(As first diaried on DailyKos by elishastephens)

The dirty trick initiative is NOT dead, say its backers.

The Mercury News has the story.

The activists questioned whether GOP attorney Tom Hiltachk, the author of the initiative, had underestimated the intensity of grass-roots support and failed to tap into it before he quit.

“The issue is so hot, it’s going to continue on,” said Tony Andrade, a Sacramento Republican who had actually submitted his own electoral vote initiative, but then deferred to Hiltachk’s effort. “People are lining up signing these petitions. There’s a lot of enthusiasm for this from a political point of view.”

Yes, they’re having trouble raising money.  But all they need is Bob Perry to dump a couple million into the effort, and they’re well on their way.  Can we afford to take the chance of assuming Perry or some other GOP multi-millionaire WON’T help revive this?

To me, that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.

Maybe we should continue what we’re doing, in terms of raising awareness and gathering ideas on what would be the most effective TV ad to run against this.

(Wow!! We did it. You did it. Amazing. We drove them into disarray. Awesome work everybody!! – promoted by Julia Rosen)

Here’s the full article from the L.A. Times: GOP electoral initiative dealt major blows. I’ll highlight this paragraph:

There remained a chance that the measure could be revived, but only if a major donor were to come forward to fund the petition drive. However, time is short to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed by the end of November. And backers said Thursday that they believed the measure was all but dead, at least for the 2008 election.

Well. That was quick. The L.A. Times is reporting that the BREAKING NEWS: Electoral initiative backers give up

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California’s 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday’s print editions, The Times’ Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

(bumped – promoted by Julia Rosen)

(also up in orange)
In what can only be described as yet another dirty trick, the campaign pushing the initiative to steal California’s electoral votes disclosed its main donor in a campaign finance report earlier this week.  The lone $175,000 donor was attributed to a Missouri based company called Take Initiative America (T.I.A).  The only name we have is Charles A. Hurth III, an attorney in the small town Union, MO and big donor to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign.  He is the guy who registered the company, way back on September 10th.  The donation came in on the 11th.  The proponents of the ballot measure swear they have no idea who actually gave the money.  (See also Shane Goldmacher’s story.  He broke it)

Let’s get this straight.  A ballot initiative was filed by the lawyers for the California Republican Party (CRP) to try and steal 20 of California’s electoral votes.  The only donor we know about appears to be a front company, set up the day before the donation was made in Missouri.  And we know that the lawyers for the CRP have done work for Bob Perry, the Switfboat guy in the past.  Is Bob Perry running money through a Giuliani donor in Missouri?  If not, who is?

This is clearly a front group.  Under the law we don’t have any right to know who wrote the original check.  We only know the name of the guy who is the registered agent for the LLC that gave the money to the campaign.

The Fair Election Reform folks point out in their email that the Giuliani connections go beyond just Hurth.

But the connections to Rudy Giuliani don’t stop there.  Two law partners of Tom Hiltachk — the Sacramento attorney who authored and filed the power grab initiative here in California — are also strong supporters of Rudy and contributors to Giuliani’s campaign, including a lawyer serving as the Deputy Treasurer for the Republican pro-initiative organization in California.

They are using this as an opportunity to go right after Giuliani.

When asked directly about this, Giuliani’s campaign spokesperson tried to dodge the question by saying they’re prepared to compete in 2008 based on “whatever the people of California decides is best” — while refusing to answer whether or not the money funneled through TIA had any connections to Rudy.  What’s more, a spokesman for the right-wing pro-initiative campaign here in California said that Rudy “probably” wasn’t involved.  Probably?  Isn’t this something their campaign would know for sure?

Why won’t Rudy Giuliani stop hiding and come clean on this?  The voters of California deserve to know the truth about who’s behind this effort to rig the 2008 election by splitting up California’s electoral votes.

The only way to do that is to put pressure on the donors to disclose who they are on their own and disavow any ties to the Giuliani campaign.  All along he has said that one of the bonuses to his campaign is that he would be competitive here.  Is he trying to guarantee that is true?

(We need to stay on top of the education aspect of this. There are already reports that low-information voters are getting bogus explanations of what’s in PERA. – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)

UCLA is about to begin classes this week.  That’s right, this week.  I know, it’s almost October.  That’s how we roll.  😎

So in the inaugural issue of the Daily Bruin, they generally have submissions from both the Bruin Republicans and the Bruin Democrats.  So what does the president of Bruin Democrats have to talk about in the first issue?  Iraq?  Global warming?  Health care?  Our kick-ass quarter-opening barbecue?

