SSP Daily Digest: 6/23 (Afternoon Edition)

KY-Sen: The Louisville Courier-Journal has something of a compendium of Rand Paul’s Greatest Hits, selecting the dodgiest bits from his public appearances from the last decade. While the whole thing’s worth a look, the highlight most likely to attract the most attention is his criticisms of the current health care system and how it “keeps patients from negotiating lower prices with their doctors.” Bwack bwack bwack bwack bwack bwack…

LA-Sen: A key David Vitter aide has resigned after his long rap sheet was revealed, perhaps most significantly that he pled guilty in 2008 to charges associated with a “knife-wielding altercation” with an ex-girlfriend, as well as that he’s still wanted on an open warrant in Baton Rouge on DWI charges. Perhaps most disturbingly, this was an aide that Vitter had been assigned to “oversee women’s issues.”

MO-Sen: I’ll bet you’d forgotten that Roy Blunt had a teabagging primary challenger, in the form of state Sen. Roy Purgason (I had). Well, Purgason wants you to know that, despite complete silence from the DeMint/RedState/CfG/FreedomWorks axis, he’s still hanging in there; he just rolled out an endorsement from one of his Senate colleagues, Matt Bartle.

NV-Sen: Well, this doesn’t look good for John Ensign. Staffers, in depositions, have told the Senate Ethics Committee that, yes, they knew that the one-year lobbying ban was being broken when they helped set up former Ensign staffer and cuckolded husband Doug Hampton with a cushy lobbying gig.

NY-Sen-B: After Quinnipiac didn’t even bother polling him this week, Joe DioGuardi (who holds the Conservative ballot line and its trying to petition into the GOP primary) wants you to know he’s still in this thing. He released an internal poll from the ubiquitous POS showing that he’s within 11 points of Kirsten Gillibrand (49-38), and, more plausibly, that he has a big edge in the GOP primary, at 21 against Bruce Blakeman’s 7 and David Malpass at 3.

OR-Sen: Rasmussen has been working hard to convince people that there just might be a competitive race in Oregon for Ron Wyden, against little-known law professor Jim Huffman. Looking to head that off at the pass, Wyden rolled out an internal poll today from Grove Insight that should be a bucket of cold water for the Huffman camp: Wyden leads 53-23.

CA-Gov: I’m not sure how much of this is Politico just, as is its wont, looking for drama where there isn’t much, and how much of this is genuine discontent. But they have an article today about an increasing sense among Dem insiders of wondering when Jerry Brown is going to drop the Zen approach and, if not attack Meg Whitman, at least work on some of the infrastructural aspects of the campaign.

CT-Gov: Ned Lamont got a key labor endorsement, from the state’s largest teachers’ union, the Connecticut Education Association. Lamont and Dan Malloy have split the endorsements from the various trade unions. Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Tom Foley got an endorsement that may help him with that all-important demographic bloc of Massachusetts expatriates; ex-Gov. William Weld gave Foley his backing.

MI-Gov: Peter Hoekstra got an endorsement from his next-door neighbor in the House, outgoing (and considerably more moderate) Rep. Vern Ehlers, who had earlier said he wouldn’t endorse but qualified that by saying “If there is an exceptional candidate that appears to be lagging” he’d endorse. Hoekstra in fact does seem to be lagging, facing a seeming surge from AG Mike Cox in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

MN-Gov: This seems odd; when she pulled the plug on her campaign after the DFL convention, Ramsey Co. DA Susan Gaertner said she didn’t want to get in the way of the historic prospect of a female governor and didn’t want to be a spoiler for Margaret Anderson Kelliher. So what did she do today? She endorsed Matt Entenza in the DFL primary instead.

NM-Gov (pdf): Magellan (a Republican pollster, but one who’ve started releasing a lot of polls where they don’t have a candidate) is out with a poll of the New Mexico governor’s race, and like several other pollsters are finding the Diane Denish/Susana Martinez race to be in tossup territory. They find the Republican Martinez leading Denish 44-43. There’s a huge gender gap here: women support Denish 48-36, while men support Martinez 53-36. One other item from the crosstabs, which either casts some doubt on the findings or else is the key to why Martinez may win this: while Martinez is losing in Albuquerque-based NM-01, she’s actually winning in NM-03 (45-41), the most liberal of the state’s three districts but also the most-heavily Latino.

AL-07: Local African-American organizations (the same ones who threw their backing to Ron Sparks in the gubernatorial primary) seem split on what do to in the runoff in the 7th. The Alabama New South Coalition (who’d backed Earl Hilliard Jr. in the primary) has now endorsed Terri Sewell, while the Alabama Democratic Conference is backing Shelia Smoot.

OH-05: Rep. Bob Latta languishes as one of the GOP’s most obscure back-benchers, but he’s in the news because of two different things that happened at a town hall meeting. First, he went birther-agnostic at the meeting in response to a participant’s questions, only to try to walk that back later when talking to a reporter. And second, he didn’t immediately respond to another participant’s suggestion that the President be “shot in the head.”

