New super PAC launching to support Evan McMullin’s White House Bid

Evan McMullin, the Conservative Republican and former CIA Officer making a late independent bid for the White House, is poised to get a boost from a new super PAC being formed by two GOP strategists with experience in third-party ballot access.

Kahlil Byrd, who served as Chief Executive of Americans Elect, an organization that sought to create a pathway for an independent Presidential candidate in 2012, and Chris Ashby, a GOP Campaign Finance Attorney who worked on that effort, are together launching a new super PAC called Stand Up America to support McMullin.

"We want to be the conduit for people to be able to stand up and not just support his candidacy, but the efforts of an independent to satisfy the American people’s need for something more than they have seen," Byrd told The Washington Post. "We are down to the two major party candidates, yet people are still looking for someone else."

Until recently, Byrd had been serving as an adviser to Better for America, a nonprofit group that was laying the groundwork for a third-party candidate to gain ballot access this year. When he heard that McMullin was planning to run, Byrd resigned from the organization over the weekend so he and Ashby could launch the super PAC, he said.

In the spring of 2016, Republican Evan McMullin spoke to the University of Pennsylvania's Washington semester program about his views on the United States' ideological foundations. McMullin announced Aug. 8 that he's running for President.

The group faces a tight time frame in which to raise money and ramp up its operations. Byrd said the super PAC already has some financial commitments, which he declined to identify, adding that the organization plans to roll out a full political team later this week. "The timeline is a quick one," Byrd acknowledged. "We need to be active and operating at a high clip by the time we get to Labor Day."

McMullin's late start puts him at a severe disadvantage, as he is entering the race long after ballot access has closed in many states. But both Byrd and Ashby said there was sufficient time for the first-time candidate to gain sufficient ballot access to put him in reach of 270 Electoral votes, both through states still accepting signatures and others where his campaign could sue to gain access.

Ashby said the super PAC will not be involved in ballot access efforts, but will instead focus on voter outreach using "all the tools at our disposal," including TV and digital ads, live events and grass-roots organizing. "Our strategy will be focused on connecting and engaging the many millions of Americans who are hungry for another choice and an independent choice for president," Ashby said, adding: "Anything is possible this year, and we think this is possible. We are going to run an aggressive, independent campaign."

Until Monday, McMullin, who was Policy Director for the House Republican Conference, had little public presence. But Byrd, who first met the former CIA operative in 2011 when he came to present a reform proposal on Congressional Gerrymandering to Americans Elect, said he believes McMullin's independent candidacy will resonate. "We’re at a moment where one of the significant parts of a candidate's experiences that American voters are examining is foreign policy and understanding America’s place in the world, and Evan has lived that, as operative in CIA and more recently working in Congress," Byrd said, adding that McMullin is "someone who is serious and stable and focused."











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Looking for My Version of the Political Middle

I first registered to vote as an independent in 1966, during my service in the Air Force. I voted with military ballots, as a resident of New York. I have also been a resident of Washington, also registered as an independent. So I have been looking for a long time for something other then the two-party system while I traveled the world. I’ve looked at minor parties, but they all had different issues I did not agree with.

So when I returned to New York in 2000, I began researching organizations proposing the concept of structural political reform and discovered the Independence Party of New York City and became a party member, then an elected member: in the Manhattan county committee and the executive committee; and four terms on the state committee. With the concept of fusion voting used in the New York ballot process, there was an opportunity to work with politicians who agreed with our political reform concepts, which lead to supporting the three terms of Mayor Bloombeg.

As an independent activist, I have found the concept of party, no longer works. Many of us, some say part of the 40%, believe we select candidates not parties. But I still look at other solutions to the two-party system.

Pointing to record levels of public disgust for the political classes, moderates fizz with innovative schemes for grabbing power from extremists of the left and right. Some are wiser than others.

