John Cox wins thousands of votes on Super Tuesday

Many of my regular readers know that I have been writing about Republican presidential candidate and Illinois businessman John Cox on an irregular basis since before the New Hampshire primary. I've been a bit curious about the guy since interviewing him at a New Hampshire radio station where I worked in 2006. After the interview, he chastised me on his blog, saying I was getting my "liberal" views across during the interview. I corrected him saying that I hold both liberal and conservative views. Most everyone I know who heard the interview said I was too easy on the guy. He did, however, send me a nice letter thanking me for the radio time, which was pretty impressive considering most folks don't bother doing that.
Anyhow, some have blogged my stories on other blogs about the Cox campaign and others have wondered why I'm ribbing him about his run [one commenter suggested I was, "obsessed"]. As I have said before, I was a bit surprised that he would quit so soon after blowing through more than $1 million of his money on his race. At the same time, I have been curious about how he would do, even though he dropped out. What did that money buy him beyond rent in an office few people visited or staffers who were hired and fired [or quit] and hired and fired?
For example, I was curious about the number of votes he received in the Iowa Caucuses, since the party refused to release the vote totals for the lower tier candidates. So I emailed the press person for the state party requesting the figures and never heard back. So, I emailed again and even called. And yet, they refused to release votes. I was pretty shocked by this. Why are they afraid to release numbers for Cox, Alan Keyes and others? I really wanted to know now! Some on the Web have stated that they believe Keyes won the Caucus there but the party refused to release the votes. I seriously doubt this. But how would anyone know, if they don't release the vote totals.
Later, I posted Cox's numbers in New Hampshire, 39, including a single vote he received in Concord.
I haven't seen much else for the guy and I know he did not make a lot of state ballots.
Well, as an update, Cox did receive 2,628 votes in the California primary, coming in 10th, ahead of Sen. Sam Brownback.
I was also surprised to not see his name on the Illinois ballot. According to the AP, with 99 percent of the Republican ballots counted, "uncommitted" received 0 votes. So, either Cox blanked his own ballot and it didn't count, wrote his name in, voted for another Republican candidate, or did not vote in the primary at all! What's up with that?
I don't know if he is on any future ballots but we'll see. In the end, after all the Republican primary votes are cast, we can take the number of votes Cox received and divide it into the amount of money he spent and see how much he paid for each vote. In the end, it will probably be less than what Mitt Romney spends!

Update: Here is the Chicago Tribune's take on John's numbers: ["The also-ran also gets votes"].

Green Party results ...

According to the Secretary of State's office in California, Ralph Nader easily won the Green Party primary with more than 60 percent of the vote:

Candidate		Votes	Percent
	Kent Mesplay (Grn)	565	2.0 %
	Jared Ball (Grn)	451	1.6 %
	Jesse Johnson (Grn)	512	1.8 %
	Kat Swift (Grn)	857	3.0 %
	Ralph Nader (Grn)	17,065	61.2 %
	Elaine Brown (Grn)	1,275	4.6 %
	Cynthia McKinney (Grn)	7,178	25.8 %

Interestingly, Nader isn't actually running. A couple of friends of his put in a place card for him on the ballot in case he decides to run. Could a Nader/McKinney ticket be in the works?

In Illinois, The Chicago Tribune is reporting the results this way:

McKinney - 1,446 - 57 percent
Howie Hawkins - 438 - 17 percent
Mesplay 3- 69 - 14 percent
Ball - 302 - 12 percent

In Arkansas, Ballot Access News is reporting these numbers:

Uncommitted: 275
McKinney 116
Ball 54
Mesplay 48
Kat Swift 26

There are no numbers from Massachusetts. Apparently there were some problems counting some of those ballots and none of the daily newspapers have the figures. As well, the Green-Rainbow Party does not have numbers and the Secretary of State's office Web site is down for "maintenance" until tomorrow.

2008 delegate count update

Here is what we have, the morning after Tsunami Tuesday:

