CNN claims "Chicago-style politics" in Obama's signature challenges in state Senate race -- while ignoring McCain's Arizona-style politics
SUMMARY: In a special report on Sen. Barack Obama, referring to Obama's challenges to signatures on his opponents' nominating petitions during his 1996 run for the Illinois state Senate, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux described Obama as "an avid student of Chicago-style politics" and aired remarks by a Chicago reporter calling the practice "cutthroat." But CNN's special on Sen. John McCain made no mention of McCain's reported petition challenges in at least two U.S. Senate races, aired no one labeling McCain "cutthroat" for those challenges, or at any point pronounced McCain an avid student of Arizona-style politics for those challenges.
During CNN's August 20 election special report Obama Revealed, host Suzanne Malveaux said of Barack Obama's 1996 run for the Illinois state Senate: "Successfully challenging her signatures, Obama knocked Alice Palmer, a revered political figure, off the ballot, as well as all three other candidates. While Obama's campaign today promotes him as a different kind of politician, back then he was an avid student of Chicago-style politics." The program included remarks from Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell, author of Obama: From Promise to Power (Amistad, 2007), who said, "In the end, what happened is we saw the first real example of Barack Obama's cutthroat nature when it came to advancing his own career in politics." But challenging a potential opponent's eligibility is not just "Chicago-style" politics; it is everywhere-style politics -- including Arizona. And yet, while in its back-to-back specials on the parties' presumptive presidential nominees, CNN highlighted allegations by Mendell and others that Obama engaged in "cutthroat" politics, which Malveux suggested were endemic to Chicago, CNN made no mention of Sen. John McCain's reported petition challenges in at least two U.S. Senate races, aired no one labeling McCain "cutthroat" for those challenges, or at any point pronounced McCain an avid student of Arizona-style politics for those challenges -- even though host John King, like Malveaux with Obama, reported on McCain's prior races.
Recounting McCain's 1992 re-election to the U.S. Senate, King reported that McCain "saw his re-election as vindication and believed the dark days of the Keating Five scandal were over," and asserted, "McCain wanted a fresh start." But unlike CNN's discussion of Obama's state Senate race, King did not point out that, after former Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham filed a petition with 16,085 signatures to appear on the Arizona ballot, according to a September 1992 Los Angeles Times article, "McCain filed a challenge to the petitions." In addition, a July 20, 1998, Roll Call article (accessed through the Nexis news database) reported, "McCain will run unopposed in his Sept. 8 primary following the capitulation of his lone GOP opponent, Phoenix businessman Bert Tollefson," and that "McCain's campaign checked Tollefson's signatures and found 1,453 that came from Democrats, members of other parties or people who were not registered to vote."
But although McCain has challenged opponents' ballot petitions in at least two races, CNN did not characterize this as "cutthroat," or indeed present it in any way.
From CNN's Obama Revealed:
MALVEAUX: When state Senator Alice Palmer tapped Obama to run for her seat, he jumped at the chance. State Senator Rickey Hendon was Palmer's friend.
HENDON: Her and Barack had a discussion about him replacing her for the Senate when she went to Congress. So, there was an agreement between them.
MALVEAUX: But then something unexpected happened.
EMIL JONES (Illinois senate president): She lost the race. Then she decided to come -- that she wanted to come back.
HENDON: She said, well, I'm going to run for re-election.
MALVEAUX: Palmer asked Obama to withdraw.
JONES: But he refused to step down.
HENDON: There's no way Barack could have beat Alice Palmer in that seat. It just wasn't going to happen. Alice was extremely popular.
MALVEAUX: Obama played hardball. He challenged Palmer's right to be on the ballot.
DAVID MENDELL (Chicago Tribune reporter): He looked at her nominating petitions that she had to submit to the Board of Elections and could see that they were put together in a real hurry.
HENDON: And the people who she had depended on to do her petitions really did not do a good job.
WILL BURNS (former Obama campaign volunteer): The rules are there for a reason.
MALVEAUX: Will Burns was part of an Obama team that found a number of Palmer's signatures were not valid.
BURNS: One of the first things you do whenever you're in the middle of a primary race or any race, especially in primaries in Chicago, you look at the signatures.
MALVEAUX: Successfully challenging her signatures, Obama knocked Alice Palmer, a revered political figure, off the ballot, as well as all three other candidates. While Obama's campaign today promotes him as a different kind of politician, back then he was an avid student of Chicago-style politics.
