Tag: Ben Nelson

• CO-Sen: Republican candidate Ken Buck has a couple pieces of good news today: one, he’s the recipient of $172K in independent expenditures from mysterious conservative group Americans for Job Security. And two, Jim DeMint‘s coming to town on July 8 to stump on Buck’s behalf

• NE-Sen: Ironically, on the same day that he was the deciding vote in the Senate’s failure to extend unemployment benefits, Ben Nelson announced that he won’t be making an appearance in the unemployment lines himself in 2012. He confirmed that he plans to run for re-election.

• SC-Sen: The profile of Lindsey Graham in the New York Times magazine is well worth a read. While it serves to make me like him a little more, I’ve gotta wonder if he’s even going to bother running (or at least running as a Republican) when he’s up again in 2014, considering it’s just going to tick off the teabaggers even more. He derides the Tea Partiers, saying they’ll be gone in a few years, “chortling” that Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today… and also has a good laugh at the rumors about his sexual orientation, instead of, y’know, punching the interviewer in the nose or something unequivocally manly like that.

• WI-Sen, WI-Gov: PPP rolls out a last batch of numbers from their Wisconsin sample, looking at the Republican primaries in the Senate and gubernatorial races and seeing them as foregone conclusions. On the governor’s side, Milwaukee Co. Executive (and legendary 60’s crooner) Scott Walker leads ex-Rep. Mark Neumann 58-19, while in the Senate race, Ron Johnson leads Dave Westlake 49-11.

• WV-Sen: OK, so the rumor today is that things are still on for a 2012 special election to replace Robert Byrd, not a 2010 one as suggested yesterday. Gov. Joe Manchin and Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin are sending signals that they won’t call for a legislative special session to shift the election date to this year, despite the decision by SoS Natalie Tennant to have it in 2012.

• AL-Gov: Here’s one more politican trapped in the semantic quicksand that seems to be developing around the issue of stateside service during Vietnam. Alabama GOP runoff contestant Robert Bentley has drawn some heat for the words “Hospital commander” and “Vietnam War” appearing on-screen in one of his TV ads. Bentley was ranking medical doctor at Pope AFB (in North Carolina) during the Vietnam era, although he didn’t serve physically in Vietnam.

• FL-Gov: Now the supposed hero of 9/11 has RINO cooties, too? Rick Scott’s camp sent out press releases yesterday attacking opponent Bill McCollum for having supported “pro-abortion, pro-homosexual” Giuliani for President, back in those heady days of, say, 2007, when it was assumed that Giuliani was going to steamroller everyone else in the Florida primary.

• MD-Gov: Republican ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich picked a running mate for his 2010 campaign, and, no, he’s not giving Michael Steele his old job back. He picked Mary Kane, who was the SoS under Ehrlich (an appointed position in Maryland). She’s from Montgomery County, suggesting he sees the route to 50%+1 through this increasingly-blue suburb.

• OR-Gov (pdf): Republican pollster Magellan is quickly becoming one of the most prolific purveyors of public polls, this time with a look at the gubernatorial race in Oregon. They join the consensus that this is a deadlocked race right now; they find Republican Chris Dudley leading Democrat John Kitzhaber by a paper-thin 41-40 margin. Dudley has 41-27 support among independents. They also offer an interesting breakdown by CD; it’s OR-04 that’s keeping Dudley in this, giving him a 44-38 edge, while predictably, Kitzhaber dominates in OR-01 and OR-03, Dudley sweeps OR-02, and they fight to a tie in OR-05.

• WY-Gov: OMG! Stop the presses! Veteran character actor and widely trusted commercial pitchman for products for old people (and Wyoming resident) Wilford Brimley has made an endorsement in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He’s backing state Auditor Rita Meyer. No word on whether he was won over by her pro-oatmeal stances.

• NJ-07: There’s an internal poll out from a Democrat? Not only that, but it’s from one who’s been totally off the radar, as national Dems seem to have ceded the 7th to freshman GOPer Leonard Lance. While the “informed ballot” numbers are the ones getting promoted (we at SSP think informed ballot questions are good… for us to poop on), there are legitimate toplines in there too, with Lance leading Ed Potosnak by a not-so-imposing 43-30. Lance also has a weak 31/46 re-elect number in the Garin Hart Yang poll.

