SSP Daily Digest: 6/1

• CT-Sen: Where’s the New York Times when you need them? At least we have the Post to go there: way back when she was applying for an appointed seat on Connecticut’s Board of Education, one of Linda McMahon’s selling points was that she had a degree in education. Nope, it quickly was revealed that her degree was in Freedom French (which, to my mind, is a lot harder to parse away through semantic obfuscation than “in Vietnam” — I mean, this is just a flat-out lie). Jodi Rell still picked McMahon for the board.

• IL-Sen: Where’s the New York Times when you need them, Part II? Mark Kirk has had to admit that previous claims about his military experience weren’t “precise,” when it turned out that the “Naval Intelligence Officer of the Year” award went to Kirk’s entire unit, not himself as stated on his website’s bio.

• TX-Sen: Remember when gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison promised to resign her Senate seat as soon as she tied up those last few legislative loose ends? After dragging that out to finish her term instead, now she’s making noises about just continuing on like nothing ever happened and running for another full term in 2012. Questions remain as to whether she’d attract high-profile primary competition if she stayed; would-be competitors would have to be heartened by her weak performance in the gubernatorial primary.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman pretty much ended her viability as a candidate in the general election with her closing argument ad for the GOP primary, where she demands border crackdowns and opposes “amnesty.” (In fact, check out the photo at Politico’s link; one picture says more than 1000 words could about Pete Wilson handing the Prop 187 turd torch to Whitman. UPDATE: Oops, photo not there anymore, but see here.) To make sure the message gets across to those least likely to be enthused about that, the California Nurses Association is running a Spanish-language ad on Hispanic radio stations that replays her comments.

• MI-Gov: This endorsement isn’t exactly a surprise, seeing as how Andy Dillon is widely disliked by Michigan’s public employee unions, but still it’s an important building block for Virg Bernero. The Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union with 155K members, gave its nod to Lansing mayor Bernero in the Democratic gubernatorial primary; Bernero also has the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, which includes the UAW.

• NY-Gov: Has anyone ever had to confirm to the media that “no, I’m not dropping out,” and then actually gone on to win a race? Steve Levy seems intent on being the first to try to do that. With the mellifluously-named M. Myers Mermel on the verge of getting the backing of the Queens GOP, the GOP/Conservative field is basically collapsing into chaos in the wake of the infighting at the Conservative Party convention, where Levy and Carl Paladino backers forced a placeholder (Ralph Lorigo) onto the Con primary ballot in hopes that Rick Lazio doesn’t win the GOP convention. Paladino’s camp is even talking up the possibility of creating a whole different “Tea Party” ballot line. There’s now also talk of creating a new ballot line out of whole cloth coming from state GOP chair Ed Cox of all places, as a means of helping the GOP’s preferred candidates circumvent the Conservative Party’s preferences.

• SD-Gov: Polling the fast-approaching (June 8) GOP gubernatorial primary in South Dakota has, oddly enough, not been a high priority for any pollsters, so money may be our main guide here. Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard is the clear winner by that criteria, having raised $1.65 mil over the cycle, more than double the $700K of next-best state Sen. majority leader Dave Knudsen. Interestingly, though, South Dakota is the only non-southern state to use runoffs, and with three other candidates in the running, those two may find themselves facing off again in late June.

• WY-Gov: Our long national nightmare is over: we have a credible Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Wyoming. State party chair Leslie Petersen took one for the team and filed the paperwork to run in the Democratic primary on Aug. 17. The Natrona Co. party chair, R.C. Johnson, had said she’d run if no one else did, so I suppose the state chair running when no one else did is, uh, something of an upgrade from a county chair. The Jackson-based, 69-year-old Petersen (assuming she gets past the several Some Dudes in the Dem primary) will face one of not one but four strong GOPers in November.

