Email   |  

Former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr announced Monday that he’s running for president as a Libertarian, a candidacy that could hurt John McCain.

“I will be a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and it is precisely to give the American people a voice, to give them a meaningful choice so that they do not have to once again go into the polling booth on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, hold their nose and pull a lever — or touch one of those magical touch-screens that seem to be so much in vogue now — and vote for the lesser of two evils. America deserves better,” Barr told reporters at his Washington, D.C., announcement.

Barr plans to run to the right of McCain and to position himself as the true conservative in the presidential race. His third-party candidacy would likely draw more disenchanted Republican voters than Democrats.

“Anybody who stands at the foundation of their domestic agenda McCain-Feingold, to me, can not ever lay legitimate claim, at least with a straight face, to calling themselves or being labeled as a conservative,” Barr said of McCain’s landmark campaign finance reform law, which the Arizona senator co-sponsored with liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

Barr said McCain’s Web site and advisers don’t have a great deal of substance about how to reduce the influence of Washington, pare down its size and return to smaller government, all top concerns of conservative voters.

He said the lack of that discussion among McCain’s resources reflects “the basic premise of the senator that Washington is Washington, and Washington is fine, we just need to make some adjustments around the corners. We need to do much more than that.”

The former Republican congressman said that having spent several weeks roaming the U.S. and abroad and talking to people from all walks of life, he has heard the same complaints.

“They want a choice. They believe America has more to offer than what [the] current political situation is serving to us,” Barr said.

He said “protecting the defense and defending the United States” is a first priority, and that would include not leaving open military bases abroad that serve no advantage. He added that overturning the status quo by bringing discretionary spending under control, limiting the size and scope of the federal government and reducing the deficit are also among his objectives.

“The status quo has given us the litany of problems that we’re all very familiar with — the debt, the deficit, the problems that we see in the economy, the trade imbalance and a whole host of problems, the occupation of Iraq. These are all children of the status quo,” he said.

Barr first must win the Libertarian nomination at the party’s national convention, which begins May 22. Party officials consider him a front-runner thanks to the national profile he developed in Congress from 1995 to 2003.

Barr said that he would reach out to supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who remains in the Republican race against McCain and who was the 1984 and 1988 Libertarian presidential candidate.

“We’ll be reaching out to the support of all Americans who believe in smaller government, more individual liberty, more individual freedom, the true principles of federalism to devolve power from Washington back to the states,” Barr said. “If that fits, as I suspect it does, with the views of many if not all supporters of Congressman Ron Paul, then yes, we’ll be reaching out to them.”

Barr, 59, announced early last month that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee to investigate whether he should run. He argued that he did not want to sit on the sidelines while the country faces a grave moral crisis.

He may be most famous for serving as an impeachment manager against President Bill Clinton. He served as a U.S. attorney before entering Congress. He left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration.

Since leaving office, he has maintained the political action committee he formed as a congressman. In the current two-year election cycle, he has raised more than $1.2 million, spending most of it on direct mail. His staff said the mailings are intended to spread his “message of liberty.”

Barr currently runs a lobbying and public affairs firm with offices in Atlanta and outside Washington. His clients have included the American Civil Liberties Union and the Marijuana Policy Project, a group pushing Congress to allow medical marijuana use and to cut spending for what it says are failed anti-drug media campaigns aimed at young people.

Barr also holds the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation and is a board member of the National Rifle Association.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Email   |  

NEW YORK — Conservative legal advocates are recruiting pastors nationwide to defy an IRS ban on preaching about politicians, in a challenge they hope will abolish the restriction.

The Alliance Defense Fund, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will ask the clergy to deliver a sermon about specific candidates Sept. 28. If the action triggers an IRS investigation, the legal group will sue to overturn the federal rules, which were enacted in 1954.

Under the IRS code, churches can distribute voter guides, run voter registration drives, hold forums on public policy and invite politicians to speak at their congregations.

However, they cannot endorse a candidate, and their political activity cannot be biased for or against a candidate, directly or indirectly.

The Alliance Defense Fund said Friday that the regulations amount to an unconstitutional limit on free speech and government intrusion into religion.

“It certainly does have a chilling effect,” said Mike Johnson, senior counsel for the fund. “I think that there is a lot of fear and intimidation and disinformation about the parameters that do exist.”

Johnson said about 100 pastors have expressed interest in participating so far.

The IRS has stepped up monitoring of nonprofit political activity during the 2008 election. Punishments can range from a financial penalty to loss of tax-exempt status.

IRS investigations are confidential and the agency does not discuss the cases.

However, the United Church of Christ, which counts Sen. Barack Obama as a member, has said that it is under IRS review because of a speech given by the Democratic presidential candidate at the denomination’s national meeting last year.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group in Washington, monitors church political activity and consistently files complaints with the IRS. They said Friday that they will notify the agency of any pastor who participates in the ADF campaign.