Americans Elect was incorporated on April 6, 2010, by Peter Ackerman and Kahlil Byrd as a follow up to his work on Unity08 for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. It opened its website to begin recruiting delegates for its 2012 Presidential Primary in July 2011. During 2011 Americans Elect was placed on the 2012 Presidential ballot in many states. But it never was able to get enough votes from its members to select a presidential slate.

More than 50 members of Congress have joined the bipartisan No Labels group, chaired by Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Jon Huntsman, a former Republican governor of Utah with 2012 presidential ambitions. Members are called “Problem Solvers” rather than centrists, and insist that staunch conservatives and liberals are welcome. Yet they are only talking about the two major party members being nice in some type of mushy middle.

Books and newspaper columns talk of an “insurgency of the rational” and of the “sane, pragmatic majority” taking charge. A political action committee founded by New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, plans to spend millions backing moderates and independents in state and federal elections, with a nicely balanced focus on promoting gun control (angering the right) and school reform (which makes teachers’ unions seethe).

The Common Sense Coalition, set up by entrepreneurs and fund managers, wants an online “Army of Moderates” to lobby candidates and elected officials.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, launches a group pushing education and immigration reforms, using Republican and Democratic strategists.

The same arguments are cited, repeatedly, to explain why the time is ripe for a centrist insurgency. First, Americans are fed up with both big parties, especially in Congress. Great faith is put in the power of technology to help new groups out-organize and out-campaign incumbent party machines, like small furry mammals scampering beneath dinosaur feet.

The moderate start-ups tend to be fiscally conservative but socially liberal, keen on free trade and free markets, worried about social mobility and open to immigration. Some talk of curbing campaign spending and involving more ordinary voters in primaries that select candidates. But there is a hitch. Some say they would struggle to win a majority in any statewide or national election in America.

The globe-spanning nature of that rage undercuts claims that American voter disillusion can be addressed by clever, local innovations. Yes, runaway campaign spending is a headache. But the entire 2010 British general election cost less than some individual Senate races in 2012, and furious British voters still think their politicians are money-grubbing thieves. Broadening primary-voter pools is a good idea. But moderates are wrong to think that America’s self-styled independents are inevitably allies. What unites independents is hatred of politicians, which is not the same thing as centrism.

Even the techno-utopians who talk of reinventing politics are missing the point of such digital triumphs as Barack Obama’s White House runs. Team Obama used new technology to pull off something old-school: to help supporters find voters who resembled themselves, then tell them bad things about Mitt Romney.

Billionaires have every right to have opinions and fund their promotion. Politics could do with more reasoned debate. But beware innovative short-cuts designed to turn centrists into kingmakers, or to shunt aside the traditional parties (tempting though that is). Shrill partisans are a menace, but they enjoy a mandate from the angriest voters—and this is a perilous time to start disenfranchising the angry. The rational middle must advance by persuasion, not revolution.

Now we have found someone that is getting closer to my middle.


Charles Wheelan, a former Economist journalist, who not only lectures on public policy and teaches it at Dartmouth College, but practices it as well, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress from Illinois in 2009 has just written “The Centrist Manifesto”, which advocates that a new, centrist political party be created. His book argues that such a party would be potentially capable of winning four or five U.S. Senate seats, and holding the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

He outlines a realistic ground game that could net at least five Centrist senators from New England, the Midwest, and elsewhere. With the power to deny a red or blue Senate majority, committed Centrists could take the first step toward giving voice and power to America’s largest, and most rational, voting bloc: the center.

The word "manifesto" typically generates more passion, but it's hard to rouse excitement when espousing a shift toward the center. Yet it's central to the argument that rabble-rousing emotionalism is part of the problem in American politics, where candidates in both parties feel that they must throw red meat to the extremists who are more involved in the nominating process than they are reflective of the citizenry at large. Contrary to analyses that see the country as increasingly polarized, the author suggests that most Americans are far more moderate and that they can find agreement on plenty of issues where two-party politics continues to find stalemate or gridlock. "The challenges we have to deal with as a nation are entirely manageable," he writes. "The key is to mobilize America's inner pragmatism." The strategy focuses on the Senate, where a handful of centrist legislators from swing states or a tradition of electing representatives from both parties could become power brokers, essential to the sort of compromise that reflects most Americans.

