Posted on 11/08/2013 9:59:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Chicago — Observers in this land infamous for political tricks say a popular method of winning elections is to ensure all of your opponents are thrown off the ballot — the tactic the Daley machine used to first elect an unopposed Barack Obama to the Illinois state senate. Another: Throw a ringer into the race to draw votes away from your real opponent. That latter tactic seems to have been employed by Democrats in this week’s close gubernatorial race in Virginia. And it may have made the difference.
There were many reasons Republican Ken Cuccinelli lost, ranging from his poor fundraising effort and overall strategy to the failure of establishment Republicans to help him as he gained late momentum over Obamacare. But Libertarian-party nominee Robert Sarvis, who won 6.5 percent of the vote in a race Democrat Terry McAuliffe carried by just over two percentage points, was clearly a factor. While some of Sarvis’s vote came from people who wouldn’t otherwise have voted in the race or would have supported McAuliffe, there is evidence that most of Sarvis’s 145,000 votes would have gone to Cuccinelli had Sarvis not been on the ballot.
So how did Sarvis get there? A few hours before the polls opened, we learned that a major Obama campaign bundler from Texas provided the key funding that got Sarvis on the ballot in the first place. The head of the libertarian political-action committee responsible for the effort admitted to Breitbart News that “we probably wouldn’t have spent” the money to secure ballot access for Sarvis if it had not been for a mysterious $150,000 donation received from Texas billionaire and Democratic contributor Joseph Liemandt. The bulk of PAC’s spending in Virginia went to ensuring that Sarvis would get on the ballot. It spent very little there after he qualified.
“I don’t think the intention was to make Cuccinelli lose but I have no problem if the perception is Sarvis caused Cuccinelli to lose,” Wes Benedict, co-founder and president of the Libertarian Booster PAC told Breitbart News. He said he informed Liemandt that his PAC was going to be active in Virginia before Liemandt “put the money in” to the PAC’s treasury: “It was in the report I gave to him before he made his investment.” Liemandt clearly had an interest in helping Virginia Democrats. Just three months before his donation to the Libertarian Booster PAC in January 2013, Liemandt had donated $4,090 to the Virginia Democratic party.
Liemandt isn’t just a run-of-the-mill Obama bundler. He was invited to a 2012 White House state dinner honoring British prime minister David Cameron. Other invited bundlers were Vogue editor Anna Wintour and Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
While Liemandt’s company, Trilogy, has given money to some libertarian groups in the past, by far most of its political contributions have been to liberal Democrats. During the 2012 election, Trilogy gave $10,000 to Barack Obama, $92,400 to the Democratic National Committee, and more than $25,000 to Democratic-party organizations in Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire.
Ironically, most libertarians I know in Virginia didn’t vote for Sarvis. They listened to former Libertarian-party presidential nominee Ron Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul, who argued that it would be “insane” for someone to vote for Sarvis over Cuccinelli, a highly aggressive opponent of Obamacare and climate-change taxation while he was state attorney general.
The Blaze website, which first broke the story of Liemandt’s donations, points out that the pattern of liberal Democrats giving to libertarian spoilers may recur in future elections.
Political-action committees enjoy a great deal of freedom and flexibility under the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, which liberals normally love to rail against but are quietly putting to good use.
The Center for Public Integrity notes that “super PACs are allowed to collect unlimited contributions from individuals, unions and corporations to produce political advertisements that are not coordinated with any candidate.” And the power of those independent expenditures (though Virginia’s state election laws are different) can make viable otherwise unimportant candidates. CPI cites examples of how third-party candidates could have decided the 2012 presidential race.
Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, ran as the Libertarian candidate for president in 2012. If the Obama–Romney race had been a bit closer, he could have affected the outcome. Another potential spoiler in that race was Virgil Goode, a former Republican congressman from Southside Virginia who ran nationally as the nominee of the conservative Constitution party in 2012. In the future, Democrats may find it makes for smart if sneaky politics to throw resources to similar candidates in close races. Such tactics clearly paid dividends in Virginia’s gubernatorial race.
Lennie Jarratt, a talk-show host whose show airs on Chicago’s WIND-AM, says Democrats in Chicago have used such “divide and conquer” methods for years to plant ringers in GOP primaries and infiltrate Republican organizations with “fake Republicans” who render the party ineffectual. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone,” he tells me, “that, with Chicago Democrats sitting in the White House, they’ll more frequently try these tactics nationwide.”
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.
Why is all of this about Sarvis just coming out over the past 6 days? This should have been learned months ago. Does anyone in the GOP know how to play this game?
The GOPe and RNC could be called a third opponent and the media a fourth opponent.
Once the GOPe guy lost the primary, they didn’t care.
That’s very true, but at least Cuccinelli’s own campaign should have been on this. If this had come to light even two weeks ago it might have made the difference.
There were three opponents, at least. His own party, the Democrats and the Libertarian powered by the democrats.
Cuccinelli made the mistake of not nationalizing his fundraising at the beginning, and not responding immediately to the planned parenthood lies. Other than that, he’s a darn good candidate. He nearly overcame the difficult situation of his opponent’s unlimited funding and a party that stabbed him in the back. Not only the DC party, but also the sellouts that allowed the Democrats to use their names in opposition ads. That is unforgivable.
Sarvis should have dropped out a week before the election and endorsed the Republican—that would have foiled their plan. That would have taken the wind out of the Progressive sails. But that would have called for men of honor—the type of honor that Robert E. Lee had—now all but gonje in Virginia Politics.
Are they ever ostracized for the damage they caused?
Do their businesses or law practices ever suffer from loss of customers who protest the dirty tricks?
Do the Democrats prop them up with contracts and kick-backs as a reward for a job well-done?
Or do they just take their 30 pieces of silver and slink away, to be forgotten by history?
Presumably, Sarvis is a young guy who still has ambitions. What is is future outlook now?
-PJ
Why? Cuccinelli is a social conservative.
When are people going to look at the libertarians and finally accept that they are are what they say they are, pro-abortion, and pro-drugs, pro-prostitution and immigration, and pro-gay agenda, anti-conservative?
Why assume that the libertarians wanted Cuccinelli to win, why not just look at what they did and frequently do, and learn from that?
The libertarians threw about 9 races to the democrats in 2012 alone, they have done this for decades.
Amazing how quickly the spin patrol arrives to try to change the emphasis from how Sarvis was a Demwit-sponsored straw candidate to “the Republicans didn’t do anything about this before the election.” Thanks SeekAndFind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.