Dems: CNN/MSNBC/Politico

Clinton 811/834/845
Obama 720/838/765
Edwards NA/26/NA
Gravel 0/NA/NA

GOP: CNN/MSNBC/Politico

McCain 616/720/613
Romney 269/256/269
Huckabee 170/194/170
Paul 16/NA/14

McCain wins big; Dems split

I'm still holding to my prediction that there will be at least one brokered convention before this mess of a presidential primary race is done. It looks like it will be on the Dem side but you never know.
John McCain had a huge night tonight, winning nine of the 20-plus states which held contests today, with Huckabee and Romney winning five or six a piece. But the big delegate gains went to McCain. He is almost halfway to the nomination and this, after virtually every talk radio host came out and endorsed Mitt Romney and pummeled ... PUMMELED ... McCain for hours and hours over days and days. And yet, he is halfway to the nomination and the other two are far, far behind.
Over on the Dem side, Obama is on his way to winning 13 states. Hillary will win in 9, including California. Since the delegates are proportional in all the Dem states, each side will win a bunch of delegates. Right now, Obama seems to be winning by huge margins in most of his winning states while the states Hillary is winning are by smaller margins. Drudge is reporting that Obama is claiming he has a delegate lead but the Clinton folks say, Not so fast. Whatever.
John Edwards scored 10 percent of the vote in California and Oklahoma despite having dropped out of the race but he did not reach a 15 percent threshold anywhere. Ron Paul racked up impressive numbers in Montana, where he placed second with 25 percent, North Dakota where he received 21 percent, and Minnesota, where he received 16 percent.
Here are some numbers:

GOP
CNN/MSNBC
McCain 475/378
Romney 151/127
Huckabee 93/91
Paul 6

Needed: 1,191

Dems
Clinton 357/249
Obama 287/128
Edwards 26/26

Needed: 2,025

Huckabee wins WV ...

AP has it here: ["Huckabee Wins All 18 W.Va. Delegates"]. This would give Huckabee about the same amount of delegates as Romney has right now, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 or 60. It's going to be a very long night.

What's up with Bob?

Politicker NH has this great video about Bob Clegg up. Clegg is considering a run against Rep. Paul Hodes for the NHCD2 seat. It's a pretty cute video ... and it looks like he might actually be running:

Not to be obnoxious but let's see how hard Clegg really runs for the seat. If we see him slim down a bit - and yeah, since he is a very BIG guy, he could stand to lose the pounds - we'll know he is working for it. If he doesn't slim down, well, then he really didn't work that hard for the seat. I know from experience that endless campaigning is one of the best ways to lose weight and keep the weight off.

Super Tuesday news sharing opportunity

The New England News Forum sent out an email on Sunday night promoting a new project:

NENF SUPER TUESDAY NEWSHARE

New Internet tools are making it easier and easier to share information. NENF is working with a startup company, Publish2.com, founded by Scott Karp, a former web strategists at The Atlantic Monthly. For the next week, we hope you'll register for this test and bookmark links to news and
commentary about SuperTuesday primary races in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
For more information, see: http://www.newenglandnews.org/?q=supertuesday.

This seems like a neat idea to be trying. Let's see how it goes

Great anti-McCain ad

This is very creative:

2008 delegate count update

Here is where the campaigns are with delegates.

According to CNN/MSNBC:
Dems
Clinton 232/48
Obama 158/63
Needed: 2,025

GOP
McCain 97/93
Romney 92/59
Huckabee 29/40
Paul 6
Needed: 1,191

Romney wins Maine Caucus

AP and CNN are reporting that Mitt Romney won the Maine Caucus. With 68 percent of the towns reporting, Romney has 52 percent, McCain has 21, Paul has 19, Huckabee has 6, and Fred Thompson had 4 percent. Romney will pick up all 18 delegates from the state.

Comcast makes some changes

A lot has been made of the fact that C-SPAN channels in Concord were moved to the digital plank of the platform. I wrote a bit about the changes here: ["A couple of quick things worth mentioning"] and here: ["Comcast flack responds"].
The issue has also been raised in other towns around the country, including Massachusetts, where some folks have noticed the changes.
Well, it seems as though Comcast has heard some of the complaints and made a minor change.
On Saturday, I went down to the local Comcast office to trade in my battered remote control for a new one and to pay my bill. While there, I grabbed the latest price information flyer, which was printed this month. In it, there is a new option called "Family Tier." In the Family Tier, for $14.95, Basic cable service customers can add C-SPAN1 and C-SPAN2, along with some kids programming, weather, and some science channels.
So, for a little more than $30 per month, cable subscribers can get the C-SPAN channels back and still save a bit of money over the Standard cable price of $55. Additionally, Comcast customers have to have a digital cable box, which bumps the price up a bit. But everyone will need those after February 2009, when the transfer to HD happens.
In the end, this is not good enough. The C-SPAN channels should be on the Basic service for free. But, at least Comcast seems to have taken a move to answer critics who don't want to pay $55 a month for Standard cable.

No Debate

Guest Perspective/Ralph Nader

It was billed as the great debate that, in the words of moderator Wolf Blitzer, “could change the course of this presidential race and the nation.”

Situated at the packed historic Kodak Theatre—site of the Hollywood Oscar awards, thousands of people, including anti-war protesters, were outside, where tickets were being scalped for $1,000.

