Protesters at the 9/12 Tea Party in Washington, DC (Photo by Aaron Wiener)

Election night was bittersweet for Andrew Moylan. The young government affairs manager of the conservative National Taxpayers Union was watching returns in Asheville, N.C., with fellow attendees of the conservative State Policy Network’s annual meeting. Early in the night, the gubernatorial races in Virginia and then New Jersey went to the Republicans. Moylan, however, was watching the returns on two anti-tax, anti-spending ballot measures in Maine and Washington. Those weren’t turning out so well.

“I care a lot less about Republicans than I do about policy,” Moylan told TWI. “So it was depressing to watch those numbers come in.”

The numbers broke hard against conservatives and libertarians. The Maine Tax Relief Initiative–Question 4–would have placed new limits on state and local government spending and required voter approval to go over those limits. It failed by 21 points and a margin of more than 100,000 votes. Washington Initiative 1033 would have placed limits on local spending and directed surplus tax revenue back to Washingtonians, as property tax rebates. It failed by 11 points and a similar margin of around 100,000 votes.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“They were massively outspent in both states,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, “and it always takes a few tries to win these things.”

Reached by TWI, activists inside and outside of Maine and Washington pointed to both of those reasons for the defeats. But some of them wrestled with the contrast between these losses and the rise of the anti-tax, small government Tea Party movement. Conservative and libertarian activists are more visible and more organized than in any time in recent memory. Why weren’t they able to buck the expected opposition of labor unions and capitalize on what, they argue, is roiling voter discontent at high taxes and wasteful government? Some suggested that the nascent movement was focused more on the politics of Washington, D.C. than on local politics, and that this might be an error. Others admitted that Question 4 and Initiative 1033 may have gone too far.

“When you’re swinging for the fences,” said Tim Eyman, the key organizer of Initiative 1033, “it’s not out of line for voters to say no. What is the statistic about Babe Ruth? He had the most home runs, and he had the most strike-outs. I wouldn’t read too much into this, other than we were fighting for an audacious tax-limiting proposal, and there limits to what voters willing to do, regardless of how out of control they think their government is.”

Eyman, a longtime ballot initiative organizers in Washington, had a lot to lose from the failure of Initiative 1033. He took out a second mortgage on his house for $250,000, providing more than a third of the total funding for the campaign–the rest of it came locally, from tapped-out small donors. And while he did tap into the Tea Party movement for support, he didn’t find much money or much organization ready to compete with the eventual $3.5 million marshaled by the initiative’s opponents.

“The recession doesn’t effect tax-takers,” said Eyman, pointing to the Service Employees International Union and the National Education Association, both of whom opposed the initiative. “Taxpayers are having a difficult time. So the money wasn’t there.”

Kevin Morse, an organizer with Olympia, Washington’s Tea Party group, told TWI that Eyman had attended a June 27 Tea Party meeting and enlisted activists to put the initiative on the ballot–it made the deadline, and the target for signatures, two weeks later. In the months between then and the election, said Morse, the activists simply spent more time organizing and putting their emphasis on health care legislation, “because that’s where the press coverage goes.” Proving his point, Morse spent Monday afternoon protesting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at an appearance in the state.

“That $3.5 million the other side spent had a big impact, too,” said Morse. “If you need more proof, that’s why big money owns D.C. right now.”

Activists in both states pointed to the fearsome fundraising advantage of the initiatives’ opponents as reasons why they never really had a chance. In Maine, Question 4 backer Tarren Bragdon claimed that the measure’s opponents had a 12-1 cash advantage that they used to drive down support. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican gubernatorial hopeful for 2010 who worked on the Question 4 campaign, personally put up a quarter of its budget.

“The results were not a negative reflection on activists here in Maine,” he said. “We were outspent and we were outmaneuvered by interests from outside the state.”

