Inhofe Gets Help on Bail-Out Freeze
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, whose proposal to freeze the rest of the bail-out money and require Congress to vote on using any more of it (there’s about $400 billion left) garnered a lot of attention last week — and also some co-sponsors. Most of the people signing on are Republicans, but Inhofe also got the support of Sen. Bernard Sanders, an Independent from Vermont who mostly votes with the Democrats and is a self-described “democratic socialist.”
Sanders was one of the most vocal opponents against the bail-out package. An earlier blog item included his comments.
Clearly, the bill is highly unlikely to be considered in the next few weeks before this Congress adjourns. Lawmakers may not return before January. And all pending bills will expire when this Congress officially ends, so Inhofe would have to reintroduce his legislation when the next Congress begins.
Wheat and Walters
In a story today, the New York Times reports from Walters, OK about the steep decline in wheat prices and the effect on land and farming.
Fallin — New Class President
Rep. Mary Fallin has been elected president of the 14-member class of sophomore Republican House members. Probably not one of the most notable achievements of the first female lieutenant governor in state history and only the second female member of Congress from Oklahoma, but, still, a nod from her GOP peers.
Fallin, R-Oklahoma City, is widely expected to make a run for governor in 2010 so she might not be around for the next class elections in the House.
A Crowd of Four Million?
The Washington Post reports today that as many as 4 million people may be here for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Guess I won’t drive to work that day.
Fairly Amazing Factoid About Prez Election in Oklahoma
Update: Since I wrote this, the Oklahoma Election Board has changed the vote totals from the ‘08 presidential race. The latest figures show McCain got 960,165 votes, which is 373 votes more than President George W. Bush got in Oklahoma in 2004.
The new figure for President-elect Barack Obama is 502,496, which means he got only 1,470 votes fewer than Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
Still, pretty amazing how little difference there was in the Oklahoma electorate.
There seems to be a lot of emotional discussion on newsok.com about the presidential race results in Oklahoma and what they may or may not have meant.
Can’t offer much beyond the people I’ve quoted in my news stories and the exit poll results posted on this blog previously.
But something to keep in mind: There was almost no difference between the support for Sen. John McCain and the support for President Bush in Oklahoma in 2004. In fact: Only 16 votes!
That’s pretty astonishing really, considering that more than 1.4 million votes were cast for presidential candidates in both 2004 and 2008. McCain got 959,808 and Bush got 959,792.
The results for the Democrats were also amazingly similar. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, got 503,966 votes. In 2008, Sen. Barack Obama got 502,329 votes. That’s only a 1,637 vote difference — again, out of more than 1.4 million votes cast in each election.
State voters apparently didn’t get the memo that this was an election about change.
Exit Polls: How Oklahoma Compares
You all know by now that Sen. Barack Obama won the presidency while losing every county in Oklahoma. But the exit polls nationally and the ones specific to the state offer some revealing points about how voters divided over Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain.
The Oklahoma results that I’ve seen don’t have all the detailed information contained in the national questionnaire, but there are some comparisons:
Nationally, Obama got a lot more support from Democratic voters and Independents than he did in Oklahoma.
_ In Oklahoma, 67 percent of Democrats voted for Obama; while, nationally, 89 percent did so. In Oklahoma, 95 percent of Republicans voted for McCain; nationally, 90 percent did so.
Only 59 percent of white Democrats voted for Obama in Oklahoma while, nationally, 85 percent of white Democrats went for Obama.
In Oklahoma, 64 percent of Independents voted for McCain; nationally, 52 percent voted for Obama.
_ In Oklahoma, McCain won every income group except one, those making from $15,000 to $30,000 a year (12 percent of those surveyed at the polls).
Nationally, Obama won four income groups (including those making over $200,000 per year), while McCain won two.
_ In Oklahoma, 36 percent of those polled said they had a college degree, and of those, 69 percent voted for McCain.
Nationally, 44 percent said they had a college degree and 53 percent of those voted for Obama.
_ In Oklahoma, McCain won the urban, suburban and rural areas. Nationally, Obama won all three areas.
_ In Oklahoma, 88 percent of those questioned were somewhat or very worried about the economy. Of those, 65 percent voted for McCain.
Nationally, 85 percent said they were worried about the economy, and of those, 54 percent went for Obama.
_ In Oklahoma, 44 percent approve of the job being done by President Bush. And, of those, 93 percent voted for McCain. Of the 55 percent who disapprove of Bush, 57 percent voted for Obama.
Nationally, 71 percent of people disapprove of Bush and two-thirds of those people voted for Obama.
Here are a couple of general comments gleaned from national results that weren’t available in the Oklahoma-only results:
If you go to church once a week or more, you were more likely to vote for McCain. And if you go only occasionally or never, you were more likely to vote for Obama.
If there is a gun in your household, you were more likely to vote for McCain. And if there’s not, you were more likely to vote for Obama.
If you were worried about health care costs, you were more likely to vote for Obama.
Some other national results that weren’t included in the Oklahoma results I’ve seen:
_ 67 percent of those polled favor offshore drilling where it’s not currently allowed; and 59 percent of those voted for McCain.
_ 56 percent of those polled opposed the $700 billion of the financial industry, and 50 percent of those voted for Obama.
_ 60 percent said they didn’t think Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was qualified to be president.
