You’d expect most candidates for Congress to spend resources either building themselves up or tearing down their opponents. But that’s not the case for Juan Vargas, who wants to represent California’s 51s district. As U-T San Diego reports: Democratic state Sen. Juan Vargas used some of the $630,000 he spent running for Congress in the
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Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, owner of casinos in Macau and Las Vegas, is planning to boost Mitt Romney’s chances for the White House. Yesterday, Politico reported on the ongoing efforts by political operatives to solicit funds from Adelson. A day after his story was published, Ken Vogel disclosed that Adelson may give Romney’s Super PAC as
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Governor Scott Walker (R) trounced his recall election challenger Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by seven percentage points. Political pundits have tried to blame Barrett’s loss on a whole host of issues: unions are getting weaker, Obama should have intervened on Barrett’s side earlier, Walker is just a better candidate. However, the biggest thing we can
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A California ballot measure to raise taxes on cigarettes by a dollar per pack failed yesterday. 50.8 percent of voters opposed the initiative compared to 49.2 percent who favored the tax, which would raise money for cancer research and anti-smoking projects for kids. Just a few months ago, about two-thirds of voters backed the measure. But
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On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked officials in Florida to suspend the controversial voter purge conducted by Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) administration, citing possible violations of voting rights law. Florida officials had been purging a list of suspected non-citizen voters, estimated at one point to include at least 180,000 people, despite evidence that
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Congressman Silvestre Reyes lost in the Democratic primary last night to challenger Beto O’Rourke. It’s a notable upset given that this is only the third time this year an incumbent has lost to an outside challenge. But it’s also indicative of a larger wave against corruption. Republic Report profiled the race before, noting that Reyes
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The Supreme Court’s string of decisions to open up our elections to corporate control will have vast consequences this year. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a private lobbying association made up of member companies like Wal-Mart and Prudential Financial, intends to use this new campaign finance landscape to elect many more pro-big business lawmakers to
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David Koch, co-owner of the Koch Industries petrochemical, manufacturing and commodity speculation fortune, hasn’t been shy about supporting Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), whose controversial union-busting agenda has forced a recall election this summer. Earlier this year, Koch told the Palm Beach Post: “We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over
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