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Category: Politics
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Two Republican dynasties are married in Crawford, Texas
The private wedding yesterday of First Daughter Jenna Bush and Henry Hager in Crawford, Texas, brought together two Republican families.
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The Hager name does not constitute a national brand, but in Virginia the family is well-connected and well-known.
Henry Hager’s father, John H. Hager, 71, was an executive with the American Tobacco Company, as was his father, Virgil Hager.
John Hager is also a former lieutenant governor of Virginia and a former director of homeland security in Virginia. He’s now the chair of the Virginia Republican Party.
Beyond that, he has been an advocate and spokesman for people with disabilities since he contracted a near fatal case of polio in 1973 when he was 34.
Hager, who uses a wheelchair and competes in wheelchair races, lost a promotion with American Tobacco when he went through months of treatment for his illness.
“I had gone to the top and got knocked down to the bottom,” Hager told a Purdue University alumni publication.
But after his rehabilitation, Hager returned to the company and worked his way back up the corporate ladder
In 2004, he was appointed the assistant secretary, office of special education and rehabilitative services in the U.S. Department of Education. He served in that position until August 2007.
Jenna Bush, 26, and Henry Hager, 30, met in 2004 when both were working to get her father re-elected. Hager proposed in August 2007 on Cadillac Mountain in Maine’s Acadia National Park.
She recalled being awakened at 4 a.m. by Hager so they could catch the sunrise at the spot where the morning light first hits the United States.
“I did not want to go hiking at 4 in the morning,” she told ABC News. “It was freezing. But we got up, and we hiked in the dark for an hour and a half, and then when we got towards the top, with the sunrise, he asked me.”
A graduate of Wake Forest University, Hager will receive his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business later this month.
He’s a former aide to presidential advisor Karl Rove. He also was an economic policy aide to Carlos Guiterrez, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
After the honeymoon – the destination hasn’t been disclosed – Hager will begin a job with Constellation Energy, a power supplier.
The couple will live in Baltimore, where Jenna Bush plans on returning to teaching.
A graduate of the University of Texas, she has taught in a charter school in Washington. She also served an internship in Latin America for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
She’s the author of Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope. It chronicles the life of a teen single mother with AIDS in Panama. Jenna Bush and her mother, Laura, are the authors of the recently published children’s book, Read All About It!
Jenna Bush selected her twin sister, Barbara Bush, to be maid of honor at her wedding.
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Silicon Valley Startup Mentality Boosted Obamas Campaign
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Silicon Valley startup mentality boosted Obama’s campaign (Muckety.com)
Think of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois as an Internet startup that began small and then took off, suggests Joshua Green in the June issue of Atlantic magazine.
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“He wasn’t anybody’s obvious bet to succeed, not least because the market for a Democratic nominee already had its Microsoft.”
But the Silicon Valley venture capitalists were impressed by Obama’s enthusiasm and newness, and with their help and Internet savvy, Obama eventually out-performed the fund-raising efforts of his main opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
The difference between the two campaigns was apparent this week, after Obama scored a convincing primary win in North Carolina and Clinton came through with a narrow victory in Indiana.
The Obama campaign emerged with millions of dollars on hand. It raised $134 million in the first quarter of this year, $240 million since the campaign started. And it has plenty of cash on hand for the remaining primaries.
In contrast, even though it has raised $195 million overall, the Clinton campaign is almost running on empty. Clinton loaned her campaign $6.4 million recently, adding to an earlier loan of $5 million.
Green details how Obama’s fundraisers created a money machine that connected to an untapped army of small contributors but still reached out to monied people with monied friends.
Their first correct move was making a sustained effort to recruit Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
“In a colossal error in judgment, the Clinton campaign never made a serious approach (in Silicon Valley) assuming that Obama would fade and that money and cutting-edge technology couldn’t possibly factor into what was expected to be an easy race,” Green writes.
Obama’s relative youth and inexperience was not a negative in the minds of the California venture capitalists.
“No one in Silicon Valley sits here and thinks, ‘You need massive inside-the-Beltway experience,’” said Obama supporter John Roos, CEO of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, a Palo Alto firm that advises startups and venture capital firms. “Sergey and Larry were in their early 20s when they started Google.”
From the start, the venture capitalists did for Obama what they would do for any start-up; they hit up their friends for money.
Mark P. Gorenberg, managing director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and a fundraiser for John Kerry in 2004 and for Democratic Congressional candidates in 2006, early on committed to bring in $250,000 for Obama.
Like Gorenberg, Steven J. Spinner, an entrepreneur and CEO of Sports Potential Inc., also became a member of Obama’s national finance committee and pledged to raise $250,000. “I’m a startup guy,” he told Green. “We take measured bets. … If you’ve got the right plan and the right leadership, the game can be won. That’s how I looked at Obama.”
But Green stresses that in addition to money, the Silicon Valley connection carried with it “the technology and the ethos” that propelled Obama into the lead.
The campaign has used key Internet tools to reach hundreds of thousands of small donors. Social networking sites have been especially important to the effort.
My.BarackObama.com connects Obama supporters, not only raising funds, but also creating a vast community of sorts. Similar and larger groups have formed on MySpace and Facebook.com.
“The social-networking model provided Obama with something that insurgents before him … always lacked, a means of capturing excitement and translating it into money,” Green concludes.
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Clinton campaign scrubs name of Fox News military analyst from website Muckety.com
The Clinton campaign has deleted the name of a controversial military analyst from a press release published months ago on the Clinton web site.
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Scales may be a familiar face to those following the details of the war in Iraq. He has been on television and radio frequently, acting as a paid military analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio.
Last month David Barstow of the New York Times provided a detailed account of how the Pentagon used Scales and other retired military officers as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” to spin the Bush administration’s views on Iraq when they acted as military analysts for the media.
Members of the group were invited to private meetings with senior Pentagon officials where they were briefed on administration talking points. They were also taken on paid junkets to Iraq, to see the war firsthand and talk with officers in the field.
The Times investigation revealed that Scales and some of the other retired officers were in positions to profit from their Pentagon connections by consulting with and/or lobbying for defense contractors.
Scales is the CEO of Colgen, a company which bills itself as “America’s premier landpower advocate – new, lean, well-connected and able to meet the needs of any client or individual.”
Clients listed on the company web site include such defense industry heavyweights as Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and Raytheon. The CIA and NSA are also on its “growing list of satisfied clients.”
Today, six months after the Veteran’s Day event, mention of Scales has been scrubbed from the press release on Clinton’s campaign web site – well, sort of.
Although the English version of the press release does not list Scales’s name, Muckety found a Spanish version of the release on the Clinton web site that refers to Scales. A list of the advisory committee members in the English version instead contains a blank space where Scales’s name appears in the Spanish version (see images below).
Redacting information from earlier publications could backfire by drawing attention to the issue, said Barbara O’Connor, professor of political communications at California State University in Sacramento.
The campaign “appears to be trying to distance themselves from (Scales). The motive for the deletion is not clear without an addendum and it causes suspicion,” she said. “I would err on the side of being transparent. You took it out and didn’t tell us why and it makes us suspicious.”
The Clinton campaign insists that it removed Scales’ name at his request last November because of his role as a cable network analyst. (See Editor’s note below.)
Editor’s note: Our original lead paragraph for this post read, “The Clinton campaign, in an apparent effort to distance itself from a supporter who has received negative publicity of late, seems to have deleted his name from a press release published months ago on the Clinton web site.”
We changed the sentence after receiving the following response from the Clinton campaign: “Because of his role as a cable network analyst, Maj Gen Scales asked in November to have his name removed from partisan press releases and the campaign complied at the time. Please correct your story to reflect this.”
