Outrage in Arizona: Most Uncounted Ballots Cast by Latinos

Something is rotten in the state of Arizona. And it stinks of a festering campaign to suppress the growing political power of the state's Latino population.

Because they're still counting nearly 200,000 "provisional" ballots that were handed out in massive numbers because of the large number of first-time voters whose mail-in ballots were not delivered, and others who did not receive their sample ballots, showing up on Election Day with only hats in hand -- even though they had legally registered. From the WSJ:

Arizona elections officials continued chipping away at a mountain of uncounted ballots from the Nov. 6 election, but more than 192,000 uncounted ballots remained Wednesday night, leaving results up in the air and prompting protests from the Latino community.

At least one high-profile contest remains in the balance: the closely watched congressional race between incumbent Democrat Ron Barber—the chosen successor to former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords—and Republican Martha McSally. As of Wednesday evening, 943 votes separated the candidates, with Mr. Barber ahead.

Many candidates with large leads—such as Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Flake and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio—have declared victory while their opponents conceded.
But state election officials cautioned that with so many uncounted ballots they couldn't confirm the outcome of any races. The state plans to release its official results Dec. 3, but "that doesn't stop candidates from declaring victory or conceding defeat," said Matthew Roberts, spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State's office, which oversees elections.

More than 163,700 uncounted ballots are provisional ballots—meaning ballots that need to be checked for missing information, such as the voter's identity or to ensure the voter hadn't filled out two ballots, or voted at the wrong polling place. The remaining 28,550 uncounted ballots are early mail ballots.

Voters who couldn't provide identification at their polling place had until the end of Wednesday to provide it so their ballots would be counted. But groups that worked to register Latino voters in the state said they feared that some provisional ballots might not be counted if those voters weren't aware of the requirement.

You read that right: If you were handed one of these provisional ballots, you had until yesterday to get back to the courthouse and prove that you voted legitimately. If not, your vote gets tossed.

And even if you do show up and prove your vote legitimate, there's the nagging suspicion it will end up uncounted anyway:

"I think a lot of Latino votes were left out on purpose," said 18-year-old Nicolas Botello, protesting outside the Maricopa County Recorder's office Thursday night. Mr. Botello said he voted, but said he fears other voters won't be counted because they received provisional ballots that may be disqualified.

Some protesters left hand-written notes on a large cork board propped up on the sidewalk behind a statue of the Virgin Mary. One such note read: "I registered to vote but they made me cast a provisional ballot. Did it count?"

So far, Senate Democratic candidate Richard Carmona has not unconceded his race, though he is being urged to do so, since the heavy Latino count inherent in these ballots could change the outcome of his race as well.

But the Barber-McSally race is attracting the usual Republican vote-suppression tactics, as AlterNet's Laura Gottesdiener reports:

Democratic congressman Ron Barber is locked in a tight battle against Republican challenger Martha McSally for a congressional seat in a district of Southern Arizona that includes the city of Tucson. The seat was once held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and the race is now gaining national attention as voter disenfranchisement threatens to tip the balance in favor of the Republican challenger.

As of Tuesday, Barber had a 829-vote lead , but McSally is using every dirty trick in the book to try to cut into Barber’s lead by attempting to disqualify votes cast in predominately Latino districts, where voters went heavily for Democrat Barber.

Tuesday, the Republican’s attorneys filed a court motion seeking a temporary restraining order to stop Cochise County from counting the ballots, alleging that 130 votes should be disqualified because they “have been spoiled because they were not sealed, as required, when they were transported from the Castro Park, Ramsey and Hopi Precinct polling locations to the Cochise County Elections Department and Recorder’s Office.”

Mario Solis-Marich observes:

Koss had noticed a trend as she called voters to remind them to head to the polls. Repeatedly she found that voters that registered for the first time had not received their sample ballots and did not know where their polls were. Many of the first time voters also had requested mail in ballots that never arrived. “Something here is not right,” she had told MarioWire during a phone call the Monday before the November 6th election. On election day she told Mariowire.com about the stated election results in Maricopa “these numbers do not add up”. As a numbers prone economist Ellee Koss should know.

“This is a sad commentary on democracy in Arizona” said Randy Parraz who leads Citizens for a Better Arizona. What we are seeing in Maricopa County is a systemic breakdown of the election process”.

The tactics are hitting home especially for new citizens, such as this Iranian man who was voting for the first time:

As the video's description explains:

When he received his voter registration card he was very happy because he could vote in a free and fair election for the first time in his life! When he got to the polls they told him that his name was not on the list and he would have to cast a provisional ballot. He asked if they would count them and they told him yes 100% but with 500,000 votes uncounted he is now less sure. This is very disappointing to him personally because he left his country and came here because he thought this was going to be a new place he could have rights. In Iran he says they had no freedom, no democracy. And he feels like the five years he worked to become a citizen was for nothing.

Heckuva job there, Arizona. As Rachel Maddow says in the video atop this post, this is a matter of deliberately making it hard for minorities to vote.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Uncovered at Last: Lee Atwater's Infamous 'Southern Strategy' Colloquy

Over the years, we've written a lot at this site about Lee Atwater, the erstwhile godfather of Republican dog-whistle attack politics -- Amato in particular has often discussed Atwater's central role in transforming the GOP into the Party of the Old South it has become today.

In our book Over the Cliff,, we cited an infamous interview with Atwater in which he explained how the Southern Strategy worked:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

However, a number of conservatives have over the years disputed the veracity of that interview and that quote, or have claimed it wasn't really Atwater. You know, the denial thing.

Now James Carter IV -- the same researcher who dug up Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks on video has unearthed the entire 42-minute interview. Rick Perlstein has the entire thing over at The Nation:

In the lead-up to the infamous remarks, it is fascinating to witness the confidence with which Atwater believes himself to be establishing the racial innocence of latter-day Republican campaigning: “My generation,” he insists, “will be the first generation of Southerners that won’t be prejudiced.” He proceeds to develop the argument that by dropping talk about civil rights gains like the Voting Rights Act and sticking to the now-mainstream tropes of fiscal conservatism and national defense, consultants like him were proving “people in the South are just like any people in the history of the world.”

It is only upon Professor Lamis’s gently Socratic follow-ups, and those of a co-interviewer named “Saul” (Carter hasn't been able to confirm his identity, but suspects it was the late White House correspondent Saul Friedman), that Atwater begins to loosen up—prefacing his reflections, with a plainly guilty conscience, “Now, y’all aren't quoting me on this?” (Apparently , this is the reason why Atwater’s name wasn’t published in 1984 but was in 1999, after his death).

He then utters his infamous words. The interlocutors go on to kibitz about Huey Long and barbecue. Then Atwater, apparently satisfied that he'd absolved the Southern Republican Party of racism once and for all, follows up with a prediction based on a study he claims demonstrates that Strom Thurmond won 38 percent of South Carolina’s middle-class black vote in his 1978 Senate campaign (run by Atwater).

“That voter, in my judgment,” he claims, “will be more likely to vote his economic interests than he will anything else. And that is the voter that I think through a fairly slow but very steady process, will go Republican.” Because race no longer matters: “In my judgment Karl Marx [is right]... the real issues ultimately will be the economic issues.” He continues, in words that uncannily echo the “47 percent tape” (nothing new under the wingnut sun), that “statistically, as the number of non-producers in the system moves toward fifty percent,” the conservative coalition cannot but expand. Voila: a new Republican majority. Racism won't have anything to do with it.

So they claim, to this very day.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Clueless Racist Tweeters Reveal the Degraded State of Right-Wing Discourse

As Karoli and Blue Texan have been observing today, the fever swamps of the American Right are, predictably, coming completely unhinged over the re-election of President Obama. This is especially true the farther you move from right-wing pundits out to the conservative base -- where the hatred of Obama is bubbling up a fresh heaping helping of steaming racism.

See, for instance, the gallery of racist tweets put together by Jezebel this week. Go ahead, spend a little time there. Then come on back, get a shower, and let's talk about it.