No, he uses it to educate the UCLA student body about the GOP’s dirty trick to steal California’s electoral votes.

He ends it with this flourish.

The upcoming academic year at UCLA will be extraordinarily political.

You will be asked to sign all sorts of things on behalf of various causes, but remember your mother’s advice about going to parties: watch your cup closely; you never know what someone might put in it when you’re not looking.

As cheesy as your mom’s advice may be, it certainly applies here. Be careful about which petitions you sign when you’re on Bruin Walk. If you don’t pay close attention, your signature might contribute to this ruthless Republican power grab.

Now that’s something you will wake up regretting in the morning.

Keep in mind his audience is college students who are probably more concerned with when the next frat party is than some bizarre ballot initiative.  You have to break through that wall to really reach them.  Likening it to a bad hook-up seems more than appropriate for this crowd.  🙂

We’re gonna be getting the message out to the student body this year at UCLA.  Of course, that means also educating the many conservative students at UCLA too about it, who may be inclined to support it after learning what it does.  Ah well.  Such is life.

BTW, as for the conservative point of view in the paper, it was given by this girl, who complains the pro-life voice isn’t being heard.  You may recognize her name as the same girl who secretly taped a Planned Parenthood session where she pretended to be a 15-year-old girl, and got an employee to tell her to pretend she was 16 so she wouldn’t have to report her boyfriend for statutory rape.  She put it on YouTube, and the controversy exploded.  Got invited on Bill O’Reilly and everything.  She also founded the pro-life magazine The Advocate on our campus.  Her op-ed includes gems like this:

In 1973, the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy.

Goodness gracious sakes alive!  (John Wooden reference.)  You mean, you can just go and get an abortion at 8 1/2 months, like that??  Who knew??? She is clever, though.  She won’t come right out and make a blanket statement that she’s against abortion.  She knows there’s too many ways to destroy that argument.  So instead she goes for the plea of letting her people be heard.  Yes, why aren’t they being heard, the voice of the enfranchised?

Yeah, we have to deal with that kind of shit at UCLA.  Anyway, I’d like to hear about what’s going on in terms of trying to stop the GOP’s power grab at other universities across California.  Anyone hear other things going on there?

( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

Bradley Whitford, the actor who played Josh Lyman on the beloved show “The West Wing”” is riled up about the dirty tricks initiative.  Rick Jacobs asked him to film a video for Courage Campaign. 

Brad sat down and wrote his own heartfelt script and they filmed it in his house surrounded by all of his children’s toys. As Brad says: “I don’t know about you, but my children cannot afford another Republican president.”

Watch the video and check out the new official No Dirty Tricks website.  Oh and join the conference call with Brad, Rick, Jane Hamsher (Firedoglake), John Amato (Crooks and Liars) and Ben Tulchin (pollster) at 4 pm today.  They will be answering questions from those on the call and a few submitted ahead of time.

You can support the campaign, and our ability to create these videos and hold these conference calls by contributing via ActBlue.

The latest Rasmussen poll just released this morning has some good news regarding the dirty GOP ballot initiative.

A proposal has been made in California that would award one Electoral Vote to the winner of each Congressional District along with two Electoral Votes for the statewide winner. In a theoretical sense, 47% of California voters think that’s a good idea. Thirty-one percent (31%) disagree while 23% are not sure. However, even that tepid level of support dissipates when voters learn that a change in California could significantly increase the number of Republican Electoral Votes. Once that is factored into the equation, support drops to 38% and opposition increases to 41%.

Excellent.  This is the first poll I’ve seen where opposition is MORE than support when people are informed of the consequences.  But again, no resting on our laurels.  Keep up the fight to educate as many Californians as possible!

Some other numbers from the poll, Arnold’s numbers stand at 46% approve, 53% disapprove.  Meanwhile, Bush is at 28% approve, 69% disapprove, including a whopping 50% of Californians who rate his job performance as “poor”.

And I’ll go ahead and disagree with the 65% of Californians who think term limits for state legislators are a good idea.

Watch it.

All those poor oppressed California Republicans…

DNC CHair Howard Dean knows exactly what’s up with the so-called “Presidential Electoral Reform Act”, it’s just one more way to keep GOP in office by gaming the system. It’s just one more dirty trick from the gang of villains that brought you Abu Ghraib, the Katrina botched handling, and the rise of the Taliban in Afganistan.  They are both corrupt to the core and unfit to lead.  More Video over the flip.

More Howard Dean:

And Some Gavin Newsom: