Martin O'Malley ex-governor Cartoon

O'Malley, Sander criticize small Democratic debate schedule, suggest its rigged to favor Clinton

Two top Democratic candidates in the 2016 White House race suggested Friday night that party leaders have rigged the debate schedule in favor of frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

“Only four debates … before voters in our earliest states make their decision,” Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor, said at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis. “This sort of rigged process has never been attempted before.”
O’Malley is particularly concerned about the party having just one sanctioned debate each in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states in which primary votes are cast.
“That’s all we can afford?” O’Malley asked. “Is this how the Democratic Party selects its nominee?”
He also argued that limiting the total number of sanctioned Democratic debates to six, including two after the Iowa and New Hampshire votes, is allowing the rhetoric of Republicans candidates to go largely unchallenged.
“Republicans traffic in immigrant hate,” said O’Malley, who has been critical of the debate schedule since it was announced in early August. “We need debate.”
However, he made clear to reporters afterward that he thought the schedule helps Clinton.
Fellow 2016 Democratic challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Independent, was also at the summer meeting and told The Washington Post that he agrees with O’Malley’s argument that the DNC has rigged the debate process.
Sanders has recently been gaining ground on Clinton, but he and O’Malley need debates to get out their message because neither has the estimated tens of million that Clinton has to spend on advertising.
And most political strategists think that frontrunners have the most to lose in debates because they are under constant attack by the challengers.
The wildcard in the Democratic primary is whether Vice President Biden enters the race.
Donors and other Biden backers have been ramping up efforts.
Josh Alcorn, senior adviser for the super-PAC Draft Biden 2016, told Fox News on Sunday that Biden has the potential backing but would have to enter the race before the first debate, Oct. 13, to catch up with the other candidates.
“He may not have the financial resources, but there is a ground swell of support,” Alcorn said. “I think having the vice president on that debate stage is an important part of the campaign.”
The DNC has said its candidates are being given ample opportunity to be on the same stage to debate, defending the schedule.
Clinton has 47.8 percent of the vote, compared to 26.3 percent of Sanders, 14 percent for Vice President Biden, 1.5 percent for O’Malley and 1.3 percent for former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, according to an averaging of polls by the nonpartisan website RealClearPoltics.com.

Texas investigators search for motive behind killing of sheriff's deputy

Texas investigators were trying to determine on Sunday what may have motivated a 30-year-old man accused of ambushing a suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy filling his patrol car with gas in what authorities believe was a targeted killing.

Shannon J. Miles was charged Saturday with capital murder in the killing of Darren Goforth, 47, a 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Goforth had gone to the station in Cypress, a middle-class to upper-middle class suburban area of Harris County that is unincorporated and located northwest of Houston, after responding to a routine car accident earlier Friday.
Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman said the attack was “clearly unprovoked,” and there is no evidence so far that Goforth knew Miles. Investigators have no information from Miles that would shed light on his motive, Hickman said.
"Our assumption is that he was a target because he wore a uniform," the sheriff said.
The killing has brought out strong emotions from the local law enforcement community, with Hickman likening it to the heightened tension over the treatment of African-Americans by police.
The nationwide "Black Lives Matter" movement formed after the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, has sought sweeping reforms of policing. Related protests erupted recently in Texas after a 28-year-old Chicago area black woman, Sandra Bland, was found dead in a county jail about 50 miles northwest of Houston three days after her arrest on a traffic violation. Texas authorities said she committed suicide but her family is skeptical that she would have taken her own life.
Hickman and Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson on Saturday pushed back against police criticism, saying there must not be open warfare on law enforcement officials.
"We've heard Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter. Well, cops' lives matter, too," Hickman said.
Local law enforcement officers were worried after the Goforth killing that others could be targeted, he said.
"It gives us some peace knowing that this individual is no longer at large and that he wasn't somebody that would be targeting the rest of the community," Hickman said.
Miles is likely to be arraigned in court on Monday.

Bush fundraisers exit campaign amid sagging poll numbers, Miami says move voluntary

Three of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s fundraising consultants have left the campaign, Fox News confirmed Saturday.

