Nevada is used to high rollers, but the state has special reason to be blase about this set.
President Obama is in the state, prepping for his Wednesday debate with his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, after headlining a Sunday night rally in Las Vegas. Romney's wife Ann arrives in Las Vegas Monday for a rally in nearby Henderson and then an evening fundraiser at the home of Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, no slouch herself in the political underwriting department. And first lady Michelle Obama arrives Wednesday for a campaign stop in Reno.
Residents of the ...
Continue readingHouse passage of Cravaack land swap bill boosts freshman’s profile, fundraising
The Minnesota Education Investment and Employment Act would order the federal government to take 86,000 acres of state land inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), part of the federally protected Superior National Forest, and give Minnesota a similar amount of federal-owned land just outside the wilderness--and its limits on develepment.
Continue readingConflict of interest? Congressional freshmen policies and portfolios entwined
An analysis of financial disclosures filed by House freshmen revealed that some wealthy members are introducing legislation and speaking in favor of industries in which they maintain holdings. It's the latest dispatch in Sunlight's series on the House freshmen.
Continue readingDo House freshmen speak differently?
Prices. Mother. Bless. Soldiers. Borrowing. Corporate. Abortion. Seniors.
What do these words have in common? They are all significantly more prominent in the speech of congressional freshmen than in overall speech patterns of House members, based on a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record.
Transportation. Cosponsor. International. Order. Public. Intelligence. Human. Respect.
What do these words have in common? You guessed it. They are all significantly less prominent in the speech of congressional freshmen.
In general, there’s not a whole lot of difference in how the freshmen speak compared to their more senior colleagues. But certain words ...
Continue readingOops! What House freshmen deleted from Twitter
Like other Twitter users, members of Congress delete and revise their tweets. Unlike most Twitter users, however, lawmakers maintain official accounts -- a use of taxpayer resources -- which is why the Sunlight Foundation considers them fair game to monitor for Politwoops, our database of deleted tweets by elected officials, launched earlier this year.
Freshman may be new to Congress, but they seem seasoned when it comes to social media skills. Based on our sample of congressional Twitter behavior so far, new members, who make up 20 percent of the 112th Congress, are sending out 19 percent of the tweets. On the ...
Continue readingThe phone booth caucus: House Democratic freshmen
Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., the first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama, is the president of this year's small Democratic freshmen class. Those nine freshmen, dubbed the "noble nine" by supporters, elected the Harvard-educated lawyer as the leader of a small, but diverse class that includes four women, four African Americans and one openly gay member and one who identifies as Buddhist.
After winning her first House term with 73% of the vote in Alabama's 7th Congressional District, Sewell established herself as a reliably liberal vote. She supported the president's health care bill as well as ...
Continue readingProfile: Rick Berg
| Party: Republican |
| State and District: North Dakota, 1 |
| Born: Aug. 16, 1959 Hettinger, N.D. |
| Campaign cash raised: $6,364,759 |
| Money from businesses that lobby: $1,384,525 |
| Money from leadership PACs: $374,726 |
| Money from in-state / out-of-state: $2,678,539 / $2,878,405 |
| At-risk in November? Yes |
| Outside group spending: $35,595.78 in opposition |
| Net worth in 2010: $12,146,147 to $54,979,033 |
| Net worth in 2011: $22,656,129 to $64,735,994 |
Berg's Capitol Words profile
How we compiled this information
Continue readingHouse freshmen in tight races: How many first-termers will be one-termers?
The 89 freshmen who roared into Washington last January are now experiencing the power, and also the perils, of incumbency. A number of them are not safe bets for reelection and some will certainly be one-termers. Of this fall's close races involving freshmen, a dozen stand out, based on the rankings of the nonpartisan political handicapper Charlie Cook.
Of them, 11 are Republicans who rode to power on the anti-Washington Tea Party wave. The remaining imperilled newcomer is Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline.
These are all bound to be expensive races where outside group spending may -- as it did ...
Continue readingSuper PAC Profile: CREDO takes aim at House freshmen
The CREDO SuperPAC exists in spite of—or because of?—its own desire to overturn Citizens United, the Supreme Court case that led to the creation of super PACs. “We wouldn't launch this SuperPAC unless we felt it was absolutely necessary to fight back,” says the group's website. But this sort of self-loathing isn’t the group's only unusual trait. Among organizations whose purpose is to obscure funding sources, CREDO is unique in its transparency.
For one thing, the group's name conspicuously excludes words like ‘freedom,‘ ‘future,’ ‘fund’ and ‘restore,' (see a list here) and makes ...
Continue readingProfile: Nan Hayworth
| Party: Republican |
| State and District: New York, 18 |
| Born: December 14, 1959 Chicago, Ill. |
| Campaign cash raised: $2,148,329 |
| Money from businesses that lobby: $751,164 |
| Money from leadership PACs: $149,626 |
| Money from in-state / out-of-state: $724,546 / $331,581 |
| At-risk in November? Yes |
| Outside group spending: $3,900 in support / $46,826 in opposition |
| Net worth in 2010: $9,347,241 to $22,463,000 |
| Net worth in 2011: $12,237,262 to $29,298,006 |
Hayworth's Capitol Words profile
How we compiled this information
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