Democratic Party

It's been a busy couple of weeks for Joseph P. Kennedy III. First, the 31-year-old son of former US Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II - and grandson of Robert F. Kennedy - announced he was forming an exploratory committee to consider a run for the congressional seat being vacated by Democrat Barney Frank. Now, we hear he's proposed to his girlfriend, Lauren Anne Birchfield - and, yes, she accepted. The news came in an e-mail sent to select Democratic Party officials and media outlets by Birchfield's parents, the Rev. James T. and Marta M. Birchfield of Houston.

Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney and his party together raised $40.1 million in April. The figures put the likely GOP nominee's fundraising haul closer to the $43.6 million that President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party raised last month. Romney's campaign pulled in about $12.5 million in March. April's reports provide the first fundraising tallies of the general election. Romney began raising cash in conjunction with the GOP last month. The new fundraising totals don't include the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by "super" political action...

WASHINGTON --President Carter said the Democratic Party has become too closely associated with abortion rights and has strayed too far from the views of religious people. Carter, in a C-SPAN2 interview scheduled for broadcast this weekend, also said he would have named the first woman to the Supreme Court if an opening had come up during his presidency. Shirley Hufstedler, then a federal appeals court judge in California, would have been his choice, he said. The former Democratic president was interviewed about his new book, "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," which argues for...

Once a bright spot for President Barack Obama, North Carolina is now more like a political migraine less than four months before Democrats open the party's national convention in Charlotte. The causes are plenty. Labor unions, a core Democratic constituency, are up in arms. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue isn't running for re-election; Democrats say she was likely to lose. The state Democratic Party is in disarray over an explosive sexual harassment scandal. Voters recently approved amending the state constitution to ban gay marriage, a position that runs counter to Obama's.

WASHINGTON -- In consecutive days last month, Alabama lost two legends from a disappearing movement -- Southern Democrats who were powerful in Washington because of their party's majority and powerful back home because of their tendency to buck it. Look around Congress these days and you'll find few conservative Democrats in the mold of the late Senator Howell Heflin or Representative Tom Bevill. Those who remain are almost as likely to represent the Midwest or Great Plains as the once-solid South.

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- John Burns, a two-term Binghamton mayor who ran the state Democratic Party and helped Robert Kennedy become a US senator, died Tuesday of heart failure in Ithaca at the home of one of his daughters. He was 83. Mr. Burns was a force in state politics for more than four decades. He was Binghamton mayor from 1958 to 1965, state Democratic chairman, Kennedy's campaign chairman, and appointments secretary to former governor Hugh Carey. While he proudly called himself "a partisan Democrat," he was also a politician who won respect and...

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and Democratic congressional leaders are trying to raise $10 million for presidential nominee-to-be John F. Kerry in 10 days. The former president, taking up his longtime role as the Democrats' "fund-raiser in chief," sent prospective donors an e-mail yesterday urging them to help meet the online fund-raising goal. Kerry's campaign raised $10 million over the Internet in 10 days after he locked up the Democratic nomination March 2. "It's our chance to demonstrate that in 2004, we're...

Marisa DeFranco, a North Shore immigration lawyer whose financially strapped campaign is relying on a small band of passionate volunteers, has collected enough voter signatures to qualify for a primary race with Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The unexpected development could complicate Warren's much-ballyhooed challenge to Republican incumbent Scott Brown. An official familiar with the signature process confirmed Wednesday that DeFranco has submitted to local election officials more than the 10,000 certified signatures required as a first step...

After a huge rush of optimism that Elizabeth Warren's candidacy would end Scott Brown's hold on his US Senate seat, Democratic insiders and activists are awakening to a new political reality, driven by a series of recent polls and Brown's success these past few months in crafting an independent bipartisan image. The campaign's reshaped landscape, which appears to have shifted in Brown's favor, has created a quiet buzz among some in the party that Warren, despite her incredible burst onto the Massachusetts electoral map last fall, has hit some strong headwinds and will need...

