SSP Daily Digest: 6/15 (Afternoon Edition)

LA-Sen: Two different polls have very different pictures of the Louisiana Senate race, which is moving into the foreground with Charlie Melancon getting a lot more media exposure criticizing BP while David Vitter acts as one of their biggest defenders. PPP (in a poll leaked to Roll Call, although I’m not sure if it’s a Melancon internal or on someone else’s behalf) finds Melancon within single digits, trailing Vitter 46-37. On the other hand, Republican pollster Magellan gives Vitter a 51-31 lead. (Magellan has been doing a lot of recent public polling of Republican primaries; this is for the general, though, and I’m not sure if they’re working for Vitter, for some other GOP interest, or just acting sua sponte.) Both polls find extremely high continued support for offshore drilling, not a surprise since that’s Louisiana’s bread and butter.

NH-Sen: Yesterday was Kelly Ayotte’s day to testify before the state legislature about what she did and didn’t know about the collapsed mortgage banker FRM; for the most part, she staked out claims of not knowing anything about them (saying that the buck stopped with her, but the buck never made it to her AG’s desk). Legislators seemed underwhelmed by her responses, and even GOP state Rep. Rip Holden criticized her, saying she needed to accept some blame for the state’s failings.

PA-Sen: Politico, always hungry for inside-baseball campaign drama, is highlighting a story titled “Sestak silence worries Pa. officials,” detailing concerns the local establishment has with Joe Sestak not sufficiently linking up with them as he pivots toward the general election. It’s actually an interesting article, but Pa2010‘s Dan Hirschhorn captures the overarching tone of it with his own meta-piece, “The Sestak-as-crazy-campaigner meme returns.”

SC-Sen: Today’s 538 look at the South Carolina puzzle focuses on how Census microdata suggests that the Greene/Green difference may not have been the racial dogwhistle that people think it is: nationwide, a higher percentage of Greenes are white than are Greens. (H/t to our commenter KCinDC, who pointed out this same data point over the weekend.) In fact, the first name “Alvin” may be a clearer dogwhistle instead. (And, of course, there’s the danger in extrapolating national data to the state level, where things may be much different in South Carolina.)

WA-Sen: As I’ve opined before, attacking Dino Rossi for having made money off foreclosed properties, and teaching other people how to do it, has a whiff of “what else have you got?” But what’s really weird here is that he just keeps scheduling more appearances at more real estate seminars, as he’ll being doing today. (Today’s burning question: “Is now the time to buy a waterfront home?”) If I were the NRSC, I’d be worried about how committed he is to a race he seemed to get dragged kicking and screaming into in the first place, if he’s still doing real estate seminars instead of campaigning 24/7. Is the Senate race a way to keep his name in the spotlight so he can get more money for more real estate seminar appearances?

AK-Gov: P’oh! Former state official Bob Poe was the first Dem to get in the gubernatorial race (back when it would have been against Sarah Palin). But not having made much progress on the fundraising front against the higher-profile Ethan Berkowitz and Hollis French in the Democratic primary, he pulled out of the race yesterday.

CA-Gov, CA-Sen: There’s a poll of the California races out from CrossTarget research on behalf of right-wing new media outlet Pajamas Media, so you might keep the salt shaker handy (especially remembering their decidedly optimistic polling of the MA-Sen special). That said, though, the gubernatorial numbers look perfectly plausible, with Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman 46-43. The Senate race may be a little further off the mark, pegged at a 47-47 tie between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina. Speaking of Whitman, she just wrote herself a check for another $20 million from her seeming bottomless reserves, bringing her total self-funding investment to $91 million. The main Whitman story that’s in the news today, though, presents a different picture of her from the rather serene Queen Meg that appears in all her advertising: it turns out she settled with an eBay employee for six-figures after shoving her during an argument.

FL-Gov (pdf): When you’re reduced to leaking your own internal poll that has you tied with your opposition, well, let’s just say you’re in a world of hurt. But that’s what Bill McCollum is doing today to prove his continued relevance in the Florida GOP gubernatorial primary. His poll by McLaughlin & Associates has McCollum tied at 40-40 with Rick Scott.

