coming up on r t it's election day twenty thirteen here in the u.s. and from new york city to miami beach unconventional candidates are shaking up the usual red versus blue politics in-depth coverage of today's elections just ahead. and in washington state there's a major vote on labeling g.m.o. foods initiative passes that would force biotech manufacturers to disclose the use of genetically modified crops more on a vote for greater transparency coming up and down in colorado there's an initiative to divide the state's eleven counties in northeast colorado will vote on whether or not to secede so what are the chances of a fifty first state tell you more later in the show.

it's tuesday november fifth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sachs and you're watching r.t. and we begin with election day two thousand and thirteen that's right political junkies around the country can rejoice because big name elections aren't just reserved for even number of years they happen on odd numbered years too so let's take a look at the map and new jersey and in virginia voters head to the polls to elect a new governor today and in new york city in detroit and miami beach a new mayor will be elected although we should probably put an asterisk on the detroit mayor or all races will explain a little bit later in the show about financial emergency managers. and there are some important ballot questions to be voted on in colorado and in washington two states that made history last year when they legalized marijuana and are trying to make history again this year with a secession vote and a vote to require g.m.o.

labeling now we're going to bring you coverage of all these issues throughout the show but we begin with big races and our team of correspondents positioned up and down the east coast in some states where polls are now closing we have on a stasia churkin to in new york and perry and boring in miami florida so let's get to it i want to start with you bill de blasio he's expected to beat a load of the republican in a landslide election for the may or a race there not only does he look set to become the first democratic mayor of new york in over twelve years but he also seems to be an anti bloomberg what does this tell us about the changing political landscape in new york and people's moods in general. well sam you know it looks like today really first of all there was pretty low turnout in new york so there isn't too much excitement it seems about this election but it's the people who did go out to vote it really seems like they were looking back over the last twelve years and kind of contemplating and weighing in

on bloomberg legacy because the two main candidates that are competing against each other republican versus democrat de blasio versus lhota one of them the republican of course he said he basically would follow in bloomberg steps lhota said that he would continue with his policies that he would basically stick with more of the same and it's the new kind of the candidate they we are expecting to win tonight de blasio who said look it's time for change and new yorkers really seem to be catching on to this message if this message being something that he you know he sticks with his promises but he is very far ahead in the polls and the things that he promised are quite simple and that have been huge issues in new york over the last several years the huge wealth inequality between the rich and poor in the city of course something that bloomberg was certainly not able to tackle or did not concentrate enough of being one of the richest people in the united states he did blasio did promise to put an end to the controversial stop and frisk program find

more a horde of affordable housing in new york city certainly something a huge issue for many people continuing to struggle on this market and really just benefits for low wage workers something that's really important for new yorkers these days because many people are still continuing to largely see the aftermath of the financial crisis of two thousand and eight so this is a candidate that's really stealing the headlines because of promising these changes and many supporters are saying we do want a new new york well i mean where are the chances that some of these policies he ran on actually are implemented he's running on things like raising taxes on wealthy people doing something about income inequality this is a city where mayors have traditionally had a very super tight relationship with with wall street. is. you know heading for a rude awakening when he comes into power. right well it's you know it's possibly

either him or the people who elected him because you know certainly it's sad and you would agree that in the u.s. we've seen quite recently examples of even bigger politicians promising huge change and then not really following up with those promises so this is something that americans and new yorkers are seem to be braced for and the people we spoke to said yeah you know we we were not we're hoping he's going to stick with these promises but we can just only keep our fingers crossed at this point and yes because of this super tight relationship between wall street and bloomberg the fight now financiers at least are here on wall street have gotten used to this certain you know cozy relationship and with this guy coming in and saying i'm going to tax the rich certainly there's going to be quite a battle it seems between him and wall street when he if he begins to really implement the promises that he's made right after all these years a mayor just not named to bloomberg is quite a big change and we're going to. now virginia what's going on there polls just