Megan Garber at the Atlantic reports on the provenance of these tweets:

Floating Sheep, a group of geography academics, took advantage of that fact to turn hatred -- and, just as often, stupidity -- into information. The team searched Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned "Obama," "re-elected," or "won." That search resulted in (a shockingly high and surprisingly low) 395 tweets.

The leading states from which these tweets emanate are Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Dakota, and Utah. Now there's a big surprise.

What's shocking and disturbing about these tweets is just how many people out there reflexively and thoughtlessly indulge in outright and outrageous racism -- and then express surprise that they're accused of being racists!

Indeed, the pervasiveness of this response indicates just how degraded Americans' understanding of racism has become -- mainly because, whenever it raises its head now, the right-wing media shouts down and belittles anyone who calls it out. So now there are millions of people out there who think that there's nothing particularly racist about using racist slurs.

For example, there's this young woman from Turlock, CA, who tweeted the following:

enlarge

As the Modesto Bee story explains, Helms was shocked when the Secret Service came knocking on her door:

She told the Fox 40 reporter: "I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. … The assassination part is kind of harsh. I'm not saying like I would go do that or anything like that, by any means, but if it was to happen, I don't think I'd care one bit."

Helms has since deleted the post and posted again about the incident. It reads: "So apparently my post last night about Obama got onto Twitter and Fox 40 came and interviewed me cause apparently a lot of people in Sacramento think I'm crazy and racist. WOW is all I got to say!! I'm not racist and I'm not crazy. just simply stating my opinion.!!!"

Also unsurprisingly, the ice-cream parlor where the woman worked decided it could not afford to employ her any longer:

But the incident and surrounding outrage caused her to lose her job at Cold Stone Creamery, where she had worked for less than a year. Turlock Cold Stone Creamery store director Chris Kegle said he was shocked to read her racist slur and see her accompanying interview.

"We found her comments to be very disgusting, and they do not reflect our opinions here," Kegle said. "We never saw anything from her at work like those comments."

When he arrived Thursday at the store on Monte Vista Avenue, he said, there were more than 20 angry voice mails about Helms.

"We made the decision because of her comments, but also the community feedback," he said. "We are very into working with the community and doing community service. So when your community does not like you because of an employee, that's bad. We have a business to run."

But the bottom line in this incident was the woman's complete cluelessness:

"OK, but what did I do wrong? That's fine if they want to," she told the reporter. "But I don't understand what I did wrong."

What kind of world do we live in when you have to actually explain to people that (A) wishing aloud for the president's assassination is the same thing as publicly advocating it, and (B) the use of the 'N word' or any other racial slur-- especially by a white person flinging it in a manner intended to degrade not just any singular target but any member of that race -- is an act of racism in itself?

Answer: The world made for us by right-wing media and assorted right-wing pundits, who adamantly insist that racism is a dead letter, that it really doesn't exist, and that their political campaigns don't exploit and foment racist attitudes -- when all the evidence to the contrary stares us daily in the face.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

For Whom the Bell Polls: Karl Rove's Jig is Up

Karl Rove has always been a con artist. This year, it seems to have finally caught up to him.

We all saw it on election night, when Rove tried to pull a Florida in Ohio on the air on Fox News. As we also noted, you could see the sweat on Rove's brow and upper lip -- in part, doubtlessly, because his predictions of an easy win for Romney were beginning to reveal his actual incompetence.

Now the performance is raising all kinds of ethical and other questions about Rove's role and his behavior. Imagine our surprise.

But even more noteworthy is that the billions of dollars spent by his plutocratic "job creator" donors on the election was washed down the drain in the night's results:

A study Wednesday by the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political spending, concluded that Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads, had a success rate of just 1 percent on $103 million in attack ads -- one of the lowest "returns on investment" (ROIs) of any outside spending group in this year's elections.

American Crossroads spent heavily, not just on Romney, but on attack ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates in eight states -- thanks to mega contributions from conservative donors like metals magnate Harold Simmons ($19.5 million), Texas homebuilder Bob Perry ($7.5 million) and Omni hotel chief Robert Rowling ($5 million.)

The super donors didn't get much for their money. Six of the eight GOP Senate candidates that American Crossroads spent money to try to elect – Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, George Allen in Virginia, Josh Mandel in Ohio, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Denny Rehberg in Montana and Todd Akin in Missouri – lost their races, along with Romney. The group did, on the other hand, help to elect Deb Fischer in Nebraska and Dean Heller in Nevada.

(The Sunlight Foundation calculation of "return on investment" was based on the percentage of money it spent on individual races-- and since Crossroads spent the most on the races it lost on, the group earned its low 1 percent "return on investment" or ROI. A sister group, Crossroads GPS, which operates out of the same offices as American Crossroads but does not disclose its donors, fared little better, netting a return on investment of only 13 percent, according to the Sunlight Foundation report.)

In some ways, it makes you wish this level of incompetence would stick around for a few more years and waste billions more dollars on going-nowhere-fast right-wing campaigns. Which, no doubt, it will.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Your Morning Schadenfreude: About Those Pundits Who Predicted a Big Romney Win ...

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning. It smells like ... victory.

Especially when it's victory over some of the most loathsome reptilian figures lurking on the modern American political scene, notably, the maroons who tried selling the world on the notion of "Romentum" going into yesterday's election.

Guys like Michael Barone, who predicted 315 Electoral College votes for Romney. Or Karl Rove, who predicted 285 victorious votes for the Mittster.

For some reason last night, they remained in deep denial while poring over the results on Fox. And of course, no mention of their own towering incompetence was made. Instead, they spent the segment calling each other "brilliant".

Though you couldn't help notice the sweat on the brow and upper lip of Rove. Bet he's thinking about all those rich clients who paid gazillions of dollars for his American Crossroads Super PAC to take down not just Obama but a bunch of Democrats ... all for naught.

We also look forward to hearing from George Will, who predicted 321 votes for Romney, and from Dick Morris, who predicted a massive Willard landslide (and a Republican Senate to boot).

Roy Edroso has a rundown of all the right-wing pundits predicting a Romney runaway.

My favorite of the pre-election pundits had to be Michael Walsh at NRO, with his charmingly titled thinkpiece, "Crush Them":

Mitt Romney is an imperfect standard bearer, but tomorrow he is the army we have. Elsewhere, I’ve predicted a Romney victory and even a retake of the Senate, despite the breathtaking tactical stupidity of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, both of whom needlessly wandered into the mine field of social issues (where the media is guaranteed 100 percent arrayed against them) and blew their own feet off. But, should Romney win, he can’t simply assume the vote was a mandate for putting America back to work, and then do his corporate-turnaround thing. If he wins, if his victory is beyond the margin of David Axelrod’s ability to cheat, Mitt needs to understand that a considerable portion of his vote was not only anti-Obama but anti-Obamaism, that it was a repudiation of everything the Marxist Left and its bien-pensant fellow travelers in the media stand for. And, most important, that going forward, it’s a call to substantially reduce their influence on the body politic.

Sorry about that, comrade. We look forward to shuffling your paranoid ass off to a Commie re-education camp soon.

This stuff has been floating about for awhile now, actually. A couple of weeks ago, the Instawanker penned a piece for USA Today musing -- with nary a shred of self-awareness -- about the "bubble" within which liberals had supposedly cocooned themselves:

Now, despite being told by the press -- and quite a few Republican pundits -- that Mitt Romney didn't have a chance, since his performance in the presidential debates things seem to be turning around. Reports of early voting and absentee ballots suggest that Republican voters are a lot more energized than we'd been led to believe. The polls are looking good for Romney, and he's picking up all sorts of endorsements all of a sudden.

This has caused some Republican enthusiasts to suggest that what we're seeing is a "preference cascade," and they may be right.

What's a "preference cascade?" In his book, Private Truths, Public Lies, economist Timur Kuran looked at the way "preference falsification" can distort societies, and then collapse suddenly.

