Balance of power still in WA Dems favor - Seattle Times

OLYMPIA, Wash. —

Voters overwhelmingly rebuked taxes passed by Washington state's large Democratic majorities in the Legislature. But while they may have been unhappy with the job Democrats did earlier this year, they appear to be letting them retain control of state government.

Republicans made gains in both the state House and Senate in this week's election, won an open U.S. House seat and were optimistic of their chances in a too-close-to-call race in another.

While they're not expected to take the majority in the Legislature as they did in 1994, Republicans have cut into Democrats' comfortable margins and ran competitive races in other districts. And voters sent a clear anti-tax statement, rolling back increased snack taxes, rejecting a $2 billion income tax on the rich and making it harder for the Legislature to raise taxes in the future.

"They're going to return Democratic majorities to the Legislature, but they clipped their wings with respect to the budget process," Democratic strategist Christian Sinderman said.

State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser said the passage of Initiative 1053 - which requires a higher bar for legislative votes to raise taxes - plus the addition of more Republican lawmakers "is like a belt and suspenders."

"Voters said 'I'm taxed enough already,'" Esser said. "Hopefully that will chasten many of the Democrats who do remain."

All 98 state House seats and 25 of 49 Senate seats were on the ballot this fall. Many positions were considered safe for either party, leaving intense battles over a relatively small slice to decide which side controls the Legislature.

The GOP steadily lost ground during the last decade, finally giving up its one-seat control of the state Senate in 2004. Before Tuesday's election, Democrats controlled the House with a 61-37 margin and the Senate with a 31-18 majority. As of this weekend, Republicans had moved their margin up to more than 40 seats in the House with a handful of races still too close to call. In the Senate, Republicans appeared to have gained at least four additional seats, with additional close races showing Democrats holding on to three seats needed for the GOP to take the majority.

Washington Democrats' key victory this week was in the competitive U.S. Senate race with the re-election of Sen. Patty Murray over Republican Dino Rossi. Her victory preserves a small cushion for Democrats in the Senate. Republicans made inroads there Tuesday, handing Democrats a slimmed-down majority, and took control of the House.

Republican Jaime Herrera's victory Tuesday night in the open 3rd District in southwestern Washington was part of the Republican wave in the U.S. House. Herrera became the first Republican to represent the district in a dozen years and her win narrowed the state's Democratic majority in the House delegation to 5-4.

Republicans also were closely watching the state's northern 2nd Congressional Democratic incumbent, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen held a slim lead over Republican challenger John Koster.

Larsen won his last re-election bid in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote.

If Koster ultimately overtakes Larsen, it would be the first time Washington's House delegation had a Republican majority since the late 1990s.

Republican consultant Chris Vance points to gains in the Legislature, the Herrera win and the closeness of the Larsen race as proof that Washington state benefited from a nationwide trend in favor of Republicans.

"Did a wave hit here, yes. Was it a massive tidal wave like hit the U.S. House, obviously not," Vance said. "I think now we're returning back to what we used to be, which is a very, very competitive state that can go either way."

State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, also saw a clear message. Murray, who is co-chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, said the election shows Republicans are too conservative for many suburban voters, particularly on social issues. But he also faults Democrats for not making the case for changes in the state's tax structure.

"One of the lessons here, post-Obama's election, is this is still the age of Reagan," Murray said, noting that Republicans have been able to make the argument for smaller government and low taxes "on their terms."

"We have not been able to articulate a vision that voters understand," he said.

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AP writer Curt Woodward contributed to this report.

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Boehner's Path to Power Began in Southern Ohio - New York Times

The same Cape Cod houses dot the roadsides, among a smattering of family businesses. On the hill where Mr. Boehner grew up with 11 siblings, there are remnants of the fence that kept cows at bay. Mr. Boehner’s sister tends the bar his family ran through much of the last century.

With Republicans increasingly confident that they will capture the House in November, Mr. Boehner stands likely to become speaker and to lead his party’s effort to turn the nation in a new direction after two years under President Obama and the Democrats. It seems that almost everything about him stems from this spot at the southern tip of Ohio.

It defined his political viewpoints, shaped by his working-class Roman Catholic family. It formed his passions (golf, football, more golf), kindled his love of sharp clothes (and his caustic commentary about others’ wardrobes) and presaged his political trajectory, one influenced by his experience as a businessman and largely ignited by a lobbyist who became his patron and the first of many lobbyist-friends in his orbit.

Mr. Boehner — now Mr. Obama’s Gucci punching bag — has by his own account and those of people who know him remained as unchanged as Reading, just outside Cincinnati. “He’s been conservative, he’s been consistent and he’s been tan,” said Bob Hagan, an Ohio state representative who served with Mr. Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner) in the Statehouse in the late 1980s.

For Republicans who hope to recapture the House, the challenge is to shift the focus from Mr. Boehner’s country club image and tangerine hue back to his Midwestern conservative résumé, which they hope will attract a frustrated electorate.

But the effort by Democrats to portray Mr. Boehner, 60, as lazy and retrograde — speak loudly and carry a large cocktail — is equally arduous. He is a man who paws through large briefing books for committee meetings, Democrats who have worked with him acknowledge. He can foil challengers with his charm, as his opponents in his first Congressional race found out. He is surprisingly emotional, given to occasional waterworks during House speeches or three-hanky stops among supporters on the campaign trail.

