Michael Gaynor
In 2008, Sandy Newman misled for Barack Obama on Obama's ACORN/Project Vote ties
By Michael Gaynor
"The time has come to lift the veil and reveal the untold story of America's Radical-in-Chief and his socialist political world."
Now that the Obama Administration has announced that it will not defend the Defense of Marriage Age and many think that presidential candidate Obama misled them when he discussed marriage at the Saddlebrook Forum during the 2008 presidential campaign, it was be an especially good time to point out that people were misled about Obama, lest his radicalness be appreciated and make him unelectable as President.
Unfortunately, the truth about ACORN, Project Vote, Obama and Obama mentor Sandy Newman is still not generally known.
"'Project Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts on minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why their vote will matter. Braun made that easier in Illinois.' So [Sandy] Newman decided to open a Cook County Project Vote! office and went looking for someone to head it. The name Barack Obama surfaced. 'I was asking around among community activists in Chicago and around the country, and they kept mentioning him,' Newman says. Obama by then was working with church and community leaders on the West Side, and he was writing a book that the publisher Simon & Schuster had contracted for while he was editor of the law review. He was 30 years old. When Newman called, Obama agreed to put his other work aside. 'I'm still not quite sure why,' Newman says. 'This was not glamorous, high-paying work. But I am certainly grateful. He did one hell of a job.'" [Chicago Magazine, 1/93]
Obama had help. To help the man picked by Newman to head Illinois Project Vote, there were 22 steering committee members. Among Obama's steerers: rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Ffleger, Madeline Talbott (head of Illinois ACORN) and Keith Kelleher (head of ACORN-controlled SEIU Local 100 and husband of Talbott).
Stanley Kurtz, in Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, stated (p. viii):
"Over the long term, Obama's plans are designed to ensnare the country in a new socialism, a stealth socialism that masquerades as a traditional American sense of fair play, a soft but pernicious socialism similar to that currently strangling the economies of Europe.
"This is Barack Obama's secret. The president has systematically disguised the truth about his socialist convictions. sometimes by directly misrepresenting his past and sometimes by omitting or parceling out damaging information to disguise its real importance. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and ACORN — all of Obama's well known radical ties are entry points into the much larger and still unknown socialist world where Obama's career was nurtured. That is why the president has disguised and withheld the truth about these political partnerships.
"The time has come to lift the veil and reveal the untold story of America's Radical-in-Chief and his socialist political world."
The sooner, the better.
The liberal media establishment has been determined to help Obama maintain his image, but facts are pesky things.
After John Fund's Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Obama's Liberal Shock Troops" on July 12, 2008, Team Obama needed to distance their man from ACORN.
Sanford A. Newman responded by writing a letter that was published in the Wall Street Journal on July 22, 2008.
Newman wrote:
"John Fund's 'Obama's Liberal Shock Troops' (op-ed, July 12) has some facts wrong. The historic nonpartisan drive to increase voter participation that Barack Obama led in 1992 wasn't for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, but for Project Vote — of which i was the national director in 1992.
"Instead of accepting far more prestigious and better paying offers, Mr. Obama accepted a grueling job with Project Vote for a meager salary. He believed so much in the democratic process that he even gave up the contract for publication of his book, not knowing whether he would ever find another publisher. He brought a broad spectrum of community organizations into that effort, conducting what remains the most successful nonpartisan voter drive in Illinois history.
"Project Vote remains a separate organization today. Indeed, it wasn't until after Mr. Obama's tenure had ended that it began to conduct projects more frequently with ACORN than with other community-based organizations.
"Both Project Vote and ACORN should be proud that their efforts have increased voting. Acorn should also be proud of its other work, including winning minimum-wage increases and helping lead the fight against predatory lending and unfair foreclosures.
"Mr. Obama's willingness to sacrifice because of his deep commitment to strengthening the democratic process is something that all Americans should applaud regardless of their party or politics."
Was Project Vote really nonpartisan?
Of course not. Illinois Project Vote, which Newman chose Obama to head in 1992, registered people to vote later that year for such Democrats (Bill Clinton for President, Carol Moseley Braun for United States Senator).
WAS Project Vote separate from ACORN in 1992 or in 2008?
As Clinton might say, it depends upon what separate means.
Jon Bauman of Texas responded to Newman in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal on August 7, 2008.
Bauman wrote:
"Regarding Sanford A. Newman's letter 'ACORN Didn't Employ Obama in '92' (July 22), I would like Mr. Newman to explain the following:
(1) The union and Clinton/Gore Campaign financial support to Project Vote in the context of Mr. Newman's claim that Mr. Obama led a 'nonpartisan' voter drive in 1992.
(2) His semantic effort to separate the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) from Project Vote when Mr. Obama's official Web site reports the following with respect to Acorn's endorsement of Mr. Obama's run for the presidency in 2007:
'When Obama met with Acorn leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with Acorn and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So there is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."'