IA-Gov: As expected, the religious right isn’t planning to do much of anything to help Terry Branstad defeat Chet Culver in November. The Iowa Family PAC, who had backed Bob Vander Plaats, confirmed (as they’d threatened months ago) that they won’t endorse Branstad.

CO-04: Credit GOP nominee Cory Gardner with having some sense of decency (or at least knowing when it’s not expedient to hitch his wagon to the crazy train). After Iowa Rep. Steve King’s comments about Barack Obama’s racist “default mechanism,” Gardner abruptly canceled a $100/person fundraiser he had scheduled for Saturday with King. (King, for his part, is doubling down on the crazy, with his impassioned defense of racial profiling yesterday.)

KY-06: The Andy Barr campaign is out with an internal by the Tarrance Group showing him within sorta-striking distance of Democratic Rep. Ben Chandler. Chandler leads Barr 45-38. Chandler’s spokesperson said that Chandler “has a strong double-digit lead” in his own polling, but didn’t offer a polling memo.

NC-08: The list of GOP Beltway figures piling on to support Harold Johnson instead of Tim D’Annunzio is a veritable House GOP who’s who. John Boehner and Eric Cantor are headlining a Thursday Capitol Hill fundraiser for Johnson, with Pete Sessions and Greg Walden also atop the list. Obviously plans for this must predate today’s PPP poll showing the huge disparity in viability between Johnson and D’Annunzio, so the NRCC has clearly had their eye on this one for a while.

OK-02: Rep. Dan Boren is out with an internal poll as he faces a tough fight in a dark-red district… but he doesn’t seem concerned enough with his minor GOP opposition to even poll on that. Instead, he’s focused on a late-breaking primary challenge from the left from state Sen. Jim Wilson. His poll from Myers Research gives him a 68-24 lead over Wilson.

OR-01: Tis the season for internal polls, I guess: there’s also one floating around out there from Rob Cornilles, the little-known but NRCC-touted businessman running against Rep. David Wu in the Portland suburbs. The Cornilles poll, by local Republican pollster Moore Information, gives Wu a 46-40 lead over Cornilles, suggesting that Wu is at least in for a tougher-than-usual challenge even if he has the district’s D+7 lean working in his favor.

SC-06: The strange saga of the South Carolina Democratic primary is also playing out in the 6th, where Democratic House Whip Jim Clyburn easily beat Gregory Brown. Clyburn, who’s led the charge that Senate candidate Alvin Greene was a plant, is crying “foul” here as well, though, pointing out that Brown has been linked to a Republican consulting firm. The Brown campaign paid $23K to Stonewall Strategies (run by former Joe Wilson aide Preston Grisham) for “marketing;” Brown says he worked with them because they were the only ones willing to take him on as a client. Several African-American state legislators tell TPM that they’ve talked with Brown and figure that his campaign, while quixotic, was still “on the level.”

TN-08: Allegedly humble gospel singer Stephen Fincher has gone negative against his opposition in the GOP primary, not the usual sign of a confident frontrunner. He’s launched a new ad against physician Ron Kirkland, attacking Kirkland for allowing thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic candidates when he was head of the American Medical Group Association. He’s also charging that the Jackson Clinic, which Kirkland ran at the time, gave $8K to state Sen. Roy Herron, who’s now running for the Democratic nod in the 8th.

VA-05: The hope of party unity for state Sen. Robert Hurt seems to be running into quite a few hitches, in the wake of his 48% victory in the GOP primary against fractured teabagging opposition. The Lynchburg Tea Party leadership says they won’t back Hurt (although they seem to be not backing anyone rather, than supporting right-wing indie Jeffrey Clark). TPM also claims that Jim McKelvey, who courted Tea Party support en route to finishing a distant second in the GOP primary, won’t be backing Hurt either.

