SSP Daily Digest: 5/27 (Afternoon Edition)

CO-Sen: That whole not-participating-in-the-GOP-convention-because-she-would-have-been-humiliatingly-defeated thing doesn’t seem to have been much of an impediment for Jane Norton. She just turned in 35,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot by petition; she only needs 1,500 from each of the state’s seven CDs.

NV-Sen: Sue Lowden is learning from Rand Paul’s mistakes (or is she?). During a televised Q&A with Jon Ralston, Lowden refused to respond to questions about whether she thought the Civil Rights Act should apply to private businesses. Eventually her handlers sent in a memo saying that she supports all aspects of the law. Meanwhile, Sharron “I am the Tea Party” Angle continues to press her advantages amidst Lowden’s slow-mo implosion, and that may be paying off in early voting, where there’s a surge of Republican early votes in the Reno area where Angle is from. But Angle just looks weirder and weirder as the media pay more attention to her (as seen in NRO’s Jim Geraghty’s piece on the bundle of contradictions from her legislative career, entitled “The Anti-Beer Libertarian“). Finally, it’s not too early to start thinking about 2012, and John Ensign, despite all the damage he’s sustained, is still acting like he plans to run again.

SC-Sen (pdf): PPP is out with the Senate part of its South Carolina poll, and they find Jim DeMint with fairly tepid support but still looking pretty safe for re-election. DeMint leads Democratic rival Vic Rawl 49-30, although 82% have no opinion of Rawl so his numbers may go up. DeMint has only 43/36 approval numbers, and 39% think he spends too little time advocating for South Carolina (instead of his national-level hobby horses) while 38% think his balance is right.

WA-Sen: State Sen. Don Benton may not be much longer for the GOP primary in the Senate race, with Dino Rossi’s official entry: he referred to Rossi as a “colleague” rather than a rival, and offered some equivocal-sounding statements that while he was committed to the race today, he didn’t rule out dropping out if it would improve GOP chances.

WI-Sen: Rumors about this were swirling yesterday and now it’s official: real estate investor Terrence Wall, who had seemed like the frontrunner for the GOP nod until recently (unless one considered Tommy Thompson the frontrunner, during his boomlet), is dropping out of the Senate race. Free-spending businessman Ron Johnson, who won the GOP convention, will still face opposition from Dave Westlake.

GA-Gov: InsiderAdvantage released a poll of the Democratic gubernatorial primary, where ex-Gov. Roy Barnes has been dominant so far and looks like he’s in position to avoid a runoff. Barnes is polling at 64, with Dubose Porter at 8, Thurbert Baker at 6, Carl Camon at 5, and David Poythress at 1.

AR-01: Former Marion Berry CoS Chad Causey seems to be consolidating the backing of his ex-rivals in his Democratic runoff against ex-state Sen. Tim Wooldridge. With state Rep. David Cook already having endorsed, now state Sen. Steve Bryles did today too.

GA-12: House whip Jim Clyburn is making an appearance at an Augusta historically-black college to talk up the benefits of the health care reform bill. There’s one wrinkle: that’s in GA-12, where Rep. John Barrow voted against HCR and faces a primary challenge from the left from African-American ex-state Sen. Regina Thomas. Clyburn says he’s already endorsed Barrow and doesn’t see the big deal, but Barrow has been trying to ward off Clyburn from appearing.

MS-01: CQ has an interesting look at the fast-approaching GOP primary in this race, and while they don’t have polling data, they feel that a runoff is likely. The expected 2nd place finisher to state Sen. Alan Nunnelee may surprise you: not Fox News talker Angela McGlowan, whose campaign fell on its face out of the gate, but small-town mayor Henry Ross, who seems to have rallied the local teabaggers against “career politician” Nunnelee.

VA-02: While frontrunner/establishment fave Scott Rigell should be vulnerable in the GOP primary in the 2nd, fractured opposition will probably let him waltz through. The local Tea Partiers seem to be realizing this problem and coalescing (probably too late, though) behind businessman Ben Loyola; the Hampton Roads Tea Party and the Virginia Beach Taxpayers Alliance both endorsed him. (Remember that Virginia has no runoff, so even if Loyola finished a distant second he couldn’t consolidate the supporters of the other teabaggers for another try.)

WV-01: After using some anti-Nancy Pelosi rhetoric in the Democratic primary, the Mike Oliverio camp is dialing that down (seeing as how he might actually have to work with her). His manager says he’ll support “whomever Democrats support for Speaker.”

House: Right-wing Vets for Freedom has a list of 10 House candidates they’re supporting this year, all of whom are veterans themselves, including some controversial lightning rods like Allen West and Ilario Pantano as well as blander figures like Joe Heck and Steve Stivers.

