SSP Daily Digest: 8/17 (Afternoon Edition)

DE-Sen: Looks like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg had to show some of that patented post-partisanship, having endorsed Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania yesterday. He offered a counterpoint in the form of an endorsement of Mike Castle in Delaware as well, and is doing a New York-based fundraiser for him tonight.

IN-Sen: That grinding sound you hear is old-school Republican Dan Coats shifting gears, trying to fit into the Tea Party template. Having won the Republican Senate nomination in Indiana probably with big help from the split among teabagger votes between Marlin Stutzman and John Hostettler, he’s now working on outreach to that set, trying to keep the focus on financial issues.

LA-Sen: Chet Traylor (who’s been seen polling in the single digits in polls we’ve seen so far of the Republican Senate primary) is out with an internal poll that purports to have him within striking distance of incumbent David Vitter. The poll by Verne Kennedy gives Vitter a 46-34 lead, keeping Vitter down in runoff territory. However, there’s a huge caveat: that number comes after voters were informed about Vitter’s use of prostitutes and employment of sociopathic aides, and there’s no word of what the non-informed toplines were. Meanwhile, Traylor seems to be gaining little momentum on the fundraising front: he’s filed a fundraising report showing he’s raised $42K since announcing his bid last month, and has $41K on hand.

NH-Sen: Bill Binnie, with little time left to catch up to Kelly Ayotte in the GOP primary, is defying orders from state party boss John Sununu to keep everything positive, and is rolling out two negative ads against Ayotte. Both ads focus on her time as Attorney General and her failure to pick up on anything wrong at Financial Resources Mortgage, which engaged in large-scale fraud and then collapsed.

WV-Sen: Joe Manchin hasn’t wasted any time on the fundraising front. He’s raised $410K already since declaring his candidacy last month, which may not initially seem like much but will go a long way in the cheap markets in West Virginia. Likely GOP opponent John Raese has raised only $30K, although he’s also poured $320K of his own money into the race.

IA-Gov, IA-Sen: Local GOP blog The Iowa Republican commissioned some polls of Iowa through Voter/Consumer Research. In a non-surprise, the Republicans are leading. Terry Branstad leads Chet Culver 53-35 in the gubernatorial race and Chuck Grassley leads Roxanne Conlin 59-33 in the Senate race. (Down the ballot, though, things look OK for Dems in the AG, Treasurer, and Supreme Court races.)

OH-Gov: This goes in the “nice work if you can get it” file. In further evidence of the high-dollar revolving door between politics and academia, there are more details out on John Kasich’s rich-guy sinecure at Ohio State University over the last decade. For instance, during 2008 he made $50K from OSU, but worked about four hours a month there, essentially making $4,000 for each visit to campus.

PA-Gov: While the Dems got good news yesterday in the Senate race in Pennsylvania with the dropout of the Green Party candidate, they got bad news in the gubernatorial race today with the dropout of John Krupa. Krupa was running as the Tea Party candidate, but had to pull the plug after a GOP petition challenge left him with too few signatures.

AZ-03: It looks like Ben Quayle’s week or two in the sun is pretty much over after a one-two punch of salacious website revelations and his own incompetent TV ad; conventional wisdom is treating him as having plunged out of front-runner status in the GOP primary in the open seat 3rd. Self-funding businessman Steve Moak seems to have that role now, followed by underfunded but better-known state Sen. Jim Waring. (The article alludes to polling, but irritatingly doesn’t offer any specifics.)

FL-17: The Miami Herald offers interesting profiles of all nine Democrats competing in the primary to replace retiring Rep. Kendrick Meek. This dark-blue seat may be, of all the nation’s open seats, the one we’re most starved for information about, so it remains to be seen whether we can get an upgrade from Meek (who voted with an eye always toward his next promotion) in this seat.

New York: Wow, there’s a serious race to the bottom going on among the New York House delegation, with regards to Cordoba House: Mike McMahon, Tim Bishop, and even non-endangered Steve Israel all offered statements saying they should look elsewhere to build. This is playing out most interestingly in NY-24, where Richard Hanna — one of the few conspicuously moderate Republicans on the front lines this year — offered support for the project last week. Then Dem Mike Arcuri came out in opposition… and Hanna, realized he was getting outflanked on the right, did a 180 and is now against it too. While it’s nice to see a GOPer getting caught in such a transparent and ad-worthy flip-flop, is this the kind of high-ground-ceding way we want to do it?