• NM-02: Construction liens seem to be the common cold of political scandals, but Democratic freshman Harry Teague is in an uphill battle to retain his GOP-leaning seat and probably wouldn’t like any bad PR. He personally, and the four oil and gas industry companies he controls, are facing a civil lawsuit over failure to repay loans to purchase equipment.

• Ohio: PPP has some odds and ends left over from their Ohio sample. Two items are on the bad news side of the ledger, although only barely: a generic House ballot test for Ohio (where there are at least five competitive Democratic holds) has Republicans leading Democrats 44-43, and GOP ex-Sen. Mike DeWine is leading appointed Democratic AG Richard Cordray 44-41 in the Attorney General’s race. (Screw that; what about SoS race numbers?) The good news is that Sherrod Brown’s favorables have rebounded quite a bit since PPP’s last poll; he’s now at 38/38.

• NRCC: More expectations management from the NRCC? After previous pronouncements that John Boehner was looking to pick up 436 100 seats, now he’s sending out a fundraising e-mail that touts a 39-seat pickup as their target.

• RGA: Haley Barbour’s rolling around in a trough full of money today: the Republican Governors Association hauled in $19 million in the last fundraising quarter. Also suggesting that GOP fundraising is kicking into higher gear, American Crossroads, the Karl Rove venture that earned a whopping $200 in May, had a much better June: they raised $8.5 million.

• NC-Sen: It looks like Elaine Marshall is fishing for campaign help outside of DSCC-approved circles. She recently hired A.J. Carrillo to “oversee day-to-day activities and coordinate strategy.” Carrillo, as you may recall, managed Greg Fisher’s ill-fated primary campaign against Bruce Lunsford in the 2008 Kentucky Senate race. Two years earlier, Carrillo had better luck, helping guide Jerry McNerney to an upset victory over the DCCC-backed Steve Filson in the CA-11 primary, and to another surprise win over GOP Rep. Richard Pombo in the general election. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Richard Burr seems to be wistfully nostalgic for the days of Bush, going so far as to tap Karl Rove to headline a fundraiser for him.

• NE-Sen: Rasmussen’s Magical Mystery Tour touches down in Nebraska today, and finds some frightening numbers for Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. In a hypothetical race against current Gov. Dave Heineman, Nelson trails by 61-30. Nelson is not up for re-election until 2012.

• UT-Sen (?): I wonder if this failed amendment to prohibit full body scanning as a “primary” screening device by none other than noted civil libertarian Jason Chaffetz could be used as fodder against him if he ever decides to run for Senate. Glenn Thrush, meanwhile, thinks the vote might have broader repercussions. For his part, Chaffetz is taking a surprisingly principled stand on his proposed ban.

• MD-Gov: Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley has picked up a primary challenger in George W. Owings III, a former state delegate who served in the Ehrlich administration as his secretary of veterans affairs. Owings plans to run to O’Malley’s right in the primary. Good luck with that one.

• MI-Gov: GOP douche extraordinaire Pete Hoekstra is actually taking heat in the Republican primary from venture capitalist Rick Snyder for his recent fundraising email that invited contributions to stop “the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security” in the wake of the most recent attempted terrorist attack.

• MN-Gov: Josh Goodman has a good piece on Mark Dayton going public (but not fully) about his struggles with depression and alcoholism.

• WY-Gov: Will Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal try for a third term? He’s seriously weighing the possibility, and has hired Global Strategy Group as his pollster to gauge his popularity in the state — and very likely to see if voters would mind if he challenged the state’s gubernatorial term-limits law in the courts.

• AL-05: The Alabama Democratic Party doesn’t believe that Parker Griffith and his consulting firm will delete the data that they downloaded from the party’s database just hours before Griffith defected to the GOP. While the ALDP is threatening Griffith and Main Street Strategies with legal action over the data, the Alabama GOP is salivating over the prospect of getting its hands on it.

• FL-17: Hotline on Call takes a look at the bubbling-under Democratic primary to replace Kendrick Meek.

• PA-07: Democratic state Rep. Bryan Lentz, who’s running to replace Joe Sestak in the House, is seeking to stake out a position as the reform candidate in his race against his likely Republican opponent, former US Attorney Pat Meehan. Lentz has called for the removal of ethically-questionable state House Majority Leader Todd Eachus as the head of the Democratic caucus.

• WA-03: Reid Wilson takes a closer look at the field to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Brian Baird. All signs are pointing to a likely run by ex-state Rep. Denny Heck.

• KY-State House: Gov. Steve Beshear has set a February 2nd special election date to fill the central Kentucky House seat of newly-elected Republican state Senator Jimmy Higdon.

• Texas: SSP’s thunder from down under, benawu, reminds us that the filing deadline for Texas closes in a week, and Democrats still have a lot of congressional races left unfilled, including the sadly-vacant TX-10.

• Strategy: Steve Rosenthal, a respected name in Dem consulting circles, has a very good piece on the five-step recovery process he suggests that Democrats follow in order to mitigate electoral damage in 2010.

Developing a line of attack he has used before, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats asserted yesterday that Terry Branstad’s past support for Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska makes Branstad partly responsible for any health care reform bill Congress passes this year.  

From the Vander Plaats campaign press release of November 23:

“Ben Nelson gave Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid the vote he needed to get the 60 votes to steamroll Republican opposition. It means the Democrats will be able to proceed with legislation that will effectively destroy our private health care system while saddling businesses and working families with hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and limiting our access to care,” said Vander Plaats, who is seeking the 2010 Iowa Republican gubernatorial nomination. “Whatever happens from here on out, Terry Branstad is going to have to accept some responsibility because he was a very active supporter of Ben Nelson in his first campaign for the Senate.”

Several Senate Democrats have said their vote for cloture over the weekend was merely in favor of allowing debate on the health care bill. However, their votes opened the process for a final vote that only requires 51 votes to win passage of any legislation.

“In other words, it’s more politics as usual where Ben Nelson will be able to vote against the bill later and insist he opposed the government takeover of health care. But the real vote was Saturday and the Democrat that Terry Branstad supported as a ‘conservative Democrat’ sided with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi,” Vander Plaats said.

Branstad, who contributed $1,000 to Nelson’s general election campaign on May 31, 2000 and $250 to Nelson’s 2006 campaign on July 17, 2002,  stood beside Nelson on May 31, 2000 at a news conference and endorsed the former Nebraska governor, saying, “It’s all right to help your friends. If he were in Iowa, he probably would be a Republican.”

Vander Plaats said, “We’re all going to pay an extremely high price for that friendship and that’s especially true for thousands of Iowans who work in the insurance industry. If Ben Nelson really did think like an Iowa Republican he would’ve voted no this weekend – just like Chuck Grassley did. Once again, this proves that elections have consequences and ideologies have consequences. The Democrats want to control us with our own dollars by taxing us more to pay for their ridiculous health care plan and Terry Branstad helped give them the leverage to do it.”

To my knowledge, Branstad did not get involved in Nelson’s unsuccessful 1996 Senate campaign against Chuck Hagel. By 2000, Branstad was no longer governor and probably never imagined he’d run for office again.

Todd Dorman of the Cedar Rapids Gazette mocked the Vander Plaats attempt to blame Branstad for health care reform, but my hunch is that this argument will resonate with some Republican primary voters.

The conservative noise machine has and will continue to whip up intense opposition to the Obama administration’s so-called “socialist” agenda. If Democrats defeat another Republican filibuster with exactly 60 votes, the media will emphasize that every Democrat voted to let the bill proceed.

By itself, Branstad’s past support for Nelson might seem insignificant, but it could reinforce doubts some conservatives already have about Branstad’s loyalty. Vander Plaats has gone out of his way to remind audiences that his running mate will share his values. Branstad picked pro-choice Joy Corning for lieutenant governor during his last two terms. Many of the business leaders who helped recruit Branstad for this race supported Mitt Romney for president, and Romney’s not the current favorite among Iowa Republicans.

The Branstad campaign struck a dismissive tone in its response to yesterday’s attack:

“Governor Branstad does not favor the health care reform bill being considered by the Senate. It spends too much money we don’t have and does nothing to create the jobs we so desperately need,” Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for Branstad, said in a written statement.  “Bob would do well to keep the focus on that and not violate Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment.”

They’ll have to do better than that as the campaign goes forward. There are plenty of vulnerable points in Branstad’s record, and Vander Plaats won’t be the only Republican attacker. Branstad is raising tons of money and rolling out endorsements, but Vander Plaats should have enough cash to get his message across statewide. He was featured on the cover of the November issue of Focus on the Family’s nationwide magazine, and last Friday, Chuck Norris hosted a $5,000 per couple fundraiser for Vander Plaats at his Texas ranch. If we’re lucky, national Teabaggers will get involved in this race too. They might be encouraged by the recent Des Moines Register poll showing Vander Plaats ahead of Governor Chet Culver.

