Robin Carnahan

Robin Carnahan announced today that she will not seek a third term as Secretary of State. Missourians will lose their strongest advocate for both voters’ rights and investor protection in our state.

However, her work protecting the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of Missourians, and the tireless work that was put in to return over $10 Billion dollars to investors who were taken advantage of, will live on long after she leaves office.

Read her e-mail to supporters here:

I’m proud of the success we’ve had in the Secretary of State’s office by staying focused on things that matter for Missourians.

We’ve saved taxpayers money, while still providing terrific services to Missourians. We’ve cut red tape and costs for small businesses so they can focus on growing their businesses and creating jobs. And we have helped consumers and investors learn how to better protect themselves, and recovered more than $10 billion for victims of financial fraud.

We’ve made Missouri history come alive by making our state’s precious historical resources available on-line to hundreds of millions of people all around the world. And, despite the efforts of some to let politics interfere with Missourians right to vote, we’ve protected the rights of voters and the integrity of our elections so that we can all have faith in the fairness of the results.

Missourians for Fair Taxation today filed suit in Cole County Circuit Court against the State Auditor for a fiscal note that “does nothing to inform voters of the risky high-stakes gamble they would be asked to take,” and against the Secretary of State for a summary statement that “does not sufficiently advise Missouri voters of the uncertainty and chaos that will be caused by adoption of this amendment to our Constitution.” 

The full petition and the associated press release from the Realtors’ committee formed to defeat Rex Sinquefield’s tax scheme may be read below the jump.

If you guessed voting in the capital city of Abuja, Nigeria, you would be spot on.  The mesh bags showing the cast ballots give a whole new meaning to transparency in voting, as does the fellow standing on the table counting the votes out loud.  The following pictures are being sent to us from our own Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who is in Abuja as co-chair of the National Democratic Institute's delegation overseeing the voting process.

Brian Hook of the Franklin Center's Missouri Watchdog website captured and posted videos of all the big speeches as this weekend's Democrat Days event in Hannibal.   Sen. Claire McCaskill, Gov. Jay Nixon, Rep. Russ Carnahan, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, Treasurer Clint Zweifel and Attorney General Chris Koster all spoke at the Saturday brunch or banquet. 

Video of all their remarks may be found here.

Fox News has backed down in its "ridiculous" partisan lawsuit against the Robin Carnahan for Senate campaign, agreeing to a settlement with the campaign and walking away without any of the monetary damages it had sought. Fox and their lawyers are apparently unwilling to test their "dubious" and "strange" claims in court, and political speech remains protected.

As you may recall, Fox sued the Carnahan campaign in September, upset that they'd found footage of Sunday morning personal Chris Wallace committing journalism in a 2006 interview with Roy Blunt, questioning his credibility as a reformer in the House of Representatives.  Never mind that all sorts of Republican candidates, including Blunt, John McCain and other GOP candidates were allowed to use Fox footage for their campaigns without so much as a whimper from the propagandists.  (Also left unmentioned in the Fox complaint: their PAC has been donating to Blunt's campaigns for a decade.)

In the settlement, Fox News agreed to walk, and the Carnahan campaign agreed it had used more footage than a Democratic candidate for office is permitted if it wishes to avoid a retaliatory lawsuit from Fox.

No word yet on the current status of Wallace's "self esteem and dignity," which Fox alleged had been significantly damaged by the re-airing of his act of journalism.

Related:

• Post-Dispatch: "Fox v. Robin: Caught being objective, Fox News retaliates."
• Slate Magazine: Why the Fox News suit against Robin Carnahan's campaign is bogus
• TPM: Fox News Took 'Dramatic Step' In Suing Political Campaign, Says Copyright Expert
• Politico: Fox News sues Carnahan over ad
• Fired Up!: Legal Experts Call Fox Complaints "Dubious" & "Strange"
• Fired Up!: FOX and Chris Wallace Really, Really Annoyed That They Were Critical of Roy Blunt
• Fired Up!: Kraske: Fox Lawsuit A "Mystery"

The Post-Dispatch weighed in on Fox News' lawsuit against the Robin Carnahan Senate campaign this weekend, in piece headlined "Fox v. Robin: Caught being objective, Fox News retaliates."  It provides a good summary of Fox's claims in the suit, along with a number of good examples of Republican campaigns using Fox footage in their ads -- campaigns that that the propagandists at Fox haven't yet gotten around to suing, for some reason. 

"We'd hesitate to call the lawsuit frivolous," they write. "Ridiculous is more like it. With a whiff of spite."

I'm fascinated by this: Roy Blunt refused to take a clear stand on Proposition B (the "Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act") for a KOMU story yesterday, even though his opposition to the measure is proudly displayed by the Alliance for Truth campaign.  

According to KOMU, "Roy Blunt turned down our requests for an interview. Neither his staff nor his website would state his views on the measure." Watch it:

Meanwhile, Blunt's name and image are on the home page of the anti-Prop B campaign website, and have been for the past two weeks.  