Still, some of last week’s election results cut against the idea that money can make or break elections. In New Jersey, first-time candidate Chris Christie ousted Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) despite taking public financing and being outspent roughly 3-1. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dramatically under-performed in the polls and nearly lost to Democratic candidate Bill Thompson despite outspending Thompson by a 16-1 margin. And while anti-tax initiatives are often battered by better-funded opposition campaigns, they often do better than Question 4 and Initiative 1033. In 2006, by many measures a better election year for liberals, a nearly identical measure in Maine failed by only 8 points. All of this pointed anti-tax activists to two other explanations–a lack of grassroots support and a smear campaign by opponents.

“I was surprised that the this movement against higher taxes, against higher spending, was not more focused on these measures,” said Paul Jacob, a longtime ballot initiative activist who now leads the Citizens in Charge Foundation. “I’m surprised wasn’t more effort to back them. There’s just been more attention paid to Congress, and people gravitate to where the attention is.”

The NTU’s Moylan paid some credit to the campaign initiative opponents had run in Maine and Washington, giving voters a dark history lesson on the Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights. That measure, passed in 1992, mandated that any tax increase that produced revenue higher than expected from the combined rate of population increase and inflation would be subject to a voter referendum. In the boom years of the 1990s, it was a trend-setter. But in 2000 and 2005, after the restrictions produced education funding cuts, voters did away with most of Colorado’s TABOR.

“The ‘No’ campaigns hammered away on Colorado,” said the NTU’s Andrew Moylan. “But when you start to dig into the history in Colorado, TABOR was not the cause of their problems.”

Anti-tax activists had a problem, said Moylan. Until they passed more tax-limiting initiatives, it would be tough to prove that they worked.

“If we had other states that had passed something like this, that were running smoothly and well, we’d have an easier argument to make. The other side has a 10-second talking point. We have a ten-minute explanation. Elections are about the 10-second talking points.”

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) (WDCpix)

To hear the Democrats tell the tale, the extension of jobless benefits enacted over the weekend will provide those living in high-unemployment states with an additional 20 weeks of insurance.

Well, not quite.

Because the bill was held up for so long in the Senate, an end-of-the-year filing deadline will prevent anyone from accessing the final six weeks of benefits, according to state officials and sources on Capitol Hill.

On Friday, President Obama signed into law legislation extending jobless benefits by 14 weeks nationwide, with an additional six weeks for those states where unemployment rates top 8.5 percent. Those benefits kicked in on Sunday. But there’s a glitch. The new law treats the 20-week extension as two separate extensions of 14 weeks and six weeks, with participants required to exhaust the first 14 weeks before applying for the next six. However, the current law keeps a Dec. 31 application deadline, roughly seven weeks from now, making collecting the full 20 weeks impossible.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

As a result, some members of Congress are already eying another sweeping unemployment extension, which would both address the deadline glitch and provide additional help — well beyond the six weeks in question — to those unable to find work next year, when jobless rates are expected to hover near double digits.

The Orange County Register first reported on the deadline glitch last week.

In a state like California, where unemployment currently stands above 12 percent, that technicality would prove significant. Loree Levy, spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department, said Monday that an estimated 92,000 residents had exhausted all of their available unemployment by the end of October, and roughly 285,000 will be eligible for the newly enacted benefits by the end of the year. Whether they can get 20 weeks or only 14, though, depends on whether Congress extends the filing deadline.

Some in Congress are well aware of the problem. The office of Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said Monday that he’ll be pushing a proposal to provide as much as an additional year’s worth of jobless benefits. The proposal will be wrapped into a package to include other provisions designed to ease Main Street’s pain amid the downturn, including money to subsidize COBRA health benefits, as well as a provision to extend the full federal funding of a traditionally state-federal unemployment insurance program called FedEd, which got full federal funding under the stimulus bill. Without congressional action, states would again have to pick up part of the FedEd tab at the end of 2009.

McDermott doesn’t have an easy task. The pricetag for extending just the unemployment benefits for one year is roughly $80 billion, the McDermott aide said. With deficit spending having topped $1 trillion in the last fiscal year — and with an enormous health reform proposal in the works — the congressional appetite for expensive new proposals is hardly ravenous. Still, with national unemployment at 10.2 percent — and no wave of new jobs on the horizon — even the most ardent small-government conservatives would have a tough time voting against additional relief.

