Robin Carnahan
From Ballotpedia
| Robin Carnahan | |
 | |
| Missouri Secretary of State | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2005 | |
| Current term ends 2012 | |
| Political party | Democrat |
| Website | Robin Carnahan's Twitter account |
Contents |
Robin Carnahan (born August 4, 1961) is the current Democratic Secretary of State of Missouri. In February 2009, she announced that would be seeking the senate seat being vacated by Republican Kit Bond. [1]
Family Legacy
Carnahan's family has a legacy of being active in Missouri politics for several generations. Her father, Mel Carnahan, served in several offices, most notably as Governor of Missouri from 1993 until his untimely death in a plane crash on October 17, 2000. Her mother, Jean, served as United States Senator for two years in the seat won posthumously by her husband until she was narrowly defeated in a special election held in November 2002 by Republican James Talent. Her brother, Russ Carnahan, is a congressman representing the southern portion of the St. Louis Metropolitan area. Her grandfather, A.S.J. Carnahan, served as congressman for south-central Missouri and as the first U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone, having been appointed to the position by President John F. Kennedy.
Education
- Graduated from Rolla High School
- Bachelor's degree, William Jewell College in education
- Juris Doctorate degree, University of Virginia Law School (1986)
Professional experience
Shortly after completing law school, Carnahan returned to Missouri and began practicing law with the St. Louis law firm of Thompson & Mitchell, focusing on business and corporate law. In 1990, she was part of a team from the National Democratic Institute sent to help rebuild the democracies and economies of the nations of the former Soviet Union and other formerly Communist regimes. In this role, she helped draft voting laws, train new political leaders and monitor elections in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Since then, she has worked in six countries to promote democracy and free elections. Carnahan also served as an executive at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. At the bank, Carnahan worked to help American companies increase the sale of their goods and services to buyers around the world.
Controversies
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| Elections, 2010 |
| Primary election dates, 2010 |
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ACORN
Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against Carnahan and the state of Missouri in a lawsuit related to the National Voter Registration Act, which charged that ineligible voters within the state were not properly pursued; nearly identical charges were filed in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, and New York. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Justice Department "pursued the lawsuit successfully all the way to the Court of Appeals, but a month after Carnahan announced her run for the Senate, the lawsuit was dropped by Obama-Holder."[2]
The Republican Party of Missouri has argued that Carnahan ordered the St. Louis Board of Elections to approve more than 5,000 questionable registrations submitted by ACORN in 2006 and that her unwavering support for the embattled liberal organization has continued to this day. It was recently discovered that in the report she issued on the 2008 elections, "she failed to mention ACORN’s organized effort to commit voter fraud across the state by submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registrations to county election boards in Missouri."[3] Far more revealing, however, was ACORN's own proclamation that Carnahan had been “helpful” in its lawsuit against the state of Missouri—a lawsuit that ended after the state agreed to pay ACORN $450,000. Carnahan has had numerous contacts with ACORN, including meetings in her own officer, between 2007 and 2009, despite never having been named in the lawsuit against the state.[4]
ACT
- See also: America Coming Together
America Coming Together (ACT), at the zenith of its power in 2004 under the leadership of former political director of the AFL-CIO, Steve Rosenthal, was a liberal 527 political activist group dedicated to get-out-the-vote efforts for candidates, mainly those belonging to the Democratic Party. The organization received a large amount of its funding from rich individuals like Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies, and billionaire George Soros, in addition to labor unions, particularly the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). ACT was heavily involved in both the 2004 presidential and congressional election campaigns, spending as much as $10 million and hiring nearly 45,000 paid canvassers in battleground states on Election Day.
Three years later, ACT, which at that point in time had largely closed up shop, was fined $775,000 by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for violations of various federal campaign finance laws in the course of the 2004 U.S. election cycle.[5] The organization was accused of knowingly hiring dozens of convicted felons, some on charges such as burglary, forgery, drug dealing, assault and sex offenses, as canvassers going door-to-door collecting sensitive personal information, such as telephone numbers. In April 2004, Missouri Department of Corrections "banished ACT from its pool of potential employers for parolees in its halfway houses in Kansas City and St. Louis."[6]
Laura Egerdal, who was hired by Carnahan to serve as her communications director, not only worked for America Coming Together, but was also responsible for hiring in the state of Missouri.[7] She was also an employee of SEIU.
