JPol (Jerry Policoff) gave me permission to reprint his letter to Sen. John Kerry:
Dear Mr. Kerry;
I cannot believe that you have the audacity to promote “count every vote” on your web site.
Have you forgotten that you ran in 2004 on the promise that “this time every vote will count?”
Have you forgotten that you collected tens of millions of dollars for a special fund from your naive supporters designed to help you fulfill that pledge?
Surely you have not forgotten that you conceded the election with nary a peep despite evidence of massive fraud in Ohio and several other states. Many of your former supporters wonder what ever became of the money you collected to insure that “every vote would count,” but that you never spent, at least not toward its intended purpose.
Continued BELOW:
Your current activities make it quite clear that you are again seeking the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 2008 despite your failure to insure the integrity of the voting process in 2004.
That is an insult to all those who voted for you expecting you to keep your promise.
Far worse, you are once again championing “Count Every Vote.” That is like George W. Bush championing Gold Star Mothers For Peace.
You are a hypocrite, Mr. Kerry, and a patronizing one at that. How dare you think we would fall for your phony commitment to fight for the integrity of the voting process twice.
If you are ever again on a national Democratic ticket I will vote independent.
Jerry Policoff — JPol
My only comment: Right on, brother. To BEG people, during the fall of his 2004 campaign, to donate to a post-election vote count fight, and then to save it for his 2008 race (except for a few dollars here and there to other Democrats), is disgusting, low, and dishonest.
Didn’t Kerry just recently pull out of the court case in Ohio regarding the voting procedures????
Yes, Parker, I think you’re right about that. Sigh.
This is just one more sadness on top of the lot we’ve already got. There goes my vote too.
to a high standard or else we fail miserably as citizens. We could also hold the repubs to a high standard, but they are like NOLA – under water as far as ethics goes and a toxic soup of idiotology and cronyism.
And when the great state of Ohio was rife with voter fraud, John Kerry said, “um… send Jessie Jackson?”
My wife (a republican “AAAACK!”) voted for Kerry in 2004 and even contributed to the legal fund to make sure every vote was counted. (Yes, she voted bush in 2000)
Do you think we are very happy about hearing this in our household?
Okay, if no one else is gonna, I guess I’m going to have to defend Kerry. I know we’re all hurt/disappointed/enraged etc., by the concession, but all of this blaming of him is not realistic.
He promised to count every vote and has helped to count every vote. I have read many outraged claims about the fund money, none of which has turned out to be true. He may not have had the best campaign, but I believe he is a good man and probably the best for the job of fixing our current problems.
He’s meticulous and principled. Out of our whole sorry government, he was the only leading politician to actually work to stop the Iran-contra criminals and their financial network, at great risk to himself. He did this quietly, just as he has done everything since.
If we’re to be angry about the last election, let’s be angry at the real criminals — the people who cheated and goodness knows what else. Presidential candidates cannot lead the charge in things like this. If you’ll recall — in 2000, W was not the one howling in Florida. He’s not the one making outrageous accusations. He says one or two “reasonable” statements that are then supported, amplified, and expanded upon by his party and its apparatus.
We expected John Kerry to, what? be a rock star like Clinton? galvanize the electorate by his force of personality? That happens once in a lifetime. If we want candidates to win, we must work at supporting and building up the party and making it into the party we want it to be. We can’t have an angry mob at the bottom and one guy at the top with nothing in the middle.
John Kerry did leave a lot to be desired as far as charisma, but we shouldn’t be depending on that. I’m not saying we need to take whatever the DLC shoves at us, but let’s keep a realistic view of how the system works at least. I know a lot of people took Kerry’s nomination as a sign of centrism and DLC shenanigans, but honestly if you look at his record, he was the most liberal candidate. I took his nomination as a sign that there is hope for the party.
What we don’t need is another Bill Clinton. I really like the guy in spite of myself, but he didn’t do us any favors while in office. We are going to need people with the courage to expose the criminal enterprise that’s been operating in our government for decades. I think Kerry would have done that. Politically, I can see that he shouldn’t run next time — too many folks hate him now — but politics aside, he’d make a good president if not a good campaigner.
I honestly don’t see how he’s a hypocrite, never mind what good it does to call him one. He’s done everything he said he was going to do, he just hasn’t blasted it all over the media. Since he’s never blasted any of his accomplishments all over the media and most people don’t even know of his battles against the Iran-Contra criminals and the Bush family, I see this as being remarkably consistent behavior. He’s a quiet, meticulous politician who has demonstrated his principles in his actions over the course of decades.