The classic example is in a totalitarian society, where everyone has to pretend to love the Great Leader on pain of death. If the authorities manage it right, 99% of the populace can be ready to revolt -- but won't, because each individual thinks he or she is the only one who feels that way.

This works until some event suddenly shocks the system, and people realize that they're not alone. When that happens, things can go south in a hurry. That's a "preference cascade."

The United States isn't a totalitarian society, but media bias has the same sort of effect: By privileging some views and suppressing others, the media give Americans, and itself, a distorted idea of reality. Then, when things crack, it's a big surprise.

That may be what's happening here. Obama was presented as unbeatable, and a lot of people believed it -- until, suddenly, he looked kind of beatable after all. Once that happened, everything was different.

That bit about "a distorted idea of reality", Perfesser? You might want to look into that.

And unquestionably my favorite reaction this morning from this faction is that from noted white nationalist Robert Stacy McCain over at American Spectator:

At the moment, I am convinced America is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and any talk of the future fills me with dread and horror.

Sweeeeeeeet.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Good Omen For Obama: Dick Morris Predicts Romney Landslide

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

If there's anything we've learned over the years of watching Fox News, it's that Dick Morris is the perfect reverse barometer: Anything he predicts will turn out to be not just wrong, but laughably, head-shakingly so, whether it's his advice on handling the democracy uprising in Egypt, his prediction of impeachment hearings for Obama, his claims Obamacare would bring about "euthanasia," or whether Bill Clinton should have negotiated the release of two hostages in North Korea, or his forecast of sweeping Republican wins in 2010 far beyond anyone's predictions (not to mention eventual reality).

If Dick Morris says it, you can count on it being wrong.

Which is why his recent prediction of a Mitt Romney landslide -- which he explained for Bill O'Reilly last night -- has largely been greeted with broad smiles from the Democratic camp. As Zandar at Balloon Juice put it, "So yes, now that Toesucker here has called it for Romney, President Obama is spiking that there football."

Ed Kilgore observes:

You might wonder if this sort of crap might run the risk of convincing some happy conservatives that they need not bother to vote, or can afford to indulge their resentment of Romney’s refusal (on occasion, at least) to back a Personhood Amendment or spend the remaining days of the campaign “vetting” the president’s background. But just as they did with the Iraq War, a lot of Republicans seem to think it is psychologically critical to protect Total Success in all their endeavors.

And just to underscore how wrong Morris is about everything he touches, Markos points out (via a commenter):

Morris says Michigan has 15 electoral votes. It has 16

He says Minnesota has 16 electoral votes. It has 10.

He says Colorado has 10 electoral votes. It has 9.

He says Nevada has nine electoral votes. It has 6.

Obama, Romney, And The Electoral College: The Beltway's One-Sided Hand-Wringing, Just Like 2000

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[H/t Heather]

It's deja vu all over again.

Thanks to a spate of polls indicating that the presidential race is tightening, the prospect of a repeat of the results of the 2000 election -- with one candidate winning the Electoral College and the other one the popular vote -- has the folks inside the Beltway all in a tizzy of speculation. And wouldn't you know it, the shape of that speculation is just as absurdly biased as it was in 2000.

Karen Tumulty at the Washington Post is the classic Beltway poobah, and her piece this weekend was a classic of Beltway poobahism:

That kind of split decision between the electorate and the electoral college would mark the fifth time in American history — and the second time in a dozen years — that the person who occupies the White House was not the one who got the most votes on Election Day.

No incumbent president seeking a second term has ever won the electoral college and lost the popular vote.

Every modern president to be reelected — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush — has gotten a bigger share of the vote in their second bid for office than their first, and with it, a chance to claim a mandate. (Though Clinton got more votes than his first race and won in the electoral college, he was re-elected in 1996 without winning a majority in a three-way race against Republican Bob Dole and independent Ross Perot.)

A win in the electoral college that is not accompanied by one in the popular vote casts a shadow over the president and his ability to govern.

Even more absurdly, Tumulty then goes on to cite the Bush administration that followed in the wake of the 2000 travesty as somehow laboring under this "shadow" -- even though, in real time, the WaPo and every other outlet of Beltway punditry studiously ignored that "shadow" for the entirety of Bush's tenure, beginning with the outrageous failure to cover the massive protests that accompanied his inauguration.

Perhaps more importantly, the Bush administration did not even bother to appear constrained by this "shadow" for the entirety of its tenure. As a skeptical Josh Marshall observed:

This happened no more than twelve years ago for the first time in a century. Democrats were crushed and outraged. And in response to various suggestions that newly-inaugurated President George W. Bush would need to govern in a form of national unity government Bush responded by pursuing one of the most maximalist and aggressive agendas in recent American history.


The difference between a non-incumbent and an incumbent winning this way is no more than some sort of pseudo-fact. It quite simply is what it is. And having been perfectly happy with it twelve years ago Republicans would have no grounds for complaining now.

Now, would they have grounds to be upset? Sure. Would this lead to “more hyperpartisanship”? Please. No greater ‘hyperpartisanship’ is possible than the scorched earth, 100% ‘No’ policy we’ve seen over the last four years, which frankly is little different from the scorched earth, 100% ‘No’ policy of 1993-2001. Remember, Bill Clinton was illegitimate because he was a plurality not a majority president.

Nonetheless, we can rest assured that should there be a electoral-popular vote split favoring Obama, as Cenk Uygur says, Republican heads will be exploding all over the place. Or at least they'll be twisting themselves into knots trying to figure out how to attack the president as illegitimate.

This is especially so if you recall the shape of the pre-electoral speculation in 2000, when it appeared, in the days leading up to the election, possible that Al Gore would win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote. This set off howls of outrage from right-wing media folk such as Fox News and the Washington Times, which were then dutifully reflected in the hand-wringing from the Beltway pundits.

Recall, for instance, the Moonie Times report on the subject:

Vice President Al Gore's strategy to go after states rich with electoral votes raises a remote possibility that has not occurred in presidential politics since 1888.

There is a chance he could capture 270 electoral votes and win the presidency even if he loses the popular vote to Texas Gov. George W. Bush....

Mrs. Jeffe, the analyst from California...says a split decision between the popular vote and the electoral vote would make it hard for the next president to lead.

A presidential election "is about credibility — it's about legitimacy," she said. "It's not about words on paper."

Of course, these concerns vanished from the pages of the Times once the results came in.

Likewise, the New York Daily News reported that the Bush team was planning to hit the ground running with attacks on Al Gore as an illegitimate president if he won the EC but not the popular vote:

They're not only thinking the unthinkable, they're planning for it.

Quietly, some of George W. Bush's advisers are preparing for the ultimate "what if" scenario: What happens if Bush wins the popular vote for President, but loses the White House because Al Gore's won the majority of electoral votes?...

"The one thing we don't do is roll over," says a Bush aide. "We fight."

How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course.

In league with the campaign — which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness — a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged.

"We'd have ads, too," says a Bush aide, "and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted."

Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. "You think 'Democrats for Democracy' would be a catchy term for them?" asks a Bush adviser....

And what would happen if the "what if" scenario came out the other way? "Then we'd be doing the same thing Bush is apparently getting ready for," says a Gore campaign official. "They're just further along in their contingency thinking than we are. But we wouldn't lie down without a fight, either."

And then there was Chris Matthews. This was his column the day before the election:

Al Gore, knowing him as we do, may have no problem taking the presidential oath after losing the popular vote to George W. Bush. He's lost popularity contests before. But how will the country take it?

How will a populace already turned off to politics react to the news that the guy who's gotten the most votes isn't getting the job?

Matthews, of course, voiced no such concerns after the election. Because that would have entailed greater self-examination than is ever permitted inside the Beltway.

These people are never, ever, ever right. Considering their record, it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that Obama wins the popular vote but not the EC. But then, no one from inside the Beltway will bother -- or dare -- suggesting to Mitt Romney that he's not a legitimate president.