The burgeoning excitement swept up Mr. Blitzer into an introduction reminiscent of a heavyweight boxing title fight. Referring to the “glamour on this stage…one of the great stages of all time,” he declared that “this will be the first time that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be debating face to face, just the two of them, one-on-one.” The crowd ROARED!

When it was over two hours later, here is how the reporters, not the columnists, of the New York Times described the showdown: “Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama sat side by side here Thursday, sharing a night of smiles, friendly eye-catching and gentle banter…It was almost as if the battle was to see which of them could outnice the other.”

Since neither scored a knockout, a knockdown, and neither stumbled, the audience left without many feeling the pain of their champion being bested. Even the Times’ critic, Alessandra Stanley, she of the usual barbed pen, could only marvel at the smooth harmony ideology both candidates decided to adopt. She wrote: “They let their eyes make nice…As they stood in front of the audience before the debate, Mr. Obama leaned down to Mrs. Clinton and whispered a few words in her ear, as if continuing the fun chat they had just shared backstage.”

The two candidates were unperturbed by any questions from the reporters that they had not answered before or they were soft balls they could hit out of the ball park.

As in all debates involving presidential candidates, the reporters were unwilling or incapable of asking the unconvential questions reflecting situations and conditions widely reported or investigated by their own colleagues.

This phenomenon of invincible reluctance should be studied by anthropologists or psychologists. Examples follow:

I called up Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief and author for a question he would have asked. He offered this one. “The Israeli government is imposing severe and continual collective punishment on the 1.5 million people of tiny Gaza, which includes restricting or cutting off food, fuel, electricity, medicines and other necessities. Malnutrition rates among many children resemble the worst of sub-Saharan Africa. Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz, has reporters and columnists describing these horrific conditions and concluding that the ferocity of the blockade is detrimental to Israel as well as the Palestinians.

“Collective punishment is clearly a violation of established international law. Prominent, former military, security and political leaders in Israel are speaking out against this punishment and calling for negotiations with Hamas. Do you, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, agree with these Israelis or do you continue to support the policy of collective punishment against innocent men, women and children in Gaza?”

The Nation magazine’s columnist, Alex Cockburn suggested this question:

“Senator Clinton, in all your previous debates, you have not criticized the bloated military budget so often documented by the media, Pentagon audits and GAO reports for Congress to be replete with waste fraud and abuse. The Soviet Union is gone. Yet military spending now consumes half of the federal government’s operating expenditures.

“Specifically, what would you do to significantly reduce the tens of billions of wasted dollars and eliminate redundant weapons systems?

“And, further, would you abolish the missile defense project, deemed by the American Physical Society and other leading physicists to be technically unworkable? It costs about $10 billion a year with a total expenditure of over $150 billion since its inception under Ronald Reagan, without any indication that it can fulfill the function for which it was designed? Please be specific.”

***

Here are a few questions of my own. “Senator Obama, you have taught Constitutional law. Has President Bush violated the Constitution, federal statutes and international treaties during his two terms of office? If so, please elaborate and tell the American people what you think should be done about holding the self-described “responsibility” President accountable under the impeachment authority of Congress and other laws of the land?”

“Senator Clinton, you represent New York, which includes the large banking, brokerage and investment firms colloquially called Wall Street. Eliot Spitzer, became Governor of your state largely on his widely reported reputation for prosecuting corporate crooks who fleeced investors, pensioners and workers of hundreds of billions of dollars. He often remarked that the federal criminal laws were too weak and the Securities and Exchange Commission was too lenient.

“As the Senator from New York, what specifically have you done to advance a strong crackdown on corporate crime with tougher laws and larger enforcement budgets? And, specifically, what do you intend to do as President?”

“Senator Obama, you have often spoken about your health insurance plan as a way to reduce costs. Yet you do not discuss three major cost reduction opportunities. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, estimates that ten percent of the entire health expenditures in this country go down the drain due to computerized billing fraud and abuse. This year, that amounts to $220 billion.

“Under a single payer plan, administrative expenses would be cut by about two-thirds. That would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year in savings. And the Harvard School of Public Health study estimates about 80,000 people die every year from medical malpractice in hospitals, estimating costs years ago of $60 billion a year. These are large savings in a $2.2 trillion a year health care industry.

“Do you agree and, if so, why have you ignored proposing practical actions in these areas?”

“Senator Clinton, you have long urged more money for children’s programs. One way to make this possible is to end or diminish the complex system of corporate welfare—subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts of business corporations. These amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year, directly and through tax loopholes. Why have you not moved against such spending so that some of the money may go to help needy children? And specifically, what would you do as President to develop standards curtailing runaway corporate welfare programs pushed by corporate lobbyists?”

