Filings, or lack thereof, reveal Michelle Nunn has no explicit policy vis a vis Israel, other than raising money from the Jewish Community.
In the last few hours Ms Michelle 'Stealth' Nunn's campaign is tanking. Is it because voters are beginning to connect those elusive dots and realize she is a Democrat, after all ,who waffles on whether she will vote for Harry Reid etc.
Is it because a member of 'her' president's staff called Netanyahu a "chicken shit coward?"
Is it because a member of 'her' president's staff called Netanyahu a "chicken shit coward?"
Perhaps this community organizer, who has revealed little about her true beliefs, would better serve the public working as a community organizer for Waffle House.
===
We know Obama is never wrong and always blames others for his many failures.
Now that we know what he and his staff think about Netanyahu, calling him a 'coward' and being a 'chicken shit,' are they setting Netanyahu up for blame when Obama's entire Middle East Policy falls apart after he allows Iran to go nuclear and/or be within a few weeks of such?
Netanyahu was one of Israel's most heroic officers serving in one of the nation's most elite units. Meanwhile, Obama never donned a military uniform. I rest my case as to who is a "chicken shit."
Lynn's great uncle, Avram, helped to establish The Likud Party also trained Netanyahu for government and I can assure you Netanyahu may not always do what I and Israelis wish he would but I can also assure you he is no coward. I can also assure you he is a friend of America and appreciates the solid relationship our two nations have had.
Netanyahu's reluctance to attack Iran was based on his mistaken belief he could trust Obama and his concern that had he already done so, and still might, he would have caused this administration great political and military problems.
Netanyhau's hope is that Obama will not allow Iran to come within weeks of being capable of going nuclear but no longer believes that is a sound bet and thus, may be forced to do what he does not want - send young Israelis to destroy Iran's various nuclear facilities. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Lynn's great uncle, Avram, helped to establish The Likud Party also trained Netanyahu for government and I can assure you Netanyahu may not always do what I and Israelis wish he would but I can also assure you he is no coward. I can also assure you he is a friend of America and appreciates the solid relationship our two nations have had.
Netanyahu's reluctance to attack Iran was based on his mistaken belief he could trust Obama and his concern that had he already done so, and still might, he would have caused this administration great political and military problems.
Netanyhau's hope is that Obama will not allow Iran to come within weeks of being capable of going nuclear but no longer believes that is a sound bet and thus, may be forced to do what he does not want - send young Israelis to destroy Iran's various nuclear facilities. (See 1 and 1a below.)
===
FOX's Cavuto lays it on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
If YOU WONDERING HOW AND WHY ISIS HAS GROWN TO BE A THREAT TO THE U.S. AND THE WORLD DO NOT BLAME ISRAEL AS SEC. KERRY WANTS BUT WATCH THIS VIDEO :http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/rise-of-isis/
===
Those who are voted to nominate Perdue are learning what he is learning - Jack Kingston, would have been a better and more effective campaigner.
Why? Because Perdue,like General Motor's Charlie Wilson, who was a businessman is also a businessman and good politicians, who have appealed to voters, often know better how to execute the campaign game. (See 3 below.)
As election day draws near and the undecided begin to decide, the tide appears to be moving towards Republican shores and well it should because of the disaster Democrats have brought to this nation . Between Obama, Reid and Pelosi what more evidence is needed? In my lifetime I have never experienced more disasters, lies and ineptness. (See 3a below.)
Courting the black vote.
If Republicans make a sincere effort and have a sensible and convincing message they are damn fools not to try. (See 3b below.)
===
FOX's Cavuto lays it on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Wonder what Obama thinks about FOX news now?This is an excellent response to Obama
If YOU WONDERING HOW AND WHY ISIS HAS GROWN TO BE A THREAT TO THE U.S. AND THE WORLD DO NOT BLAME ISRAEL AS SEC. KERRY WANTS BUT WATCH THIS VIDEO :http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/rise-of-isis/
Turkey's Erdogan no longer Arab rock star! (See 2 below.)===
===
Those who are voted to nominate Perdue are learning what he is learning - Jack Kingston, would have been a better and more effective campaigner.
Why? Because Perdue,like General Motor's Charlie Wilson, who was a businessman is also a businessman and good politicians, who have appealed to voters, often know better how to execute the campaign game. (See 3 below.)