As Steve Kornacki at Salon puts it:

Of course, that obstruction will probably persist even if Obama wins the popular vote. If modern political history has taught us anything, it’s that the Republican base doesn’t believe any Democratic victory is legitimate, and always finds a way to treat a Democratic president as a usurper. A favorite GOP talking point during Bill Clinton’s first term was that he’d only been elected by 43 percent of the country. The implication was that Clinton wouldn’t have won in 1992 without the presence of independent Ross Perot – a complete and total misreading of the ’92 election. In his first two years as president, Clinton faced the same unanimous opposition that Obama has dealt with. And even when Clinton was reelected in 1996, Republicans delighted in pointing out that he’d done so without breaking 50 percent of the national popular vote (even though their own candidate barely cracked 40). Or consider Obama’s ’08 victory, won with a higher share of the popular vote by any Democrat since LBJ. It meant little to the right, which fixated on trumped-up claims of mass voter fraud.

Problems Keep Cropping Up With Maricopa Misinformation

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Remember how, last week, we reported that Maricopa County, Arizona, had handed out voter ID cards in Spanish with the wrong date on them -- but were assured that the problem was limited to only fifty or so people.

Now a second incident makes clear that the problem may be more widespread than at first glance:

Last week, the department made the same mistake on a Spanish-language voter registration card it issued to a Hispanic woman. Yesterday it was on a bookmark the department distributed to Spanish-speaking voters.

Maricopa County’s latest error angered many leaders from various Latino organizations across the state, including members from two large organizations that have registered thousands of Latinos to vote.

As Stephen Lemons notes, the elections office, led by a Republican named Helen Purcell, has come under siege for these and other misinformation problems, which included a false media report by a local CBS station that may well have harmed the work of local GOTV volunteers.

In response, Purcell has promised a public-relations campaign to try to dispel any misinformation that it may have inadvertently issued.

An investigation, frankly, would be more reassuring.

Todd Akin's Militia Past Exposes His Profound Radicalism

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It seems Washington's John Koster isn't the only Republican Tea Party candidate who has ties to old far-right "Patriot"/militia organizations. Thanks to superb reporting by Josh Glastetter at RightWingWatch and Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon, we now know that Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP nominee for the Senate seat in Missouri, also has some old and deep militia connections -- mostly on behalf of some violent anti-abortion radicals with whom he was once arrested.

Akin, you see, was invited to speak at a militia gathering in 1995, and instead sent a laudatory letter that was read at the gathering. When Buzzfeed first reported this in August, Akin claimed he barely knew these people and that it was all a mishap. But Seitz-Wald dug into it further:

The full Post-Dispatch story, which was not included in the BuzzFeed story, also reported that “a flier promoting the 1995 event billed Akin as speaker.” Salon obtained the flier (view it here); it advertises a regional conference to teach participants “how to organize Missouri militias.” Akin is listed among the “special guest speakers.” How did Akin end up on the flier for the event and why did he write a gushing letter to a group he wanted nothing to do with? Further undermining his account: The only contemporaneous news report, a 1995 article not available online from The Springfield News-Leader, reported that Akin canceled because of “scheduling conflicts,” not discomfort with the militia’s leaders.

Akin’s account that he “didn’t know who they were” becomes even harder to believe in light of the news of his arrest. First, the commander of the now-defunct militia, John Moore, told Salon in August that he had known Akin long before the rally. Moore said the two had met to discuss gun-rights legislation Moore was pushing when Akin was a state representative in the later 1980s: “I’ve known Todd a long time,” he said.

Then there’s Tim Dreste, the milita’s chaplain and captain, whom Akin worked with in the pro-life movement and who, as it turns out, may even have been arrested along with him.

As Ed Kilgore says:

Now it’s not like Akin was some “idealistic” college student getting caught up in some ideological hijinks: he was in his late 30s, and was soon (in 1988) to be elected to the Missouri legislature. He was, and is, a stone fanatic on the subject, and his famous views on rape and abortion are entirely within the mainstream of “thinking” among the kind of antichoice activists who represent his political base. I’d even admire him a bit if he just came out loud ‘n’ proud right now and admitted a principal reason he’s in politics is to impose God’s Law on all the slatternly women who keep “killing their babies” by taking The Pill or using an IUD or having clinical abortions.

Truth is, the GOP’s longstanding compact with anti-choice activists and other elements of the Christian Right has politically legitimized folks who are much better suited to be marching in front of abortion clinics waving bloody fetus posters and screaming obscenities at women, than to be strolling the aisles of state legislatures or the U.S. Senate.

Dickhead Willard: Romney's Worst Persona Reveals A Smug, Self-Important Jerk

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

"You'll get your chance in a moment. I'm still speaking."
-- Willard "Mitt" Romney, to President Obama in the Oct. 16 debate

I'm with Charles Pierce on this:

Wow. To me, this was a revelatory, epochal moment. It was a look at the real Willard Romney, the Bain cutthroat who could get rich ruining lives and not lose a moment's sleep. But those people are merely the anonymous Help. The guy he was speaking to on Tuesday night is a man of considerable international influence. Outside of street protestors, and that Iraqi guy who threw a shoe at George W. Bush, I have never seen a more lucid example of manifest public disrespect for a sitting president than the hair-curling contempt with which Romney invested those words. (I've certainly never seen one from another candidate.) He's lucky Barack Obama prizes cool over everything else. LBJ would have taken out his heart with a pair of salad tongs and Harry Truman would have bitten off his nose.

And Romney bitched endlessly — endlessly — about the rules, and why this uppity fellow on the other stool was allowed to speak before he was spoken to, and why he didn't get to speak at length on whatever he wanted to speak on because, after all, he is the CEO of the stage. Jesus Christ, I'd hate to play golf with the man. He's the guy who counts to make sure you don't have too many wedges in your bag. He knows every cheap subsection of every cheap ground rule, and he'll call you on every one of them. You couldn't get a free drop out of him with thumbscrews, and forget about conceding any putt outside two inches. And then, on the 18th hole, with all the money on the line, he kicks his ball out of the rough and denies up and down to the rules committee that he did it. Then he goes into the clubhouse bar and nobody sits with him.

This, as Pierce explains, is the "Dickhead Willard" who periodically pops up among Romney's known public personae -- toppling over from "Snippy Willard", who sometimes is just an exchange away from "Lofty Willard," the schmoozy salesman who has suckered every Republican in the country and a few independents too.

Dickhead Willard has a habit of showing up whenever some plebeian has the audacity to challenge him or put him on the spot. He appeared twice during Tuesday's debate -- first during the whole snide attack by Romney that led up to the "You'll get your chance" moment, then later, when Romney began haranguing Obama about his pension, before the president's snappy retort ("I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours") shut him up.

The last was Romney kicking his ball out of the rough: The rules of the debate stipulated that the candidates would not direct questions at each other, and yet there Romney was, haranguing the president of the United States like a petulant child about to roll on the floor in a tantrum. But then, we already know that for guys like Romney, the rules are for everyone else.

I dunno about you, but as bad as Romney's politics and policies are, the worst aspect of his prospective presidency might be having to put up with this guy on my TV for the next four years.

Dickhead Willard has been around a long time. We've seen him many times before: Back when Ted Kennedy dubbed him "Multiple Choice" in 1994; when a reporter in 2008 challenged him on his "lobbyist free" baloney; when audience members in Iowa laughed at his claim that "corporations are people"; when he explained how he liked to fire people.

So I made a mashup of all those great Dickhead Willard moments, punctuated by the now-definitive "You'll get your chance" moment.

And let's hope we see more of Dickhead Willard tonight. Because he makes it obvious that the whole "Lofty Willard" persona is as much a lie as his claim to not want to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Evil Liberals Keep Making Republicans Look Racist

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Those nasty, hate-filled, race-baiting liberals are out there at it again, trying to make Republican Obama-haters looks racist:

For the second time in a week, a Colorado field office for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has been targeted.

KUSA-TV reported Friday that the campaign’s field office in Conifer, Colorado, was found with swastikas spray-painted on it.

