SSP Daily Digest: 2/25

AR-Sen: Here’s one way in which Blanche Lincoln can breathe a little easier: she’s not getting a primary challenge from the right (as if there were any room on the right of her within the Democratic electorate). State Sen. President Bob Johnson, who floated the idea in August, said he won’t run against her. However, she’s drawing heat on her left from African-American groups; the state’s NAACP is upset that she hasn’t done more to appoint African-American federal judges. With Lincoln already on environmentalists’ hit list and organized labor unenthused about her, there isn’t much left of the Democratic base she can afford to tick off. A primary from the left from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is still possible – although if there’s one guy whose support Halter can’t count on, it’s retiring Blue Dog Rep. Marion Berry (saying it was a fluke Halter got elected LG in the first place, and that Halter “is only of consequence in his own mind”).

CO-Sen: Former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff is counting on labor backing in the Democratic primary, but Michael Bennet got a key boost; he got the endorsement of the SEIU. (That public option letter is already paying dividends.) Meanwhile, Romanoff seems to be staking his hopes on a strong showing in Colorado’s party insider-dominated caucus and convention process that begins next month, in order to catapult him into contention. (It’s non-binding, and candidates can still win the primary without winning at the convention, with Ken Salazar as Exhibit A.) On the GOP side, former LG Jane Norton is getting slammed from the right by former state Sen. Tom Wiens for her support (following the lead of Republican Gov. Bill Owens) of Referendum C, which passed and lifted certain spending limits imposed by a previous TABOR initiative.

FL-Sen: We’ll have to see if this does anything to tarnish that conservative halo that’s gleaming over Marco Rubio’s head. Revelations came out (via Jim Greer, the Charlie Crist ally who recently got bounced out his place as state GOP chair) that Rubio charged $13,900 in personal expenses to a party-issued credit card over the course of several years. I don’t see this as a game-changer, but it’s the first hard blow the Crist camp has been able to land in a while.

GA-Sen: Rasmussen finds that the anti-incumbent blues are even weighing down super-safe Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson a bit, as he’s below 50%. Too bad the Democrats don’t have a top-tier candidate to go against him (although it seems like they have a few spares in the gubernatorial race who might consider making the jump). Isakson beats Generic Dem by 49-36.

NY-Sen-B: Harold Ford Jr.’s big night out at the Stonewall Dems didn’t quite go according to plan. He was repeatedly heckled and shouted down as he attempted to explain his convenient road-to-Damascus conversion on matters such as gay marriage. It also turns out that Ford’s former House colleagues from the New York delegation aren’t much more enthused about his run, either. The majority of the delegation has already endorsed Kirsten Gillibrand, and no one has backed down from that, with Ed Towns, Greg Meeks, Jerry Nadler, Tim Bishop, and Carolyn McCarthy all offering public statements discouraging his run.

UT-Sen: Wow, yet another Republican is going to get into the primary against Bob Bennett, who has a bullseye on his back because of occasional acts of cooperation instead of lockstep obstructionism. This one is actually a step above the rest of the field… or maybe not. Ex-Rep. Merrill Cook says he’s going to get in the race. An ex-Rep. is nothing to sneeze at (especially when none of the other contestants have gotten elected to anything before), but on the other hand, Cook was kind of an eccentric who frequently ran for office until lucking out in 1996. His hotheadedness got him primaried out in 2000 (and Jim Matheson went on to pick up the seat for the Dems that year).

NY-Gov: The blowback from yesterday’s NYT article is already hitting David Paterson’s inner circle, suggesting he isn’t going to be able to shrug this off. Paterson’s Criminal Justice Coordinator, Denise O’Donnell, resigned in protest over having been lied to by the state police.