NRCC: Rep. Mike Rogers has a pretty easy job this year: he’s in charge of incumbent retention for the NRCC. He says there are, at this point, only nine incumbents who are in need of continued financial support: Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, Charles Djou, Joseph Cao, Pat Tiberi, Jim Gerlach, Charlie Dent, and Dave Reichert. (You’d think he’s been looking at our House Ratings page or something.) There’s one other stray bit of good news for the NRCC: they’ve finally settled their several-years-old embezzlement case, paying a $10K civil penalty for improper reporting; they’ve also received a payout from their insurance company, covering $500K of their lost $724K in funds.

Meanwhile, wags have been having some great fun at the expense of the name of the NRCC’s offense program, named, of course, “Young Guns.” Despite the fact that the average Young Gun is 50 years old. Only 7 of the 105 members of the program are women, so maybe at least the Gun part is right.

DCCC: Roll Call looks at the DCCC’s continued outreach to K Street. An “adopt a member” strategy is being cooked up where sympathetic lobbyists will work directly with the most embattled members to shepherd them through the electoral cycle.

WATN?: If you’re wondering whatever became of ex-Rep. John Doolittle, who retired in shame in 2008 after getting caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, it turns out he won’t be facing any charges. The DOJ has finally closed the case on Doolittle, who had previously been named as a co-conspirator in the case against aide-turned-lobbyist Kevin Ring.

109 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 6/15 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. Sestak has disappeared since the primary.  His hit and run tactics worked well against Weldon and Specter, but I am not sure they are going to work against Tooomey.  The Toomey campaign has been pretty deliberate about attacking Sestak on a different issue every week.  

    This week they are attacking him on Marcellus Shale drilling, which is a big provider of jobs in the swingy areas of southwestern Pennsylvania.  Sestak appears to be ready to flip flop at any moment on this one as the rest of the PA Democratic delegation knows they need the Marcellus Shale drilling to occur as a new source of revenue.  

    Last week, they attacked him on off-shore drilling by pointing out Sestak supported more off-shore drilling at greater distances, but not close to shore.  By the end of the week, Sestak flipflopped on the issue.  Sestak cannot be flipflopping all over the place.  

    At this rate, Sestak will have flipflopped on everything before November.  

  2. C’mon GOP primary voters.  You denied us Dale Peterson and Vaughn Ward, and the hours of fun that would have resulted.  I also had hopes for John Hostettler here in Indiana.  True, you gave is Rand Paul and especially Sharon Angle, and that’s all good — but I think you’ve got one  more round of crazy in you!

  3. First he takes forever and a day to make up his mind to run for the Senate in the first place. And now he’s hardly running, but giving foreclosure seminars of all things?? Let’s hope he’s forgotten all about the story of Martha Coakley.

    He’s done two statewide campaigns in the past, so it’s not like he’s a newbie at this-  Weird

    Or maybe he’s thinking outside the box on us, and has created a new concept: a combination foreclosure seminar/campaign rally.

    Is Lean D still the right rating here?

  4. Let’s not confuse the Meg Whitman money.  

    Her latest $20 million to her campaign was her own money, earned the “old fashioned” way, e.g., from Goldman Sachs.  BUT when she physically assulated an E-Bay employee, the 6-figure payment was paid by E-Bay, just as all of her lavish, wasteful spending at E-Bay was with E-Bay’s money, not her own.    

  5. in an interview  earlier this year, Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) appeared to float the possibility of armed insurrection if “this Congress keeps going the way it is,” reports Greg Sargent.

    Said Angle: “You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”

    I don’t know whether to be happy this nutcase may hand Harry Ried re-election or scared that she may actually become a US Senator.

    http://politicalwire.com/archi

  6. I’m sorry, no offense Tom Holland, you’re a solid candidate for a Kansas Democrat, but OMFG why did Mark Parkinson refuse to run for Governor?!?!! Gah!  He just gave what is probably the single best speech about Kansas I’ve ever heard or read.

    http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q

    -Kansas City Star

    …and got a standing ovation and an approving newspaper headline. It’s the kind of speech that gets Democrats elected in Kansas. Okay, granted…not a ton of competition for “best speech about Kansas.” But still…good speech. And he even evoked the ole progressive spirit of Kansas, God bless him. Attention, KS Democrats–moar like this, plz.