He promised to count every vote and has helped to count every vote.
No he hasn’t…
Oh? Examples, please.
Are we talking about the same John Kerry?
I’ll give you his courageous stance on Iran-Contra, but that was ages ago, and frankly, I suspect he was taken aside on that one and told that rocking those boats was not the way to get ahead in the Senate. He hasn’t taken on anything like that since, and after the issue died a quiet death he never sought to revive it.
You imply that Kerry did not have a huge fund set aside for the purpose of fighting post-election legal battles. He certainly did. I and many people I know contributed to it. I still have an e-mail he sent out urging his supporters to donate to that specific fund so he would have the resources to take the battle to the courts after the election if that proved necessary. I can’t remember the exact amount he collected, but it was over $50 million.
I am not, frankly, upset that Kerry is finally (again) championing this issue. I am upset that he does so while pretty openly campaigning for his party’s nomination in 2008. “Count Every Vote” is a failed 2004 Kerry campaign pledge, and if he is to have any credibility in again pushing the issue he should openly proclaim that he will not be a candidate for the presidency in 2008. If he does that I will gladly support him in every progressive initiative he champions. But I will not trust Kerry, the candidate, to fulfill this pledge when he also made it in 2004, and then failed so dismally to keep his word.
The last paragraph:
“… On February 17th Kerry, Senators Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer and Frank Lautenberg introduced S 450 the “Count Every Vote Act of 2005” to fully fund the Help America Vote Act, fund the activities of the Election Assistance Commission, and help states invest in better voting machines with paper trails. …”
…which I take to say, that the “count every vote” effort is not going to go away; as easily as the Republicans, the Republican controlled Courts and the Republican Paid-For-Press would like.
…and if you can’t remember the exact amount collected then research it rather than cast aspersions or insinuate with the “…over 50 million.”
So you, susan and w. patrick lang don’t like Kerry.
Fine.
We get the message.
Kerry won.
Gore won.
We won back the Senate too…
I really do not feel the need to research to the penny how much Kerry collected in his special litigation fund. It is not relevent. What is relevent is that he made a campaign pledge and collected money for the express purpose of keeping that pledge. Then he walked away while others litigated. He tacitly supported the efforts of others, but did not assist them in paying for the expensive litigation they undertook. We voters footed that bill because Kerry chose not to. The issue is not whether Kerry won or lost. the issue is the integrity of our elections. Kerry promised to work to insure that integrity and then walked away without fulfilling his promise. Let’s not cloud the issue by nickle and diming how much money he collected. If he let us down once, why should we trust him to not let us down again.
And the fact that Kerry is co-sponsoring this legislation with others is also irrelevent. What I am dealing with is Kerry’s broken promise. I support the legislation he is co-sponsoring. I just question his sincerity in co-sponsoring it when he made the same promise before and let us down. I hope the legislation succeeds. I just resent Kerry jumping on this band wagon at this late date. Way too little, and way too late.
I’m not keen on the fellow.
But I wasn’t for him for years before I ever saw a blog, wrote on a blog, or heard of Pat Lang. I was vehemently opposed to him from early on in the primary – and that’s about a year and a half before I ever posted on a blog. I was willing to support Howard Dean, John Edwards, or Gen. Wesley Clark but knew that Gephardt and Kerry could not win, and opposed both.
However, when he became the nominee, I supported him fully. I can’t tell you how many times I replaced my yard sign for him. I finally took my Kerry/Edwards sticker off my car six months after the election because I was tired of ‘wingers tailgating me.
I don’t know what you were inferring so thought i’d just give you a bit of history.
maybe it’s just running too fast, a lost detail here or there… but if you’re going to promote cranky frontpagers, you’re going to get cranky responses.
And I am feeling cranky.
Now about Kerry, this is at least the third front page dig. I get the message. I really do. And that’s fine.
Really.
And jpol just wants to rant.
Fine.
Really.
As an aside, I don’t watch TV so my impressions are not tinted by spin; but out of the entire field, Kerry is the only one with the experience and tenacity to take apart the Republican Neocon Machine. The BCCI investigation gives a hint…
The short view, the surface skimming, is especially appealing to the TV/Radio/Newspaper junkie. And Blogs reflect that viewpoint.
