SSP Daily Digest: 10/6 (Morning Edition)

  • KY-Sen: Jack Conway has succeeded in getting a false and misleading ad by the “First Amendment Alliance” pulled off at least one television station, Louisville’s Fox 41.
  • WI-Sen: On the other side of the equation, Russ Feingold is being forced by the NFL to alter an ad which featured some footage of embarrassing end zone victory dances, including Randy Moss taunting Green Bay Packer fans. Could this really have been a mindless goof by Feingold’s media team? The Hotline’s Tim Alberta had the same thought I did: This sure was a good way to get plenty of free media coverage for this ad. (Judging by the number of Twitter mentions, at least, this ploy worked – if it was indeed the plan.)
  • AZ-08: The Smart Media Group is reporting that the DCCC has cancelled all of their ad buys in Tucson except for the final week of October. I suppose there are three ways you can interpret this news. The first is that Gabby Giffords is cruising and doesn’t need much help. The second I’ll call “panzers reconsolidating”: She’s basically doomed. And the third lies between the two: The D-Trip is performing triage, figuring that Giffords is strong enough to have a chance on her own, while other more fragile campaigns are in greater need of help. Choose your own adventure!
  • NY-24: Mike Arcuri is a lucky man. As you may recall, he created a new third party just so that he could have an extra ballot line to run on (and perhaps draw in a few votes from people who like him personally but can’t stomach the thought of pulling the lever for a Democrat). The problem: He called it the “New York Moderates” party, but state law forbids any party name from including the words “American,” ‘United States,” “National,” “New York State,” “Empire State,” or any abbreviation of those. Fortunately, a court ruled that he was able to retain the line by renaming it just the “Moderates” party.

    • Fundraising:

    • MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan: $2.1 million raised, “on par with” Roy Blunt
    • PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D): $3.2 million raised, Pat Toomey (R): $3.8 million raised
    • CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D): $361K raised from 9/16-29, Dan Maes (R): $28K raised, Tom Tancredo (ACP): $149K
    • OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D): $1.6 million raised from 9/3-10/4
    • OH-15: Steve Stivers (R): $757K raised, Mary Jo Kilroy (D): $603K raised

    Independent Expenditures:

    • CT-Sen: Sources tell Aaron Blake that the DSCC has added $1.2 million to its buy here
    • OH-01: The Campaign for Working Families throws down $125K for ads to help Steve Chabot (R)
    • OR-05: CULAC the PAC chips in $34K for mail on behalf of Rep. Kurt Schrader (D)

    SSP TV:

    • NV-Sen: Harry Reid’s latest is actually half-positive/half-negative, and concludes by calling Sharron Angle “a foreign worker’s best friend”; Angle’s newest is a race-baity spot that – jeez – features footage of scary brown people sneaking through a fence (wish I were kidding)
    • PA-Sen: The DSCC also has an ad out that’s fairly race-baity, talking about Pat Toomey’s support for sending jobs to China – complete with Asian-style gong noises that were embarrassing even when John Hughes brought us Long Duk Dong more than a quarter-century ago
    • GA-Gov: In a reversal of the usual roles, Republican Nathan Deal paints himself as the friend of teachers (and education in general) in his first attack ad
    • NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo continues to sound like an anodyne Republican in his ads (cut wasteful government, blah blah), and says that Carl Paladino’s “anger is not a governing strategy”
    • AL-05: Steve Raby goes back to his mailbox to criticize Mo Brooks for being a DC tool (and then litters)
    • CA-45: In this Steve Pougnet ad, little kids singing bowdlerized versions of the “Miss Mary Mack” (Mary Bono Mack, get it?) schoolyard rhyme are annoying
    • CO-07: In an ad with weak production values, Ryan Frazier attacks Ed Perlmutter for supporting the stimulus and cap-and-trade
    • FL-12: Dennis Ross recites some conservative pabulum
    • FL-25: In a minute-long spot, Joe Garcia uses news coverage to revisit the David Rivera ramming-a-delivery-truck-carrying-his-opponents-flyers incident
    • ID-01: Walt Minnick can’t resist hitting the illegal immigration theme again – and he, too, features footage of Hispanic-looking people. Just uck
    • MN-06: A Tarryl Clark ad with really low production values stands out only because the otherwise serious-sounding female announcer declares: “Michele Bachmann: Not doing [bleep] for the people of the sixth district” (yes, there’s an actual bleep sound) [UPDATE: Gah, it’s just a fucking web ad.]
    • NC-02: Bob Etheridge hits one of my favorite attack ad topics: Renee Ellmers’ support of a 23% national sales tax
    • NV-03: As she did in her last ad, Dina Titus compares Joe Heck to Sharron Angle, this time attacking his record on education
    • NY-13: Big fucking surprise: Despite voting against healthcare reform, Mike McMahon is getting attacked on it anyway – for not supporting repeal, and for just generally siding with Pelosi & Obama. Will Democrats never learn? Don’t answer that
    • NY-20: Chris Gibson attacks Scott Murphy for supporting the stimulus. Man, it was a damn long time ago, but remember how much traction Murphy got last year by attacking Jim Tedisco (lol) for opposing the stimulus? (Not surprised to see the ad in that link has since been removed)
    • OH-18: Oh man. Clearly polls must be showing Dems that attacks on Republicans for wanting to send jobs overseas must be especially potent, ’cause here’s another one, from Zack Space. No gong in this one, though – instead, he features a prototypical Chinese dragon, and then even has the announcer say a mock “thank you” in Chinese! I really can’t wait for this election to be over

    149 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 10/6 (Morning Edition)”

