Labels: 2008 Election, Democrats
Pictured left-to-right (background): Verena Brown (Civil Court Countywide-Bronx), Senator Martin Connor (25th Senate Distict-Brooklyn and Manhattan), Michael Katz (Civil Court Countywide-Manhattan), A Harrison staffer holding a sign, Steven Harrison (13th Congressional District-Brooklyn and Staten Island), Assemblywoman Joan Millman (52nd Assembly District-Brooklyn), Zack Bommer (representing Speaker Sheldon Silver), JoAnne Simon (District Leader, 52nd Assembly District-Brooklyn)
Pictured left-to-right (foreground): Marty Sesmer (504 Treasurer), Michael J. Schweinsburg (504 Vice President), Senator Shirley Hunter (10th Senate District-Queens), Edith Prentiss (504 President), Lewis Goldstein (504 Board Member and Executive Committee member, State Committee)
The 504 Democratic Club (504) which works to turn disability rights into legislative and judicial priorities, today announced the endorsements of a strong slate of candidates in the September 9th primary battle, signifying a strong effort to elect candidates who have earned the endorsement in their races.
Endorsements are a key element of our strategy to craft a pro-disability agenda -- because we aggressively target candidates where it matters most, at the ballot box. This year 504 celebrates our 25th Anniversary and has a proud history of backing-up our endorsements with intensive involvement in the campaigns of our chosen candidates. Each year, our 300+ membership of politically involved disability rights activists works hard to elect and work with candidates on the campaign trail and after they have achieved elective office. "504 is proud to endorse these candidates who are fighting for our vision on the campaign trail. We urge our membership and all those who share our concern for the over 20 percent of New York's population who comprise the disability community, to show these candidates how much their courage and leadership means to us by working hard for their election and contributing today,"
said Edith Prentiss, President of the Club.
View the list of candidates running in this fall's elections endorsed by the 504 Democratic Club.
Note: The 504 Democratic Club is now also on Yahoo! Groups, MySpace, and Facebook.
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Labels: 2008 Election, Democrats
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Date: Sunday, August 17, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: steps in front of City Hall in Manhattan
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/504Dems/message/7835
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Labels: 2008 Election, Democrats
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You can comment on this entry, or request for more information about this event, by posting a response at: Labels: 504 North Star, Barack Obama
PDF document of the flyer for this event
(Size of document: 2.79 MB; Make sure you have the Adobe Reader in order to view, print and/or save the document)
Time and Date:
12 Noon - 4:00 PM
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Featuring:
Live Jazz and R&B
50/50 Raffle for Prizes
Complimentary Wine and Cheese buffet
Chess competition will be available to all participants
$10 Minimum Donation/Gift
Please make all checks payable to "The 504 North Star Democratic Club"
15% of all collected monies will support the Barack Obama New York Delegation
Location:
The Legendary Jazz Lounge at Minton's Playhouse
206 West 118th Street
between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd and St. Nicholas Avenue
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/504Dems/message/7809
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Labels: 2008 Election, Democrats
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Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards
The upcoming 2008 Presidential Primary (February 5th) is particularly exciting for the disability community as we continue to strive for greater representation in society, the Democratic Party and at the Convention. On behalf of the Officers and Executive Committee members, I am writing to ask that after you vote for the Presidential candidate of your choice, that you support all and any of the following 23 people with disabilities who may be on your ballot running to be delegates regardless of which candidate they are supporting.Name Congressional District - Representative 504 Club Member Candidate Brooke Ellison 1 - Bishop No Clinton James Sanders Jr. 6 - Meeks No Obama Thomas Duane 8 - Nadler Life Member Elaine Berlin 8 - Nadler No Edwards Arthur Schwartz 8 - Nadler Life Member Obama Anastasia Samoza 8 - Nadler previously Clinton Norman Rosenthal 9 - Weiner Yes Obama Belinda Dixon 13 - Fossello No Clinton Dilia Schack 13 - Fossello No Clinton Kenneth Dash Sr. 14 -Fossello No Clinton Sylvia Friedman 14 - Maloney Life Member Edwards Arthur Leopold 14 - Maloney No Obama Ida Torres 14 - Maloney No Clinton Pamela Bates 15 - Rangel Yes Clinton Gloria Alston 16 - Serrano No Obama Barbara Werber 23 - McHugh No Clinton Lynne Tillotson 24 - Arcuri No Obama Lori Gardner 24 - Arcuri Clinton Denise Williams-Harris 25 - Walsh No Clinton Janice Dunne 26 - Reynolds No Obama Bryce Hopkins 27 - Higgins No Edwards Sue Samuels 28 - Slaughter No Obama Mushtaq Sheikh 29 - Kuhl No Clinton
Most Club communication occurs via our listserv (join at 504Dems-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) but we're working on reviving our newsletter. Our goal would be to primarily e-mail it. So please include your e-mail on your membership renewal form and indicate if you are interested in joining the listserv, or just receive the newsletter.
