bill that would have kept the U.S. military cargo handling business a U.S. business. In other words, McCain paved the way for foreign interests to handle shipping needs for the U.S. military.

Davis earned a reported $590k for his various lobbying efforts for the German company. McCain says that, since Davis hasn't been involved in any of that since 2005, there's no conflict of interest. What'd McCain get, I wonder?

Most recently, he got the opportunity to tell some distraught Ohioans a little bit of "straight talk": "I can't assure you that this train wreck isn't going to happen, but I will do everything in my power to avert it"; and, "I can't look you in the eye and say we're going to avert this."

As reassuring as those comments weren't, McCain promised to launch an anti-trust investigation into the proposed DHL/UPS merger that would all the German company to earn back some of its losses and get out of Ohio. And after promising to investigate the deal on the Senate floor, McCain said "And that's the problem in our nation's capital. It's not just the Bush administration, and it's not just the Democratic Congress. It's that everyone in Washington says whatever it takes to get elected or to score the political point of the day."

Like I said. Tone deaf.

CNN Says McCain's Humor Could Do Him In

CNN writer Rebecca Sinderbrand makes a series of excellent points in this article. Is anybody reading?

Little Miss Buffalo Chip

This is too much, really. Be sure to watch the video. Just when we thought we couldn't dumb-down the presidency any further . . .

The "Paper Thin" War

I find this amusing: "Barack Obama should focus on bolstering his paper thin resume as opposed to having surrogates level distorted attacks against Senator McCain.”

That should be "paper-thin," but who am I to argue?

That was RNC spokesman Danny Diaz, speaking on Obama and past presidential candidate John Kerry.

The RNC is willing to start a "paper thin" war? Okay, then. How deep was George W. Bush's resume when the RNC piled on board? This is current from the White House website:

President Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 1968, and then served as an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975. Following graduation, he moved back to Midland and began a career in the energy business. After working on his father’s successful 1988 Presidential campaign, President Bush assembled the group of partners who purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. On November 8, 1994, President Bush was elected Governor of Texas. He became the first Governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive 4-year terms when he was re-elected on November 3, 1998.

Talk to me when the RNC is serious, please.*

*What's missing from the Bush resume? Click here, for starters.

The Carpool Poll

Best. Poll. Yet. And it's merely August. Oh, the little joys of election season politics.

Udall Makes No Comment on Justin Schaffer's Facebook Page

The Denver Post reports today that the son of Colorado Republican Bob Schaffer has apologized for offensive posts to his Facebook page.

Opponents of Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer have found political fodder in his 19-year-old son's Facebook page, which shows a picture of Barack Obama over the caption "High five . . .. who's gay" and another picture that reads "Slavery gets sh-- done," reports Michael Riley.

Money quote? "Schaffer's campaign opponent, Mark Udall, had no comment on the controversy."

I'd like to thank Mark Udall for leaving this alone. I hope Udall and his advisers have the vision to continue to recognize, even as the campaign gets nastier and nastier, that you don't run down a candidate's family, nor exploit family troubles, nor drag the candidate's children into the race. Anybody want to speculate as to whether Camp Schaffer, run by the notorius Dick Wadhams, would do the same were the roles reversed?

Seeking Information on Referred Question 1A

UPDATE: After a phone call to the City Council, the skinny seems to be that, as it stands right now, every petition in the City and County of Denver that gathers enough signatures to appear on a ballot must first be presented/debated by the City Council. The CC is tired of being the go between on this, especially as their function--if I understand correctly--is neither to approve nor reject the initiatives/referendums that reach the voter, but simply to hear said initiatives/referendums.

I look forward to hearing back from the mayor's office, and Councilwoman Montero's office as well (District 9), just to get a sense of whether everybody says "yes" to 1A, and, if not, to find out who is saying "no."

__________

Can anybody help me understand the intent and the impact of this season's Referred Question 1A as it appears on the Democratic primary ballot?

Shall the Charter of the City and County of Denver be amended to require the Clerk and Recorder, upon certifying the sufficiency of any initiative or referendum petition, to submit the initiative or referendum directly to the registered electors of the City and County of Denver at the next scheduled citywide election, unless the City Council determines to call an earlier election?

