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Brad Carson: Meh.

Author:   Matt Deatherage  
Posted: 7/10/04; 12:45:22 PM
Topic: Brad Carson: Meh.
Msg #: 874 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next: 873/875
Reads: 6241

Oklahoma's primary is in just over two weeks, on July 27, so the candidates are really starting to hit the airwaves. It's especially hectic for the US Senate seat that Don Nickles is vacating, because three GOP challengers want it:

  • Kirk Humphreys, the former mayor of Oklahoma City and anointed of the state GOP who has somehow failed to excite anyone despite endorsements from Nickles, Inhofe, and J.C. Watts, and seems to inspire an almost Clinton-like hatred among some conservative Oklahoma voters

  • Dr. Tom Coburn, former Congressman from eastern Oklahoma, who stepped down in 2000 after six years in the House because he pledged in 1994 that he would do so, and who gained a bit of notoriety in his term for condemning NBC for broadcasting Schindler's List because it showed nekkid people while kids might be watching

  • Bob Anthony, super-effective corporation ("public utilities") commissioner who has kept big utilities from plundering the state for about ten years, and therefore earned the absolute hatred of his party who wishes he would shut up and go away

These guys are fighting it out hard in TV ads. Humphreys has been running "morning in America"-style ads for months, with video endorsements from state GOoPer luminaries and making sure to say every third word that he's "conservative." Coburn, sponsored by the nut-job anti-every-tax Club for Growth, has been responding with commercials about how huge deficits are not conservative values, and Anthony has been attacking with ads about Humphreys' questionable dealings in Oklahoma City.

By the way, the Oklahoman has sued the Anthony campaign for using Oklahoman stories in its commercials and combining them with the copyrighted The Oklahoman or the older The Daily Oklahoman front-page mastheads:

Ed Kelley, the editor of The Oklahoman, said his biggest concern is that by placing back-page stories directly under the paper's trademarked nameplate, viewers are led to believe the stories were worthy of front-page coverage.

"He clearly leaves a false impression that the editors deem these stories front-page worthy," Kelley said.  "It's regrettable we have to go to this, but they could eliminate the problem if they go ahead and pull the ad or recast the advertisement."

Anthony said he believes he is protected under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and that he's trying to protect the political process in the state of Oklahoma.

It doesn't seem ironic to Kelley in the slightest that if the paper had run stories about Humphreys' alleged corruption actually on the front page, as it does for every allegation against every Democrat (no matter how small the office or the charge), then not only would the paper not need to sue, but Anthony wouldn't have to spend his money pointing out what the newspaper tried to bury on "the back page." (The Oklahoman has not yet endorsed a GOP Senate candidate, but the paper endorsed everyone who's endorsed Humphreys, and endorsed Humphreys as Mayor of Oklahoma City.)

So local programs are jammed with these ads, and all three candidates are getting more name recognition and face time with voters. Now enter Brad Carson, a second-term Democratic Congressman from eastern Oklahoma. Carson won Coburn's seat when Coburn kept his term limits pledge, and is Oklahoma's only non-GOP member of Congress. He's unopposed in the Democratic primary for Senate, and Rep. Ernest Istook's polling shows him ahead of both Humphreys and Anthony in a head-to-head contest, but not ahead of Coburn and with a huge undecided contingent in all cases.

Carson thumbnail Carson has wisely decided that he needs to let people know he's in this race even as the GOP candidates shred each other, so he's started running TV ads across the state. The one I've seen is called "Stilwell," and you can see it in only in Windows Media format even though the campaign's home page has a picture of it running in QuickTime Player.

That kind of minor bait-and-switch typifies why many progressives cannot get excited about Brad Carson. Here's the highlight of what Carson says in the "Stilwell" commercial:

I also know from my years in Congress that neither national party has a monopoly on the truth, and they don't care much about Oklahoma. I approved this message because, in the United States Senate, my only loyalty will be to you, and I will never back down. To me, Oklahoma's worth fighting for.

Taken in context, here's what seeing all the ads on local TV looks like:

Humphreys: I'm the real conservative in this race. I've been conservative all my life!

