Republicans are terrified of Bill de Blasio (D) winning the New York City Mayor's race that they're using some familiar faces to use Citizens United to defeat him:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
A little-known group of powerful Republican activists and donors with experience in campaigns across the country have coalesced in an attempt to overturn a New York state law limiting individual money in politics, and influence the New York City mayoral race in the process.
The Republicans at the center of New York Progress and Protection PAC wouldn't say how much money they intend to spend to aid Joe Lhota's underdog candidacy against the heavily favored Democrat Bill de Blasio. But they say multiple would-be donors are lined up to contribute more than $150,000 -- the current annual maximum allowed in New York -- if a judge grants them an injunction in their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the limit.
"It's about free speech. Free speech is the reason why I'm doing lots of things," Shaun McCutcheon, one of those would-be donors, told The Huffington Post. "It's about our rights as people under the First Amendment."
The NYPP's contention that New York state's campaign contribution ceiling violates First Amendment protections will be heard in federal court on Oct. 8. Handling the legal strategy is Michael Carvin, a Washington-based attorney specializing in campaign law who represented George W. Bush during the 2000 recount. Last year, he appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court to unsuccessfully challenge the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
"This is plainly unconstitutional," Carvin told HuffPost about the New York law. He said it requires "immediate relief" because "my client wants to able to speak on the mayor's election."
"The timing is critical because there's very little time left," he added. Indeed, Election Day is Nov. 5.
Though it's unclear if the case will get resolved quickly, even groups that support keeping the limit in place acknowledge there's a good chance the PAC will win. Amy Loprest, executive director of the city's campaign finance board, said Friday she's "deeply concerned" by the lawsuit. - Huffington Post, 9/30/13
Emphasis mine.
Yep, Bush's ghost still haunts us and despite the GOP wanting nothing to do with Dubya, they'll happily use the people who helped him steal the 2000 election to help their buddy Joe Lhota (R). By the way, remember how Lhota kept giving de Blasio shit about his past for supporting the leftist Sandinista regime? Well Lhota himself supported an extremist in his younger days. Lhota's boyhood idol was failed 1964 failed Presidential candidate Senator Barry Goldwater (R. AZ):
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Now, running for mayor of New York, he faces the ultimate test of his ideological salesmanship: persuading an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate to pick a leader who cites Barry Goldwater and Margaret Thatcher as his intellectual forebears.
In a city accustomed to Republican candidates who choose their party out of convenience, not conviction, Mr. Lhota is a lifelong conservative with deep-seated but idiosyncratic beliefs about government’s role in society, even as he seeks to direct a sprawling municipal apparatus that spends billions of dollars each year on social services and spread the gospel of banning smoking and trans fats.
In college, Mr. Lhota eschewed protests in favor of nights in the gallery of the United States Senate, where he sat rapt as Mr. Goldwater, his boyhood hero, orated on the floor. He took a shine to supply-side economics, long before the term “Reaganomics” was coined, and developed a revulsion at Marxism, a hostility Mr. Lhota expressed last week when he fiercely criticized his Democratic rival, Bill de Blasio, for sympathizing with the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s. - New York Time, 9/30/13
de Blasio of course didn't hesitate to bash Lhota's Goldwater worshipping:
http://politicker.com/...
TOP 10 FACTS ABOUT JOE LHOTA’S ICON, EXTREME CONSERVATIVE BARRY GOLDWATER
Brooklyn, NY – The New York Times today detailed Joe Lhota’s life-long adulation of extreme conservative Barry Goldwater. Here are 10 facts about the man credited as the father of the modern conservative movement:
1. Goldwater Explicitly Supported GOP Extremism and Denounced Moderation: “Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is No Vice.”[THNRK, “Father of Conservative ‘Extremism’”, 8/27/2012]
2. Goldwater Opposed the Brown vs. Board of Education Court Decision, Stating Racial Segregation in Mississippi and South Carolina is “Their Business, Not Mine.” [History News Network, “Barry Goldwater and the Civil Rights Acts: The Antecedent to Rand Paul”]
3. Goldwater Voted Against Civil Rights Act of 1964. [NY Times, “Civil Rights Bill Passed, 73-27; Johnson Urges All To Comply; Dirksen Berates Goldwater,” 6/19/1964]
4. Goldwater Claimed the Civil Rights Act Was Unconstitutional and Would Promote Racial Intolerance, Opening the Door to a “Police-State System of Enforcement” [4President.org, “Barry Goldwater for President 1964 Campaign Brochure: “Barry Goldwater Speaks Out for a Stronger America”]
5. Goldwater Supported the Use of Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam. [Journal of Strategic Studies, “Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam,” 8/2006]
6. Goldwater Explicitly Aimed to Reduce the Size of Government and Repeal Laws. [NY Times, “Barry Goldwater, Conservative and Individualist, Dies at 89,” 5/29/1998]
7. Goldwater Considered American Labor Leaders More Dangerous than the Soviet Union. [NY Times, “Barry Goldwater, Conservative and Individualist, Dies at 89,” 5/29/1998]
8. Goldwater Refused to Condemn McCarthyism. [NY Times, “Barry Goldwater, Conservative and Individualist, Dies at 89,” 5/29/1998]
9. Goldwater Condemned Non-Violent Protests, Calling Them Nothing More Than a “Fable” and Inherently Violent. [The Bulletin, “‘Non-violent’ protest just a fable,” 8/23/1966]
10. Goldwater Advocated Leaving the United Nations After China’s Entry to the Organization. [St. Petersburg Evening Independent, “Red China Will Ruin U.N.: Barry,” 1/22/64] - Politicker, 9/30/13
Yeah, if you're running for office in New York City, Goldwater may not be the person you want to brag about having as your hero. Plus de Blasio's views for New York City's future are much more aligned with the majority of New Yorkers':
http://www.thedailybeast.com/...
