Late last week, national Democrats announced they would be launching a campaign responding to laws across the country that may decrease access to the polls for many for the 2012 election.

U.S. News reports:

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused Republicans of launching a “full-scale attack on the public’s right to vote.” She said that GOP efforts in states to curb instant voter registration and early voting and require photo identification at the polls to fight alleged fraud could push minorities, especially Hispanics and African-Americans, away from voting. She claimed that repeated investigations into voter fraud have found very little evidence that it occurs.

…

The Republican National Committee rejected the charges, however. Officials said there is evidence of voter fraud. In just one popularized case, for example, they note that ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—in 2008 was accused of handling 400,000 fraudulent registrations.

The website, protectingthevote.com, states that “in 2011, a new movement to change the way we vote is under way. Unlike past reforms that sought to expand access to voting, this effort aims to restrict voting purely for partisan gain.”

The website runs through some of the most restrictive new laws in states across the country. The DNC points to laws that “target voter registration drives, cut early voting, repeal election day registration, and create citizen challenges” as the biggest culprits of voter suppression.

The website also has a link to a 73-page report written by the Voting Rights Institute, with help from the DNC. The report singled out Florida as passing some of the most restrictive voting laws, including one law that targets voter-registration drives and another that cuts early voting.

According to the report:

The GOP enacted restrictions on voter registration drives in Florida and Texas, and proposed similar measures in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The new legislation in Florida was by far the GOP’s most extensive effort. In 2010, Republican Governor Rick Scott rode a wave of Tea Party support to victory in the state’s gubernatorial race, joining Republican majorities in the Florida House and Senate. A pinnacle of their collaboration in this year’s legislative session was HB1355, a 158-page omnibus elections overhaul that—in addition to early voting cuts—enacted draconian restrictions on all nongovernmental entities that conduct voter registration.

Under HB1355, any group or individual that conducts voter registration must now (1) register their organization with the Florida Division of Elections prior to conducting registration activities and regularly file onerous reports on all their activities; (2) track and account for voter registration forms using a specially generated number for each document; (3) submit completed voter registration forms to the state within 48 hours (a significant decrease from the previous deadline of 10 days); (4) subject themselves to fines between $50 and $1,000 for registration forms returned to the state after 48 hours; and (5) submit to new enforcement authority from the Florida attorney general.

These restrictions encumber even large and experienced organizations; immediately after HB1355 was passed, the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its voter registration activities. But these restrictions fall heaviest on small organizations that conduct neighborhood voter registration, lack the capacity to abide by the state’s reporting requirements and tight deadlines, and could be virtually bankrupted under this penalty structure. Already, there are reports of public school teachers who may face huge fines under the new law—all for the supposed offense of helping students register to vote without following each minute requirement of the new law.

Fewer voter registration drives mean fewer voters. But cutting back on voter registration drives does not have the effect of limiting the political participation of all citizens equally. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that African American and Hispanic voters are more than twice as likely to register through voter registration drives as are white voters in Florida.

Democrats have also sought congressional investigations in order to address these laws. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,requested congressional field hearings into the new laws, asking Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to schedule them. Nelson also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the Justice Department launch an investigation into whether the “new state voting laws resulted from collusion or an orchestrated effort to limit voter turnout.”

Florida is currently waiting for a ruling on the most controversial aspects of H.B. 1355 from a court in the District of Columbia.

Photo: Flickr/hjl

Wasserman Schultz represents Florida’s 20th congressional district, which covers parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties and is member of the House Judiciary and Budget committees. #

The Miami Herald reports: #

An email from Vice President Joe Biden on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s ascension to DNC chief: #

“Debbie has served the people of Florida – first in the Florida State Legislature, and more recently in Congress – for nearly two decades. During that time, she has fought for America’s children, seniors, and men and women in uniform. #

“In selecting Debbie to lead our party, President Obama noted her tenacity, her strength, her fighting spirit, and her ability to overcome adversity. President Obama expressed great admiration for her as a leader, and he was honored that she accepted this important challenge on behalf of the Democratic Party. #