Edith Prentiss, President
president @ the504dems.org or 212-781-8309
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New York Times
February 1, 2008
LOS ANGELES — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama met for debate here Thursday, sitting side by side and sharing a night of smiles, friendly eye-catching and gentle banter. Cordial as the encounter was, the candidates did not mask their own divisions, even as they previewed the attacks one of them will ultimately make against a Republican rival.
Still, it was almost as if the battle was to see which of them could outnice the other.
At the end of the nearly two-hour encounter, as the audience of Democrats and Hollywood celebrities rose to its feet at the Kodak Theater, Mr. Obama held Mrs. Clinton's chair as she rose. The two rivals, almost hugging, held each others' elbows and whispered in one another's ear, offering a striking image that captured the tenor of the debate. "When we started off, we had eight candidates on this stage. We are now down to two,"
Mr. Obama said. "I think one of us two will end up being the next president of the United States."
Gone were the sharp and sometimes personal attacks that have characterized a year's worth of debates, particularly a combative session last week in South Carolina, which both sides conceded had tarnished their images.
Still, the candidates were at pains to lay out their differences on issues like national health care, the Iraq war and experience in their last appearance together before voters in more than 20 states weigh in Tuesday on the presidential nominating fight.
As she has through much of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton found herself defending her 2002 Senate vote to authorize war against Iraq — a position that has been enduringly unpopular with Democrats. The vote has forced her to discuss her shifting stands on Iraq instead of the antiwar principle she has sought to embrace in the campaign."I think now we have to look at how we go forward,"
she said. "There will be a great debate between us and the Republicans, because the Republicans are still committed to George Bush's policy."
Mr. Obama, given his opposition to the war from 2002 onward, argued that he would be in a strongest position to challenge the Republican nominee over Iraq."I think it is much easier for us to have the argument when we have a nominee who says, 'I always thought this was a bad idea, this was a bad strategy,' "
Mr. Obama said to applause. "They screwed up the execution of it in all sorts of ways."
"The question,"
he said, "is, can we make an argument that this was a conceptually flawed mission from the start, and that we need better judgment when we decide to send our young men and women into war?"
Still, unlike when they last met for debate, when they attacked each other over personal conduct as well as issues, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama aimed their sharpest words at Republicans.
Mrs. Clinton criticized President Bush over his stewardship of the economy, while Mr. Obama chided Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the two Republicans leading in their race, for supporting Bush-backed tax cuts for wealthy Americans after initially opposing them."Somewhere along the line the Straight Talk Express lost some wheels,"
Mr. Obama said, referring to one of Mr. McCain's political slogans.
Both lavished praise on John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who dropped out of the race this week and whose endorsement they are actively seeking.
Mr. Obama said he and Mr. Edwards were determined to fight special interests and big business. Mrs. Clinton twice noted early on that her universal health care plan — which, unlike Mr. Obama's, includes a requirement that all Americans have health care — was very similar to that of Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Obama countered that about "95 percent"
of his plan and Mrs. Clinton's were the same, but that he believed his proposal went further to reducing costs.
But their tone Thursday night was largely friendly. Each candidate laughed agreeably and nodded at the other's remarks, and they praised each other at different points and looked ahead to the battle with the other party."They are more of the same,"
Mrs. Clinton said of the Republican candidates. "Neither of us, by looking at us, is more of the same — we will change our country."
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton sidestepped a question about whether either would select the other as a running mate. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, the moderator, called it a "dream ticket"
in the eyes of many Democrats. In fact, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have built up resentments toward each other over the campaign and seem unlikely to want to pair up for the general election."We've got a lot more road to travel,"
Mr. Obama said, "and so I think it's premature for either of us to start speculating about vice presidents."
When pressed, he said, "I'm sure that Hillary would be on anybody's short list."
Mrs. Clinton responded in kind. "Well, I have to agree with everything Barack just said,"
she replied, to laughter from the audience.