ALL ACROSS America, liberals have been engaged in a debate over the enthusiasm with which to support President Obama's reelection. One side argues that while Obama might not have been the second coming of FDR, he was dealt an impossible hand; Republicans obstructed everything Obama tried, which forced him to attempt to compromise. The other side faults Obama for often behaving like a Republican lite rather than fighting for the things for which liberals and Democrats have stood. Complaints notwithstanding, these folks will likely pull the lever for him come November, but they are less...

Marisa DeFranco, a North Shore immigration lawyer whose financially strapped campaign is relying on a small band of passionate volunteers, has collected enough voter signatures to qualify for a primary race with Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The unexpected development could complicate Warren's much-ballyhooed challenge to Republican incumbent Scott Brown. An official familiar with the signature process confirmed Wednesday that DeFranco has submitted to local election officials more than the 10,000 certified signatures required as a first step for her to...

Ichiro Ozawa, the veteran Japanese lawmaker who engineered the ruling party's rise to power, was acquitted Thursday in a political funding scandal that has damaged his chances of becoming prime minister. The scandal also cost Ozawa his membership in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, though he continued to wield great influence as a political power broker. The acquittal means his membership could be reinstated, allowing him to exert even more sway. The 69-year-old was charged last year with overseeing false accounting by his former aides in a murky 2004 land...

Japan's Cabinet has approved a proposal to raise the sales tax, clearing the way for legislation to help counter the country's mounting fiscal deficit. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has pledged to carry out tax and social security reforms this year. The bill approved Friday calls for raising the 5 percent sales tax in two stages, to 8 percent in 2014 and 10 percent by 2015. The plan is unpopular with the public and opposed by opposition lawmakers as well as some within Noda's own Democratic Party of Japan.

President Obama collected $45 million for his reelection bid in February, accelerating his fund-raising pace as his campaign frets over an oncoming spending blitz by Republican-leaning outside groups. Obama's monthly haul was nearly twice as much as the $23 million per month average he raised during the final three months of 2011 and more than the $29.1 million he raised in January. Yet the largesse still fell short of the $56 million he raised in February 2008, when he was seeking the Democratic nomination against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

President Barack Obama is holding a private fundraiser with about 20 donors who each gave $35,800 to his re-election effort. Obama is holding the event at the upscale W Hotel near the White House. The fundraiser is closed to the media. Proceeds from Monday's fundraiser are split between Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic Party. Through the end of February, Obama has raised about $300 million for his re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the current election cycle.

RE "Democratic jitters in Senate race: Brown's resurgence in polls has shaken some of party's confidence in Warren" (Metro, March 6): Elizabeth Warren's main tie to Massachusetts is that she has collected a paycheck from one of our most prestigious universities. She would not be running for Senate except for two things: She was blocked from taking the Obama administration job, running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she developed; and the national Democratic Party thought the field that our local Democrats were putting forth was too pathetic to have a chance...

Democrats seeking to replace Republican Scott Brown in the US Senate came face-to-face at a fund-raiser by the state Democratic Party in Plymouth this week. Mingling on the manicured lawn at the oceanfront estate of late theologian Peter J. Gomes were Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren , Newton Mayor Setti Warren , and state Representative Tom Conroy . Speakers included Senate President Therese Murray and state Democratic Party chairman John E. Walsh .

After a huge rush of optimism that Elizabeth Warren's candidacy would end Scott Brown's hold on his US Senate seat, Democratic insiders and activists are awakening to a new political reality, driven by a series of recent polls and Brown's success these past few months in crafting an independent bipartisan image. The campaign's reshaped landscape, which appears to have shifted in Brown's favor, has created a quiet buzz among some in the party that Warren, despite her incredible burst onto the Massachusetts electoral map last fall, has hit some strong headwinds and will need to recapture the excitement...

On the eve of Tuesday's presidential primary in Massachusetts, the state Democratic Party is attacking Republican candidate and former Bay State Governor Mitt Romney. In a conference call with reporters, Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh and Newton Mayor and former Senate candidate Setti Warren criticized Romney's economic record in Massachusetts. "Romney wasn't very good at generating jobs. He didn't work very hard at it," Walsh said, attacking a central tenet of Romney's platform, which is that he is the candidate best suited to deal with the...