I drove out to the Jesse Viertel Memorial Airport this afternoon to begin making pictures for my final project. As I parked and began looking for the airport manager I spoke with on the phone, I felt directionless. The sky was low and overcast and all the planes were huddled on the runway or in pieces inside the hangers. But I was overjoyed to find the people milling around the airport extremely friendly. I arrived close to quitting time, so they offered me a beer and we got to know each other.

I think this will turn out to be a good photo story, but I’m going to have to devote a lot of time to it. I seemed to be the first J school student these people had dealt with, so I’m excited to finally break out of the Mizzou bubble.

I didn’t take any outstanding pictures today, but that’s ok. I brought an ultrawide lens, thinking I’d be photographing mostly runways and buildings, but I think something in the 35-75mm rage might serve me better. There’s a lot of possibilities here, so I’ll probably need a variety of lenses to get what I want. But in the meantime, I established a starting point and aquatinted myself with some potential characters.

Riddle me this: Obama won a national-scale election, Democrats won seats in the Senate, but Republicans retained the House of Representatives, even though Democratic House candidates received more votes overall.

It seems apparent enough to me. Republicans won control of an inordinate number of state legislatures in a redistricting year, and they have capitalized on that.

To be fair, this is not a partisan behavior. Democrats, after all, kept the House during Reagan’s presidency. But it still stinks — and it’s so obvious!

Some states, like California, appoint a nonpartisan committee to redistrict. Consequently, one of the most liberal states still has a plucky Republican delegation (including the majority whip and the popular chairman of the Ethics Committee).

That’s the better way. That’s the fair way.

After two cycles in which the the GOP seemed poised to gain control of the upper chamber, 2014 might finally be the year. 

The next election will come six years after 2008, when many of the senators elected on Obama’s coattails will face reelection for the first time. The Obama wave helped elect Democratic candidates in traditionally conservative territory, but at this early stage in the cycle, Obama seems to be less of an asset. Moreover, some of these senators are from states Obama didn’t even win in 2008.

The most vulnerable are Mark Begich (Alaska), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Mark Pryor (Arkansas) and Tim Johnson (South Dakota). Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) and Max Baucus (Montana) are also at risk. 

Of course, there is also the buzz saw of Republican primaries. Will Saxby Chambliss (Georgia) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) make it to the general, or will they fall to younger, flashier activist candidates, a la Dick Lugar? 

Growing up in Georgia, I can tell you the rumors of Saxby Chambliss’s demise are greatly exaggerated — or at least premature. For one, Georgians might grumble about Chambliss’s flirtation with tax increases, but finding a credible challenger without a history of doing the same would be difficult. 

Which brings me to my second point: finding any challenger will be difficult. Erik Erikson was a tantalizing prospect, but he has unequivocally ruled it out. Karen Handel, the almost-nominee-for-governor-turned-Komen-exec is plausibile, but her Planned Parenthood debacle while helping run Komen For The Cure is politically haunting.

Georgia might be a conservative bastion for now, but it seems every up-and-coming political star is from the Atlanta political scene — which is to say, Democratic. Georgia’s high volume of transplants coupled with its exploding immigrant and urban populations lead me to believe my state will soon become competitive; something like North Carolina or Florida, rather than Alabama, Tennessee or South Carolina. 

November has demonstrated climate change and demographic shifts to be two long-foretold trends asserting a suddenly dramatic influence. Let’s focus on the latter.

Until Tuesday, Mitt’s campaign insisted “momentum” would put them over the top in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa. He lost them all. (Admittedly, Florida’s election mire has kept the state from declaring.) The Romney campaign wasn’t exactly bluffing, because polls show after the first debate Mitt did surge. But the whole story is, Mitt’s true surge was among white males. Since the Romney campaign largely (and for good reason) assumed hispanic and black voters would close ranks around the president, I believe they undervalued the magnitude by which these groups supported for Obama.

Coupled with Obama’s titanic ground operation, this demographic shift away from whites made it easy for Romneyworld to believe optimistic projections (some of which counted on fewer minorities voting than in 2008).

Perhaps the party will note this shift and adjust its tone (particularly on immigration) to accommodate the new political reality. To which, I’m sure officials in the Democratic party would say, buena suerte.

by Adam A. Aton

HONOLULU –– The tendency of urban news media to focus on short-term problems and breaking events – while giving short shrift to promising long-term innovations and solutions ­– has been a “serious media failure,” leading urban-issues columnist Neal Peirce told a group of international journalists participating in the East-West Center’s Jefferson Fellowship study tour.

“Newspapers provide lots of urban crime, conflict and corruption stories,” said Peirce, whose syndicated weekly column for the Washington Post Writer’s Group appears in more than 50 newspapers.

Continue reading “Urban-issues columnist launches website to cover innovative solutions”