OK-02: State Sen. Jim Wilson is challenging Rep. Dan Boren in the Democratic primary in the 2nd; he’s out with an internal poll from Lake Research with a dismal topline (Boren leads 62-17) but with better numbers on the “informed ballot.” The topline numbers aren’t that different from Boren‘s own internal poll released last week. Still, between Boren releasing an internal, airing an anti-Wilson ad, and rolling out an endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it’s clear Boren is taking the threat seriously.

Census: The Census Bureau is out this week with its 2009 population estimates of the nation’s cities, the last estimate it’ll provide before releasing the numbers from the actual 2010 count. Perhaps most notably, they found the population of New York City is up another 45,000 over the last year. NYC’s growth over the last decade accounts for two-thirds of the state’s population growth over the last decade; as we’ve discussed before, this means that in the next round of redistricting (Congressional, but especially legislative) the city is going to continue to gain strength at the expense of dwindling Upstate.

138 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 6/23 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. Dan Boren trying to capture some of the Dale Peterson magic by wielding a gun at the end of the ad? He should of said that Jim Wilson doesn’t give a rip about Oklahoma!

  2. Is a flaming, lying, scumbag sonofabitch asshole.  I was in school at Bowling Green State University in 2007 during the special election to replace the late Paul Gillmor, and the guy completely lied out his rear about his opponent the entire race.  His smear campaign was found to be just that, a smear by the Ohio Attorney General’s office.  Unfortunately, he just barely snuck by in the primary race, and then in the general election, despite losing his own home county (Wood County), he still defeated Democrat Robin Weirauch, who in a sane district would have run away with the race.

    Basically in the general election, Weirauch was cast off by Latta in his television ads as “the dreaded liberal”.  Every single one of his ads ended with the same line! “Oppose liberal Weirauch, Bob Latta, the conservative candidate for Congress”.  Apparently that’s a winning message still in OH-5 even though Obama moved the needle here quite a bit in 2008.  I remember the DCCC getting involved in the race in the late going and that told me that national democrats thought they had a great shot at a pickup.  It was an extremely dissapointing result, and quite frankly, much of rural northwest Ohio is struggling today while representative Latta sits on his hands as a backbencher.  He’s done nothing, and provides horrible constituent services.  

    It makes me happy to be rid of him, and be back safe within the confines of Betty Sutton’s OH-13.  Even if Tom Ganley somehow beats her in November, at least he would be upstanding and conscientious representative even though I would disagree with his politics.

  3. Sean Tevis formally kicked off his campaign with a speech on the steps of the Capitol building in Topeka. There’s a decent article and some good video on Kansas Watchdog. There’s also video with some press Q&A’s, too.

    I couldn’t watch the whole thing (work, ugh, always getting in the way)–but from what I did watch, he’s not the most polished public speaker, but he’s reasonably charismatic and comes across as a completely normal, everyday guy (especially in the Q&A’s).  

  4. Branstad will tour the state with his lt. gov pick tomorrow. Conflicting leaks say it’s going to be either former State Senator Jeff Lamberti or current State Senator Kim Reynolds. Lamberti is fairly well known in central Iowa after running for Congress against Boswell in IA-03 in 2006. Very few people have heard of Reynolds. A few weeks ago I might not have recognized her name as a current member of the Iowa Senate (she’s halfway through her first term and hasn’t done anything notable).

    Culver has a new negative ad up on Branstad.

  5. Surprisingly, NM-03 (which is D+7) is actually the least Latino district in the state, at 36 %.  NM-01 is 43% Latino and the most conservative district, NM-02, is actually the most Latino at 47%.

    NM-03 is nearly 20% Native American, however, and has a lot of white liberals in the Santa Fe area.

  6. They have Obama job approval upside down for the first time, 45-48.  And GOP leads generic ballot 45-43.

    Gallup daily track today has Obama upside down again at 45-46.

    I’m noticing in recent weeks that Obama is much more consistently sub-50, and upside down in more polls than anytime in the past.  There’s a real trend here.

    I have no doubt it’s the oil spill.

    And I don’t know how we turn this around.  The BP escrow and GOP reaction helped a little, but the messaging needs to get a lot better.

    Obama has governed well under exceptionally tough circumstances.  But he’s not getting credit for that.

    Time is running out.

  7. This can’t be happening

    Obama approvals:

    NBC/Wall Street Journal- 45%

    Gallup- 45%

    RASMUSSEN- 48%

    Wow, Scotty actually produced a believable poll. He has Obama better than Gallup. Wow.  

  8. http://voices.washingtonpost.c

    Here’s a cool breakdown in WaPo about the popularity of HCR amongst different age demographics. Basically, every group besides seniors are favorable to the bill, but seniors really hate it. How can we fix this? Hmmmm…..

  9.   If Rand Paul did get elected, and he could be, his mouth would keep his colleagues  wincing.  Some might even have to hide under their desks now and then as his more crazy sophistries.  Viewed in that light his election would not be a total loss.  

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