The Elephant in the Campaign War Room

On August 21, 2006, in General, by Neil Stevens

Frank Davies at the San Jose Mercury-News talks about safe Congressional seats and, of course, the discussion fixates on one concept: gerrymandering. And boy, does he lay it on, mostly because Democrats are annoyed that they have virtually no chance of picking up a House seat here in California this year:

“There’s more democracy in Iraq right now than in California,” said Allan Hoffenblum, longtime GOP consultant and publisher of the California Target Book, which tracks all state races.

….”Basically, Democrats made a bad deal back in 2001,” said Tony Quinn, a veteran of redistricting wars and editor of the Target Book. “They could have picked up two or three seats in California this year if they had made them more competitive.”

….”Democrats in California are miserable — they see all this excitement elsewhere but they’re not a part of the action,” Hoffenblum said.

Bad deals seem to be going around in political law, or at least attempted bad deals. You’d never know it if the mainstream press is your only source of news, though. Davies, in his zeal to pin a rash of safe incumbents on districting, somehow manages to completely miss the elephant in the campaign war room: Campaign Finance Restrictions.

Republicans signed themselves onto a bad deal, too, just a few years ago when they passed the BCRA. They even tried to make that deal worse when they attempted to ban so-called 527 groups. But this law, with its unprecedented restrictions on the criticism of candidates for federal office, including incumbents whose criticism would seem to be at the heart of the First Amendment, escapes any of Davies’ attention.

And would anyone be surprised to learn that men like Davies, with their positions in newspapers, are just the kind of people who are excluded from the CFR that stifles everyone else’s political speech? Funny how that works. This is press bias of omission at its worst, conflict of interest or no.

 

Comments are closed.



Nima Jooyandeh facts.