OR-Gov: Local Republican pollster Moore Insight takes a look at the gubernatorial race — and they find ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber doing a lot better than Rasmussen did. They find Kitzhaber has identical 45-33 leads over the two GOPers they judged the strongest, Allen Alley and Chris Dudley. (Rasmussen actually found long-forgotten ex-state Sen. John Lim fared the best against Kitzhaber of the four GOPers, but apparently Moore didn’t think Lim was worth polling; Rasmussen had Dudley within 6 of Kitzhaber and Alley trailing by 8.) Moore didn’t poll the primaries, or how Democratic ex-SoS Bill Bradbury would fare.

SC-Gov: Winthrop University polled South Carolina without doing gubernatorial head-to-heads, but that may not matter as they also found that few people know anything about anybody who’s running; only LG Andre Bauer came close to 50% name rec. They did find 43 61% approval for Jim DeMint, 39 45% approval for Lindsey Graham, and a surprisingly high (for SC) 48% approval for Barack Obama.

AK-AL: Businessman, blogger, and gadfly Andrew Halcro (who ran as an indie in the 2006 gubernatorial race) sounds like he’s backing down from his planned Republican primary challenge to Rep. Don Young. He cited other developments (all positive) in his business and family life.

HI-01: It looks like Hawaii’s election officials found enough change under the couch cushions to throw together a special election to replace retiring Rep. Neil Abercrombie, after all. They’ve tentatively set a May 22 date for the all-party winner-take-all election. All three candidates plan to run again in the September primary for the regularly-scheduled election.

NJ-03: It looks like NFL player and gentleman farmer Jon Runyan may have a less tortuous path to the GOP nomination than Chris Myers did in 2008 (which helped contribute to Rep. John Adler’s victory that year). Toms River Committeeman Maurice Hill (the dreaded rear admiral who was the favorite of the Ocean County GOP) decided that he won’t run, meaning that all of the county organizations are likely to coalesce around Runyan. Runyan already has the support of the Burlington County party.

PA-12: After recently deciding not to run, Joyce Murtha weighed in with an endorsement in the battle to replace her deceased husband. She endorsed Murtha’s former district director, Mark Critz. The state party will choose a replacement candidate on March 8. On the GOP side, they’ve pretty much struck out on finding an upgrade from the two guys who were already running, businessman Tim Burns and Bill Russell. And now there’s growing worry that Russell — who claims to be the choice of the conservative grassroots, although mostly that’s because he’s been able to churn and burn through millions in direct mail fundraising through BaseConnect (the company known until recently as BMW Direct) — may pull a Doug Hoffman and get on the ballot as an indie if he doesn’t get chosen by the party poohbahs. Even RedState has had to weigh in, praising establishment fave Burns and warning Russell not to bolt — the total opposite of their NY-23 stance, of course, although Burns, who’s tried to reach out to the teabaggers, is no Scozzafava-style moderate.

SD-AL: This is encouraging; even Rasmussen can’t find a way to show Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in grave peril. Herseth Sandlin, who has three different credible GOP candidates fighting it out in the primary to take her on, leads all three, two of them by double digits. Herseth Sandlin beats SoS Chris Nelson 45-38, state House assistant majority leader Kristi Noem 49-34, and self-funding state Rep. Blake Curd 51-33. In fact, these numbers are extremely close to the ones put up by PPP back in December.

IL-LG: Well, here’s a nice solution to the Dems’ woes in trying to find a Lt. Governor candidate in Illinois: just eliminate the position. State House speaker Michael Madigan is bringing to the House floor a plan to altogether eliminate the non-job that is Lt. Governor in 2015 (and save millions). Unfortunately, that still means the Dems need to find someone to fill that slot (vacated by Scott Lee Cohen’s implosion) for one term.

Polltopia: Nate Silver performs a nice deconstruction of the myth that won’t die: that incumbents polling below 50% in early polling are going to lose. He finds there is no consistent tendency for challengers to pick up the bulk of the undecideds. Moreover, a majority of incumbents polling below 50% in the 2006-09 cycles went on to win anyway. (It’d be interesting to extent this study, though, beyond the 06 and 08 wave years to see if it holds true in more neutral cycles.)