  7. From Ralston’s Twitter feed, 4 straight tweets I’ve strung together as they’re really the continuation of a single thought:

    Cornyn says Angle not ready 2 face media 4 weeks..”at some point that I think she needs 2 get staffed up and prepared.”…Does it strike anyone else Cornyn & Co. are talking about Angle as if she’s a child or some new species getting acclimated to planet Earth?…   News flash: This woman has been running for the U.S. Senate for the better part of a year. She won in a landslide. What are they saying?…Here’s what they’re saying: We’re terrified that if Sharron Angle is herself that Harry Reid will shred her like Buscemi in the woodchipper.

    Really, Angle is getting shredded in the Beltway, but I’m more interested in what is happening in Nevada.  We know Ralston is shredding her; I don’t know how well-known he is, but he appears to have a nightly TV show so he’s probably got some broader name rec; we know a local Fox station news reporter attacked her Fox & Friends interview; we know Reid is up with a TV attack ad, in what I read is a big buy even though I didn’t see a numerical value for dollars or points; and we know Angle is dodging the Nevada media, not just national media.  I’m hopeful that more than just Reid’s ad buy is reaching the Nevada public regarding Angle.  The faster we can take her down, the harder it will be for her to get back up.  If she loses control of her public image and can’t rehabilitate it, then checkmate, Reid wins.  Stu Rothenberg tried to argue this week that Angle is the same as any generic Republican and is likely to win, and I say bullshit.

  8. I’m in China for a bit, and I can’t use my American phone here. I’m currently following SSP on Twitter and I meant to unsubscribe before coming here but it slipped my mind, and now I can’t because Twitter is blocked in China. In the interest of not having a full text message inbox when I return to the States, is there some way one of the SSP admins could unsubscribe me? Thanks.

  9. http://www.nola.com/politics/i

    Newly elected State Senator Karen Carter Peterson is mulling over a La-02 race according to this. She lost in the 2006 run-off to Jefferson. She was Speaker Pro Tem of the state house before she was elected to the state senate this spring. She was succeed by another former loser in the run-off to Jefferson, Helena Moreno. She won the seat held by the DCCC’s preferred candidate, former State Senator Cheryl Gray, who resigned to move to CT with her husband. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the DCCC recruit Karen Carter Peterson. She would be much stronger than Richmond and LaFaunta and is considered a rising star in the LA Dem party. She would probably have a much more liberal record than Richmond or LaFaunta too.  

  10. Have Republicans Already Blown Their Chance to Recapture The Senate?

    With nearly five months to go until Election Day, Republican hopes of retaking the Senate have dimmed and they’re privately lamenting their lost opportunity. Until just a few weeks ago, Republicans considered winning a Senate majority a long shot but by no means out of reach. But the euphoria over Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts in January seems a distant memory now, especially after the latest round of primary results last week.

    Primary victories by Carly Fiorina in California and Sharron Angle in Nevada bolstered a growing national narrative that Republican candidates are lightweights, or too outside the mainstream, to survive in the fall, and that could harm even top tier Republicans.

    “There’s now a path to ‘acceptable losses’ for Democrats,” notes one cautiously optimistic Democratic strategist.

    “I totally see how the number stops at five to seven [Republican pickups]” says a Republican consultant, speaking of an optimistic scenario for the GOP.

    Go to the link to read the rest. It’s a good read and grist for the mill.

  11. Gallup Generic Ballot (6/7-13/10)

    Republican 49

    Democrat 44

    USA Today/Gallup Generic Ballot (6/11-13/10)

    Democrat 48

    Republican 43

    http://content.usatoday.com/co

    “In fact, it’s the lowest level of enthusiasm for Democratic voters since 1998.”

    Yeah, cos 1998 was soooo terrible for Democrats!

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