According to The Denver Post, a spokesperson for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department said a deputy answering a vandalism report that morning found three windows and five campaign signs for the president had been vandalized, though he did not know what had been spray-painted on them.

No doubt -- as with the person who opened fire on the Obama office in Denver -- this was actually a false-flag liberal pretending to be a violent right-wing Obama hater, just to make Obama-hating Republicans look bad.

This, at least, is what we hear every time it appears that the right's historical racist element is bubbling back up to the surface of American conservatism thanks to the race-baiting dog-whistle campaigns being conducted by mainstream Republicans -- such as last week's appearance of overtly white-supremacist sentiments at a Mitt Romney rally in Ohio.

It was what we immediately heard from the usual predictable quarters -- not concern about how best to drive out the racist element cropping up on the right, but rather, blame for any liberals who dared point this out. Over at Althouse's place, this was the response:

Shame on you and everyone else who slavered at the opportunity to serve up this racial obscenity.

Ah yes, the old "bloody shirt" diversion: The problem isn't the racism on display, it's those evil demagoging liberals pointing it out who are the real issue.

Best of all, Althouse then cites a renowned white nationalist to prove her point.

In the event, applying the same logic, we must reach the conclusion that this shop owner in New Jersey with an overtly racist anti-Obama window display must also be a Romney opponent out to make Republicans look bad, eh?

The picture shows Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, naked except for a primitive loincloth, with a bone through his nose, witch-doctor style. Underneath the image, a caption is written in black and white: 'ObamaCare - coming soon to a clinic near you.' The 'C' is depicted as a classic Communist hammer and sickle, a symbol not as regularly seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.

"That's not right. It's racist," said Brinson, a 46-year-old African-American, pointing with a visible wince on his face to the doctored image of Obama as witch-doctor. "I understand that this is America, but the president doesn't deserve this. This is wrong."
But Skuby, 66, a Spring Lake resident, saw nothing wrong with displaying his anti-Obama visual, which has been up since last week, for the world to see.

"A lot of people feel the way I feel, but are just afraid to say it," said Skuby, who said that public response on the street in front of his store ran "70 percent positive" in favor of the display's anti-Obama sentiments. "It always comes down to the race card."

Now, I'm not sure how to explain this guy's rabid recitation of every anti-Obama meme on the planet in his window display, notably those favored by the Fox News bloc, but he simply cannot be an actual conservative, because that would make them look bad, and this simply is an impossibility on Planet Wingnut.

He even pulls out every right-winger's favorite "race card" -- his grandkid is mixed race, so he can't possibly be a racist:

Skuby felt that the proverbial "race card" was one that he could flip over in his favor because of his particular family circumstances.

"The middle one is my granddaughter," said Skuby, holding up a photo of his now 17-year old biracial grandchild Brett, flanked by two other grandchildren who are white.

"My son married a girl that had a biracial kid. She is every bit a part of our family as the other two in this picture. I'm not racist. And as long as my grandchild doesn't think I'm a racist, I'm perfectly fine with all of this."

Sure. Just like those lynched empty chairs didn't really mean anything:

Empty Chair 'Lynching' Protests Spark Controversy

Whatever the case, the obvious conclusion -- that the American Right has always contained, and continues to contain, both racist and extremist elements that act out in violent and repugnant ways, and that the current campaign is bringing them back into the mainstream of politics -- simply can't be true. Because otherwise, all of their mainstream enablers on the right would be forced to recognize that their refusal to admit their existence and their resurgence is in fact empowering these racists by providing them with endless wink-and-nudge cover.

Cold reality: Conservatives are not even remotely serious about confronting or dealing with racism in America, no matter how they protest that they "oppose" "racist material". And they prove it to us every day.

Will A Surging Latino Vote Turn Arizona Blue This Election?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Many of you may recall that back in 2010, we predicted that the backlash created by the politics of anti-Latino bigotry practiced by Sharron Angle and her fellow Republicans was going to create a tsunami of Latino voters who would sweep Sen. Harry Reid to re-election in Nevada. And then it happened exactly that way.

Now, according to Latino Decisions, a similar scenario is cropping up in Arizona, where the nativist politics of Jan "Headless Corpses in the Desert" Brewer, Russell "SB1070" Pearce, and Crazy Joe "Who? Me? Racially Profile?" Arpaio have turned the state into a political cesspool of bigotry. The backlash, it appears, is coming this fall:

In 2010, the average of 16 polls of likely voters in Nevada suggested Sharon Angle had a firm 3 point lead, and 538′s Nate Silver gave her an 83.4% chance of winning. On election night, the results showed Harry Reid with a 5 point win — an 8 point difference from the poll averages. Why the error? Almost every statewide poll in Nevada badly missed the Latino vote. In the final analysis, Reid won close to 90% of the Latino vote, and Latino turnout was much higher than anticipated.

New polling data out of Arizona released by America’s Voice and Latino Decisions suggests Arizona may be much closer than the polling averages indicate. A full 80% of Latinos say they plan to vote for Obama, compared to just 14% for Romney, and Latino enthusiasm is much, much higher in Arizona than the national average. In Latino Decisions national tracking poll 34% of Latinos say they are more excited about voting in 2012 while 36% say they were more excited back in 2008. In Arizona 60% are more enthusiastic in 2012 compared to just 16% who were more enthused in 2008. In October and November 2010 Latino Decisions polling in Nevada was picking up similar trends in Nevada, leading then Washington Post columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos to note on Election Day before the polls closed: “As the Western returns come in tonight, look out for the possibility of a Latino surprise. For the Democrats, a high Latino turnout could possibly save Harry Reid in Nevada.”

If Latino turnout is high in Arizona this year, it will be the Nevada of 2012 that takes the mainstream media by surprise.

David Pinar at Tucson Citizen notes that the problem may well lie in the techniques used by polling companies:

Matt Barreto of Latino Decisions suggested to Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog at the NY Times how the polls all missed the impact of the Latino vote in Nevada in 2010: All the major polling firms conduct their polls in English only, while Latino Decisions conducts their polls in both English and Spanish, with the respondent selecting the language in which they prefer the poll to be conducted. The major polling firms missed the Latino voters who prefer to speak Spanish. About 40 percent of Latino voters in California meet this description, with likely similar numbers in Nevada and Arizona. Mr. Silver compiled results from the eight states with the largest share of Latinos in their population: these are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas. He found that in 10 of the 15 races, the polling average underestimated the Democrat’s margin by at least 2.5 points. He concluded that there was the beginnings of a pattern — and considering how rapidly the Latino population is growing, it’s one that pollsters are going to need to address. That was right after the November 2010 election. And less than a month away from the 2012 election, the major polling firms still haven’t addressed that, still conduct their polls in English only, and are likely under representing Latino voters in places like Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and elsewhere.

There may be an even simpler dynamic at work: Many polling firms still do not call people's cell phones (though some firms, notably Gallup, are changing that), and Latinos (especially young ones) are more prone than other ethnic groups to use only cell phones, not land lines. (See Mark Blumenthal for more on this.)

This has produced some strange poll results in Arizona that are only now starting to emerge:

Arizona is home to one of the nation's hottest Senate races. Arizonans are also significantly more cell-only than the overall population, with 38.2 percent of those over 18 living in wireless-only households during 2011, according to CDC estimates. That was a sharp increase from 2010, when 33.2 percent of the adult population was wireless-only -- suggesting that the 2012 cell-only share of the population likely exceeds 40 percent.

For most of the year, it was thought that Republican Rep. Jeff Flake would defeat the Democratic nominee, former Solicitor General Richard Carmona, but the Senate race has closed over the past few months. Both sides released internal polls earlier this week, ranging from a 4-point Carmona lead in polling for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to a 6-point lead for Flake in polls for his campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee's independent-expenditure arm. (Pollsters for the DSCC and NRSC polls contacted some respondents via cell phone, Hotline On Call confirmed, though these percentages fell short of the cell-only adult population estimate. A pollster for the Flake campaign did not return a phone message on Friday afternoon.)