• CA-45: Rep. Mary Bono Mack and her opponent, Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet, are on the same stage today to celebrate the new Palm Springs Airport control tower. Both were proponents of the construction project and will no doubt try to claim their share of the credit, although Bono Mack has the slight problem of having voted against the stimulus package that paid more than half the costs of the project.

• PA-12: Turnout numbers seem to contradict the GOP’s excuses about how they would have won the special election in the 12th if they hadn’t gotten swamped by a surge in Dem turnout motivated by the Sestak/Specter primary. Turnout in the 12th for the special election was 135K, compared with 203K in the 12th in the 2006 general election.

• WA-03: Here’s a surprise: state Sen. Craig Pridemore, who’d been carrying the liberal flag in the Democratic primary in the open seat race in the 3rd, is prepared to drop out. Pridemore had been lagging on the financial front compared with self-funding establishment choice Denny Heck (who now has the Dem field to himself), but that hadn’t been a deterrent before and it seems like that wasn’t what spurred the dropout. Instead, it was leaked over the weekend that the Washington Education Association was prepared to back Heck, and without the state’s biggest union on his side, Pridemore didn’t have much a route to getting over the top.

• WI-07: It looks like the careful field-clearing for state Sen. Julie Lassa in the Democratic primary in the open seat in the 7th wasn’t entirely successful. She’ll still have to face Joe Reasbeck in the Dem primary. Reasbeck, an author and consultant who doesn’t seem to have held office, seems to be at the Some Dude end of the spectrum, though. He’s announcing his campaign kickoff with a ganja break at Superior’s Richard Bong Museum.

• New Hampshire: SSPers will no doubt enjoy this… a Blue Hampshire blogger has calculated 2004/2008 PVI for each of New Hampshire’s 299 voting wards, not only putting together tables but also a slick map.

• Polltopia: PPP’s latest nugget unearthed from their crosstabs is that Democrats are still holding onto moderates pretty well, contrary to what conventional wisdom has been asserting. Tom Jensen finds that Dems are leading among self-identified moderates in all the key Senate race around the country. (The problem, of course, is that there are more self-identified conservatives than liberals, which accounts for GOP leads in a number of these races.)

• History: Here’s a very interesting bit of history from Arkansas writer John Brummett, looking at the remarkable parallels between the Blanche Lincoln/Bill Halter race, and the long-forgotten 1972 Democratic primary in Arkansas where upstart David Pryor almost knocked off long-serving conservative Democrat John McClellan.

78 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 6/1”

  1. I posted this earlier asking if Rasmussen was likely to poll any of the June primaries. Obviously he will just not right before each election. Mark Blumenthal takes this fact on in his latest National Journal column.

    http://www.nationaljournal.com…

    Not sure I buy the arguments he got in response from Scott. When polling so often why not poll on the eve of the actual voting? Can anybody find evidence from 2006 and 2008 that he is telling porkies?

  3. What a fun bunch!  This weekend is going to be mighty interesting to see how it all shakes out.

  5. Good Lord.

    Lots of interesting data, confirms that Hanover (home of Dartmouth) is, as I had suspected, the most Democratic town in the state.

    The most Republican town in the state is a place called New Ipswich, which I actually had not heard of despite it being on the MA border less than an hour’s drive from where I grew up. Apparently a high percentage of its residents are followers of a very conservative sect of Lutheranism that’s otherwise not commonly found in New England.  

    You learn something new every day.  

  6. Today is filing deadline day in Minnesota (5 PM CDT). Everything going as expected except In MN-07 the 2008 Republican nominee Glen Menze has filed to run as an Independence Party Candidate (He got a whopping 28% in 2008). By all account Blue dog Dem Collen Peterson should be safe but I know a few republicans who were hopeful they could at least run a competitive race in this conservative district but with Menze splitting the wingnut vote with likely Rep nominee Lee Byberg it looks like the race will not be competitive.

  7. Iapologize if this is too off topic but I just heard that Al and Tipper Gore are splitting up. Too bad. Does anyone think it could be because Gore is planning a political comeback? He could take on Corker in 2012.