MENDELL: Morally, he had some complications with whether he should knock this woman out of the way.
MALVEAUX: David Mendell is a Chicago reporter who wrote Obama's biography.
MENDELL: In the end, what happened is we saw the first real example of Barack Obama's cutthroat nature when it came to advancing his own career in politics.
From CNN's McCain Revealed:
KING: Election night 1992.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE [video clip]: Republican incumbent John McCain is wining a second term in the Senate.
KING: Winning 56 percent of the vote meant more to John McCain than a second term in the Senate.
[begin video clip]
McCAIN SUPPORTERS: Six more years.
McCAIN: Thank you. Thank you very much.
[begin video clip]
KING: He saw his re-election as vindication and believed the dark days of the Keating Five scandal were over.
McCAIN [video clip]: We will do everything we can to break the gridlock in Washington.
KING: McCain wanted a fresh start.
Its not like the corruption in Chicago didn't help buy a presidential election with dead voters or anything...
It didn't. That's an urban myth.
From the Snopes web site:
In the 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy bested Richard Nixon by a mere 118,000 popular votes (out of 68 million ballots cast), and Kennedy also won the state of Illinois by a margin of less than 9,000 votes. However, the key electoral vote total wasn't nearly as close as the popular vote: Kennedy came out ahead of Nixon by a 303 to 219 margin, so even if Nixon had taken Illinois (and its 27 electoral votes), Kennedy would still have won a majority in the electoral college.
Even the charge that a one vote difference in each precinct in Illinois would have changed that state's results is hard to prove or disprove because it's widely understood there was a fair bit of cheating carried out by both sides over those 27 electoral votes. What the numbers eventually tallied out to be is almost immaterial, as both Nixon's and Kennedy's factions were reportedly stuffing every ballot box in sight. That year, the motto in Illinois seemed to be: "One man, one vote - and then some." A statement from Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley captured the essence of what was going on in that place and time: "One of their precincts, outside of Peoria, where there are only 50 votes, just announced 500 votes for Nixon."
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/onevote.asp
Science101, you're right. I laughed when I read "Arizona-style politics."
My guess: A slow day for "conservative misisnformation" at MM?
Snopes:
as both Nixon's and Kennedy's factions were reportedly stuffing every ballot box in sight. That year, the motto in Illinois seemed to be: "One man, one vote - and then some."
So it wasn't a myth...It was going on. It doesn't matter that both sides or one side were doing it.
Chicago Style Politics fits the bill.
Arizona Style? What did a bunch of retiree's start taking people out at the knee's with their walkers and canes!
Obama was trying to ensure a legal campaign and election by verifying the signatures on his opponents' petition.
Don't you want legal and fair elections, with real registered voters only signing petitions and following the law? Why are you against people following the law?
And how is following the law a bad thing?
Arizona style politics? Was this just made up? There is no comparison here to the long known corruption in Chicago politics.
Do you know anything about Arizona? or anything about anything?
Let's start with Rehnquist hassling Latino voters in the early 60s, while they were standing in line at their polling places. Or the fact that Arizona-- particularly the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, is a notorious mob haven.
Arizona Style Politic? Was this made up?
Yea it was made up to make a point about how biased CNN is. what Obama did and what McCain did were the exact same things. But, because Obama did it in Chicago and McCain did it in Arizona, Obama's tactics get called cut throat and McCain's don't even get mentioned because the media has stereotyped Chicago as an evil cesspool of corruption and Arizona as
some country bumpkin desert.
Hilarious that you don't even have the intelligence to understand that.
Arizona style politics? Was this just made up? There is no comparison here to the long known corruption in Chicago politics.
Well, YES, obvioulsy they just made up "Arizona-Style Politics," but I think you're missing the point. Whether that's intentionally or due to srupidity, I'm not sure. So I'll spell it out for you.
BOTH men are using the same tactics! BOTH men did the exact same thing! So the whole "Chicago-Style Poiltics" is just a slur to attack the one guy that happens to be from the area, in an effort to lump ONE CANDIDATE in with an unpleaseant stereotype and letting the other guy off (even though he is also apparently a student of the same school) just because his state's biggest city doesn't have the same reputation.
In fact, if you buy into the stereotype/reputation way of thinking, McCain's actions may have been worse. Obama would have just played the game the way that area had always played it. McCain would have BROUGHT the corruption game to an otherwise sunny and innocent state. (Now I don't buy that - it's the home state of Barry Goldwater for christ's sake!) But IF YOU DO, then McCain is worse here.