TThe Morrison Institute at ASU recently produced a fascinating report about "Arizona's Emerging Latino Vote" [PDF file] that observed that, while some of the factors that have long suppressed Latino voting power remain in place there, many of them are crumbling under the weight and energy of young Latino voters in the coming election:

Some political observers — and many activists — believe that 2012 will see a significant turnout among Hispanics in Arizona. For example, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) predicts that Arizona Latino turnout this year will reach 359,000, an increase of 23% over the 2008 presidential election, and will constitute 12% of the total turnout.

These arguments for the sudden increase:

• Many Arizona Latinos have been energized by Senate Bill 1070 and related antiimmigrant measures and rhetoric of the past several years. June’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on SB1070, this view holds, will not blunt those concerns because it upheld the requirement that police officers inquire about individuals’ immigration status under certain circumstances.

• The growing impact of the Latino vote has been demonstrated in the recent electoral victories of President Obama, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, and Phoenix Councilmember Daniel Valenzuela.

• Latino registration rates, while still below that of non-Hispanic Whites, have been increasing. In addition, a coalition of 12 Latino organizations in Arizona has been pursuing what it claims is an unprecedented voter registration drive this year, primarily in Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Yuma and Santa Cruz counties.

• The reluctance or inability of Latinos (and others) to vote during the workday may diminish as more sign on to receive their ballots in the mail — a major objective of current registration drives for greater Latino participation.

• The Obama campaign and national Democrats argue that Arizona is in play in the presidential race, and promise to mount a strong effort to win the state; drawing out the largest possible Hispanic vote is a component of that strategy.

• Arizona Democrats believe they have a strong Latino candidate for the U.S. senate seat being vacated by the retiring Jon Kyl, a Republican. If so, the candidacy of Richard Carmona, a former U.S. Surgeon General, may bolster registration and voting by Latinos.

The study concludes:

Data and demographics tell us a change in the political face of Arizona is on the horizon with the emerging Latino voter. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Of course, Jan Brewer blames the Latino wave favoring Democrats on "race baiting" by Democrats -- which reveals, really, their underlying confusion and denalism: It has been real race-baiting by a horde of Republicans, including the current GOP standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, that has driven Latinos into the arms of Democrats.

Evidently, Brewer and Co. are confused by their attempt to redefine "race baiting" to include the act of standing up to bigoted politics. Nice try, wingnuts, but people just aren't that stupid.

Romney's Dog-Whistle Campaign Bears Predictable Fruit

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I'm sure you're about as shocked as I am that this shirt showed up at a Romney campaign event in Ohio. Which is to say, not even remotely.

Via Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed:

The Getty Images photo was taken at a Romney/Ryan campaign event in Lancaster, Ohio on Friday. A Romney spokesperson commented that the shirt was “reprehensible and has no place in this election.”

Now, candidates can't really be blamed for all the nutcases they attract. But what exactly did Republicans think was going to be the outcome when Romney and Co. began indulging in a campaign employing barely-disguised racial dog whistles anyway?

Wisconsin Republican (and Ryan Endorsee): 'Some Girls Rape Easy'

Rep. Paul Ryan and State Rep. Roger Rivard in August at a Rivard fundraiser

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Ah, there's nothing like that ongoing Republican outreach to "minorities" who vote against them en masse, such as Latinos and LGBT folk. And women. Especially women.

Like this Republican legislator from Wisconsin:

Freshman Rep. Roger Rivard (R-Rice Lake) in December discussed a case with the Chetek Alert newspaper in which a 17-year-old high school senior was charged with sexual assault for having sex with an underage girl in the school's band room.

The newspaper quoted him as saying his father warned him, "Some girls rape easy" - meaning that after the fact they can change what they say about whether sex was consensual. On Wednesday, Rivard told the Journal Sentinel that the article did not provide full context of his comments and that his father's exact words had been slightly different from how they appeared in the Chetek Alert.

He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.

"He also told me one thing, 'If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,' " Rivard said. "Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she's not going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.' All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she's underage. And he just said, 'Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,' he said, 'they rape so easy.'

"What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, 'If you're going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.' So the way he said it was, 'Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.'

"So it's been kind of taken out of context."

About three hours after speaking to the Journal Sentinel, Rivard issued a written statement that he said was meant to further clarify his points.

"Sexual assault is a crime that unfortunately is misunderstood and my comments have the potential to be misunderstood as well," his statement said. "Rape is a horrible act of violence. Sexual assault unfortunately often goes unreported to police. I have four daughters and three granddaughters and I understand the importance of making sure that awareness of this crime is taken very seriously."

Oh yes, he takes it very seriously. And when a woman reports a rape, no doubt his first question is: "Was it legitimate rape?"

And boy howdy, what do you know? This same Roger Rivard was the beneficiary of a public endorsement and fundraising visit by none other than Rep. Paul Ryan, at the very time that Ryan was waiting around to hear whether or not he was going to be Mitt Romney's running mate.

And boy howdy, was it a warm endorsement:

U.S. Congressman and vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan endorsed the candidacy of State Rep. Roger Rivard during a breakfast buffet held at The Shinako Lodge & Event Center in Turtle Lake on August 9. Ryan introduced Assemblyman Rivard to the citizens of his newly defined 75th Assembly District which now includes the town of Clear Lake in Polk County, the town of Forest in St. Croix County, and New Haven in Dunn County.

Congressman Ryan stated, “Roger needs to be reaffirmed to get this job done and fix the state of Wisconsin.” The Congressman emphasized the support Rivard provided Gov. Scott Walker who took Wisconsin from a $3.6 billion deficit into a $300 million surplus, kept Wisconsin’s unemployment rate around 6.7 percent, and prevented WEA Trust from pilfering millions of tax dollars by over-charging for healthcare benefits, Ryan said.

I'm sure we'll get a statement from Ryan later today expressing his "disappointment" with Rivard's remarks and completely disavowing him now. You know, the usual kabuki. Something to give the shrinking ranks of Republican women a fig leaf.

Why Did The Seattle Times Endorse A Right-Wing Extremist?

A 1995 militia meeting in Maltby, Wash., organized by the SnoCoPRA.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Our "liberal media" here in Seattle is something else -- particularly the Republican-owned Seattle Times, which is astute enough to include a few liberal voices on its editorial page and among its columnists. Our TV stations are pure mush. And don't get me started on the subject of local talk radio.

The worst, though, has to be the Times. Because, those handful of liberals notwithstanding, its editorial content (especially its editorials) is relentlessly right-wing. This was embodied in their endorsement yesterday of Republican John Koster in Washington's new 1st Congressional District.
Indeed, their rationale was enough to make you laugh out loud:

We disagree with Koster on social issues, but in Congress right now, his fiscal viewpoint and elected experience are what’s needed.

Koster’s reputation and performance as the practical conservative who can articulate and act on those views and find common ground is needed and welcome.

Actually, Koster's "reputation and performance" make irrevocably clear that he is a Tea Party fanatic, a fiscal extremist who, in his six years in the state's Legislature, voted against five of six budgets. It's entirely predictable what he'll do if elected to the House: Sign up with the Tea Party caucus and immediately link arms with the bloc that has refused to pass any kind of jobs bill or face up to the problem of unemployment, simply because doing so would ensure a difficult re-election for President Obama, and who already tried to drive the American economy over the cliff with their brinkmanship on the debt ceiling.

And that's just on the fiscal side of things. Koster is so extreme on so many other issues -- particularly on abortion and education -- that the notion of him "finding common ground" with Democrats on anything is endlessly risible.

What the Times didn't tell its readers, though, is that Koster has a long history of far-right extremism -- not merely with the Tea Party, but back in the 1990s, with the far-right Patriot/militia movement.

The Times' softball profile of Koster made an oblique mention of this fact -- so we know that they have to be perfectly aware of all this:

His record also shows a steady streak of conservatism: He voted against five of six budgets and introduced legislation to allow a group of people in northern Snohomish County to secede and form a new county, "Freedom County."