"Although receiving federal funds and supposedly nonpartisan, there was nothing nonpartisan about Project Vote's '92 voter registration drive. In fact, some have attributed Mr. Obama's Project Vote work as key to getting Democrat Carol Moseley Braun elected senator. And while Acorn might not have signed his pay checks at Project Vote, Mr. Obama's own words prove that Project Vote and ACORN were hand and glove."
The Project Vote-is-nonpartisan claim is absurd.
In "Perot's Support Slips, but Impact in Race Remains — Where His Supporters Go May Determine if Bush Has Chance of winning" (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30, 1992, p. A1), David shribman and James M. Perry reported:
"Voting experts at the Democratic National Committee point to surging registration in several big cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Most of that work has been done by the nonpartisan Project Vote, a voter participation organization based in Washington, D.C. Its director, Sandy Ndewman, says his group has helped to register 150,000 new voters, almost all of them black, in Pennsylvania; 110,000 in Chicago; 70,000 in Michigan; 40,000 in Ohio; and 160,000 (with the help of the New York Public Interest Research Group) in New York City."
Note: That's the New York Public Interest Research Group which includes this statement on its website (www.nypirg.org/goodgov/obama.html): "President Obama's Role as a NYPIRG Project Coordinator. As mentioned in his autobiography, Dreams for My Father, President Obama was hired in his first job as an organizer as a 'Project Coordinator' in February 1985 to run NYPIRG's office at the City College of New York. He continued in this position for approximately three months until the end of the academic year...."
Project Vote goes back to the first year of the Reagan administration and was created to oppose, not to support, it.
Hedrick Smith, "Candidates Concerned About Alienation in People Out of Work," New York Times, Oct. 8, 1982, p. A1:
"Project Vote, a nonpartisan effort with $34,000 in donations from labor unions and slightly more from private foundations, says it has registered more than 80,000 people who were standing in lines for unemployment, food stamps and welfare benefits in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
"'Our objective is to increase electoral participation by those who participate least and are most in need of an equal voice at the polls, and that means low income people and unemployed workers,' said Sandy Newman, the group's executive director."
In Project Vote v. Ohio Bureau of Employment Services, 578 F. Supp. 7 (S.D. Ohio), the court described Project Vote as "one of the projects of Americans for Civic Participation, a non-partisan voter registration campaigned aimed at low income citizens." Americans for Civic Participation was a District of Columbia non-profit with 501(c)(3) status.
Later Project Vote was OFFICIALLY added to the ACORN "family of organizations."
Americans need to know what Project Vote really has been doing, and why, and Team Obama needs to keep them deceived and/or ignorant in order to promote its raadical agenda effectively.
Demand answers.
© Michael Gaynor
February 28, 2011
"The time has come to lift the veil and reveal the untold story of America's Radical-in-Chief and his socialist political world."
Now that the Obama Administration has announced that it will not defend the Defense of Marriage Age and many think that presidential candidate Obama misled them when he discussed marriage at the Saddlebrook Forum during the 2008 presidential campaign, it was be an especially good time to point out that people were misled about Obama, lest his radicalness be appreciated and make him unelectable as President.
Unfortunately, the truth about ACORN, Project Vote, Obama and Obama mentor Sandy Newman is still not generally known.
"'Project Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts on minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why their vote will matter. Braun made that easier in Illinois.' So [Sandy] Newman decided to open a Cook County Project Vote! office and went looking for someone to head it. The name Barack Obama surfaced. 'I was asking around among community activists in Chicago and around the country, and they kept mentioning him,' Newman says. Obama by then was working with church and community leaders on the West Side, and he was writing a book that the publisher Simon & Schuster had contracted for while he was editor of the law review. He was 30 years old. When Newman called, Obama agreed to put his other work aside. 'I'm still not quite sure why,' Newman says. 'This was not glamorous, high-paying work. But I am certainly grateful. He did one hell of a job.'" [Chicago Magazine, 1/93]
Obama had help. To help the man picked by Newman to head Illinois Project Vote, there were 22 steering committee members. Among Obama's steerers: rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Ffleger, Madeline Talbott (head of Illinois ACORN) and Keith Kelleher (head of ACORN-controlled SEIU Local 100 and husband of Talbott).
Stanley Kurtz, in Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, stated (p. viii):
"Over the long term, Obama's plans are designed to ensnare the country in a new socialism, a stealth socialism that masquerades as a traditional American sense of fair play, a soft but pernicious socialism similar to that currently strangling the economies of Europe.
"This is Barack Obama's secret. The president has systematically disguised the truth about his socialist convictions. sometimes by directly misrepresenting his past and sometimes by omitting or parceling out damaging information to disguise its real importance. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and ACORN — all of Obama's well known radical ties are entry points into the much larger and still unknown socialist world where Obama's career was nurtured. That is why the president has disguised and withheld the truth about these political partnerships.
"The time has come to lift the veil and reveal the untold story of America's Radical-in-Chief and his socialist political world."
The sooner, the better.
The liberal media establishment has been determined to help Obama maintain his image, but facts are pesky things.