Is reportorial self-censorship limiting the questions presented to the Presidential candidates? You decide.

More on Nader ...

Ralph Nader's friends have launched a new Web site: ["Nader Explore 08"]. On the site, the campaign volunteers, a lot of the same faces from 2000 and 2004, make their case:

Maybe we're wrong.

Maybe the Democrats and Republicans will nominate Presidential candidates this year who will stand up against the war profiteers, the nuclear industry, the credit card industry, the corporate criminals, big oil, and the drug and health insurance industries.

We doubt it.

But hope springs eternal.

In the meantime, take a few minutes and explore with us an idea.

The idea is this—1,000 citizens in every Congressional district.

Each and every one committed to challenging the corporate powers that have a hammerlock on our political and economic systems.

Organized citizen power facing off against corporate power.

In this election year – 2008.

Instead of spending this election year sitting back and watching the corporate candidates spin their vapid mantras – hope, experience, change.

Instead of spending the year complaining about inertia, exhaustion, and apathy.

Let us instead weigh the possibility of pulling together half a million dedicated citizens collectively rising up off our couches and organizing a ground force in every Congressional district in the country.

A ground force of citizens who are informed, committed, tenacious advocates for a just future.

This is what we are contemplating.

Something new.

Something big.

Something bold.

Something that works.

Something that will prod young and old alike.

To join in a mass push back against the corporate powers that are dictating our future.

No one person can get us there.

But one person is ideally suited to lead this grassroots force – if he chooses to do so and runs as the citizens’ candidate for President in 2008.

And that one person is Ralph Nader.

In the 1960s, Nader brought together a group of young people who challenged the corporate status quo.

The press dubbed those young people Nader’s Raiders.

And the rest – as they say – is history.

Here's the idea—1,000 active and informed citizens in each Congressional district ready to take on the corporate political structure in this 2008 election year.

Half a million citizens – mobilized, informed and powerful, organized for a common cause – facing off against corporate power and corporate control.

It is a pretty lofty goal. Let's see how it goes.

Edwards suspends campaign ... Nader dips in ...

Edwards will have a press conference in about 15 minutes announcing that he is getting out of the presidential race. The AP's Nedra Pickler has a pretty good overview here: ["Edwards to Quit Presidential Race"].

And Rick Klein has the Nader news here: ["Ralph Nader Flirts with Presidential Bid"].

2008 delegate race update

Here are the latest delegate race totals:
_______CNN __ MSNBC
McCain ---95------93
Romney---57------59
Huckabee-26------40
Paul--------6-------4

1,191 needed to win.
_______CNN/MSNBC [with super delegates]
Obama-----68-----------[232]
Clinton-----48-----------[158]
Edwards----26-----------[62]

2,025 needed to win.

AP is reporting that Giuliani will endorse McCain tomorrow: ["Giuliani will endorse McCain"]. This, frankly, is amazing. Giuliani got a single convention delegate ... for $47.2 million. Absolutely amazing.

The Washington Post has some interactive maps of Florida here: [Interactive map].
A couple of things worth pointing out: On the Dem side, Edwards won more counties, 11, than Obama won [9]. Their county wins ran from the panhandle across the top of the state, the more conservative and black areas of Florida. Edwards placed second in many of northern border areas and the more suburban areas of the middle of the state.
Over on the Republican side, Huckabee won four counties towards the top of the state. He also placed second in eight counties and third in 27 counties. Giuliani placed third in most of the southeastern counties.

Close to final Florida votes:

6709 of 6913 Precincts Reporting - 97%

Name Party Votes Vote % Clinton, Hillary Dem 850,170 50% Obama, Barack Dem 563,147 33% Edwards, John Dem 246,097 14% Biden, Joe Dem 15,238 1% Richardson, Bill Dem 14,655 1% Kucinich, Dennis Dem 9,459 1% Dodd, Chris Dem 5,353 0% Gravel, Mike Dem 5,207 0%

President - GOP Primary

6709 of 6913 Precincts Reporting - 97%

	Name	Party	Votes	Vote %
	McCain, John	GOP	686,246	36%
	Romney, Mitt	GOP	589,590	31%
	Giuliani, Rudy	GOP	279,339	15%
	Huckabee, Mike	GOP	256,706	13%
	Paul, Ron	GOP	61,438	3%
	Thompson, Fred	GOP	22,112	1%
	Keyes, Alan	GOP	3,961	0%
	Hunter, Duncan	GOP	2,747	0%
	Tancredo, Tom	GOP	1,539	0%