The Herald adds: #

The South Florida congressional delegation is traditionally friendly, regardless of political affiliation. But Wasserman Schultz, a staunch defender of the economic embargo against Cuba, has especially warm ties with South Florida Republicans who share her stance on tough sanctions against the island. #

The Sun-Sentinel comments that “Wasserman Schultz will lead a party hoping to rebound from what Obama called a ‘shellacking’ in last year’s elections, when Republicans regained majority control of the U.S. House. Republicans swept the Florida races for governor, U.S. senator and all six of the state’s closely contested U.S. House seats.” #

“From a partisan point of view, I think it would be the best thing in the world to have a shutdown,” the former DNC chairman said. “I know who’s going to get blamed. We’ve been down this road before.”

Dean clarified that during the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, it was the Republican Party that took the blame, which Dean believes, improved former President Bill Clinton’s reelection chances.

“All these tea party people who are dependent on Social Security and Medicare and all these other things, when those checks stop coming, believe me, their constituency’s going to go even lower than it has been after the fiasco in Wisconsin,” Dean said, before he was reminded that Social Security checks will not stop coming in the event of a shutdown.

“Yes,” he countered. “But there’s going to be a lot of talk about it and there’s going to be a lot of nervousness and there are going to be some things that do stop and who knows what’s going to stop?”

Panelists Steve Elmendorf, top aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia and former Republican Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, disagreed with Dean on all points, saying a shutdown would be bad for the American people and would not assist either party politically.

Dean said he wouldn’t like a shutdown from a statesman point of view.

Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced Tuesday that the House will not pass another short-term federal funding bill if Congress cannot finalize a 2011 spending agreement by April 8, according to the Boston Globe.

Here’s video of Dean speaking on the National Journal Insider’s Conference panel:

The Republican National Committee, which has struggled in recent months to keep pace, has yet to release its own September numbers, but campaign ad spending by outside groups — which at this point totals $80 million and has favored Republicans by as much as 7 to 1 — promises to keep the overall spending totals for both sides roughly on par.

Campaign finance law places strict limits on the size of individual donations to party committees, however, indicating that the DNC is taking in a greater number of small donations than Republican campaigns are getting from new conservative-leaning outside groups like American Crossroads, which face no comparable restrictions. Indeed, groups like American Crossroads have registered with the FEC under the new designation of an “independent expenditure committee,” which means than can raise unlimited amounts of cash as long as they promise to spend it all on independent ad buys. They’ve since raised the majority of their funds from a couple of billionaires.

The site picks up where Obama left off, taking special care to point out the plenitude of connections the minority leader has to lobbyists in Washington and asking voters to “imagine the huge influence they’ll have if he becomes Speaker of the House.”

All in all, singling out Boehner represents a major shift for the President, who spent most of his first year and a half in office attempting to signal to voters that he was above the fray of partisan politics. With Democrats down in the polls by such large margins, especially when voters are asked to pick a generic Republican over a generic Dem, however, Democrats best hope is in pointing out the most corrupt or eccentric aspects about their opponents in order to keep the races local and personal.

Boehner, with his close circle of lobbyists and former aides now working for Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS, among other companies, seems like the perfect target for this strategy.

The contract runs down an agenda of the Democrats’ boogeymen: repealing Health Insurance Reform, privatizing Social Security, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, protecting “those responsible for the oil spill,” and abolishing the Department of Education, Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency. There’s also a video that you can see here and more details on the DNC website here.

The mock contract is an attempt by Democrats to preempt the new “Contract for America” — a document similar to the one created by the GOP before the 1994 elections — that Republicans are in the process of drawing up and hope will help sweep them into office as it did 16 years ago. Republicans say they won’t lay out their platform until they have a chance to confer with their constituents during the August recess. Democrats say it’s all a phony effort and their radical agenda is already set in stone.

