Subject: H4A News Clips 5.30.15
From: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 30 May 2015 10:39:34 -0400
List-Id: <HRCRapid.hillaryclinton.com>

*H4A News Clips*

*May 30, 2015*

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS

New York Times says the victory for both parties in 2016 could hinge on
mobilizing Latino voters and the epicenter is in the American southwest.
Several outlets are still covering Thursday’s Press Briefing in Brooklyn
Headquarters office. The Hillary for America online store got news coverage
again today due to a tweet posted by John Podesta in “Everyday Pantsuit
Tee”.

Martin O’Malley announced his candidacy for President today.

LAST NIGHTS EVENING NEWS

ABC and CBS did not report on 2016 issues. NBC had a brief segment on the
Patriot Act, noting Rand Paul's opposition to the reauthorization of the
Patriot Act.

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S
NEWS.......................................................................
1

LAST NIGHTS EVENING
NEWS...................................................................... 1

TODAY’S KEY
STORIES...................................................................................
3

*Inside the battle for Latino voters* // NYT // Chris Moody – May 29,
2015....................................... 3

*Hillary Clinton’s Strong Start* // The New Yorker // John Cassidy – May
29, 2015............................ 5

*Hillary Clinton Team Lays Out New Primary Blueprint* // TIME // Sam
Frizell – May 29, 2015........ 7

SOCIAL
MEDIA................................................................................................
8

*John Podesta (5/29/15, 8:52 AM)* - Ready to accessorize?
http://hrc.io/1eDlzSw............................ 8

*Sam Youngman (5/29/15, 9:20 AM)* - McConnell statement: "I congratulate
Matt Bevin on his victory and endorse him for
governor.".......................................................................................................................
8

*Teddy Schleifer (5/29/15, 10:16PM)* On her trip to Houston on Thursday,
@HillaryClinton will accept Barbara Jordan award at Texas Southern
University.................................................................................
9

HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE..........................................................................
9

*How's Hillary doing? Wish we could tell you* // CNBC // John Harwood – May
29, 2015.................. 9

*The head of Hillary Clinton's campaign and Matt Drudge are teasing each
other about pantsuits* // Business Insider // Hunter Walker – May 29,
2015....................................................................................
10

*After becoming the first Latina Senate chief of staff, Amanda Renteria is
ready to help create another “first” as Clinton’s national political
director.* // Fortune // Nina Easton – May 28,
2015............................. 10

*Campaign officials like to spin reporters in private. That’s worth making
public.* // Vox // Jonathan Allen – May 29,
2015....................................................................................................................................
12

*On the trail of Hillary Clinton, not everyone is allowed to jump into the
press pool* // WaPo // Paul Farhi – May 29,
2015....................................................................................................................................
14

*Why hasn’t Maggie Hassan made an endorsement?* // Boston Globe // James
Pindell – May 28, 2015              16

*Report: Cruz, Clinton resonate the most online* // Des Moines Register //
Matthew Patane – May 29, 2015     18

*On trail in S.C., Clinton faces old ghosts* // Boston Globe // Annie
Linskey – May 29, 2015............ 19

*Why the N.H. primary is nearly impossible to predict* // The Boston Globe
// James A. Kimble – May 29,
2015.................................................................................................................................................
21

*Shumlin, Kunin to host Hillary Clinton event* // Burlington Free Press //
April Burbank – May 29, 2015           23

*Pelosi: Clintons "will have to answer for the foundation"* // Vox //
Jonathan Allen – May 29, 2015. 24

*Hillary Clinton cites GOP quotes on equal-pay legislation out of context*
// WaPo // Glenn Kessler – May 29,
2015................................................................................................................................................
25

*Bill Clinton to Foundation Donors: I Feel Your Pain* // Daily Beast //
David Freedlander – May 29, 2015          28

*Clinton Library readies Monica Lewinsky photos, more Hillary Clinton first
lady files* // Politico // Josh Gerstein – May 29,
2015.............................................................................................................................
29

*Lena Dunham said something political, which means you must immediately
click here* // Washington Post // Janell Ross – May 28,
2015........................................................................................................
30

*Clinton Lawyer Marc Elias Among Those Behind Major New Voting Rights
Lawsuit in Wisconsin* // Election Law Blog // Rick Hasen – May 28,
2015.............................................................................................
31

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL
COVERAGE............................................ 32

*Bernie Sanders distances himself from 'dumb' 1972 essay on rape* // CNN //
Dan Merica – May 28, 2015         32

*Will Bernie Sanders start a revolution?* // CNN // Stephen Collinson – May
28, 2015.................... 33

*Sanders draws in a crowd with talk of income inequality* // Quad Cities
Dispatch-Argus // Dennis Moran – May 28,
2015....................................................................................................................................
37

*For O'Malley, a lot riding on Iowa in 2016 campaign* // AP News // Ken
Thomas and Catherine Lucey – May 29,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
38

*Baltimore’s blight puts O’Malley on defensive in bid for presidency* //
WaPo // Robert McCartney – May 29,
2015................................................................................................................................................
40

*O’Malley looks for his opening* // The Hill // Jonathan Easley – May 29,
2015.............................. 44

*Bucking Odds, Martin O’Malley Tilts at Hillary Clinton* // WSJ // Laura
Meckler and Scott Calvert – May 29,
2015................................................................................................................................................
47

*O’Malley Hires Former Obama Hispanic Media Director For Senior Campaign
Role* // Buzzfeed // Adrian Carrasquillo – May 29,
2015.......................................................................................................
49

*9 things to know about Martin O'Malley* // The Center for Public Integrity
// Rachel Baye – May 29, 2015       51

*Immigration As 2016 Issue Upped With Martin O'Malley's Candidacy* // NBC
News //Suzanne Gamboa – May 29,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
52

*Martin O'Malley Kicks Off Presidential Campaign By Playing "Hail To The
Chief" On An Acoustic Guitar* // Buzzfeed // Evan McMorris-Santoro – May
29,
2015.................................................................... 55

*Chafee to announce he is running for president* // CNN // Dan Merica – May
29, 2015.................. 55

GOP................................................................................................................
56

*The Iowa straw poll, once a kingmaker, fades into irrelevance for 2016* //
WaPo // Robert Costa – May 28,
2015................................................................................................................................................
57

*Bill to allow presidential primary resurrected, sent to Assembly floor* //
Review Journal // Sean Whaley – May 28,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
58

*Insiders: Rand Paul's foreign policy views are a serious liability* //
Politico // Katie Glueck – May 29, 2015      59

*In Iowa, Rand Paul sticks with death penalty skepticism* // WaPo // James
Hohmann – May 28, 2015             61

*Rand Paul's money problem* // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – May 29,
2015..................................... 62

*Pataki enters White House race with focus on N.H.* // Boston Globe //
James Pindell – May 28, 2015               64

*Pataki faces tough odds in Iowa against better-known candidates* // The
Des Moines Register / Branne Pfannenstiel – May 28,
2015......................................................................................................
66

*Announcing his bid for president, Pataki says Democrats are “party of
privilege,” GOP “party of the middle class”* // Concord Monitor // Caset
McDermott – May 28,
2015.............................................................. 67

*Santorum hits the trail again* // Quad-City Times // Ed Tibbetts – May 28,
2015.......................... 69

*Santorum: Climate change, flat-Earth believers are alike* // The Des
Moines Register -//Josh Hafner – May 28,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
71

*Jeb Bush earned millions in juggling act as corporate adviser* // AP – May
28, 2015...................... 71

TOP
NEWS......................................................................................................
73

DOMESTIC..................................................................................................
74

*U.S. Accuses Ex-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Paying to Hide
‘Misconduct’* // NYT // Monica Davey – May 28,
2015....................................................................................................................................
74

*No 'Plan B' If Congress Misses NSA Deadline, White House Says* // Jordyn
Phelps - May 29, 2015. 76

*Idaho's Abortion Ban Is Unconstitutional, Federal Court Says* // NPR //
Bill Chappell – May 29, 2015               77

INTERNATIONAL.......................................................................................
78

*Obama’s New ISIS War Plan: Nothing* // The Daily Beast // Nanzy A. Youssef
– May 29, 2015....... 78

*U.S. Takes Cuba Off Terror List* // TIME // Andrea Rodriguez and Matthew
Lee – May 29, 2015.... 81

*Freed Gitmo Detainees Pose New Threat, Republicans Say* // The Daily Beast
// Tim Mak - 5/29/15 83

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS.................................................................
86

*The Arrogance of Jeb Bush* // NYT // Timothy Egan – May 29,
2016............................................ 86

*A Message from President Clinton* // Clinton Foundation // President
Clinton – May 29, 2015...... 88

*New FCC robocall rules concern pollsters* // Politico // Steven Shepard –
May 29, 2015................. 91

TODAY’S KEY STORIES

Inside the battle for Latino voters
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/29/politics/being-moody-latino-outreach/index.html>
// NYT // Chris Moody – May 29, 2015

Albuquerque, New Mexico (CNN) Victory for both parties in 2016 could hinge
on mobilizing Latino voters -- and the battle for their support is already
fierce.

The epicenter is here in the American southwest, where the Libre
Initiative, a conservative group, is spending millions on outreach to
Latino voters, an effort that has sparked a backlash from Democrats worried
about Libre's potential.

In anticipation of the upcoming election cycle, Libre is undertaking one of
the most ambitious and expensive Latino outreach programs by any
conservative organization yet. It will have a $14 million operating budget
in 2015, according to a source with knowledge of the group's finances who
requested anonymity to speak freely. Libre now has field staff in ten
states, with plans to expand further in 2016. Most of Libre's funding comes
from a network of conservative donors organized by billionaire businessmen
Charles and David Koch.

Since Libre's inception four years ago, the group has built a presence in
states with high Latino populations by providing classes and free social
services.

In Nevada, Libre sponsored a program to help people receive driver's
licenses. In Florida, they partnered with H&R Block for tax preparation.
Later this year, Libre plans to launch an education initiative that will
pay for GED courses. The effort aims to build goodwill within the Latino
community, while allowing Libre to collect data that will be instrumental
in coordinating political ad campaigns and voter targeting efforts next
year.

Libre also supports granting immigrants living in the country illegally a
pathway to citizenship, a position that, while controversial on the right,
allows them a gateway to increasing Latino support. The group does not,
however, approve of President Barack Obama's use of executive orders to
implement immigration policy--a tactic currently tied up in federal
courts--which separates them from Latino outreach groups on the left.

"The Libre Initiative exists primarily to advance the principles of
economic freedom to the Latino community," Libre Executive Director Daniel
Garza, a former aide to George W. Bush and the son of migrant workers from
Mexico, told CNN. "It is about driving a narrative, a conversation within
the Latino community. If we're not helping to drive that agenda, somebody
else is, and it's usually the left."

Last week, Libre's non-profit armed hosted a conference for about 100
Hispanic business leaders from seven states in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as
part of the group's multi-million dollar effort to promote conservative
ideas within the Latino community and, they hope, convince them to vote for
Republicans in 2016. Set inside the ballrooms of the Crowne Plaza hotel
just off the intersection of one highway that streches coast-to-coast
across the United States and another that slopes southward to the Mexico
border, business leaders sat through presentations and panels on energy,
over-regulation and trade. Panels included titles such as "Regulations
Stranglehold on Economic Prosperity" led by Libre operatives and talks
about how to increase energy production in the state. Politics made a brief
appearances when New Mexico Republican Lt. Gov. John Sanchez spoke on the
power of the Latino vote.

"No president will be elected ever again unless they have the right message
when it comes to how do they attract Hispanic voters," Sanchez said.

Indeed, in key battleground states, securing the Latino vote has been
incredibly important in recent election cycles. In 2012, Obama received 71
percent of the vote. But in the 2014 mid-term elections, when the
electorate is often more conservative than during presidential years, the
GOP made gains within the community in states like Colorado, Texas and
Florida.

Libre operated relatively quietly until last year's mid-term election, when
the group's advocacy arm—called the Libre Initiative—ran paid political ads
in English and Spanish in close races around the country. Libre's campaign
helped remove Pete Gallego in Texas, Joe Garcia in Florida and Ron Barber
in Arizona--all Democrats.

"It's been kind of a wake-up call," said Angela Kelley, an immigration
reform advocate who works with liberal groups on Latino engagement. "Their
message is intentionally fuzzy, but yet it's delivered with flawlessly
competent clarity. That's a pretty brilliant combination. Those who
disagree with Libre and the Koch brothers are really going to need to
muscle up."

Now, a massive coalition of liberal groups is planning to strike back.
Representatives from several organizations on the left met in the
Washington office of the Latino Victory Project in early May to discuss a
plan for how to counter Libre's efforts. Attendees included represenatives
from labor unions, American Bridge, Mi Familia Vota, Media Matters and
People For The American Way, according to attendees.

Initial plans have been made to sound an alarm against Libre by
highlighting their ties to the Koch donor network and relay a message that
Libre supports policies liberals say are against Latino interests. They
also plan to release a report about Koch industries that digs into the
company's record on workplace safety and the environment, Latino Victory
Project President Cristobal Alex told CNN.

"While I admire the rapid growth of this organization, I'm afraid it's for
disingenuous purposes," Alex said. "It's important for us to begin having
some very serious conversations with our allies to counter what Libre is
doing. No one has really pushed back. So far they've had free reign."

Earlier this month, BuzzFeed News revealed that the Democratic National
Committee had put together an internal presentation warning about Libre's
strength that called on Democrats to increase voter engagement with Latinos.

"It has changed our calculus," Alex told CNN. "Those on the left are
starting to see, because Latinos can change their mind about who to vote
for, they're going to start to pay attention to that and really investing
in the Latino community."

Groups on the left also point to the fact that the same donors who support
Libre—which is vocally supportive of comprehensive immigration reform that
includes a pathway to citizenship--also help bankroll Republican
congressional and presidential campaigns that oppose it.

"Libre's Achilles heel is exposure," said John Loredo, the former
Democratic Minority Leader in the Arizona state House. "They align
themselves with people who are openly anti-Latino. Exposing them, however
it may happen, that's a killer for Libre."

Efforts against Libre are already underway. Last week — on the same day of
the business conference in Albuquerque — a liberal research organization
called the Bridge Project released a 48-page research document that
outlined Libre's priorities and some of their funding sources. The group
released the paper online, along with a Spanish-language video attacking
Libre.

Representatives from liberal groups The Latino Victory Project, Open
Society Foundation and Mi Familia Vota plan to hold a roundtable discussion
with reporters to outline their plans to counter Libre. Next Monday, People
for the American Way plans to host a briefing with activists to discuss
their Latino outreach plans and ways to counter Libre.

"The irony here is that the Latino left had criticized the conservative
movement for years that they were not doing outreach to the Latino
community," Garza told CNN. "Now that the conservative movement is doing
outreach and engaging in the Latino community on a national scale, they're
criticizing us for that too. You can't have it both ways."

Hillary Clinton’s Strong Start
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/at-this-early-stage-hillary-clinton-looks-strong>
// The New Yorker // John Cassidy – May 29, 2015

On Thursday, some of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign officials held a
briefing for about three dozen members of the 2016 hack pack. Their message
was a positive one. “The view inside the campaign is that voters are
concerned about kitchen-table issues Clinton wants to talk about, rather
than media reports and Republican attacks on the [Clinton] foundation, the
officials said,” Vox’s Jonathan Allen reported. “There’s no conflict
between her promise to represent ‘everyday Americans’ and the access big
donors have had to Clinton and her husband over the years, they said,
arguing that voters will trust her to represent them in the White House.”

That was partly spin, of course. There is no end in sight to the stories
about the finances of the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton e-mails, or the
activities of some of the Clintons’ associates. But as spring rolls into
summer, Team Brooklyn has successfully accomplished its two initial goals:
heading off the possibility of a serious challenge for the Democratic
nomination and surviving a barrage of negative publicity that was
inevitable at some stage, and which was, therefore, best confronted early
on.

The entry into the Democratic contest by Bernie Sanders was welcome from a
Clintonite perspective, because it filled a potentially dangerous vacuum.
With his long record of service to progressive causes, Sanders is popular
enough to garner a decent-sized following among liberal Democrats, but he’s
almost certainly too far to the left to represent a serious threat to
Hillary. So far, at least, his presence has been more of a problem for
Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, who is set to officially
announce his candidacy on Saturday. As I noted back in March, O’Malley is a
serious figure who demands some respect. As governor, he eliminated the
death penalty, legalized gay marriage, and championed various
good-government initiatives. But with Sanders already out there on the
stump, O’Malley has struggled to gain traction.

A new poll of likely Democratic voters conducted by Quinnipiac University
illustrates the scale of the task that is facing Clinton’s challengers. The
survey, which was carried out from May 19th to May 26th, showed her getting
fifty-seven per cent of the vote. Sanders was in second place, with fifteen
per cent. O’Malley got just one per cent, and so did two other possible
candidates, Jim Webb, a former U.S. senator from Virginia, and Lincoln
Chafee, a former governor and U.S. senator from Rhode Island. Of course, it
is early in the process, and anything could happen between now and the end
of the primaries. At this stage, though, Clinton is sitting pretty.

Something similar, if somewhat less definitive, could be said of her
position vis-à-vis her potential Republican opponents. Opinion polls
positing head-to-head matchups with likely G.O.P. candidates have
consistently shown Clinton winning, and the Quinnipiac survey was no
exception. It showed her with double-digit leads over Jeb Bush and Scott
Walker, two of the Republican front-runners. Interestingly, the closest
hypothetical contests were with Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from
Kentucky, and Florida senator Marco Rubio, whom some in the Clinton camp
have reportedly identified as her biggest potential threat. Clinton’s leads
over both Paul and Rubio were four points.

The Quinnipiac poll also contained some valuable clues as to how Clinton
has been able, so far, to navigate all of the negative media coverage she
has received while sustaining relatively little damage to her overall
polling numbers. In terms of the level of personal trust that voters have
in Clinton, the drip-drip-drip of stories does seem to be having an effect.
Fifty-three per cent of respondents to the Quinnipiac survey said that they
do not consider her to be “honest and trustworthy,” while only thirty-nine
per cent said that they did. Among self-identified Independents, the
numbers were even more lopsided: sixty-one per cent to thirty-one per cent.

The number of people who question Clinton’s trustworthiness must be of
concern to her team, and it’s a figure that Republican ad-makers and
opposition-research shops will be seeking to increase. But this issue needs
to be weighed against the fact that Presidential elections are about
leadership—and most Americans think of Clinton as an experienced and strong
leader. One of the survey questions asked, “Would you say that Hillary
Clinton has strong leadership qualities or not?” Sixty per cent of
respondents said yes, and thirty-seven per cent said no. Among
Independents, fifty-eight per cent answered yes, and thirty-eight per cent
said no.

These findings suggest that voters are more sophisticated than they are
sometimes given credit for. Rather than looking at politicians in
black-and-white terms, they are able to size up candidates’ strengths and
weaknesses, and to reach an over-all view based on what they are looking
for in a leader. At a time when the world seems like an increasingly
dangerous place and a majority of Americans believe that the country is on
the wrong track, perceived strength and decisiveness may well count for a
great deal. “Can you get low marks on honesty and still be a strong
leader?” said Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, in
a news release. “Sure you can. Hillary Clinton crushes her democratic
rivals and keeps the GOP hoard [sic] at arm’s length.”

For Clinton’s campaign team in Brooklyn Heights, that means things are on
track. Of course, they won’t necessarily stay that way. The campaign is
just getting started, the country is more or less equally divided, and
winning a third term of office isn’t easy for any party. Now it’s up to
Clinton to finish up her “listening tour,” lay out her policy platform, and
take it to the Republicans.

Hillary Clinton Team Lays Out New Primary Blueprint
<http://time.com/3901267/hillary-clinton-primary-campaign-plan/> // TIME //
Sam Frizell – May 29, 2015

Hillary Clinton will gradually ramp up her campaign throughout the summer,
but it will be months before she turns completely to a more orthodox model
replete with a packed public schedule of billboard events and the regular
appearance of husband Bill and daughter Chelsea, top Clinton campaign
officials said on Thursday.

The former Secretary of State will present a more detailed reasoning behind
her candidacy at her first official campaign rally on June 13, top Clinton
officials told reporters in a briefing at the campaign’s Brooklyn
headquarters Thursday evening. Afterward, Clinton will begin holding larger
speaking events in the primary states.

But Clinton will not significantly increase the pace of her campaigning for
many months, and she will continue to hold the roundtable discussions that
have marked the first six weeks of her presidential bid.

She will roll out more policy plans over the summer, but she will do it at
a measured pace without any momentous announcements all at once. And while
Chelsea and Bill will make an appearance at her June 13th announcement,
campaign officials said the focus will be on Hillary in the coming months.

Clinton had originally planned to hold her official kickoff at the end of
May, but the campaign pushed the rally back.

While Clinton and her top aides have insisted they plan to run a serious
and competitive primary, her opponents former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley
and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lag far behind her in the polls, allowing
the frontrunner freedom to run a campaign on her own terms.

Clinton’s schedule has so far included a couple of days each week or less
of campaigning in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. She has
held small-scale, roundtable discussions with a selected group of primary
voters in Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa that officials say allow her to
connect with voters and frame her policy ideas.

Clinton’s relaxed pace of campaigning will slowly increase and will begin
to include a broader mix of campaign events and venues.

The campaign officials said they hope to raise $100 million through the
primary, discounting rumors about a $2-billion fundraising goal. The $100
million sum does not include donations raised by Priorities USA Action, the
pro-Clinton super PAC.

Clinton’s aides insisted that the campaign has not been significantly
damaged by criticism over the Clinton Foundation and her role at the State
Department, saying that while those issues may rile up the Republican base,
they do not register much with primary Democrats and Independents.

The campaign would not provide more details on the location for the June 13
event, but said that it would be a large, public event.

The head of Hillary Clinton's campaign and Matt Drudge are teasing each
other about pantsuits
<http://www.businessinsider.com/john-podesta-and-drudge-discuss-pantsuits-2015-5#ixzz3bZCdnl8d>
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker – May 29, 2015

John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, took
to Twitter on Friday after conservative blogger Matt Drudge mocked his
fashion choices.

On Tuesday, the campaign unveiled a T-shirt designed to look like one of
Clinton's trademark pantsuits. On Friday, Podesta posted a picture of
himself wearing the shirt to encourage supporters to buy one in the
campaign store.

Drudge subsequently made Podesta's picture the top story on his widely read
website, which featured the headline "PODESTA IN DRAG FOR HILLARY?"

Podesta responded with another tweet referencing Drudge's famous fedora.

Business Insider reached out to Podesta to ask if he would be sending
Drudge a T-shirt.

"No free loaders here," Podesta said. "Drudge will have to buy his own."

SOCIAL MEDIA

John Podesta (5/29/15, 8:52 AM)
<https://twitter.com/johnpodesta/status/604314462368059394> - Ready to
accessorize? http://hrc.io/1eDlzSw

Sam Youngman (5/29/15, 9:20 AM)
<https://twitter.com/samyoungman/status/604276074957180930> - McConnell
statement: "I congratulate Matt Bevin on his victory and endorse him for
governor."

Teddy Schleifer (5/29/15, 10:16PM)
<https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/604471509357314049?s=03> On her
trip to Houston on Thursday, @HillaryClinton will accept Barbara Jordan
award at Texas Southern University.

HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE

How's Hillary doing? Wish we could tell you
<http://www.cnbc.com/id/102717374> // CNBC // John Harwood – May 29, 2015

I've been inside Hillary Clinton's national campaign headquarters in
Brooklyn.

I've talked with "senior officials" about her bid for the White House. They
sat in these chairs.

Wish I could tell you more. But they said very little.

Notice that I typed very little and not "very little," because under the
ground rules of Thursday's briefing reporters were not allowed to quote
their words directly.

You're not missing much.

The former secretary of state plans to kick off the heavy-rhetoric stage of
her campaign on June 13. I can't say where or what time because the senior
officials wouldn't say.

She plans to lay out some policy proposals after that. Can't say which ones.

She'll take questions from reporters. Can't say how often.

She'll start having rallies. Not too many, because the election's a long
way away. But some.

She might take a summer vacation, which means reporters covering her can,
too. Don't know when, but one senior official observed that summer
vacations traditionally occur in mid-August.

Her aides are organizing furiously in the early battlegrounds of the
nomination fight (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina) because they
are competing in every state. They take the primary challenges of Bernie
Sanders, Martin O'Malley and perhaps others very seriously.

They are also taking their Republican opposition very seriously—some in the
sprawling GOP field more seriously than others. Can't specify which ones.

They are raising lots and lots of money and are pleased with how much is
pouring in. But they absolutely, positively are NOT seeking to raise $2
billion, which some journalists have reported is their goal.

They are building a large digital constituency for their efforts to
communicate and mobilize voters on social media. Are they starting with the
lists from President Barack Obama's organization, and Hillary Clinton's
2008 campaign? Can't say for sure, but they're exploring lots of lists.

Her husband, Bill, and daughter, Chelsea, will play roles in her campaign.
Can't say exactly what, or when.

She's feeling more in control of her campaign effort this time around,
unlike 2008 when she sometimes felt the campaign was controlling her.

Controversies over her emails as secretary of state or the Clinton
Foundation have not inflicted significant political damage. That's because
voters who might support her see the controversies as politically
motivated.

She might even be able to expand the roster of battleground states beyond
those Obama targeted. Can't say which ones.