closed over an hour ago we're talking of course about the governor's race there we had the democrat a call of leading the republican ken cuccinelli plus there's a libertarian candidate in the mix what do you know about voter turnout election results of this point. hi sound yes as you mentioned of the polls closed just about an hour ago and right now there are still are just too early to call there were initial reports saying that terry mcauliffe was in leave however just recently we've got some reports from the washington post and huffington post that say that right now we've got a fifteen percent county rate and cuccinelli is in the lead fifty one percent with mcauliffe trailing behind forty point two percent now one of the interesting things to note in the person that we've been following in particular is robert sarvis he is the libertarian candidate throughout the entire election he was polling at ten percent and right now he's actually holding pretty steady in the polling results

anyway at about eight percent now in this election right behind me at the russell and fire center we had earlier results come in one hundred seventy seven people voted for mcauliffe two hundred seventy one people voted for which nelly and seventy percent seventy people actually came out so it reach that a five percent mark for service here why is why is the ten percent mark so important for service. well ten percent obviously you can't win a governor's election with ten percent but when you can do is guarantee the future of the libertarian party and that is because a specific law that's in the virginia election code which says that in the election before if a party ten percent of the votes they are automatically guaranteed a place on the ballot in the future so that's really important for a few different reasons most of the time when you have these third party candidates coming in they have to spend the majority of their funding and their resources and their time in those early days just trying to get on the ballots and float enough

petitions to get on the ballot for the primaries so they lose a lot of time that the other republican and democratic candidates have the other thing is they get more face time because they will be allowed in the debates so they can have that extra time to speak to the voters to get their face out there without having to raise the vast amounts of money that the republicans and democrats easily pull it. though the latest results i saw so service right about eleven percent number just above it but there's still a lot of votes to be coming in and i'm sure his team will be watching that number very closely let's go down to perry and boring now in miami beach where there's been a mayoral election that's nonpartisan which is made for a fairly colorful field of candidates is probably one of the more entertaining races around the country can you give us an idea of who some of these characters are in this race and if there are any results trickle in. yeah we are sorry to see a few numbers the three main candidates are one philip levine he is the c.e.o.

of royal royal partners and that is a multibillion dollar media conglomerate and local being himself as a multimillionaire he has spent about one point five million dollars on his alexion for a seat that only pays ten thousand dollars and he has hired the best people money can absolutely buy to run his campaign and he even got former us president bill clinton to come down to miami beach and endorse him and he looks like he's doing pretty well the second candidate that i've been following around is steve burke he is thirty two years old a former pro tennis player he suffered a very serious back injury lost his entire athletic career to it and turned to medicinal marijuana as a natural means of treatment and has been a big advocate for legalizing marijuana and he's running on a platform of decriminalizing marijuana and miami beach but has made him a very alternative candidate he's also only raised

a small fraction of the amount of money that levine has spent and he doesn't have the same resources and manpower to get people out there to vote for him as an opponent and the third person i need to mention as michael gone he is miami beach is a first openly gay elected to city commissioner he's now running for mayor and we've gotten some numbers in early voting started two weeks ago and with the absentee ballots plus the early voting numbers levine is leading advocate fifty two percent gone gore has about thirty seven percent and burke only has a but again you know i had the type of resources to bring bosses and to get a lot of the elderly people to get a lot of people mobilized and moved on the ground and get them to the polls and we think that's why these numbers are reflecting such things for the update there was a r g correspondence made in lopez in virginia on a stylus you turn to new york and in miami florida thank you all. meanwhile in

detroit voters headed to the polls to select a new mayor but it's an election unlike any in the city's history not only with the expected winner might do can be the first white mayor in the city since one nine hundred seventy four but also right now detroit is not even under the control of its mayor or locally elected representatives but instead under the control of a financial manager appointed by governor rick snyder who is in charge of managing the city's descent into bankruptcy so the winner of today's mayoral election will have very little power and said he will work under emergency financial manager kevyn orr who has full powers over the city's budget meaning the new mayor will have to get or his approval on any new spend it while both candidates running for mayor of detroit stand opposed to the financial manager in charge of their city neither they nor the voters have any power this election to remove him only governor rick snyder has that power and will snyder has refused to endorse either