62 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 2/25”

  1. I could check out the results from 2 of the 4 Hawaii special elections by driving and photocopying. But i’m not driving 70 miles in February. Even if it could shed light on the “Abercrombie wins special election, loses primary” oddity (Hawaii had open primaries too, so it might be a GOTV failure involving voters voting for Abercrombie in the special election and not voting in the primary)

    Don’t tell the Teapartiers about this one, because they’d fly to Hawaii. If they’re willing to go to New York in October, they’re guaranteed to bother Hawaiians.

    And Utah is a bit weirder, as I think Bennett has to win 60% or 66% in a convention to avoid a primary, and the voting will keep going and going until that happens. Although, in theory, he could lose his seat and have no way to run for re-election through the same convention process.

    Missouri note: Still no candidates for the 2nd, 6th, and 9th. But the Democratic candidate for Roy Blunt’s seat (Tim Davis) has a PhD in Economics and a law degree from Oxford. So he’s very qualified, he’s jut not particularly likely to win (short of the Republicans blowing their primary epically).

    All it takes is a receipt for a $100 check to the party to run for Congress in Missouri. So someone is likely to show up before March 30th. Because it’s very rare for the major parties to completely pass up a Congressional seat in Missouri.

  2. Well, is there any magic number at which half of incumbents polling at that number are expected to win and half to lose?

  3. didn’t know what Lawrence v. Texas was.  Maybe because I’m gay I feel like everyone should know that decision, but I guess not.

    Also, is Madigan next in line if there’s no Lt. Gov.?  Isn’t that how IL got its current governor?  (Yes.)  Doesn’t that mean the position has some worth?

  4. Halter’s spokesman took a shot back that clearly drew lines between Halter and the establishment, saying:

       “Congressman Berry’s comments are not surprising to us. After all, he did not support Halter’s campaign for lieutenant governor which beat the insiders and has now resulted in a scholarship lottery that will help thousands of Arkansans afford a higher education.

       If getting under the skin of the insiders is the price for helping Arkansans, he’ll do it time and time again. Should he run for federal office Arkansans can look forward to more of the same because Washington is broken and it needs more people like Bill Halter who aren’t afraid to stand-up to special interests and insiders.”

    A lot of people here are reading that as a hint that Halter’s about to jump in…He has until the end of next week to decide.

    If Halter does get in though, don’t expect any backing from the state party or major endorsements.  The machine isn’t going to break away from Lincoln, but it can still be beaten.

  5. Ugg, seriously, GA-sen looks like it could be a pickup IF WE GET A GOOD DEM IN THERE, but for some reason, no one is looking at this race.  WHY!?!?!  WHY I Ask!?!?!

  6. by allegedly making an intimidating call to the victim.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02

    She told the police that Mr. Johnson, who is 6-foot-7, had choked her, stripped her of much of her clothing, smashed her against a mirrored dresser and taken two telephones from her to prevent her from calling for help, according to police records.

    How did that thug bodyguard get promoted into a top position anyway?

    And how is AG Cuomo going to investigate this guy he’ll be running against in a few short months without seeming conflict of interest?

    Paterson just needs to resign and go away.

  7. As I’ve mentioned before, the fact that all three candidates will be on the same ballot works to our advantage.  Ed Case and Charles Djou will split the same voters…moderate to conservative, independent to Republican, mostly male voters.  Colleen Hanabusa will get everyone else and win easily.

    I predict:

    Hanabusa 45%

    Case 30%

    Djou 25%

  8. What do they have on her?  Does she have some wild secret that could cause a scandal for her state?

    I bet money the GOP must threaten to close a military base on her in Maine.  I am tired of parties treating their members like this, witholding funds and committee assignments.  Olympia Snowe was elected to represent Maine, not the GOP.  She should just go indy, heck that’s what Arlen should have done as well.  

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