I'd show you pictures of the office and desks where campaign officials do
their jobs, but the post-briefing tour was deemed off-the-record.

There will be more briefings, however. Stay tuned.

After becoming the first Latina Senate chief of staff, Amanda Renteria is
ready to help create another “first” as Clinton’s national political
director. <http://fortune.com/2015/05/28/amanda-renteria-hillary-clinton/>
// Fortune // Nina Easton – May 28, 2015

With many of the power players from Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential run
are sitting this one out, the big question is: Who’s in?

What follows is the latest installment of a Fortune series looking at the
the most influential women on Clinton’s 2016 team. When this series wraps,
we’ll turn our attention to the most powerful women on the GOP side of the
race.

Amanda Renteria, 40, National Political Director

After dinner at the Virginia Governor’s Mansion not long ago, Amanda
Renteria excused herself from the table and headed out to the basketball
court to shoot hoops—by herself. You wouldn’t know it from her 5’ 5” frame,
but this is Renteria’s passion—her way of centering herself, and finding
the clarity for big decisions, like uprooting her husband and two young
sons from California’s Central Valley to join the Clinton campaign in
Brooklyn. On the court, “you can’t think of anything but what you’re doing
at that moment,” she says. In fact, she’s such a basketball hound that she
even continued her 6 a.m. Friday games with a bunch of guy friends while
she was pregnant.

Renteria’s entire life can be described as a cycle of free throws. Her
parents began as farmworkers: Her father a Mexican immigrant who founded a
small construction firm and her mother a California-born school secretary.
The town she grew up in was once a labor camp. As a child, Amanda’s job was
to help with rentals, clean the house, get good grades—and become a
proficient Mexican dancer.

It was a typical farm-town, Latino upbringing. And then … she got accepted
into Stanford. She wasn’t sure she should go; her parents liked the idea of
Fresno Pacific University. It was closer to home. When news of her
acceptance was broadcast over the school intercom, Renteria, a jock,
cringed. But then a teacher she admired put her straight: “This isn’t about
you,” he said, “it’s about our community.”

And so she went, almost dropping out when the frightening blur of calculus
numbers on a chalk board convinced her she didn’t really belong there after
all. She had the chutzpah to walk onto the Stanford basketball team right
after they had won the NCAA championships. She got a scholarship for
playing softball. And a few years later, she was at Goldman Sachs, learning
how to wear a suit, navigate office life and work crazy hours.

Then came Harvard Business School, a year of teaching back home (“I love
teaching”) and a dizzying rise through the ranks of Senate staffers to
become the first Latina chief of staff during her tenure with Senator
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Last year, she returned home to make a run for
Congress but lost to the Republican incumbent. Renteria would have been the
first woman in Congress from the Central Valley—and I sense this won’t be
her only attempt. “But, really, it’s not about being the first,” she
insists. “It’s about making sure you’re not the last.”

As Clinton’s political director, Renteria’s job is to piece together a
range of constituencies—from women and young people to business leaders and
union members—who will support the campaign. “We want to build the biggest
tent that’s ever been built,” she says.

Campaign officials like to spin reporters in private. That’s worth making
public.
<http://www.vox.com/2015/5/29/8688861/greenwalds-wrong-anonymous-sourcing-isnt-the-problem>
// Vox // Jonathan Allen – May 29, 2015

It's not every day that I get attacked by a Pulitzer Prize winner over my
journalistic standards. That's what Glenn Greenwald, famous for being NSA
leaker Edward Snowden's conduit, did last night on Twitter. He was wrong.

First, my crime: Agreeing to let senior Clinton aides speak on the
condition of anonymity and then attributing what they said about their view
of the state of the race and other matters only to senior campaign
officials.

Greenwald's first tweet was mocking.

We exchanged a few tweets back and forth, but 140 characters is too short
for a full explanation and defense of using anonymous sources and
"background" material in a story. Greenwald's argument rests on the premise
that allowing people to speak without attribution is a sucker move that
allows them to gain an advantage by saying things that aren't true without
repercussions.

The practice can also dilute the value of anonymous sources who fear for
their safety or livelihoods when they blow the whistle on wrongdoing — a
neighborhood Greenwald has lived in for a long time. But he ignores the
value of background sources in everyday beat reporting, as well as the
fundamental difference between reporting on campaigns and reporting on
government.

What happened?

The Clinton campaign invited reporters to come to campaign headquarters in
Brooklyn Thursday for a background session with senior campaign officials.
All of the roughly three dozen reporters who showed up understood they
weren't going to be getting a lot of attributable material before they
arrived.

Though the names of the aides can't be published under the rules of the
agreement, there's nothing evasive, in this case, about describing them as
senior officials. As the session started, another ground rule was added by
the campaign: no direct quotes.

Paranoid? Yes. Par for the course? Yes. Sinister? No.

These officials are people who could easily avoid interacting with
reporters for the entire campaign if they so chose. Given the option of
talking to them or not, major news organizations chose the former.

The session lasted more than an hour, and they were asked about strategy,
fundraising, Clinton's positions on certain policy, and the questions of
conflicts of interest that have arisen because she and her husband have
raised so much campaign, foundation, and personal money from people with
business before the government.

On many scores, the answers were unsatisfactory. The big news, according to
some reports, was that Bill and Chelsea Clinton will attend Hillary's big
kickoff speech on June 13.

The officials dodged on conflicts of interest, maintaining that Americans
will view Clinton as a champion for them and not "special interests." While
it's not surprising they would say that, reporters ask questions both
because predictable responses can be assessed against future realities and
because someone might just say something unexpected. The officials also
acknowledged the campaign effort is likely to cost between $1 billion and
$2 billion.

All of that's worth knowing.

Often, reporters hold onto information from briefings like this and weave
it into later stories. But many of the reporters in the room yesterday at
Clinton headquarters wrote up what was said and attributed it to Clinton
officials. The approach at Vox was to be as clear as possible at each turn
that the views expressed were those of campaign officials, leaving it to
the reader to decide whether the claims were credible. Greenwald was able
to decipher that the officials were less than forthcoming. Amy Chozick and
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times wrote that candor was in short supply.

Gleaning information

One of the questions that have concerned Democrats in recent years is
whether Clinton has learned anything from her 2008 loss.

On that, the officials were somewhat more open than on other topics,
indicating they won't raise general election money that can't be used in a
primary for a while (a big mistake in 2008), that Clinton is refusing to be
controlled by her campaign (a bigger mistake in 2008), and that she won't
get caught misunderstanding the importance of how the system of winning
delegates for the convention works (the biggest mistake of 2008).

Ironically, she's running the race she should have run last time — perhaps
fighting the last war — in a campaign in which she does not appear to have
a legitimate rival for the nomination.

There's value in understanding that, too.

Beat reporting

When reporters cover an institution — whether it's a government agency, a
corporation, or, say, an international governing body for soccer — they
have to find ways to get the institution to state its position on various
topics, policies, and controversies. That can be difficult. No one has to
talk. And while it would be nice for someone else to do that scut work, the
Greenwalds of the world wouldn't be able to do what they do without it.

How would anyone know when public figures aren't living up to their own
standards without knowing what the official line is and whether it's
changing over time? Their own standards certainly aren't the only ones that
matter, but they're an important part of the mix when it comes to reporting
on their successes and failures.

By talking to senior campaign officials, reporters get the baseline.
There's a difference between Clinton saying something on the record and her
aides saying it under the cover of anonymity — it affords her an inch or
two of distance — but it's not an earth-shaking, journalism-on-the-brink
kind of difference.

The most important distinction

The government or a corporation can be judged on its policies and its
actions. The very nature of a campaign is different.

During the campaign, the candidate doesn't have the power to implement
those policies. On most scores, candidates have to be assessed on what they
are promising to do — essentially on what they are saying. That means what
they say matters. The anonymous advisers are a Splenda to the cane sugar of
the candidate, but their message is the candidate's message.

Again, that's worth knowing. And when it doesn't stack up to reality, it's
pretty obvious. In yesterday's Vox story, every bit of information was
attributed to these anonymous officials. Greenwald took that to mean the
story was no better than a press release. It's a reasonable criticism, but
it misses the mark not just for the reasons outlined above. Rather than
being credulous, the careful attribution suggests the opposite. This is
what they are saying, not necessarily what they believe or what is true.

The story also observed the "split-screen" nature of a campaign that has
compartmentalized the conflict-of-interest questions and is all but
ignoring them publicly. That may be an untenable formula, but it's a
familiar one in Clintonworld.

Whatever one thinks of Greenwald's methods, the revelations he brought to
the world about NSA spying were valuable in reshaping and reinvigorating
the national and international debate over about civil liberties and the
security state. Just like senior Clinton campaign officials, he's worth
listening to. But he's applying his ideology about journalism to a
situation it doesn't fit. In that way, he misses the mark.

The fundamental power of journalism is to take information from a small
number of people and give it to a larger number of people in the hope and
belief that an informed polity will make wise decisions about who gets
which powers. Reporting on the official line of a campaign is one of the
many avenues of journalism that fits that description.

On the trail of Hillary Clinton, not everyone is allowed to jump into the
press pool
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/on-the-trail-of-hillary-clinton-not-everyone-is-allowed-to-jump-into-the-press-pool/2015/05/29/f2f99ae6-0631-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html?postshare=1571432938773275>
// WaPo // Paul Farhi – May 29, 2015

When it comes to covering Hillary Rodham Clinton, some campaign reporters
are feeling less equal than others.

Major news organizations have established their own press pool to cover the
leading Democratic candidate, an arrangement that gives them premium access
to Clinton as she campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere.

The only problem: The pool has left news organizations that aren’t part of
the reporting consortium on the sidelines, effectively turning them into
second-class journalists in the hunt for Clinton info.

Pool reports are journalism’s way of managing journalism’s perpetual mob
scenes. Rather than having a jostling crowd of reporters all chasing the
same newsmaker into tight quarters, a lone reporter handles the job,
sharing whatever he or she learns with colleagues via a series of e-mails.

The White House press corps has employed such a system for decades to cover
the president. Presidential pool reports are shared widely, and in real
time, not only among news organizations but among congressional offices,
executive branch agencies and hundreds of other interested parties.

That’s not how the Clinton pool works, however.

With the Clinton campaign’s ascent, some 14 news organizations — including
the New York Times, Politico, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post — formed a
press pool in May. Each member is expected to supply a reporter to cover
Clinton on a rotating basis when an event — say, a diner stop in Iowa — can
only accommodate a small group. The news organizations regularly travel to
report on Clinton.

But the pool reports are only being shared among pool members through a
special-access Google Group. Reporters from news organizations that aren’t
in the traveling pool can get access only on a delayed basis, usually at
the end of the day. That’s a veritable lifetime to wait in an age when news
is constant and instantaneous.

And that hurts: “My feeling is that some people have established the rules
and that we haven’t been part of the discussion,” said Laura Haim, a
U.S.-based reporter for a French TV network, Canal Plus’ i-Tele. “I went to
Iowa to cover [Clinton’s] first event. I only saw her van. I never saw her.
I was not the only one. The level of frustration was amazing. . . . I am
fighting for equality and access for all.”

The architects of the new system, who agreed to speak only on background,
said its rationale is simple: Pool members have agreed to bear heavy travel
costs to cover Clinton and thus should have first crack at information
about her. Others are welcome to join the pool, they say — “the more the
merrier,” as one put it — but only if they’re willing to shoulder their
share of campaign-coverage costs.

Otherwise, they can wait until the end of the day.

The pool members say they have made no distinction between domestic and
international press; in fact, two of the founding members, the Guardian
andDaily Mail, are British-based, and a third, Agence France-Presse (AFP),
is based in Paris.

But the nature of the arrangement troubles some.

“I understand why some reporters want the reports to be only available to
those who are participating in the rotation,” said Anita Kumar, a White
House and Clinton campaign reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, which is part
of the pool covering Clinton. “I just think in this day and age, it’s hard
to justify restricting the information, both because the precedent has been
set with White House pool reports . . . and because shrinking budgets and
newsrooms need to translate to more sharing of information, not less.”

The pool members are scheduled to meet Monday morning at the Los Angeles
Times’s Washington offices to discuss organizational changes. It was not
clear if there are any plans to change the way the reports are distributed,
several people said.

Despite the often rote nature of pool summaries, the Clinton pool reports
may have extra value because of her reluctance to engage directly with the
press. Since many of Clinton’s early appearances have been in small venues,
and because the media crush sometimes surpasses 70 or 80 people, the pool
descriptions are often the only way to learn what transpired.

For example, during a mid-day stop in Independence, Iowa, last week, pool
reporter Sam Frizell of Time magazine described Clinton’s encounters with
local business owners. The interactions were routine but colorful: “ ‘Can I
order some coffee?’ Clinton said with enthusiasm as she entered Em’s Coffee
Co. [a shop on the main drag]. ‘I would love to get some coffee!’ The owner
is Emilea Hillman, a young woman. . . . ‘I’m going to come back here, Em,
what do you recommend?’ Clinton said moving to the area behind the counter.
‘Perfect, I’m coming for it,’ she said ‘I needed a shot of espresso to keep
going here!’ ”

In addition to their exclusion from the pool, reporters for foreign news
organizations, such as Haim, complain that they have been shut out of
Clinton’s “open-press” events, in which all credentialed reporters are
admitted. An ad hoc organization of international reporters intends to
discuss the issue with campaign representatives, she said.

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill declined comment. But people close
to the campaign said some open-press events quickly reached their limit and
the campaign restricted access to local and national reporters.

Why hasn’t Maggie Hassan made an endorsement?
<http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/05/28/capitalgroundgame/2GVwRUVL6s4RXIML4loMiJ/story.html>
// Boston Globe // James Pindell – May 28, 2015

SALEM, N.H. — Seven years ago, when Hillary Rodham Clinton needed her most,
then-state Senate Majority Leader Maggie Hassan was there for her
presidential campaign.

Today, it’s anybody’s guess whether Hassan, now governor of the Granite
State, will back Clinton again.

On the Globe’s list of the 115 most desirable Democratic endorsements in
the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary, more than half of the state’s
political establishment is “Ready for Hillary.” This includes President
Obama’s pointman in the state, Jim Demers. It also includes Granite State
activists who backed John Edwards, like Maureen and Donald Manning in
Manchester. The Clinton network is vast in New Hampshire, including three
former US ambassadors, several Clinton administration appointments, and all
three of the state’s Democratic National Committee members.

But so far, Hassan is not on board.

In 2008, Hassan and a few dozen other female Clinton supporters may have
had as much to do with her surprise first-in-the-nation primary win over
Obama as did Clinton’s tears at a now-famous Portsmouth event. This group,
which included other prominent New Hampshire Democratic women, signed a
blast e-mail to other women in the state raising questions about whether
Obama sufficiently supported abortion rights because he had voted “present”
on a number of abortion-related bills in the Illinois Senate.

With just more than eight months until the primary, Hillary Clinton has
scored public support from a sizable chunk of New Hampshire political
insiders.

Tracking the endorsements of N.H. GOP activists

Exit polls showed older, pro-abortion rights female voters lifted Clinton
to victory in that primary, setting the stage for a protracted primary.
Afterwards some of those who wrote the letter expressed regret, but the
deed was done. And for Hassan, the Clintons repaid the favor.

Less than four years later, Hassan was running for governor after she was
defeated for reelection to the Legislature. She faced off with another
former state senator who backed Obama in the 2008 primary. While Hassan was
the front-runner for the nomination, her primary was dicey. With weeks to
go, Hassan called in a favor: While Hillary Clinton was traveling the globe
as US secretary of state, former president Bill Clinton flew into Nashua to
hold a rally for her.

It did the trick.

But Hassan also got help from another source in her 2012 race. Maryland
Governor Martin O’Malley was chairman of the Democratic Governors
Association. He sent a staffer to assist Hassen, and now that staffer is
her top political adviser. O’Malley is expected to announce his
presidential bid on Saturday, followed by a trip to New Hampshire the next
day.

After Hassan won her first term, and President Obama won reelection, Vice
President Joe Biden personally invited her to attend his swearing in. Biden
would then agree to do a fund-raiser for Hassan. O’Malley did two.

During Hassan’s reelection race last fall, Hillary Clinton made her first
trip back to the Granite State since the 2008 election. She held a rally
for Hassan and US Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Afterward Clinton did a
fund-raiser for Hassan in Portsmouth.

When asked at a Tuesday event, Hassan responded she hasn’t endorsed a
presidential contender because she is focused on passing a state budget. “I
am focused on the budget, and I am also mindful of the state’s role as
holding the first in the nation primary,” Hassan said.

Hassan might have other matters on her mind, too, like a 2016 race against
US Senator Kelly Ayotte. Democrats expect her to challenge the Republican
next year.

Shaheen endorsed Clinton in 2013, when she signed a letter with other
female Democratic US senators urging her to seek the presidency again.

But Ann McLane Kuster, New Hampshire’s only Democratic member of Congress,
has said she is trying to be neutral at the beginning of the state’s
primary.

Both the Clinton and Hassan operations chalk up the governor’s hesitance to
a matter of timing. First, Hassan has to pass a budget, next she will have
to make a decision on the Senate race — and then an endorsement for
president.

Most believe her endorsement will eventually go to Clinton. But having the
issue resolved last year like many top Democrats — or even earlier than
that, like Shaheen — would have removed the question from the table.

Report: Cruz, Clinton resonate the most online
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/05/29/cruz-clinton-presidential-bids-resonate-online/28144199/>
// Des Moines Register // Matthew Patane – May 29, 2015

Of all the presidential contenders that have entered their names in the
ring, Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz saw the most reaction from their
campaign announcement speeches, a new report shows.

The report comes from George Washington University's Graduate School of
Political Management and Zingal Labs, a company that monitors online media
interactions. It monitored the "public echoes" during March 15 through May
15 surrounding the eight formal presidential campaigns that launched in
that period.

Clinton and Cruz were the only two candidates that "established some
semblance of branded visibility" in that time frame, the report reads.

During the two-month period, Clinton had more than 4.8 million mentions.
Cruz garnered about 2.6 million.

Cruz, researchers said, benefited from being the first one officially in
the race, while Clinton benefited from years of speculation about whether
she would run. Cruz announced on March 23 and Clinton announced on April 12.

During the two-month period, Zignal tracked 10.3 million online mentions of
the eight candidates, or 7,150 mentions per hour. The report dubbed that a
"low echo volume." For comparison, the Kentucky Derby on May 2 generated
16,670 mentions per hour for most of the day.

"In spring 2015, then, heavy news coverage notwithstanding, people were
more interested in talking about an actual horse race than the famously
symbolic one in politics," the report reads.

On trail in S.C., Clinton faces old ghosts
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/05/28/hillary-clinton-campaigns-against-ghosts/oH3zHKoha3NeQASPwhBIbM/story.html>
// Boston Globe // Annie Linskey – May 29, 2015

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to South Carolina this
week and began to confront one of the most pointed threats she faces so far
on the campaign trail: echoes from her campaign of seven years ago.

Cognizant of how her campaign angered African-Americans in the Palmetto
State — especially when her husband made series of comments viewed as
dismissive of Barack Obama — Clinton took pains to make amends. Before
showing up, she reached out to a key South Carolina leader who had been
critical. And when Clinton spoke to activists, she twice referred to the
2008 primary, at one point calling it a “pretty vigorous” campaign.

Few in the audience needed a reminder.

“We are Southern, honey. We hold a grudge for a long time,” said Phyllis
Harris, a 61-year-old African-American woman from Camden. She recounted how
she felt Clinton disrespected voters in the state in 2008 by packing up and
leaving for Tennessee before she conceded.

“She needs to convince me, to take the time to convince my people,” Harris
said.

South Carolina is foremost among several early primary states where the
ghosts of Clinton’s past campaign haunt the trail, posing thornier problems
in the early stages of her campaign than her declared opponents. The
memories of 2008 may not threaten her place in the polls, but exorcising
them is crucial if she wants build the kind of enthusiasm that will keep
stronger party rivals on the sidelines and inspire volunteers to promote
her candidacy.

The last Clinton campaign kicked off with a series of large events where
hundreds packed into town hall meetings and rallies in Iowa and New
Hampshire to cheer her. This time the campaign has stopped trying to
elevate her to rock-star status.

“She’s not as effective from the podium’’ as Bill Clinton and Obama, said
Kurt Meyer, a Democratic activist in Iowa. “Neither of them, fine as they
are speaking to 1,000 fans, can compete with her in the six or eight people
sitting around the table.”

Meyer should know. A local Democratic leader, he was tapped to sit with
Clinton at a coffee shop during one of her first events in Marshalltown,
Iowa, last month. The Clinton campaign filmed the friendly exchange and
posted it on her Facebook page. It has been viewed more than a quarter
million times.

The overwhelming size of the Clinton staff was also a problem in the past.
Meyer said he brought it up in an early meeting with Clinton campaign
manager Robby Mook. “I said, ‘One of the things you all have to know about
a rural county is if you get off a Greyhound bus and 47 self-important
people get off . . . it doesn’t work in Mitchell

County.”

During Clinton’s first pass through the state in mid-April, Meyer was
pleased to see that the cadre of campaign aides staff had shrunk. But
during her more recent stop he started hearing reports that those numbers
began to swell, particularly at what was supposed to be an intimate
gathering at a private home in Eastern Iowa. Meyer complained to the
Clinton campaign. “They said, ‘You were right. We had way too much staff in
Dubuque,’ ” he recalled.

Nowhere is the Clinton campaign more haunted than in South Carolina, a
state where the primary contest descended into a racially charged brawl. At
one point Bill Clinton downplayed the significance of the first Southern
primary by pointing out that Jesse Jackson won it in 1988, a remark many
saw as diminishing both the state and the historic nature of Obama’s rise.
He also referred to Obama’s stance on Iraq as a “fairy tale.” The quip
offended Representative James Clyburn, one of the state’s most important
black leaders, because he viewed it as a backhanded attempt to paint the
entire Obama campaign as make-believe. The race drama peaked when the
former president let loose a frustrated rant accusing the Obama camp of
playing a race card. “Once you accuse somebody of racism or bigotry or
something, the facts become irrelevant,” he said. He then blamed the press
for accepting the Obama spin. “They are feeding you this because they know
this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for.”

This year Hillary Clinton has tried to mend fences, hiring a former Clyburn
aide, Clay Middleton, to run her operation in South Carolina. She also
called Clyburn several days before her trip Wednesday. The two discussed
her campaign and upcoming visit, said Amanda Loveday, a Clyburn
spokeswoman. (He was out of town during her stop and didn’t attend any of
her events.)

Clyburn doesn’t plan on endorsing anyone for the primary this time and he
eagerly invited Clinton’s challengers to visit in a statement to the Globe.

“I welcome any and all Democratic presidential candidates to South
Carolina, a state that offers distinctive opportunities to hone messages in
relatively inexpensive media markets,” Clyburn said.

Scars also remain in the Nevada desert, where activists recall the
hand-to-hand combat between the Obama and Clinton camps over the state’s
caucuses. That fight ended up in court, with the Nevada State Education
Association, which backed Clinton, filing a federal lawsuit over the
state’s voting rules. Clinton also failed to secure a coveted endorsement
from the state’s culinary union, which is the largest and backed Obama.

Clinton won the state’s popular vote, and held out an olive branch to the
union on her recent visit. “I’ve met with a lot of culinary workers and
other workers who keep the economy going strong,” she said, recalling her
2008 days in the state.

“The last time the mistake they made was they took a lot of things for
granted,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the
University of Nevada. “This time it seems like they are much more
interested in listening to folks who might not have agreed with her in the
past.”

Even in Massachusetts, Clinton and her team must grapple with another
unpleasant echo of 2008 — the state’s senior senator. Last time it was the
late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who wound up endorsing Obama, a huge blow
to Clinton. This time Clinton must court Senator Elizabeth Warren, who
holds sway over a huge liberal fan base and whose help will be crucial in
getting such activists fired up if Clinton makes it to the general election.

In New Hampshire, Clinton’s ghosts are friendly. Its primary voters revived
Bill Clinton’s presidential hopes in 1992 when he came in second, and it
injected momentum into her bruised campaign eight years ago, when she won
it after losing Iowa.

Those memories were on Clinton’s mind when she stopped in the Granite State
several weeks ago. “I came here in 1991,” Clinton said while chatting with
one man on her first stop in the state at a bakery in Keene. “I celebrated
my birthday here.”

Later, at a business round table held nearby she brought it up again,
saying she was “thrilled” to be back in the state. “I have a lot of
wonderful memories.”

Why the N.H. primary is nearly impossible to predict
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/05/28/why-primary-nearly-impossible-predict/G2Hn9AaLt29sF1ud1Pt1yL/story.html>
// The Boston Globe // James A. Kimble – May 29, 2015

DURHAM, N.H. — Pinning down voters about who they might support in the New
Hampshire presidential primary may be political gold for a candidate, but
history has proven it’s not an easy race to predict.

“More often polls are wrong than they are right,” said Andy Smith, director
of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “I think the 1984 Gary
Hart win was the worst. Any pollster who says they know who will win the
primary doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

New Hampshire is well known for unpredictable voters who can launch
underdogs into the national spotlight. Hart’s win in the New Hampshire
primary, upending predictions favoring Vice President Walter Mondale, is an
often-cited example of pollsters who spent weeks surveying voters getting
it wrong.