I assume Branstad will have the resources to win the Republican primary next June. That said, I doubt he can spend the next six months asking his rivals to follow Reagan’s 11th commandment. Besides, Branstad has already broken his own rule by criticizing Vander Plaats’ proposal to halt same-sex marriage in Iowa by executive order. At some point Branstad will have to defend his past actions, and whatever he says probably won’t satisfy his detractors on the right wing.

Any thoughts on the Iowa governor’s race are welcome in this thread.

• NY-20: Jim Tedisco has moved into a 12-vote lead as the counties continue to engage in recanvassing of the lever-pull machines, which will continue next week. (Paper ballots are impounded at least until the scheduled court hearing on the 6th.)

In other news, Tedisco stepped down from his role as minority leader in the Assembly today. (That shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a sign of confidence in winning the election; he was facing a no-confidence vote from his caucus.)

• SD-Sen: The 2010 South Dakota senate race isn’t looking very fruitful for Dems, even in the unlikely event we run a top-tier recruit. (If Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin goes for a promotion, at this point she seems more interested in governor.) R2K polls SD for Daily Kos and finds that John Thune runs ahead of both ex-Sen. Tom Daschle, 53-40, and Herseth Sandlin, 51-39. All three have pretty good favorables; South Dakotans just seem to prefer to keep Thune where he is.

• CT-Sen: In the wake of yesterday’s terrible poll, a primary challenger to Chris Dodd has already popped out of the woodwork. Roger Pearson, the former First Selectman of Greenwich, has formed an exploratory committee. He seems little-known outside (or even inside) of Greenwich, but we’ll have to see if he can catch an anti-Dodd wave.

• AL-Gov: Looks like the Democratic primary for Governor is about to get pretty crowded; state Sen. Roger Bedford is now openly mulling a run, and the inside chatter appears that the controversial but powerful northern Alabama legislator is pretty serious about a bid.

Meanwhile, ArturD2 is kvetching like a five year-old over the probable entry of Ag Comm’r Ron Sparks into the race. (J)

• NH-Sen: Despite entreaties from the NRSC, Judd Gregg says he won’t seek re-election. Apparently, he wants to devote all his time to supporting the president’s agenda in the Senate. (D)

• CO-Sen: Appointed senator Michael Bennet pulled in startling fundraising numbers for the 1st quarter, raising $1.37 million. Bennet is facing a paltry field of GOPers so far (with ex-Rep. Bob Beauprez their best bet), so this may actually serve more to cause former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff to think twice about a primary challenge.

• AK-Sen: With charges dropped against Ted Stevens, Alaska GOP chair Rudy Reudrich wants a do-over on last year’s election. Gov. Sarah Palin also endorsed the idea, despite her taking an anti-Stevens stand in the closing weeks of the election. However, Rep. Don Young doesn’t support the idea, saying Mark Begich “will be in the Senate and will do a good job.” (In fact, Young has a totally different idea: Stevens should run for governor in 2010 against Palin.) Stevens’ friends in the Senate also seemed resigned to the election being over.

• RI-Gov: Ex-Sen. Lincoln Chafee seemed to back off a bit from previous statements that he will be running for governor as an independent, saying that he will decide by May whether or not to run, once his current position (teaching at Brown) ends.

• Votes: Yesterday was the big vote in the House on the Obama budget. After a lot of public vacillation, even Joe Cao voted no, joining every other Republican. 20 Democrats voted no; it’s a who’s who of who’s vulnerable (with a few entrenched Blue Dogs joining them): Barrow, Boren, Bright, Childers, Donnelly, Foster, Griffith, Kosmas, Kratovil, Kucinich, Markey, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, Minnick, Mitchell, Nye, Perriello, Taylor, and Teague. The only ‘nay’ votes in districts won by Obama were John Barrow (who’s actually been fairly cooperative so far this session), Bill Foster (usually a good guy, but a deficit hawk), and Dennis Kucinich (who assumedly voted against the budget from the left for not containing enough magic ponies). In the Senate, a few hours later, Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson were the only defections.

• NASA: Here’s a guy we’re glad to see land on his feet: Nick Lampson, who used to represent NASA’s Houston-area facilities in TX-22, is now on the short list of potential NASA Administrators. Even Pete Olson, the guy who defeated Lampson, is advocating for Lampson.