What’s clear is that Democrats are banking on a strategy that links Republicans to the Tea Party and the furthest reaches of the right wing. Republicans, for their part, don’t all seem to be shying away from the label. Last week at least eight House members, all Republicans, announced the formation of a “Tea Party Caucus” in congress. In addition to organizer Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the caucus’s members include Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kans.), John Carter (R-Texas), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind).

Guests at Obama’s DNC events in New York City today will be asked to give the legal maximum of $30,400 to attend. Both events are sold out, but The Wall Street Journal nonetheless argues that antipathy towards Democrats on Wall Street will limit the amount of events Obama will be able to throw in the Big Apple:

Measured in a variety of ways, Wall Street giving to Democrats is down. Overall, five of the top 10 sources of donations to the DNC in 2008 were Wall Street firms, according to an analysis of campaign donations by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. This election season, just one financial company—the investment-management firm Capital Group Cos.—ranks in the top 10.

Employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. donated a total of $1.1 million to the DNC in 2008, making Goldman the biggest source of campaign cash to the Democratic Party. Goldman employees have donated about $100,000 to the DNC so far in the 2010 congressional elections, according to the center’s data.

The “Wall Street is angry with Obama and the Democrats” meme is popular and not without a kernel of truth. Fundraising numbers, however, don’t actually seem to bear this out, at least when compared against the amount of money Wall Street is giving to Republicans. In the same article, the Journal admits as much:

While Wall Street giving is down, Democrats are still outpacing Republicans. Overall, Wall Street has given $4.26 million to the DNC in the current cycle. Financial executives have donated just $870,000 to the Republican National Committee so far, less than 1% of the total raised.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele (ZUMA)

The “suggested amount” portion of the donation form is crossed out. There isn’t a box to check for no donation, so the would-be donor has simply drawn and filled in a new bubble and scrawled “NO.”

“What the hell happened in NY District 23?” writes the anonymous donor to an unrewarded Republican National Committee. “You guys supporting Dede Scozzafava?”

[GOP1] The form is one of many collected by blogger, columnist and TV pundit Michelle Malkin since the RNC chipped in for the doomed congressional campaign of Scozzafava, a moderate Republican who eventually withdrew from a November 2009 special election and helped Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.) squeak past Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. In the wake of Monday’s Daily Caller story on the RNC’s lavish spending, including a $1,923 check to the Voyeur West Hollywood nightclub — an embarrassment to RNC Chairman Michael Steele for which the offender, Allison Meyers, was fired, and her upcoming events postponed — Malkin put up another batch of defiled RNC donation forms, with graffiti like “Fire Steele. Hire Cheney. (Dick or Liz.) Then Get Back to Me.”

The Voyeur story dogged the RNC all week, especially after the committee pointed to outsized Democratic National Committee expenses as a distraction (giving the DNC an opportunity to take another whack at the juicier RNC tale) and after Politico noticed that a typo on one solicitation form sent donors to a phone sex line. But for many conservative activists, it only accelerated and amplified a revolt against the RNC that had been brewing for months. It’s given the growing number of conservative PACs and projects a new selling point to potential donors. And it’s emboldened the sizable number of loose-lipped Republican activists who are working to create new institutions outside of Steele’s purview.

“This nightclub story is absolutely awful,” said Eric Odom, a Tea Party activist and the chairman of Liberty First PAC, “but the RNC just came off of a meeting in Hawaii, and that was even worse. I don’t think there are conservatives who are going to turn on the RNC just because of this story. I think it’s the nail in the coffin.”

According to Odom — who famously denied Steele a speaking slot at the April 15, 2009 anti-tax Tea Party in Chicago (Steele, at the time, denied that he had wanted to speak) — donors to Liberty First PAC have been submitting RNC-bashing notes along with their checks. One out of ten donations via Paypal, said Odom, came with a message along the lines of “2009 was the last year I’ll donate to a party.”

Mark Skoda, the leader of the Memphis TEA Party who launched the Ensuring Liberty PAC at February’s National Tea Party Convention, told TWI that the troubles that had beset the RNC would be impossible in his group — and potential donors knew it.