We’re still awaiting the campaign’s answers to our follow-up questions about why no mention of the redaction was made on the web site and why General Scales agreed to be on the campaign’s Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary Committee if he was concerned about being viewed as a partisan.
English version of press release (PDF)
Spanish version of press release (PDF)[Muckety.com](https://createpositivechange.org/2008/05/09/clinton-campaign-scrubs-name-of-fox-news-military-analyst-from-website/2681
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4br Penthousduplex in Luxury Obama Blg Great Location
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4br penthous/duplex in luxury Obama blg, great location (Muckety)
Emotions are running so high in this year’s presidential race that real estate agents may want to start promoting buildings not only for their park views and their square footage, but for their residents’ political leanings.
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Not surprisingly, most of the top addresses were clustered in a relatively small area around Central Park.
The top money-getters in the top 20 buildings are shown on the map below – M for McCain, C for Clinton and O for Obama.
Not all the addresses are residential buildings. Some contributors – including Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone – used business locations. The two private equity managers, at 345 Park Avenue, are backing McCain.
Leonard and Evelyn Lauder, reporting their contributions from the offices of Estee Lauder, at 767 Fifth Avenue, support Clinton.
Among top residential buildings, the historic Beresford, at 7 West 81st Street, went for Obama. Clinton drew the majority of dollars donated by residents of the San Remo apartments, on Central Park West.
([Muckety](https://createpositivechange.org/2008/05/08/4br-penthousduplex-in-luxury-obama-blg-great-location/2671)
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G. Gordon Liddy connection could plague John McCain
Writing in the Chicago Tribune recently, columnist Steve Chapman suggested that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, could have a friend problem.
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Liddy, 77, contributed several thousand dollars to McCain’s senatorial campaigns, and this year he gave $1,000 to the presidential campaign.
McCain has appeared on Liddy’s show. And in November he praised Liddy for his adherence “to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great,” Chapman reports.
The McCain-Liddy connection would seem to be much stronger that the link between Sen. Barack Obama, McCain’s possible Democratic opponent for president, and William Ayers, the former member of the Weather Underground. The radical group formed in the late 1960s was involved in several bombings.
Ayers contributed $200 to Obama when he was running for the state Senate in Illinois. And the two served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago.
Obama condemned the actions of the Weather Underground. But he also noted that he was “an 8-year-old child” when they took place.
McCain criticized the Obama-Ayers connection when it became a campaign issue between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“I think not only a repudiation but an apology for even having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people,” McCain said. Chapman suggests that McCain should do a little repudiating and apologizing of his own for his relationship with Liddy.
An Army veteran of the Korean War era, Liddy graduated from Fordham Law School and became an FBI special agent. Later he served as a prosecutor in New York’s Dutchess County.
His effort to convict counterculture Dr. Timothy Leary on drugs charges then was unsuccessful. Years later, Leary and Liddy teamed up on the speakers circuit.
Liddy joined the White House Staff during Richard Nixon’s first term in office and eventually became part of the White House Special Investigations Unit. The covert group of so-called plumbers tracked down leaks of information and spied on perceived opponents of the administration.
Liddy and E. Howard Hunt Jr., a former CIA agent, put together the 1972 plan to break into and bug the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. Along with the five men caught on the scene, they were eventually convicted on charges of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping.
Liddy refused to cooperate with prosecutors. He received a 20-year sentence that was commuted by President Jimmy Carter after more than four years of time served.
He emerged from prison in September 1977 penniless and unrepentant and remained silent on his role in Watergate until the 1980 publication of his memoir, Will.
In the book, he acknowledged that he once volunteered to kill columnist Jack Anderson, an offer that was not accepted. And he wrote that, after the Watergate break-in went bad, he volunteered to be assassinated.
“‘If someone wants to shoot me, just tell me what corner to stand on and I’ll be there,’” Liddy remembered telling John Dean, the White House counsel.
Liddy has written several more books and become wealthy through his talk show and his speaking appearances. He has also been in films and television shows, including a stint as a competitor on “Celebrity Fear Factor.”