Some religious groups support keeping politics out of the pulpit.

J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, which advocates for religious freedom, said churches should be involved in public issues, but partisan activity can “compromise the essential calling to spread the Gospel.”

“The church can’t raise prophetic fist at a candidate or at a party,” Walker said, “when it’s locked up in a tight bear hug with that candidate or party.”

Email   |  

States and territories allocating pledged delegates to date:

Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida, Maine, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho (Democratic), Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana (GOP), New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia (GOP), Kansas, Nebraska (Democratic), Washington, Louisiana, Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island, Texas, Mississippi, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana and North Carolina

NOTE: Totals may not include 100 percent of delegates available in voting states. Last updated at 1:42 a.m. ET, May 7, 2008.

Source: The Associated Press

Democratic Delegates (2,025 needed to win nomination)

Republican Delegates (1,191 needed to win nomination)

Email   |  

DURHAM, N.C. — Voter excitement, always up before a presidential election, is pushing registration through the roof so far this year - with more than 3.5 million people rushing to join in the historic balloting, according to an Associated Press survey that offers the first national snapshot.Figures are up for blacks, women and young people. Rural and city. South and North.

Overall, the AP found that nearly one in 65 adult Americans signed up to vote in just the first three months of the year. And in the 21 states that were able to provide comparable data, new registrations have soared about 64 percent from the same three months in the 2004 campaign.

Voters are flocking to the most open election in half a century, inspired to support the first female president, the first black or the oldest ever elected.

Also, the bruising Democratic race has lasted longer than anyone expected, creating a burst of interest in states typically ignored in an election year.

Some Democratic Party leaders bemoan the long battle, with two strong candidates continuing to undercut each other. But there are clear signs that the registration boom is favoring their party, at least for now.

“This could change the face of American politics for decades to come,” said Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, predicting permanent gains for her party. Republicans, concerned at least somewhat for 2008, say these surges come and go over the longer term.

While detailed data are available from only a handful of states, registration seems to be up particularly strongly for blacks and women.

Among the new voters in North Carolina is Shy Ector, 25, of Durham. She favored Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry while a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill four years ago, but never actually took the time to make sure she was registered to vote. Barack Obama’s candidacy was enough to make sure she did this year, she said.

“I was like ‘Oh, now this is a reason to vote. This is different,’” Ector said. “I was inspired and I was excited.”

New voters are generally less reliable. So there’s no guarantee this year’s newcomers will stick around in years to come - or even cast ballots in November if their candidate doesn’t make it.

“I will be very disappointed, and it will take me some time to recover,” Ector said of an Obama loss to Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I’m not going to say I’m just going to write off politics for good, but it does make you feel like you’re doing all this work for nothing, and nothing’s coming to fruition.”

Even if some discouraged new voters drop off, the numbers are striking.

Consider Pennsylvania and North Carolina - where the primary elections hadn’t been expected to matter because they occurred so late in the nominating process.

New voter registrations favored Democrats in North Carolina, which holds its primary Tuesday. In the first three months of the year, the number of new Democratic registrants nearly tripled - to 74,590 - from those during the same period of 2004. New Republican registrations were up, too, but they only doubled.

More than 49,558 unaffiliated voters signed up in the Tar Heel state, compared with just 16,858 in the first three months of 2004. The Democratic primary was the obvious draw, with 85 percent of unaffiliated voters who cast early ballots doing so on that ticket.

Cherie Poucher, director of elections in Wake County, home of the state capital of Raleigh, said registrations among the parties have historically kept pace with each other - until this year. In the two weeks before the April 11 registration deadline, she said, the Democrats gained about 8,000 voters in Wake County while the GOP lost several hundred.

“We have never seen something like that before,” Poucher said.

In Pennsylvania, where Clinton’s victory in the April 22 primary kept her campaign alive, there were 40,000 more Republicans than Democrats in Bucks County in April 2004.

Among the new registrants in the first three months of this year, 6,537 signed up as Democrats while 2,200 did so as members of the GOP in the county north of Philadelphia. And 12,554 filed applications to switch to the Democratic Party. By the beginning of April, Bucks had become a Democratic county by a margin of nearly 4,000 registered voters.

“After January, they were just coming,” said John Cordisco, the county’s Democratic chairman.

Cordisco said party leaders had initially set a goal of turning the county blue by 2011. Then came the extended primary battle that gave Pennsylvania an important role. And while Clinton won Bucks County by a margin of 25 percentage points, accounts suggest that many of the new registrants are black voters inspired by Obama.

The overall figures on new registrations were compiled by the AP in a survey of election officials nationwide. Six states and the District of Columbia were unable to provide statistics, meaning the total number of voters who registered between roughly Jan. 1 and March 31 almost certainly exceeds 3.6 million. One of the six, North Dakota, does not require voters to register.

