Tag: Running

Copyright 2018 CNN (CNN) - A Louisiana mom, running for office for the first time, thought about taking her kindergartner and her 1½-year-old along with her on the campaign trail. So, Morgan Lamandre asked the board that oversees election rules if she could use political donations to cover child care expenses that wouldn't exist if she weren't running. Candidates in other states, particularly mothers, have made similar bids this year and won. "Nobody forces you to run for public office. 'An important bridge to cross' Already, Lamandre's case has spurred a push among Louisiana lawmakers to write an allowance for child care expenses into state election law. The episode follows similar requests in at least six states from mothers hoping to use political contributions to hire sitters while they worked to get elected. "This is an important bridge to cross because women don't feel like the opportunity is there for them because they have a family, they have responsibilities. "When you still have people writing the rules that are of a different time, it's very hard for a 30-something mom who's choosing to seek public office while working full time and raising kids to do that," Agnew said. Brasted noted that the Louisiana Ethics Board's own staff attorney reminded members weighing Lamandre's appeal that the same panel in 2000 allowed a male lawmaker to pay for "childcare (babysitting) expenses ... from campaign funds since they are related to your campaign." "There's already certain opportunities for a certain class of people to be able to run for office that others wouldn't, so this gives the opportunity for two working parents to be able to run for office that wouldn't otherwise have the extra funds to be able to run for office," Lamandre told the Ethics Board.

Here’s the story of how a first-time council candidate and his campaign volunteers were chased from a city event in East Oakland by security guards in what is shaping up to be a tense election season in Oakland. He said she did not explain why it wasn’t allowed but took a photo and told Taylor she’d file an ethics complaint. In an email days later, Brooks told me Taylor was violating a rule that prohibits city resources from being used to campaign for or against candidates and ballot measures. Taylor said the security guard told him that Brooks wanted him out of there — and that if he had an issue with that, he’d have to talk to Brooks about it. Taylor put the canopy in a car and returned to the park with three volunteers. Instead, in an email, she wrote: “I am not aware of Loren Taylor’s interaction with other people. Brooks didn’t respond when I asked if she filed a complaint or was planning to. “We need to be able to have all of the facts of a particular situation.” I asked Mark Morodomi, a former deputy city attorney for Oakland, this question: Can a candidate for office campaign at a city-sponsored event in a public park? Brooks did not respond when told of Morodomi’s opinion. Taylor, meanwhile, has asked the Oakland Public Ethics Commission for clarification on whether there are restrictions on campaigning at a free public event.

But while it’s her job to recruit, train and fundraise for female Republican candidates she finds herself telling many women to not run — at least not this year. “A lot of good moderate Republican women who want to run for office, our advice is ‘You’re a good candidate, you would probably win in any other year, let’s wait’”. Female Republican candidates are having a harder time than usual in 2018. “It’s always been hard, but this year all the reasons it’s been tough make it even tougher.” According to the Center for American Women in Politics, the number of Democratic women running for House seats this year increased 146 percent over 2016 (to 351), while the number of Republican women running for the House increased just 35 percent (to 99); on the other side of the Capitol there are only 14 Republican women running for Senate compared to 27 Democratic women. In part this is because there have always been fewer Republican women in high office than Democratic women. And the reason for that, candidates and strategists say, is the reason for so many other phenomena in politics at the moment – Donald Trump. Women are expected to have a stand on Trump, on #MeToo, and men aren’t even asked the question. Texas has not sent a freshman woman to Congress in 22 years, “meaning an entire generation of young Texans has never seen a woman elected” to that job, so while her gender got her a bit of attention, not all of it was good. Blackburn, who proudly aligns herself with the president, is considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination in that race, and she sent her staff to call Corker out. Republican women though have slowed down” their expected timeline, waiting to see if the landscape shifts.