As election day draws near and the undecided begin to decide, the tide appears to be moving towards Republican shores and well it should because of the disaster Democrats have brought to this nation . Between Obama, Reid and Pelosi what more evidence is needed? In my lifetime I have never experienced more disasters, lies and ineptness. (See 3a below.)
Courting the black vote.
If Republicans make a sincere effort and have a sensible and convincing message they are damn fools not to try. (See 3b below.)
===
Dick
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1)
3) In Georgia, a Capitalist Struggles
GOP Senate candidate David Perdue is learning that voters can recoil from market rationality.
While the grandson of former governor Jimmy Carter runs for governor, Perdue, the cousin of Georgia’s two-term governor Sonny Perdue, is running against the daughter of former four-term senator Sam Nunn. Barack Obama’s unpopularity is her principal problem, but bucking such headwinds is a family tradition. In 1972, when her father won his first term, George McGovern led the Democratic ticket, en route to losing 49 states, including Georgia by 50 points. Nunn won by eight.
Well, today, the RealClearPolitics average polling shows Republicans are projected to gain a net of 7 seats in the Senate, and there is only an “outside chance” that the Democrats will retain the Senate Majority.
1)
The ‘Chickenshitgate’ Fallout for America, Israel, and the Middle East
President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House. Photo: Screenshot.
Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economy minister, got it 100 percent right in a Facebook posting just a few hours after the latest blow to American-Israeli relations—aka “chickenshitgate”—surfaced in the media.
Responding to the anonymous “senior Obama administration” official who told The Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a “chickenshit,” Bennett said, “Cursing the prime minister and calling him names is an insult not just to him but to the millions of Israeli citizens and Jews across the globe. The leader of Syria who slaughtered 150,000 people was not awarded the name ‘chickenshit.’ Neither was the leader of Saudi Arabia who stones women and homosexuals or the leader of Iran who murders freedom protestors.”
I would have also added Qatar into the mix, as that terror-financing, slave-owning Gulf emirate is also fawned over by the Obama administration, but Bennett’s point stands nonetheless. Our officials in Washington come across as a vindictive and petty bunch, accusing an ally of cowardice while hiding behind anonymity, and guilty of hypocrisy in its rankest form.
“Chickenshit?” That’s rich, coming from an administration whose fear of Vladimir Putin is the subject of derisory mirth in the Kremlin, and whose cravenness towards Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus has directly resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Syrians. Blissfully dismissive of their own failings, they round on Netanyahu, a man who served with distinction in his country’s elite Sayeret Matkal army unit, by calling him, of all things, a coward!
And that’s not the only epithet. As Goldberg pointed out, “Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and ‘Aspergery.’” (For those unclear as to what that last term means, it’s a pejorative description for people with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, and it’s as nasty as calling someone a “retard.” Remember that next time you hear another kumbaya, “let’s heal” speech from Obama.) You have to think that sooner or later, the administration will join the chorus of confirmed Israel-haters by labeling Netanyahu as a “baby killer” and a “war criminal.”
Sure, the Obama officials will say that the Israelis started it, by citing the injudicious comments about Secretary of State John Kerry uttered in private by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. But Ya’alon was man enough to apologize for what he said, and that still didn’t stop the administration from pursuing a private vendetta against him, blocking him from meeting with key officials like Vice President Joe Biden during his recent visit to Washington. And while the Israelis wish they could turn back the clock on Ya’alon’s advice to Kerry to “take his Nobel Prize and leave us alone,” Obama’s appointees see nothing wrong with insulting Netanyahu in such a grotesque manner because, you see, they are Right with a rolling, upper case “R,” and therefore anything goes.
I’ve argued many times in this column that, as far as Israel is concerned, the Obama administration is a lost cause. The only question now is how much damage they will do before Obama departs the White House—a day that can’t come soon enough, frankly.
The immediate danger lies on two fronts. Firstly, the Palestinians. Any doubts that the Obama administration believes that Israel is responsible for the stalemate with the Palestinians will have been dispelled by Goldberg’s revelations. As far as Obama, Kerry, and company are concerned, the primary problem is Israel’s insistence in building new housing units in its undivided capital, Jerusalem. Their impatience could reach the point where the U.S. no longer backs Israel at the United Nations, thereby allowing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s crusade for unilateral recognition to reach fruition. In the event of such an outcome, Israel could find itself worryingly isolated, as the European governments are anxiously awaiting a signal from the Americans that it’s okay to abandon the Jewish state. If so, we will then be confronted with the edifying spectacle of the world’s democracies aligning themselves with tyrannies from Venezuela to Iran in singling out Israel for opprobrium.