Thanks for any thoughts on this. I'm ignorant as to the existing process that the Clerk and Recorder takes regarding initiatives and referendum petitions. And a Google search renders great results . . . from previous years' Referred Question 1As.

WaPo Reports Online Learning on the Rise

All in all, this is not a very interesting article. But I post on it because . . . because sometimes we post on things that bore us. It is a glimpse into my work these days, although I am buried behind the scenes and, when I do my job well, nobody notices. (Such is the seamlessness to which I aspire in the text I edit.)

This statement caught my eye, though:

The number of times students enrolled in distance education courses connected with public schools (using Internet, two-way video or other technologies) rose from about 317,000 in 2002-03 to more than 506,000 in 2004-05, the National Center for Education Statistics reported in June. That's a 60 percent increase. In at least 66 percent of the cases, the report says, students earned credit with a passing grade.

60% growth in two years is a pretty good indicator that, all things being equal, I might just have some job security. And that study is incredibly outdated, when you consider recent trends in online access and resource availability. I'd be curious to know what the 2004-05 to 2006-07 numbers reflect. My guess, and this is purely speculative, as Internet applications continue to boom and school districts continue to flail to accommodate their charges, is that those numbers continue to rise.

66% passing, on the other hand? That's darn near failing, if I recall correctly from my own public school days (and I believe I saw that number--or its alphabetical equivalent--on a couple of report cards). Those numbers are going to have to come up if the industry hopes to sustain itself. School districts and online content providers get to take shelter under a pretty sweet umbrella, though: who's to say why students fail to earn credit? Isolated, perhaps underconnected--and who can speak to a borderline distance student's motivation?--online learners may be the source of more questions than answers as educational demographics shift with the times.

Good News for Frontier Ticket Holders

Good news today regarding my plane tickets later this month: I'll probably still be able to use them.

Why McCain Should Stand With Bush?

William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal has an interesting and salient take on how McCain could "find himself on defense through November": keep avoiding the president.

Allowing himself to look afraid of being in the president's company hurts him in two large ways. For one thing, it cuts against Mr. McCain's most attractive trait: his fearlessness. This is a man running as someone who stood up to his captors in Hanoi, who stood up to his own party, and who, as president, would be willing to stand up to America's enemies. For such a man to fear photo ops with the president broadcasts an insecurity that will only feed into the Obama campaign. And the press smells it.

. . . Mr. McCain's reticence will also hurt him with his own party. While the president's general approval ratings may be down in the 30s, among the GOP faithful the numbers are up in the 60s. These numbers, moreover, do not track intensity: The people who have stayed with Mr. Bush this far have been through the fire with him. They are not likely to be excited by a nominee who makes a habit of dissing fellow Republicans like Phil Gramm, whose crime was trying to support their nominee.

In other words, McCain dilutes his brand by avoiding GWB, and he also pisses off his base (they were never really his, though, were they?). The alternative? Get cozy with the least popular president (according to CNN) in American history.*

Sounds like a damned if he does situation if I ever heard one. What's a candidate to do? Well, distracting folks from this issues (on which his politics do bear a striking resemblance the those of the man he would replace) is a good start. Camp McCain wins the past week's tussle when it comes to dictating the terms of the campaign. As for all the rest? Folks like William McGurn and myself will be watching closely to see how this plays out.

*No comment as to the scientific integrity of that poll, nor any other conducted over the past 232 years.

Denver Post Promotes Richardson for VP

While Michael Gerson was busy distracting readers with the possibility of an Obama/Ritter candidacy this past Friday, the editorial board at the Denver Post had another, western states governor in their sites: New Mexico's Bill Richardson.

The Denver Post made its case Sunday for Richardson for veep, and I can only see this as a welcome call. Richardson brings the international credibility that Obama is so often seen as lacking, and he also happens to be a widely popular governor in his home state of New Mexico. And, uh, he'll bring at least some of the much sought-after, Latino vote (not to mention some of the much sought-after, western states vote).

