Domenic Recchia, go home.

Brooklyn City Councilman Domenic Recchia has been making the rounds on Staten Island in recent weeks. Some speculated that the Daily News Knucklehead award winner( http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2006/12/26/2006-12-26_how_stupid_can...) was visiting the forgotten borough because he was seeking citywide office. Others correctly speculated that he was contemplating running a primary against Steve Harrison for the right to attempt to unseat Vito Fossella, New York City’s only Republican member of Congress, who represents all of Staten Island and a portion of Brooklyn. Crain’s and the Staten Island Advance confirmed his potentially disastrous for those wanting to Veto Vito, ambitions.

Brooklyn attorney Harrison ran a gallant campaign last year, losing by a smaller percentage of the vote than any of Fossella’s opponents since he supplanted the Molinari dynasty in 1997. Harrison accomplished this despite being out spent 12-1 by Fossella, largely because people like Recchia, who represents a tiny portion of the Congressional District in the Council, did squat for Steve.

Harrison has not formally announced his repeat candidacy yet, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he’s likely to run based on his ubiquitous presence on Staten Island since the election. He also couldn’t announce because of party chair John Lavelle’s death and three first quarter 2007 special elections in Staten Island.

The City Board of Elections denied Independence Party candidate to replace the late John Lavelle representing Staten Island’s North Shore in the March 27 Special Election Kelvin Alexander’s bid to place his made up Family First line (Not to be confused with Working Families which supports Democratic opponent Matt Titone ) as an additional line on the ballot. The board ruled that 611 of the petition’s 1616 signatures were invalid, leaving him short of the 1100 he needed for that additional line.

Alexander, a Staten Island Democratic County Committee member, is running on the Independence line and potentially turning a potential easy Democratic win into an opportunity for Republican Rose Margarella because the party chose Titone over him. He is undecided if he’ll fight the ruling with the state Supreme Court.

Alexander has accused any challenge of his fabricated party petition as marginalizing minority voters. I find that a stretch since he’s already on the ballot as a better known party’s candidate.

I also need to clarify that I am supporting Titone in this race. I have donated money to Titone, campaigned with Matt and have a Titone sign on my front lawn. There are some comments on the Link TextStaten Island Advance’s SIlive political forum that take out of context my initial backing of Alexander in the Daily Gotham. Although I would have voted for Alexander in the first round of voting at the County Convention had I been allowed to participate, I would have switched to Titone in subsequent rounds. Also for the SIlivers who read my blog, I was not one of the January Committee additions thought loyal to Olivari. I was told I was added in June 2006 and still haven’t been named to the Committee and thus still can not vote in County matters.

Well, I just keep finding more and more evidence that the Democratic Party is the Party of ALL Americans. Honestly, I'm not even looking for this info, I just keep coming across it.

Among religious Christians, there really is a bias towards Republicans, unlike the myths about Jewish voters, young voters and Asian-American voters. But the Republican bias is decreasing. From Street Prophets:

Dramatic shift of evangelical and Catholic votes

Catholic Shift - 16 point swing to Dems nationally since 2004

White Evangelical Shift - 16 point swing to Dems nationally since 2004.

10-point Dem gain among weekly chuchgoers up to near parity D46/R53

The Republicans are losing touch with their base. I am sure they are scratching their heads about why this is happening. Well, I can tell them: it's because the modern Republican Party has become a bunch of corrupt, right wing extremists with no real philosophical connection with real American values. No one likes Bush anymore.

Well, after writing about the Jewish vote and youth vote going overwhelmingly Dem this year, I found the following from the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund:

Asian American voters in eight states continued a decade-long shift to support Democratic candidates, with 79% of those polled favoring Democrats in Tuesday's congressional and state elections. According to preliminary results of a nonpartisan, multilingual exit poll of over 4,600 Asian American voters, released today by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Democratic candidates in closely-watched races in Virginia, New Jersey and other states were consistently buoyed by Asian American voter turnout.

So much for the myth of Asian-Americans being overwhelmingly Republican. The article goes on and breaks down the importance of this vote by state:

Virginia Senate: After maintaining a slim lead, Democratic candidate Jim Webb was declared the winner by 0.3% of the total vote (49.6%) beating Republican incumbent Sen. George Allen (49.3%), best known among Asian Americans for his derogatory “macaca” remark to a South Asian campaign worker. According to AALDEF’s exit poll of more than 250 Asian American voters, 76% voted for Jim Webb, 21% voted for Sen. Allen, and 3% voted for Glenda Parker.

Well, I report below that the Jewish vote is as overwhelming Democratic as ever. Apparently so is the youth vote.

From Reuters:

Young Americans voted in the largest numbers in at least 20 years in congressional elections, energized by the Iraq war and giving a boost to Democrats, pollsters said on Wednesday.

About 24 percent of Americans under the age of 30, or at least 10 million young voters, cast ballots in Tuesday's elections that saw Democrats make big gains in Congress. That was up 4 percentage points from the last mid-term elections in 2002.

"This looks like the highest in 20 years," said Mark Lopez, research director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which compiled the data based on exit polls...

Rock the Vote, a youth-and-civics group, said young voters favored Democrats by a 22-point margin, nearly three times the margin Democrats earned among other age groups and dealing a potentially decisive blow to Republicans in tight races.

YAY ROCK THE VOTE! They do good work!

That's the question posed in the New York Times' article Republicans Keep Control of the Senate in New York. I hate to say it, but I have to agree with Michael Cooper :

For Democrats who have long sought to take control of a Senate in New York that has seemed stubbornly out of reach even though the state has 5.5 million registered Democrats and only 3.1 million registered Republicans, 2006 proved to be a squandered opportunity.