Actually, it runs much, much deeper than that.

John Koster played a significant role in helping promote far-right "Patriot" movement property-rights organizing in the Puget Sound region in the 1990s – organizing that in many cases involved recruiting militias, extremist "sovereign citizen" schemes, and efforts at secession. Koster's role was important: As a state legislator, he introduced bills that promoted and legitimized the far-right agenda of these groups, particularly their efforts at forming new counties, carved out by "secession" from larger urban counties in western Washington.

Beginning in 1990, the Puget Sound region saw the sudden creation of a well-organized network of Wise Use "property rights" front groups. The majority of this activity revolved around opposition to the Growth Management Act, passed by the Washington Legislature that year. Accordingly, many of the groups behind this network were business interests opposed to the act, but who were willing to have their money help fund far-right organizing.

A classic front group in this case was the Snohomish County Property Rights Alliance (SNOCO PRA). Like all front groups, it faced both ways: on one side, it was funded by the Building Industry Association of Washington (in Whatcom County, the Chamber of Commerce joined in, too) and a collection of timber and developer interests. On the other side were the far-right Christian Patriots, conspiracy-prone extremists, often with John Birch Society backgrounds, who rapidly infiltrated the key groups in Snohomish and Whatcom counties, including the SNOCO PRA. In the middle were mostly retired property owners with "nest-egg" investments.

In 1991, the key regional "property rights" organizer and BIAW official, Jim Klauser, discovered previous abortive attempts by far-right/JBS "property rights" activists ("Liberty County") in Pierce County to exploit a technicality in the Washington Constitution: the formation of new counties is sketched out, but the Legislature has never passed clarifying laws spelling out the procedures. Klauser, with the help of Wise Use guru Ron Arnold, began helping organize localized secession efforts.

By 1992, numerous property rights front groups had set up county secession front groups and were using the secession petitions for illegally pre-qualifying new voter registrations and collecting voter lists, which were used by property-rights candidates in local elections. In 1993, they were able to influence county government elections in King, Snohomish, Thurston, and Whatcom counties. (More here and .)

In King, Ted Cowan was a leading spokesman for the Cedar County Committee. Up in Snohomish, two proposed counties were being formed. The Skykomish County Committee was represented by Arne Hansen, while the north half of the county was rallying around the flamboyant John Stokes and his Freedom County Committee.

The Snohomish County Property Rights Alliance (SNOCO PRA) began running a savage campaign against the critical areas ordinance, the county and particularly two county councilmen, Peter Hurley and Ross Kane. Their referendum on the land use ordinance had been the object of lengthy litigation and still hadn't made it to the polls. Using colorful single sheet tabloids, SNOCO PRA warned "NOW URBAN AND SUBURBAN DWELLERS ARE UNDER ATTACK!", "TAXPAYER RAPE!" and "YOUR PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES."

By 1994, SNOCO PRA organizers like Ben Sams were holding Christian Patriot meetings in places like Maltby and Snohomish, all of which were focused on organizing militias. Militia-movement leaders like John Trochmann and Bob Fletcher appeared at these meetings and ran through their lengthy conspiracy theories, including the claim that environmentalists' efforts to create a North Cascades Biosystem was actually part of a covert United Nations plot to round up gun owners and place them in concentration camps.

In the intervening time, many of the developers who originally financed these groups peeled away,
and the remaining Christian Patriot elements took them over wholly, notably in Snohomish/"Freedom
County" and Clark/"River County". They continued to focus their efforts on forming militias and creating new counties by secession; all of these new counties, in the organizers' plans, were predicated around far-right "Posse Comitatus" principles in which the county sheriff becomes the law of the land and the federal and state governments are powerless entities.

By 1996, the leaders of the would-be counties of Cedar, Skykomish, Freedom and Pioneer together had collected 44,650 valid signatures. At that time, they thought the state constitution required the Legislature to create a new county if petitions were signed by half the number of voters who went to the polls the previous November. All four groups achieved that goal. When nothing happened, Cedar County proponents headed to the Supreme Court.

This is where John Koster came in. As a Republican state representative from the Sultan/Monroe area, Koster in 1997 introduced bills to create Skykomish, Freedom and Pioneer counties. The Freedom and Pioneer County bills died in committee.

Koster was more successful with his Skykomish County bill, House Bill 1660. It provided for the process to create Skykomish County pending a ballot question for the affected area. The proposal set forth that the existing superior court of Snohomish County would also serve Skykomish County. Opponents of the bill (and the new county) attempted to amend the bill to require a vote from the entirety of the counties affected (Snohomish and King Counties). The bill passed the House, but failed to emerge from committee in the state Senate.

The Freedom County secessionists were led primarily by three people: David Guadalupe, who had previously been involved with the far-right American Land Rights Association; Thom Satterlee, a "sovereign citizen" and Christian Patriot whose writings at times indicated he subscribed to racist "Christian Identity" beliefs; and John Stokes of Camano Island, a onetime real-estate agent who had run afoul of state wetlands laws.

Satterlee and Stokes in April 1997 filed a complaint with the United Nations against Washington for violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because the state would not create Freedom County: "the right of self-determination and self-government ... are being denied by the state of Washington," the complaint alleged. However, the U.N. informed them that it could not help.

Stokes later moved to Montana and began making problems there, again of the far-right-wing variety, much of it militia-oriented. (See here for more on this.)

A Superior Court decision ruled that Freedom County did not exist. When Guadalupe and Satterlee appealed to the State Supreme Court, the court commissoner wrote: "Having studied the pleadings filed by Mr. Guadualupe and Mr. Satterlee, which are in the main legally incoherent despite a heavy
larding of pseudo-legal rhetoric, I find no basis to grant a stay."

In February 1998, the state Supreme Court ruled that signatures from half the registered voters of the affected area are required to propose a new county, shelving many county secession movements in the state. Prior to the ruling, Washington county secession movements had interpreted the law to require signatures from only half of those who voted in the most recent election. Arguing that voter registration rolls are always out of date, Skykomish County movement leaders attacked the court's ruling as creating an "unreachable standard".

Koster was quoted in the press expressing his disappointment with the ruling, adding that it was time for the Legislature to step in and clarify exactly how new counties can form. "It isn't going to happen this year, not in a short session, but it needs to happen,'' he said.

By the fall of 1998, Freedom County seemed to be the only secession movement county to still be active. Satterlee told a reporter that he didn't want to be portrayed as "whacked out, anti-govenment extremists. We could make a mistake and try to create anarchy, and throw the Sheriff's Office out. But that's not going to benefit the residents of Freedom County, or Snohomish County."

Many of the county-secession organizers had Patriot movement backgrounds. Thom Satterlee is a "common law" proponent who tries to give "legal advice" to similarly ideologically inclined people. For instance, he repeatedly tried to give advice to a tax protester named Floyd Ryan at a hearing in July 1997, prompting the judge to order him to sit down. In a 1995 election he was involved in, he identified himself as 46 years of age, but gave his only occupation as "consultant." Satterlee at one point tried to pay his taxes with checks backed by pseudo-legal "liens" filed against a federal judge in Seattle over his handling of a conspiracy and weapons case against a group of western Washington militiamen.

Sharon Pietila, a general promoter of "county secession," spoke at a Washington State Militia meeting in 1995; coincidentally, she was a neighbor of since-jailed militiaman John I. Pitner, involved in various bombmaking activities.

Other attempts at forming counties during the period 1993-98 in Washington state include "Cedar County" from King County (Ted Cowan, a longtime Wise Use advocate and leader of the Washington Property Rights Alliance; Lois Gustafson, Gordon Cox, Warren Iverson, Ted Callas); "River County" from Clark County (David Darby, former head of the Clark County chapter of the United States Militia Association, Joe Ahrend, head of the Clark County Militia [who blamed the OK city bombing on the US govt], Ed Uselmann, a tree farmer, Robert Skip Leuschner, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, Rudy Ebert, Peter Brennan, Richard Van Lieu, Marshall Adams); Pioneer County from Whatcom County; Skykomish County from Snohomish County (Arnie Hansen, a real estate broker); "Pioneer County" from Skagit County; "Independence County" from Whatcom County (Doug Howard, Sharon Pietala); and "Liberty County" from Grant County (also, reportedly, "Puget Sound," "West Seattle," and "Vashon" for Vashon Island).

