There are two references in the FEC report to a company called Feather Larson & Synhorst DCI of Phoenix, AZ, which was paid some $6,000 on October 9, 2006 by the NRCC to conduct phone banks opposing Democrat challenger Patricia Madrid's campaign against Republican incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson. As reported by the Center for Media & Democracy's Sourcewatch (must read), FLS DCI is closely associated with Karl Rove.

• barbwire's diary :: ::

FLS DCI is known for its phone banking on behalf of phony front groups created to try and convince voters there's more support for the positions of its clients than there really is. For instance, they've been involved in creating bogus groups that put up ads that advocate abandoning net neutrality under names like "Hands Off the Internet." They've created synthetic "grassroots" groups on behalf of telecommunications, pharmaceutical and computer industries, among others.

So what does that mean? It takes more effort to get people out for a midterm election. Effort means money and volunteers. While the Wilson campaign is reportedly having problems getting volunteers, the Richardson campaign has been using their money and volunteers to excite Democrats around the state. Including in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties.

And one last point (perhaps the most important): Patricia Madrid is not Richard Romero.  She is a much better candidate and has learned from Romero's mistakes.  So let's not pretend they are both the same quality candidate.

The other best canvass of the night, I could never have predicted in a million years.  I went to Catholic school for twelve years, and I have always thought that when encountering someone whose main political cause is abortion, you might as well not wasting your time talking to them.  They're in the Republican pocket and will be there right until the Republicans reinstate serfdom.  I was about to cut the visit short when it occurred to me that the abortion issue is about emotion.  So I tried appealing to her emotions.  I talked about the kind of education her daughter deserves, the quality of life and environment she needs to grow up to have a good life.  I talked about my own family in which there has recently been a lot of illness, and the necessity of good healthcare.  I talked about the end of life, the support that older people need.  I talked about how much Heather Wilson has done to undermine those things.    I talked about how these systems make it easier for a young woman, even if she's poor and alone, to keep a pregnancy.  I talked about how the number of abortions has gone up under the presidency of W.  And when I finished talking this young woman took a Patricia Madrid bumper sticker.

This is exactly the sort of ad that we suggested in our candidate memo. It focuses on Iraq. It directly casts blame on Republicans. It describes a failure of leadership. It picks a fight--Heather Wilson missing an important vote on Iraq. It ties her to Bush, with a great picture at the end. I give this as an A.

NM-01	Toss-up / Lean Dem	Wilson	Madrid	2.4	61%	52-44 D, 50-40 D, 44-44 (2)	8.9%		Most polled race in the nation

Joe Monahan says Novak changed to the category from toss-up in his latest online newsletter (which you can get for free here).

More on the dark side of the moon... Crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP.

• fbihop's diary :: ::

The noose appears to be tightening. Conservative Republican political analyst Robert Novak has moved the Wilson-Madrid battle for the ABQ congressional seat into the "lean Democrat" column, yet another sign that a historic upset here is a very real possibility.
[...]
Some districts now merit Democrats' efforts and resources in a way they never could have just two weeks ago. Republicans are on the defensive all across the map, and the map keeps getting bigger." So wrote Novak.

The Cook Political Report puts the NM-01 race as a toss-up (pdf).

MyDD's House Forecast also puts the NM-01 race as a toss-up.

The Hotline House Rankings have the race as the 13th most likely to change hands -- pushed down this week by FL-16, Mark Foley's district, jumping to #2.

All political analysists agree that Patricia Madrid has all the momentum.

Research and Polling Inc for the Albuquerque Journal. 9/25-28. Likely voters. MoE 5% (8/25-31 results)

Wilson (R) 44 (45)
Madrid (D) 44 (42)