Later, Mrs. Clinton was forced to fend off a question about her ability to "control"
former President Bill Clinton from interfering in her administration should she become president in 2009, given his assertiveness on the campaign trail. (Mrs. Clinton has acknowledged that her husband has become "carried away"
at times recently.)"The fact is that I'm running for president, and this is my campaign,"
she said to applause. She added: "At the end of the day, it's a lonely job in the White House. And it is the president of the United States who has to make the decisions. And that is what I'm asking to be entrusted to do."
On one flash point — immigration — Mr. Obama cited his role in immigration reform legislation in Washington last year. He voiced his support for states giving driver's licenses to undocumented workers."People don't come here to drive, they come here to work,"
Mr. Obama said.
It was an issue that stirred controversy in a debate last year, which Mr. Obama sought to raise by pointing out that his rival gave "a number of different answers on this over the course of six weeks."
"Now she does have a clear position, but it took awhile,"
Mr. Obama said Thursday. "The only reason I bring that up is to underscore the fact that this is a difficult political issue."
It was the first dust-up of the evening between the candidates, occurring near the end of the first hour. Mrs. Clinton smiled and offered her reply."I just have to correct the record for one second,"
she said, explaining that she initially supported the concept of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants so she could help Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York, who was being criticized over the issue. Turning to Mr. Obama directly, she said: "You were asked the same question and could not answer it. So this is a difficult issue."
Asked by Mr. Blitzer whether she was "missing in action"
during the immigration debate, Mrs. Clinton was quick to reject the suggestion."I cosponsored comprehensive immigration reform in 2004, before Barack came to the Senate,"
she said.
In a week where Senator Edward M. Kennedy endorsed the candidacy of Mr. Obama, as did Caroline Kennedy, Mrs. Clinton was asked why they had chosen her rival and whether she would represent the kind of change that would inspire a nation."I have the greatest respect for Senator Kennedy and the Kennedy family,"
Mrs. Clinton said. "I'm proud to have three of Bobby's kids supporting me — Bobby, Kathleen and Kerry supporting me."
She added, "I think having the first woman president would be a huge change for America and the world."
The candidates could not question one another in the debate, but took questions from viewers. A 38-year-old woman in South Carolina, who sent her question in by e-mail, said she had never voted for someone not named Bush or Clinton. She wondered how Mrs. Clinton would represent change."You have to make the case for yourself,"
Mrs. Clinton said. "And I want to be judged on my own merits. I don't want to be advantaged — or disadvantaged."
The debate also featured questions about the strengths of Senator McCain and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts — the two leading Republican presidential candidates. Asked about Mr. Romney's experience as a chief executive officer, Mr. Obama drew laughs when he reminded the audience that Mr. Romney has significantly outspent his rivals, investing millions of his own money."Mitt Romney hasn't gotten a very good return on his investment during this presidential campaign,"
Mr. Obama said, adding that he would match his financial management skills with Mr. Romney's. (Hours before the debate, Mr. Obama's campaign announced that he had raised $32 million in January alone.)
Not only was the debate much less contentious than Wednesday night's debate among the remaining Republican candidates, but it was also far more muted than recent Democratic debates — an obvious calculation on the part of both candidates, who have been criticized for being overly harsh and personal. Democratic leaders feared that the negative tone would carry over to the general election, tamping down voters' enthusiasm.
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January 14, 2008
New York Times
LAS VEGAS - After staying on the sidelines in the first year of the campaign, race and to a lesser extent gender have burst into the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest, thrusting Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton into the middle of a sharp-edged social and political debate that transcends their candidacies.
In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama's campaign, in an effort to inject race into the contest, distorted remarks she had made about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Obama tartly dismissed Mrs. Clinton's suggestion, adding that "the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous."
Mr. Obama's campaign then attacked Mrs. Clinton for failing to repudiate one of her top black supporters for "engaging in the politics of destruction"
with an apparent reference to Mr. Obama's acknowledged drug use in the past. And throughout the day, supporters of Mrs. Clinton and of Mr. Obama each accused the other of injecting race in search of political gain.
The exchanges created apprehension among many of their supporters who viewed this moment - if perhaps inevitable, given the nature of the contest - as divisive for Democrats. At the same time, it offered a portrait of a party struggling through entirely unfamiliar terrain that has been brought into relief by Mr. Obama's victory in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton's in New Hampshire.
Two factors have helped create the atmosphere in which race and gender are coming to play a more prominent role. The first is that Democrats now increasingly view both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton as credible and electable candidates, given their victories.