Though third-party candidates haven't typically fared well, Wheelan argues that the difference here is that the centrists will come from the common-sense middle rather than the radical fringes. Leftists will have trouble swallowing his antipathy toward unions, while conservatives will find his positions on the environment and gay marriage suspect. But as he works his way through flash-point issues to consensus on abortion and guns, he strives for a rationality that all but ideologues can embrace. It's a sign of the times that this sensible plea for moderation can seem so radical.

But we just said we do not like parties or want centrists, or a mushy middle. What happened to the intelligent independent individual? I want to take away the opportunity for a majority in 2014. Thanks to quirks of Senate arithmetic, a handful of independents could hold the balance of power.

Senators Not Running in 2014

Max Baucus - (D) Montana
Saxby Chambliss – (R) Georgia
Frank Lautenberg – (D) New Jersey
Car Levin – (D) Michigan
Mike Johanns – (R) Nebraska
Tim Johnson – (D) South Dakota
John Rockefeller – (D) West Virginia

Do you think we could take away the majority in Congress with intelligent, independents?










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Backing an Independent in Maine

I have been watching the Maine Senate race were Augus King, the former independent Governor, is running as an independent.

We now find out that Americans Elect has become the super PAC in support of King. The ad buy so far is from Oct. 5-25.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $500,000. The other two major donors are Peter Ackerman, one of the Americans Elect founders, and John Burbank, the founder of Passport Capital, gave $500,000 and $750,000, respectively.

This super PAC in support of King, countered spending from the NRSC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in support of Republican Charlie Summers. It's the first pro-King advertising from an outside group, in a race where the GOP is pouring in resources amid a shifting Senate battleground.

The NRSC, National Republican Senatorial Committee, has filed a complaint with the FEC about the involvement of Americans Elect.

I hope this support for independent candidates becomes a template for the future, so independent candidates will be elected to take away the two-party's majority in Congress.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Americans Elect becomes a Fund Raiser

American Elects has quietly shifted its fundraising focus earlier this month to serve a curious goal: All money raised by Americans Elect will, for the foreseeable future, be given to the millionaires who created it.

The Board of Directors voted unanimously on 20 February 2012 to ensure that no supporter would cover more than 20% of the Americans Elect budget. In the event that any one supporter exceeds that percentage, there are provisions created to expedite repayments to that supporter.

But its immediate effect may make it extremely difficult for the group, which is heavily bankrolled by its chairman, financier and philanthropist Peter Ackerman, to raise any more money at all, and particularly the kind of small, grassroots donations it seeks on its website.

Ackerman had given $5.5 million to the group as of last November. The group's fundraising and spending aren't public, but the new 20% threshold and the acknowledgement that repayment has begun suggests that donors has given more than that.

The decision to begin repaying its wealthy backers makes its current fundraising pitch difficult to explain. The only cause new contributions serve appears to be refunding large donors, a move which calls into question the promises the organization makes in a video on its fundraising page.

"Donations made to Americans Elect go only to three areas: developing the website, gathering signatures to get on the ballot in every state, and helping us bring in more delegates," says Joshua Levine, a former E*TRADE executive who is Americans Elect's Chief Technology Officer, in the video. Americans Elect's "core budget" for 2012 is $40 million.

This change drew a round of objections from the group's internal and external critics, who cast it as a move to raise the share of contributions from shadowy oligarchs from $10,000 to 20% level.

But the group's real issue may be the opposite: It's now fundraising entirely to repay the rich, a pitch which, if it's made clear, will likely mean that it's not doing any fundraising at all.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Stephen Dolgos Files to Run for Congress in AZ in the Americans Elect Primary

Thanks to Ballot Access News for this post.

On May 30, filing for the Arizona primaries closed, for candidates who wish to have their names placed on primary ballots. Stephen Dolgos of New River, Arizona, filed 171 signatures to run in the Americans Elect primary for Congress in the new 8th district. As far as is known, he is the first person who has filed to run in any Americans Elect primary in any state.

Dolgos was permitted to obtain signatures from registered voters who are not members of a political party, as well as from voters who are registered as Americans Elect Party members.

There is a little confusion on the Sec. of State's website. There is a list of candidates for the Primary. But it also says CD8 is a Special Election to be held on June 12, 2012. The list shows a Democrat, two Republicans, and Mr. Dolgos as an Americans Elect candidate.

Use the above link for Stephen Dolgos' website.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Update on Third Party's for 2012

With all the talk about Third Party's competing in 2012, at least two separate organizations have the capacity to get on 50 state ballots.

The more visible of these is No Labels, whose motto is: “Not Left. Not Right. Forward.” Despite its plea to restore “civility” and oppose extremists in both parties, No Labels seems almost exclusively focused on convincing Republicans to assent to “progressive” measures. Fronted by former Bush advisor Mark McKinnon, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Scarborough, and others, its formal public launch will be held December 13 at Columbia University in New York City. Its organizers protest this is “neither a third party nor a stalking horse for any presidential candidate or other candidates.” Its website insists, “No Labels is not interested in encouraging the development of a third party.”

However, in private, its leaders sing a different tune. Mark McKinnon, a longtime advisor to George W. Bush, told David Frum that he knows “some smart people working behind the scenes” working “to resolve ballot access issues and make it easier for a third party to happen.” In an October 22 speech to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, McKinnon admitted “something very exciting” was coming: “A third party in 2012.” An unsuccessful candidate who showed up at No Labels’ New Hampshire road show, Peter Angerhofer practically begged attendees to admit they were forming a minor party. “If you want to create a third party and carve out the middle, that might work,” Angerhofer offered, “but be clear about it.” The St. Louis Business Journal straightforwardly described the group as “a new third party movement.”

The No Labels movement has attracted a constellation of fleeing RINO's. Former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman literally wrote the book on the topic. She now heads the Republican Leadership Council, dedicated to slapping the Tea Party’s hands off the levers of power. Another No Labels supporter is Rep. Christopher Shays, a liberal Republican from Connecticut who co-sponsored the House version of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform.” Former Rep. Tom Davis, R-VA, and former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-NY, are also scheduled to attend the December kick off.

The No Labels launch has been talked up by the more aesthetically appealing half of Parker Spitzer. In her Tuesday column, Kathleen Parker wrote that No Labels made her heart flutter. Why, everything an inside-the-Beltway squish could want is here. “All that’s missing from a centrist movement that could be formidable is a leader,” she wrote. “Anyone?” Former Conservative Digest editor Richard Viguerie has called Parker a “pleasantly wishy-washy, mostly plain vanilla Republican” – and he was being generous to a lady and a fellow Southerner. She boasted on CNN, “I led” the character assassination of Sarah Palin, with a September 26, 2008, column stating Palin was “out of her league” and calling on her to drop out of the race.

John P. Avlon is another No Labels organizer. Avlon, a longtime speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and a policy director for Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign, is now a columnist for The Daily Beast. He has authored two books on centrism and made a career by attacking the Tea Party movement. Avlon is married to Margaret Hoover, a social progressive who is best known as one of the “culture warriors” on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, where she too sides against conservatives on social values.

The closest thing to its beliefs are embodied in a piece Mark McKinnon wrote for The Daily Beast entitled “A Centrist Manifesto.” He again protests he is simply holding the middle ground, where he takes fire from both sides. He frequently says the media are fascinated with the Tea Party but “the real story is in the middle: A third of all adults are not affiliated with either party. And the middle is growing.”

No Labels calls itself a “citizens movement.” To date, it has raised just over $1 million, chickenfeed by national political standards, and claims it has “more than 1,000 people” ready to attend its launch on December 13. But it has the potential to tap into some deep pockets.

Howard Fineman notes No Labels’ “anti-partisan yearnings are common these days, but what makes ‘No Labels’ potentially significant is its organizational ambition and big-buck backers.” One of these is Nancy Jacobson, a longtime fundraiser for retiring Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh who has worked for Hillary Clinton. She is married to Mark Penn, a former Clinton pollster. Fineman calls Jacobson “a prodigious fundraiser with wide contacts.”

The principals of No Labels met in June in Houston in the home of Marty McVey. Curiously, McVey “had dined with President Barack Obama in Washington only a few weeks prior.” McVey’s close relationship with Obama does not square with his stated desire to field a candidate to topple him.

Some Democrats are surprisingly upfront about the fact that they believe Republican internecine warfare will strengthen the Left. When McKinnon, Avlon, and Kiki McLean outlined the concept behind No Labels at the Clinton School of Public Policy, McLean, a Democrat, said, “I am involved in No Labels, because I love my party, I believe in my party, and I want my party to be stronger.” She said, “My work here is to find the window where people can work together again for progress” – although Democrats define “progress” as steady movement to the Left.

The second organization, Americans Elect (AE), is more open about its aims but less well-known. Previously calling itself Unity ’12, and still earlier Unity ’08, AE plans to “nominate a presidential ticket in 2012 that will bridge the vital center of American opinion. The winning presidential and vice presidential nominees will be on the ballot in all 50 states.” AE is financed by Peter Ackerman, a onetime protege of junk bond king Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Ackerman earned a Ph.D. and is on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He recently headed Freedom House. Michael Bloomberg is taking a wait-and-see attitude. The mayor’s aides say the mayor keeps a watchful eye on the work of Peter Ackerman, after Ackerman donated $1.55 million to Americans Elect.

Once again, the organization has claimed no ongoing affinities between AE and Bloomberg, but the facts seem to say something else. Bob Roth of AE’s predecessor, Unity ’08, insisted in 2008 his organization and the Draft Bloomberg Committee were “totally separate organizations.” However, the two organizations shared an address, and leaders of the organization reportedly registered the Draft Bloomberg website in mid-2007. Key Unity employees worked in the Draft Bloomberg movement.

America Elects has a head start on 2012. It is already recognized as a political party in the state of Nevada. It has reported multiple expenditures to Arno Political Consultants, headed by AE Secretary Kellen Arno, for “Ballot Access Services.” The website Irregular Times, which has monitored America Elects in depth, states the organization is using Arno’s company to gain ballot access status for a presidential ticket in Nevada and Arizona, before branching out nationwide. Irregular Times claims Ackerman is AE’s lone donor. But that may not be the case for long – and there is absolutely no way of knowing. Americans Elect just changed its IRS status from 527 to a 501(c)4, so it will not have to disclose its donors.

Democrats for a Weaker Republican Party Although the most visible leaders of this movement are Republicans (of a sort), a number of Democrats are on board. Among them are Senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Los Angeles’ Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, an outspoken Open Borders advocate, will visit the Big Apple later this month. The Wall Street Journal notes its corporate supporters “include co-chairman of Loews Corp. Andrew Tisch, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich and ex-Facebook executive Dave Morin.”

But I do not believe these types of movements for a new party just to elect a president will not work without first getting a big foot into the guts of Congress. First it will take a major structural political reform of better ballot access and open primaries to get members of a new party or movement into the political process locally. When Congress truly represents the voters then a third party could work. Then the opportunity for coalitions on issues could give a president the ability to work with a non-partisan slant on the tough issues of the day.

What do you think will happen in 2012?

Update

I watched most of the conference streamed on the web. I joined their email list so I can keep up with this movement. I hope just some of their ideas bring more grassroots voters into this fight for open primaries, non-partisan redistricting, and the rest of the issues for structual political reform of our political process.

NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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