In DA candidate Cline’s Duke lacrosse “explanations” (Post 1) I referred to Durham’s current chief assistant district attorney Tracey Cline as “the front-runner” in the four-way May 6 primary race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for Durham DA.
An Anon commenter responded:
Do you say Cline is the "front runner" because Mayor Bell and a few entrenched PACs have endorsed her? Or is because there is a voter poll somewhere? I haven't seen any polls.I haven’t seen any polls, either.
I should have made that clear and said something like “in my opinion” or “in the opinion of just about all Durham political observers” Cline is the front-runner.
I’ll try to be more precise next time.
I thank the Anon commenter for calling the matter to my attention.
That said, it’s important to say to readers that Cline has the endorsement of the two “entrenched PACs” that have dominatied Durham’s elections for at least the last 15 years: The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People and The Durham’s People’s Alliance. She also has the endorsement of the progressive weekly The Independent and Durham’s only daily newspaper, The Durham Herald Sun.
Those endorsements plus those of Mayor Bell and others were some of the factors that led me to say Cline is “the front-runner.”
In the next few days I’ll do more checking on the status of Cline and the candidate generally viewed as her chief rival, attorney and former assisstant DA Freda Black, and post again on “the front-runner” issue.
Again, my thanks to the Anon commenter.
6 comments:
Hi, same anonymous contributor here. Thank you for the great response to my post.
In politics, the "air of inevitability" can be the greatest weapon (though it didn't work for Hillary). My initial comment was prompted by a desire to make sure Cline doesn't assume that air as "front runner."
There is a theme running through recent news articles/editorials that the establishment has "concerns" about whether voters are paying attention to local races. With the possibility that tens of thousands of new voters will show up to vote for Obama or Clinton, these new voters may not be so educated about the Durham offices. Can we really expect voters who know nothing of the PA or the Friends or the CABP to follow their endorsements? Will these new voters know the diffence between the plans of Reckhow, Moffit, and Peterson for the County?
In other words, the establishment power brokers might be irrelevant, thanks to Hillary's refusal to get out of the race. The old Durham guard is nervous. The County and the DA's office might just be delivered into the hands of the candidate with the most memorable yard signs.
Blog and Media Roundup for 4/28/08
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2007920/posts?page=7
abb
JinC I don't normally post here, but thanks to our "buddies" who hacked the LS board I'm getting my "fix" as are a lot of others,here on your blog..Keep up the great work and lets all stay united...
Michael
FYI
Tom Hayden Looks at Clinton's 60s Past
ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper
April 27, 2008 12:35 PM
In The Nation, former 60s radical Tom Hayden -- in an essay called "Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream" -- hammers Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, for attacking Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, for his association with former Weather Underground member William Ayers. "Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties," Hayden writes. "She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an 'unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged.' She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. ... She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.
"Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others 'tolerated communists'. Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. ...
"All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?"
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/tom-hayden-look.html
As far as the DA race goes, it is true that many are going to the polls mainly to vote for either Obama and Clinton and are not up to date on the DA candidates. Perhaps it is not too late for some good old Obama/Wright type attack ads. In the N&O yesterday an article about those ads against Cline can be found here:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1055073.html
As usual, the media loves a good mud-slinging fight. They call it 'spice'. Regardless of the salt and pepper, it will all end up being sour grapes.
To the last anon commenter re HRC and her 'radical' past, thanks for the reminders. Hillary is no more a communist or unpatriotic than Obama is, but she does have a lot of nerve attacking him via guilt by association when her closet is full of such things. The media already has it's target and they really don't care about Hillary, it is much more fun to go after the front-runner at this point.
Re: Cline as front-runner. Today's Herald Sun says she's in third place in fund raising, behind Freda Black and Mitchell Garrell. Guess those fundraising parties at the Mayor's house don't bring in much.
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