Smith said a number of factors make New Hampshire voters tough to predict —
especially during the presidential primary — but one constant has remained
true over the years.

“People will make up their minds at the very end,” said Smith, who recently
coauthored a book with David Moore titled “The First Primary: New
Hampshire’s Outsize Role in Presidential Nominations.”

With 2016 promising a double-digit field of Republican candidates,
pollsters may be facing an even harder go of it while their surveys are
being called upon in new ways to shape the election. National polling is
already being used by CNN and Fox News to narrow the number of candidates
on stage during the first two Republican presidential debates.

“That’s a real world implication for this cycle that wasn’t present in
previous cycles,” said Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling in
Raleigh, N.C. “The other area where polling really matters is for
fund-raising purposes, especially if you’re one of those candidates who are
skirting the line.”

A handful of Republican hopefuls have already hired private polling firms
as part of their New Hampshire operations in advance of a possible
presidential run.

“A real survey helps you determine who is responding to the things you want
to talk about and how to best communicate your message,” said David Carney,
a GOP strategist based in New Hampshire. “That’s what it’s about.”

Campaign polling should not be confused with public opinion polling
reported on by the media, Carney said. Campaign polls have no interest in
the horse race aspect of elections, instead delving into questions that
help a candidate learn the “where, who and how to best deliver your
message,” he said.

Carney criticized public opinion polling, saying it falls short with how
and what kind of information it collects from voters. At the same time,
campaigns will be quick to use a public opinion poll when it works to the
advantage of their candidate, and just as quick to trash one that goes
against them, Carney said.

“The political spinning of polls is the most egregious part of a campaign,”
he said. “It’s the most overused technique.”

Jensen said polling results in New Hampshire and Iowa will likely play a
significant role in shaping the 2016 election in the months before voters
reach the polls. The prominence in polling comes at a time when fewer
people want to participate in surveys, he said. For every 100 people Jensen
said his company reaches out to for an automated political poll, he will be
lucky if 10 percent will participate. More recently, that number has
dropped to 5 percent, he said.

“You now you have a situation where you have 18 or so candidates on the
Republican side,” he said. “You worry a little about exhausting the
respondents.”

Landline phones are on their way out. People have shorter attention spans,
and more pollsters in 2016 are turning to the Internet in an attempt to get
a well-rounded view of the electorate, Jensen said.

“The simple reality is there is no one single way to reach everybody in an
election,” he said. “We are going to see more of a fusion methodology.”

Despite his criticisms of public polling, Carney said CNN and Fox News
should have used a blend of polls from states with early primaries where
candidates are spending most their time instead of national polls where
voters are not yet paying attention to the election.

“It would have been a more accurate barometer,” he said. “It would have
given candidates an opportunity to strut their stuff. You can’t have 18
people on stage.”

Smith said over the years he has honed the types of questions he asks
potential voters that have given him more telling results. Likability tends
to be a better predictor of who may emerge as a winner in an election, he
said.

“It’s always difficult. It’s always a crap shoot, so one of the things I
try to do to make my understanding of the race better is to look at
favorability ratings,” Smith said.

In 2000, when polls indicated that US Senator John McCain was tanking in
race, he still rated well in likability, Smith said. McCain went on to defy
polls predicting his loss in the New Hampshire primary and defeat George W.
Bush.

Smith now asks voters what candidate they believe has a high likeability
factor; what candidate they would never vote for under any circumstance;
and finally, regardless of who they vote for, who do they think will win?

“That question is more likely to predict who will win than the horse race
question,” he said. “More often, it gets winner right.”

Shumlin, Kunin to host Hillary Clinton event
<http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2015/05/29/shumlin-kunin-hillary-clinton/28146077/>
// Burlington Free Press // April Burbank – May 29, 2015

Less than a week after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., launched his
presidential campaign from Burlington, the rival Hillary Clinton camp is
planning its own event near the waterfront.

Gov. Peter Shumlin, who recently endorsed Clinton for the Democratic
nomination, and Vermont's first female governor Madeleine Kunin will host a
"grassroots organizing meeting" 6 p.m. Monday, according to the Clinton
campaign website.

The event is described as a gathering of supporters; Clinton is not
expected to be present.

The event will take place in Main Street Landing at 60 Lake St. in
Burlington — within eyesight of Waterfront Park, where Sanders entertained
thousands of people at a campaign rally Tuesday.

Clinton, a former U.S. senator and secretary of state, has garnered
endorsements from U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., former Gov. Howard Dean
and Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, in addition to Shumlin and Kunin.

Pelosi: Clintons "will have to answer for the foundation"
<http://www.vox.com/2015/5/29/8689155/pelosi-clintons-foundation> // Vox //
Jonathan Allen – May 29, 2015

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Bill and Hillary
Clinton "will have to answer for the foundation," suggesting that the
public will care more about conflict-of-interest allegations than Clinton
campaign officials say will be the case.

Pelosi's distancing from the Clinton nonprofit in an interview with MSNBC's
Thomas Roberts came on the same day the New York Times reported that a
charity focused on building schools donated $500,000 to the Clinton
Foundation after Bill Clinton agreed to speak at a gala for the smaller
nonprofit.

Pelosi's response is the biggest crack in the Clinton Foundation armor so
far because of her position as the party's leader in the House and because
she has said she backs Hillary Clinton for president. It could give
political cover for other Democrats to distance themselves from the
Clintons' operation of their foundation.

On Thursday, senior Clinton campaign officials insisted voters aren't being
swayed by a series of stories about the Clintons raising money for
themselves and the foundation from entities with business before the
federal government. They said they would answer questions about the
foundation as they arise but don't believe it will damage or distract
Clinton.

Pelosi said that having Bill Clinton speak could have increased
contributions to the school-building charity, but she pointedly declined to
stick her neck out for him or Hillary Clinton.

There's "no question" they'll have to address questions about the
foundation, Pelosi said.

A spokesman from Pelosi's office disputed the characterization of minority
leader. "This is a completely inaccurate characterization of the Leader's
remarks," said Drew Hammill. "Leader Pelosi complimented President Clinton
on his work on behalf of various causes and only said she wasn't going to
respond to this story."

The Republican National Committee emailed a clip of the interview to
reporters.

Hillary Clinton cites GOP quotes on equal-pay legislation out of context
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/05/29/hillary-clinton-cites-gop-quotes-on-equal-pay-legislation-out-of-context/>
// WaPo // Glenn Kessler – May 29, 2015

“Now we could fix this [equal pay for men and women].  If Republicans would
get on board, we in fact could fix this today but they won’t. One
Republican candidate dismissed equal pay as ‘a bogus issue.’  Another said
Congress was ‘wasting time’ worrying about it.  One even said that efforts
to guarantee fair pay reminded him of the Soviet Union. And to that, I say:
What century are they living in?”

—Hillary Clinton, speaking to the Democratic Women’s Council in Columbia,
S.C., May 27, 2015

This is a pretty interesting collection of damning quotes from Hillary
Clinton about her erstwhile GOP rivals for the presidency. But here at The
Fact Checker, we often are wary when politicians start to negatively quote
other politicians, because all too frequently those quotes are taken out of
context.

We’ve written in the past about some of the statistics surrounding the
equal-pay debate — such as the assertion that women make 78 cents for every
dollar earned by men. But in this case, we are going to focus on whether
Clinton is accurately quoting her potential opponents.

The Facts

“One Republican candidate dismissed equal pay as ‘a bogus issue.’”

Here, Clinton is referring to a quote from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R),
who in 2012 signed a repeal of a 2009 law that allowed equal-pay lawsuits
to be filed in state court, in addition to federal courts. He argued that
the law — which was crafted and passed when Democrats controlled the state
government — was duplicative and “could clog up the legal system,” given
there were other administrative and federal options available.

Walker’s quote appeared in a 2012 article in the Green Bay Press-Gazette,
titled “Walker faces challenges in winning some female voters.” The article
highlighted the repeal of the law and quoted the executive director of the
state Democratic Party as saying that Walker approved the repeal “in the
dark of night” (a Thursday before Easter) in order not to draw media
attention. The article continues:

Walker said there was no attempt to hide anything, and the bill-signing did
nothing harmful to women.

“It’s a bogus issue,” he said. “It is against the law to discriminate
against women for employment and to pay them less than you pay men, and it
will continue to be.”

Clinton claimed that Walker “dismissed equal pay as ‘a bogus issue.’” But
in context, it appears that Walker is referring to debate over when he
signed the repeal, or perhaps that he has a problem with women. It
certainly does not appear that he said that concerns about equal pay are
bogus.

The Fact Checker contacted Paul Srubas, the reporter of the story. He
agreed that “to say he called ‘equal pay’ a bogus issue I think would be
misquoting him.” As he put it:

“As best as I can recall and reconstruct, I don’t believe Walker was
publicly dismissing the concept of equal pay as ‘a bogus issue.’ I believe
he was saying the 2009 equal pay enforcement act was unnecessary and
redundant, so he repealed it, and since repealing it created no harm to
women, accusing him of hiding his actions by cloak of night is bogus.”

A Clinton spokesman responded: “Walker is very clearly saying he thinks
it’s a bogus issue because other laws take care of the problem and we don’t
need to legislate more on this.”

(Incidentally, exit polls showed that in 2014 Walker lagged behind the
female Democratic challenger by nine percentage points among women, but he
coasted to re-election by winning the male vote by 21 percentage points.
Walker also narrowly won the votes of white women.)

“Another said Congress was ‘wasting time’ worrying about it.”

In this sentence, Clinton attacks Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who, like all
Senate Republicans, opposed the Democratic-sponsored Paycheck Fairness Act.
Again, the battle lines between the parties were drawn over whether the law
would result in more litigation. (We obviously take no position on the
legislation but trial lawyers tend to be major financial backers of
Democrats, not Republicans.)

In a 2014 interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Rubio was asked about
executive actions that President Obama had taken to address the pay gap
between men and women. “I think it is a legitimate issue to focus on
because of have millions of women trapped in low-paying jobs for a multiple
of reasons,” Rubio said, adding that he wanted to find ways to provide more
educational opportunities and better career options for women.

He then turned to criticize the Paycheck Fairness Act. Here is the full
context of his comment:

“The proposals before the Senate now are really geared toward making it
easier to sue an employer. I understand the political benefit of
highlighting that and why they’re doing it, but it isn’t going to solve the
core of the problem. And I just think we’re wasting time. Meanwhile, an
entire generation of young women is caught in low paying jobs with no way
to emerge from that into a better paying job.”

In other words, he was concerned about the pay gap but objected, on
substantive grounds, to the proposal before the Senate — which had no
chance of getting any Republican votes. So the “wasting time” comment
referred to debating a politically oriented bill that had no hope of
passage. (In fact, by 2014, the bill had been rejected in the Senate
several times.) Rubio did not say that Congress was wasting time worrying
about it; in fact, he said it was a “legitimate issue to focus on.”

The Clinton spokesman responded: “Rubio absolutely said Congress was
wasting its time; his reasoning for believing that isn’t the point.”

“One even said that efforts to guarantee fair pay reminded him of the
Soviet Union.”

Finally, Clinton takes on Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). This line is based on a
2012 Huffington Post article headlined “Rand Paul Compares Paycheck
Fairness To Soviet Politburo.”

Paul also attacked the Paycheck Fairness Act for encouraging litigation,
saying the proposed law would hand powers to judges to determine whether
women are paid fairly, which he said would violate free-market principles.
It was in that context that he made the reference to the Soviet Union:

“Three hundred million people get to vote everyday on what you should be
paid or what the price of goods are. In the Soviet Union, the Politburo
decided the price of bread, and they either had no bread or too much bread.
So setting prices or wages by the government is always a bad idea. … The
minute you set up a fairness czar to determine what wages are, you give
away freedom. When you give that power to someone to make decisions, they
may well discriminate in favor of whoever they want to discriminate in
favor of. The market just makes decisions on your ability to do your job.”

Again, Clinton is suggesting that opposition to a Democratic-written bill
means opposition to equal pay for women. But her statement here is a bit
more cleverly worded. Paul certainly suggested that this particular effort
to address the issue reminded him of the Soviet Union, so as phrased,
Clinton’s statement is relatively accurate.

The Clinton spokesman said she was not “saying that the Paycheck Fairness
Act, something she believes is a piece of the solution, would solve the
problem on its own.… She specifies several areas that contribute to the
problem that could be fixed.  Unfortunately, Republicans obstruct attempts
to fix any of these problem areas, including repealing state legislation or
blocking or dismissing federal legislation.”

The Pinocchio Test

In at least two of the quotes — Walker’s and Rubio’s — Clinton has ripped
the remarks completely out of context. In all three cases, Clinton is
suggesting that opposition to bills crafted by Democrats — which
Republicans said would encourage litigation — is tantamount to not caring
about the gender pay gap.

Taking statements out of context is an old political game played by both
parties. We recall that Clinton supporters protested vehemently when they
accused Republicans of twisting out of context remarks she made during the
hearings on the Benghazi attacks. But that still does not make the practice
acceptable for political discourse.

Overall, Clinton earns Three Pinocchios.

Three Pinocchios

Bill Clinton to Foundation Donors: I Feel Your Pain
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/29/clinton-foundation-sorry-about-ruining-your-careers-now-give-us-more-money.html>
// Daily Beast // David Freedlander – May 29, 2015

Bill Clinton has a message to all those autocrats, petro-billionaires,
compromised television journalists, and corporate titans who have been tied
to a series of devastating exposes about the Clinton Foundation and its
finances: I feel your pain. And we still need your money.

In a letter sent today to Clinton Foundation supporters, the former
president writes, “As you all know, it’s the political season in America,
so the purpose and impact of the efforts your support makes possible has
largely been ignored in recent coverage of the Foundation. But we are and
always have been a non-partisan, inclusive foundation with lots of support
from and involvement by people across the political spectrum and
governments from right to left, all committed to our creative
solutions-centered work.”

Speculation has swirled around the Clinton Foundation in recent years about
how the global philanthropy, which now ranks as one the nation’s largest in
terms of annual fundraising, will continue to operate should Hillary
Clinton win the presidency in 2016.

At times, the letter reads like a Clinton State of the Union speech of old,
with him citing example after example of people who have been helped by the
Foundation’s work. One can almost imagine the “smallholder farmers in
Africa” or the “women entrepreneurs in Latin America” or Wazia Chawala, a
farmer and single mother in Tanzania participating in the Clinton
Development Initiative’s Anchor Farm program standing up on the House
balcony to receive applause.

The letter also comes as the foundation launches a public relations blitz
to defend the work that it does. Hillary Clinton aides have been frustrated
at the developing narrative about the foundation—one which largely ignores
the work the charity does to combat global poverty. In recent days, a
number of Clinton supporters, including Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild
and former New York State Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs have spoken
out publicly in defense of the foundation’s work.

Yesterday, President Clinton appeared before the United Nations to speak
about the foundation’s role in improving global public health.

In the letter Clinton cites the work that the foundation has accomplished,
including 9.9 million people globally with access to HIV/AIDS medicine, 16
million in kids in the U.S with access to healthier food, and 3,200
commitments orchestrated by the Clinton Global Initiative “that have
already improved 430 million lives in more than 180 countries.”

“That's the real story of the Clinton Foundation—people coming together
across traditional divides to help others live up to their full potential,”
Clinton continues. “We are grateful that you have been a part of it.”

The foundation has also been accused of mismanagement internally, with
longtime Clinton family friends put on the organization’s payroll without
clear duties, and it has been discovered that the organization has not
properly filed the necessary tax paperwork with the federal government.

Next week, Donna Shalala, a former Clinton administration cabinet official
will take over as the group’s president. Along with her hiring, Clinton
writes, “We will continue to look for ways to improve our reporting systems
so that we can operate as accurately, efficiently and transparently as
possible—a goal to which we have been committed to since day one.”

Clinton Library readies Monica Lewinsky photos, more Hillary Clinton first
lady files
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/05/clinton-library-readies-monica-lewinsky-photos-more-207910.html>
// Politico // Josh Gerstein – May 29, 2015

The Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock is set to release more
records this summer, including official White House photos of Monica
Lewinsky and about 10,000 pages of files kept by staffers in the office of
First Lady Hillary Clinton, but what's being held back may draw more
attention than what's made public.

The National Archives is proposing for release only 11 photos of Lewinsky —
the former White House intern whose intimate relationship with former
President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment in 1998 — but archivists said
in a notice Thursday that they are planning to withhold five other photos
found in White House files.

It's unclear whether the photos set for release are the same 11 photos
Independent Counsel Ken Starr appended to a report he delivered to Congress
in 1998. The notice does not state a basis for declaring the five other
photos "restricted," but records are sometimes held back on privacy grounds
or because they pertain to political activity.

An Archives spokesperson had no immediate comment on the planned release.

In a similar notice last week, the Clinton Library — which is run by the
Archives — proposed release of about 10,000 pages of office files from
several Hillary Clinton aides: office manager Eric Woodard, executive
assistant Missy Kincaid, Alissa Brown and Diane Limo.

The records include briefing papers, staff memos and details on protocol
for White House events, including "food and drink requirements."

The files are set for release August 17 and the photos four days later,
unless either the current White House or aides to former President Clinton
seek a 30-business-day extension or move to restrict the records on
executive privilege grounds.

The photos were requested under the Freedom of Information Act by Conor
Skelding, a reporter at Capital New York. The office files were processed
under a so-called "systematic" review of Clinton White House files
considered to be of public interest.

The new round of planned releases comes on the heels of a much larger
flurry of releases last month, totaling about 200,000 pages. Those files
included details about efforts to polish Hillary Clinton's image, about the
then-first lady's revulsion at racy marketing by clothing retailer
Abercrombie & Fitch and about the Clinton White House's handling of the
same-sex marriage issue.

Last month, Hillary Clinton made official her long-assumed candidacy for
the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Lena Dunham said something political, which means you must immediately
click here
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/29/lena-dunham-said-something-political-which-means-you-must-immediately-click-here/?postshare=6731432916657717>
// Washington Post // Janell Ross – May 28, 2015

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled reading on the state of the
nation's economy, schools, war, rumors of war, corruption, malfeasance and
famine around the world to inform you that Lena Dunham is Ready for Hillary.

Dunham has posted a picture of, well, herself, with a Hillary 2016
bumpersticker planted in her mouth. It has been liked nearly 23,000 times
in an hour.

The picture isn't exactly a shocking revelation. Two months ago, Dunham
posted a tongue-in-cheek message about that picture of Hillary --  you know
the one, suglasses on, blackberry in hand, handling business with outfit
and hair almost on fleek. It made her allegiences pretty clear to anyone on
Instagram who can also read.

Then, earlier this month, Dunham posted another pro-Hillary declaration on
Instagram. She was kind enough to share an idea: The Clinton 2016 campaign
logo would form the basis of her new tramp stamp.

Dunham is an outspoken advocate of all manner of progressive causes.
Sharing some of her ideas on social media drew enough attention from what
Dunham called "crazy neocons" and trolls that she announced plans to
withdraw from the Kingdom of Twitter. The sustained opposition to Dunham,
of course, is part of what makes people care what she says. And Dunham has
every right to express her ideas; before the 2016 race ends, she will
hardly be the last celebrity to do so.

Maybe she feels compelled to share her thoughts, somehow. After all, she's
been called the voice of her generation -- even if that voice and the world
it depicts is decidedly wealthy and white. She is smart, sarcastic and
sassy enough to make light of such an auspicious label, run her own HBO
show and ably deflect criticism for telling a modern American story without
including, you know, the actual range of people who live in America -- or
Brooklyn -- if and when anyone calls her on it. But no one is irritated by
ubiquity or her selective grasp on empowerment or anything. OK?

So, Lena Dunham has weighed in for Hillary, in a photo, with a Hillary
bumper sticker in her mouth, which requires little to no interpretation.

Let's return to a world where this happened and someone or something else
matters, shall we?

Clinton Lawyer Marc Elias Among Those Behind Major New Voting Rights
Lawsuit in Wisconsin <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72945> // Election Law
Blog // Rick Hasen – May 28, 2015

Here is how the complaint for the lawsuit filed in federal court in
Wisconsin begins:

This lawsuit concerns the most fundamental of rights guaranteed citizens in
our representative democracy—the right to vote. That right has been under
attack in Wisconsin since Republicans gained control of the governor’s
office and both houses of the State Legislature in the 2010 election.
Indeed, since 2011, the State of Wisconsin has twice reduced in-person
absentee (“early”) voting, introduced restrictions on voter registration,
changed its residency requirements, enacted a law that encourages invasive
poll monitoring, eliminated straight-ticket voting, eliminated for most
(but not all) citizens the option to obtain an absentee ballot by fax or
email, and imposed a voter identification (“voter ID”) requirement. These
measures were intended to burden, abridge, and deny, and have had and will
have the effect of burdening, abridging, and denying, the voting rights of
Wisconsinites generally and of African-American, Latino, young, and/or
Democratic voters in Wisconsin in particular.

As set forth below, these and the other provisions challenged in this
Complaint (the “challenged provisions”) violate Section 2 of the Voting
Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301, and/or the First Amendment, the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment,
and/or the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The
challenged provisions should therefore be declared illegal and enjoined.

A few thoughts:

1. As with the new Ohio litigation, the case is not officially being
brought by the Clinton campaign but is being backed by the Clinton’s
general counsel, Marc Elias. It is hard to believe such a suit would not be
brought with Marc’s involvement without political vetting by the Clinton
campaign.

2. These lawsuits serve a political purpose even if they are not successful
legally. They keep the issue of voter suppression in the minds of
Democratic constituencies and help galvanize Democratic voters. It puts
Democrats on the offensive rather than the defensive.

3. As to the chances of success, if this case gets before the same federal
judge which initially struck down Wisconsin’s voter id law, this case could
well have a good chance of success. [Update: The case was filed in Western
district, and Judge Adelman (as well as Judge Randa, who would not be a
good draw for Democrats) is in the Eastern district.] But its fate is much
less certain before the 7th Circuit (which reversed that district court
opinion) or the Supreme Court. These cases are hard to win, especially if
they are premised on a “retrogression” theory.  But we’ll see.  It is
really too early for me to to say.

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE

Bernie Sanders distances himself from 'dumb' 1972 essay on rape
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/politics/bernie-sanders-rape-essay-1972/> //
CNN // Dan Merica – May 28, 2015

New York (CNN)Bernie Sanders' campaign tried on Thursday to distance the
presidential candidate from a 1972 essay in which he wrote -- among other
things -- a women "fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously."

Michael Briggs, Sanders' newly minted campaign spokesman, said the article
was a "dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication" that "in
no way reflects his views or record on women."

"It was intended to attack gender stereotypes of the '70s, but it looks as
stupid today as it was then," Briggs told CNN.

The Vermont senator is currently pursuing the 2016 Democratic presidential
nomination.

The 1972 essay, which was first revealed in a profile by Mother Jones, was
published in the Vermont Freeman, an alternative newspaper from Sanders'
home state. It ran the same year that Sanders ran for governor of the state
as a member of the anti-Vietnam War Liberty Union Party. He lost the race,
but was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981.

"Have you looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of
your local bookstores? Do you know why the newspapers with articles like
'Girl, 12, raped by 14 men' sell so well?" Sanders wrote. "To what in us
are they appealing?"

The article also says that a man's "typical fantasy" of a woman includes
her "tied up" and "abused."

Sanders analyzes the dynamics of sexuality and relationship between men and
women, including a seemingly made up conversation between a couple about
their deteriorating relationship.

"And they never again made love together (which they had each liked to do
more than anything) or never ever saw each other one more time," he wrote.

In the statement, Briggs said that the essay surfaced as a result of
Sanders' presidential ambitions.

"When Bernie got into this race, he understood that there would be efforts
to distracts voters and the press from the real issues confronting the
nation today," the spokesman said. "He is determined to run a campaign that
takes on the big problems facing the American people and not a campaign of
salacious gossip and innuendo."

Sanders formally announced his presidential campaign this week, a little
less than a month after he announced his intentions to run for president
and filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.

After his first presidential rally in Vermont on Tuesday, he traveled to
New Hampshire and will spend the next three days in Iowa for a series of
town halls, speeches and small meet-and-greets.

Will Bernie Sanders start a revolution?
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/politics/bernie-sanders-presidential-campaign-revolution/>
// CNN // Stephen Collinson – May 28, 2015

Burlington, Vermont (CNN)It wouldn't be the first time a revolution sparked
in New England changed the world.

But two and a half centuries after the insurrection that birthed America,
the idea that a rumpled radical like 73-year-old Vermont socialist Bernie
Sanders could overthrow the U.S. economic, health care and tax systems
seems farfetched at best.

Yet that's exactly the task the fiery U.S. senator has set himself in a
presidential campaign targeting billionaire "oligarchs" who he says have
hijacked America's economy and inflicted misery on the middle class.

Sanders, an agitator who doesn't suffer fools, political opponents or
journalists gladly, is testing whether the kind of populist, liberal agenda
that gave him 75% approval ratings in his adopted home state can catch fire
nationwide.

"Brothers and sisters: Now is not the time for thinking small," Sanders
told thousands of supporters in Burlington on Tuesday.

"Now is not the time for the same-old, same-old establishment politics and
stale inside-the-Beltway ideas," Sanders said in an implicit denunciation
of the runaway front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

The obstacles Sanders faces in the presidential primary race, however, are
immense.

Sanders has no viable countrywide political organization, so he must foment
a grassroots uprising. His task is complicated by the fact that although he
caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, he has always been a political
independent wary of formal party affiliations.