Coburn: I'm more conservative! You'll just run up the deficit because you're the hand-picked choice of the RINOs in Congress now!

Anthony: I'm the true conservative! I kept the utilities from bilking Oklahomans but made sure they were profitable. I got more votes in a state-wide race than anyone in history, and I'm the only one of you who's been elected to statewide office as a Republican three times! You can't get more conservative than me and not be crazy.

Coburn: Says you! Everyone knows I'm ultra-conservative!

Humphreys: I'm radically conservative! Pick me!


Carson: (in a small voice, off in the distance, waving his hand) I'm not really a Democrat...

Although Kos has called Carson a "rising star," diarists at Daily Kos have objected to support for Carson. He's against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would forbid firing gay and lesbian workers solely because they're gay or lesbian. He supports the Federal Marriage Amendment that would rewrite the US Constitution to permanently denigrate same-sex relationships as unworthy of government recognition. He withdrew his support for a bill that would have provided healthcare to all children born after 2004 under pressure from the anti-tax right.

Carson brags about being rated a centrist. Progressive Punch lists him a little better than 55% liberal, giving him an overall score of 65.41%, with a high sub-score of 91.67% for "Education, Humanities, & the Arts," and a low score of 0% for "Housing." Project Vote Smart certainly shows more mixed ratings, especially a strong move towards anti-abortion stands in 2003 as his Senate campaign started to form. He voted with the Human Rights Campaign only 50% of the time in 2003, but also voted with the John Birch Society 50% of the time in Summer 2003, though only 14% of the time in Spring 2004. He got a 41% rating from the Christian Coalition in 2003 and a 48% rating from the American Conservative Union in 2001, and similar 48%-area ratings from liberal groups in similar periods.

Of course I'll vote for Carson in November, because a 50% liberal rating is about 48% more progressive than the rest of Oklahoma's hateful, anti-citizen, reactionary delegation will ever get. But Carson has a real, progressive, gay-friendly primary opponent: Monte Johnson, a lawyer-minister from Muldrow who actually opposed the war, opposes special interest money, and is gay-friendly to the point that he actually expounds on why people who use the Bible to condemn homosexuality are wrong (he's a graudate of Duke Divinity School), though for some reason he still opposes equal marriage rights for gay people.

Johnson's a real progressive, so of course, he stands no chance of winning; the Oklahoma media is doing its level best to pretend he doesn't even exist, and there sure won't be any "debates" or bunk like that to interfere with Carson's "rising star." Yet Carson is our best shot, because control of Congress has shown that any Democrat who'll vote for his party to lead the Senate (no telling about Zell Miller anymore) is better than any Republican.

That's especially true in the House, where once again, Tom DeLay and his thugs openly and shamelessly extended a vote in the House by twenty minutes to pressure ten GOP representatives into changing their vote on limitations to the PATRIOT act that would have embarassed President Bush. That delaying tactic is the same one that, when used by Democrats in 1987 (and nowhere near twice in nine months on major bills, as DeLay has done), prompted then-Rep. Dick Cheney to call it "the most heavy-handed, arrogant abuse of power in the 10 years I've been here," and that sent the GOoPers into a tizzy about how they needed control of Congress to "change the tone."

Brad Carson voted for the restrictions that DeLay cheated to defeat; all four of Oklahoma's GOP congressmen voted "no." (Make what you will that of 13 absences, four were Republicans and nine were Democrats, including Richard Gephardt.) Carson's clearly a better Senate candidate than any of his opponents; I'd actually think about voting for Bob Anthony except he's a Republican, and we can't afford to put anyone in the Senate who'll vote to keep Bill Frist and party in charge of the rules and committees.

But Carson is weak on abortion lately, largely anti-gay, and is running away from progressive causes and the Democratic party as fast as he can. Don't expect me or any other Oklahoma progressives to get excited about the guy. You have to wonder how many people would take Monte Johnson's positions more seriously if elections were publicly financed - if getting on the ballot determined your participation instead of how many TV ads you can afford.

There really is a left in Oklahoma, once one of the nation's most progressive states, and there are a lot more of us than most people think. If elections were driven by issues instead of airtime (including nutjob radio), this and other "red" states would make the analysts crap their pants.
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