Word: democratator
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...closest Senate race in history - for an open New Hampshire seat in 1974 - was so tight that the candidates had to hold a second election. After Republican Louis Wyman beat Democrat John Durkin by just 355 votes, a recount gave Durkin the lead - but by only 10 votes, which meant another recount. This count gave the election back to Wyman - by two votes. Durkin asked the Senate - which had a convenient 60-vote Democratic majority - for a review of the results. Despite six weeks of debate, the Senate couldn't resolve the matter, and the two candidates agreed...
...Minnesota race; in some states, a candidate can request a recount, finance it and be reimbursed with public funds if the recount reverses the vote. (Recounts do not come cheap: one of the most famous in recent history, for Washington governor in 2004, cost the state Democratic Party $730,000. When the recount gave the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire, the initial loser, the state paid the party back. The final margin: 133 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast...
...changed his mind, say Floridians who know the committed conservative, is that he fears last month's election calamity could dilute the ideological purity of the Republican Party. In an interview this week with Newsmax.com, Bush, 55, the outgoing President's younger brother, warned the GOP against becoming "Democrat lite. We can't just 'get along.'" Despite his disdain for Washington, the Senate would at least "give Jeb a bully pulpit," says a friend. That could help him keep his party from falling too far into the centrist, bipartisan hands of new Republican leaders like his successor, Florida Governor Charlie...
...some of Jeb's admirable, results-driven passion. But while his education reforms, for example, did raise the abysmal accountability level in Florida schools, their overweening emphasis on standardized testing and punitive measures is more reflective of the GOP-dominated state legislature he reigned over and not the Democrat-controlled Senate he would chafe under...
...family issue can work both ways for the Bushes. Jeb's Senate chances, if he does run, could be dampened by the fact that his brother is leaving the White House with approval ratings that have fallen further south than Key West. Barack Obama was the first Northern Democrat to win Florida in a presidential election in 64 years, and one of Martinez's other big troubles is his own plummeting approval numbers, thanks in no small part to his close ties to President Bush. But that could all actually be a motivator for Jeb, whose sharp sense of dynastic...