Taking on the Clinton machine

He must take on the Clinton political machine that has retooled after its
defeat in 2008. He's a minnow in the money game in a campaign that will be
awash in billions of dollars.

He's not exactly a polished pol either, with an unrepentant message of
class warfare that makes him an unlikely candidate to win over Middle
America.

And many Democrats are only beginning to learn who Sanders actually is.
He's a long shot, but has shown some momentum since indicating he would
take the plunge into the presidential race late last month. In a new
Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday, Sanders was at 15% of
Democratic voters nationwide, up from the 5% he managed in a CNN national
poll last month.

His campaign launch, on a Lake Champlain boardwalk that he saved from
developers as Burlington's mayor, had the air of a hippie revival or a folk
festival.

One woman twirled a hula hoop and shouted "Hooping for Bernie"; people
lined up for free helpings of locally made Ben and Jerry's ice cream; and
kids carried banners naming Sanders their political superhero.
Vermont-based warm-up act Mango Jam pumped out a fusion of Zydeco, Cajun
and Caribbean rhythms.

The place pulsed with the hopeful political energy that is unique to the
start of U.S. presidential campaigns when anything seems possible -- even
in minute, ultraliberal blue states with three electoral votes.

Of course, in the highly unlikely scenario that Sanders is elected
president, enacting his revolutionary agenda faces even greater odds.
Another long-shot, transformational president has already demonstrated how
hard turning campaign slogans into reality can be.

If there's one lesson of Barack Obama's White House, it's that passing
social reforms such as Obamacare -- which falls way short of the kind of
single-payer health system Sanders prefers -- can be almost impossible and
exact a heavy political price.

Sanders surely knows this.

He might be a dreamer, but he knows the realities of politics: A pragmatic
streak leavened his idealism during four terms as mayor; he railed against
the Iraq war but became a champion of veterans in the Senate.

So it may be fair to question whether, unlike his devoted Vermont cadres, a
politician as experienced as Sanders thinks he can actually win the
presidency, especially as political reality is weighted against him.

America's middle class, while hurting, is hardly a simmering proletariat
ready for the economic shock therapy he prescribes.

Opponents attack Vermont's record

And political opponents argue that for all his flamboyance, Vermont has not
done that well in the Sanders era.

"Fear and frustration are a powerful political cocktail," said a statement
from the Vermont Republican Party on Tuesday.

"All you have to do is take a good look at Vermont's demographic and
economic realities -- and our growing crisis of affordability -- to get a
good look at what the hangover from a Sanders administration would look and
feel like."

But to simply write off the Sanders campaign as some kind of personal
vanity project, or a token quest to insert progressive values into the 2016
campaign, does him an injustice.

His messages, the timing of his campaign, the polls and his personal
qualities suggest that the Sanders campaign could end up more than a flight
of political fancy and become a real headache for the Clinton machine.

For starters, the 2016 Democratic primary campaign seems to be shaping
itself around the issues of economic justice and fairness for which he
first fought amid the political turmoil of 1960s Chicago where he was a
student.

In a recent interview with CNN, the candidate's UK-based brother Larry
disputed the notion that Sanders is a man of the fringe.

"I don't think we are out of the mainstream. I think that what we have
noticed is that the mainstream has been ignored for a long time," he said.

While the solutions that Bernie Sanders advocates to fix America's problems
are radical, his diagnosis of the national mood is not.

Health care, child care, college and medical costs preoccupy middle class
families, whomever they vote for, a fact reflected in the way Clinton and
Republicans Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum have emphasized income
inequality in their campaigns.

One advantage Sanders may have over this crowd is the crucial elixir of
presidential runs -- "authenticity" -- said Vermont University political
science professor Garrison Nelson, who has known Sanders for decades.

"Bernie Sanders has been saying these same things for over 40 years. Bernie
is not tailoring his speeches to the agenda. The agenda has caught up with
Bernie Sanders."

Another way Sanders debunks the hopeless crusade metaphor is that he's not
just some political gadfly. He narrowly won his first race for mayor, then
got elected over and over again, and has been in Congress for a quarter
century.

Iowa could be a tough sell for Sanders

But it's not a given that his brusque style and pyrotechnical calls for a
revolution will go down well in Iowa, for instance, where voters like to be
wooed rather than harangued.

"It is going to be a hard sell," said Nelson, who said his friend must find
a sweet spot on the issue of income inequality. "Bernie is counting on that
-- that degree of resentment and that degree of anger."

While Sanders is a novelty in Iowa, he's a known commodity in New Hampshire
-- where the overlap from the Burlington media market makes him well-known
and could give him a leg up in the primary campaign.

But Sanders must also show that he has got the financial muscle to even get
that far -- though he says he is certain he can raise $50 million, after
quickly pulling in contributions of around $4 million within days of first
saying he would run for president.

"That should give him enough money to be competitive in the four early
states," said Eric Davis, a veteran Vermont political analyst and professor
emeritus at Middlebury College, referring to Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina and Nevada.

But Davis asked: "What state is his campaign going to be in at the end of
those four early contests?"

And if by some miracle he won the nomination, he would then find it
difficult to counter questions about whether his left-wing politics would
be palatable to a wider electorate.

Still, polls suggest that Sanders is a viable candidate to be the leading
alternative to Clinton among Democrats -- though he lags behind the former
first lady by 50%.

A Quinnipiac University poll in Iowa found that 15% of likely caucus goers
would back him while 18% of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire
prefer him -- numbers that give him a genuine platform in the race.

He's ahead of other possible Democratic long shots, including former
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia.

And while he may not beat Clinton, Sanders can at least shape the economic
debate in the Democratic primary and force her to confront her liabilities
on trade and the influence of big money in politics.

Appealing to liberal Democrats

Clinton will also be wary of alienating liberal Democrats who support
Sanders and are suspicious of her candidacy, but whom she needs to swell
her margins in Midwestern swing states if she is to win the general
election.

Sanders' hopes of causing a stir in 2016 also depend on his capacity to
show the side of his character that has won him such a loyal following in
Vermont, where he has convinced voters he is on their side.

Ann Taylor of Burlington, a self described "old hippie," said Sanders was
pushing a message that America needed to hear: "This is probably the only
candidate that is going to fight for working people. And I know he is
influencing Sen. Clinton. Bernie will do so much for working people, it is
unbelievable."

Sanders draws in a crowd with talk of income inequality
<http://www.qconline.com/news/local/sanders-draws-in-a-crowd-with-talk-of-income-inequality/article_b0bbbd04-da7c-53ff-b3ce-354aea5c9ebf.html>
// Quad Cities Dispatch-Argus // Dennis Moran – May 28, 2015

DAVENPORT -- U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., roused a larger than expected
crowd at St. Ambrose University on Thursday with his vision of a
transformed nation — with free public university education, higher taxes on
the wealthy and higher wages for workers.

Sen. Sanders is seeking the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination,
challenging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Already he is
polling in double-digits in Iowa and New Hampshire, important early
campaign states. He’s generating excitement among liberals by unabashedly
calling himself a “socialist” and seeking higher tax rates for wealthy
Americans.

Rogalski Center staff initially planned for about 300 people Thursday but
quickly worked to accommodate about 600 who welcomed Sen. Sanders with a
standing ovation and chants of his name. For more than an hour, he spoke
emphatically and energetically before answering questions with a voice in
no need of a public address system.

“This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world," he said. "But
that really means very little to the great majority of the population."

Rising income and wealth inequality pose “the greatest moral, economic and
political issue of our time,” he said.

"Something is profoundly wrong when one-tenth of 1 percent own as much
wealth as the bottom 90 percent,” he said. “We have the highest rate of
childhood poverty of any major country on earth.”

“This has got to change and we’re going to do it," he said. "What we need
to do is create an economy that works for all of us and not just the 1
percent.”

The greater reach of corporate campaign contributions under the Supreme
Court’s Citizens United decision, he said, is turning the U.S. into an
oligarchy. He called for a constitutional amendment to overturn the
decision, creating up to 13 million government infrastructure jobs and
doubling the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Free or nearly free tuition at public colleges and universities could be
financed with "a tax on Wall Street,” he said. “We bailed out Wall Street,
and it’s time for Wall Street to help the middle class."

Some at Thursday's meeting weren’t ready to call themselves Sen. Sanders
supporters but wanted to hear him.

“I’m a Hillary supporter, but in my fantasy I’d like to see a
Clinton-Sanders ticket,” said Kay Anthony, of Davenport. “I like what he
stands for, and he has a lot of down-to-earth logic which is in short
supply."

Stella Herzig, also of Davenport, said Sen. Sanders appeals to all ages,
including seniors, "the ones who actually vote.

"He harkens back to an earlier time when politicians weren't so blatantly
bought by corporations.”

For O'Malley, a lot riding on Iowa in 2016 campaign
<http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268798/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=dja1eMCb>
// AP News // Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey – May 29, 2015

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Martin O'Malley is returning to the state that
introduced him to presidential politics three decades ago, when he played
guitar and knocked on doors for Gary Hart. This time he'll be tooting his
own horn, so to speak, in a setting that could determine whether his
longshot challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination
takes root or fades away.

The former two-term Maryland governor is expected to enter the Democratic
campaign Saturday in Baltimore, where he served as mayor and built his
political career. Then it's on to a union hall in Davenport and more Iowa
events before he goes to New Hampshire on Sunday.

O'Malley, 52, presents himself as a next-generation leader who built a
progressive record in Maryland on gay marriage, immigration and the minimum
wage. While he has been well received in recent trips to Iowa and New
Hampshire, Clinton holds a commanding advantage. And he faces competition
for liberal support from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's raised more
than $4 million since launching his campaign in late April.

Iowa has a history of rewarding insurgent candidates and O'Malley's early
admirers say he can ill afford any missteps here. President Barack Obama's
defeat of Clinton in the 2008 caucuses serves as the benchmark but few see
O'Malley in the same light as the president, who already had an active
state organization by this time in 2007.

"I think he needs to win Iowa," said Scott Ourth, a Democratic state
representative from Ackworth. "If he comes into this thing and does not
present well in Iowa, it's pretty much not going to be happening for him."
O'Malley spoke at a fundraiser for Ourth in April.

O'Malley advisers say he'll spend significant time in early voting states
and be an accessible candidate in diners, coffee shops and living rooms, no
doubt bringing out his guitar at times. That's what Iowans expect — and may
reward — in their leadoff caucuses.

There is "definitely a path here for him to do well in Iowa if he's willing
to put in resources," said Tom Henderson, chairman of the Polk County
Democrats in Des Moines.

O'Malley's prospective bid holds parallels to the Hart campaign he worked
on as a college student in 1983. Hart was a major underdog against former
Vice President Walter Mondale and struggled in a large field of Democrats.

In late 1983 and into January 1984, O'Malley organized volunteers and
canvassed neighborhoods in Davenport and other communities in eastern Iowa,
often playing Irish ballads on his guitar at small events, before moving on
to help Hart in other states. Hart's advisers remember O'Malley as a
street-smart, earnest and detail-oriented young political organizer,
constantly building his list of potential caucus-goers for Hart.

"He's somebody who basically drank up information and knowledge," said Doug
Wilson, a Hart campaign aide who dispatched O'Malley to Iowa. "He was a
listener and he was always asking questions. You could tell in his mind
that he was pocketing information."

Mondale won the Iowa caucuses handily. But Hart emerged as a fresh face in
the party, with a surprising second place finish, went on to defeat Mondale
in New Hampshire and dragged out the contest until Mondale was able to
grind out enough primary victories to capture the nomination.

This time, Clinton appears to be in a stronger position than Mondale was
then. O'Malley supporters hope Iowa can help him become the main
alternative to her.

O'Malley has made several appearances in Iowa this year, has two paid
staffers in the state and plans to add more. He made four trips last year
and dispatched 14 staffers to work on state campaigns. But it will be
difficult to compete with Clinton, who is already building a large staff
and organizing communities around the state.

"He's got to get his ground game going," said O'Malley supporter Earl Agan
Jr., an official of the plasterers and cement masons union in Des Moines.

Kimberley Boggus is a Democratic activist from Des Moines' Beaverdale
section, a key neighborhood for Obama in 2008. She said O'Malley has built
relationships and has people ready to listen. She introduced him at a bar
event last month, where he spoke and played guitar.

"People left saying, 'You've got to see more,'" Boggus said.

Iowa's slow winnowing process could help a little known candidate like
O'Malley, suggested Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba, who is neutral in the race
but has offered O'Malley advice and contacts. He said: "This is Iowa. It's
personal — one-on-one. One vote at a time. One contact at time.

"Eventually it pays off."

Baltimore’s blight puts O’Malley on defensive in bid for presidency
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimores-blight-puts-omalley-on-defensive-in-bid-for-presidency/2015/05/29/9dffe1d0-0541-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html?postshare=9211432955470416>
// WaPo // Robert McCartney – May 29, 2015

When Martin O’Malley announces his bid for the presidency Saturday in
Baltimore, he is hoping that backdrop will strengthen his effort to become
the leading candidate for progressives.

But the backdrop also could be his albatross.

In preparing to seek the Democratic nomination, he has cast himself as the
only candidate with the vision, record and hands-on experience to attack
urban problems such as poverty and crime.

But the stubborn urban decay that continues to afflict sizable swaths of
Baltimore threatens O’Malley’s pitch. The city drew international attention
in April when riots erupted in the same troubled neighborhoods where
O’Malley had said conditions were “so much better.”

A challenge for O’Malley, analysts say, is that his numerous initiatives
for the city — as mayor for seven years and governor for eight — have
yielded mixed results.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is a possible Democratic contender for
the White House in 2016.

The gleaming offices, restaurants and new housing in the Inner Harbor area
are a stark contrast to the boarded-up businesses and homes the world saw
on television when Baltimore exploded. The sharp reduction in violent crime
is offset by the tension with police that was exposed by last month’s
looting.

Given his desire to run as an urban champion, it’s no wonder that O’Malley
is quick to object when anyone criticizes Baltimore.

At a public meeting in December, a month before his last day as Maryland’s
governor, O’Malley interrupted a fellow Democrat who faulted the city for
the thousands of vacant, abandoned buildings that fill its poorest
neighborhoods.

“You drive up the streets of Baltimore City, as I do often, and it is just
indescribable what we, I guess collectively, have allowed that to become,”
Comptroller Peter Franchot said at a Board of Public Works session in
Annapolis.

Before Franchot could continue, O’Malley jumped in: “And yet so much better
than it was 15 years ago. . . . A lot of people gave their lives [at work]
to make it better.” He said Franchot was “30 years late” in sounding an
alarm over urban blight.

The mixed results of O’Malley’s tenure can be seen in the frustration he
experienced in trying to reclaim the city’s uninhabitable buildings. The
city drew applause for acquiring thousands of lots in the hope of promoting
their redevelopment.

But the number of vacant and abandoned residential properties increased by
2,570, to more than 15,700, between 2002, when O’Malley’s program began,
and 2007, the year he stepped down as mayor to become governor, according
to statistics from the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance.

The alliance said the gain was partly attributable to the city’s success in
identifying vacant buildings that it hadn’t known about before. But housing
specialists said legal complexities and high costs also stymied efforts by
O’Malley and his two successors to fix the problem.

On the plus side, O’Malley won national plaudits for innovative leadership
as both mayor and governor, such as for his early adoption of data-driven
management. He points to accomplishments such as slashing violent crime,
reducing children’s exposure to lead paint, increasing spending on drug
treatment and drawing young people back to redeveloped neighborhoods
downtown.

But the renaissance of prosperity in some Baltimore communities,
principally around the harbor, has not spread to many of the city’s poorer
sections. The city’s overall poverty and unemployment rates have remained
high — not nearly as bad as in Detroit, but worse than in the District,
Pittsburgh, Boston and New York.

A survey released this month by two Harvard economists found that among the
nation’s 100 largest cities and counties, Baltimore ranked at the bottom as
the jurisdiction where children face the worst odds of escaping poverty.

“Any city has pockets of poverty; it’s really a matter of the depth and
scale,” said Jennifer S. Vey, a fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy
Program. “The lows are low in Baltimore. . . . You have deep distress in
certain pockets.”

O’Malley contends that Baltimore was making better progress than most
comparable cities until the 2008 recession.

But his defense of his urban record also poses some political risks. He
says the shortcomings arise not from his programs but from national
economic policies that foster inequality and from a lack of support from
the federal government.

“We haven’t had an agenda for America’s cities for at least two decades . . .
probably since Jimmy Carter,” O’Malley said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on
May 3.

Taking a robust liberal position, O’Malley has urged increased spending on
cities. He wants to raise the minimum wage, as Maryland did with his
encouragement as governor.

“We need big investments in affordable housing,” O’Malley said at a forum
May 5 in Redlands, Calif. “We need investments in infrastructure,
especially mass transit. We also need to target job training.”

That approach could help O’Malley in the Democratic primaries, where he has
positioned himself to the left of front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
O’Malley is competing with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a socialist, for
support from liberal activists who see Clinton as too moderate.

But it would face a more skeptical audience in the general election.

“The problem is that it is politically unsalable,” said Donald F. Norris,
director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland
Baltimore County. “We are a nation of suburbs, and suburban residents and
elected officials do not care a whit about declining central cities.”

O’Malley hasn’t said how much he thinks his proposed investments would cost
or where he would find the money. Haley Morris, an O’Malley spokeswoman,
said this week that such questions are premature because O’Malley won’t
unveil a comprehensive agenda for cities until several weeks from now.

Since the riots, O’Malley’s record has drawn attention mainly for the
aggressive police policies he implemented as mayor. They led to a
substantial decline in homicides and other violent crime, but also resulted
in a sharp increase in arrests for minor offenses, which alienated poor
communities.

O’Malley’s successor as mayor, Sheila Dixon (D), abandoned the “zero
tolerance” arrests, and critics noted that homicides continued to decline.
Still, O’Malley’s defenders credit him with helping to start the trend,
especially by shutting down many of the city’s open-air drug markets“ On
one hand, more people got arrest records; on the other hand, murders went
down,” said Robert C. Embry, president of the Abell Foundation, which works
to reduce Baltimore poverty.

O’Malley also drew mixed reviews for his economic development strategy. As
mayor, he directed money and government support toward middle-tier
neighborhoods, which he thought offered the best chance of recovery, or
toward ones that had access to job centers.

Many urban experts praised the approach as a smart use of scarce resources.
But critics said it diverted aid from communities most in need of help.

O’Malley played a key role in pushing forward the redevelopment of a poor
neighborhood near the Johns Hopkins medical complex in East Baltimore. He
did so partly to keep Hopkins, the city’s largest private employer, from
taking its expansion plans outside the city. He also targeted that
community because it had a relatively good chance to prosper, owing to its
proximity to hospital jobs.

O’Malley also supported Healthy Neighborhoods, a community development
effort sponsored by financial and philanthropic organizations that has been
credited with helping to stabilize middle- and working-class neighborhoods
that were at risk of declining.

“O’Malley recognized that improving neighborhoods is about finding their
assets,” said Mark Sissman, president of Healthy Neighborhoods Inc. “He and
others at the same time said, ‘Let’s figure out what works and build from
those strengths.’ . . . Is there a college that’s important? Is there good
public transportation? Are there historic buildings?”

But that progress came with a cost, according to some community activists
and business people in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

“O’Malley did well by the harbor, but my community didn’t benefit,” said
Doni Glover, a community activist and journalist who lives in
Sandtown-Winchester. “My understanding is that for poor, inner-city black
neighborhoods in West Baltimore and East Baltimore, his method, his
strategy, was just let them rot.”

Sandtown-Winchester was the center of the April protests in Baltimore,
which were triggered by the death of Sandtown resident Freddie Gray a week
after he suffered a severe spinal injury in police custody.

Perhaps the biggest problem for poor neighborhoods in Baltimore and
comparable cities is the shortage of jobs for low-skill workers.

Here, O’Malley drew praise for good management of federal job programs and
for protecting funding for public schools. But Baltimore schools remain the
worst in the state, by most measures, and it’s still a challenge for
job-seekers without automobiles to get to jobs in upscale parts of the city
or the suburbs.

“He did a good job of managing the agencies,” said Peter Beilenson, chief
executive of the Evergreen Health Cooperative, who served as O’Malley’s
city health commissioner. “I don’t think a huge amount was done to make
jobs accessible in the neighborhoods, which is truly essential if you’re
going to deal with the Sandtown-Winchesters of the world.”

O’Malley strongly backed building the light-rail Red Line, which would
improve transit for residents of poor neighborhoods in West Baltimore. But
Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who succeeded O’Malley in Annapolis, is considering
killing the Red Line on grounds that its price tag of at least $2.6 billion
is too high.

In his Project 5000 effort to reduce urban blight as mayor, O’Malley sought
for the city to take over 5,000 abandoned properties and prepare to donate
or sell them so they could be redeveloped.

The city exceeded the target in gaining control of buildings but then had
difficulties disposing of them.

Dixon proposed instead to create a quasi-governmental “land bank” to deal
with the issue, but it never got off the ground. The current mayor,
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), has embraced a third approach, called
“Vacants to Value.” It uses a broad array of methods, including increased
demolition funding, infrastructure repairs and housing reinvestment.

None of the efforts have reduced the backlog. The reported total of vacant
and abandoned residential properties has continued to creep up and was
above 16,100 in 2013.

At the December hearing, Franchot said it was “utterly, totally
unacceptable” for Baltimore to have “block after block after block” of
homes shuttered with boards or cinder blocks.

O’Malley instead stressed the “great opportunities . . . to repopulate the
City of Baltimore.” He added: “It could happen even more quickly with some
more capital dollars.”

O’Malley looks for his opening
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/243405-omalley-looks-for-his-opening>
// The Hill // Jonathan Easley – May 29, 2015

Martin O’Malley is just looking for a little room to breathe.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is far and away the front-runner
for the Democratic presidential nomination, while Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I) has taken the edge as the liberal insurgent.

O’Malley, days before the Saturday launch of his White House bid at a park
overlooking Baltimore’s harbor, is performing dismally in polls despite
months of travel to Iowa and New Hampshire.

He regularly pulls just 1 percent nationally, and only does slightly better
in the first-in-the-nation caucus and primary states.

O’Malley isn’t well-known nationally, and could soon be competing for
money, media and support with a handful of other candidates, including
former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.).

Yet Democrats interviewed by The Hill insist O’Malley has a chance.

They say there’s still an opening for him to become the alternative to
Clinton given his liberal voting record, his youthful good looks — which
have helped him win attention from the conservative Drudge Report — and his
standing as a Washington outsider.

“There’s a lot of hostility out there towards Washington right now,” said
Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “He could run as the anti-Washington
candidate, as someone who hasn’t been tainted by Washington politics, while
framing Hillary and Bernie as products of D.C. culture.”

If the front-runner implodes, some supporters say he might be
best-positioned to step in.

“He’s a legitimate national candidate,” said Democratic strategist Scott
Ferson. “If Hillary for some reason doesn’t become inevitable, some
candidate will have a shot to step in, and he could be that person.”

But Ferson then acknowledges: “He’s not that person now.”

To get there, outsiders say O’Malley will have to distinguish himself from
Clinton and Sanders.

O’Malley is already signaling he intends to play up the generational divide
in the primaries. At 52, he’s 15 years younger than Clinton and 21 years
younger than Sanders.

He has previously taken swipes at the dynastic elements of Clinton’s
candidacy, saying the presidency is not a “crown” to be passed between two
families.

This week, O’Malley allies launched a super-PAC called Generation Forward,
a not-so-subtle dig that suggests Clinton is the candidate from the past.

The super-PAC will focus on younger voters. Spokesman Ron Boehmer told The
Hill that O’Malley is a natural fit for the constituency.

“We believe the country is looking for new leadership and new ideas, and
we’re supporting him because he best speaks to the ideas and issues that
millennials care about,” he said.

Supporters say O’Malley has quietly built a strong liberal record as
governor of Maryland that should allow him to contrast himself with Clinton
and compete with Sanders.

He opposed the war in Iraq, sponsored the same-sex marriage bill that was
passed into law in Maryland, oversaw the implementation of the DREAM Act in
the state, and has advocated for a higher minimum wage and lower college
tuition costs.

He toured Baltimore during the unrest that broke out earlier this year,
meeting with political and religious leaders to discuss economic disparity
in the community, reiterated his opposition to the death penalty on the day
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced and emerged as a
vocal critic of President Obama’s trade agenda. “You go down the list, he’s
been a progressive’s progressive,” said Democratic strategist Steve McMahon.

O’Malley’s immediate challenge is preventing Sanders from cornering that
market.

The Vermont independent has been impressive on the campaign trail so far,
and is winning favorable news coverage.

Yet he is still seen as a sideshow by some Democrats, who believe his harsh
rhetoric, harsh temperament and outside-the-mainstream positions, would be
a disaster in a general election.

“He’s a socialist from Vermont and he looks like one,” said Ferson.

While some have criticized O’Malley’s generally understated media
appearances as a weakness, others argue that it’s helped him fashion a
personae as an easy-going everyman.

The Drudge Report has repeatedly run pictures of him shirtless on the beach
or playing guitar in a sleeveless shirt that show off his biceps.

Democrats say it’s something he can build on by being more accessible than
the other candidates, potentially setting up a contrast with Clinton, who
has been criticized for avoiding the media.