“We’re not going to be buying first-class tickets,” said Skoda, who is convening the first meeting of Ensuring Liberty’s board next week. “There’ll be no big parties. We’re operating like a business. I used to work for FedEx — these things like vast overcharges didn’t happen.”

Skoda, who said he “felt bad” for Steele after hearing the Voyeur news, emphasized that Ensuring Liberty would be “a complement,” not a competitor, to the RNC. It would back Republican candidates, albeit after making sure they fit the PAC’s exacting standards and didn’t just have an “R” next to their names on the ballot. But other conservatives are less diplomatic. On Wednesday night, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins sent a blunt message to supporters: “Don’t give money to the RNC.” On Thursday afternoon, the Leadership Institute — whose president, Morton Blackwell, is an RNC committeeman – posted a Facebook message commenting favorably on the Perkins news. (Blackwell is out of the country and did not respond to requests for comment.)

The evidence of conservative donors taking their money elsewhere is hard to track. In the final quarter of 2009, for example, the most prominent competitors for conservatives’ donations pulled in modest amounts of money. Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the group behind the Tea Party Express, had only $161,174 in receipts. The Senate Conservatives Fund, Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) PAC to aid his hand-picked candidates, raised $238,189. By comparison, the RNC raised $22,295,310. But activists point to the RNC’s low cash-on-hand numbers to make their case.

“The bottom line is that Michael Steele never should have gotten this job in the first place,” said one exasperated conservative fundraiser. “Nothing that’s happening now should surprise anyone.”

That criticism has surfaced again and again as conservatives court donors for their projects. On Thursday, Jonathan Strong — the reporter whose initial Voyeur story started the latest stampede against the RNC – cobbled together the last few years’ worth of negative stories about Steele’s managerial and financial problems. They hadn’t been enough to push conservatives away from Steele when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 or the RNC chairmanship in 2009. Indeed, in 2005, conservatives rallied around Steele when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hacked into the Senate candidate’s credit report to get the details on his personal bankruptcies.

Conservatives are no longer giving Steele a pass on those stories. The less faith small- and big-dollar donors have in the RNC, the more valuable they can be to other PACs, which are not being shy about soliciting their support.

“When I fly, I fly coach,” said David Bossie, the chairman of Citizens United and its political PAC, another competitor for small-dollar conservative donors. “We’re not lavish. If you donate to us, you know your money is going right back into the field to support conservative candidates, seeking out people who wouldn’t otherwise get support.”

The Susan B. Anthony List, the American Conservative Union’s PAC and Our Country Deserves Better can all point donors to their low-overheard campaigns in NY-23 or the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate, contrasting those with the performance of the RNC.

The party committee is well aware of its predicament. “The press shop’s about as busy now as it was during the days that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suspended his presidential campaign,” groused one conservative strategist who’s worked with the RNC.

The problem for conservatives is that dividing their efforts, and nurturing mistrust in the RNC, might damage the GOP’s 2010 strategy even if competing groups are well funded.

“You’re seeing a lot of small donors, who in other times would be discovering the party committee, going to these PACs instead,” said Anthony Corrallo, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies campaign finance. “Large amounts of potential money that the RNC may have been able to attract are now going elsewhere. And you’d rather see money located in the parties — the RNC can do much more coordinated GOTV [get out the vote] and advertising.”

RNC defenders could point the detractors to the left’s experience with divided effort. In 2003, a team of big liberal donors that included George Soros and Peter Lewis founded America Coming Together, spending more than $10 million for GOTV. Because ACT couldn’t coordinate with the Democratic Party or John Kerry’s presidential bid, some of its efforts were wasted. And in 2007, the disbanded group paid a $750,000 fine to the FEC for fundraising violations.

It remains to be seen whether conservatives can avoid a similar fate.

“I thought it was a good idea,” Steele said. “Don’t sit there and think you’re going to direct a bunch of angry liberals to call the RNC when I know full well what that’s all about. I get the joke. My response was, talk to your own party, because they’re the ones ginning this up.”