Heather Wilson - New Mexico-01

Heather Wilson has fought diligently for the rights of people not to see nipples during half-time shows. In a tearful speech during a hearing to investigate Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, she spoke movingly of the terrible effect it had on her young son and compared Viacom, the parent company of CBS, which broadcast the offensive show, to Enron, which contributed $2,500 to her campaign in 2000, while Viacom only gave $1,500. Wilson's deep-seated desire to protect children won her a position on the Congress' page board in 2001, which is a very big honor. During her tenure she became very close to Mark Foley, who contributed more to her campaign this year than to any other candidate, so you can imagine how devastated she must be by the recent allegations, which she denies having any prior knowledge of whatsoever so you can't blame her for what happened. One thing she and Foley have in common is a strong belief in the right of prvacy, which is probably the reason for her misguided statement calling for a full investigation of the NSA wiretapping program. Wilson's deep concern about issues of privacy began early in her career. Three days after she was appointed to head the New Mexico Department of Children, Youth and Families in 1995, she had an investigative case file on her husband removed and hidden in her office so that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. Although she initially denied taking the file to a nosey reporter, she later courageously owned up to it. Her opponent is New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid, who makes her living from prying into other people's business.

The Page Board is there to protect pages from this sort of innappropriate contact -- and worse. What exactly did the Page Board do to protect the Pages from people such as Foley? It is unknown.

Wilson is defending herself by saying that the charges by Madrid are out of bounds. That it's out of bounds for Madrid to suggest that Wilson should have been protecting the pages when she was on the House Page Board.

Or maybe we can sum it up with a quote from Madrid: "She didn't do her job." Again.

I looked across six main areas of contact between Abramoff and the GOP. Here they are:

1: Money
Candidates with contributions directly from Jack and the other lobbyists from his team (Scanlon, Rudy, Volz, Buckham, Ring and Safavian) and their spouses/family made the list. And so did the folks who pocketed contributions from the Tan Family and the sweatshop lobby on Saipan. Over the last 10 years this small part of the GOP slush fund Abramoff managed moved $825,192 in recorded donations to Republican candidates.

It is a very small fraction of the money Abramoff's GOP slush fund moved to the GOP, but it does point to Jack's Team of elected officials.

And I looked at even more donations from the Slush Funds main lobbying firms (Preston Gates, Alexander Strategy, Greenburg Traurig and more). Then there were all the contributions from Abramoff's other clients and the clients of Abramoff trained lobbyists.

Another source of funds I looked for was GOP Leadership PAC donations, especially the ones funded by Abramoff, his team and his clients. And candidates who got money from Leadership PACs controlled by Jack's inner circle of Congressmen and Senators stood a good chance of making the list. Under the GOP the Leadership PACs work as a series of connected washing machines to launder money to hide pay-offs for earmarks and other favors. Abramoff and Duke Cunningham are just the tip of the iceberg ripping through Capital Hill.

Another source of funds was the $13.5 million that Jack and the slush fund ran through the stealth GOP PAC, United Seniors Association in 2002. The backdoor donations were used to support 25 GOP candidates in that mid-term election. There were (and are) quite a few of these GOP controlled Stealth PACs.

In addition to the FEC reported donations there are also solid reports of some off-the-books donations, trips, freebies, meals and jobs for family and friends of elected officials and their staffs. Candidate tied to Jack through creative financial reimbursements always made the list.

2: Staff Connections
Abramoff was the point of the spear for the K Street Project. He trained a generation of GOP lobbyists and staffers in his way of doing "business". He was also a legendary head of the College Republicans in the early 1980s. In his lobbying days, Jack always made time to mentor the youngsters at the CRNC.

Candidates who had a staffer who went to work for Jack, or one of Jack's Team members who went to work the candidate made the list. So did those with ties to Jack through their College Republican days. And the candidates whose staff took trips on Jack's dime to the Marianas Islands (and other destinations) made the list.

If you want to see if a particular GOP candidate has an Abramoff connection, a good place to start is a list of their staff members over the years. Almost everybody on Team Abramoff (except Jack) spent time on Capital Hill. Feel free to send me a list of staff members for any of the 53 or any other candidates who should be added to the list.

3: Travels with Jack
Abramoff used travel. It started back in the 1980s and it never stopped. By some accounts over 100 Congressmen and their staffers traveled to CNMI between 1996 and 1999. The actual number is much higher, especially when you look for travel between 1995 and 2004.

Almost every scam in Jack's portfolio involved trips and how to hide the payment, purpose and travelers from required disclosure. If a candidate or their staff was cited in published reports or other records as traveling on Jack's dime or to support Jack's clients they made the list, especially if they took the junket to the Marianas Islands.