NY-AG: This seems very unusual: the New York Democratic party backed five different candidates for AG at the convention, moving them all through to the primary ballot. Nassau Co. DA Kathleen Rice is probably the biggest name, along with Eric Schneiderman, Richard Brodsky, Eric Dinallo, and Sean Coffey. Liz Holtzman had previously released a poll showing her leading the primary field, but doesn’t seem to be following through on that.

ID-St. Sen.: One place where the local teabaggers did seem to make a difference: four different incumbent Republican state senators lost their primaries, usually ones who’d been insufficiently hard-edged on taxes or even the decidedly parochial issue of fighting wolves. With a Senate with only 35 members, that’s pretty big turnover, although with conservative Republicans already dominant it doesn’t seem likely to change its outlook too much.

Polltopia: Nate Silver has another interesting hit on Rasmussen today, comparing its polling on the question of Elana Kagan vs. CBS. Rasmussen finds many, many more people offering an opinion on her than other pollsters do, providing more evidence for the idea that its tight likely voter screen (and lack of callbacks) serves to make it mostly a poll of political junkies, i.e. the most motivated voters.

Twitter: We’re just three followers away from a nice even 2,000! Who wants to be the one who puts us over the top?

151 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 5/27 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. I’ve been wondering if Dean Heller has been staying out of this year’s race because he’s planning to torpedo Ensign in the primary next time (which probably wouldn’t be that hard), and wouldn’t have to worry about Reid’s money or connections in the general.

  2. That event will actually be held in the GA 10 part of Augusta (check out Paul Broun's map on his House site) and Russell Edwards, a Democrat who actually supports HCR and who wants responsible leadership for the district, is running for that seat against crazy Paul Broun.

     

    *Note I am the Finance Director for Russell Edwards. 

  3. Frontline and Red-to-Blue candidates.  Obvious omissions:

    (1) TN-06 – I suspect we’ve given up on this one.

    (2) LA-03 – Could be waiting on another candidate.  I thought we had given up, but the Dems spent some money attacking Downer last week.

    (3) IN-08 – Van Haaften has been in the race for a while now.  Oversight?  We couldn’t be giving up here, right?

    (4) WV-01 – May still be a question as to whether the DCCC will support Oliviero at all given his comments about Pelosi, which I see he’s backtracking from.

    (5) MI-01 – Filing deadline has passed and McDowell is our guy.  Oversight?  Just a delay?  It’s only been a few weeks since the Dem field cleared for certain.

    (6) NY-29 – Not completely sure the Dem field is set here, but the locals had settled on Zeller for the special.  May be waiting for other candidates for the general.

    (7) WI-07 – May be waiting to see if there are other candidates, but Lassa appears to have cleared the field.

    (8) PA-06 – Trivedi’s primary win is very recent, so hopefully this is just a brief delay.

    (9) AZ-03 – Presumably Hulburd is on his own in this longshot open seat race.

    (10) CA-44 – Same deal.  Hedrick is on his own.

    There are several other serious challengers for open and Republican seats that are not accounted for by the DCCC (AL-05, AR-01, AR-02, HI-01, LA-02, MA-10, MN-06, NH-02, RI-01, WA-03), but they are all contested primaries where the DCCC will have to wait and see.

    There are also many endangered incumbents who are not on the list, but just about all of them are veterans with plenty of money and plenty of capacity to generate more money on their own.

  4. I keep getting this

    Unable to Post

    This is because:

    – A one-time error

    – You have exceeded the maximum number of 1 post(s) per 24 hours.

    – You are unable to post

    What have I done wrong?  I havent postd any new diaries for quite some time and I cleaned out my 2 other draft diaries I’ll never do.

  5. The four relative moderates who were unseated do make a difference; it’s sort of like Alaska, where Democrats coalesce with moderate GOP ideas and basically for a coalition. One of the senators (Gary Schroeder, whose seat should go D in November) would be an average Democrat.

  6. anyone see Charlie Melancon breaking down during a hearing talking about the oil spill. He really seemed sincere and I could tell it meant a lot to him. He really seams dedicated to the cause, he sounded fierce on Maddow. I think this could help him. It has been a while since the non Rass poll. Could this oil spill and likely good press help him?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/

  7. http://www.silive.com/news/ind

    Not a surprise.  Guy Molinari has wanted the party chair’s scalp as well as the party itself for awhile and they had previous given Guy the finger by endorsing Fosella.

    Of course given the borough Republican Party organization is a mess not that big of a loss except they’ll have to do a bit more work gathering signatures.

  8. not enough to make me forgive him being a dick on every other aspect of gay rights, but at any rate, I think he’s serious about contesting re-election.

  9. Ros-Lehtinen knows where her district stands.  Any district with Key West as one anchor forces her to support repeal.  Which makes me think of Palm Springs.  Bono Mack didn’t join her.  Could Pougnet get some traction from this?

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