During the war of Independence, the occupation of Boston was not broken with one simple battle. The cannon of the captured Fort Ticonderoga were shipped overland to the heights surrounding Boston which then prompted the British to leave.
I’m a native New Englander. a Connecticut Yankee. Straight line descendant to the Mayflower. I take a long view. I take exception.
I was never implying that he did not collect a substantial fund for post election battles. I know he did. I also know he had over 17,000 lawyers and I’ve yet to see any court filings that they were not involved in, even if Kerry wasn’t named. So far as I’ve heard, the Kerry/Edwards lawyers supported every effort for months.
It seems to me the point of disagreement is his concession. I was as disappointed as anyone, but the fact remains that it had nothing to do with legally giving up or not fulfilling his promise to count the votes. Al Gore also conceeded before the Florida recount.
I’m not a person who thinks we should just shut up about it — I think there were horrible injustices and probably downright cheating during the last election. I think we all should be making the biggest fucking stink we can about it. But it’s ridiculous to tear into Kerry for not making a huge stink on his own. No presidential candidate does that. He kept his legal team on the job.
If you can show me a time when John Kerry’s lawyers did NOT support every recount and litigation effort, I’ll change my opinion. But so far, his lawyers have been right there in everything I’ve read about.
As far as the Iran-Contra thing, I think you’re reading the situation wrong. Kerry investigated in spite of overwhelming pressure not to. He was never taken aside and told to let it drop for political purposes — that’s just ludicrous guessing. The issue had already been swept under the rug when he started. He is the ONLY politician who kept going. If you read the history and the record, you’d see that. I’ll keep judging him by his record, not by the spin.
I’ll let this story from Raw Story speak to the issue of Kerry’s support for those post-election battles:
Green Party’s Cobb Says Kerry Is Thwarting Recount
The Raw Story/John Byrne | December 17 2004
In an exclusive interview with RAW STORY Friday, the Green Party’s presidential candidate David Cobb lashed out at Sen. John Kerry, saying he Democratic nominee has tried to “undermine,” “delegitimize” and “minimize” the Ohio recount.
Cobb, who ran an unsuccessful bid for president, is at the vanguard of the Ohio recount. The Green and Libertarian Parties raised tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the recount and put county observers on the ground.
Meanwhile, Cobb observed, Kerry has not contributed “a single dime.”
“John Kerry is trying to minimize and undermine and delegitmize the recount,” Cobb asserted.
The Green called attention to the $51 million war chest Sen. Kerry was left with after the election. Kerry has come under fire for not contributing the money to other 2004 Democratic congressional candidates.
“Sadly, John Kerry seems to be trapped under the pile of 51 million dollars that is preventing him from getting up and standing up,” Cobb told RAW STORY.
That’s “the highest amount of money a presidential candidate has ever been left with so far” after an election, he added.
Kerry, given the opportunity to exercise his right for a recount as a candidate that received a large percentage of the vote, declined to do so. As such, the Green Party and others raised $150,000 to pay Ohio to conduct the count.
Kerry-Edwards did join Cobb’s lawsuit suing to prevent the electors from voting before the recount was completed, which failed in court. They also issued a letter to Ohio Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell demanding an investigation.
Cobb says the letters are paper tigers.
I’ll let this story speak for itself then:
I know little about Cobb. I do know that I was watching post-election developments closely. There was never any hope that the challenges would be taken seriously unless Kerry took an active role. I saw no evidence that he did that, and obviously Cobb didn’t either. Can you cite any? I felt Kerry let us down. Maybe I missed something. Show me some evidence that I did. The evidence is clear that before the election Kerry made it clear that any irregularities would be dealt with by his legal team, funded by our contributions that were specifically earmarked toward that purpose. It is not as if we expected something of Kerry that he did not promise. I supported him. I voted for him. In my mind he let me down. I know I am not alone. Show me some evidence that Kerry upheld his promise to maintain the integrity of the 2004 election. Until then I maintain my position that Kerry should not be trusted to keep a promise he reneged on in 2004.
The Kerry Campaign had over 17,000 lawyers nationwide, including 2000 in Florida. They filed lawsuits across the country in the weeks before the election in states with policies they believed would disenfranchise voters, including in Ohio, Michigan, and Florida.