“He has an opportunity here to be nimble in a way that Hillary can’t,” said
Ferson.

Still, Democrats stress that a lot of pieces will need to fall into place
for O’Malley.

“Hillary is still the overwhelming favorite and almost certain nominee,”
said McMahon. “But in a field where she’s getting 52 percent support, that
still leaves about 47 percent that someone could theoretically consolidate.
The question is whether there’s enough room for someone like O’Malley and
whether he can execute.”

Bucking Odds, Martin O’Malley Tilts at Hillary Clinton
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/bucking-odds-martin-omalley-tilts-at-hillary-clinton-1432922892>
// WSJ // Laura Meckler and Scott Calvert – May 29, 2015

BALTIMORE—Settling into a pizza joint last week in Station North, an arts
district once dominated by vacant buildings, presidential hopeful Martin
O’Malley recalled the skepticism when, as mayor more than a decade ago, he
suggested this city try reviving the area.

“Many people at the time laughed,” he said, “and all the smart people in
Baltimore said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”

The same might be said for Mr. O’Malley’s underdog run for president, which
he launches Saturday. In the Democratic primary, the 52-year-old Mr.
O’Malley faces Hillary Clinton, who looms 50 points ahead of him and every
other Democrat in polls. In April, President Barack Obama joked that Mr.
O’Malley went unrecognized at his own campaign event.

Mr. O’Malley, who completed two terms as Maryland governor in January,
professes no concern about Mrs. Clinton’s advantages. He often says history
is littered with victories that were inevitable until the moment they
weren’t.

His strategy: Cast himself as a more authentic liberal than Mrs. Clinton.

He is one of the few candidates working to channel dissatisfaction from the
left with Mrs. Clinton, and one of the only Democrats in a position to
capture the nomination if she falls.

Mr. O’Malley touts his eight years as governor, when he helped raise the
minimum wage, enact strict gun restrictions, eliminate the death penalty
and grant in-state tuition to some illegal immigrants. He eventually
supported a successful move to legalize same-sex marriage. He backed tax
increases and higher fees to continue services during the recession.

On the campaign trail, he adopts populist rhetoric, warning that without
“sensible rebalancing” of wealth, there will be “pitchforks—lots of them.”

Yet he often finds Mrs. Clinton working to occupy the same lane, staking
out liberal positions aimed at solidifying support inside the party. She
repeatedly says the deck is stacked against the middle class. On
immigration, she doesn’t just support President Obama’s controversial
executive actions, she wants to expand them. Gay marriage? She’s for it.
Universal prekindergarten? She wants it. Minimum wage? She’d raise it.

Mr. O’Malley has responded with the mildest criticism and subtle age
contrasts: At 67, she is 15 years older. He regularly says America needs
“new leadership” and a “new generation.”

He still plays in an Irish folk band, and on the campaign trail sometimes
picks up a borrowed guitar, as he did in April at an Iowa bar.

A Clinton spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. O’Malley’s campaign.

Mr. O’Malley has beat odds before, notably when elected the white mayor of
majority-African-American Baltimore. Another example, he said in an
interview, is the revitalization of Baltimore’s first designated arts
district.

His fortunes probably depend on controversy tripping Mrs. Clinton. In the
interview, as on the campaign trail, he passed up chances to opine on two
controversies: foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and her use of
private email as secretary of state.

On policy, he has taken several positions to Mrs. Clinton’s left and is
hoping to convince voters she is too centrist for today’s Democratic Party.
He favors breaking up big banks, killing a pending Pacific Rim trade deal,
expanding Social Security benefits and rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.
She has sidestepped these issues or remained silent.

Even so, he also battles Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent running
in the Democratic primary, for the party’s most liberal voters. Mr. Sanders
trails Mrs. Clinton but beats Mr. O’Malley in polls.

One of six siblings, Mr. O’Malley grew up in the Washington suburbs in an
Irish-Catholic family steeped in politics. One grandfather was a Pittsburgh
ward boss, the other a party chairman of an Indiana county. His parents met
through Democratic politics. At his second birthday party, the cake’s icing
read: “Martin for President 2004.”

In the 1984 presidential contest, he worked for Sen. Gary Hart, who
challenged front-runner Walter Mondale for the Democratic nomination. After
law school, he settled in Baltimore with his wife, and they had four
children. He was elected to the city council at 28.

With drug-related crime ravaging Baltimore, Mr. O’Malley embraced the
“zero-tolerance” police strategy Mayor Rudolph Giuliani brought to New York
City, which reasoned: Crack down on minor offenses and serious crimes will
drop.

That was the core of his mayoral campaign against better-known opponents.
He won the Democratic primary with 53% of the vote, then won the mayorship.

Under Mr. O’Malley, arrests rose and crime fell. Between 2000 and 2006, his
last full year in office, Baltimore’s violent-crime rate dropped 31%,
Federal Bureau of Investigation data show.

This record has been vital to the story he tells of himself as a crime
fighter who harnessed data to drive policing resources. The image came
under scrutiny after last month’s death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray from
injuries during Baltimore-police custody.

Critics say Mr. O’Malley’s approach created lasting anger toward police. In
2006, plaintiffs including local NAACP branches sued Baltimore, alleging
police arrested people without probable cause and claiming about 30% of
those arrested in 2005 had charges quickly dropped—after they spent jail
time and acquired arrest records that made it hard to find work.

In a 2010 settlement, the police department rejected zero-tolerance
policing and agreed to retrain officers. The city denied wrongdoing.

“The things that we did in policing were necessary to do at that time,” Mr.
O’Malley said. “Policing the police” was also a priority, he said, pointing
to reductions in police-involved shootings.

Now he is taking his record to primary voters, with particular emphasis on
Iowa, which he has visited six times since last June. Bill Hyers, his
senior strategist, noted that Mrs. Clinton finished third in the 2008 Iowa
caucuses. A candidate can win Iowa with hard work and little money, Mr.
Hyers said, and being unknown means Mr. O’Malley can shape voter views.
“Iowa’s a good state to grind it out in.”

He may find an audience. Some Democrats hunger for a primary that is a
contest of ideas, not a Clinton coronation, and hope competition will
prevent Mrs. Clinton from tacking to the center.

Before an April event in Indianola, Iowa, retiree Twila Glenn told Mr.
O’Malley she was glad to see him on the national stage. He drew applause
when he said America could fund his policies by asking the wealthiest to
pay more “instead of offshoring their profits and offshoring their wealth.”

Ms. Glenn later said she was impressed but, for next year’s caucuses, had
settled on Mrs. Clinton, whom Ms. Glenn favored for her leadership
experience and early work on health care.

At the pizza place last week, Mr. O’Malley appeared relaxed and upbeat,
chatting with a foot perched on the next seat. A well-wisher stopped to say
he hoped Mr. O’Malley would run for president. The former mayor smiled
warmly.

Does that happen often? “Not nearly enough,” Mr. O’Malley replied.

O’Malley Hires Former Obama Hispanic Media Director For Senior Campaign Role
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/adriancarrasquillo/omalley-hires-former-obama-hispanic-media-director-for-senio?utm_term=.xd2LbB82Rd#.unQr2QWy5>
// Buzzfeed // Adrian Carrasquillo – May 29, 2015

Martin O’Malley is set to announce his campaign Saturday in Baltimore, but
he has already made a key hire.

Gabriela Domenzain, former director of Hispanic media for Obama when he
garnered a record 71% of the Latino vote in 2012, is joining O’Malley’s
campaign as the director of public engagement where she will have a hand in
communications, policy, and political outreach, a campaign source said.

“In Maryland, you speak to Latinos and they call him the most pro-Latino
governor of the United States,” Domenzain told BuzzFeed News. “In other
states they don’t know him but they should.”

O’Malley has talked up his immigration bonafides at events in Iowa and New
Hampshire — the campaign notes that it is part of his stump speech — and he
doesn’t even use the term immigrants (he uses “new Americans”). Domenzain
cited his record of passing the DREAM Act and giving undocumented
immigrants driver’s licenses but also says he increased government contract
investment to Hispanic-owned small businesses by 133%.

Domenzain, was considered for the director of Hispanic media position in
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to sources with knowledge, and said
she believes Americans want new voices on the left, especially voices as
progressive as O’Malley.

As a longshot candidate, the former Maryland governor will need to make
contrasts with Clinton to advance. Although he has a long and liberal
record on immigration, Clinton has made immigration a priority in the early
weeks of her campaign — outlining specific action she would take as
president, and plainly suggesting she would go even further with executive
action than President Obama has if Congress does not make changes to U.S.
immigration policy.

But Luis Miranda, former director of Hispanic media in the Obama
administration, also said both campaigns should not mistake immigration
policy for being enough on Latino outreach.

“Engaging Latino voters takes not insulting them like Republicans do, but
also the fact that they are Americans and care about a lot of things, like
the economy,” he said.

Still, Domenzain who says that she is a single-issue voter when it comes to
immigration, says she came to understand its importance in 1999 in North
Carolina at the first statewide conference of Latinos when she was staffing
the former president of the National Council of La Raza, Raul Yzaguirre.

A farmworker walked up to her, shook her hand, and asked, “Why do you care
about me?” On her flight home she realized only her and Yzaguirre were on
the way back from that event to Washington — and she realized they were the
only people who might advocate for the farm worker.

Domenzain ties her passion on immigration to O’Malley’s response to the
surge of Central American undocumented minors across the border last
summer, where she says national leaders like Clinton and Obama said the
children should be sent back.

She was heartened however when O’Malley, speaking at a Democratic Governors
Association press conference last summer, said the country should act like
Americans and give children “fleeing death” refuge. “That brought the
possibility of dignity back to the conversation and turned my head,” she
said.

Domenzain also pointed to the recent Clinton hire of an immigration
activist who was undocumented and has a mixed status family as a key moment
in the run-up to the Democratic nomination.

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign has hired Lorella Praeli, an incredible
advocate who’s lived the broken system,” she said. “I’m very excited that
the immigration debate will be elevated because we have people like Gov.
O’Malley and his whole record has been speaking about this.”

Miranda made a similar point. “Hispanics should be involved in campaign
positions across the board, it’s similar to how Clinton has a political
director in Amanda Renteria, it’s important to have diversity throughout
the campaign,” he said.

O’Malley will begin outreach to Latino organizations on Wednesday in his
first event after his presidential announcement at a question and answer
session with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce president Javier Palomarez in
Washington.

Jose Parra, a seasoned strategist and former senior advisor to Harry Reid
noted that Domenzain is one of a handful of top Latino Democratic
operatives and said he respects the fact that O’Malley is putting a
Hispanic in a position where they can guide the conversation around the
campaign as a whole and not just “implement” Latino strategy.

And while O’Malley starts off at a major disadvantage against the
frontrunner Clinton, Parra said his presence in the race will help shape
the debate around issues that matter to progressives and will ensure
Clinton stays the course on those messages and policy positions.

“It makes sure these ideas are defined and battle-tested,” he said. “It
winds up strengthening the party in the long run.”

9 things to know about Martin O'Malley
<http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/05/29/17303/9-things-know-about-martin-omalley>
// The Center for Public Integrity // Rachel Baye – May 29, 2015

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is set to announce his bid for the
presidency on Saturday.

The announcement will make O’Malley the second official challenger facing
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the battle for the party’s
presidential nomination.

While in the governor’s mansion from 2007 to 2015, O’Malley also did a
two-year stint as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, a
political committee dedicated to electing Democratic chief executives.

O’Malley’s presidential aspirations have been Maryland’s worst-kept secret
for several years. He has been an active presence in the national political
arena since his election as Baltimore’s mayor in 1999. In 2007, the
then-new governor even stood in for Clinton at a rally promoting her first
presidential run.

Here are nine things to know about O’Malley’s political and financial
history:

Martin O’Malley’s entrée into politics came as a field director on the
first U.S. Senate campaign of Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who was then a member
of the U.S. House.

Martin O’Malley lost his first attempt at public office — a 1990 Democratic
primary election for a seat in the state Senate — by just 43 votes.

Martin O’Malley’s first campaign for governor, in 2006, raised $11.9
million. In 2010, he raised about $11 million for his re-election effort.

During Martin O’Malley’s campaigns for governor, more than 60 percent of
the cash he raised came from outside of Maryland.

The largest contributor to Martin O’Malley’s 2006 campaign for governor was
developer David S. Brown Enterprises, which gave $25,500.

Edward St. John was fined in 2008 for giving more than the legal limit to
O’Malley’s campaign. The fine was levied around the same time that O’Malley
announced a highway project serving one of St. John’s properties.

While Martin O’Malley was at its helm, the Democratic Governors Association
raised $50 million, tax records show. Labor unions contributed at least
$7.5 million during that period.

During his tenure as chairman, the DGA credited Martin O’Malley with
raising then-record sums for the group.

As DGA chairman, Martin O’Malley received widespread criticism when the
group accepted large amounts of money from companies with business before
Maryland lawmakers.

Immigration As 2016 Issue Upped With Martin O'Malley's Candidacy
<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/immigration-2016-issue-upped-martin-omalleys-candidacy-n366666>
// NBC News //Suzanne Gamboa – May 29, 2015

The heat that immigration has brought to the 2016 presidential campaigns
could intensify Saturday with the addition of former Maryland Gov. Martin
O'Malley to the Democratic field.

All expectations are that on Saturday in Baltimore, O'Malley will announce
his bid to be the Democrats' 2016 presidential nominee.

When he does, supporters say he'll bring with him a record of work on
issues of concern to Latinos and immigrants that rivals that of his
fiercest Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Though he's considered an underdog with a big gap to overcome to win the
Democratic primary, several Latino leaders consider him a stronger ally on
immigration and support of the Latino community.

"Martin O'Malley, in his history as governor of Maryland, has been a real
hero for the immigrant community. He not only supported many groundbreaking
reforms in the state, he also became a national spokesperson for immigrant
families and their human rights, especially the unaccompanied minors who
arrived in droves on the border last year," said Kim Propeack, chief of
political communication for CASA de Maryland - Maryland's largest
immigrants services and rights organization - and director of its political
arm.

That alone won't be enough to propel him to frontrunner, but it does serve
to add even more attention to the place immigration is taking in the 2016
race, which can also set a tone for races down ballot.

"What this does is give our community a real choice," said Ben Monterroso,
executive director of Mi Familia Vota.

"It will help sharpen (Hillary's) position and distinguish it from the
Republican Party," said Stella Rouse, an associate professor in government
and politics at the University of Maryland.

Maryland's Latino population has been booming in recent decades and now is
about 9 percent of the state's population. About 80 percent of the Latino
population is non-Mexican, according to Pew Research Center.

As governor, O'Malley signed a bill allowing young immigrants illegally in
the U.S. to pay in-state college tuition and to a bill to get driver's
licenses.

He was the first governor to meet with Latino leaders last year and sign up
to push House Republicans to bring immigration reform legislation to a
vote, which they never did

He has shown respect that many in the immigrant community say is lacking in
debates on immigration by using the term new Americans to refer to
immigrants, whether here legally or not. He also established a state
council to focus on integrating immigrants.

He opposed White House proposals to return young Central American children
and families who crossed the U.S-Mexico border last summer, saying they
would face "certain death."

On deportations - an issue that still vexes the current administration -
O'Malley stopped Baltimore's City Detention Center from holding immigrants
without criminal records for deportation by the federal government.
Malley's office also has hired former lobbyist and former Obama Hispanic
media director of political engagement, Gabriela Domenzain, according to
Buzzfeed.

"He was very helpful on the immigration question in Maryland and certainly
is someone we think of as a friend and more progressive on immigration
matters," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of League of United Latin
American Citizens.

But Wilkes added that he didn't think his entrance and record would hurt
Clinton "because of the aggressive effort" she's made on immigration in her
campaign.

In response to questions from immigration activists on unaccompanied
children who arrived at the U.S. border last year, Clinton said the
children should be sent back, essentially supporting the Obama
administration's stand on the influx.

But she has since said mothers and children should not be held in
immigration detention. She has hired an immigrant who lived in the U.S.
illegally and became active on immigration reform politics, Lorella Praeli,
as part of her campaign staff. Praeli is now a legal resident.

She has said she would expand on Obama's immigration executive action
programs to shield the parents of young immigrants illegally in the country
from deportation as well.

"I will fight to stop partisan attacks on the executive actions that would
put Dreamers . . . at risk of deportation," she said at a roundtable in
Nevada, according to The Associated Press. "If Congress refuses to act, as
president I will do everything possible under the law to go even further."

The high profile and details their campaigns are giving - and will give -
to the immigration issue hasn't always been the case in presidential
campaigns. But the topic has moved more and more to center stage with the
help of young immigrants who call themselves Dreamers. They have regularly
pressed politicians and the sitting administration to address the effect of
U.S. immigration policies on their lives and their families' lives.

Although there are certainly other issues of interest to Latino voters,
immigration has been something of a mobilizer. In 2012, 54 percent of
Latino voters were naturalized or had at least one immigrant parent.

Also in the Democratic field, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from
Vermont, has backed immigration reform. But he withheld support for last
year's sweeping Senate immigration bill until fixes were made to a guest
worker provision that he thought would allow for the hiring of cheap labor
in place of U.S. workers. He has supported Obama's executive action
programs.

Republican candidates have worked to engage the Latino community, with Sen.
Ted Cruz, R-Texas, doing a National Press Club interview with Javier
Palomarez, U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce president last month and
expected candidate Jeb Bush making appearances in Puerto Rico and before
the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference's convention in
Houston. O'Malley is scheduled for an appearance with Palomarez on
Wednesday.

While GOP presidential hopefuls are largely opposed to Obama's executive
action, regarding it as overreach, they too have been discussing
immigration on the trail.

Latinos were about 10 percent of the electorate in 2012. According to Pew
Research Center, Obama received 71 percent of Hispanic votes, the highest
of any president since former President Bill Clinton won 72 percent of the
Latino vote in 1996.

Martin O'Malley Kicks Off Presidential Campaign By Playing "Hail To The
Chief" On An Acoustic Guitar
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/guitar-force-one#.foxaWa0q2> // Buzzfeed
// Evan McMorris-Santoro – May 29, 2015

WASHINGTON — Martin O’Malley will enter the Democratic presidential race
Friday not with a bang, nor a whimper, but with a guitar lick.

O’Malley’s campaign will heavily promote a 23-second video of the former
Maryland governor strumming “Hail To The Chief” on a guitar ahead of his
formal campaign kick off event in Baltimore, according to details of the
plan obtained by BuzzFeed News.

O’Malley supporters emphasize the lack of production in the 23-second clip
— the guitar isn’t even O’Malley’s, they say, but was borrowed from a
supporter — which they suggest contrasts with the slick, highly-produced
rollout video by the Democratic presidential frontrunner, former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton.

O’Malley can be heard humming as he tunes up the guitar in the video. At
the end of the short lick, the camera pans up to find him nodding
approvingly at the song used go play presidents on and off stage. The
screen fades to black before the words “Stay tuned” appear.

The guitar and O’Malley’s willingness to play it at the drop of a hat have
been a central part of the exploratory phase of O’Malley’s presidential
effort. As that phase comes to an end with an expected announcement that
he’s formally running for the White House, the guitar looks like its
staying as a central part of O’Malley’s image.

The former Maryland governor’s rollout will have its share of production
values as well. A local blues band that once opened for O’Malley’s own
Irish rock band is scheduled to play the Baltimore event on Saturday.
O’Malley will speak atop Federal Hill overlooking the city he led as mayor
before going on to become Maryland governor.

Following the announcement, O’Malley will set off for a string of retail
politics events in Iowa and New Hampshire. No word from the campaign on
whether the guitar will go with him.

Chafee to announce he is running for president
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/29/politics/lincoln-chafee-running-for-president/index.html>
// CNN // Dan Merica – May 29, 2015

Washington (CNN)Lincoln Chafee will announce he is running for president
next month, according to his spokeswoman Debbie Rich.

The former Rhode Island governor and senator, who became a Democrat in
2013, will make the announcement during a previously scheduled speech at
George Mason Center for Politics & Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia
on June 3.

Chafee's announcement was first reported by Politico.

Chafee has spent most of his life as a Republican. He was nominated to his
late father's Senate seat in 1999 and then was elected as a Republican in
2000. He served only one term, losing to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in
2006, but then successfully ran for governor of Rhode Island as an
independent.

Facing long odds and slumping in the polls, Chafee decided not to run for
reelection in 2014. He told CNN last month that he made that decision
because he wanted to run for president.

Chafee announced he was looking into a presidential run in April. In an
interview with CNN at the time, the former governor took on Hillary
Clinton, the race's frontrunner.

"Considering the premise for invading Iraq was based on falsehoods and
considering the ramifications we live with now from that mistake, I would
argue that anybody who voted for the Iraq War should not be president and
certainly should not be leading the Democratic Party," he said.

Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq War in 2002, and Chafee has repeatedly
said he will make that decision a focal point of his campaign.

Chafee, though, is aware of his long odds. He has registered in only a
handful of polls and is looking up at not only Clinton, but also Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who will
announce his candidacy on Saturday.

When asked in April if he would bet on himself winning the race, he
demurred.

"I can't," Chafee said before catching himself. "I am in it to win. I mean,
I care about these issues and I think they should be discussed within the
Democratic Party. That is the first goal."

In the same interview, he said that if he decides to get into the race, it
will be because he has "the organization in place to continue this into
that long road ahead ... and I plan not to spend a lot of money, but
nonetheless, there has to be some fundraising."

GOP

The Iowa straw poll, once a kingmaker, fades into irrelevance for 2016
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-iowa-straw-poll-once-a-kingmaker-fades-into-irrelevance-for-2016/2015/05/28/ca09c87c-0550-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html>
// WaPo // Robert Costa – May 28, 2015

When Republican officials in Iowa convened a planning session Thursday for
their quadrennial presidential straw poll, only a handful of advisers to
GOP contenders bothered to show up.

The sparse attendance and lack of enthusiasm, even from those who came, was
worrying to state party brass: The straw poll — a carnival-like organizing
ritual that has in past years winnowed the candidate field and marked the
start of caucus season — has faded into irrelevance.

This August’s straw poll in Boone, in fact, may be the least consequential
in decades. Some Republican hopefuls expect to participate only
halfheartedly, while others — including former governors Jeb Bush (Fla.)
and Mike Huckabee (Ark.) — are opting out altogether. And almost no one
outside the fringes of the race believes a summertime victory would provide
a meaningful jolt.

Thursday’s information-only meeting in Des Moines at state GOP headquarters
illustrated the event’s descent. Representatives from seven official or
soon-to-be-declared candidates dropped by, but none from the top tier.

Most telling was the absence of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s operation.
Walker, who spent part of his childhood in Iowa and has built a fervent
following of Christian activists and tea party conservatives, seems poised
to bypass the straw poll and focus on next year’s caucuses.

The lack of interest from Huckabee and former Pennsylvania senator Rick
Santorum — the winners of Iowa’s past two Republican caucuses — has a
similar debilitating effect.

Walker’s aversion is notable because his candidacy is one that could reap
benefits from straw-poll success, elevating him as a donor-class darling
who is also a favorite of the grass roots and sucking up the political
oxygen from his underfunded rivals on the right.

But the risks for Walker and the rest are evident: Win, and you gain little
other than momentum; underperform, and your campaign could be tagged as
flat and inspiring. When former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty competed
hard in the 2011 straw poll only to lose, he ended his campaign the next
day.

“We haven’t made any commitments for anything that requires a candidate to
officially declare,” Walker said this week on Laura Ingraham’s radio
program, reflecting his wariness of angering Iowans but reluctance to bring
a volunteer army to the Central Iowa Expo on Aug. 8 that would surely raise
expectations.

Strategists for Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who has surged to the fore of the
2016 pack, also did not appear Thursday. “We’re running a lean operation,
so we’re only spending money to compete in contests where delegates are at
stake,” said Alex Conant, Rubio’s spokesman.

Those who attended Thursday’s meeting were allies of Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.),
businessman Donald Trump, former surgeon Ben Carson, former Texas governor
Rick Perry, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), former Silicon Valley executive
Carly Fiorina and Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.). All have blocs of support but
sit near the middle or bottom of national polls.

Intriguing was the presence of Christie’s adviser, Phil Valenziano. Hobbled
by aides’ involvement in a bridge-closing scandal, Christie has been
lagging behind for months and eyeing New Hampshire as the setting for a
possible comeback. But if other center-right Republicans neglect the straw
poll, his friends say, Christie could try to impress there and earn a boost.

At a book signing in Davenport, Iowa, on Thursday afternoon, Sen. Rand Paul
(Ky.) said that “we haven’t decided” on whether to participate.

The straw poll’s unraveling can be traced to those late summer days of
2011. After tea party star Michele Bachmann, then a Republican
congresswoman, topped Pawlenty and a parade of others, her campaign
crashed. GOP leaders in Washington and some powerful Iowa Republicans, fed
up with the spectacle and the way the event has damaged the state’s
influence on presidential races, have worked to cripple it or at least tone
it down.

The straw poll, with its new home in the town of Boone, will be more
controlled and low key. In its previous location at Iowa State University
in Ames, it had the feeling of a tailgate party, with lines of cars and
tents where tickets were handed out and paper plates were piled with
barbecue pork.

Worried that the state’s caucuses will be diminished if the straw poll
becomes overly associated with Iowa’s role in presidential politics, Gov.
Terry Branstad (R) has been at the center of the effort to lessen the straw
poll’s significance.