Overturned ballot titles
It is the responsibility of the Missouri Secretary of State to produce fair and neutral ballot titles for proposed Missouri initiatives. In two cases in early 2008, ballot titles for the Missouri Stem Cell Prohibition Initiative (2008) and the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (2008) written by Carnahan were thrown out by two different Missouri judges.[8]
Proposition B
Carnahan's own political career within Missouri began in 1999 when she led the statewide campaign against the concealed carry referendum known as Proposition B. She chaired the Safe Schools and Workplaces Committee (SSWC) and orchestrated television advertisements against the measure. These spots were controversial in that they made several misleading statements or downright lies concerning what the proposition allowed. Specifically, the SSWC alleged that Proposition B allowed Missourians to carry the UZI carbine rifle, despite the fact that the UZI shown in the advertisement had been banned in the United States since 1994, and that individuals convicted of assault, stalking, even child molesting could legally carry concealed handguns under the law, totally ignoring the law's stringent requirements barring such individuals from taking part.[9] Proposition B was narrowly defeated in April 1999 by a margin of 3.3%, but a similar right-to-carry proposal was adopted by the Republican legislature over Governor Holden's veto four years later. Regardless of her work to defeat Proposition B, Carnahan insisted in 2004 while running for Secretary of State that she supported the Second Amendment.
Secretary of State Project
- See also: Secretary of State Project
ActBlue reports that McCulloch received a substantial donation of least $13,736[10] from the Secretary of State Project, a below-the-radar 527 political organization whose purpose is to "wrestling control of the country from the Republican Party" through the process of "removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count," namely the office of Secretary of State in many cases.[11]
Electoral History
2004
| 2004 Race for Secretary of State - General Election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidates | Percentage | |||
 Robin Carnahan (D)
| 51% | |||
| Catherine Hanaway (R) | 46.4% | |||
| Christopher Davis (Libertarian) | 1.9% | |||
| Donna Ivanovich (Constitution) | 0.6% | |||
| Total votes | 2,678,326 | |||
2008
| 2008 Race for Secretary of State - General Election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidates | Percentage | |||
| Robin Carnahan (D)
| 61.8% | |||
| Mitchell Hubbard (R) | 35.6% | |||
| Wes Upchurch (Libertarian) | 1.4% | |||
| Denise C. Neely (Constitution) | 1.3% | |||
| Total votes | 2,829,810 | |||
Family life
Robin Carnahan currently lives in Rolla, Missouri with her husband, Juan Carlos Antolinez. They currently have no children together.
Contact Information
Office of the Secretary of State
State Capitol, Room 208 or State Information Center, 600 W Main
Jefferson City, MO 65101
(573) 751-4936 [ SOS Information ]
SOSmain@sos.mo.gov
External links
- Official Missouri Secretary of State website
- Robin Carnahan's Facebook profile
- Robin Carnahan's Twitter account
- Robin Carnahan for Senate Campaign website
- ACORN and Carnahan website
References
- ↑ AMERICA Blog "Robin Carnahan is running for Senate in Missouri" 3 Feb. 2009
- ↑ YouTube video - Questions Raised About Robin Carnahan's implementation of election law in Missouri
- ↑ Missouri Republican Party "Robin Carnahan ally ACORN in serious trouble" 15 Sept. 2009
- ↑ Robin Carnahan’s Involvement in ACORN Lawsuit
- ↑ FEC News Release - FEC To Collect $775,000 Civil Penalty From America Coming Together
- ↑ Associated Press "Felons Paid in Voter Registration Drive" 23 June, 2004
- ↑ StL Indymedia - Carnahan 2004 job posting
- ↑ Judge rewrites contentious ballot title
- ↑ MOCCW "Top 5 List of Misleading SSWC Statements or Actions" 29 March, 1999
- ↑ ActBlue - Secretary of State Project Donations
- ↑ American Spectator "SOS in Minnesota" 7 Nov. 2008
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