They had observers in every county in the swing states during the election itself. They had a network to report irregularities immediately. They observed the counts where possible and filed motions to preserve the ballots and make sure the process was transparent.
They filed briefs and joined legal efforts in Ohio, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Florida, and Washington, among other states. And they’ve subpoenaed untold numbers of officials.
Kerry’s lawyers, in other words, were working non-stop before, during, and after the election. They’ve filed on the county, state, and federal levels. His legal team is still involved in litigation. There is no big pile of money that’s not going to legal fees. How is all this to be construed as Kerry reneging?
Where’s your backup for saying he’s a hypocrite and that he’s withholding money collected for litigation? I understand your hurt and disappointment, but these are pretty serious charges you’re making. So far as I know, they’re baseless. Every time this accusation has been made about his legal fund, he’s accounted for the money. It has been and is being spent on legal proceedings.
I’ll just say it first so people know where I stand. I don’t want Kerry running for president in 2008.
I busted my hump for him in 2004 at Dean’s request. I am NOT doing it again even if Dean asks me to do it. Life is too fscking short already.
However, to be fair, I understand that there were three court cases in Ohio and Kerry withdrew from only one of them.
I think Kerry set a terrible example by conceding before I had even gotten my second cuppa joe after all that tough talk. And then hanging on to the money pisses me off as well, but I understand it is ‘only’ $7 million.
Finally, Yushenko didn’t leave the country on vacation after he ‘lost’ the first Ukraine election. He made such a stink that their Supreme Court invalidated the first one. That is what should have happened in the 2008 US election.
So I’d like John Kerry to remain in the Senate instead of helping the Rethugs divide the Dem party in 2008.
LL
He asked for donations so that they could litigate…
“The legal fund”
It was extra donations that were SUPPOSED to be used to LITIGATE…
Kerry barely used “the legal fund” and didn’t even show up for the recount himself.
Meanwhile after the election the Greens and Naderites were all over the place doing the counting and the litigating.
The Greens and Naderites did fight hard, but Kerry’s lawyers were there as well, fighting with them. It was Nader himself who was yelling to the press about Kerry not doing enough. Kerry’s lawyers were very involved in all of the litigation. They were also instrumental in the Cobb and Badnarik challenges.
I beg to differ. Kerry did belatedly sign on to the complaint, but only after being roundly attacked for not doing so. He kept a very low profile in his support and, in fact, made some public statements that were at best not helpful. He also did not assist in paying for the litigation. Cobb was openly critical of Kerry’s “efforts” on behalf of this litigation.
I understand that with the current administration in charge it seems there are no rules any more, but there are some. One is that Kerry is not allowed to pay for another politician’s litigation from his own funds. He cannot validly be criticized for that. It’s like criticizing Gore for not demanding a statewide recount of Florida — that was not a legal option. It’s a false grievance.
Kerry got involved in all the litigation with his own lawyers that he paid for. There have been several media tempests saying this or that about his legal fund and every one has turned out to be baseless.
Also, the initiative you’re mad about him “suddenly” introducing was introduced in February.
Excuse me. Kerry set up a separate fund so he could litigate. There may be legalities that prevented him from supporting other litigants, but then how did he come up with $100,000 to assist the Gubernatorial challenge in Washington State. And why didn’t he litigate himself? If he thought the other challenges had enough merit for him to support them, why didn’t he preempt the field and file his own litigation? Isn’t that why he said he needed all that money? I see a lot of excuses and not mut logic here.
of where the money in the ‘litigation’ fund went?
I would be willing to lay down my battleaxe long enough to read through it and ‘re-decide’ if Kerry did the right thing with the money.
How about everybody else?
If Kerry has not done the right thing, then we can pummel the shit out of his primary run, OK?
LL
I’m not sure what your last sentence means, but I sure would like to know where all that money went. I want to make it clear that I bear Kerry no ill will. I will never again support a Kerry run for the presidency, but I would gladly embrace him as a leader of the Democratic party. In my mind he has a lot to offer, but not as the party standard bearer. His presidential ambitions are the only thing I take issue with, and the reason for my opposition to him on that score is that I believe he won the 2004 election, and he does not. I would have fought, and he did not. Kerry was a hero of mine back in the days of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Perhaps I hold him to too high a standard, but he has greatly disappointed to me.
but Kerry’s lawyers were there as well, fighting with them
Filing “friend of the court” papers is not fighting, and to be frank and honest about it:
Kerry didn’t show up FOR HIS OWN FIGHT. The point of it all is that he promised to fight to make sure all of the votes were counted properly. He didn’t. He quit being a credible leader when he conceded.
