You seriously thought there would be naked photos here? Puh-leeze....if you want to see naked photos just check the spam in your Inbox.
Now that I have your attention, below is a commentary in today's SF Chronicle about 527 groups and voter registration. I realize this is California (the Bay Area in particular) and we are unimportant in this year's campaign but the new voter registration numbers are really amazing.
If the viewer turnout for the debates and the new Democratic voter registration numbers (which appear to be favoring the D's nationwide by large margins) don't help you sleep better at night from now until Nov. 2, I don't know what else will.
Changing political landscape
'527s' creating Bay Area political earthquake
Phil Reiff
Sunday, October 3, 2004
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Political "527 groups" - those loosely regulated political organizations that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the November presidential election - are having a major impact on the Bay Area's political landscape.
Research by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) shows that in the last seven months alone, Democratic-leaning 527s have helped register more than 60,000 new Democratic Party members in the Bay Area - five times more new voters then the Republican Party has added.
While Democrats in the Bay Area have traditionally enjoyed a 2-to-1 voter- registration edge over the GOP, this 5-to-1 disparity in newly registered voters is dramatic and represents what may be the initial tremors of a major political earthquake.
The 527 groups are most widely known as the sponsors of the controversial MoveOn.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads. Everyone from President Bush to Common Cause has criticized 527s as having an undue influence on the political process - a charge that may be accurate. But in one important aspect, 527s have been an unqualified success: They are actually adding new bodies to the voter rolls - something the two major parties have failed at for decades.
Elected officials have lamented for years the declining number of registered voters, yet nothing seems to have effectively reduced this downward trend. Looking at just the Democrats, the party lost more than 80,000 (the size of the entire population of Alameda) registered voters in the Bay Area between 1999 and Feb. of 2004 -- a big number considering the state as a whole was voting increasingly Democratic.
Then along comes a raft of well funded 527s early this year with an effective combination of entrepreneurial initiative, enthusiastic ground troops and fistfuls of cash. The political parties have always had the money for voter registration, but they failed in making a dent in the "unregistered class" because they used the same tired messages, delivered by the same tired field organizations.
Attracting new voters will have long-term implications: One, drawing a new class of voters to the primary elections could dramatically change who wins office and what issues get attention in the Legislature and Congress. For decades, years, success in the primary election usually guaranteed victory in November in Bay Area districts. Two, shifting the party's base will also weaken the influence of labor unions, trial attorneys and other interests over the party.
As many people already know, 527 groups started growing in size and influence after passage of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law that curtailed the campaign activities of political parties. Taking their name from the provision in the Internal Revenue Service code that governs them, 527s supportive of Democratic candidates have seen tremendous growth leading up to the November presidential election.
BACVR's research found that the absence of a major organized field effort in the Bay Area by either the Bush or Kerry campaigns left a vacuum that was quickly filled by liberal 527s. Finding a receptive audience and generous donor base in the Bay Area, Democratic 527s have been able to tap the energy and pocketbooks of like-minded voters who would normally be courted directly by the candidates' campaigns.
There has been much debate about the impact 527s might have on the upcoming presidential election. Our findings answer the question with a resounding "yes" - 527s are significantly altering the electoral playing field in the Bay Area. By registering so many new Democratic voters in the Bay Area, 527s are demonstrating that they are, in fact, a political force to be reckoned with.
Despite this success in attracting more and younger voters to participate in our democracy, 527s are under attack on a number of different fronts, including from the courts, the Federal Election Commission and from lawmakers in Congress who are threatening to rewrite the McCain-Feingold law to specifically ban this type of activity. As a result, it is possible 527s as we now know them may not exist long after November.
Whatever their ultimate fate, there can be no doubt that the aftershocks of the political earthquake brought on by 527s will be felt in the Bay Area for years to come.