Tag: Christine Jennings

SurveyUSA (9/30-10/1, likely voters, no trendlines):

Christine Jennings (D): 33

Vern Buchanan (R-inc): 49

Jan Schneider (I): 9

Don Baldauf (I): 3

Undecided: 6

(MoE: ±4.1%)

Polling has been all over the place in FL-13 just in the past month. First good old Vern released an internal that had him up 18. Then Jennings responded with her own showing her back just four. Research 2000 neatly split the difference, calling it a twelve-point race. Neither the R2K nor Jennings polls, though, included Democrat-turned-crybaby Jan Schneider, a three-time loser who seems to be digging her loser’s share directly out of Jennings’s hide.

Vern also poaches Dems directly. He scores a strong 76-11 among members of his own party, while Jennings takes just 62-19 from Dems. And he cleans up with indies, 43-25. Jennings has an extremely tough row to hoe in this district.

The one thing that stands out is at this point old hat for SUSA: voters 18 to 34 are Vern’s best demographic, favoring him by a 57-31 split. I know the preference for Republicans among young voters in SUSA polls has struck SSPers of all stripes as odd if not completely off-base. But perhaps SUSA sees something the rest of us haven’t.

A little history lesson may be in order here. I’ve been reading Rick Perlstein’s utterly awesome Nixonland, which I can’t recommend highly enough. He recounts that when the franchise was extended to 18-to-21-year-olds before the 1972 election, Democrats were convinced that this would be of huge benefit to them. After all, young people had been on the vanguard of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and surely despised Tricky Dick. Yet Nixon managed to split the youth vote en route to a massive landslide.

Now obviously, the differences between 2008 and 1972 are too many to count, not least that many Democrats back then completely misunderstood Nixon’s appeal. But either SUSA has made a huge mistake with its likely voter screen, or they’ve correctly identified trends among younger voters this year that most other pollsters have missed. We’ll see.

(Proudly cross-posted at Clintonistas for Obama)

Hello. I’m atdleft, someone you may know from Clintonistas for Obama or MyDD or The Liberal OC. I’m new to Swing State Project, so please don’t get too rough on me.

I just want to let you know that when we’re not obsessing over all things Presidential, my friends & I are looking for good Congressional candidates to support. We already have some idea of who looks good to us, but I’d like to hear from all of you on which candidates we should help out. Whild I’d love to be of use to everyone, I at least want to make sure I’m doing something for Democrats that: (a) can win & (b) will stick to good progressive values once elected.

Because I’m in the area and I’m already familiar with her, I’m all for Debbie Cook. She’s running against an extreme right-wing wacko incumbent, and she’s the first Democratic challenger since Loretta Sanchez (in 1996) who has a real chance of winning an Orange County, CA, House seat. I’m already doing whatever I can to help her win, and I encourage everyone else in the LA/OC area to do the same.

But what about everyone else living in other parts of the country? I feel terrible leaving them all out in the cold. That’s why I’m here today asking for suggestions.

So who should we love? Which candidates deserve our attention? Is Dina Titus the one who can finally upset Jon Porter in NV-03? Can Charlie Brown blow away GOP carpetbagger Tom McClintock in CA-04? Is the second time the charm for Darcy Burner (WA-08) & Christine Jennings (FL-13)? And can Jeff Merkley (OR-Sen), Tom Udall (NM-Sen), & Jeanne Shaheen (NH-Sen) help us expand our Senate majority?

So who should we love? Tell me now. If you make a good case, you might see big chances with this ActBlue page & some diaries from me promoting your favorite candidate(s). 😉

Roll Call (subscription required) is reporting that Vern Buchanan has been hit with a lawsuit alleging consumer fraud at the auto dealerships that he owns. In and of itself, this might not be huge news; this isn’t a criminal indictment, so when you’re in the same party as the Doolittles, Renzis, and Fossellas of the world, a little civil action isn’t even going to get you noticed, right? (The Sarasota Herald Tribune has a story here about the basics of the case.)

There are some eye-raising details to the case that Roll Call raises, though, suggesting that campaign finance violations in his 2006 run for Congress may be intertwined with the fraud allegations. FLA Politics has some excerpts:

Joseph Kezer, a former finance director at Buchanan’s Sarasota Ford dealership … Kezer also alleged in an interview with Roll Call that he observed campaign finance violations ahead of Buchanan’s narrow 2006 victory against bank executive Christine Jennings (D)…

Some of the Buchanan campaign’s record $8 million outlay in the 2006 campaign, according to Kezer, likely was laundered corporate cash funneled through higher-ups at Buchanan’s numerous dealerships.

Buchanan faces a rematch against 2006 opponent Christine Jennings, against whom he won by 369 votes against a backdrop of malfunctioning electronic voting machines… well, assuming he’s still a free man in November.

An interesting development:

Unwilling to wait for the courts to rule on the disputed Sarasota elections, a key member of the U.S. Senate is launching an investigation into the 13th Congressional District race.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she will ask the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct a “top-to-bottom investigation” to determine what caused 18,000 Sarasota County undervotes in the race for Congress.

A GAO investigation could definitely lap the current court case brought by Dem Christine Jennings. Right now, we’re still waiting on an appeal of the trial court judge’s ruling that Jennings can’t get review ES&S‘s voting machine source code. At first I thought we’d find out this month, but now Jennings’ lawyers are saying we won’t hear any earlier than March.

But with Feinstein’s newly aggressive posture, we  might not even have to wait on the appeals process: The Senate can issue subpoenas to crack this stubborn nut open. Then the real fun begins.

P.S. It’s also notable that this pressure is coming from the Senate, rather than the House, which has said it prefers to wait until the court case runs its course. My sense, based on tiny hints in the article linked above, is that the Senate has a freer hand here, since (as Feinstein is doing) it can frame the issue as purely one of election integrity, rather than appearing to try to increase its majority by an extra seat.

(Thanks to ca democrat.)