Bush, speaking earlier this month in Iowa City, agreed. “All of the
resources ought to go to the thing that matters, which is the Iowa caucuses
on February 1,” he said.

For now, organizers of the straw poll remain confident that it will go on.
“We never expected 100 percent participation,” Iowa GOP adviser Charlie
Szold said Thursday. “In a field this large, we understand how it’s not
strategic for everyone to do it. We still expect ten to twenty thousand
Iowans to be part of a beloved tradition.”

Bill to allow presidential primary resurrected, sent to Assembly floor
<http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada-legislature/bill-allow-presidential-primary-resurrected-sent-assembly-floor>
// Review Journal // Sean Whaley – May 28, 2015

CARSON CITY — A Republican-backed bill that would allow political parties
to scrap Nevada’s presidential caucus system in favor of a secret-ballot
primary was resurrected Thursday and passed out by an Assembly committee.

Senate Bill 421 was defeated in a vote in the Legislative Operations and
Elections Committee on Wednesday, but was brought back and approved on a
6-4 vote with Democrats opposed. It now goes to the full Assembly.

The bill would give political parties the option to hold a presidential
preference primary election on the last Tuesday in February, while leaving
the primary for state and local political contests in June. A party could
chose to opt out and use the caucus system instead.

Republican supporters argue that changing how Nevada voters choose their
favorite presidential contender would protect the Silver State’s early
influence in the presidential selection process and encourage more voter
participation.

It would also dilute the influence of grass-roots party activists who are
more motivated to turn out for precinct caucuses and in recent years have
taken control of the state Republican Party, much to the chagrin of more
moderate Republicans such as Gov. Brian Sandoval.

The bill as amended would have the state pay the cost of a primary, with
costs estimated about $500,000 statewide for a single party primary. There
would be no early voting or sample ballots. Polls would be open from 7 a.m.
to 7 p.m. Absentee and overseas voting would be allowed.

Insiders: Rand Paul's foreign policy views are a serious liability
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/rand-paul-2016-foreign-policy-liability-118400.html>
// Politico // Katie Glueck – May 29, 2015

A majority of early-state insiders believe it’s helpful for Rand Paul to
differentiate himself from the Republican field through his views on
foreign policy and national security. But over the course of the campaign,
many say, those same positions will prove to be a serious liability.

This week’s survey of the POLITICO Caucus — a bipartisan group of the most
influential operatives and activists in Iowa and New Hampshire — found that
61 percent of those polled overall said that the Kentucky senator’s
anti-interventionist and libertarian-oriented positions are helping to
distinguish him in a pack of nearly 20 candidates.

Yet that number dropped to 48 percent among just Republican respondents.

In a reflection of the ideological distinctions between the Republican
parties in New Hampshire and Iowa, New Hampshire Republicans were more
inclined to look favorably on Paul’s “odd-man-out” status than Iowa
Republicans: Sixty percent of Granite Staters who responded said it’s
helpful to break with the party; while only 37 percent of Hawkeye State
Republicans said the same. In both states, many insiders said Paul’s
stances likely preclude him from being the GOP nominee.

“It helps him stand out, but it also puts a low ceiling on his support. Not
enough to win the nomination,” said a New Hampshire Republican, who like
all members of the POLITICO Caucus was granted anonymity in order to speak
freely.

An Iowa Republican was even more blunt: “Helps him with his base of liberty
followers. But God help us if someone like him was ever to be President.
His foreign policy and national security views are more frightening than
any prominent Democrat, save Sen. Sanders.”

Those comments follow a contentious week for Paul, who is already in the
cross hairs of his more hawkish GOP competitors. On Wednesday, Paul
appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he blamed Republican hawks for the
rise of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). The comments
sparked sharp criticism from several other Republican candidates and some
POLITICO insiders, and earned him a caustic headline on The Wall Street
Journal editorial page that read, “Rand Paul created ISIS.”

“Rand was trying not to be his father [former Rep. Ron Paul], he had taken
the most serious approach to date in reaching out beyond the confines of
our primary base, to build upon his father’s base,” said a New Hampshire
Republican. “But his ISIS comments were way over the line, almost
Obama-like in blaming the [medieval] Christian crusades as the cause of
ISIS. This will sink his chances to break out from Ron Paul 2012.”

Going a step further, an Iowa Republican added, “It solidifies his ceiling
at under 10 percent. Every day that passes it appears that Rand Paul should
be Hillary Clinton’s [Democratic] primary opponent.”

Many Republicans who said his views were helpful in separating him from the
pack said they shored up his libertarian base, provided a boost to his poll
numbers and energized his natural constituency at a time when competitors
are struggling to get noticed as they compete for the same blocs of voters.

“Like it or not, Paul’s message separating himself from other candidates
helps him stand out among a large field,” said an Iowa Republican.

“It helps him early when you can be a star with 20 percent, but as the
field narrows, the early advantage he had is eroded because it isolates him
from where the party really is and from where our nominees usually come,” a
New Hampshire Republican said.

Paul’s filibuster-like speech last week in the Senate, designed to derail
reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, did not generate such strong feelings
among GOP insiders. A third of Iowa Republicans said it hurt him, but 44
percent said it had no impact, while 67 percent of more libertarian-minded
New Hampshire Republicans said it helped him.

“Paul’s filibuster helped to bring home a lot of wandering supporters of
his father who weren’t sold on Rand,” a New Hampshire Republican said. “By
using the issue to clarify himself from Cruz, it sent a clear signal to
libertarians as to who their candidate was.”

In Iowa, Rand Paul sticks with death penalty skepticism
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/28/in-iowa-rand-paul-sticks-with-death-penalty-skepticism/>
// WaPo // James Hohmann – May 28, 2015

DAVENPORT, Iowa—Rand Paul expressed deep skepticism of the death penalty
Thursday as he repeated his position that states should be able to decide
whether to keep it.

The Kentucky senator, appearing at an afternoon book signing here,
responded to a question about the neighboring state of Nebraska’s ban on
capital punishment this week.

“My first thoughts aren’t that forgiving for someone who would hurt a
member of my family, but I also understand there have been times when we
haven’t gotten the right person,” he told reporters. “And somebody who is
distrustful of big government, like I am, is also distrustful of so much
power being given to government to kill somebody, when there might be a
mistake. A lot of eyewitness testimony has been shown over time not to be
very good.”

Paul complained that many witnesses in murder trials are not credible.

“We also have the problem of when you’ve got three thugs and they’re all
testifying against each other, and two of them say, ‘Let’s say he did it,’
and the other two say, ‘Let’s say he did it,’” he said. “So your testimony
is coming from people who are not necessarily the best witnesses, as far as
veracity.”

The Nebraska legislature voted Wednesday to override the governor’s veto of
their death penalty ban, making them the first red state to do so in
decades but the seventh state since 2007.

Paul, who has said in the past that death penalty is a state issue, used
his ideological support for federalism to avoid staking out a firm position.

“It’s a tough issue,” he said. “Most crimes are adjudicated at the state
level and should be, so there really are almost no crimes at the federal
level really under the Constitution that would require the death penalty –
I think treason being one. It isn’t a big issue, I think as far as a change
in federal policy, and I would leave it for the most part to the states.”

Paul did not take follow-up questions. The issue has been in the news
recently in the wake of the Boston Marathon bomber being sentenced – under
federal statutes, by federal prosecutors – to death. Paul did not mention
the recent episodes of botched executions, another of the main reasons
cited by death penalty critics.

Paul has made criminal justice reform, including the repeal of mandatory
minimums, central to his presidential campaign. He spoke to a crowd of 80
here about an Iowa woman who was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison
over her use of methamphetamine.

The senator’s stump speech mainly focused on his fight to let the Patriot
Act sunset on Sunday at midnight.

Speaking at a minor league baseball stadium on the banks of the Mississippi
River, Paul told the crowd that his voice is still raspy from speaking for
nearly 11 hours on the Senate floor last week about his opposition to the
law. He noted that his opposition has forced the Senate to cut short its
Memorial Day recess, reconvening Sunday evening in an 11th hour effort to
prevent parts of the program from expiring.

“I’m expecting a very cool reception from the other senators, but these are
important debates,” he said, adding: “I don’t know if I can win or not.”

Paul also argued that he’s the most electable candidate. He said polls have
shown he could beat Hillary Clinton in Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New
Hampshire.

“Quinnipiac did a national poll this week…and only two Republicans, and I
was one of them, beat Hillary Clinton in a nationwide poll,” he said. “So
people need to ask themselves, and Republicans need to ask themselves, who
can win in the fall?”

In fact, the Quinnipiac University poll he referred to showed Clinton
leading Paul by 4 points, 46 percent to 42 percent, in a hypothetical
matchup.

Rand Paul's money problem
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/rand-pauls-money-problem-118397.html?ml=po>
// Politico // Alex Isenstadt – May 29, 2015

In a presidential campaign defined by billionaire sugar daddy donors, Rand
Paul has a problem: He doesn’t seem to have one.

While his rivals cultivate wealthy backers who will pump millions of
dollars into their candidacies, Paul has struggled to find a similar
lifeline. It’s led to considerable frustration in his campaign, which, amid
rising concerns that it will not be able to compete financially, finds
itself leaning heavily on the network of small donors who powered his
father’s insurgent White House bids.

It hasn’t been for lack of trying. In recent months, Paul has sought to woo
a string of powerful Republican megadonors — from Silicon Valley executives
to a Kentucky coal mogul to the billionaire Koch brothers — who, it was
believed, would be philosophically aligned with his free-market views. In
each case, he met disappointment.

At the top of the list was Peter Thiel, the eccentric Northern California
venture capitalist who funneled $2.6 million to Ron Paul’s presidential
campaign. But Thiel is being far less generous this time around, leaving
Paul’s crestfallen advisers with the distinct impression that he won’t give
them a dime. They’ve been left guessing as to why. One speculated that
Thiel, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, was unhappy with the
rollout of Paul’s policy platform. Another surmised he was skeptical of
Paul’s 2016 prospects or that he’d become tired of political giving and
would sit out 2016 entirely.

There was Sean Parker, the flashy Napster co-founder who was portrayed by
Justin Timberlake in the hit 2010 movie “The Social Network.” But Parker,
who has known Paul for several years and has met with him to discuss 2016,
isn’t expected to endorse Paul — or any Republican candidate, for that
matter. Those familiar with Parker’s thinking say he’s most likely to
provide financial support to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

There was Larry Ellison, the former Oracle CEO known for his penchant for
megayachts. In October, Ellison hosted a Silicon Valley fundraiser for
Senate Republicans that Paul attended — an event that led to speculation
that Ellison, whose net worth is said to hover around $54 billion, would
get behind the Kentucky Republican. But he’s instead thrown his support to
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and will host a fundraiser for him on June 9.

“It was love at first sight,” one person close to Ellison said of his
feelings toward Rubio.

Not even two months into his presidential campaign, Paul is scrambling to
compete with opponents who have established fundraising vehicles
underwritten by well-heeled contributors. Jeb Bush has tapped his family’s
formidable network of donors, a wide-ranging list of names that includes
real estate developer Mel Sembler and Anheuser-Busch distributor John Nau,
to fund a super PAC that’s expected to raise an historic $100 million by
the end of this month. Rubio has won the backing of Norman Braman, a Miami
auto dealer who’s expected to pour anywhere from $10 million to $25 million
into his bid. Ted Cruz is expected to receive around $30 million of support
from Robert Mercer, a New York hedge fund manager.

Even Rick Santorum, who barely registers in polls, is expected to have a
deep-pocketed benefactor: Foster Friess, a businessman who helped keep
Santorum’s 2012 presidential bid alive, has said he will donate again.

Paul is compensating by turning to his grass-roots supporters who fueled
his national rise, bombarding them with pleas for cash. In recent days,
many have highlighted Paul’s filibuster-style stand against the PATRIOT Act
— opposition that has made him a hero to libertarians. “The clock is
ticking,” read one appeal sent on Tuesday, a few days after his Senate
theatrics. “I need to know you stand with me.”

The hope, those close to Paul say, is that his nationwide support from
small contributors will make up for his billionaire deficit.

Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul’s official campaign, declined to comment
on his fundraising. Jesse Benton, a spokesman for a super PAC that’s been
set up to support Paul’s candidacy, America’s Liberty PAC, wouldn’t discuss
the group’s fundraising or donors but said early results had shown promise,
particularly in Silicon Valley, to which Paul has traveled several times
and where he’s opened an office.

“Results to date have been solid and give us lots of room for optimism as
we continue,” Benton said. “We also know this is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Among those involved the 2016 money sweepstakes, theories of Paul’s
struggles abound. Some point to his anti-establishment posture, which has
alienated some in the business community — much of whose support has gone
for Bush. Others say his more dovish foreign policy stances has turned off
Jewish Republicans, many of whom view him as insufficiently pro-Israel.
Still others say he’s found competition from Cruz, who like Paul has
branded himself as a free-market thinker.

Others contend that Paul’s unpolished style might be working against him as
he seeks out the support of wealthy Republican benefactors, While attending
a California donor conference sponsored by Charles and David Koch, two of
the nation’s most powerful Republican donors, Paul was criticized for
dressing casually in jeans, slouching in his chair and giving rambling
answers to questions. One person briefed on the Kochs’ thinking said Paul’s
star has faded in their eyes, and that it’s now hard to see them providing
substantial financial support to the Kentucky senator.

At times, he’s seemed to be more on defense than offense. Earlier this
year, Paul had a private meeting with casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who’s
given millions of dollars to pro-Israel causes. During the meeting, Adelson
provided the Kentucky senator with assurances he wouldn’t spend money
explicitly to defeat him.

To some, it’s not entirely surprising he’s struggling to win over the
party’s donor elite. In 2010, when he upset the political world by
defeating Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s handpicked candidate
in the Kentucky Senate primary, Paul’s deepest well of support came from
his party’s activist set. It’s those conservative activists, many believe,
whom Paul must win over in 2016.

“The worst thing for a presidential candidate to be is something it’s not,”
said Nick Everhart, a former Paul adviser who worked on his 2010 campaign.
“If small donors are his place in the field, that’s got to be where he is.”

Still, at times the rejection has stung, especially when he’s tried to win
over his home state’s moneyed class.

A few months ago, Paul invited Joe Craft, a Kentucky coal company executive
and his fiancée, Kelly Knight, to have breakfast in the Senate dining room.
But the couple, who rank among the most prominent Republican givers in the
state, had bad news for Paul: They wouldn’t be getting behind his
presidential bid.

In a brief interview, though, Knight recalled giving Paul a consolation
prize of sorts.

The Crafts would, she told him, “strongly support him in his Senate
reelection campaign.”

Pataki enters White House race with focus on N.H.
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/05/28/pataki-enters-white-house-race-with-focus/Qbb5zxWODuaKm9FJqI3NHM/story.html>
// Boston Globe // James Pindell – May 28, 2015

EXETER, N.H. — After twice flirting with presidential bids in previous
years, former New York governor George Pataki officially entered the White
House race Thursday, hoping to differentiate himself as a Northeastern
Republican with a more moderate stance on social issues.

Pataki announced his campaign for president at the old town hall where
Abraham Lincoln once spoke and former US representative Ron Paul of Texas
and former governor Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah launched their presidential
campaigns four years ago.

He has been out of office since 2006, but in an interview, he said he is
running this time because he is prepared.

“I am ready,” Pataki said. “I just know that my life has prepared me for
this moment. I can lead this country and win this election. And the need to
change Washington has never been greater.”

Pataki is the only Republican among the eight candidates who have declared
presidential campaigns to support laws granting same-sex marriage.

“I believe in limited government,” Pataki said. “I don’t want politicians
telling me how to live my life. I don’t want them to tell me what type of
health care I have to have. I don’t want them telling our schools how to
educate every single child. I don’t want them in Washington deciding what
the rules on marriage should be for every state in America. Leave it to the
states. Let the people in those states decide.”

To be sure, in Pataki’s announcement speech, he touched on popular GOP
themes: cut taxes, project a strong foreign policy, and oppose programs
like the Affordable Care Act and the Common Core educational standards.

While Pataki has struggled to break from the pack nationally, he has gotten
some traction in the Granite State, where he has focused his campaigns.

For example, of the 14 Republican state senators, four have endorsed a
presidential candidate. Two of those four have endorsed Pataki. Pataki also
has one of the largest campaign steering committees in New Hampshire. Many
of the participants attended a private reception at the Exeter Inn
Wednesday night, when they were served lobster rolls.

Notably, some of the state’s well-known libertarian-minded Republicans are
listening to Pataki. Among those inside the sweltering town hall event was
John Babiarz, a former libertarian candidate for governor.

Babiarz backed Ron Paul in the past, and said Pataki is possibly more
libertarian than US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on other issues. He also
gives Pataki credit for focusing his campaign on the Granite State.

“Pataki is on my list of candidates to watch,” said Babiarz. “He has
willing to take questions and lets you know where he stands.”

Pataki faces tough odds in Iowa against better-known candidates
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/05/28/george-pataki-tough-odds-iowa/28120275/>
// The Des Moines Register / Branne Pfannenstiel – May 28, 2015

George Pataki will have to answer tough questions on the road through Iowa.

Primary among them: Who is George Pataki?

The Republican former governor of New York, who announced his candidacy for
president Thursday, has been out of the public spotlight for almost a
decade after serving three terms. He barely registers on Quinnipiac
University's latest poll of Republican voters.

"I really think Iowans don't know who he is," said Kedron Bardwell,
chairman of the political science department at Simpson College in
Indianola. "And I'm not sure he cares who we are."

So far, Pataki has played it light in Iowa, spending two days here this
year for GOP cattle call events. He has not committed to attending the Iowa
Straw Poll. Bardwell questioned whether Iowa will even be part of Pataki's
campaign strategy going forward.

As a moderate Republican who favors gun control and environmental reforms,
Pataki's brand of Republican is unlikely to resonate as strongly with more
conservative Iowa caucusgoers, Bardwell said.

Pataki also has spent more days in New Hampshire, which is more moderate
and holds the nation's first presidential primary. His formal presidential
announcement was made in Exeter, N.H. A Pataki super PAC opened an office
in the state in April.

Former New York Governor George Pataki released this video to announce his
entry into the 2016 presidential race. VPC

"Given his name recognition in the Northeast, he may try a New
Hampshire-and-beyond strategy," Bardwell said, "which is a disadvantage,
because you're not showing your ability to coalesce all parts of the party
behind you."

Pataki will have to spend more time showing voters what he's about and what
his key issues are, Bardwell said.

While at the GOP Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines earlier this month, Pataki
touted his ability to lead in "the deepest blue state" and still cut
government waste.

"When I left office (in New York) we had 25,000 fewer state workers — a 15
percent reduction," he said. "The government worked better, and so would
Washington."

Pataki proposed reducing the federal workforce by 15 percent and rebuilding
the U.S. tax code from scratch. He has said he would put troops on the
ground in Iraq to fight the Islamic State.

Marshall Critchfield, chairman of the Jasper County Republican Central
Committee, hosted a meeting with party members and Pataki while the former
governor was in town for that dinner.

"He's a likeable guy, and I think that will go a long way on the campaign
trail," Critchfield said. "Pataki has a calmness about him that I found
appealing, and though it's early in the process, he doesn't seem to exhibit
that same defensive shield we've all seen with presidential candidates in
the past."

Critchfield said if Pataki talked more openly in Iowa about gun-control
issues, it would likely hurt his chances here, but could help him pick up a
more moderate crowd moving forward.

Ryan Frederick, Adair County Republican Central Committee chairman, said he
thinks Pataki's leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
helps set him apart from other candidates. Pataki was serving his second
term as governor when the World Trade Center in New York City was hit by
suicide attackers.

"I don't think we've got anybody else in the race right now who can say
they were directly involved with that at the time," Frederick said.

Frederick noted that other long-shot candidates have been able to come from
behind in Iowa, but it will require that Pataki invest the time and effort
in campaigning across the state.

"We want people to come here and tell us what you've done," he said. "Tell
us what you've accomplished."

Announcing his bid for president, Pataki says Democrats are “party of
privilege,” GOP “party of the middle class”
<http://www.concordmonitor.com/news/politics/17080052-95/announcing-his-bid-for-president-pataki-says-democrats-are-party-of-privilege-gop-party>
// Concord Monitor // Caset McDermott – May 28, 2015

It’s official: After twice before toying with a bid for the White House and
spending months trying to make his mark in New Hampshire, George Pataki is
running for president.

The former governor of New York, who’s flirted with the idea of seeking the
nation’s highest office in 2008 and 2012, announced his bid for the
Republican nomination yesterday at Exeter Town Hall.

The venue, where Abraham Lincoln once spoke during his own campaign for
president back in 1860, was packed with supporters – some of whom spent the
event waving red-white-and-blue fans because of the heat. Even the
candidate himself couldn’t escape the temperature, dripping with sweat as
he shook supporters’ hands and fielded reporters’ questions on the way out
of the town hall after his speech.

Keeping with the tone of other remarks he’s made during earlier stops in
New Hampshire this year, Pataki was blunt about his assessment of the
country’s problems but unabashedly optimistic in the nation’s ability to
tackle those issues – and in his own ability to unify the nation in pursuit
of those solutions.

“The problems we face are real, but I’ve never been one to dwell on
problems – I’m a solutions guy. When you grow up on a farm and you have a
problem, you don’t ask the government to solve it,” Pataki said, referring
back to his childhood in Peekskill, N.Y. “You just figure out what needs to
be done and go do it. That’s the American way.”

Pataki offered a few broad suggestions of his policy goals as president and
outlined a vision for reining in the size and power of the federal
government. Those ideas, many of which he’s articulated earlier on the
campaign trail, included: a lifetime ban on members of Congress serving as
lobbyists; a repeal of “oppressive laws like Obamacare,” and an end to
Common Core; an elimination of “excessive taxes that crush small
businesses” and additional tax reform. He would also, he said, “shrink the
size of the federal workforce, starting with the bureaucrats overseeing
Obamacare,” and would also seek to fire “every current IRS employee abusing
government power to discriminate on the basis of politics or religion.”

On poverty, Pataki called for more policies that “replace dependency with
opportunity,” criticizing Democrats’ in the process: “It seems like
liberals have so much compassion for the poor, that they keep creating more
of them.”

And on national security, Pataki called for securing the border and
building the nation’s military. Describing himself as “the proud product of
immigrants,” Pataki said the country must make sure “everyone coming to
America is coming here legally, and that everyone coming here is coming not
to harm us, but to be a part of a better America.”

“This is not the time to weaken America’s military, it’s time to strengthen
our military,” Pataki continued, prompting a rousing applause. “Not so that
we can use it – but so that we don’t have to use it.”

As he spoke on national security, Pataki drew on his own personal
experiences – as the father of two sons who served in the military and as
the governor of New York in the period surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Libby and I know what it’s like to lie awake dreading a call in the middle
of the night when your child is in harm’s way overseas,” he said. “I do not
want one parent, one husband, one wife, one child or loved one to
experience that fear unless it’s absolutely necessary – but we will do
whatever is required to protect the American people.”

Taking several jabs at his opponents on the opposite side of the aisle – as
a group and, specifically, former secretary of state and current
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – Pataki argued that Republicans are
best suited to unify the nation this election.

“Today, those in the other party, instead of offering ideas, seek to
divide. When you have no solutions, instead you offer fear,” Pataki said.
He later added, calling out Clinton in particular, “They are the party of
privilege. We are the party of the middle class.”

On previous visits to New Hampshire, Pataki signaled an interest in making
the state a key part of his prospective presidential campaign – in part
because it offered an opportunity to appeal to undeclared voters. Pataki,
too, has tried to steer away from advocating against same-sex marriage and
abortion rights, airing ads here encouraging Republicans to avoid getting
caught up in debates on these issues. “They’re a distraction,” Pataki says
in one ad, “and will only help elect Hillary.”

The crowd in Exeter drew some supporters from New Hampshire but also plenty
of allies from Pataki’s home state. One of those people was Teresa
Santiago, who served as the head of New York’s consumer protection board
while Pataki was governor and spearheaded “Amigos de Pataki,” an effort to
attract more support among Latino voters during the 2002 gubernatorial
campaign. As reported by the New York Times after Pataki’s victory that
year, those efforts paid off: The governor, at least according to initial
results from “districts that are heavily Hispanic,” managed to capture “a
third or more of the Latino vote.”

At one point during his announcement speech in New Hampshire, Pataki broke
into Spanish – prompting cheers from Santiago and others.

“It comes very natural to him,” Santiago said of Pataki’s attention toward
Latino voters. “This is something he believes in thoroughly.”

In an especially crowded Republican field, where Pataki is widely
considered to be an underdog, Santiago said the former governor’s interest
in uniting diverse voices could serve him especially well.

“I think that the party, the Republican Party tends to sometimes split or
divide within its own party,” she said. “And I think he has that ability to
bring people together – within the party and outside of the party, and he
did that extremely well in New York.”

And again, Santiago said, “the key here is the Latino community.”

“We are not the minority anymore, and people need to pay attention to us,”
she said, leaving the town hall after Pataki wrapped up his remarks and the
crowd was filtering out. “And the candidate – in either party – that does
that will win. That’s the bottom line, and he gets it. And that’s what sets
him apart.”

Santorum hits the trail again
<http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/elections/santorum-hits-the-trail-again/article_8f098477-f740-5470-8629-da269912bf21.html>
// Quad-City Times // Ed Tibbetts – May 28, 2015

Rick Santorum, the come-from-behind winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses, hit
the road again in Iowa.