He reminded them of the “simple, straightforward ideas” that had helped him secure the nomination. End the NYPD's stop-and-frisk strategy. Tax the wealthy to better fund the schools. Build more affordable housing so people will not be driven out of their own neighborhoods.
“We’re living a tale of two cities,” he said as he had many times before. “It’s not right, it’s not sustainable.”
After imparting a rousing reminder that the real test is not the primary but the general election, he stepped outside and took questions from reporters. He had fled the press on one occasion a few days before right after the New York Times ran an article reporting that he had once been a supporter of the Sandinistas and had honeymooned in Cuba. But he tackled it all directly on the next occasion, saying he had acted on principles of which he was only proud.
There were no commie queries on Saturday, only questions about the issues of the moment. He affirmed his support for a waste transfer station on the tony Upper East Side, as such facilities have traditionally been built in what he termed ”neighborhoods of color.” H suggested many cops would in fact welcome the end of stop-and-frisk. - The Daily Beast, 9/30/13
FYI, the waste transfer station is another issue de Blasio and Lhota don't see eye to eye on:
http://www.nydailynews.com/...
Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota (inset) received cheers from supporters on the upper East Side Saturday, where he touted his opposition to the city’s plan to build a waste transfer station on E. 91st St.
Instead, he prefers shipping the garbage off to the Garden State — an arrangement he helped negotiate as deputy mayor.
“It is by far the most environmentally safe way to get rid of Manhattan garbage and most importantly it is considerably less expensive than the plan here,” Lhota said.
“Garbage from Manhattan does not go to any other borough,” he said. “It goes to New Jersey to a waste-to-energy plant. They want the garbage. We actually pay them to take our garbage and they get low-cost energy from it.”
He slammed de Blasio for supporting the construction of the 10-story facility. - New York Daily News, 9/29/13
Of course de Blasio has other big plans for the city that he recently spoke about when he was visting Queens:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Bill de Blasio on Sunday said he would seek to use the recovery money heading to New York City’s storm-battered coastline to achieve liberal aims at the heart of his mayoral campaign: creating living-wage jobs, affordable housing and community health care sites in areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
His visit to Far Rockaway in Queens, his first since becoming the Democratic nominee, offered a glimpse of how his lofty language about a tale of two cities would translate into on-the-ground policies as mayor.
“Now, with these new resources from the federal government, we have to use it as a moment, not just to right the wrongs of Sandy but start righting some greater wrongs,” Mr. de Blasio said inside a packed community room of a church.
He outlined a vision of a recovery that would move beyond rebuilding houses, businesses and neighborhoods, by seeking to fix long-term inequalities in communities that he said had been overlooked by City Hall.
It is a program, infused with ideological as well as nuts-and-bolts goals, that diverges significantly from those outlined by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has made rehabilitating the coastline a priority, and Mr. de Blasio’s Republican rival this fall, Joseph J. Lhota. Mr. Lhota on Sunday accused Mr. de Blasio of exploiting the storm’s damage for political gain and said that the Democrat had accomplished little for the Rockaways as public advocate.
“The people of the Rockaways won’t be fooled by this blatant political maneuvering in pursuit of a promotion,” Mr. Lhota’s spokeswoman, Jessica Proud, said.
A coalition of labor and community groups called Alliance for a Just Rebuilding, some of which have endorsed Mr. de Blasio, argues that the billions of dollars in money promised to New York represents a rare chance for city government to accomplish ends long cherished by liberal activists.
On Sunday, Mr. de Blasio suggested that he had signed on to much of their agenda, and would return within 60 days of becoming mayor to begin mapping out a way to achieve it, even joking that, should he waver, his wife, Chirlane McCray, would be there to enforce his promise. - New York Times, 9/30/13
And de Blasio also opened up a personal story behind his name change:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/...
Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio revealed Monday that his father killed himself.
“While this has been a private part of my family’s life, it is now clear a media story will soon emerge,” de Blasio said in a statement. “My father tragically ended his life while battling terminal cancer in 1979.”
De Blasio was born with the name Warren Wilhelm, Jr. His father, Warren Wilhelm, was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a car outside a motel in Connecticut, the New York Post reported.
The death certificate revealed not just the gunshot wound but also “carcinoma of the lung and metastases,” the Post reported.
Wilhelm had split from Maria de Blasio a decade earlier, the Post reported. - CBS New York, 9/30/13
The election is Tuesday, November 5th. de Blasio continues to lead in the polls and in fundraising but we can't let Bush's people try and buy this race for Lhota. Please do consider donating and getting ivolved with de Blasio's campaign. You can click here:
http://www.billdeblasio.com/