News Highlights

Minority groups are worried about Utah's opposition to NCLB (Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News), as lawmakers prepare a bill for the special session that supports state flexibility (Standard-Examiner).

Nancy Workman wants Salt Lake County to pay her legal bills (Tribune).

Salt Palace expansion is still hanging out there and time is running short (Tribune and Morning News).

Quote of the Day
“What possible reason could the CDC have for shying away from a full and complete study of how fallout from government-sponsored tests affected the thyroid glands of people downwind, no matter how far away?”

-- Morning News editorial asking whether the federal Centers for Disease Control is more interested in good science, or in politics and protecting the government’s reputation.

Two Big Issues Could Impact
Hatch Re-election
Sen. Orrin Hatch is the next Utah politician up in a statewide election. Despite being, on paper at least, an overwhelming favorite to win next year, Hatch is taking nothing for granted, already gearing up his campaign with a lot of fundraising and behind-the-scenes work. Hatch is viewed by some national analysts as the least-vulnerable senator in the country. Here in Utah, I think his seat is also generally viewed as safe, but two big issues – Hill Air Force Base and nuclear waste storage -- are hanging around out there, and they could give him some headaches.

If things turn sour for Utah on both of those issues, Hatch’s vaunted power and clout in Washington will be seriously questioned. If Hill gets on the BRAC closure list, and if Utah gets spent nuclear fuel rods slapped on a concrete slab on the Goshute reservation, Utah voters might be feeling rather crabby next year. It will take some fancy campaign footwork by the senator and his campaign manager, Dave Hansen, to avoid having voters take out their frustration on the next available politician, one Orrin Hatch.

Political Polling Challenges
An interesting recent article in Wired Magazine asks this question: Can polling be fixed? It notes the problems national pollsters had in predicting the last presidential election results, particularly the early exit poll numbers that had the Kerry campaign thinking it had won. Polling is a big challenge today. Call screening and cell phone-only households shrink the sample base and lots of people don’t want to talk to pollsters. I believe properly-executed survey research, such as is done by Dan Jones & Associates, can still accurately reflect public attitudes and opinions for various demographic groups. But predicting elections in advance of election day is a lot more difficult because it’s so hard to figure out who will actually vote. Voter turnout can fluctuate greatly, and no pollster has a fail-safe method to get to actual voters.

Reader Response
Blog is Part of Bigger Site
Yesterday I published a note about Robert Miller’s blog, pointed out to me by a reader. I didn’t look at it carefully enough to realize the blog was part of a full-blown campaign Web site, pointed out to me by another (rather grouchy) reader. It’s quite a remarkable site for a candidate for Democratic party vice chair. The point I made is still valid: Blogging technology provides an easy way for a candidate for any political position, large or small, to quickly create a Web site to promote views and issues.

Goofy Global Village Stats
Every time I publish some interesting tidbit forwarded via the e-mail networks I get told by readers with more discriminating factual tastes that I’m perpetuating myths and fallacies. I did point out that I couldn’t vouch for the accuracy of the global village statistics I published yesterday. Gary Lawrence, a friend and political polling professional from California, noted that “there would not be one Jew out of the 100 people. There are about 14-15 million Jews in the world, whereas one percent of the world would be 60 million people. In fact, there will soon be as many Mormons in the world as Jews. Now if we could just match them on Nobel prizes.”

Todd Weiler, a Salt Lake attorney and Davis County GOP chair, was much more thorough in his dismantling of the global village stats. He sent me a lengthy critique of the cute little item from www.snopes.com, a site which debunks internet myths, “like the one you shared today.” See www.snopes.com/science/stats/populate.htm. Says Snopes: “With respect to the so-called global village, this thing has been circulating for ages (in Internet time) now, and people seem to find the contrasts it highlights between the "haves" and "have-nots" of the world compelling. However, much of the information it presents is questionable, out of date, or poorly-defined.”

National Politics
Bush Election was Remarkable
Charlie Cook, in his Tuesday e-mail column (sign up here) says George Bush accomplished in the 2004 election what his predecessors were unable to. Here are some excerpts:

     In a fascinating and provocative analysis of the 2004 elections, Michael Nelson, a political scientist at Rhodes College in Memphis, makes a strong case that last year's election was a clear departure from recent elections.
     In a just released book with chapters from eight other distinguished political scientists -- including the inimitable Gary C. Jacobson of the University of California, San Diego -- Nelson notes that while President Bush's victory margin was narrower than those of presidents Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996, theirs were "lonely landslides," as they were unable to gain House and Senate seats for their parties.
     Bush, however, enters his second term with full control of the government, holding the White House, House and Senate. According to a June 2003 Washington Post article, Bush was "explicit that he doesn't want to win with 55 percent and have a 51-49 Senate," said an aide who referred to the president's desire to "expand the governing coalition."
     Put aside questions of Bush's expansion of a small winning margin in 2000 and the fact that an extraordinary mid-decade congressional redistricting in Texas and several Democratic Senate retirements seats in the South were key to the GOP's Capitol Hill gains. The fact is that Bush did accomplish what Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were unable to do.
     While there are certainly countervailing arguments and data, Nelson makes a pretty good case. In the last 10 presidential elections since 1968, Republicans have amassed 3,381 electoral votes to just 1,949 for Democrats, a 63 percent to 37 percent split.
     He points to the fact that neither of the Democrats elected president during this period exceeded the 50.8 percent of the popular vote Bush received in 2004. Jimmy Carter picked up 50.1 percent, the only Democrat, Nelson points out, to get a majority of the presidential vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
     Nelson makes another fascinating point. After noting that the last three Democrats elected president -- Johnson, Carter and Clinton -- were all southerners, he points out that the pool of southern Democrats to nominate is drying up. Only four of the region's 11 governors and four of its 22 senators are Democratic. In 1976, when Carter won the nomination, 15 senators and eight governors in the region were Democrats. The pattern in the House is similar.

Las Vegas Sun

- Opposition to Utah site growing

Boston Herald

- Joe K mocks ‘out of place' Mitt at Dem bash

Salt Lake Tribune

- Ethics inquiry stalled at BLM

- Utah's NCLB challenge begins to fuel dissent

- Workman sends county bill

- Hatch backs entire Patriot Act renewal as hearings begin

- Time running short for S.L. City, Council to solve Palace issue

- Justices weigh status of workers' comp fund

- Utah senators seek extension of fallout study

- Riverton changes process for choosing council members

- Editorial: DRIVER LICENSES: Don't postpone REAL ID Act to await immigration reform

Standard-Examiner

- No Child Left Behind: Officials say State's rules come first

- New law restricts e-mail

- Ogden asks state to reconsider vets home

- Editorial: Hanging on every word

Deseret Morning News

- Utah presses federal fight

- More chemical arms coming to Utah?

- Bikini Cuts drawing heat in Provo

- County backs Salt Lake's Palace tax plan

- Cedar group is targeting moral issues

- Justices consider who controls workers fund

- Oly message pushes off on first leg of journey to Torino

- Editorial: Pattern of willful ignorance?

- Editorial: County tuition probe warranted

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Editor: Paul Hollingshead
News: Golden Webb
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