With his first campaign stop Thursday after announcing his 2016
presidential candidacy the day before in Pennsylvania, the former U.S.
senator visited the Iowa Machine Shed, where he gave a relatively brief
seven-minute stump speech.

Then, he spent an hour and 10 minutes taking questions.

Then, he went outside and greeted a line of people.

Santorum is far behind in the polls, and most pundits give him little
chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination. But much like in
2012, he began his Iowa effort underestimated, yet meticulously working to
gain support.

Santorum echoed his announcement speech in saying Thursday that he would
emphasize the people left behind in today’s economy.

“What’s the path to help these folks that feels like no one’s really
talking about them?” he asked.

He blamed the size of government for stifling the economy and said
unskilled foreign labor has taken all the new jobs in the U.S. Santorum has
called for curbs on legal immigration.

Santorum said government needs to be smaller, and he drew applause when he
called the Internal Revenue Service a “political organization.”

Later, however, he said he was worried about “anti-government rhetoric” and
argued there is a place for government.

“Government's not evil. Government can be evil,” he said, but added,
“Government’s us."

Santorum is part of a large and growing Republican field, and some of his
2012 supporters have moved on.

Still, campaign aides say he will work aggressively in Iowa and he will go
to all 99 counties.

Vivian Martin of LeClaire, who said she supported Santorum in 2012, is not
sold just yet. That’s not unusual early in a caucus cycle. Still, she said
she continued to be impressed with Santorum.

“He just seems sincere,” she said. “He sounds like he has a plan."

Santorum also said Thursday that, if elected, he would defeat the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS. And he told reporters afterward that he backed
the Patriot Act, major parts of which are scheduled to expire June 1.

Sen. Rand Paul, who also was in Davenport on Thursday, has argued against
bulk collection of telephone records.

“I don’t like bulk collection,” Santorum said, and technology changes may
make such programs unnecessary. But he added, “we know people are trying to
harm us and that having access to this information is helpful. That says it
all."

Santorum: Climate change, flat-Earth believers are alike
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/05/28/rick-santorum-climate-change-world-is-flat-science-unsettled/28121963/>
// The Des Moines Register -//Josh Hafner – May 28, 2015

While in Davenport during his Iowa campaign's first official event in the
state, Rick Santorum compared scientists convinced of climate change to
those who once called the world flat.

One man stood up during the event's Q&A portion, expressing concern about
climate change. Addressing it, the audience member said, should be an
imperative to Christians commanded by the Bible to be stewards of the Earth.

"I always have problems when people come up and say the science is
settled," said Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate and winner of
the 2012 Iowa caucuses. "That's what they said about the world being flat.
When someone says the science is settled you're not a scientist, because
scientists never say the science is settled."

He added: "The idea that the science is settled, to me, tells me that this
is political science, not real science."

Jeb Bush earned millions in juggling act as corporate adviser
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeb-bush-earned-millions-in-juggling-act-as-corporate-adviser/>
// AP – May 28, 2015

During his transition from Florida governor to likely presidential
candidate, Jeb Bush served on the boards of or as an adviser to at least 15
companies and nonprofits, a dizzying array of corporate connections that
earned him millions of dollars and occasional headaches.

Bush returned to corporate America after leaving the governor's mansion in
early 2007, and his industry portfolio expanded steadily until he began
shedding ties late last year to prepare a run for president.

Executives who worked alongside Bush describe him as an engaged adviser
with an eye for detail.

Yet experts question how anyone could serve so many boards at once
effectively.

"Board of directors and advisory boards are in charge of high-level
oversight," said law professor Elizabeth Nowicki, a former Securities and
Exchange Commission lawyer. "You cannot possibly do that simultaneously for
10 or 15 entities."

There is no formal rule limiting the number of boards one person can serve.
But in the wake of the Enron scandal, where flimsy board oversight
contributed to the company's infamous meltdown, and a federal law that
increased liability for a public company's director, common sense dictates
a small number, Nowicki said.

"If somebody starts serving on more than three or four boards that's a
problem," she said.

Three boards should be the maximum, agreed Zabihollah Rezaee, a University
of Memphis accounting professor who has authored books about corporate
governance.

"Board members are representing shareholders, and they are responsible to
shareholders for financial integrity," said Rezaee. "Best practices"
dictate a small number, he said, "because of the amount of time it requires
to be effective."

Bush served on the boards of or as an adviser to 11 companies or nonprofits
at a time each year from 2010 to 2013, The Associated Press found. Those
ties were in addition to his own businesses, such as Jeb Bush & Associates,
and the educational foundations he created.

In 2010 Bush served on the board of directors of eight different entities,
as adviser to a ninth company and advisory board member for two others. In
2013, he served on six boards, as an adviser to another company and on the
advisory board of four more entities.

"I had two public boards," he said. "And I did my fiduciary duty quite
well, I think. You'll have to ask them."Bush answered curtly Thursday when
asked about the positions after visiting a lab in Lansing, Michigan, that
makes antidotes and vaccinations for poisons such as anthrax.

Bush was apparently referring to his standing only in 2014, when he shed
his corporate ties. At that time he was on the board of two publicly held
companies, Tenet Healthcare and Rayonier Inc. In 2013, he was on the board
of four public companies, including the international advisory board of
Barrick Gold Corp.

Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said not all the corporate entities were
the same - some were board slots, some advisory positions and others
nonprofits - and suggested it was unfair to put them all in the same
basket. AP's review found that Bush served on the board of directors of as
many as seven for-profit companies at a time - while also serving as an
adviser to other companies and nonprofits.

Bush's experience on corporate boardrooms could evolve into a theme during
the 2016 race for the presidency. Among the issues the Florida Republican
could be asked to explain:

-One company that paid Bush $15,000 a month as a board member and
consultant, InnoVida Holdings, collapsed in fraud and bankruptcy, with the
company's CEO, Claudio Osorio, now serving 12 1/2 years in prison. Bush
joined InnoVida despite warning signs that Osorio's prior company dissolved
amid bankruptcy and allegations of fraud.

-At least five companies where Bush served on the board or as adviser faced
class-action lawsuits from shareholders or legal action by the government.
Some of the most sweeping cases, involving allegations of fraud or
environmental damage, remain active. The Securities and Exchange Commission
subpoenaed one of the companies, Rayonier Inc., in November, shortly before
Bush's exit.

-Bush earned $3.9 million from four companies alone since 2007, the AP
found, plus $25,000 a year more from a medical company in Georgia, $9,600
annually from Bloomberg Philanthropies and zero pay from a drug addiction
nonprofit. His earnings from eight other companies are unknown, and Bush
has declined AP's requests to disclose his compensation - raising questions
about how open he would be as a presidential candidate.

Bush was a board member or adviser to publicly traded health care, timber,
gold mining and sanitation companies; for private firms involved in
housing, finance, medicine, higher education and decontamination; and for
nonprofits focused on drug addiction and philanthropy. He served on the
board of directors for nine of the 15, and as an adviser or advisory board
member for the others. Two of the 15 are nonprofits.

Once Bush officially declares for president, he will have 45 days to file a
public disclosure form listing his sources of income for the prior year.
Those forms include broad ranges for the values of assets or salaries that
can be used to estimate a politician's net worth, but they will not be
precise totals and will capture just the prior year.

"Until you say the magic words `I am running for president,' there are a
whole lot of restrictions that don't apply to you. I think this is an
advantage he is taking," said Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the
Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government. "There
just should be an expectation of transparency around anything that a
presidential candidate is involved with, whether it's a nonprofit
foundation or their past employers."

Spokeswoman Campbell said, "If he becomes a candidate, he'll comply with
all necessary financial disclosures. That is an approach consistent with
what he did in all three of his campaigns for governor."

TOP NEWS

DOMESTIC

U.S. Accuses Ex-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Paying to Hide
‘Misconduct’
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/us/ex-house-speaker-j-dennis-hastert-indicted-on-federal-charges.html?ref=politics>
// NYT // Monica Davey – May 28, 2015

CHICAGO — J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of
Representatives, has been charged with lying to the F.B.I. and making cash
withdrawals from banks in a way that was designed to hide that he was
paying $3.5 million to someone for his “misconduct” from years ago, a
federal indictment released on Thursday said.

Mr. Hastert, 73, the longest-serving Republican speaker, had worked as a
lobbyist since leaving office. The indictment, announced by the United
States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said Mr. Hastert,
who was once a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Ill.,
had so far paid $1.7 million to the person, who had lived in Yorkville and
had known Mr. Hastert for most of his or her life. Mr. Hastert worked in
Yorkville from 1965 to 1981.

In 2010, during meetings between Mr. Hastert and the unnamed individual,
the two discussed “past misconduct” by Mr. Hastert against the person,
according to the indictment.

In those meetings and in later discussions, Mr. Hastert agreed to provide
money to the person “in order to compensate for and conceal his prior
misconduct,” the indictment said. It said he was structuring the cash
withdrawals in increments designed to avoid bank reporting requirements.
The indictment does not provide details of the misconduct.

Mr. Hastert could not be reached for comment at his office in Washington.

Each of the two charges carries a penalty of as much as five years in
prison and a $250,000 fine, the prosecutor’s office said. Mr. Hastert is to
appear at an arraignment at a future date, the prosecutors said.

Kimberly Nerheim, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office,
declined to identify the person being paid — who was referred to as
Individual A in the indictment — or to comment on whether that individual
would face any charges.

Mr. Hastert, first elected to Congress from Illinois in 1986, was suddenly
catapulted to speaker in 1999 during a moment of crisis for his party. Newt
Gingrich had just stepped down after a contentious election marked by
wounds the House Republicans inflicted on themselves during impeachment
proceedings against President Bill Clinton.

The Republicans’ first choice to succeed Mr. Gingrich, Robert L. Livingston
of Louisiana, gave up the position before he ever assumed it, acknowledging
that he had carried on adulterous affairs in the past.

Mr. Hastert, who became a popular and unifying leader, was promoted for the
job by Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, then a powerful Republican force
in the House, largely because of Mr. Hastert’s reputation as a conciliator.
Mr. DeLay recognized that he himself was too polarizing for the job.

In office, Mr. Hastert, who was known as “the coach” for his former
occupation and his leadership style, pressed a series of health care
initiatives and played a leading role in shaping the congressional response
to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In 2006, he faced criticism that he and top aides failed to respond to
warnings about the behavior of Representative Mark Foley of Florida, whose
sexually explicit electronic messages to former Congressional pages sparked
a scandal that contributed to the Republicans’ losing their House majority.
Mr. Hastert chose not to seek re-election in 2008.

According to the federal indictment made public on Thursday, Mr. Hastert
gave money to the unnamed person for four years, starting in 2010.

At first, Mr. Hastert provided $50,000 in cash from several bank accounts
to the person every six weeks, for a total of 15 such exchanges, the
indictment said.

Banks are required to report cash withdrawals of more than $10,000, and in
April 2012, bank officials questioned Mr. Hastert about sizable withdrawals
from his accounts.

That July, Mr. Hastert began making smaller withdrawals, of less than
$10,000, and he continued providing them to the person at prearranged
meeting places and times, the indictment said.

Later, the arrangements changed so that Mr. Hastert was providing $100,000
every three months, the indictment said.

By 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue
Service began investigating the withdrawals, focusing, federal authorities
said, on whether cash was being taken out in a way that was intended to
evade bank reporting requirements.

Last Dec. 8, Mr. Hastert was interviewed by federal agents. He told the
agents that he was not paying anyone with the money, but was keeping the
withdrawals for himself because he felt unsafe with the banking system.

“Yeah,” Mr. Hastert told the agents, according to the indictment. “I kept
the cash. That’s what I’m doing.”

This is not the first time a political figure has attracted attention
through banking practices. Eliot Spitzer, then the governor of New York,
came to the attention of federal investigators after bank officials noticed
that he was moving around thousands of dollars in a manner they thought was
intended to conceal the purpose and source of the money. As it turned out,
Mr. Spitzer was using the money to pay for prostitutes. He resigned when
the payments became public; he was not charged with a crime.

Since leaving office, Mr. Hastert has been a prominent lobbyist in
Washington. He is co-leader of the Public Policy & Political Law Practice
at the Washington law firm of Dickstein Shapiro, according to the firm’s
website.

By Thursday night, Mr. Hastert had resigned from Dickstein Shapiro, an
official with the firm said, and his biography had been removed from its
website. Mr. Hastert also resigned from the board of the CME Group, the
Chicago-based operator of one of the world’s largest futures and
derivatives exchanges, a spokeswoman said.

The reaction in Washington was primarily one of astonishment as Republicans
tried to absorb the news that Mr. Hastert, elevated in some respects for
his upright image, was in such trouble. Allies and former advisers said
that they were surprised by the case and that they had no knowledge of the
acts described in the indictment. “It has come completely out of left field
and is pretty shocking,” said John Feehery, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert in
his days as speaker.

In his home state, Republicans seemed stunned by the announcement. Some
described Mr. Hastert as a well-liked man whose life story — from small
town coach to House speaker — had always been part of his low-key,
regular-guy appeal and approachable nature.

“We’re all shocked,” said Pat Brady, the former chairman of the Illinois
Republican Party. “It’s been a total shock in the Land of Lincoln. No one
had been hearing anything about this. Not a word.”

No 'Plan B' If Congress Misses NSA Deadline, White House Says
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/plan-congress-misses-nsa-deadline-white-house/story?id=31402992>
// Jordyn Phelps - May 29, 2015

The White House warned today that there is no fallback position if the
Senate fails to reach a deal on the Patriot Act before Sunday night’s
deadline.

“There is no plan B,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during today's
press briefing. “There is no executive action that the president can take
to give our law enforcement and national security professionals the tools
they need, all of the tools that they need, including the tools that are
included in the USA Freedom Act.”

If a deal is not reached before 4 p.m. Sunday, the Senate will be exposing
the American people to “unnecessary risk,” Earnest said, by forcing the
National Security Agency to begin shutting down its phone data surveillance
program.

“What our national security professionals will tell you is that they will,
if faced with a scenario in which they have some of these tools taken out
of their toolbox, they will try to use all of the tools that they currently
have to do what's necessary to keep us safe,” he said. “And the point that
I would make is that taking those tools away seems like an unnecessary
risk.”

“Why would we take the chance, and more importantly, why are we taking the
chance?” he said.

In scolding the Senate for the standoff, Earnest said there is no “rational
explanation” for the current situation.

“I haven't heard a rational explanation for what exactly is going on in the
United States Senate right now,” the press secretary quipped. “There is no
good explanation for it.”

While some Senate Republicans contend that the Freedom Act does not go far
enough in providing national security officials access to data that can be
helpful in counter-terrorism operations, others argue that it would
infringe to greatly on civil liberties.

Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, has staunchly opposed the
extension of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act, bucking his own party's
leadership.

He filibustered on the Senate floor for about 11 hours last week to protest
the NSA's bulk data collection program that monitors Americans' phone
records.

"The bulk collection of all Americans' phone records all of the time is a
direct violation of the Fourth Amendment,” Paul, who opposes both the
Patriot Act and the USA Freedom Act, said last week.

Idaho's Abortion Ban Is Unconstitutional, Federal Court Says
<http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/29/410560051/idahos-abortion-ban-is-unconstitutional-federal-court-says>
// NPR // Bill Chappell – May 29, 2015

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says Idaho's law prohibiting abortions
after 20 or more weeks of pregnancy is "unconstitutional because it
categorically bans some abortions before viability."

The court ruled in favor of Jennie McCormack and Dr. Richard Hearn (on
behalf of himself and his patients), who had challenged Idaho's
Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that restricts abortion in the
state.

In 2011, McCormack was arrested and faced criminal charges after she ended
a pregnancy by taking what's known as the abortion pill, RU-486. She was
found to have been perhaps twice as far into the pregnancy as the
recommended nine-week window for using the pill.

The criminal charges against McCormack were dismissed in 2011; shortly
afterward, she filed a class-action lawsuit.

As NPR reported in 2012, "McCormack is a small, quiet woman in her early
30s and a single mom of three. McCormack was raised devoutly Mormon in
Pocatello, Idaho, where she's lived all her life — and until last year, she
was used to going unnoticed."

The arguments were heard by Circuit Judges Harry Pregerson and Kim McLane
Wardlaw and Senior District Judge Donald E. Walter. The court's opinion was
written by Pregerson.

In addition to ruling on the 20-week time period, the court said Idaho's
requirement that all second-trimester abortions take place in a hospital is
also unconstitutional, "because it places an undue burden on a woman's
ability to obtain an abortion."

Other elements of Idaho's law, such as a requirement that abortion be
performed in a medical office with proper staffing, were
"unconstitutionally vague," the court said.

INTERNATIONAL

Obama’s New ISIS War Plan: Nothing
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/29/team-obama-shrugs-at-isis-victories.html>
// The Daily Beast // Nanzy A. Youssef – May 29, 2015

The self-proclaimed Islamic State has claimed a major provincial capital in
Iraq and taken over another strategically key city in Syria. In response,
the Obama administration plans to do—well, not much of anything new.

Four defense officials told The Daily Beast that there’s still strong
resistance within the Obama administration to making any serious changes to
the current strategy for fighting ISIS—despite mounting skepticism from
some in the Pentagon about the current U.S. approach to the war.

Although the Obama administration’s public messaging is that it still wants
to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIS, in reality, many in the Pentagon
view the real objective as just running out the clock.

“I think this is driven by a sense that this not our fight and so we are
just going to try to contain it and have influence where we can,” one
official who works closely on the military strategy explained to The Daily
Beast. “This is a long fight, and it will be up to the next administration
to tackle.”

Rather than aiming for a decisive victory, the U.S. approach has devolved
into simply maintaining a low boil in perpetuity.

They said they realize that the political strategy supersedes the military
one; there is no public appetite for ground troops in Iraq; there is
frustration about corruption within the Iraqi government; and there is a
lack of a clear alternative approach.

“It’s a political response,” one official explained. “They are doing
‘something’ to inoculate themselves from substantial criticism.”

Some are more blunt, saying no one wants to invest too much time or
resources in crafting an alternative.

“Who wants a soldier to come home dead or without a leg or captured by ISIS
for forces that retreat?” a second defense official asked.

To be sure, the Pentagon brass has yet to offer alternative strategies to
fighting ISIS. Most recently, the U.S.-led coalition did not even ramp up
its airstrikes after ISIS claimed the Sunni-dominated Iraqi city of Ramadi
on May 18. Since then, the coalition has conducted an average of three
strikes a day, targeting vehicles and fighting positions. U.S. officials
insist they strike whenever they get good intelligence on ISIS positions.

With no change in airstrikes and a ground force that has retreated, ISIS
has successfully—and without any major impediments—built berms, receiving
and building other defenses against a promised counterattack by Iraqi
security forces.

Even the mildest adjustments are being met with resigned silence, four
defense officials told The Daily Beast. En route to Singapore on Wednesday,
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told reporters that he had convened a
meeting with “his team” about Iraqi and said the military was examining how
“to increase the effectiveness of the campaign.”

“I can’t describe to you what the possibilities are because folks are
looking at them right now,” Carter added.

But rather than adjust the strategy, the U.S. military is considering small
tactical changes—in how quickly it conducts airstrikes after the Iraqis
request them and how to provide Iraqi ground forces weapons and equipment
quicker. Among the ideas Carter proposed was speeding up the training of
Sunni tribesmen. Army Colonel Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman,
emphasized to reporters Thursday the U.S. is looking only to “fine-tune”
its tactics, not overhaul its strategy.

The secretary noted the military is responsible for two of the nine lines
of effort the U.S. is using toward Iraq, which include financial and
political pressure, but there was no evidence Thursday that those lines
were being reconsidered, either.

But neither a lack of airpower nor weapons appeared to lead to Ramadi’s
fall. While the Iraqis feared that a sandstorm would limit coalition
airstrikes, U.S. officials said that was not the case. And the Iraqi army
vastly outnumbered ISIS forces, and there is no evidence its soldiers
suffered a major weapons shortage.

Rather it appears ISIS had fighters hidden in the city who built scores of
car bombs—some the size of the bomb used in the Oklahoma City bombing
attack—and a strike plan to follow that flustered Iraq Special Forces, or
Golden Brigades, who retreated, followed by brigade forces.

Critics of officials at U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of the
U.S. military approach toward the Middle East, note that military leaders
have yet to publicly propose a strategy that does not involve a major
ground force presence. That’s something the White House simply won’t accept.

At a breakfast with reporters Thursday, General Raymond T. Odierno, the
chief of staff of the Army and a former top commander in Iraq, said he was
“adamant” about not sending U.S. ground forces back to Iraq.

“It always comes back to the government of Iraq,” Odierno said.

And while U.S. officials have said they are committed to a united Iraq,
privately two officials said that many anticipate what they described as
“the Balkanization of Iraq” along sectarian and ethnic lines.

The U.S. military’s initial response to Ramadi was to blame the Iraqi
military for failing to take on the outnumbered ISIS forces. Both Carter
and Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said the Iraqis retreated. In an interview with CNN, Carter said the Iraqi
army lacked “the will to fight” for its country.

When the U.S.-led air campaign began nearly a year ago, it, by most
accounts, achieved its initial goal of stopping ISIS’s momentum, which was
ascending with the capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul. There were fears
then that the group could move on to Baghdad.

But since then, ISIS has adjusted while the U.S. strategy has not, the
defense officials said. And an air campaign that once could contain ISIS no
longer can as the group has developed the skills to create a military plan
against an army that outnumbers it by 10 to 1, as in Ramadi, according to
U.S. military estimates.

U.S. officials often note they have destroyed 6,300 targets since the
strikes began. But critics pointed out that statistics are not always an
indicator of a working strategy.

“Every agency is briefing that they are having effect,” the first official
explained. “But it is activity, not effect.”

Senator Rand Paul, who is running for the Republican nomination for
president, has been a frequent and enthusiastic critic of the Obama
administration’s foreign policy and of U.S. military intervention in the
Middle East in general. On Thursday, his senior adviser, Doug Stafford,
told The Daily Beast, “Senator Paul called months ago for a declaration of
war against ISIS.” That declaration, unveiled in November, would have
allowed for boots on the ground. Stafford said Paul called “for arming the
Kurds” and “for insisting on boots on the ground from neighboring
countries.” (The declaration actually specified limited use of American
troops on the ground in specific circumstances.)

Stafford added, “This shouldn’t be a political issue or one that is mired
in bad strategy from the Obama administration, and it shouldn’t be left for
the next president.”

U.S. Takes Cuba Off Terror List
<http://time.com/3901597/u-s-cuba-terror-list/> // TIME // Andrea Rodriguez
and Matthew Lee <http://time.com/author/associated-press/> – May 29, 2015

(HAVANA)—The Obama administration on Friday formally removed Cuba from a
U.S. terrorism blacklist, a decision hailed in Cuba as the healing of a
decades-old wound and an important step toward normalizing relations
between the Cold War foes.

Secretary of State John Kerry signed off on rescinding Cuba’s “state
sponsor of terrorism” designation exactly 45 days after the Obama
administration informed Congress of its intent to do so on April 14.
Lawmakers had that amount of time to weigh in and try to block the move,
but did not do so.

“The 45-day congressional pre-notification period has expired, and the
secretary of state has made the final decision to rescind Cuba’s
designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, effective today, May 29,
2015,” the State Department said in a statement.

“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a
wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria
relevant to the rescission of a state sponsor of terrorism designation,”
the statement said.

The step comes as officials from the two countries continue to hash out
details of restoring full diplomatic relations, including opening embassies
in Washington and Havana and returning ambassadors to the two countries for
the first time since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with the island
in January 1961. The removal of Cuba from the terrorism list had been a key
Cuban demand.

The Cold War-era designation was levied mainly for Cuba’s support of
leftist guerrillas around the world and isolated the communist island from
much of the world financial system because banks fear repercussions from
doing business with designated countries. Even Cuba’s Interests Section in
Washington lost its bank in the United States, forcing it to deal in cash
until it found a new banker this month.

“We welcome today’s announcement by the Secretary of State, which is
another step forward toward a more normal and productive relationship
between the United States and the Cuban people,” a White House blog post
said Friday.

“For 55 years, we tried using isolation to bring about change in Cuba,” it
said. “But by isolating Cuba from the United States, we isolated the United
States from the Cuban people and, increasingly, the rest of the world.
Through this new approach of engagement, we are finally in a position to
advance our interests while simultaneously improving the lives of the Cuba
people.”

The terror list was a particularly charged issue for Cuba because of the
U.S. history of supporting exile groups responsible for attacks on the
island, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger flight from
Barbados that killed 73 people aboard. The attack was linked to Cuban
exiles with ties to U.S.-backed anti-Castro groups and both men accused of
masterminding the crime took shelter in Florida, where one, Luis Posada
Carriles, currently lives.

“I think this could be a positive act that adds to hope and understanding
and can help the negotiations between Cuba and the United States,” said
director Juan Carlos Cremata, who lost his father in the 1976 bombing.

“It’s a list we never should have been on,” said Ileana Alfonso, 57, who
also lost her father in the attack.

Still, top U.S. Republicans criticized the move, with House Speaker John
Boehner of Ohio saying that the Obama administration had “handed the Castro
regime a significant political win in return for nothing.”