Let me know if I missed somebody.

4: The Public Record
There is a rich public record of Abramoff's connections to GOP Candidates in this cycle. Some are reports after Abramoff's fall from grace in 2004. Others are reports from 1980 through January 2004 when Jack was at the height of his power. Candidates with long time ties to Abramoff through these reports made the list. So did the candidates who traveled to the Marianas Islands to support the GOP's Hong Kong based sweatshop owning patrons who run the US Territory as a feudal fiefdom. The local press on Saipan and Guam reported many connections to Abramoff, especially the Tan Family's newspaper, the Saipan Tribune.

The reports and records of human rights workers trying to end the abuse on CNMI was another source. Candidates who made these reports as sweatshop protectors made the list.

And then there is the Congressional record and transcripts of many hearings, as well as some legal documents.

If you know something in the public record that connect a candidate to Abramoff let me know, especially if I've left them off the list.

5: Billing Records/Emails
There are thousands of pages of emails, memos and other records related to Abramoff's lobbying work. Some have been released. Some have not. The Indian Affairs Committee reviewed over 80,000 pages of documents and released around 2,000 pages of documents and testimony. While these were scrubbed to protect Republican Members of Congress, the Senate and George Bush, there are still quite a few documents that connected some members to Abramoff, especially when compared with other bits of information.

A better set of documents is the billing records and emails for Jack's lobbying work for the CNMI Government. These records were collected as part of a 2001 audit of all the lobbying expenses that the CNMI government paid for between 1994 and the end of 2001. The audit was done by the CNMI Office of Public Auditor (OPA) and the records were released to various news outlets in the last couple of years. I have a set.

The billing records are day by day details of Team Abramoff's efforts to protect sweatshops and shower their Chinese Patrons with favorable earmarks, appropriations and laws. If a candidate repeatedly made the Abramoff's CNMI invoices, they made the list.

The CNMI invoices are incomplete. They represent only a fraction of Abramoff's work. It is a core sample of how Lobbying in the Gingrich/DeLay/Bush era of incompetence and corruption is conducted. These are roadmaps of graft.

6: Congressional Favors
In a few cases the CNMI invoices or press reports have tied a candidate to an official action taken for Jack Abramoff. More often than not, the official action is only implied. In these cases I looked to see if a candidate was in a position to help Jack and his clients. If they were a member of DeLay's House Leadership, on the Resources Committee, and/or on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (or the Senate equivalent) they stood a good chance of making the list, especially if the had Abramoff connections in other categories. The same is true of the Appropriations Committee and a few others on specific issues.

And then there is the hunt for the quid pro quo, the search for the payback. In 2001 alone it looks like Congress found an extra $28 million for various projects just on CNMI. There are a lot of earmarks to search through. And the CNMI was just one of Jack's clients.

Abramoff could deliver massive amounts of dollars to an election cycle whenever and where ever the Party was in trouble. That gave him power and access. Candidates who were in a position to do Jack favors made the list. Especially when they were rewarded with donations and/or choice Committee assignments around the time of an action that helped Abramoff and his clients.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who is spearheading GOP committee movement against Wilson's bill, said the measure fails to create a solid system for TSP and would instead establish a passive, ad hoc response to terrorist attacks, rather than a steady program with legislative oversight under FISA. Flake said this approach both threatens the stability of intelligence gathering and increases the likelihood of civil liberties abuse.

Included was this quote about Wilson's support for the Iraq war -- the war that is clearly not going well and is only getting worse by the day.  From the USA Today:

Wilson is a rarity in the Republican-led Congress, one of a few in the GOP openly embracing President Bush on the war in Iraq. Her resolve belies the disillusionment with the war: More than six in 10 people say they disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this month.

Yet it also presents a political dilemma for Wilson, only the second female veteran in Congress and one who represents a district with more registered Democrats than Republicans. The USA TODAY poll found that 35% of registered voters nationally are more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress who opposes Bush's handling of the war, compared with 26% more likely to back a candidate who supports Bush on Iraq.

She supports the war, yet, "Wilson has yet to use Iraq in TV ads."  She supports it -- but hopes that you forget that.