What happened to the Blunt campaign's big promises to always "say where he stands?"  Is he embarrassed by the rhetoric of Prop B opponents?  If not, why can't he provide a coherent reason for his opposition?  

h/t Turner Report

Via the Hollywood Reporter: "Now that Carnahan has dutifully pointed out that Fox News was a bit tardy in filing its copyright registration, Fox has decided to take advantage of Rule 15(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. What's that? It basically allows a party to amend its pleading within 21 days of the other party raising a defense based on jurisdictional or procedural grounds (i.e. serving a copyright lawsuit before registering copyright). So Fox News is amending its lawsuit to include the copyright registration. In addition, the cable news network is adding new charges against the Carnahan campaign for continuing to use the commercial on its website, even after taking the ad off TV.  The move hardly will change the outcome of the case, but it allows Fox News more time."

No word yet on how the protracted legal battle is affecting Chris Wallace's self esteem and dignity.

Fox News' amended complaint is embedded below the jump.

h/t Micheal Mahoney

The Star:

Blunt, the father of a former governor and son of a Missouri legislator, talks about a commitment to small government regarding health care and No Child Left Behind. However, his record shows he often backs big, and sometimes unfunded, government.

He admits Republicans did a pretty poor job controlling spending when they were last in charge in Washington, hardly a good reason to believe they would be frugal this time. Blunt has close ties to special interests and is one of the largest House recipients of special interest donations, so his political independence is clearly suspect.

Carnahan, in contrast, proposes to end the revolving door from Congress to lobbying firms, and she strongly supports more disclosure on campaign finance donations. She opposes earmarks, a growing budget concern, and offers a fresh, honest approach to government.

The Post-Dispatch:

Ms. Carnahan understands both the human and economic imperatives of reforming health care. She understands the need to bring even more reform to the financial sector. She understands that the social contract — work hard and get ahead — is threatened by special interests and record income inequality.

Mr. Blunt does not appear to see the problem, perhaps because he played a key role in creating it. His 21-page “jobs program” boils down to standard Republican mantras of cutting taxes and government spending and unleashing the forces of the marketplace.

Since 1980, those ideas have worked fine for the “haves” and “have mores” in America, but they’ve left the working poor desperate and the middle class struggling.

On a personal level, Mr. Blunt, 60, is charming and thoroughly professional, but in the House he was all too willing to go along with every excess of the Bush administration and has been all too willing to play ball with lobbyists and special interests. To think that would change if he moves across the Rotunda to the Senate is a pipe dream.

The next six years will be difficult for America and for Missouri. We have no illusions that Ms. Carnahan’s election to the Senate will get us where we need to be. But she is far more likely than Mr. Blunt to support policies and programs that will get us started.

KCPT is broadcasting the debate -- it should appear in this UStream player at 7pm.

Hilarious.

The Hollywood Reporter: "Carnahan has struck back, telling a Missouri District Court that Fox News sued before properly registering copyright on the clip. The Carnahan camp submitted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Friday, arguing that the popular cable news network was premature in initiating its copyright claim. Carnahan's lawyers say this is 'more than a technical failure.' Instead, the campaign contends that Fox couldn't complete a copyright application because it would have trouble claiming copyright on all elements of the clip that Carnahan used. The footage itself, it turns out, incorporates an image first broadcast on C-SPAN. The campaign says this may be proof that Fox abused the copyright registration process and filed a frivolous claim in bad faith."

From the motion:

Because the Fox Network commenced its copyright claim prematurely, the Court cannot grant the Fox Network relief on its copyright infringement claim and must therefore dismiss this claim. If this filing precondition problem is not resolved, the validity of this lawsuit and any rulings made herein may be questioned. The Carnahan Campaign has finished running, and thus ceased, television broadcasting of the advertisement in question, and if the case proceeds, it could place the Court and parties in the unusual situation of litigating a lawsuit never properly initiated as to broadcasts of a political advertisement that have already terminated.

Additionally, because no copyright registration is attached to the Complaint, the Fox Network has obscured the issue of the extent to which the materials used by the Carnahan Campaign in its television political advertisement even fall within the Fox Network's copyright.

Documents filed Friday may be found below the jump. 

h/t The Turner Report

The Fix: "Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's (D) Senate campaign will announce $2.1 million raised in the third quarter, a campaign source tells The Fix, bringing it near parity with Rep. Roy Blunt's (R) more than $2 million raised. Outside groups are spending heavily for Blunt, but this remains arguably Democrats' best pickup opportunity."

Backup documentation posted with the YouTube video may be found here.

"Once on the farm, she was hopping up and down out of the bed of her pickup loading hay like she’d done it a thousand times. Maybe she had. She couldn’t fake that stuff. And I was watching for it, just to make sure this farm thing was as real as it was being portrayed on TV."

The Star's Steve Kraske on Robin Carnahan in this weekend's column, "The pols need to let the sun shine in a whole lot more"