    On to a more political note PPP released a Iowa primary poll showing a very close race. DemoiseDem will be happy.

    http://publicpolicypolling.blo…

  10. …in reality, moderates ALWAYS favor Dems.

    As Crisitunity pointed out, conservatives outnumber liberals by a significant percentage.  And that, too, has ALWAYS been true.

    The reason America’s politics are evenly-divided and always competitive is the fact that moderates always favor Democrats.

    So it’s not any kind of “advantage” to us for PPP to discuss that fact as if it’s something to hang our hats on.  I imagine even in 1994 we won self-identified “moderates” by some margin, but just too small a margin.

    The Democratic Party is a center-left coalition, and the change in my lifetime has been to jettison most of the conservatives, except in the South where some conservatives still remain Democrats at least in voting for local and state offices.

  12. They get 64 wards with a worsening PVI.

    With their numbers, I get 18.

    And I have 216 wards improving at least as much as the worst decrease.

    One interesting change:

    The most R ward was more R than the most D ward in 2004.

    Now 6 D wards are more D than the most R ward.

    In all:

    1 ward (Newton) flipped from D to R PVI.

    57 wards flipped from D to R PVI.

    So, 205 D PVIs, 107 R PVIs.

    240 Obama wards, 72 McCain wards.

  13. Basically, in the wake of his vote against the repeal of DADT, Kirk is now in the crosshairs of outing activist Mike Rogers, who has played a part in outing a number of gay politicos. He’s basically the gold standard of outing among the gays, as far as that goes.

    Rogers claims to have multiple sources from Kirk’s college days (both undergrad & grad, apparently) that have actually claimed to have sex with him. This comes on the heels of one of Kirk’s primary opponents trying to hammer him with the issue.

    But apparently, Kirk’s heretofore-decent record on gay rights led Rogers (and apparently Rogers’ sources) to conclude that he wasn’t being hypocritical, especially for a Republican. The vote against DADT, though, was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back. As for what comes next, Rogers’ usual M.O. is to start with an aggressive, “he’s definitely gay and I can prove it post” (below) and then drip-drip the more specific allegations for maximum, prolonged damage.

    Rogers’ Mark Kirk post: http://blog.blogactive.com/201…

    But let’s just be honest: Mark Kirk is gayer than a pink unicorn with a clutchpurse full of rainbows.

  14. Via the Grand Forks Hearld:

    Arthur Link, a former North Dakota governor, congressman and longtime state legislator known for environmental stewardship and staying true to his rural roots, died today surrounded by family, a family spokesman said. He was 96.

    Link wasn’t feeling well after dinner Saturday and was taken to St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, where he developed and was being treated for pneumonia, said Bob Valeu, a family spokesman.

    “His five sons, along with his wife, Grace, and grandchildren were with him over the weekend,” Valeu said. Funeral arrangements were pending.

    Link was born in Alexander in 1914, the son of homesteaders from Czechoslovakia and Germany, and was raised on the family farm. Friends said he never forgot his upbringing during his four-decade political career, which included only two lost races.

    The Democrat advocated for allowing oil-producing counties to keep some tax revenues for road repairs and pushed for strong regulations for reclaiming land mined for coal.

    Gov. John Hoeven said Link’s environmental stewardship while governor left a lasting legacy on the landscape of North Dakota’s reclaimed lands, and his “deep faith and principled decision-making throughout his long life” earned him widespread respect and affection.

    “He was a remarkable man, a courageous leader and a dear friend,” U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad said in a statement. “He knew what he believed, he knew what he stood for, he knew the values that he had been raised with.”

    U.S. Rep. Earl Pomeroy added: “He approached issues with a strong conscience and the kind of common sense that you get growing up on the prairie. He was interested in results, not the limelight.”

    Link: http://www.grandforksherald.co…

    RIP.

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