Oh please, "Chicago-style politics" is a part of our historical lexicon, going back a long way. There is no such stirring of any memory of rough and tumble politics in "Arizona-style politics", so for any reporter to make the same comparison is apples and oranges.
WITH?
"Chicago-style politics" is a part of our historical lexicon, going back a long way.
Exactly Tommy. What the hell is Arizona-style politics?
There's a hell of a lot more to Chicago-style politics than just challenging signatures.
Now Barack Obama can be added to the list. And as Americans take the measure of the former community organizer on the South Side, few better insights are available into his character, views, and approach to politics than his two decades in Chicago. That's where he developed his commitment to accommodation and honed his ability to navigate smoothly among competing and often angry constituencies, all in a vast human stew of diversity.
"Politics in Chicago is an all-season sport, and it's not for the fainthearted," says U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel of the North Side, former White House political director for President Bill Clinton. Adds David Axelrod, a Chicago-based political consultant who is now chief strategist for Obama's presidential campaign: "Ours is a blunt, brawling way. People are upfront about their self-interest." The Chicago style of politics reminds Axelrod of the "invisible man" educational toy he knew as a youth—a human figure whose internal organs were fully exposed. "It's like Chicago—all laid bare," says Axelrod.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/campaign-2008/2008/04/11/obamas-years-in-chicago-politics-shaped-his-presidential-candidacy.html
When was the last time you were in Arizona, that paradise of political and moral virtue?
Tommy, do you know anything besides knee-jerk reaction?
Yes, I can see it now in one of the fall debates is this comes up;
McCain; Oh, you know those Chicago-style politics.
Obama; Well, what about those Arizona-style politics?
I doubt Obama is that stupid to say something that would only get a laugh from the moderators, the audience, the media, and the voters.
For crist's sake guys, THIS IS HERE because Obama has been acused of "Chicago-style politics" for doing the EXACT SAME THING as McCain (and undoubtedly many others who are NOT running for president) and yet somehow McCain gets a pass.
What? Only people who've lived in Chicago can engage in "Chicago style poloitics?"
It's here cause McCain got a pass. You WITH'ers should get over yourselves.
Chicago-style politics" is a part of our historical lexicon, going back a long way.
Exactly the point. Chicago-style politics has specific meanings, and those meanings don't include challenging the validity of signatures on petitions. That happens everywhere in the country by both parties. To call it "Chicago-style politics" implies that Obama did something unbecoming. Challenging signatures isn't Chicag-style, cutthroat, or any other buzz word. It's a valid request that the opponent play by the rules of the game.
Tommy, are you deliberately missing the point?
M.M. is stating that the practice of challenging petition signatures is not exclusive to Chicago, or for that matter, exclusive to Illinois, or exclusive to Arizona, or exclusive to any other state.
The point is that the right wing conservative GOP-CNN was taking another pro-GOP slant on a story by giving the impression that gutter politics only takes place in one city or one state, which is not true, and never has been true.
Oh, and New York City politics are clean as whistles? NO! Tammany Hall, NEW YORK CITY, anyone?
I suppose that the politics of the authoritarian fascist racist American South (pick a Southern state) have been pure too, right?
Speaking as someone who LIVES in Illinois, and KNOWS the FACTS and FICTIONS of IL's dirty political history, past AND present, dirty, clean, and in-between, of BOTH the Denmocrats and the Republicans past and present, I know better than anyone not to cast a blanket on every IL politician as being crooked and slimy. There are Democrats and Republicans here that I think should have been voted out, or shouldn't have been elected in the first place, eons ago.
See it real posted:
I suppose that the politics of the authoritarian fascist racist American South (pick a Southern state) have been pure too, right?
OK. I pick NC.
But c'mon, Science. It's not relevant that "Chicago happens to be known for" dirty politics. The question is whether or not Obama has engaged in dirty politics or not.
Challenging voters' signatures is not dirty politics. In cases where opponents' petitions are vulnerable, all pols challenge the petitions. In our electoral system, it's not enough to gather a bunch o signatures--one has to gather a bunch of valid signatures. Obama's opponent didn't do that, and it was reasonable for him to challenge. The fact that his challenge was reasonable is borne out by its success.
"Chicago-style politics" involves:
1) Dead people voting;
b) Bums being paid to vote for someone;
gamma) People being strong-armed into voting for someone; and
iv) Individuals voting multiple times, in different precincts.
