The Conservation Voters of South Carolina announced their endorsements this morning for the June 10 primary. The group says it made those decisions based on candidate questionnaires, interviews and analysis.
“This diverse group of candidates demonstrates that conservation is not a partisan issue to South Carolinians,” says Executive Director Ann Timberlake. “Voters are less and less concerned with whether candidates are red or blue – the public wants ‘green’ candidates.”
Here’s the local endorsements:
Dwayne Green, D, Charleston Senate #42
Clay Middleton, D, Charleston House #111
Joe Bustos, R, Charleston House #112
Arianna Huffington laid the groundwork for scandal earlier this week, claiming that Sen. John McCain told her that he didn’t vote for President Bush in 2000 (which would put him among the majority of Americans, but we digress). The campaign says the conversation didn’t happen, but two actors of The West Wing came out later in the week to say they were there and heard him say it too. Well, that got us wondering who McCain voted for if not Bush. Sure, he may have voted for Gore or wrote in his own name, but we have a few more alternatives:
Tiger Woods — athlete of the year; would have deflated some of this “change” talk for the 2008 race.
Brad Pitt — named Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine the week of the election — and if there’s one thing the White House has been lacking, it’s a pretty face.
Regis Philbin — Millionaire was on four nights a week, and, hey, those gruff, old chatter-boxes have to stick together.
Carlos Santana — rocker working across the aisle, topping the charts with pop-enthused “Smooth” and the urban-inspired “Maria Maria.”
Andrea Gail — the old fishing boat at the center of “The Perfect Storm” that struggled through the waves before falling to the battering surf — dashing the hopes of audiences everywhere.
City officials released the draft report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health regarding the June 18 Sofa Super Store fire. Recommendations will not be released until the final report is complete, but the draft version provides a summary of the events that led to the death of nine Charleston firefighters in the Savannah Highway blaze.
The fire quickly outgrew the available suppression water supply and the interior crews became disoriented as the heat rapidly intensified and visibility dropped to zero as the thick black smoke filled the showroom from floor to ceiling.
…
Soon after, the flammable mixture of combustion by-products ignited, and fire raced through the main showroom. Interior fire fighters were caught in the rapid fire progression and nine fire fighters from the first-responding fire department died. At least six fire fighters barely escaped serious injury.
The report was given to the city and the firefighters union for review. Mayor Joe Riley, who was criticized last weekend for his initial decision to delay releasing the city’s independent review team report, was quick to release this draft report to the public. He announced Tuesday that the city report will be released next Thursday, May 15.
“Apparently (the NIOSH) report, which is pre-decisional and has not been finalized, is a report that normally is not publicly distributed,” Riley said in announcing the release. “My belief is that because of the understandable immense interest in the Sofa Super Store fire that it is very important that everyone be aware even of this draft document so that this process is public and transparent.”
Get ready, Charleston. All the insane comedy and drama that was The Bachelor: An Officer and a Gentleman, which had three Charleston ladies competing for the love of a Navy officers we called “Da Cheese,” is back with the latest version of The Bachelorette. Charleston has two guys pursuing spurned Bachelor finalist DeAnna Pappas: Donato, a 26-year-old sales rep, and Luke, a 27-year-old oyster farmer from Folly Beach. There’s also Jon, a 35-year-old resort manager from Surfside Beach.
The show premieres May 19. We’ll be there with our Bachelor Wrap.
Amidst all the drama in the Democratic race, both Indiana and North Carolina voted in the GOP primary as well.
While McCain won, some are sounding the alarm over results that show 23 percent of Indiana Republicans and 27 percent of N.C. Republicans voted for someone else.
But the important point isn’t that they voted for someone else — it’s that they voted. A handful of these folks might stay home in protest come November, but Republicans are ridiculously practiced at rolling out of bed on election day and pulling the lever. As long as there isn’t another option on the ballot in November, they’ll go with McCain.
Today’s Post and Courier story finally prints the details of the Randy Scott phone calls, showing that he wanted his cousin, a local magistrate, to come perform a bond hearing and get him out.
We’re not saying he was cheating, but one phone call in particular struck us like the scene in every episode of “Cheaters” where they tape a conversation with the cheater fibbing about what he/she is doing while showing video of him/her with the other man/woman.
In another call, Amanda (his wife) asks Scott where he was coming from at the time he was stopped.