The consultants are Kris Money, Trey McCarley and Debbie Alexander, and they voluntarily left the campaign Friday, according to multiple sources.
Politico first reported the departures and suggested they were the result of personality conflicts and concerns about the strength of the campaign.
However, a Bush campaign source attempted Saturday to minimize the impact of the departures by saying the consultants remain involved in multiple projects outside of the campaign.
In addition, Bush spokesman Tim Miller told Fox News: "Governor Bush has the widest and deepest fundraising operation of any candidate in the field.”
He also said Ann Herberger, a longtime aide with more than two decades of experience in state and national politics, will continue to lead fundraising operations at campaign headquarters in Miami.
Bush, a former Florida governor, was the 2016 GOP presumptive frontrunner. And he had a superior fundraising advantage over essentially all of the other candidates in the party’s huge primary field, in large part because of his family name and connections with Washington Republicans.
Bush and the super-PAC Right to Rise raised a combined $114 million in the first quarter of this year, according to federal records, meeting often-talked-about expectations that the operation could indeed raise that much money.
However, Bush’s poll number have steadily declined since billionaire businessman and first-time candidate Donald Trump entered the race in mid-June.
"This is the time of year that campaigns make staffing changes before settling a final team going forward," Joe Desilets, a Republican strategist and managing partner at the Washington firm 21st & Main, said Saturday. "Jeb is far and away the fundraising leader in the race and has announced other major fundraisers joining his team. ... If Jeb starts dropping in fundraising, it may prove to be a bigger deal, but ... I don't see this as a major problem going forward."
Bush led the GOP field in mid-July with 17.8 percent of the vote, but is now at 9.8 percent, behind Trump at 23.5 percent and retired Dr. Ben Carson at 10.3 percent.
Trump has aggressively and consistently attacked Bush as the frontrunner, criticizing several of his positions including those on immigration and federal spending on women’s health.
Trump’s attacks have also been more personal, saying Bush is “low energy.”
Meanwhile, Bush appears to be taking a non-confrontational approach by largely not responding to the attacks and referring to himself as a “joyful tortoise."
Money, McCarley and Alexander will continue to work for Right to Rise, sources also told Fox News.

Sanders gains on Clinton in latest Iowa poll

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is continuing to gain on Hillary Clinton in Iowa, and is now within 7 points of the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race, according to a newly released poll.

Clinton remains the first choice of 37 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers, while sanders is the pick for 30 percent, according to the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll released Saturday.
"It looks like what people call the era of inevitability is over,” said Pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. “[Clinton] has lost a third of the support that she had in May, so anytime you lose that much that quickly it’s a wake-up call."
This is the first time the former secretary of state has seen her support fall under 50 percent among Democrats. The most recent Iowa Poll in May had Clinton leading the field with 57 percent, Sanders at 16 percent and Biden at 8 percent.
"What this new poll shows is that the more Iowans get to know Bernie, the better they like him and what he stands for," Sanders' spokesman Michael Braggs said. "We've seen the same thing in New Hampshire and across the country."
Vice President Joe Biden remains a choice among caucus-goers, even though he has yet to decide if he plans to run. Biden captured 14 percent of the vote, way ahead of candidates Martin O’Malley with 3 percent, Jim Webb at 2 percent, and Lincoln Chafee at 1 percent.
Biden also has the highest favorable rating among the field at 79 percent, compared with 77 percent for Clinton and 73 percent for Sanders.
Sanders’ poll numbers are also being buoyed by a group of voters similar to the ones attracted to President Obama in 2008: young people, liberals and first-time caucus-goers. In the latest poll, Sanders draws 50 percent of the support of those under the age of 45, well above Clinton’s 27 percent and Biden’s 8 percent.
While Clinton’s support has continually dropped among Iowa caucusgoers from 56 percent in January to 37 percent in the latest poll, Steve McMahon, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist told the Des Moines Register, "it's still early, and Hillary Clinton's done this before. She knows what it takes to win."