    1. I posted it in an older thread this morning, but I’ll re-post here.  These are House freshman polls from Mark Penn.

      http://thehill.com/house-polls…

      AZ-01 – Gosar 46, Kirkpatrick 39

      CO-04 – Gardner 44, Markey 41

      IL-11 – Kinzinger 49, Halvorson 31

      MD-01 – Harris 43, Kratovil 40

      MI-07 – Walberg 41, Schauer 41

      NV-03 – Heck 47, Titus 44

      NM-02 – Pearce 46, Teague 42

      OH-01 – Renacci 42, Boccieri 39

      OH-15 – Stivers 47, Kilroy 38

      PA-03 – Kelly 49, Dahlkemper 36

      VA-02 – Rigell 42, Nye 36

      VA-05 – Hurt 45, Periello 44

      Sadly none of this looks unreasonable to me.  It is a big shit sandwich for all, and I mean all, of these candidates.  If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Periello, Markey, and Schauer are doing a little better than I might have thought.  But they are still doing shitty, mired in the low 40’s.  Indeed Penn doesn’t have ANY of these freshmen breaking 45%.

      I would not look at these as Dem polls though.  Penn clearly selected many of the very most vulnerable freshman, which I suspect was deliberately designed to feed the doom narrative and thereby draw maximal attention to the polls.  Penn’s not doing Dems any favors here.

      Next week, Penn does open seats, the week after that sophomores, and the week after that veterans.

    2. Murphy is running a good ad in PA-8 attacking “congressman” Fitzpatrick for voting for legislation that sent jobs overseas.

    3. Is Option #2 or #3, probably #2.  I guarantee you they are not abandoning Giffords to the wolves, and won’t do so unless they pull out of AZ-01 and AZ-05 first.  Giffords is the strongest of those three incumbents and the most proficient at fundraising, is in the most friendly district, and has the weakest opponent.  If the panzers start reconsolidating, you will see the D-trip pull out of AZ-01 first.

    5. 1. I think the PA-SEN ad is fair game; the gong alone is fine — had they done the stereotypical music cue or pidgin voice, that’s different.

      2.  The MN-06 ad has to be web-only.  There’s no Stand By Your Ad disclaimer.

      3.  As noted above, here’s how to do the outsourcing ad right:

    6. CO-Sen:  Bennet’s internal has him up 44-41, and 45-43 with “definite” voters.  That’s NOT promising to me!  I think Bennet really is only a quasi-incumbent, it’s not quite right to measure his polling strength or weakness the same as people like Feingold or Murray who have repeatedly won election to their offices.  But this isn’t truly an open seat, either, and 44/45 a month out is not good for him IMO.

      http://www.politico.com/static…

      CT-Sen:  Blumenthal’s latest internal has him up 53-38, corroborating the recent flurry of polls that have him comfortably ahead.

      http://www.politico.com/static…

      NM-Gov:  This one’s the worst of all.  Denish is down “only” 3 points in her latest internal,

      49-46.  The linked polling memo spins this as improvement from 49-44 in each of the previous 2 months, but any campaign junkie knows that 2-point “movement” is at least as likely just statistical noise.  That Martinez has held steady at 49 is not promising for Denish.

      http://www.politico.com/static…

    7. Carney too.

      Yet another poll shows Chris Coons with a commanding lead over Christine O’Donnell… Coons leads 49%-30% in a new University of Delaware Center for Political Communication poll. With leaners, Coons’ lead expands to 61%-37%.

      In the Delaware House race, John Carney leads 48%-31% over Glen Urquhart.

      http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…

    9. First Read this morning:

      *** The Coakley lesson? Here’s something worth paying attention to: the DSCC is advertising in Connecticut (despite the fact that Dick Blumenthal is leading), and the NRSC is now upping its advertising in Kentucky (even though Rand Paul is ahead). A theory why this is occurring — the parties are fearful of screwing up these races. Call it the Martha Coakley lesson. But also don’t forget this about Kentucky: While John Kerry won just 40% of the presidential vote in the state in 2004, Dan Mongiardo lost by just one percentage point to Jim Bunning that same year.

      Well said, and the same thing goes for some of our incumbents.  Not every incumbent Dem who goes on the air for the first time in many years is in trouble.  Some of them are just making sure they STAY out of trouble, rather than become the next Jim Ryun and Jeb Bradley and Melissa Hart who don’t realize trouble until it’s too late.

      Regarding CT-Sen in particular, the Republicans who frequent this site can stop being so excited about the DSCC reservation.  Blumenthal is winning comfortably, certainly more comfortably than Rand Paul is.

    12. Raese 50-44

      http://www.rasmussenreports.co…

      I get it would be tough either running now or in two years but looking at the bigger picture it would have been far better for him to lose in 2012 and keep the seat until then while others fall. GOP +8.

    17. http://www.fitsnews.com/2010/1…

      Take it with a grain of salt, but I do believe this is a close race, with potential to get more so.

      I also wish someone would poll SC-2 (Joe ‘you lie’ Wilson vs. Rob Miller).  I think it might be an upset in the making.    

    19. http://www.northjersey.com/new…

      Closer than I would like, especially considering he won iwth 67% last time.  But he’s over 50% so he’s ok.  The problem is that the shore county of the district, Monmouth, has turned into nutjob territory.  Christie does best in Mommouth and Ocean counties, and Ocean is what’s keeping Jon Runyan in the game in NJ-3.

    24. I believe it was the fact that Tedisco refused to take a position on the stimulus, not the fact that he opposed it. Also, even if it was more popular then, a lot has changed in the last 18 months, and it has become a lot less popular and is an effective attack.  

    25. That ad seriously bothers me. I agree that it’s race-baiting but also the characters that they used at the end are not even used in China (but rather, Taiwan and Hong Kong). xenophobia fail.

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