In the 21 states that were able to provide comparable figures from the first three months of 2004, only Iowa showed a decline. That state held its first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 3.

The numbers even seem to be benefiting Democrats in states that generally lean Republican. In Wyoming, where registered Republicans still outnumber Democrats by more than 2-to-1, Democratic registrations in the first three months of the year surpassed those for the GOP. Ditto in West Virginia, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina - all states won by President Bush in 2004. There could be more: Only 10 states had figures on new voter registrations by party.

Four states provided information about the race of registrants in both 2004 and 2008: Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina. And in each, there was a surge in the registration of black voters. In North Carolina, more than 45,000 blacks signed up to vote in the first three months of 2008, compared with just over 11,000 in the first three months of 2004.

There was also a fourfold rise in black voter registrations in Alabama, while Louisiana and Tennessee saw increases of 64 and 17 percent.

Six states collected voter data by gender in 2008 and 2004, and the new-registration rate among women - who have largely backed Clinton - is up 89 percent in those states, compared with 74 percent for men.

Not all of the registrants are new to politics. A newly registered voter might be one who has moved to a new state. But the onslaught of registrations has overwhelmed election organizers, resulting in a mix of both excitement and anxiety as they prepare to count ballots cast by millions of new registrants.

North Carolina officials expect a turnout of around 50 percent in Tuesday’s primary election - double the rate of past primaries. Almost half a million voters cast early ballots, more than half the number who voted in the state’s 2004 primary overall.

In Indiana, which also votes Tuesday, a flood of recent voter applications slowed election systems to a crawl and forced some counties to keep staff working around-the-clock to process the backlog.

In April alone, Hoosier election staffs processed 130,000 new or updated voter registrations. Many more people cast ballots in early voting.

“Those numbers completely obliterate any numbers from 2004,” said Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita. For the primary, he said, “I’ve been pulling my staff in for war-game meetings, playing out every scenario. They’re almost paramilitary tactics in terms of strategy.”

David Woodard, a professor of political science at Clemson University who has advised Republican candidates, acknowledged the GOP is concerned about what appears to be a movement to voters to the Democratic Party attracted by Obama. But he noted that Ronald Reagan was supposed to lead the GOP to long-term political dominance but was never able to do so.

“These tides come in and wash in a personality,” Woodard said. “But the tides of American politics are still pretty much the same, and the excitement of one candidate or one personality is not really long lasting.”

It works both ways. In 1980, four years after Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter swept the South on his way to the White House, the Democratic Party slipped and Republicans returned, largely dominating the region.

“People have had big impacts,” said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick. “But you also see that some things don’t last that long.”

And then there is the reality that registration numbers don’t always add up to high turnout in November.

Historically, only a little more than 50 percent of voting-age adults cast ballots in U.S. presidential elections. By comparison, more than 70 percent of those in France and the United Kingdom go to the polls.

Email   |  

NEW YORK — Tom Hanks is supporting presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Hanks has taken to his MySpace.com page to pledge his support for Obama, who is competing to be the first black president. Obama, who faces rival Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, has also been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen and Scarlett Johansson.

“As an official celebrity, I know my endorsement has just made your mind up for you,” the 51-year-old actor says in a short video titled, “Beware: Celebrity Endorsement.”

“History with a capital `H’ is going to be made this November, no matter who the president-elect is. I want Barack Obama to be president of this country, a country that once said people with his skin color were only three-fifths of a human being.”

Hanks, who won Oscars for his roles in “Forrest Gump” and “Philadelphia,” explains his decision: “It’s because of his character and vision, and the high road he has taken during this campaign. He has the integrity and the inspiration to unify us, as did FDR and Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy and even Ronald Reagan when they ran for the job.”

The actor says Obama and Clinton have each “pretended to eat cheese-steak sandwiches and go bowling,” “committed gaffes” and distanced themselves from supporters who could damage their campaigns.

But Hanks thinks an Obama presidency could bring about a “seismic shift,” and “live up to the great promise once shaped by our founding fathers.”

Signing off, the star says: “I’m Tom Hanks, I wrote and approved this message, and I’m now going to turn off the camera.”

Email   |  

WASHINGTON  — Most voters think Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has done a good job handling the controversy surrounding his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to a poll released Sunday.

In a CBS News/New York Times poll, 60 percent of voters — and 68 percent of Democratic primary voters — said they approved of the way Obama handled the situation.

   At a press conference in Washington last Monday, Wright praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and reiterated his beliefs that that the U.S. government may have developed the AIDS virus to infect the black community and that it had invited the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Obama denounced the remarks the next day.

   Three-quarters of voters polled said Wright’s statements had not changed their opinion of Obama.

   And a majority of those polled — 56 percent — said the news media have spent too much time covering the controversy.

   The poll was conducted among a random sample of 671 adults, including 283 Democratic primary voters, from May 1-3. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points for the whole group, plus or minus 5 percentage points for the Democrats.