Netroots Nation: James, Crisitunity, and I will all be doing a Q&A panel on the 2010 elections at Netroots Nation, along with the horserace folks at Daily Kos. So if you were on the fence about coming to the annual online progressive confab, now you have no excuse to miss it! Also, the special hotel rate for the convention is only available through Monday, June 28th, so book now.
CA-Sen: To give you a sense of how meaningless most of Moose Lady’s endorsements are, she’s visiting California this week, but isn’t doing any events with Mama Grizz Carly. (BTW, would this make Todd “Baby Daddy Grizzly”?)
IA-Gov: Bob Vander Plaats will go on a local radio show either tonight or tomorrow (it’s not clear), the first time he’ll be speaking in public since losing the gubernatorial primary. Cat fud lovers (such as myself) are, of course, hoping he’ll announce plans to run as an independent.
MI-Gov: There is some crazy-ass shit going on in the Michigan gubernatorial primary. AG Mike Cox is claiming that four unaired TV ads were “stolen” from his campaign and uploaded by parties unknown to YouTube. They’ve since been taken down, but accounts of them indicate that they were designed to push back against mysterious anti-Cox radio ads that resurfaced recently, alleging that Cox helped cover up an out-of-control party at the Detroit mayor’s mansion in 2002, which helped lead to the downfall of then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. (Incidentally, Kilpatrick – who is currently in jail – was just indicted on another 19 fraud-related counts yesterday.)
MA-10: Former Quincy, Mass. mayor and former Democrat James Sheets says he’s going to run as an independent for the seat left open by retiring Rep. Bill Delahunt. Sheets must figure that Tim Cahill’s less-than-glorious Dem-turned-indie run for governor doesn’t hold any lessons for him. In any case, Sheets is not exactly a fresh face – he’s 74, and served as mayor for six terms, before getting turfed almost a decade ago. Still, this probably doesn’t help Democrats.
MD-01: Been a while since we saw one of these: A Democratic incumbent releasing an internal showing him in the lead. A Garin-Hart-Yang poll has Rep. Frank Kratovil up 44-39 over retread Andy Harris. And as the WaPo reminds us, Harris doesn’t have the GOP primary to himself: richie rich Rob Fisher is already on the air with TV ads and pledges to stay up through the September primary.
NY-13: Wow – all that sturm and drang ends with a whimper. Stephen Harrison, the 2006 Dem nominee for the 13th CD, had made some noise several months ago about challenging Rep. Mike McMahon in the primary (as he had in 2008) after the incumbent voted against healthcare reform. But now Harrison has endorsed McMahon, all but ensuring the only real fight here will be in November.
Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Michael Allegretti told Politico in an interview that he considers Vito Fossella a “good example for anyone aspiring to office on Staten Island and Brooklyn.” There’s some weird tribal/cultural thing going on in this race, and I just don’t get why the Staten Island Republican establishment has such a fetish for a guy with multiple families and a drunk-driving conviction. Michael Grimm seems like a perfectly good candidate, yet it’s almost like professing loyalty to Fossella is a litmus test here. So very strange.
NY-20: Scott Murphy secured the backing of the Working Families Party, which means he’ll have their ballot line in November. He previously won the Independence Party’s endorsement, so he’ll be on three different ballot lines this fall (Rows A, C, and E). Recall that in last year’s special election, Murphy won by just 726 votes – but took 3,839 votes on the WFP line.
CA-SD-15: It turns out there might not be a runoff for this seat after all. Republican Sam Blakeslee’s election-night vote count stood at 49.7%, just shy of the 50%+1 needed to win the seat outright. He may yet do that, since there are some 15,000 uncounted mail-in ballots, and apparently most of them are in GOP-friendly territory.
Club for Growth: John McArdle in CQ notes that the Club for Growth has been celebrating their recent string of primary successes – but also notes that the group is taking a more “Republican-friendly” approach this cycle by targeting only GOP-held open seats. “Moderate” Rep. Steve LaTourette is a bit happier with this approach, but says: “If we secure the majority in November I’m sure we can get back to the Spanish Inquisition and continue purging our party by fire.” Failed ex-NRCC chair Tom Cole, meanwhile, is delighted that the Club’s influence is still helping to sabotage his party, saying: “Members realize they have to be much more consistently conservative then they have been in the past and that’s a good thing.”
don’t put too much stock in internal polls.
How could we be winning in MD-1, yet be losing in places like IL-11, FL-2, and barely leading in places like WV-3 and CA-11?
I think what I’m going to have to do is assign 5-10% bias on either side for both democratic and republican internal polls and wait for public polling to corroborate internal findings. Either that, or keep making calls merely by gut feeling, which is what I’ve been doing to this point anyway.
It’s already only D+5, and a significant D indy probably brings that down to maybe D+2.
I hope the D candidate got schooled at someplace amenable to working class residents, like BC.
The ad theft thing is really strange. A lot of people have speculated that the campaign released the ads themselves, which almost makes sense. The ads (defensive ones) get out there and in circulation, and the campaign gets some sympathetic press out of it. Only thing that makes me question that is that the YouTube account also posted video of internal polling sheets on Kwame and other issues, which wouldn’t make sense to disclose if it were some kind of skullduggery.
wants exact numbers to where the yet to be counted votes in CA SD-15 lie, the list is here. And the math is brutal for Laird, I don’t see him holding Blakeslee below 50%+1 who’s edged up to 49.8% now.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/election…
…some interesting numbers nonetheless.
The topline is Angle up 48-41, down from 50-39 immediately post-primary.
I’ve been a disser of crosstabs in recent months after learning how little they often inform compared to toplines, but one thing worth noting is that Rasmussen is always eye-opening for consistently having much more heavily Republican nonwhite voters, especially in the “other” category as in “not black,” in their sample than everyone knows will show up on election day. And this poll is no exception. Ras has white voters favoring Angle by the same 7-point margin as in the topline, but “other” which in Nevada means mostly Hispanics favoring her 65-18(!). That’s just absurd. As a rule, the crosstabs for whites are usually more reliable because whites are usually an overwhelming majority of the sample, so the margin of error for the white subsample is much lower than for other demographic breakdowns. So if Angle’s lead with whites really is in the ballpark of 7 points, she’s losing.
Favorables: Reid at 48-49, Angle at 48-47.
Obama job approval in Nevada: 48-52.
Overall, these aren’t bad numbers for Reid for a Rasmussen poll.
I only wish others would poll this race more, but Mason-Dixon is the only other pollster I’ve seen there all year, and only LVRJ hires them to do the state.
Haven’t seen this posted yet…Terry Branstand has picked state Sen. Kim Reynolds as his running mate.
http://www.iowapolitics.com/in…
Not someone from the BVP camp. It’s a state senator almost no one has heard of My first take is at Bleeding Heartland. I think he chose someone to keep fiscal issues rather than social issues front and center, and I am not sure the religious right will be happy (although lt. gov candidate Kim Reynolds is conservative on the social issues).
I doubt Vander Plaats will run as an independent. Working up a post on some scenarios.
I don’t know if this has been posted elsewhere, but Vince Sheheen just got the endorsement of the SC Chamber of Commerce, which was posted to his website this morning (vincentsheheen.com)
Probably isn’t a huge surprise since they’re neither fans of Sanford nor Haley, but should definitely give Sheheen some extra dough in what isn’t a terribly expensive state.
shows Burr leading Marshall by 1 point!
T