Secondly, the Iranians. The deadline for a final deal over the mullah’s nuclear ambitions—November 24—is upon us. Perhaps Obama thinks that cursing Netanyahu will persuade Iran’s Supreme Leader, the brutal Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to accept a deal. Judging by the breathlessly excited manner with which the regime’s English-language outlet, the Holocaust-denying Press TV, greeted chickenshitgate, the president might be onto something.
But what benefits will a historic accord with the Iranians bring us? Very few, whereas the costs will be enormous.
For a start, this isn’t just about Israel. We will alienate the conservative Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, all of them already angry and frustrated with Obama’s kowtowing to Tehran. We will permit an Islamist state to become a nuclear power, at the same time that it backs terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah with money and weapons. We will lose our leverage over the Iranians, in the form of biting sanctions, with few resource at our disposal to compel them to cooperate with international nuclear inspectors when they start—as they inevitably will—obstructing them at every turn. And we risk, again, the prospect of an Israeli pre-emptive strike, because whatever else Netanyahu might be, he’s no chickenshit.
Umpteen immediate questions remain, among them: Will Obama apologize for the chickenshit remark? Will he publicly name and discipline the officials who showered Netanyahu with insults? What will he do if the Iranians decline to make a deal?
But the biggest question of all is a long-term one. What will the strategic map of the Middle East look like once Obama is done? That’s what should be occupying the minds of Israel’s leaders, who are painfully aware that Obama’s peace efforts can only lead to more conflict and strife.
Ben Cohen is the Shillman Analyst for JNS.org and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Haaretz, and other publications. His book, “Some Of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism” (Edition Critic, 2014), is now available through Amazon.
1a)
| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning (Thursday, 30 October 2014), at his Jerusalem office, held a special discussion in the wake of last night's terrorist attack in which Yehuda Glick was shot. Participating in the discussion were Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Public Defense Minister Itzhak Aharonovitch, ISA Director Yoram Cohen, Israel Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino, Jerusalem District Police Commander Moshe Edri, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and representatives from the Attorney General's office, the Justice Ministry and the IDF. Prime Minister Netanyahu said at the start of the meeting: "I would like to send my best wishes for a full and quick recovery to Yehuda Glick, who is now fighting for his life. I would also like to commend the ISA and the Israel Police for quickly solving this act of terrorism. A few days ago, I said that we were facing a wave of incitement by radical Islamic elements and by Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen who said that Jews must be prevented from going up to the Temple Mount by any means possible. I still have not heard from the international community so much as one word of condemnation for these inflammatory remarks. The international community needs to stop its hypocrisy and take action against inciters, against those who try to change the status quo. I have ordered significant reinforcements so that we can maintain both security in Jerusalem and the status quo in the holy places. This struggle might be long, and here, like in other struggles, we must first of all, lower the flames. No side should take the law into its own hands. We must be level-headed and act with determination and responsibility, and so we shall." |
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2) Turkey: No Longer a "Rock Star" on Arab Street
by Burak Bekdil
Early in 2010, James Jeffrey, then U.S. ambassador to Turkey, sent acable to Washington, DC in which he described Turkey as a country "[w]ith Rolls Royce ambitions but Rover resources." Time has proven him right.
Back in 2009-10, then Turkey's Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan was greeted like a rock star in every Arab capital. He was presumably the darling of the Arab street, including Damascus, Beirut and Egypt -- all of which are today Turkey's regional nemeses. In 2011, an Egyptian columnist wrote a commentary in which he "begged the Turks to lend [them] their prime minister." To which this columnist replied: "By all means. Take him, and you need not return him."
Erdogan's "rock star" popularity on the Arab Street was based on a single dimension: his constant Israel-bashing and deep hatred of the Jewish state. "When there are matters of conflict between the Turks and Arabs all those love affairs will disappear," a Lebanese friend said at that time.
All the same, Erdogan thought that the rock star treatment would earn him his lifelong dream of reviving the Ottoman Empire with the Sunnis of the former Ottoman lands worshipping a new Turkish caliph. Proof? Turkey was a rising star. In 2008, it had won 151 votes out of 193 members of the United Nations to win easily a coveted non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council [UNSC]. With that seat, Turkey would further reinforce its influence in the region and the world.
After Turkey won the Security Council seat, then Foreign Minister (now Deputy Prime Minister) Ali Babacan spoke like a Rolls Royce: "This is the product of our efforts during the last five years. The election is an indication that Turkey's global perception, visibility and influence are on the rise. It shows how positively Turkey is perceived by the international community."
Fine. When a country wins a UNSC seat for the first time after 47 years, it is normal that politicians claim credit. But by simple logic, if it had lost the contest in 2008, the defeat should have meant that "Turkey's global perception, visibility and influence were on decline;" how negatively Turkey was being perceived by the international community. Right? Right. Not in the Turkish psyche.
On Oct. 16, Turkey once again bid for the same seat it had won six years earlier. A day before the vote, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu declared to journalists in New York: "We believe, Allah permitting, that we will get the [positive] result of the work we put in."
Allah did not permit. Turkey won merely 60 votes -- compared to 151 in 2008 -- and was defeated by New Zealand and Spain. Does that mean that Turkey is now being negatively perceived by the international community? Or that Turkey's global perception, visibility and influence are on decline? Of course not!
Cavusoglu heroically defended the defeat: "There may be those that are disturbed by our principled stance." How lovely! In the Turkish Islamist thinking, the country's election to the UN Security Council is an acknowledgement of Turkey's success story but failure is the work of unprincipled nations who envy Turkey. Enjoy your Rover!
It is an open secret in diplomatic circles in Ankara that several Arab and African countries in which Turkey has heavily invested -- both economically and politically -- over the past several years, lobbied against Turkey's UNSC bid. Another group of countries with decent democratic credentials preferred to vote for a country [Spain] with the same democratic credentials, instead of a country known by its alarmingly autocratic resume.
Erdogan's Turkey is no longer an attraction for the Muslim Street. Instead, it is, overtly or covertly, on hostile terms with Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Iran -- all at the same time. Ironically, after the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, in which a Turkish flotilla tried to break an Israeli naval blockade aimed at preventing weapons from reaching the Gaza Strip, Erdogan and his then Foreign Minister (now Prime Minister), Ahmet Davutoglu, vowed to "isolate Israel."
Instead, it is Turkey that has been badly isolated, with the help of its one-time Arab brothers who had rushed to one city square after another, waving Turkish flags, to attend Erdogan's public rallies in Arab capitals.
The U.S. ambassador's wording, "Rolls Royce ambitions," denotes a mental condition that categorically refuses admittance of own fault. In this mind-set, "We are so superb that we cannot be wrong because what we think right is Allah-given." If things go wrong, it must be because of something else.
It is often amazing to observe that Erdogan and Davutoglu have every confidence in their foreign policy calculus despite repeated -- and sometimes tragic -- failures. At moments of despair, both men have had the reflex to blame failure on the "wrong world order." It is this childish psychology that, from time to time, when it suits their convenience, prompts them to question the legitimacy of international institutions, including the UN and the UN Security Council. They do not, for instance, question the UN's legitimacy when a resolution denounces Israel. But they question that legitimacy only when it does not fit their agenda. Once, Erdogan said that the permanent UN Security Council members should have Muslim representation. Which country could he have been thinking of? I'll bet he was thinking of the one that he considers the heir to the throne of the Ottoman caliph.
For the mess they created in Syria, they have accused the West and NATO. For the failure to move an inch toward European Union membership, they have accused the EU of discriminating against a Muslim country. And most recently, Turkey failed to win the UN Security Council seat because of "those who are disturbed by [Turkey's] principled stance."
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) In Georgia, a Capitalist Struggles
GOP Senate candidate David Perdue is learning that voters can recoil from market rationality.
McDonough, Ga. — In a sun-dappled square decorated with scores of entrants in the community’s Halloween scarecrow contest, a balky sound system enables, if barely, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate to exhort a few hundred people, mostly supporters, to urge neighbors to vote to reduce Senator Harry Reid to minority leader. The exhorter is David Perdue, a glutton for punishment who has been campaigning incessantly for 15 months and may be doing so for two more.
A January 6 vote would end his second runoff, which will be necessary if, because the libertarian candidate gets perhaps 5 percent of the vote, neither Perdue nor his Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn, wins 50 percent of the vote next Tuesday. Perdue’s first runoff, a nine-week slog ending in July, resulted when none of the seven Republican primary candidates reached 50 percent.
While the grandson of former governor Jimmy Carter runs for governor, Perdue, the cousin of Georgia’s two-term governor Sonny Perdue, is running against the daughter of former four-term senator Sam Nunn. Barack Obama’s unpopularity is her principal problem, but bucking such headwinds is a family tradition. In 1972, when her father won his first term, George McGovern led the Democratic ticket, en route to losing 49 states, including Georgia by 50 points. Nunn won by eight.
That she might win November 4, or at least force a runoff, illustrates a paradox of Republican politics: Republicans prefer the private sector to the public. Americans profess admiration for markets and those who prosper in them. But voters can recoil from market rationality.
Perdue, 64, won the nomination by stressing that he is a stranger to politics and is a practicing capitalist (“I would be the only Fortune 500 CEO in the Senate”), thereby touching two Republican erogenous zones. But capitalist rationality is more beneficent than pretty, which is a problem.
Nunn, 47, is a political novice from the nonprofit sector, which is doubly ideal: She has no record in any office to attack, and she has never made the political mistake of making a profit. In Perdue’s attempts, sometimes unsuccessful, to revive failing companies, he outsourced jobs, making him vulnerable to reprises of the attacks on Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney was first attacked as a “vulture capitalist” by rivals in the Republican primaries. Nunn is recycling attacks that Perdue’s Republican rivals began, and she is using an advertising firm that made anti-Romney ads.
Today’s saturation campaigning exhausts the power of particular attacks. But more than half a million votes will probably have been cast by November 4, many of them when those attacks were fresh. Making the campaign about Perdue’s business past has enabled Nunn to avoid dwelling on the future — why Georgians, many of whom think the country is on the wrong track, should send another senator into Reid’s obedient ranks.
It will be difficult for Nunn to reach 50 percent in this still-red state that Romney won by only 7.8 points, compared to his victory margins in the contiguous states of South Carolina (10.5 points), Alabama (22.2) and Tennessee (20.4). And in a runoff, with the national excitement having subsided, turnout will be down, especially among three crucial Democratic constituencies — minorities, young people, and unmarried women.
By then, and for similar reasons, a likely runoff in Louisiana on December 6 may have sealed or enlarged a Republican Senate majority, reducing Georgians’ interest in sending a new senator to join the Democratic minority.
Sam Nunn was elected just 22 months after Lester Maddox, the pick-handle-wielding segregationist proprietor of Atlanta’s Pickrick restaurant, ended his term as Georgia’s governor. But as has been said, the past is another country. The rally here occurred at the base of a monument common to squares in southern county seats, a statue of a soldier facing south, high atop a column the base of which is inscribed with florid prose about the Confederate dead “who sleep beneath the sod of every Southern state” and “those who like a benediction, still limp in our midst.” The rally was watched by a few members of Georgia law enforcement, blacks and whites in a brotherhood of boredom, cloaked in crisply pressed uniforms and the dignity of the state. They dignify the state by the professionalism of their presence, which is evidence of how much America has changed. At the end of a political season of splenetic rhetoric, this tableau is now a remarkably unremarkable reminder of the good that politics can do.
3a)
The Insiders: Things are better for Republicans than Karl Rove dreamed
By Ed Rogers
As Insiders readers know, in politics, what is supposed to happen tends to happen. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in May 2013,“The GOP sets its sights on the Senate in 2014,” no less than Karl Rove analyzed the likelihood that Republicans would take back the Senate majority in the 2014 midterm elections. Largely based on his own observations and his knowledge of history, Rove gave Republicans no better than an “outside chance” of winning the majority, as long as Republicans ran strong candidates, fund-raised competitively and focused on the issues that matter most to voters.
Well, today, the RealClearPolitics average polling shows Republicans are projected to gain a net of 7 seats in the Senate, and there is only an “outside chance” that the Democrats will retain the Senate Majority.
Rove, and almost everybody else, overestimated how strong the president would be politically in the fall of 2014. Even though Rove was able to precisely outline some of the challenges that Republicans would face, no one could have predicted the calamity that the Obama administration has become. It seemed unlikely a year ago that Republicans would add to their majority in the House and take back the Senate. After all, in November 2013, the generic ballot favored Democrats by 6.6 percent. Now, one year later, the generic ballot favors Republicans by 3.1 percent. What should naturally be a good year for Republicans has turned out to be a great year for Republicans due to the failures of the Obama administration.
While it seems that traditional pocketbook issues have been pushed aside by the sinister, lethal contagion that is ravaging West Africa and has found its way to the United States, famous GOP pollster Ed Goeas reminds me that economic issues still drive the right track/wrong track equation in this campaign cycle. And currently, 65.8 percent of Americans think this country is on the wrong track. So at the end of the day, what is worse for the Democrats? For voters to render a verdict on the low-growth, low-income Obama economy, or for them to vote based on President Obama’s and the Democrats’ inept, confusing handling of crises ranging from Obamacare to Ebola?
Obviously, the current Ebola crisis has enhanced the trouble the Democrats are in, and it may end up being seen as the coup de grace in this election. The Ebola crisis could have been managed better if the White House had reached out to an admiral in a crisp uniform and made him the Ebola Czar. If that had happened, every Democrat would be quoting him and demanding that everyone defer to him, and no Republican would want to outright challenge what a military officer was saying we should do. Even if the White House had appointed someone like former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (who is also a doctor) to be Ebola Czar, the dynamics of the Ebola crisis could be very different for the Democrats.
The cascade of debacles brought about by the incompetence of this administration is so constant that the half-life of any given crisis is very short. But it doesn’t look like the Ebola crisis will completely fade in the next week.
Anyway, here we are, one week from Election Day, and the Democrats’ situation reminds us that in politics, bad gets worse.
3b) Is the GOP Wasting Its Time Courting Black Voters in Illinois?
CHICAGO—It's just days before a heated election to determine Illinois' next governor, and Republican Bruce Rauner is in Chicago's South Side. He wants to know what issues matter to a convicted felon who served 22 years for laundering drug money.
Republican Bruce Rauner is aggressively courting black voters in his bid to be governor. If he succeeds, his outreach will be the model for the entire party.
CHICAGO—It's just days before a heated election to determine Illinois' next governor, and Republican Bruce Rauner is in Chicago's South Side. He wants to know what issues matter to a convicted felon who served 22 years for laundering drug money.
They're at Fleck's Coffee, a year-old business in the working-class Chatham neighborhood, just blocks from where some of the worst violence in the city has taken place. Rauner listens as Joseph Davis, who runs an organization that helps former felons find work, and a group of black ministers—many of whom have endorsed the Republican—talk about crime, drug sentencing, and challenges for black-owned businesses.
The 57-year-old venture capitalist doesn't look out of place. But he isn't in his element either. He nods his head when Davis argues that felons need a chance to "reestablish themselves" when they get out of jail. Davis entered the meeting undecided, but said he left as a supporter of Rauner's.
When the Rev. Corey Brooks, an African-American pastor who endorsed Rauner, expresses concern about rampant unemployment in Chicago, Rauner sounds an empathetic note: "I don't see enough stores and businesses owned by African-Americans. There's a lack of economic opportunity and a lack of economic empowerment," he replies. For the most part, Rauner listens, and speaks in carefully practiced sound bites.
"African-American families today are suffering terribly with unemployment, poverty, crime, low wages, lousy schools, shredding social services. [Gov. Pat Quinn has] failed the African-American community, yet he's taken their vote for granted," Rauner tells me after the breakfast meeting. "He's assuming African Americans are voting for him even though he doesn't deserve to get their vote."
It's part of an unconventional strategy for Rauner, a billionaire venture capitalist who is spending time in an overwhelmingly African-American community that gave nearly unanimous support to President Obama and instinctively votes Democratic. Several prospective Republican presidential candidates, including Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, have engaged in minority outreach, but it has been rare for top Republican candidates to make it such a prominent part of their strategy in the final stage of an actual campaign.
Rauner is doing just that. Locked in a tight race with a Democratic governor, Rauner's campaign is convinced that if he can get about 15 percent of a usually-monolithic black vote, he's got the election locked up. "Pat Quinn is taking the African-American vote for granted. He's talking, but he's not delivering results!" he thundered at a debate that night cosponsored by the Chicago Urban League.
Rauner used the opportunity to tout the endorsement he received from the black ministers he'd met in the morning, while outside the debate hall dozens of Rauner's African-American supporters, brought in by the campaign, shouted epithets at Quinn.
"I've been a Democrat all my life," says Davis, now in his 60s, wearing a grey suit with a crucifix lapel pin. "I found out that just being a Democrat is not enough. I'm for whoever's going to help the community." He added: "Democrats have become so arrogant that they think they're the heir to black votes. We're not your children."
Democrats are perplexed by Rauner's strategy, assuming it's as much a play to win over moderate suburban white voters as it is to actually win over black votes. Even one in-state Republican operative wondered why Rauner was spending valuable October campaign time in overwhelmingly Democratic precincts, given that he needs to win over undecided suburbanites in more politically-competitive territory.
"What Rauner is trying to do is taking a 90-10 electorate, and making it 88-12," said a former adviser to Rahm Emanuel about the Republican's focus on black voters. "That's a waste of your time when there's a 60-40 [suburban] electorate that you can make 50-50."
In the three days I spent with his campaign in mid-October, the campaign stops Rauner made were all in minority areas of Chicago—the coffee shop on the South Side, a café on the city's heavily-Hispanic West Side, and at a popular Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. The vast majority of voters who attended the events were small business owners and religious leaders—two professions where Republicans perform well with white voters but still lag badly with minorities.
"Many Democratic politicians take the Latino vote for granted. They talk about Latino issues but they don't change anything for Latino families. And they don't create the real opportunity for the American dream. We're going to change that," Rauner said while campaigning at La Catedral Café on Chicago's West Side. He offers an entrepreneurial message focused on economic opportunity and education reform—that with hard work and a helping hand, anyone can succeed—sprinkled with sharp criticism of Gov. Quinn for the insidiously high unemployment rate in the minority communities throughout Illinois.
Tony Hu, the owner of the popular Lao Shanghai restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown, said the Republicans' last gubernatorial nominee, conservative state Sen. Bill Brady, made a last-minute visit to his restaurant in 2010 asking for his vote, but never engaged in any prior outreach to him or the Chinese-American community in Chicago. Rauner, by contrast, schmoozed with him when they were both part of a 2011 trade delegation (that included then-Mayor Richard Daley), and forged a relationship. Rauner kept in touch after the trip, occasionally visiting the restaurant with his family. Hu said that past engagement played a pivotal role in his support and advocacy for Rauner's campaign.
"Bruce has roots with us. I'm not a political person, I'm a community servant. But I look at someone's past. He has the ability. Look at his background. And vision," Hu said. "We don't care about Democrats or Republicans. We care about who has ability. Bruce, he has ability."
HIGH STAKES IN ILLINOIS
Even though it hasn't garnered a level of national attention on par with battleground Senate elections, the Illinois governor's race is as consequential a contest for Republicans as any other in the country. It's something of a political science experiment, testing whether Republicans have a chance to make even small inroads with minority communities.
On paper, Rauner is an appealing Republican candidate for such a mission. He has a long record of philanthropy to minority communities, even before he began his second career in politics. He was the main donor for several urban renewal projects, including a YMCA in the majority-Hispanic Little Village neighborhood and six new charter schools on the city's West Side. His work in education-reform circles has opened up a partnership with leading African-American community leaders and clergy that he's utilized in the gubernatorial campaign. He's a friend of the Rev. James Meeks, minister at Salem Baptist Church, one of the largest black churches in the city. They've gone fly-fishing together on vacation. He talks about his endowment of a professorship at historically black Morehouse College. He tapped a Latina running mate, attorney Evelyn Sanguinetti, whose experience as a first-generation immigrant is a story he highlights when speaking to Hispanic groups.
"Our outreach effort has been like no other. Businesses of every kind are suffering. So we're reaching out to Latinos, to the Indian-American communities, the Polish community, the Russian communities," said Sanguinetti. "As Republicans, the messaging is out there now. Before, I believe we had problems with messaging. But that's no longer the case. The party has a face-lift."
Last Sunday, Rauner even spent the second-to-last weekend on the trail at the New Beginnings Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side. "Our Lord God has not put us on this Earth as Democrats and Republicans," he told the congregation, according to the Associated Press. "He put us on this Earth to take care of each other."
Meanwhile, he's running against one of the least popular governors in the country, who has presided over a state with unemployment rates among minority communities well above the national average. Bill Brady, Quinn's last Republican opponent, won just 6 percent of African-American voters and 26 percent of Hispanics in the last gubernatorial election. Quinn won the race by a 32,000-vote margin out of 3.4 million votes. This year's race is shaping up to be as competitive.
One of Rauner's ads, specifically aimed at the black community, features footage of former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in 1987, saying he regretted hiring Quinn as the city's revenue director. "He was dismissed and he should've been dismissed," said Washington, who was the city's first black mayor. "My only regret is that we hired him and kept him too long."