Typical ideas of the groups may be seen from the proposal for River County, which claimed that no outside law enforcement would be allowed to talk to a county citizen without the sheriff's permission and similar Posse Comitatus/militia/common law court ideas.

The secessionists continued to lose their fights in court as well. On Jan. 28, 2000, Supreme Court Commissioner Geoff Crooks tossed out their last effort: "Once again, David Peter Guadalupe and Thom Satterlee invite this court to step through the looking glass into the strange world of Freedom County. On behalf of the court, I decline," Crooks wrote.

In 2000, the secessionists had their last gasp. On Oct. 23, Satterlee and Guadalupe gathered a group of followers and announced they were swearing in a new sheriff, a coroner, and an auditor for Freedom County, claiming that the signatures they had gathered were enough to create the county.

The sheriff gave his name as "Fnu Lnu," which is law-enforcement lingo for "first name unknown, last name unknown." His real name was Robert Victor Bender, a 57-year-old former FBI agent from the Seattle area who was hired by organizers to provide law enforcement for the would-be county, such as it is. When he tried to introduce himself to then-Snohomish County Sheriff Rick Bart, he was tossed out of the sheriff's office.

"Without a doubt, most of the people in this county think Mr. Satterlee and his group are a bunch of
wackos," says Sheriff Bart. "They have no credibility."

Afterward, the secessionists faded away due to a lack of interest and the fact that their neighbors had largely grown to fear them. There were no further activities in Snohomish County of any note.

However, Koster remained active. He was elected a commissioner to the very Snohomish County he had worked to help his constituents secede from in 2001. But he evidently remained fond of the Patriot movement, which by 2009 re-emerged, particularly in rural areas where it had flourished in the 1990s, as the Tea Party movement. He told a group of Tea Partiers: "The Tea Party Movement, the Patriot Movement to me is one of the most exciting things to happen to this country for a long time."

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Here is a useful timeline of the secession movement, compiled by the Everett Herald staff.

History of 'Freedom County'

Here are some of the significant events in the history of the proposed Freedom County:
1993 -- Backers begin circulating petitions to carve out a new county from most of north Snohomish County.
1994 -- Supporters announce in January that they have collected more than 12,000 signatures, sufficient, they claim, to form Freedom County.
1995 -- Freedom County presents the signatures to the Legislature in April. Thom Satterlee and David Guadalupe later claim they were "elected" Freedom County commissioners on the bus trip to Olympia .
September 1995 -- Thom Satterlee runs for the Snohomish County charter review commission. He also mounts a referendum challenge to a newly enacted county ethics ordinance, an action that goes nowhere but puts the law on hold during much of the election season.
December 1995 -- Satterlee loses his charter commission bid. He joins other disgruntled candidates in a lawsuit alleging that Snohomish County elections officials used computers to manipulate vote results. A Snohomish County judge tosses out the complaint.
January 1996 -- Satterlee claims the Snohomish County auditor mishandled petitions from Freedom County after being asked by the state to check the validity of the signatures. The auditor found more than 2,400 signatures were from people who weren't registered to vote, or had signed twice, or did not live within the boundaries of the proposed new county.
May 1996 -- David Guadalupe writes Snohomish County officials, challenging the display of gold-fringed U.S. flags in county courtrooms. Guadalupe says he believes the country is under martial law and that fringe flags are symbols of tyranny. Guadalupe's letter to county officials warns they must address him as "David Peter, Guadalupe," because to do otherwise is to use his "nom de guerre (war name)" and "that is grounds for an action for slander."
June 1996 -- State officials and Satterlee spar over whether the people who signed the Freedom County petitions should be counted even if they are not registered to vote. Satterlee maintains the state Constitution places no voter registration requirement on "electors." Auditors admit they overlooked about 900 signatures that should have been counted, but not for the reason raised by Satterlee.
April 1997 -- Satterlee and another Freedom County backer asks the United Nations to launch an investigation, alleging backers of the proposed new county have had their rights trampled upon by state and federal officials who refuse to assist them in creating their secessionist county. They allege violation of international treaties, and want the U.N. to impose sanctions, including a possible economic boycott.
June 1997 -- U.S. Secret Service agents confiscate "public wealth rebate notes" that Satterlee attempted to redeem at a local bank, in part to fund Freedom County. The notes, which have a purported face value of $38 million, supposedly get their value from liens filed by anti-government activists against federal officials.
July 1997 -- Satterlee comes to the aid of a critic of the Internal Revenue Service who has barraged Sheriff Rick Bart and others with self-generated criminal complaints and arrest warrants. He joins the man in court hearings, and also affixes his personal seal on documents the man has filed, calling for a grand jury investigation. Satterlee's seal features his name under the words "Bishop of the Way" And "Yoshua's Talmadin." Satterlee declines to explain the seal, except to say that he is a bishop in a Judeo-Christian religion, which he wouldn't further identify.
November 1997 -- A Snohomish County judge dismisses a lawsuit brought on behalf of Freedom County by Satterlee and Guadalupe. The pair claimed Snohomish County owed them $125,000 for work they'd done representing constituents in their breakaway group. They also sought a legal claim to all public and private property in Snohomish County. The judge rules that Freedom County does not exist.
December 1997 -- The state Supreme Court refuses to hear a lawsuit brought by Satterlee and Guadalupe attempting to overturn the Snohomish County judge's ruling. "Having studied the pleadings field by Mr. Guadalupe and Mr. Satterlee, which are in the main legally incoherent despite a heavy larding of pseudo-legal rhetoric, I find no basis to grant a stay," a Supreme Court commissioner wrote. A federal case brought by the pair also is tossed out.
February 1998 -- The state Supreme Court rules in the case of Cedar County, a secessionist government proposed for King County. The state's highest court holds that simply gathering signatures and presenting them to legislators does not bring a county into existence. The court also finds that only the signatures of registered voters can be counted when reviewing petitions to form a new county. The ruling means that Freedom County not only doesn't exist, but backers were roughly 5,700 signatures short of the required number when they presented them to lawmakers in 1995.
April 1999 -- The state Court of Appeals rules that Freedom County does not exist.
September 1999 -- Satterlee sends warning notices to Gov. Gary Locke, Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel and others, threatening a forceful attempt to seize their homes if they don't recognize Freedom County. The state attorney general warns him in writing that threats against public officials could result in felony charges.
January 2000 -- The state Supreme Court dismisses another case brought by Satterlee and Guadalupe. "Once again, David Peter Guadalupe and Thom Satterlee invite this court to step through the looking glass into the strange world of Freedom County. On behalf of the court, I decline," a commissioner writes. Justice Richard Sanders, however, files a dissenting opinion saying that the case should be heard because legal questions remain to be resolved in creating new counties.
August 2000 -- Freedom County backers begin holding public meetings, asserting that the time has come for them to begin taking action as a government. Satterlee sends letters to Snohomish County, claiming that it no longer has authority over land-use, planning and building issues in much of its north end. Satterlee says Freedom County is taking applications to fill the offices of sheriff, auditor, etc.
Oct. 23, 2000 -- A King County man who calls himself Fnu Lnu takes an oath to serve as Freedom County sheriff. Two other Snohomish County men take similar oaths to serve as coroner and auditor.
Oct. 24, 2000 -- Fnu Lnu meets with Sheriff Rick Bart and presents him with a notice asserting his authority. He says federal agents are no longer allowed to seize property for back taxes within Freedom County's alleged boundaries. Bart tells Lnu that Freedom County doesn't exist, Lnu has no authority, and that he will arrest him if he attempts to act as a law officer.