Also, Richardson ran one of the best ads of the early presidential campaign season (FWIW, which obviously ain't much).

So, the negatives. The biggest that I see comes in the form of a question Steve Clemons asked back in 2007 when Richardson threw his hat in as a contender among Democrats, early in that primary. Here's the way Clemons, who cites previous experience working with Richardson's staff when Richardson served in the House of Representatives, cozies up to the problem.

I will frame this as a "question" for Bill Richardson.

Have you behaved inappropriately or not in public settings with female members of your government administration, jokingly or not? Have you gestured to female public servants and political appointees -- who work as colleagues with you -- and made lewd gestures, specifically pointing to them and then pointing at your crotch with a room full of media and other politicos there in the room?

I ask this not to demean or undermine Richardson.

I ask it because I was not in the room when this particular incident occurred but many others were -- and rumors have long swept around Santa Fe that Bill Richardson makes a frequent joke out of demeaning women. These incidents don't have to do with the comments by Lt. Governor Diane Denish that Richardson is a "touchy" and "feely" Governor. They have to do with questions about a far more crude kind of gesture that demeans professional women.

These concerns I have heard may be completely contrived, but after speaking with several senior level New Mexico officials, my sense is that it needs to at a minimum be addressed by the Governor who wants to be President. Some suggest that Richardson "can't stop himself" or "doesn't even realize what he is doing" or thinks that "this sort of thing is part of New Mexico's political scene."

Clemons treads some tricky waters, here. By his own admission, the topic is based on hearsay and perpetuated by rumor. After reading it twice, I still want to brush the thing aside and say "Nah. If that was true it would have exploded by now." And yet, the whisper campaign could be all it takes. As soft as the media has gone on John McCain's history of documented, inappropriate treatment of colleagues, staffers, journalists, and even his wife, expect the wheels to come off the cart as the McCain camp, the RNC, the special interests, and the news industry get up to speed dismantling Obama's pick, whomever that is, for the #2 spot.

So I wonder what the vetting process turns up, and whether it deems Richardson as carrying too much baggage or not (a la Jim Webb, the outspoken Senator who published novels with gratuitous passages, and once sent a staffer packing heat through Senate security).

To be sure, other pols have weathered close scrutiny, and even allegations, over their conduct toward women. Bill Clinton did it in the wake of the Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers brouhahas (not to mention that other one), and Arnold Schwarzenegger managed to navigate similarly choppy waters in his bid to become California governor. So Clemons' questions may not be the sort of questions that derail the Richardson bid, but they may also raise issues that the Obama campaign could do without right now.

Richardson, to be sure, boasts a more global resume than the oft-mentioned Tim Kaine of Virginia and Evan Bayh of Indiana. But he also presents another unique challenge: could he seriously alienate recalcitrant, Dem voters (read Clintonites) who already see electing Obama as a stretch? I've posted before that I wonder who these Hillary supporters are who are so entrenched in their own process that they won't vote for the strongest Democrat in the running this year. I've also speculated that this whole notion reeks of Rovian pursuits, e.g., tell the public what you want the public to believe. A Richardson nod, however, could result in a backlash of voices against Obama from one of the Democratic candidate's newest core constituencies: Hillary Clinton supporters. The Clintons themselves must know as well as anybody the incredible stakes of full-contact politics, but I wonder if the bile they'd swallow to stump for an Obama/Richardson ticket wouldn't prove too much. It would all depend, I suppose, on what the Obama camp would be willing to offer the Clintons.

Or maybe that's more of the "old politics" talking. Maybe the electorate and the Democratic Party are simply ready for the best ticket, period. I think, if Richardson can satisfy the internal vetting process, then that might be the way to go. I have no idea what that process will turn up. Obviously, Richardson would be a shoo-in for cabinet (State Dept.), but as far as giving the ticket a boost and getting the Democrat into the White House, I think he'd also help there. More so than a Jim Webb (who says he won't do it), a Tim Kaine, or even a Bill Ritter (who, as David Sirota pointed out yesterday, isn't even popular in his home state, much as we wish he were).