“The communist dictatorship has offered no assurances it will address its
long record of repression and human rights at home,” he said in a statement.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called Cuba’s removal from the list “a
mistake” and “further evidence that President Obama seems more interested
in capitulating to our adversaries than in confronting them.”

Also critical of the move was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has urged
the Obama administration to demand the return of a woman who escaped to
Cuba after being convicted in 1977 of killing a state trooper. Joanne
Chesimard, now known as Assata Shakur, has lived on the island since the
1980s.

Christie said removing Cuba’s terrorism designation is “an unacceptable
offense to the family of the fallen New Jersey State Trooper and every
other wanted criminal that still lives freely in Cuba today. ”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, praised the
move, saying that the State Department had “removed the burden of an
outdated, outmoded strategy.” She called it a “critical step forward in
creating new opportunities for American businesses and entrepreneurs, and
in strengthening family ties.”

U.S. and Cuban officials have said the two sides are close to resolving the
final issues but the most recent round of talks ended on May 22 with no
announcement of an agreement.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that “there continue
to be issues that need to be worked out.” He said important progress had
been made, but would not give a time frame for an announcement. “That’s
obviously among the next milestones,” he said.

Even with the hurdle over the terrorism designation cleared, Washington and
Havana are wrangling over American demands that its diplomats be able to
travel throughout Cuba and meet with dissidents without restrictions. The
Cubans are wary of activity they see as destabilizing to their government.

Both the U.S. and Cuba say the embassies are a first step in a larger
process of normalizing relations. That effort would still have to tackle
bigger questions such as the embargo, which only Congress can fully revoke,
as well as the future of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and
Cuba’s democracy record.

Freed Gitmo Detainees Pose New Threat, Republicans Say
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/29/freed-gitmo-detainees-pose-new-threat-republicans-say.html>
// The Daily Beast // Tim Mak - 5/29/15

There are growing concerns in some corners of the American government that
six former Guantanamo Bay detainees freed by the Obama administration could
pose a threat to the safety of U.S. personnel.

Those detainees were sent to Uruguay in December. And in recent months, the
U.S. Embassy in Montevideo has substantially expanded its defenses against
a possible threat, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The embassy has increased the number of guards present, as well as the size
of the embassy’s Marine Guard detachment, adding two more men to the
handful who were there previously.

The embassy has also taken steps to heighten security for employees. All
local hires have been ordered to park two to three blocks from the building
so that embassy guards can conduct surveillance more easily over American
cars and passengers parked nearby. Some local staff have taken that order
as disregard for the safety of foreign nationals working at the embassy.

In the past month, the receptionist at the embassy’s front desk has been
replaced with a guard, said a source familiar with the matter. And embassy
employees have received a training session on how to react if an attacker
managed to enter the embassy.

One State Department official characterized the increased security presence
as more or less routine, similar to steps taken at U.S. diplomatic missions
around the world following the 2012 Benghazi attacks. And the Obama
administration has insisted that the former Guantanamo detainees do not
represent a security threat.

But Republican lawmakers have been drawing attention to the six men,
arguing that they could present a threat to U.S. interests. The lawmakers
note that the six were released to Uruguay under refugee status, which
means that under Uruguayan law, government officials are barred from
monitoring or imposing travel restrictions on the former detainees.

“All six of them are hardened terrorists, who should...still be at
Guantanamo,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who has become one of the most
outspoken opponents of shutting down the Guantanamo facility. “It was a
mistake to transfer them there, it was certainly a mistake to transfer them
to a country that apparently did not give us adequate, if any, security
guarantees.”

The tiny South American country of Uruguay, population 3.3 million, has
become a flashpoint in the larger political battle over the closure of the
Guantanamo Bay detention center.

President Obama has been dedicated to closing the detention facility at
Guantanamo from the day he set foot in the White House. But the release of
the six men has become a nagging question his administration must now fend
off. For Republicans opposed to Guantanamo’s closure, the situation in
Uruguay has become the vehicle for criticizing the administration’s larger
policy of releasing cleared detainees to third countries.

And the questions Republicans have raised about national security
complicate efforts to close Guantanamo by creating doubts about whether
future transfers of detainees is wise.

The former detainees now in Uruguay were previously accused of having been
fighters with ties to terrorist groups. A Bush administration assessment,
concluded in 2008 and made public by WikiLeaks, said five of them posed a
“high risk” because they were “likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its
interests and allies.” The sixth posed a “medium risk.”

After Obama was elected, he ordered a review of every detainee at
Guantanamo. The six men were approved for transfer upon the unanimous
approval of the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice
Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the director of national
intelligence, and the State Department.

This Obama administration review, which involved a larger number of federal
agencies and was arguably more thorough, found in essence that the
intelligence used to draw conclusions for the Bush-era assessments was not
credible.

“It was the unanimous decision of six departments and agencies...that these
individuals should be transferred from Guantanamo, and could be transferred
in a manner that protects our national security and is consistent with our
humane treatment obligations,” said Ian Moss, the spokesman for the Office
of the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure at the State Department.

Beyond that, the Obama administration is hampered by how little it is able
or willing to say about the men. Many of the surrounding details about
these six former detainees are classified at the highest levels.

In a private meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee in May, closed
to the public to allow for the discussion of sensititve national security
matters, the discussion turned to the future of Guantanamo and the
recidivism rate of former detainees.

One senator cited the detainees released to Uruguay as a prime example of
why lawmakers should be concerned about terrorists re-engaging in
hostilities and trying to plot attacks after their release, according to
multiple congressional sources.

But the discussion of Gitmo detainees released to Uruguay was swiftly shut
down. Even in a session closed to the public, the cases involved
information that was so highly classified, some aides in the room had not
been cleared to hear about it.

So far, there is no public indication that the men have done anything
nefarious since their release in December 2014.

Several of the detainees camped out for several weeks this spring in front
of the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo to demand more compensation from the
Uruguayan government. And former detainee Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab
traveled to neighboring Argentina in February to urge that country to take
in Gitmo detainees, rankling Republicans.

In an April letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, House Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairman Edward Royce raised concerns about the former detainees’
threat to the U.S. Embassy.

After the detainees arrived in Uruguay, they were given housing six blocks
away from the embassy.

“I remain concerned that this close proximity to the Embassy, combined with
the apparent lack of host country mitigation measures, poses a potential
risk to the safety and security of our Embassy and its employees, including
local hires,” Royce wrote.

“The February 2015 travel of one of the individuals to Argentina
underscores the ease of travel afforded the former detainees now that they
are characterized as refugees in Uruguay,” Royce added. “This freedom of
widespread movement would seem to make effective mitigation, if attempted,
near impossible.”

Moss, the State Department spokesman, said he was unable to provide The
Daily Beast with additional information about steps taken to mitigate
potential security risks.

“I cannot discuss the specific assurances we receive from foreign
governments,” said Moss, who stressed that transfers only occur after
“detailed, specific conversations” with the receiving country about the
security threat a detainee could pose and the measures the country will
take to mitigate that threat.

Lawmakers have been lobbying the Obama administration publicly and
privately to release more details about the release of the detainees.

“Surely we didn’t release six hardened Guantanamo detainees to Uruguay
without a memorandum of understanding—without definite and specific
criteria under which the Uruguayan government was going to monitor these
detainees,” Cotton said.

Before Royce’s April letter, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote to Kerry in
January, asking for the government to release a written agreement between
the U.S. government and the Uruguayan government indicating “what security
measures...have been put into place to prevent their engaging in terrorism
related activities.”

And last week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker sent
another letter to Kerry—this time, a private one.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Corker likened the Uruguay transfers to
the former Taliban fighters sent to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe
Bergdahl’s freedom.

“Our office is conducting its proper oversight role to ensure the
administration provides—as it did in the case of Qatar—documentation
describing any commitments, understandings or agreements between the United
States and other countries relating to the transfer of Guantanamo Bay
detainees,” Corker said.

The displeasure at the release of the six former detainees to Uruguay is
not confined to the United States. Longtime Uruguayan lawmaker Jaime Trobo,
who belongs to a center-right opposition party, said coordination between
the Uruguayan and American governments occurred through Uruguay’s
president, without official approval from the country’s congress.

“All the initial process and the procedure related to the arrival of the
ex-prisoners from Guantanamo to Uruguay has lacked transparency,” Trobo
told The Daily Beast. “The information provided does not fulfill the
minimum requirement of substance for such a delicate situation.”

Trobo also questioned U.S. officials’ assurances that the ex-detainees pose
no national security threats.

“The United States has said publicly that these people are not a threat,”
Trobo said. “If so, why aren’t they able to enter the U.S.? That’s what we
ask ourselves here [in Uruguay].”

Corker, Cotton, and their staffs all declined to comment on or corroborate
details regarding embassy force protection measures and intelligence
methods.

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS

The Arrogance of Jeb Bush
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/the-arrogance-of-jeb-bush.html?_r=0>
// NYT // Timothy Egan – May 29, 2016

You thought he was the smart Bush. You thought he was the reasonable one.
You thought he was the Republican with one foot in the 21st century, the
man who wasn’t going to say crazy things to win the primary voter who
believes in crazy things. But you haven’t been paying attention to Jeb Bush.

Yes, he was strafed from both sides for his tortured and fact-challenged
explanations of the Iraq war. The fumbling is understandable: Bound by
family fealty, the fraternal load of the biggest foreign policy debacle of
our time, Jeb Bush can’t state the obvious.

But an equally astounding, and perhaps more absurd utterance, has not
received nearly as much attention — his climate change stance. Bush the
youngest believes the Earth is warming. No doubt, he’s willing to go
further out on a limb and conclude that heat expands, cold contracts and a
dolphin is not a fish.

That’s as far as he’ll go. He says the science is “convoluted,” even though
the latest assessment from international climate scientists states with 95
percent confidence that humans are the cause of a sick planet. That
obfuscation is also understandable. You simply cannot be a leader of the
Republican Party without appearing to know less than a fifth grader about
earth science.

The real stunner was a statement made earlier this month at a campaign
event. What bothers him is not the threat of megastorms, life-killing
droughts, city-burying sea rises — but experts in the scientific community
who are sounding such alarms. Those people.

“And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really
arrogant, to be honest with you,” said Bush. “It’s this intellectual
arrogance that now you can’t have a conversation about it even.”

Is it arrogant to say that smoking causes lung cancer? That you shouldn’t
text and drive? That the American diet and lifestyle cause Type 2 diabetes,
which is killing people? There is some wiggle room in each of those
assertions. But you test them at your peril. Since when did prudence become
a vice in a family whose presidential patriarch was guided by what
“wouldn’t be prudent”?

In that sense, Jeb Bush is the living example of another bit of truthiness
from science: Evolution does not always mean advancement.

In fables, in biblical parables, in history lessons mostly forgotten, a
single theme repeats itself: It’s arrogant to defy nature.

Arrogance is thinking you can build subdivisions in a flood plain, because
everyone around you is doing it.

Arrogance is putting a shopping center over an earthquake fault, knowing
full well that the collapse could kill hundreds of people.

Arrogance is paving the sponge of land that normally holds water during
epic rain events, thinking there will be no consequence.

Arrogance is lording over a planet where a majority of all species that
have ever lived are now extinct, without giving it a second thought.

Arrogance is the certainty that you can geoengineer your way out of
whatever mess you make.

Bush, a Roman Catholic convert, could ask Pope Francis about humility in
the face of nature. The pope has been outspoken about how the world’s poor
will be most affected by the rise in global temperatures, and the
responsibility to slow human-caused soiling of the Earth. In an upcoming
encyclical, he hopes to influence a global accord on climate change in
Paris next December.

Or Bush could ask his older brother, who cited the same arrogant bunch of
know-it-alls — the National Academy of Sciences — in stating, while
president, that the unsustainable increase in greenhouse gas “is due in
large part to human activity.”

Why is that so hard to say? Why are Republicans still debating whether the
house is on fire, when much of the rest of the world is ready to direct the
fire hoses?

One reason is that the Earth-is-doomed purists are annoying, with their
sanctimony, their humorlessness, their failure to embrace political nuance.
No president has been better on climate change than Barack Obama, and yet
influential voices in the environmental community consider him a traitor to
their cause.

Coming from Florida, much of which could be underwater in our children’s
lifetime, Jeb Bush knows better. He is reflective and well-informed about
his own health and weight loss. And he once spoke the language of common
sense about trying to restore a smidge of the wild in the
strip-mall-saturated Sunshine State.

But now he has to be dishonest to keep his tenuous hold among the top tier
of Republican candidates. He’s already out of line with his party on Common
Core school standards, and immigration. A trifecta of conservative heresy
would be enough to knock him out completely.

It’s too late — his embrace of science denial will not save him. It doesn’t
matter that he may rake in $100 million during the fake campaign, where he
can remain under the radar of nominal oversight by not formally announcing.
It doesn’t matter that he may yet win the Koch brothers primary, which
explains more than anything why he favors more fracking for oil and gas.

In addressing and assessing the great issues of the day, Jeb Bush has
disqualified himself to lead. On top of that, he’s politically inept. All
he has going for him is a certain arrogance, to use his word, that the name
Bush entitles him to be president.

A Message from President Clinton
<https://www.clintonfoundation.org/blog/2015/05/29/message-president-clinton>
// Clinton Foundation // President Clinton – May 29, 2015

Chelsea and I recently returned from a trip to Africa where we saw the
results of the work that you support through the Clinton Foundation. We
make this trip almost every year to see the work our Foundation, the
Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and CGI partners do, and the
people we're able to help.

As you all know, it’s the political season in America, so the purpose and
impact of the efforts your support makes possible has largely been ignored
in recent coverage of the Foundation. But we are and always have been a
non-partisan, inclusive foundation with lots of support from and
involvement by people across the political spectrum and governments from
right to left, all committed to our creative solutions-centered work.
That's why I am writing to you and our hundreds of thousands of other
supporters in the U.S. and around the world to let you know how grateful I
am for your support, and for our staff and our partners, and how determined
I am that our work will continue.

Next week, Donna Shalala will join the Foundation as President and CEO. She
will inherit a senior leadership who have years of experience in the NGO
and private sectors, and a talented, dedicated, diverse staff, all deeply
committed to keep doing the kind of inspiring work we saw in Africa. We
will also continue to look for ways to improve our reporting systems so
that we can operate as accurately, efficiently, and transparently as
possible – a goal to which we have been committed since day one.

I started the Clinton Foundation when I left the White House to continue
working on issues I had long cared about, where I believed I could still
make an impact. I grew up believing that if I worked hard enough I could
build a rewarding life, and entered public service to create more
opportunities for others and to empower them to seize those opportunities –
or as we say, to have better life stories. That same purpose has driven our
work at the Clinton Foundation – whether we're helping smallholder farmers
in Africa increase their yields or supporting women entrepreneurs in Latin
America as they build better lives for their families.

From the very beginning, the Clinton Foundation has intentionally taken a
different approach to addressing global challenges. Except to spur recovery
in the aftermath of disasters like the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane
Katrina, and, over a longer period, in Haiti, we don't primarily make
grants to other organizations. Instead, we implement and organize projects
ourselves by bringing partners together, including governments, businesses,
labor unions, philanthropies, other NGOs, and the people we're trying to
help, and join them on the ground to solve problems faster, better, and at
lower cost. We strive for innovative approaches to problem solving that are
sustainable and yield strong results. With each of our initiatives, we try
both to change lives today and offer a model for meaningful and replicable
future action. The best way to do that usually starts with forming
inclusive networks of all stakeholders. We incorporate data and metrics
into the Foundation's work and encourage others to help scale-up or
replicate our successful projects wherever they can touch more lives.

My work with the Clinton Foundation over the past 14 years has been one of
the most rewarding endeavors of my life, as every day I see how, with your
support, our programs change lives. While in Africa, I met many of the
people we're helping build better futures, provide for their families, and
strengthen their communities. Their lives tell the real stories of the
Clinton Foundation, and they are worth hearing.

In Tanzania, I visited Wazia Chawala. She is a farmer and a single mother
raising seven children. She is also one of 85,000 people in Tanzania,
Malawi, and Rwanda participating in our Clinton Development Initiative's
Anchor Farm program. The program operates commercial farms and partners
with local smallholder farmers to provide them with access to high-quality,
low-cost seed and fertilizer, training in improved agricultural techniques,
and transportation to market. Participants have more than doubled their
yields on average, increased their incomes by even greater margins, and
dramatically improved their quality of life. When I met Wazia, she told me
how her increased productivity has helped her improve her home and keep her
seven children in school. She is forging her own path out of poverty with a
system that is life-changing, sustainable, and replicable. What is working
for 85,000 farmers could work for millions.

In Tanzania, I also visited a dispensary run by CHAI that is helping to
make life-saving vaccines more affordable and readily available to people
in rural areas, where 70 percent of the country's people live. In addition
to negotiating price reductions for the pneumonia and rotavirus vaccines,
CHAI is using innovative solar-powered refrigerators to preserve the
vaccines – which are only effective when stored in cool temperatures – in
the remote areas of the country that lack electricity. I met with several
mothers who have had their children vaccinated through the program, which
is saving 11,000 lives annually, including one woman who walked twelve
miles to get her baby vaccinated for the first time. Stories like that are
why I started this work, and why I am more committed than ever to
continuing it.

As I often say, there can be a big difference between the headlines and the
trend lines. We mostly hear about the headlines – but the trend lines can
tell us more about what is happening in most people's lives. When I look at
what the Foundation has accomplished over the last 14 years, I believe we
are helping to move the trend lines in the right direction. 9.9 million
people in more than 70 countries now have access to low-cost, life-saving
HIV/AIDS medicines through the Clinton Health Access Initiative; 16 million
kids in more than 28,000 schools in the U.S. now have healthier food and
more physical activity options; and members of the Clinton Global
Initiative have made 3,200 commitments that have already improved 430
million lives in more than 180 countries.

That's the real story of the Clinton Foundation – people coming together
across traditional divides to help others live up to their full potential.
We are grateful that you have been a part of it.

We'll keep trying to reach our goals faster, better, and in the most
cost-effective way. We'll continue to strive for accuracy and transparency
and, most important, keep working on the mission and measuring our progress
every step of the way. That commitment to impact, innovation, and
efficiency is what you expect from us, and what we want to deliver for
years to come.

Thank you for your support of the Clinton Foundation. Together, we can
build a future we can all be proud to share.

I encourage you to visit clintonfoundation.org/our-work to learn more about
the way the Clinton Foundation works and our life-changing programs around
the world.

New FCC robocall rules concern pollsters
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/new-robocall-rules-fcc-pollsters-polling-118422.html?hp=t1_r>
// Politico // Steven Shepard – May 29, 2015

For many Americans, the idea of technology that can block automated
telephone calls sounds like a solution to all those annoying “robocalls”
and interrupted family dinners.

But to the nation’s pollsters and campaign professionals, many of whom are
gearing up for the 2016 election cycle, a federal government proposal
circulated Wednesday to encourage phone companies to embrace the technology
feels like an existential threat.

Story Continued Below

As a result, they say, Americans might soon know much less about what they
think about everything from which candidates are gaining or losing ground
to what issues voters care about most. And political campaigns might be
forced to abandon tools they currently use to reach large numbers of voters
in a short period of time.

The Federal Communications Commission says it receives more complaints
about unwanted phone calls than any other issue. As a response, the FCC is
asking phone companies to offer services to their customers that block
calls placed by an automatic dialer.

Pollsters are asking to be exempted from the new guidelines, arguing that
legitimate researchers shouldn’t be grouped with telemarketers and
debt-collectors. But, for now, the FCC has no plans to establish a
carve-out for telephone surveys.

In a blog post on the FCC’s website on Wednesday, chairman Tom Wheeler said
that the commission was “giving the green light for robocall-blocking
technology.”

“The FCC wants to make it clear: Telephone companies can — and in fact
should — offer consumers robocall-blocking tools,” Wheeler wrote.

The commission plans on considering the rules at a June 18 meeting in
Washington.

But survey researchers say those tools would spell their doom: They would
undercut a key element of the science behind modern telephone polling and
make the work they can do cost-prohibitive.

When reached by POLITICO Campaign Pro, a few pollsters said they assumed
that, as with the federal “Do Not Call” registry, the new guidelines would
apply only to telemarketers, not to legitimate survey research.

Not so, says the research industry’s lobbyist in Washington.

The proposed rules are “potentially devastating to the survey, opinion and
marketing research profession,” said Howard Fienberg, director of
governmental affairs at the Marketing Research Association. “The FCC and
the chairman are playing fast and loose with their terms, using unwanted
calls, telemarketing calls, and robocalls interchangeably, and conflating
illegal telemarketing scams with legitimate calls.”

The FCC, which says the new rules would be a win for consumers and were
informed by extensive public comments, declined to address pollsters’
claims that they are being unfairly lumped with telemarketers when it comes
to blocking automated calls. But a fact sheet accompanying the proposal
said there would only be “very limited and specific exceptions for urgent
circumstances,” such as alerting bank customers to possible fraud or
reminding patients about important prescription refills.

Fienberg says he plans to meet with commission staff over the next two
weeks to convince them that legitimate survey research should be exempt,
too.

A robocall ban already exists for cell phones; the FCC requires pollsters
to manually dial cell phone numbers, which makes including cell phones — an
increasing necessity as Americans abandon their landline phones — much more
expensive.

The FCC’s proposed rules would affect telephone polls of all kinds.
Americans could block all automated surveys — which were already prohibited
from calling cell phones — conducted by a recorded voice.

Polls conducted by live interviewers also use automated dialers — and the
FCC’s Wheeler made clear those would also be affected, writing that the
proposal would “clarify the definition of ‘autodialers’ to include any
technology with the potential to dial random or sequential numbers.”

That random-dialing technology, pollsters say, is an underpinning of the
science behind survey research. Using a random-digit dialer means that
every phone number has an equal chance of being selected for the survey.

Random-digit dialing is used by most of the public political pollsters. And
while they will still be able to use randomizers to generate numbers to
call, operators will then have to dial manually those who’ve elected to
block automated calls, as they do for cell phones.

Even private campaign pollsters who rely on lists of registered voters
would be affected. The landline numbers matched to the voter files they use
have traditionally been called using an auto-dialer.

The industry has been fighting the restrictions on calling cell phones for
years; it costs roughly twice as much per cell-phone respondent because of
the added time of dialing their number manually and the fact cell-phone
users are less likely to pick up the phone and agree to an interview than
those reached on landlines.

“The existing TCPA restrictions on using an autodialer to call a cell phone
have long since become archaic, as 58.8 percent of American households are
only reachable on a cell phone,” Fienberg said, referring to the Telephone
Consumer Protection Act.

All pollsters can expect their costs to rise significantly if the proposal
is adopted. For nonprofit organizations and universities that rely on
professional call centers, that means they’ll likely conduct fewer surveys.
Colleges that use student operators will require more participants to
maintain their current polling levels.

The news media — already stretched thin by shrinking budgets — will likely
cut back on polling as well. We will see fewer high-quality surveys to
gauge both the state of the horse-race and the factors and issues informing
voters’ decisions.

Political candidates will be forced to spend more of their campaign cash
for the same volume of polling, which won’t be a particularly big issue for
well-funded presidential hopefuls, but could hurt downballot candidates who
rely on smaller budgets.

“If you’re talking about a $50 million or $100-million campaign,”
Republican pollster Jon McHenry said, “you can justify those costs by
making your TV and your direct mail campaign as targeted as they can be.”

And it’s not just polling: Campaigns and other groups use automated calls
to reach large numbers of voters to deliver political messages.

“Campaigns have always used robo-calls to quickly communicate with voters —
especially late in campaigns,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster
who worked for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race.

If the new regulations are approved, they would take effect immediately.
That doesn’t mean phone companies would be able to deploy the technology
next month, but it’s likely pollsters will be forced to adapt before the
bulk of their 2016 election polling.

The first two big tests for pollsters will come over the next four months,
when Fox News and CNN will use poll averages to determine which Republican
presidential candidates will appear on stages in the first two debates in
August and September, respectively.

Some pollsters see a silver lining, however: If landline respondents have
to be hand-dialed just like cell phones, there’s no reason for pollsters
and groups who sponsor polls to skimp on cell-phone calls to save money.
“In round numbers, it equalizes the costs between cell phones and
landlines,” said McHenry.

But ultimately, the new regulations, if adopted, could be another
significant blow for the telephone polling industry, which has been reeling
from Americans’ move away from landlines and increasing embrace of mobile
phones. The FCC proposal would further encode rules treating pollsters just
like telemarketers when it comes to working over the phone.

“The new regulations would just make a bad situation much worse,
threatening the integrity and results of research and the companies,
organizations and governments that rely upon it,” Fienberg said.

The difficulties with phone polling have led many firms to start conducting
surveys over the Internet. But roughly one-in-10 adults live in households
without web access, primarily older and lower-income Americans. And some
survey researchers balk at using a self-selecting, non-random sample to
represent the opinions of the entire population.

Pollsters, meanwhile, are caught in the middle: Phone polling is getting
significantly harder, and Internet polling is, for many, not yet a viable
replacement.

A few pollsters predicted that if the new regulations are wide-ranging
enough to complicate existing campaign practices like robocalls and
polling, politicians will find a way to scuttle them before they are
adopted.

“Also, wouldn’t it kill ‘tele-town halls?’” Newhouse, the GOP pollster,
asked in an email, referring to the increasingly utilized form of
constituent engagement. “If members of Congress believed those were at
risk, they’d probably revolt!”