That isn’t even getting into the failure of a campaign both he and Edwards ran… With bush’s performance in the first time the race should never have even been close… But those two, and their campaign advisors, still managed to look like light weights.
As far as I am concerned he did fine work with BCCI. When bush is gone Kerry can return to doing that sort of stuff all over again while remaining IN THE SENATE.
He will not get ANY support from independents next time around. (Presumptious of me to say that, but look around, even Dems can see those failures.)
As a side note: I think that liberal independents are not very likely to endorse any DLC platform sweetheart ever again… Thankfully, it seems like some Dems are getting the point on that issue. BUT as long as there is a hillary type alive and kicking there may not be enough Dems that have wised up to the realities of DLC candidates = Dems nightmare at the polls in the future. Even if a DLC candidate were to win it would set back the liberal agenda for another decade. But that is just my opinion…
I appreciate what you’re saying and share your reservations about his ever running again — the campaign sucked in my opinion. That said, the specific accusations in this thread are baseless. In that one case he filed a friend of the court brief. There are many other legal cases his legal team is and was involved in.
Specifically, the charge has been made here that Kerry raised money for legal fees and litigation and that he has not spent it in legal fees and litigation in order to save it for a future campaign. This is patently false. Perhaps he’s planning another run, but he has not stayed out of legal battles, he has not called off his lawyers, and the money is being spent on litigation.
If people are pissed about the way he has handled the fight politically, I understand that. I also would have preferred him to take a public stance and be shouting from the rooftops. I would have preferred it if he hadn’t conceeded. However, the criticism in this post is about his legal fund and is saying he didn’t wage a legal battle, not a political one. He did wage many legal battles.
It’s been mentioned here repeatedly that he just dropped out of one of them — if he wasn’t waging the legal battle, what the hell is he dropping out of now, 10 months later? How can he be accused of dropping out of something in the same breath as he’s being accused of never joining?
I don’t know all the details about the vote count funds themselves, but for Kerry to reprise his “count every vote” slogan after conceding so abruptly in ’04 is disgraceful.
When I saw him standing with the Grand Canyon behind him saying that even if he knew then what he knows now that he still would have supported the Iraq invasion, I knew he was a shitbird who’s only qualification was a negative one; that he was not as bad as the imbecile Bush.
Maybe he and Hillary will damage each other as they compete within the DLC corporate arena. I hope so because if either one of them is nominated it will set the Democratic party back another 3-4 election cycles.
I think this issue deserves another diary that deals with all the legal and political issues raised in the comments. Unfortunately, I’m not the one to write it (since I don’t have that knowledge). But I think that everyone could profit from a thorough, factual presentation of what Kerry did and what he did not do.
I think this issue deserves another diary that deals with all the legal and political issues raised in the comments.
I think you are right there.
But I also think that now is the time that we need to bring all of our efforts to the ’06 Senate races, and then after all of the votes are in there look at what strategies and candidates lie further ahead in ’08.
That is one of the things that really started to piss me off at dKos… Way too much campaigning for ’08 when there are just too many hills to climb for ’06.
A little over 1 year awy, and while the GOP has already dropped pretty clear hints to their strategies, the Dems have ZIP, NADA, ZERO, ZILCH, etc., set as their strategies or policies.
Just spinning their wheels hoping the other side is hated that much by then is not going to win anything (again).
As per usual the political activists (bloggers, etc.) have pretty good idea where they want to go, and yet still nothing from the people that are supposed to lead. The only ones that are taking stands are the GOP enablers like the DLC… And that won’t win squat. (IMHO)
It’s true that we need to be investing a lot of effort, in fact most of our effort, in the ’06 races (not just Senate, but Congressional and local). But I don’t think that all our effort could or should go toward that goal. There are so many things to be done.
Determining Kerry’s culpability is, granted, not a life or death matter, but it is emotionally important to those of us who contributed to him. And emotions do matter. Resolving questions such as “What did Kerry do and what did he not do?” requires a different kind of energy, perhaps from a different kind of person, than hitting the streets and canvassing — and anywhere, there’s not much canvassing for ’06 races that can be done right now. I don’t think one excludes the other.