At times, his statements have gotten him in trouble, as when he said, “If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they’re wearing flak jackets and you’re better off shooting for the head.”
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Some of the biggest Republican donors aren’t giving to John McCain
John McCain may be feeling a backlash from big GOP donors angry with his support of reforms limiting the flow of “soft money” to political campaigns.
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MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.In the 2004 election cycle, 37 major contributors gave a combined $44 million to the conservative Republican group, the Progress for America Voter Fund (PFA-VF). The group, operating as a 527 organization, took in large donations exceeding the limits that candidates and parties can accept.
Last year, the Federal Election Commission ruled that the PFA-VF violated election law by failing to register as a political committee, failing to report contributions and expenditures, taking individual contributions of more than $5,000, and accepting corporate and/or union money. The FEC fined the PFA-VF $750,000 – the third largest in FEC history – and required it to file donor reports.
A Muckety analysis of the most recent FEC filings for the 37 major donors to PFA-VF shows:
- Only 14 (38%) have contributed to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign – total $36,600.
- 13 (35%) contributed to Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign – total $28,700.
- Nine of the 37 (24%) contributed to Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign – total $20,700.
- 26 (70%) contributed to the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election cycle – total almost $1 million.
- Eight (22%) have yet to make a contribution to any candidate for president in the 2008 election cycle.
- Two (5%) have given to Democratic candidates for president.
Aubrey K. McClendon, chairman and CEO Chesapeake Energy Corporation, appears to be the leader of the anyone but McCain camp. He gave the maximum contribution to six candidates including Giuliani, Tommy Thompson, Romney, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson and most recently Barack Obama. He has not contributed to McCain’s campaign according to the latest FEC filings. McClendon gave $250,000 to the Progress for American Voter Fund. McClendon’s wife Kathleen has given the maximum amount to Rudy Giuliani and Bill Richardson.
Robert A. Day, Chairman of the Trust Co. of West, has donated the maximum amount to five candidates: Romney, Clinton, Chris Dodd, and in the latest reporting period to Obama and McCain. Day gave $300,000 to the Progress for American Voter Fund.
Harold C. Simmons, CEO of Contran Corp., has donated the maximum amount to four candidates: McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Duncan Hunter. Simmons gave $500,000 to the Progress for American Voter Fund.
Harlan Crow, chairman and CEO of Crow Holdings, donated the maximum amount to three candidates: Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and most recently John McCain. Crow gave $500,000 to the Progress for American Voter Fund.
Fourteen of the donors have given the maximum contribution to just one candidate. And of this group, only four gave to McCain: Alex G. Spanos, Paul E. Singer, Peter M. Nicholas Sr. and William C. Powers.
Eight of the donors have not given to any candidate. They are Dawn Arnall, Alice Walton, Jay Van Andel, Bernard Marcus, Carl H. Lindner, Marian S. Ware, Marilyn Ware and Paul Ware. Marian Ware died in February of this year at the age of 91. These eight gave over $13 million to the Progress for American Voter Fund.
Five of the donors also gave $100,000 or more to the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, another conservative 527 organization. They are Carl H. Lindner, Aubrey K. McClendon, Bob Perry, Boone Pickens and Harold C. Simmons.
John McCain has indicated that he may accept the $84.1 million in public financing that is available to candidates in the general election. Barack Obama has said that he may take a pass on the public financing of his campaign if he is the eventual Democratic nominee. Obama’s campaign has set fundraising records with $234.8 million raised through March 31, 2008. By contrast, McCain raised $71.7 million during the same period.
A Wall Street Journal report says that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has outlined a “McCain Victory 08″ fund as a way to get around the $2,300 limit that contributors can give during the primary and again during the general election. Here is what the Journal reported:
The new structure allows up to $70,000 in individual contributions by channeling the money into different McCain-centric funds. The first $2,300 of that would go to McCain’s primary campaign. The Republican National Committee would receive $28,500 of the donation. The remaining funds would be divided equally, up to $10,000 a piece, among four states the campaign has designated as battlegrounds for November: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico.