Some Democrats believed that too little was done on Senate races to take advantage of a year when their party got almost all the breaks on the rest of the statewide ticket. Republicans, by contrast, worked feverishly to protect their majority. For the Republicans, it was a critical fight: since many of them had already written off the governor’s race, they concentrated on the Senate hoping to retain a power base in Albany.

Controlling even one house of the Legislature, they knew, would effectively give them veto power over much of what goes on in the state: they would have to approve all of Mr. Spitzer’s budgets, agree to his legislative proposals, and even give their approval to many important construction projects and grand plans around the state.

This was history in the making. Don't anyone downplay it. As pointed out by Michael Bouldin, "for the first time in American history, a political party lost no seats it was defending. Ain't never happened in 230 years, folks." This was historic.

But there is one very key lesson to be learned by us...by Democrats and by the left in general. This was won big because we worked together. When we are united, Democrats win. When we let the Republicans divide and conquor us, we lose. It is up to us to maintain that unity. Unity does not mean conformity. Mostly it means mutual respect even when we disagree.

So who were the big players in our victory? I think there are several key players. In no particular order:

Act Blue: $17,419,765 raised since 2004. Mostly small donors, not that "soft money" Republicans love so much.

MoveOn: targeted ads in some "safe" Republican districts made those districts so unsafe for Republican that Democrats won. CT-5, IN-2, NY-20, and NH-2 shifted after MoveOn.org ads went on the air and we wound up winning them.

But that ain't all. They then set up the most ambitious phone bank in history, making 6 million calls to voters by election day. This was probably the biggest GOTV effort in history.

But that ain't all...they now are offering a $250,000 reward to anyone who can give evidence of election fraud that leads to a conviction.

Howard Dean: we never would have won so big in Indiana or scared them so much in Wyoming and Idaho and Tennessee had it not been for Dean's 50-state strategy. Chuck Schumer's more targeted Senate strategy made sense for the Senate, but Howard Dean gave the states the ability to exploit Republican weaknesses when they appeared. Probably half our pick ups are thanks to this new infrastructure Dean has helped build in states that previously were ignored as being "too red." 2005 was a successful test of the 50-state strategy. 2006 was a RESOUNDING victory for Howard Dean's strategy. I don't think the DSCC needs to change its strategy, but the DCCC might want to take some lessons from Doctor Dean.

Progressive Majority: Targeting smaller, more local races right down to school board, Progressive Majority is training and helping out the next generation of leaders in several key states as well as helping boost minority representation. In 2005 they won about 70% of the races they targeted. They were more ambitious this year and didn't fare so well, but they did well enough and they came really close in many other races. As they expand, they will be a force through out the nation for helping young progressive activists enter politics. We could probably have won this election without Progressive Majority, but their efforts are helping pave the way for future victories.

Make no mistake...this was a progressive grassroots victory. But it was also a victory for ideological diversity within the Democratic party. Some real progressive grassroots activists helped some moderate Democrats win, and now that we have won, the progressives and moderates have to maintain respect for eachother. Both sides have to remember this: we could not have won without this progressive/moderate alliance. United in respect, we can find the common ground we need to to win big. Divided over the few issues where we differ, or divided through lack of mutual respect, and we lose. Let's remember this lesson. And here I am speaking to the Greens as well, because the main problem I have with them is NOT ideological, but in how we related to diversity of opnion within the left. Republicans work by conformity and dictating from above. Democrats work by respecting diversity and listening to eachother. So let's DO IT folks. As I keep quoting these days, remember what FDR said:

"Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country."

This from an email just received from Working Assets' Act For Change via US Newswire:

Washington, Nov. 7 -- MoveOn.org Political Action is offering a $250,000 reward for new material evidence leading to a felony conviction for an organized effort of partisan voter suppression or electronic voting fraud.

Throughout the day accusations of election fraud and voter suppression incidents have been flooding into state and federal authorities throughout the country. In Virginia, the FBI has launched a criminal investigation into charges of voter suppression. In 20 Congressional districts, NRCC robocalls appearing to come from Democrats harassed voters with repeated calls in an apparently coordinated campaign to suppress the vote.

Complementing an earlier reward for whistleblowers, MoveOn's reward is being offered to anyone who provides this information.

I just found this fantastic gem of a video. Mr. Darryl Lawson's students at Humanities High School explain why most teenagers do not vote or have no interest in voting.

I wish this video had been made A YEAR AGO. As it is, this should be the beginning of GOTV research for 2008.

In a GOTV email from Howard Dean, he outlines the values that the Democratic Party stands for. And they represent what I stand for and these are the reasons why I am a Democrat. As I have said before, it is not a lack of ideas that is the problem with the Democratic Party. It is a lack of unity in achieving those ideas. Here is a list of Democratic Values according to Howard Dean (and I agree):

Honest Leadership & Open Government
We will end the Republican culture of corruption and restore a government as good as the people it serves.

Real Security & A New Direction in Iraq
We will protect Americans at home and lead the world by telling the truth to our troops, our citizens and our allies, and we will heed the advice of our commanders on the ground and force a change in the failed Republican strategy in Iraq.

Energy Independence & Lower Gas Prices
We will create a cleaner, greener and stronger America by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, eliminating billions in subsidies for oil and gas companies and developing energy alternatives.

More Jobs, Better Pay & College Access for Everyone
We will create jobs that stay in America, raise the minimum wage, and open the doors to college for every American.