candidate for mayor he has supported his financial manager and he insists that the city of detroit will be under kevin or his control through the bankruptcy process so it's an election in name only in detroit today. now on to washington state where the g.m.o. industry finds itself in another fight against transparency on the ballot there is an issue to five twenty two which requires companies to label foods that contain genetically modified ingredients washington state is trying to do what california failed to do last year which has become the first statement nation to pass g.m.o. labeling it's believed that eighty percent of packaged foods in the united states contain g.m. most now this debate has attracted an enormous amount of money a lot coming from out of the state of washington so far supporters of g.m.o. labeling requirements have raised more than seven million dollars in their efforts mostly from thousands of individual donors but. the other side opponents of g.m.o.

labeling mostly biotech companies like monsanto and dupont have raised three times as much more than twenty two million dollars and that cash influx has significantly moved the polls a survey of likely voters in september should the labeling measure passing with two thirds of voters in support and twenty two percent against but now those numbers have narrowed with only forty six percent in favor and forty two percent opposed we sell a similar poll shift in california last november just before the g.m.o. labeling measure was defeated for more on this i was joined earlier by alexis payton meyer political director at the organic consumers association and i first asked her what this initiative in washington would specifically do. well it gives us what ninety three percent of the public is demanding our right to know what's in our food our right to know if our food contains genetically modified organism it's

very very important for consumers to be aware of this issue and unfortunately only about twenty six percent of the american public actually knows they're already eating t.m.o. foods but the american medical association came out recently and said that these g.m.o. foods said have been safety tested before we started eating them and they weren't the american academy of environmental medicine doctors are going say some not quite as powerful as the and but still a great group lots of pediatricians they're saying that they're seeing problems in their patients now that they believe are related to g m o's these include include gastrointestinal problems allergies even autism may be linked to eating jam out so beyond just the common sense here that people should have a right to know what they're eating there's also a whole medical dynamic here because this is definitely an unsettled question in science whether these foods are healthy or not for you i mentioned enormous amounts of money flowing into. opponents of g.m.o. labeling mostly these g.m.o.

companies like monsanto and dupont have spent twenty thirty million dollars in this race to defeat it they did the same thing in california what's behind this why are they so adamantly opposed to something just as innocuous as labeling their products well i think it goes to that question of whether g.m. us are safe to eat if they're not safe to eat based and feeding us poison essentially and they're not going to want to admit that. the money is having a profound effect though i mean in i remember last year we value on to talk about this issue in california and the polls show that this was going to pass overwhelmingly and then monsanto into part of the rest and coming down tens of million dollars and in the polls just suddenly shipped like that you know what i just mentioned in the in the intro today here that the polls were similar. overwhelmingly people supporting jim are labeling all this money gets dumped and in the polls change why why is money having such an impact on this issue and

could it be the supporters of g.m.o. labeling are not doing the work they need to do to get the message out through this money is there more that they can be doing to compete against this point well it's tough because the message on the no side hasn't been that the companies are opposed to consumers right to know they've been telling consumers that g.m.o. labels are fine but that this bill won't give the voters the g.m.o. labels that voters want that no side has focused on perceived probably made up exemptions and loopholes that. and they also kind of focus on extra costs that will burden these companies us right to say ok the cost of what it would cost for every company to take the g.m.o. and greedy and out of their products and they say that's what it would cost to label the product labels are virtually costly so most of the most of the money that's coming from the opposition side is is funneling misinformation baseball yet this issue because they can't win by saying they don't support consumers right now