In addition, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are now moving into a series of contests, particularly in South Carolina but also in California, where black voters could play a pivotal role.
Indeed, both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama spoke from the pulpits of black churches on Sunday, Mr. Obama in Las Vegas and Mrs. Clinton in South Carolina.
The candidates and their campaigns have not been innocent bystanders to all this. In fact, since her loss in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton has, subtly but unmistakably, pushed gender, engaging in a series of events intended to present her in softer ways. Many Democrats believe that Mrs. Clinton won New Hampshire after a decisive swing of women into her camp, particularly after a debate on the Saturday night before the primary in which John Edwards and Mr. Obama joined forces in criticizing her."I never thought we would see the day when an African-American and a woman were competing for the presidency of the United States,"
she told black parishioners at a Presbyterian church in Columbia, S.C. "Many of you in this sanctuary were born before African-Americans could vote. So this is not a piece of history that is happening to someone else; this is happening to us."
Mr. Obama, reflecting the different way he has talked about race during his own campaigns, took pains in speaking at a church service here on Sunday to avoid portraying his election as historic because of the possibility of putting an African-American in the White House."We're on the brink or cusp of doing something important; we can make history,"
Mr. Obama said, speaking to a few hundred worshipers at the Pentecostal Temple Church of God. "I know everybody is focused on racial history. That's not what I'm talking about. We can make history by being, the first time in a very long time, a grass-roots movement of people of all colors."
Mrs. Clinton said Sunday, in an interview on the NBC program "Meet the Press,"
that she was hopeful race and gender would not be an issue in this contest.
Still, supporters of Mr. Obama said in interviews Sunday that they were concerned Mrs. Clinton and her allies might be deliberately raising the issue of race at the very time that Mr. Obama had shown signs of taking off."I don't want to believe that, but I've got to tell you I'm wondering,"
said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who is black and an Obama supporter. "I don't want to believe it is true."
Mrs. Clinton and her supporters denied that. Geraldine A. Ferraro, who was the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1984, said she thought Mr. Obama and his campaign were fanning the issue to draw black voters away from Mrs. Clinton before the primary in South Carolina, where about 50 percent of the electorate is expected to be black."As soon anybody from the Clinton campaign opens their mouth in a way that could make it seem as if they were talking about race, it will be distorted,"
Mrs. Ferraro said. "The spin will be put on it that they are talking about race. The Obama campaign is appealing to their base and their base is the African-American community. What they are trying to do is move voters from Clinton by distorting things. What have they got to lose?"
In a sign of how the issue was churning the waters, Mr. Edwards, also speaking at a church in South Carolina, expressed pride in Mr. Obama while criticizing Mrs. Clinton for what some have seen as her suggesting that President Lyndon B. Johnson deserved more credit than Dr. King for the Civil Rights Act of 1964."As someone who grew up in the segregated South, I feel an enormous amount of pride when I see the success that Senator Barack Obama is having in this campaign,"
said Mr. Edwards, who grew up in North Carolina. He added: "I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change came not through the Rev. Martin Luther King, but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that."
Mr. Obama spoke in general terms Sunday about the attacks on his candidacy on a day when Mrs. Clinton specifically challenged his record on opposing the Iraq war."I think they have decided to run a relentlessly negative campaign, and I don't think anybody who's watching would deny that,"
he said. "I gather that she's determined that instead of trying to sell herself on why she would be the best president, she's trying to convince folks that I wouldn't be a good one."
Aides to both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama expressed squeamishness at the direction the conversation was heading. And publicly, the campaigns spent much of the day shadow-boxing on an issue that advisers to both of them described as volatile. The issue broke through when Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who appeared at a rally with Mrs. Clinton in Columbia, S.C., seemed to allude to Mr. Obama's use of cocaine as a young man."To me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book - when they have been involved,"
Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Johnson later issued a statement saying he was referring to Mr. Obama's work as a labor organizer in Chicago, which he described in his book "Dreams From My Father."
Asked about Mr. Johnson's statement, Mr. Obama said, "What's there to respond to?"
"I'm not going to spend all my time running down the other candidates, which seems to be what Senator Clinton has been obsessed with for the last month,"
he said.
Reporting was contributed by Julie Bosman in Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Patrick Healy in New York; Katharine Q. Seelye in Columbia, S.C.; and Jeff Zeleny in Las Vegas.