“I was just riding around.”
“You were just riding around?” she asks.
“I wasn’t drunk either,” Scott says. “This ain’t nothing but politics. That’s all it is.”
In short, Mrs. Clinton could not have asked for a better second chance to turn this campaign around and to make her central case to superdelegates: that Mr. Obama was a damaged general election candidate who would get swallowed up by the Republican Party.
Yet she was unable on Tuesday to build her base of support substantially beyond the white, working-class voters who had sustained her for the last month. That will not be lost on the superdelegates, the elected Democrats and party leaders who will ultimately decide this fight.
To sum it up with the delegate machine, Obama could lose ALL of the remaining six primaries by a 12-point spread (and he’s expected to win at least three of those six) and he would still only need 78 of the 277 remaining superdelegates.
That said, I can certainly understand if Hillary stays in until May 20. She’s got West Virginia and Kentucky next. But even big victories there will be met the morning after with the realities that chances only look worse. With every win, she’ll close the spread, but Obama will be getting closer to the clinching the nomination.
You know, people can tell you just how difficult the climb is for Hillary to win the Democratic nomination, but you really don’t get it until you do the math yourself.
I could play with CNN’s delegate calculator for hours (and just might), but here’s the two key points:
As long as Obama collects half of the remaining superdelegates, he would only need 34 percent of the delegates handed out in the remaining primary states.
Even if Hillary received two-thirds of the remaining superdelegates, she’d need 60 percent of the delegates handed out in the remaining primary states.
We all know that the Clinton campaign is crunching these numbers too, so why the delay in calling an end to this? Well, there likely waiting for a Macaca moment or they’re dreaming of that dream ticket. The problem is that the longer this goes on and the more venomous Clinton’s attacks become, the less likely that ticket is going to happen.
What Clinton needs to do, beginning tomorrow, is to acquiesce to Obama’s talking points, while continuing to maintain her campaign. Let the little engine putter out in June and she just might be able to negotiate the VP slot. That said, my best guess is that Obama will look outside of Washington to maintain the “change” theme.
Mayor Joe Riley announced today that he would, in fact, release the independent fire review team study report on the Sofa Super Store fire next week. Late last week (like, 6:30 Friday), Riley announced he was delaying the report, and has since received harsh criticism.
Commissioned by the city last year, the report is expected to lay out a timeline for the events on June 18 that led to the deaths of nine firefighters in the flames of the Sofa Super Store on Savannah Highway. The review team completed its work, but Riley said he was holding off on releasing the report (and even his own private review) until the findings of two federal investigations.
But it was the concerns of firefighters and families of those lost that led to Riley announcing Monday afternoon that the city would release the report on Thursday, May 15.
“I realized that decision (to withhold the report) would be a disservice to our fire department and the families,” Riley said, also worrying about the potential for “hurt feeling, ill will, skepticism, and a lack of confidence” that may rise from a delay.
While he expects it will be critical of the department (as most of these reports are), Riley said he wasn’t sure what the report would look like. He said it may have a break down of lessons to be learned from the fire and the departments response.
Federal investigators have said it could be four months before their findings are prepared. With the potential for the those studies to gleam some new information in the coming months, Riley seemed to suggest that he would have stood his ground on the delay — had he not promised the review team’s report to residents this month.
The news didn’t make it in the print edition, but Post and Courier staff reported this morning that designs for the $150 million Midtown Development received initial approval from the city on Monday.
The project is just two doors down from the Post and Courier office and the around 12 acres the paper’s parent company plans to develop. We’ve questioned previous reports of the Midtown project that did not mention this fact.
Now, it’s almost like they can’t bring themselves to lay out the paper’s obvious financial interest in the success or failure of this neighboring project.
The development is now up for preliminary approval, which will take into account more of the building details in the project. The project could be part of a transformation of the upper King Street area.
Well, there’s a hint of context there, but no mention of the paper’s stake in said “transformation.” I want to make it clear that I don’t think this is a responsibility of the staff writers. There should be a discussion in the newsroom led by the editors regarding how the paper handles this development.
Greg Hambrick is a staff writer for the Charleston City Paper. He covers the 2008 elections, City Hall, and other Charleston news. He likes musicals and comic books. He's not surprised that people don't vote when you have lazy, half-invested fingers pointing toward the polling place.