_ 60 percent said the choice of Palin was a factor in their vote. And, of those, 56 percent voted for McCain.
_ 33 percent said Palin wasn’t a factor in their vote and, of those, 65 percent voted for Obama.
Note that some of the results don’t add up to 100 percent because some people didn’t answer the question.
What conclusions can you draw from these numbers, if any? Looking just at the red and blue areas on maps, it seem easy to make generalizations, but the detailed data makes the national political picture much less clear.
Inauguration Tickets
Whatever you do, don’t buy any off ebay right now. They’re not even available and won’t be until sometime in January. You can get some info here.
Basically, you need to contact your U.S. senator or House member. The tickets are being distributed through them.
Oklahoma’s two senators are Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe; you can call either of them to get on the list. The House members are Reps. Mary Fallin, Tom Cole, Dan Boren, John Sullivan and Frank Lucas.
If you live in Oklahoma, Seminole or Pottawatomie Counties, Fallin is your rep.
Cole has Moore, Norman, Lawton, Chickasha, Duncan, Ada, Ardmore and lots of points in between.
Boren has Muskogee, McAlester, Poteau — most of eastern Oklahoma really besides Tulsa, which is represented by Sullivan.
Lucas has everything else — and it’s a lot, from the Panhandle to Altus, Stillwater, Yukon.
All of their phone numbers, in DC and Oklahoma, are available on the House web site linked above. Good luck. There will be hundreds of thousands of people here for inauguration on Jan. 20; inaugurations are always historic and this one, obviously, will be particularly so.
Boehner Backing Cole’s Opponent
House Republican leader John Boehner came out today for Rep. Tom Cole’s opponent in the race to run the House GOP campaign committee.
Cole, R-Moore, is running for a second term in the leadership post. He spent much of his time dealing with financial problems he inherited from past election cycles, including a mountain of debt. After retiring that debt, he faced a tough political environment for Republicans nationwide and may see his efforts result in the loss of more than 20 seats.
But Cole said this week that he thought he and the team he assembled at the National Republican Congressional Committee had managed to contain the damage — some had predicted a loss of up to 40 seats — and that he had put the committee on firm financial footing.
Still, Boehner, of Ohio, released a statement supporting Texas Rep. Pete Sessions for the job:
“Tom Cole has guided the NRCC through a difficult time for our party, and I’m sincerely grateful for his service to our team. But I believe having Pete Sessions at the helm of the NRCC in the next cycle will give House Republicans our best shot at rebuilding a majority coalition. Pete has the skills needed to recruit top-tier candidates and give them the support they need to challenge a Democratic Congress that has been bought and paid for by liberal special interests. We need Pete Sessions at the leadership table as the next chairman of the NRCC.”
Cole couldn’t be reached for comment on Thursday. There has been speculation that Boehner will actually change the rules and prevent a race between Cole and Sessions. Boehner has considered making the post subject to appointment by the Republican leader — in this case, him.
So clearly, if he does that, Sessions is in and Cole is out.
Rahm Emanuel
President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Chicago-area Congressman Rahm Emanuel may be good news for the natural gas industry, which has been promoting expanded use of the cleaner-burning fuel.
Emanuel co-sponsored legislation with Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, this year to use tax credits and mandates to get more natural gas vehicles on the road.
A powerful House Democratic leader, Emanuel included the natural gas provisions in a broad energy bill that passed the House in September. The bill didn’t get through the Senate.
Emanuel also appeared at a Washington news conference earlier this year with Boren and Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon to promote natural gas usage.
Emanuel has an Oklahoma Republican friend in Rep. Tom Cole. The two are political pros and there’s a lot of mutual respect there.
I did a piece on Cole three years ago and called Emanuel’s office to see if I could get a quote from him. His press staff was amazingly helpful (believe me, that’s not always the case with Capitol Hill press people who don’t work for the Oklahoma lawmakers) and got Emanuel to call me from a plane to meet my deadline.
Emanuel told me that he and Cole share almost no similarities in ideology but that they did share a sense of public service as a noble profession that carries immense responsibility.
“Even though you have the party divide, the partisan divide, I consider him a friend,” Emanuel said then. “He’s a man of his word, I think, someone who will level with you and be honest with you.”
Cole Not Done on Campaign Committee?
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Moore, said in an interview today that he plans to seek another term as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
That’s the organization that works to get Republicans elected to the House. Cole won the job after the 2006 elections, when Democrats routed Republicans and took control of the House.
Expected to turn things around immediately, Cole was the subject of some withering criticism (much of it made anonymously) and palace intrigue when Republicans lost special elections in districts long held by the GOP.
And earlier this year, some pundits were expecting a total bloodbath for Republicans that might cost them up to 40 seats in the House.
But, as of Wednesday afternoon, Cole said the losses would be in the range of 18 to 23 seats for Republicans. Not good, he said, but also not nearly as bad as some had predicted.
“We did a lot better than a lot of people thought we were going to do,” he said.
The chairman of the GOP campaign committee is elected by Republican House members. Two years ago, Cole, who has a wealth of political experience at the state and national levels, beat two of his colleagues.
It’s not clear whether he will be opposed this time. The leadership elections are expected to be held in two weeks.
Cole said the campaign committee is in much better shape now than when he took it over. It was deeply in debt then, and Cole made it his top priority to retire the debt.