After John Fund's Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Obama's Liberal Shock Troops" on July 12, 2008, Team Obama needed to distance their man from ACORN.
Sanford A. Newman responded by writing a letter that was published in the Wall Street Journal on July 22, 2008.
Newman wrote:
"John Fund's 'Obama's Liberal Shock Troops' (op-ed, July 12) has some facts wrong. The historic nonpartisan drive to increase voter participation that Barack Obama led in 1992 wasn't for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, but for Project Vote — of which i was the national director in 1992.
"Instead of accepting far more prestigious and better paying offers, Mr. Obama accepted a grueling job with Project Vote for a meager salary. He believed so much in the democratic process that he even gave up the contract for publication of his book, not knowing whether he would ever find another publisher. He brought a broad spectrum of community organizations into that effort, conducting what remains the most successful nonpartisan voter drive in Illinois history.
"Project Vote remains a separate organization today. Indeed, it wasn't until after Mr. Obama's tenure had ended that it began to conduct projects more frequently with ACORN than with other community-based organizations.
"Both Project Vote and ACORN should be proud that their efforts have increased voting. Acorn should also be proud of its other work, including winning minimum-wage increases and helping lead the fight against predatory lending and unfair foreclosures.
"Mr. Obama's willingness to sacrifice because of his deep commitment to strengthening the democratic process is something that all Americans should applaud regardless of their party or politics."
Was Project Vote really nonpartisan?
Of course not. Illinois Project Vote, which Newman chose Obama to head in 1992, registered people to vote later that year for such Democrats (Bill Clinton for President, Carol Moseley Braun for United States Senator).
WAS Project Vote separate from ACORN in 1992 or in 2008?
As Clinton might say, it depends upon what separate means.
Jon Bauman of Texas responded to Newman in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal on August 7, 2008.
Bauman wrote:
"Regarding Sanford A. Newman's letter 'ACORN Didn't Employ Obama in '92' (July 22), I would like Mr. Newman to explain the following:
(1) The union and Clinton/Gore Campaign financial support to Project Vote in the context of Mr. Newman's claim that Mr. Obama led a 'nonpartisan' voter drive in 1992.
(2) His semantic effort to separate the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) from Project Vote when Mr. Obama's official Web site reports the following with respect to Acorn's endorsement of Mr. Obama's run for the presidency in 2007:
'When Obama met with Acorn leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with Acorn and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So there is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."'
"Although receiving federal funds and supposedly nonpartisan, there was nothing nonpartisan about Project Vote's '92 voter registration drive. In fact, some have attributed Mr. Obama's Project Vote work as key to getting Democrat Carol Moseley Braun elected senator. And while Acorn might not have signed his pay checks at Project Vote, Mr. Obama's own words prove that Project Vote and ACORN were hand and glove."
The Project Vote-is-nonpartisan claim is absurd.
In "Perot's Support Slips, but Impact in Race Remains — Where His Supporters Go May Determine if Bush Has Chance of winning" (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30, 1992, p. A1), David shribman and James M. Perry reported:
"Voting experts at the Democratic National Committee point to surging registration in several big cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Most of that work has been done by the nonpartisan Project Vote, a voter participation organization based in Washington, D.C. Its director, Sandy Ndewman, says his group has helped to register 150,000 new voters, almost all of them black, in Pennsylvania; 110,000 in Chicago; 70,000 in Michigan; 40,000 in Ohio; and 160,000 (with the help of the New York Public Interest Research Group) in New York City."
Note: That's the New York Public Interest Research Group which includes this statement on its website (www.nypirg.org/goodgov/obama.html): "President Obama's Role as a NYPIRG Project Coordinator. As mentioned in his autobiography, Dreams for My Father, President Obama was hired in his first job as an organizer as a 'Project Coordinator' in February 1985 to run NYPIRG's office at the City College of New York. He continued in this position for approximately three months until the end of the academic year...."
Project Vote goes back to the first year of the Reagan administration and was created to oppose, not to support, it.
Hedrick Smith, "Candidates Concerned About Alienation in People Out of Work," New York Times, Oct. 8, 1982, p. A1:
"Project Vote, a nonpartisan effort with $34,000 in donations from labor unions and slightly more from private foundations, says it has registered more than 80,000 people who were standing in lines for unemployment, food stamps and welfare benefits in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
"'Our objective is to increase electoral participation by those who participate least and are most in need of an equal voice at the polls, and that means low income people and unemployed workers,' said Sandy Newman, the group's executive director."
In Project Vote v. Ohio Bureau of Employment Services, 578 F. Supp. 7 (S.D. Ohio), the court described Project Vote as "one of the projects of Americans for Civic Participation, a non-partisan voter registration campaigned aimed at low income citizens." Americans for Civic Participation was a District of Columbia non-profit with 501(c)(3) status.
Later Project Vote was OFFICIALLY added to the ACORN "family of organizations."
Americans need to know what Project Vote really has been doing, and why, and Team Obama needs to keep them deceived and/or ignorant in order to promote its raadical agenda effectively.
Demand answers.
© Michael Gaynor
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