Quinn's campaign has been bludgeoning Rauner on the airwaves, portraying him as a vulture capitalist who laid off workers and shipped jobs overseas, and even unleashed allegations that he threatened a female manager because she declined to lay off employees.
That Democratic assault might be working. Talk to strategists with both campaigns, and Rauner hasn't made the gains with minority voters that he expected, despite his effort. He's facing a challenge hitting 10 percent support among black voters, and isn't improving much on Brady's Hispanic performance, either. In fact, the Chicago Tribune poll released last week has him winning only 3 percent of the African-American vote, just half of Brady's showing in 2010.
"He'll be lucky to get what Brady got," said Quinn pollster Mark Mellman. "Across the state, including the African-American communities, [people] see him for what he is—a guy who makes himself rich in shady business deals at the expense of everyone else. That's not what people want in a governor."
A SUBURBAN AUDIENCE
Even Republicans working for Rauner privately acknowledged that despite their candidate's optimism, they're not going to reshape long-standing voting patterns that have consigned Republicans to a sliver of the black vote. His campaign has set a goal of winning 20 percent of the vote in Chicago, something that can be accomplished with only small inroads among minority voters. But they also hope that by highlighting Rauner's minority outreach, he'll improve his showing among softer Republican voters—like married women in the suburbs and moderates. The Chicago Tribune poll, which showed Rauner narrowly ahead, reported that his gains had "been driven primarily by white suburban women, a voting bloc considered socially moderate but fiscally conservative."
Indeed, Rauner is part of a leading wave of candidates who are beginning to engage in minority outreach, even if it doesn't render immediate political dividends. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has prioritized minority outreach in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, and has opened field offices meant to reach African-American voters in Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, and Florida.
In Louisiana, Republican Senate candidate Bill Cassidy has discussed his work as cofounder of free dental and health care clinics for the uninsured—many in heavily black neighborhoods. Cutting into Sen. Mary Landrieu's huge support within the black community would be devastating to her already tenuous reelection hopes. Early in the cycle, Sen. Marco Rubio's political action committee aired Spanish-language ads in support of Republican Cory Gardner in the Colorado Senate race. Representing a swing seat, Republican Rep. Mike Coffman has become omnipresent throughout his cosmopolitan suburban Denver district, from Korean community meetings to Hispanic groceries.
"When I worked for Rudy Giuliani, we recognized we never were going to get the votes from the Dominican community, but we did that outreach because it was important to do. Doing well while doing good. It's the model that Rauner's picked up," said Republican media strategist Rick Wilson, who cited the former New York City mayor as one of several Republicans to aggressively engage in minority outreach in the late stages of a campaign. "You know [they] may not vote for us, but it shows we're listening. It doesn't cost you much to see you're on a long march."
Quinn isn't taking the threat against his base lightly. President Obama headlined a mid-October campaign rally in Illinois earlier this month at Chicago State University, designed to bring black voters to the polls for the governor. "You got to find cousin Pookie. He's sitting on the couch right now watching football—hasn't voted in the last five elections. You've got to grab him and tell him to go vote… And then tell them to vote for Pat Quinn," Obama said. Obama's numbers are barely above water even in his home state, but he's still an effective surrogate for turning out African-American voters.
For Republicans, the outreach to minorities is as much out of necessity as it is out of beneficence. Mitt Romney scored an historic high for a GOP presidential challenger by winning 59 percent of the white vote in the 2012 presidential election, but his dismal showing among minorities relegated him to just 47 percent of the overall vote. With the share of minority voters increasing over time, Republican officials recognize they are destined to struggle unless they can make real inroads into communities that don't traditionally vote for them.
At the same time, if Republicans are able to take even a small bit of constituent groups that are overwhelmingly Democratic, it could be the basis for a longer-term winning coalition. Democratic struggles with working-class white voters have cratered in the second term of Obama's presidency, and have given Republicans an opening to win over disaffected voters who don't usually vote for their party.
"We need to position the black community to take advantage of the opportunities that will emerge as Republicans will need to broaden their appeal," said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, a friend of Al Sharpton's, who regularly votes for Democrats but is backing Rauner in this election. "Illinois has become like a one-party state, and it's not healthy. We need to be more sophisticated in our politics. We can't be effective if we're in the hip pocket of one party."
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