NRCC: Everyone seems abuzz that the NRCC is out with its list of 40 targeted districts today and its plan to spend $22 million (more than their current $17 mil CoH). It’s worth noting, though, that unlike the DCCC’s $49 mil list of 60 districts from July, these aren’t even reservations (which require deposits – or a willingness to seriously piss off television stations if you try to cancel), only a telegraphing of their plans, so things may change. (They may also roll out more in two steps, as did the DCCC.) Most of the buzzing is about what got left out. (Where are the defenses in LA-02 and HI-01? There’s a grand total of one defensive buy: the open seat in IL-10.) National Journal also has an interesting analysis of the method behind the NRCC’s madness, noticing that they’re playing Moneyball, focusing on the cheaper media markets and letting some of the more expensive East Coast markets slide.

Ads: Lots of ad miscellany today, starting with big buys from Karl Rove-linked GOP group American Crossroads, which is spending $425K on an anti-Michael Bennet piece in CO-Sen, and $500K on a pro-Rob Portman (doesn’t he have his own money?) spot in OH-Sen. Dina Titus and Betsy Markey, freshman Dems in tough defenses in NV-03 and CO-04, are both on the air with new spots with a similar strategy: go negative on TARP (they’re inoculated from it, not having been in Congress in the previous cycle). Finally, Scott Murphy is dipping into his huge cash stash with his first ad in NY-20, a feel-good piece featuring his enormous family that (like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s ad) traffics in the metaphor that Washington sometimes eats too much (although luckily this ad doesn’t show anyone pooping).

Rasmussen:

OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 37%, Rob Portman (R) 45%

PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 37%, Pat Toomey (R) 46%

156 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 8/17 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. It’s a little sad that we Iowa Democrats would be getting hammered in the Governor’s and U.S. Senate Race while leading the Treasurer’s race where we have had actual scandal involving the buying of teddy bears as gifts with state money.  I suppose most people probably don’t know what the State Treasurer does though.

    It’s good to see Tom Miller, our great Attorney General doing well however.  

  2. Scott Murphey is “aww shucks!” and forgettable, Titus lacks production values but has a decent message.

    Still, Markey ftw with an ad like that, I say she NARROWLY pulls it out this year.

  3. That’s quite a haul in a short period for Gov. Manchin. And I read this morning that he won the endorsement of the NRA. Though on the other side of things, the only tv ads I’m aware of airing so far are Raese ads.

  4. http://www.petoskeynews.com/ne

    “Glenn Wilson, an independent candidate and Rose City business owner who filed to run in the 1st Congressional district, pledged to spend $2 million in an attempt to shatter two-party politics.”

    “According to the “issues” portion of Wilson’s website, his primary objectives follow a conservative mold.

    The top issues state, “Stop the out of control spending; stop Obamacare; border enforcement; and lawful immigration.””

  5. I know in todays thread and this morning’s thread I kind of had a meltdown regarding PPP’s Rasmussen like voter model and whats seats are going to change or not and I want to apologize to the regulars her who I either offended or annoyed. Sometimes when i’m frustrated I let my emotions go and say shit I don’t usually mean. I don’t think we’ll lose and lose 30-35 seats in the House and I believe Sestak can win if the bastard goes in TV. I swear I watch the morning news and see a Toomey ad almost every day. How many ads did I see from Sestak: ZERO. No wonder Toomey is up by nine when your up on the air getting your name and message across and your opponent is not of course you’ll be up if no one knows your opponent (Sestak) is still running. I have said some shit about PPP changing their model but in the end I still trust them as a pollster unlike Scotty Ras.

    So in the end I want to apologize to any I annoyed today. My emotions got the best of me.

  6. ok so I accept GOPVOTER’s explanation that people hate Obama enough to vote for Vitter over Melancon…but um, that double digit lead over Traylor is the informed ballot? “uh yeah, so I guess Vitter’s adviser on women’s issues abused his girlfriend, and this Traylor dude would oppose Obama just as much, but uh…you know…whatever!”

    and boo OSU giving that money to Kasich. I want to like OSU since they have a good program for what I’m doing and I’m probably applying there for grad school, but they make it so hard. whatever, Cali and Hawaii have better weather anyway.

  7. I’m not going to get into policy, but I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that Congressman Steve Israel has said the Cordoba House owners should “should look elsewhere to build.”

    The only statement from Israel I’ve found says: “While they have a constitutional right to build the mosque, it would be better if they had demonstrated more sensitivity to the families of 9/11 victims. I urge them to do so before proceeding further.” That’s not necessarily a call for them to voluntarily give up the site, though I’m not sure what it is a call for (aside from “more sensitivity”).

    Bishop, Arcuri, and McMahon have explicitly said that the group seeking to build the center should choose another location.

    Whether this is a distinction without a difference I leave to the reader.

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