Primary Tuesday: A Day of Infamy for Democracy Reformers that No One Noticed

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http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/primary-tuesday-day-infamy-democracy-reformers-no-one-noticed


Democratic New York gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout and running mate Tim Wu.
Photo Credit: New Yorkers For Zephyr Teachout As Governor

The political events of Tuesday, September 9, will soon be forgotten—if they ever were noticed in the first place. But those handful of people who have been paying attention to the downward spiral of American democracy, there’s no nice way to say this. It was a disaster, unless you consider losing everywhere somehow a noble gesture.

What happened? On the three frontlines of the modern democracy reform movement, three different strategies failed to win enough votes to achieve their stated goals. In the U.S. Senate, a constitutional amendment proposal to empower Congress to re-regulate campaign contributions and spending not only devolved into the predictable partisan divides, but Senate Democratic leaders couldn’t even keep enough members present, literally a quorum, to keep debating it. A final Senate vote is expected this week, where there is zero chance that it will get two-thirds majority needed to pass.

Examples two and three comes from Tuesday’s primary elections in New York State and New Hampshire. In these states, candidates embracing political anti-corruption banners, both of whom were promoted by different slices of the democracy movement, also lost.

In New Hampshire, conservative Republican Jim Rubens was backed by the Mayday PAC, created by Harvard law professor Larry Lessig, which spent $1.6 million on ads for him. Rubens and another challenger facing ex-Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, each received 23 percent. Meanwhile, in New York State, where the Mayday PAC didn’t spend a million, a law professor and anti-corruption expert running for governor, Zephyr Teachout, got 35.5 percent of the vote against incumbent Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

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1. Teachout and Wu went from no name to a solid

showing in a primary for a incumbent. The article is a large scale fail!