and as a result of the citizens united and other elections that have allowed all this money to flow into these elections it's really hard to kind of speak through a lot of the misinformation that's coming out california tried to become the first state last year to require g.m.o. labeling washington now is trying to become the first state to do it how important is it for that first state to break through what might we see on a national landscape once one state succeeds in thousand jamma labeling could it have a ripple effect across the country oh yes already more than half of the states have introduced legislation to label to a mouse and we will see a wave of new legislation being passed all across the country if we went today in washington state and i guess that's why you see those senators staking ground in the states to make sure make sure that g.m.o. labeling fails but we'll have to see what happens tonight alexis peyton my a political director of the organic consumers association thank you. for being on last year colorado voters made history joining washington voters and becoming the first state in the country to legalize marijuana well this year some colorado

voters are trying to make history again by seceding becoming a fifty first state parties marine important eyes in colorado with more. in a state of five point one million people democracy is failing the minority and a battle to break away has begun we're trying to address from a systemic issue within a country which is this rural versus urban divide eleven colorado counties approximately four hundred thousand citizens are voting on a ballot initiative that would pave the way for leaving the fifty first us states the urban areas can assert their well against the rural communities and it is like taxation without representation and that the rural communities don't have a voice to the things that are being forced upon them earlier this year colorado's democratically controlled legislature exerted its power by passing laws fiercely unpopular in the northeastern parts of the state among them. historic gun

control laws and mandating only rural areas to produce twenty percent of their energy from renewable sources a move officials say will crush farmers and ranchers while also raising the cost of electricity urban legislators imposed one standard on rural colorado and exempted themselves out of that same standard for their urban constituents one might call that tyranny in my thirteen years plus of being a county commissioner i have never seen folks this frustrated this discontent this feeling of this disenfranchise in addition to sending a message to lawmakers here in denver supporters of the fifty first state say their ballot initiative also serves as inspiration for the many other u.s. cities and states with their own secession movements i get fold calls on a regular basis. at least once

a week from citizens in other states that saying hey what are you guys doing out there how you doing this from vermont and north carolina to texas and california the u.s. has seen a rapid spy. movements blazing across the nation in the past decade as the united states has grown extremely divided i hope that there's a recognition that a disconnect exists not just here in colorado but in other states and that we need to begin to address that problem the problem of america's partisan politics extends all the way up to the top of last month's dysfunctional stalemate in washington caused a sixteen day government shutdown the next step beyond this is going to be more than likely in twenty fourteen statewide ballot initiative which everybody in the state would be able to vote at that point which would redraw the boundaries of the state of colorado however this coveted swing state can only be torn in two with the approval of u.s. congress a powerful legislative body known best for its own failure at reaching compromise

merino point ny out colorado from elections to activism in the u.k. today is known as the guy fawkes day commemorating the guy who tried to blow up the british parliament on this day more than four hundred years ago now thanks in part to the graphic novel and later movie v for vendetta guy foxes' visage has been immortalized on masks masks that were frequently worn by members of the occupy movement and masks that have become the symbol of the internet hacktivist group known as anonymous well today anonymous called on millions around the world to turn out to major landmarks as part of the million mask march against billionaire bankers and corporations who are corrupting politicians and perpetuating injustices around the world rallies took place in more than four hundred locations including right here in washington d.c. and in los angeles that's where our t.v. remote go indo has our report. right. sydney just

yet all from london to here in los angeles demonstrators dotting the guy fawkes mask all protesting against corruption around the world. i'm tired of the way things are going i'm tired i'm tired of the banking industry running our government our government no longer representing the people people are displeased with the status quo so yeah. and then you educate. and then you organize activist link to the online activism movement anonymous helped organize this million mass march which is supposed to be taking place in dozens of cities across the u.s. organizers proclaimed that this event aims to help bring back fairness justice and freedom in the system my dad actually is going on seventy now and he can't retire any flat feel slaving away just to keep it just to keep current house like what is right now live we were not able to help out at all we can't even support ourselves at his children and he's over there you know at the white house and you know