Update: The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirms that Congress must pass another bill to guarantee the full 20-week extension.

As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands that filled town hall meetings this summer and the nearly a million Americans who gathered here in Washington in September, millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents are worried about liberal social policies and runaway federal spending, deficit and debt.

The best estimate of the Sept. 12 march’s size was about 60,000 to 70,000, according to the D.C. Fire Department and reported by ABC News and other sources. Pence is inflating that figure by at least 1000 percent. I expect dramatic inflation of the march’s size to be with us forever, even though it seems sort of silly — even the lower number is the largest gathering of economic conservatives in anyone’s memory.

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The members of Congress who are slated to speak: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.). Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) is speaking at a preceding event on health care.

Some of the more famous names on the stage that day:

- Betsy McCaughey, the health care think-tanker who helped sink the 1993-1994 reforms and has been hitting the TV circuit to do the same this year.

- Dick Armey of FreedomWorks.

- Stephen Baldwin, the actor turned conservative activist.

- Lloyd Marcus, the conservative African-American singer who’s been headlining the Tea Party Express tour with songs that must be heard to be believed.

FreedomWorks spokespeople said that there would be no editing of anyone’s speeches, but added that they’d become aware of “Lyndon LaRouche types” and other activists with “uninvited messages” who were going to show up to share the spotlight. “We’ve told the park police to look out for them.”

Since the high court struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun control law and found a fundamental right to bear arms, Republicans have been hopeful that the Court will take the next step and say that right applies to the states as well, and would therefore serve to severely restrict states’ rights to restrict gun possession and ownership. But it’s never answered that question — at least, not yet.

Here’s how Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), an avid believer in his fundamental right to gun possession, tried to get Sotomayor to answer the question, and in the process revealing that much of this questioning is aimed at the senators’ constituents, not at any real fact-finding:

“Do I have a right to personal self defense?” asked Coburn.

Sotomayor struggled to think of whether the Supreme Court has addressed the question in that way in any case. “I can’t think of one. The issue of self defense is usually defined in criminal statutes by the states’ laws.”

“But do I personally have an individual right to self defense?” Coburn persisted, knowing full well that any right of self-defense depends on the circumstances and how you try to exercise that right.

“That’s an abstract question and not a particular legal question,” said Sotomayor, always careful to respond with legalistic precision.

“Well, that ‘s what the American people want to hear,” Coburn said. “Is it okay to defend yourself in your home when you’re under attack. The general theory is, do I have that right? I understand if you don’t want to answer,” he said, letting Sotomayor off the hook, implicitly acknowledging he didn’t really expect her to answer it. “That’s a fine answer with me.  But that’s what people want to know. Do we have that right?”

Sotomayor proceeded to answer that it really does depend on the specific situation. For example, she said, if Coburn were to threaten to kill her right then and there, and she ran home and got a gun and came back and shot him, she probably would not have the right to do that.

The AANR will be visiting a handful of congressional offices, but it is keeping the names of the lawmakers close to the chest (pun intended).

AANR members hope to increase the number of locations for enjoying nude recreation on public lands. And like a good lobbying association, AANR is armed with hard data. The group states, “Several polls taken of the traveling public indicate that nearly 20 percent of all persons in North America enjoy skinny-dipping and nude sunbathing.”

According to The Hill, the AANR representatives are expected to be clothed during their visit to the Capitol.

(Via FamousDC)

On April 15, taxpayers gathered across the country. Now it’s time to bring that message to Washington on September 12th. We have secured permits for the West Front of the United States Capitol and are currently working on the remaining logistics.

From the PIC press release:

Musical performers scheduled for the event include Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Heather Headley, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Usher Raymond IV, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am, and Stevie Wonder. Among those reading historical passages will be Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington. The Rt. Reverend V. Gene Robinson will give the invocation. Rob Mathes will be the music director and arranger for the backing band, which will support all of the artists. Additional performers will be announced as they are confirmed.

What, no Oprah? Pfffft. I’m staying home.