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The candidates have spent a year and tens of millions of dollars in Iowa, and Thursday night the first actual voters offered their first assessments. Some candidates and their strategists were hoping the caucuses and the New Hampshire primary next week would settle the race, weeding out the contenders for the two major parties' presidential nominations. Watching the campaign in cold, snowy and mostly empty Iowa, we were hoping for something else - that this year's Iowa-New Hampshire rush to judgment will be the last.
For all of Thursday night's drama, the results in Iowa did not
preclude a race going into New Hampshire, and, we hope, beyond - to South Carolina, Florida and the cluster of primaries on February 5. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton, but she's got plenty of money left, and John Edwards got a boost. Mike Huckabee's win was unlikely to deter Mitt Romney or the Republicans who did not contest Iowa: John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani.
Keeping this race alive so significant numbers of Americans in more populated states can participate would begin to make up for the ludicrous spectacle of the past year, which enriched the television networks and the political consultants (some $300 million already spent) far more than it enriched the political dialogue. We hope both parties will wake up and end the undemocratic system in which the choice of a new president rests far too heavily on nonbinding votes in January by voters that don't necessarily represent the rest of the country.
We don't question the enthusiasm or the commitment of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire. But Iowa, where a huge turnout amounts to less than 10 percent of the population, is about 92 percent white, more rural and older than the rest of the nation. New Hampshire has a non-Hispanic white population of about 95 percent. Iowa's Democrats are more liberal and more protectionist than the nation's Democrats. Its Republicans are more conservative, and religiously driven, than the nation's Republicans. And yet, The Boston Globe reported that Mr. Romney spent $7 million on ads in Iowa. That's nearly $4 per registered voter.
We do believe that the time has long passed for both parties to not only break the Iowa-New Hampshire habit but also end the damaging race to be third, with states pushing their primaries closer and closer to New Year's Day.
Instead, the country should adopt a more sensible and more representative system of regional primaries, in which states are divided into regional groups that vote on a designated day. The honor of going first would rotate year to year among the regions. That would give a far broader range of American voters a say in this vitally important choice.
Make no mistake, there are choices to be made in this first election in many, many years in which both parties' nominations are being contested. Most of the Republican contenders (with the exception, most of the time, of Senator John McCain) offer the same kind of politics of division that has so polarized this nation over the last seven years. It is a politics that thrives on religious and social intolerance and fear.
Mr. Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, cloaks himself in affability and Christianity. But he bullied Mr. Romney into pleading with religious conservatives to accept his Mormon faith as Christian enough for a Republican nominee and, after professing charity, has recently become a scourge of undocumented immigrants.
Fear often appears to be the only plank on which Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is standing, when you can tell where he is standing at all. Mr. Giuliani, who parlayed the 9/11 tragedy into a lucrative business and now speaks, bizarrely, of the "9/11 generation,"
has switched his views a dizzying number of times - on immigration, on abortion, on New York.
Almost as dizzying, in fact, as the pirouettes executed by Mr. Romney, who wants American voters to forget his record as governor of Massachusetts - where he endorsed gay marriage and reproductive choice - and believe what he says now that he wants to be president. Among Mr. Romney's tailored-for-the-campaign proposals is to double the size of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which even President Bush knows must be closed.
All of the Republicans want to continue President Bush's disaster of a war in Iraq, including Mr. McCain. He, however, has taken a courageous stand for immigration reform, which seemed to doom his candidacy last year, and is a strong advocate of the need to confront global warming and to stop the abuse of prisoners in Mr. Bush's system of secret prisons.
The Democrats are united in their opposition to the war, but none have spelled out a persuasive plan for getting American troops home without setting off a wider conflagration.
Senator Obama generates enormous excitement with his youth, and his promises of change - even if it's not entirely clear what he intends to change or how. Senator Clinton, meanwhile, wavers between wanting to be seen as ready to serve as president because of her eight years in the White House with her husband - and trying to satisfy voters' yearnings for new ideas and new ways.
Mr. Edwards has a strong populist message, but it sounds a bit odd coming from a former tort lawyer and hedge fund executive who ran as a completely different person in 2004. One of his ads features an out-of-work Maytag employee who said Mr. Edwards promised his 7-year-old son: "I'm going to keep fighting for your daddy's job."
We're still waiting for Mr. Edwards to explain how he, or any politician, can turn back the tide of economics and globalization. We'd prefer if he explained how to make it work for all Americans.
None of this has led us to a choice in the nominating contests, never mind for the presidency. The majority of Americans are in the same position. That's why they should be allowed to see and hear more of these candidates, and not have to settle for the judgments of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/504Dems/message/6927
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