If the big donors continue to sit on the sidelines McCain’s best option may still be public financing.
Where are the big GOP dollars going? Contributions to: Donor name McCain Romney Giuliani PFA-VF RNC – 2004 Dawn Arnall $0 $0 $0 $5,000,000 $48,250 Rick J. Caruso $0 $2,300 $0 $100,000 $50,000 John W. Childs $0 $4,200 $0 $250,000 $50,000 Harlan Crow $2,300 $0 $2,300 $500,000 $0 Robert A. Day $2,300 $2,300 $0 $300,000 $50,000 Richard M. DeVos $0 $1,000 $0 $2,000,000 $25,000 Lawrence J. Ellison $0 $0 $2,300 $100,000 $0 Richard T. Farmer $0 $2,300 $0 $300,000 $0 C. Boyden Gray $2,300 $0 $0 $100,000 $50,000 David C. Hanna $0 $500 $2,300 $175,000 $50,000 B. Wayne Hughes Sr. $0 $2,300 $0 $1,000,000 $50,000 E. Floyd Kvamme $0 $0 $2,300 $100,000 $47,500 Carl H. Lindner $0 $0 $0 $1,000,000 $20,600 Bernard Marcus $0 $0 $0 $1,050,000 $42,500 Aubrey K. McClendon $0 $2,300 $2,300 $250,000 $0 Robert C. McNair $0 $0 $2,300 $1,250,000 $25,000 Peter M. Nicholas Sr. $2,300 $0 $0 $500,000 $40,000 Jerry Perenchio $2,300 $0 $0 $9,000,000 $25,000 Bob Perry $2,100 $2,300 $0 $3,000,000 $0 T. Boone Pickens Jr. $0 $0 $2,300 $2,500,000 $0 Lonnie Ken Pilgrim $4,600 $0 $0 $100,000 $25,000 William C. Powers $2,300 $0 $0 $250,000 $25,000 Robert Rosenkranz $2,300 $0 $2,300 $100,000 $0 Robert R. Rowling $0 $2,300 $0 $1,000,000 $45,000 Thomas A. Saunders III $0 $2,300 $0 $300,000 $50,000 Harold C. Simmons $2,300 $2,300 $2,300 $500,000 $0 Paul E. Singer $2,300 $0 $0 $1,500,000 $0 Alex G. Spanos $2,300 $0 $0 $5,000,000 $50,000 James E. Stephenson $4,600 $0 $0 $500,000 $25,000 John M. Templeton $0 $2,300 $0 $100,000 $24,550 Jay Van Andel $0 $0 $0 $2,000,000 $27,750 Kenny Troutt $2,300 $0 $0 $500,000 $0 J. Ronald Terwilliger $0 $0 $0 $100,000 $50,000 Alice Walton $0 $0 $0 $2,600,000 $25,000 Marian S. Ware $0 $0 $0 $750,000 $25,000 Marilyn Ware $0 $0 $0 $550,000 $37,500 Paul Ware $0 $0 $0 $100,000 $0 Totals $36,600 $28,700 $20,700 $44,425,000 $983,650 Notes:
Fred Thompson received the maximum contribution from Harlan Crow, C. Boyden Gray and Robert C. McNair.
Tommy Thompson received the maximum contribution from Aubrey K. McClendon.
Mike Huckabee received the maximum contribution from Kenny Troutt and J. Ronald Terwilliger
Duncan Hunter received the maximum contribution from Harold C. Simmons.
Sam Brownback received the maximum contribution from Jerry Perenchio
Robert A. Day donated the maximum contribution to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd.
Aubrey K. McClendon donated the maximum contribution to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.
PFA-VF is the Progress for American Voter Fund
RNC – 2004 are donations to the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election cycle.
Source: Federal Election Commission filings