Since there's no evidence that any of that happened in Obama's election, there's no basis for accusing him of "Chicago-style politics."
No, what's offensive is to smear a candidate with derogatory associations, and then give the opponent a pass.
Hey guys-- how much are those republcans paying you for these troll postings? Lots of fun prizes?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/06/AR2008080603589.html
DINO (Democrat In Name Only) Hillary Clinton gets the STARTING blame for this gutter politics, besides the fact that Hillary was LYING, and Liar McCain AND GOP-CNN both get the rest of the blame, by Liar McCain for repeating these lies, and by GOP-CNN for furthering these lies.
Next...
I believe it was Hillary who lied first.
Also, Obama's "association" with Rezko was very minimal. Obama did NOT buy his condominium from Rezko, and Rezko was NOT a client of Obama's.
Just listen to Chicago's black talk radio station WVON-AM 1690 http://www.wvon.com, and get the facts from either Roland Martin http://www.rolandsmartin.com or Clifford Kelley to get the REAL facts about this or any other Obama story, debunking the lies.
Just listen to Chicago's black talk radio station WVON-AM 1690
Chicago black talk radio, and Chicago black theology liberation...yes the truth will for sure come out.
Most EDUCATED folks also know, Anne, that syphilis was not INTRODUCED into the AA men by the Government. They had ALREADY CONTRACTED the disease and the Gov studied and did not TREAT the disease.
This is dispicable on many levels but to insinuate that the Gov introduced syphilis or AIDS as Wright has done is a lie.
I believe it was Hillary who lied first.
She did no such thing.
Hey guys-- how much are those republcans paying you for these troll postings? Lots of fun prizes?
I've won a big screen TV & a Car so far. I'm going for one of McCain's houses next, he's got so many he's giving them away ;-)
these are still available, Tommy.
It's very nice.
I've been promised ambassador of information in the McCain admin:
The "Arizona politics" line is cute but stupid.
Ignoring that can anyone really defend those who accuse Obama of being cutthroat and playing outside the rules for doing something that McCain also has done and nobody is talking about at all?
It's either wrong for both or wrong for neither.
Yes, why would this be here? I mean it seems fair to claim Obama is just another user of dirty politics for doing the exact same thing McCain has done. Of course McCain is not a dirty politician, he is a maverick. So you see, only Obama using these tactics is bad, becuase he is from Chicago. If he had used them in Arizona, no problem!
Jeez, sometimes the WITH crowd are really dense.
It's even worse than them being simply dense.
If they hadn't had the purpose of this site pointed out to them countless times before, they might simply be dense.
If this wasn't a prime example of that mission statement, they might simply be dense.
If there wasn't clear evidence that some of the most egregious examples of conservative misinformation get the loudest WITH objections, they might simply be dense.
Every politician should challenge the petition drives of his opponents if he thinks there's any chance of illegitimate voters signing those petitions.
"Chicago-style politics" is supposedly illegitimate political behavior, right? Obama was trying to ensure that the election slate was populated with only eligible candidates! That's a good thing!!!!! Obama wasn't participating in "Chicago-style politics". He was participating in "anti-Chicago-style politics"!!!!!
And that's the point that the WITH'ers want us to miss. That's why they're so invested in the WITH posts.
If they really thought that there was no reason for a post to be here, they could ignore them, or debate why this should not be here using the Mission statement as a tool. They can never do that though - in the 6 months or so I've been posting here, there's never been a time that they've had a leg to stand on with their WITH posts!
Making conservatives look better than they deserve to look is part of the conservative agenda. Making liberals look worse is too!
Ignoring the fact that it makes the arguers hypocrites to point out behavior in Obama that's was done first and more often by McCain forwards the conservative agenda. Hypocrisy is their middle name!
I also agree that some here are completely missing the point. The facetious nature of this particular summary is tripping up some readers.
The article has nothing to do with contrasting the politics of Chicago and Arizona. The issue is that someone in the MSM is unfairly characterizing Obama's signature challenges in the state Senate race as "cutthroat" and an example of "Chicago-style politics". But McCain has done the exact same thing in at least two races!
MMFA was not being serious when they used the phrase "avid student of Arizona-style politics". The intent was to highlight a glaring inconsistency in the coverage of two men.
i want to think this is a clear example of unconscious instittutional racism and i fear it is a deliberate smear campaign to defeat Obama for many reasons not the least of which is his race.