Mr. Boehner explains his rise from a childhood with little money to the Congressional leadership by recalling his ambition to improve his life.

“I was determined, I was miserable and I didn’t have anything,” he said in a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, as he pulled on a series of Camel cigarettes (filtered). “I was trying to make something out of nothing.”

Mr. Boehner’s parents were Democrats, and politics did not define his upbringing, nor even really infuse it. “We were lucky to know who the president was,” said George Luning, a high school classmate of the congressman. “His dad owned a bar, and I think being around older people who had their opinions about this or that all day made it so when he got home, he didn’t much want to talk about that stuff.”

The culture wars that would later define the Republican Party were also far from the minds of the boys of Reading. “There just weren’t as many issues then,” said Jerry Vanden Eyden, Mr. Boehner’s closest childhood friend. “You didn’t know anything about gays, you didn’t know anything about abortion, you didn’t know anything about a lot of the social issues they got today,” he said. “We didn’t hear about it, didn’t worry about it, didn’t talk about it, didn’t think about it.”

It was work, and taxes, that politicized Mr. Boehner.

“Growing up, we were probably Kennedy Catholics because we were a strong devout Catholic family,” said Bob Boehner, the congressman’s older brother, who like all his siblings eventually switched party allegiance. “But the first time you get a real job and get your paycheck, you look down and you wonder, where’s the rest of your money, and they explain to you that that’s the tax you have to pay to the government, you start thinking more and more about becoming a Republican.”

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Reading, Ohio, and Carl Hulse from Washington. Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington.

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Vargas Llosa: The Power of the Man Who Didn't Become Peru's President - TIME

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel prize for literature.

The love-hate relationship between Peruvian President Alan Garcia and Mario Vargas Llosa, the newly minted winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, is definitely in the love column right now. Garcia gushed with joy early today, when news of Vargas Llosa's win began spreading through Peru. "It is a great day for Peru and an enormous act of justice for Mario Vargas Llosa," he said.

But just a month ago, the president probably had different words for Vargas Llosa. The novelist had resigned as head of a special committee to build a Memory Museum that would recall the horrors of the state's 20-year war against two brutal, Marxist insurgencies, the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). Vargas Llosa abruptly quit after Garcia's government passed legislation redefining how crimes against humanity would be tried in Peru. The law would have basically closed the books on the most heinous crimes committed by members of the security forces in the 1980s and 1990s. Among those benefiting would have been Garcia and his Vice President Luis Giampietri. Garcia was President in 1986 when he ordered Giampietri, then in charge of naval special operations, to put down a prison riot, resulting in the deaths of more than 300 Shining Path inmates. (In 2000, the Inter-American Court ruled that the prison action by Garcia's government had violated the American Convention on Human Rights.) (See Radhika Jones on Vargas Llosa's Nobel victory.)

In his resignation letter, Vargas Llosa called the law a thinly veiled amnesty and said it was unacceptable in a modern democracy. The author's move embarrassed the government, which then asked Congress to repeal the law, which occured on Sept. 14, with only Giampetri voting against the repeal. The defense minister who wrote the law also resigned. It was not the first time Vargas Llosa was put in charge of a politically charged human rights effort. He headed the government commission that investigated in the 1983 murders of eight journalists in Uchuraccay, Ayacucho.

It was also not the first time Vargas Llosa knocked heads with Garcia. In the 1980s (during Garcia's term as head of state from 1985 to 1990), the author took to a break from literature to fight against the President's decision to nationalize the country's banks. After forming a political party, Fredemo, Vargas Llosa was widely expected to win the presidency in 1990. He lost, instead, to an unknown math teacher, Alberto Fujimori, who went on to infamy, first, because of his brutal battle with the Shining Path and, later, as he unsuccessfully fled Peruvian justice and ended in prison. (See the top 10 failed celebrity political campaigns.)

The author went on to become a fierce critic of the Fujimori regime, which ruled Peru for a decade, especially after the govenrment decided in 1992 to shut down Congress. He was a lone voice for years, but his opposition was vindicated when Fujimori's regime collapsed under a massive corruption scandal. Many other illegal activities were also revealed, including the organization of the Grupo Colina, a paramilitary death squad. Fujimori is serving a 25-year prison sentence for being the "intellectual author" of the squad.

Peruvians have long believed that Vargas Llosa was passed over annually by the Nobel committee because of his political views. "Mario would have won years ago if he kept his political opinions quiet. His outspokenness was difficult for some to accept," says Genaro Delgado Parker, a prominent local journalist. (See how Nobel Prize winners spend their prize money.)

In 2006, Vargas Llosa and Garcia publicly reconciled their differences after Garcia returned to the presidency, this time as a free-market, economic liberal. Since the author's resignation, the Peruvian President has downplayed the rift over the museum, saying that he picked Vargas Llosa because of his "universal objectivity." Garcia announced earlier this week that a friend of Vargas Llosa friend, the painter Fernando de Syzlo, would head the Memory Museum. He has asked Vargas Llosa to reconsider his resignation from the committee.

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