Candidate Issue Index: Transportation
Transportation, Infrastructure, Traffic, Cities, Regions and States
Robert Puentes, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program
The Brookings Institution

Opportunity 08, a Brookings project in partnership with ABC News, aims to help presidential candidates and the public focus on critical issues facing the nation, providing ideas, policy forums, and information on a broad range of domestic and foreign policy questions. Brookings is an independent think tank (501c3) that does not support or oppose any candidate for public office. Voters should learn all they can about the candidates on a range of issues and should not rely on any single source of information before making their decision.

This Pew Research Center Report states that twice as many Americans cited the internet as their primary source of political news and information for the 2006 midterm elections as opposed to the 2002 midterm election. One of the most useful tables in this report shows the percentages alloted to television, newspapers, radio, internet and magazines from 1992 to 2006, outlining the increasing presence of the internet while noting it still falls behind TV, newspapers and radio as a primary information source in 2006. 31% of Americans (totaling more than 60 million people) say they were online during the campaign season "gathering information and exchanging views via email" and the report calls this group "campaign internet users."

71% of campaign internet users cited convenience as a major reason they get political news online. On one hand, the highest percentage of campaign internet users are younger adults who seem to be the most flexible and eager adopters of new technology and internet activism. On the other hand, I wonder if the fundamental importance of convenience could (does) undermine the ability of cyber-activity to translate into voter turnout?

 

Harold

11/21/97
Episode 84

A parable of politics and race in America. The story of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, told on the anniversary of his death. We first broadcast on the tenth anniversary of his death and reran this on the 11th. Washington died November 25, 1987.
Act One. Yesterday. A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington, and its lessons for black and white America, as told by people close to him. Many of them are activists and politicians: Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, then-alderman Eugene Sawyer. There are people from his administration--Jacky Grimshaw and Grayson Mitchell--and some reporters who followed his story: Vernon Jarrett, Monroe Anderson, Gary Rivlin, Laura Washington (who became his press secretary). Plus a few ordinary voters, and a political opponent of the late mayor. Act One continues after the break.
Act Two. The present and the future. Thoughts about why there are no black mayors in the nation's largest cities today--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Plus a visit to a white Chicago ward, to see if ordinary voters have learned any tolerance in the last ten years since Washington's death.
Song: "At Last" Etta James

About: The Next Mayor project is an innovative, two-year multimedia partnership to focus on the issues - not just the personalities - leading to the 2007 mayor's race. It was created by the Daily News, WHYY and the Committee of Seventy. The project is funded in part by a $330,000 grant to WHYY from the William Penn Foundation

This article deals with the power of political blogs in local politics.  It focuses upon how candidates with little or no name recognition can gain some quick ground through the blogisphere.  By using this low cost resource to throw their name into the political arena, new candidates gain the ability to hit potential voters individually and with tons of information very quickly.