they're getting arrested right now from genetically modified foods the federal reserve demonstrators here express many problems with the current culture of our politics and our corporate nature they are hoping that the first like this will awaken the public to many problems that are not commonly covered in the mainstream press in los angeles ramon not in the party u.s. secretary of state john kerry is in poland there that he tried to ease concerns from allies over the n.s.a. spying programs promising that a review of surveillance activities will strike the right balance between security and privacy yes we've heard a lot of talk lately about striking balances kerry also advised allies not to let n.s.a. revelations get in the way of trade deals between europe and the united states u.s. defense contractors are trying to get involved with a forty five billion dollar upgrade to an air base in central poland and talks are underway over a new and much broader e.u. u.s. trade deal that as a result of the n.s.a.

leaks could get shaken up all this comes as new allegations are leveled at the u.k. spy agency g c h q close partner of the n.s.a. over whether or not the brits are still spying on the germans artie's peter all over as more. because of another day another case of spying on each other this time it's the turn of the british it seems these allegations in documents leaked by edward snowden suggest that on the roof of the british embassy here in berlin there was a pawn in the roof listening post now if that's the case it comes just a week after the united states supposedly removed a listening post of their own on the roof of their embassy which is just next door to the british embassy here in the german capital now there is the argument that this is what they do however there is certainly going to be repercussions from this if it turns out that it is true that the british had this. this this what's called

an intercept nest on the roof of the embassy it's certainly going to be toxic for relations between germany and britain to close allies within europe and it also comes at a time where german officials try and get some kind of agreement on not spying on each other so all of this information coming out it seems in a relentless fashion showing that all of these people who held hands as friends around the world were all secretly listening in to what each other would doing now it's been said that the e.u. have asked david cameron's british government for answers on this the british government have said well it's a matter of security and they don't comment on matters of security it all seems like a very easy answer to give but this to be repercussions from they said it does seem that just because you're a little paranoid doesn't mean that everybody isn't spying on you there was artie's

peter all over berlin germany one of the burden earning rate in fact here and who can forget rodman and. that's right who would have ever thought that the former chicago bulls player dennis rodman and kim drawn would be such great friends tonight resident takes a look at the strange friendship between dennis rodman and the north korean dictator. we need to talk about this whole dennis rodman north korea situation because it's awesome robin has become b.s.f. with kim jong un north korea's dictator he visited north korea this year for a t.v.

show what else and he got along so well with the dictator that he was quoted as saying i love him he's now organizing our basketball game to celebrate kim's birthday next year recently rodman went back to north korea for another visit and he came back gushing about what a great time we had i want to great guy kim is he's been making lots of statements to the press about how the dictator is just as understood this thing is that all that calling him just a good hearted kid so dennis rodman has made it his mission to improve relations between the u.s. and north korea dennis rodman a guy who can barely pronounce words who got rich off of basketball they did madonna and carmen electra has a well documented drug and alcohol problem and has starred in donald trump's reality show the apprentice in other words dennis rodman is the perfect representation of america he has the euro understanding of politics or labor camps

or anything of any real importance at all at a recent press conference reporters were pressing him about what is thoughts were about north korea's bad relations with china and japan rodman responded i don't care what the f. he goes over there what he does with that what he does over there between me and him with friends i don't care if the bags is just perfect because that is how we roll in america we. and we don't worry about how terrible they might be to others we have a terrific friendship with saudi arabia where women are allowed to drive and need male guardian under the law we're festes with israel i don't even care about their hypocritical nuclear weapons program while we threatened iran with war for the same damn thing. only joke countries making friends with other countries while bashing others who do the same things as their b.s.

that country so it's absolutely perfect that dennis rodman defends his new best buddy who happens to be one of the most controversial secretive world leaders of our generation it makes dennis rodman the quintessential american atmospheric for our time tonight let's talk about that. does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r g america or you're going to website r t v dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter sam sax and don't forget to tune in at nine pm per larry king no tonight's guests are the two great boxing titans you better holyfield and mike tyson hopefully everybody comes out of that interview with both their years intact

until next time take it easy. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question for.