Tag: Joe DioGuardi

• CA-Sen (pdf): The apparently nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California has put out another statewide poll, and the numbers look very similar to those in the Field Poll last week. Barbara Boxer is in a dead heat with Tom Campbell, down 44-43, and not faring much better against Carly Fiorina, where Boxer leads 44-43. (She led Campbell by 4 and Fiorina by 8 two months ago.) Boxer’s doing better against Chuck DeVore, with a 46-40 edge. The big change from the Field Poll is that PPIC finds Fiorina actually in the lead in the GOP primary, the first pollster to see that in a while; she’s up 24-23-8, an improvement from January’s 27-16-8 Campbell edge. Are reluctant social conservatives getting off the fence and behind Fiorina, sensing DeVore isn’t gaining traction? Or did the Demon Sheep ad actually sway some ovinophobic voters?

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway’s on the air with a TV spot in the wake of the health care vote, trying to get some mileage out of Democratic primary opponent Dan Mongiardo’s stated opposition to the bill that passed.

• NY-Sen-B: Wall Street exec David Malpass, fresh off his smashing success as chief economist of Bear Stearns, looks like he’s doubling down on trying to be the GOP nominee to go against Kirsten Gillibrand. He’s promising $1 million of his own money to kick-start his campaign, where he first needs to get out of a primary against Bruce Blakeman and Joe DioGuardi.

• UT-Sen: It’s all still anecdotal, but the preliminary reports for how caucus night went for Bob Bennett sound pretty bad. Observers report strong anti-Bennett sentiment in general, although what might save him is that there was no coalescing behind any of his particular challengers. Turnout was maybe twice that of caucuses two years ago, suggesting a highly-motivated anti-Bennett base.

• CA-Gov (pdf): PPIC also has California gubernatorial numbers, again similar to the last Field poll. Meg Whitman’s outspending of Jerry Brown by a 200:1 margin or so is definitely paying temporary dividends, as she’s leading the gubernatorial race 44-39 (up from a 41-36 Brown lead two months ago). Brown leads Steve Poizner 46-31, basically unchanged from two months ago, suggesting this change is pretty Whitman-specific and not an across-the-boards phenomenon; Whitman leads Poizner 61-11.

• GA-Gov: Republican Governor Sonny Perdue is engaging in a remarkable end-run around Democratic AG Thurbert Baker, appointing a “special attorney general” to join in the suit against the health care reform brought by Republican AGs after Baker refused to do so and called it “political gamesmanship.” If nothing else, the fireworks between Perdue and Baker ought to raise Baker’s profile (who’s currently lagging in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but might be poised to make an impact if he switched to the mostly-vacant Senate race).

• MA-Gov: Here’s some trouble for independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill: the SEC has charged that John Kendrick, an executive with Southwest Securities, won $14 billion in bond deals after co-sponsoring a fundraiser for Cahill. That’s a violation of federal rules against contributions to officials who oversee bond sales. The SEC says that the Cahill campaign (which is returning the contributions) didn’t break any laws by accepting the money, though.

• OH-Gov, TX-Sen: Two more GOPers who still seem to be charging full speed ahead on “repeal” are Ohio’s John Kasich and, more interestingly, John Cornyn, who’d been cited in Ezra Klein‘s piece yesterday, on the GOP’s rapidly dialed-down rhetoric, as supporting only piecemeal tinkering but now seems to be reversing course again.

• WY-Gov: Whoops, that was a short-lived candidacy-to-be. Wyoming Democrats looking for a gubernatorial candidate are back to square one after attorney (and gubernatorial progeny) Paul Hickey reversed course and said “no” to a run.

• CO-07: Tom Tancredo weighed in with an endorsement in the Republican primary field in the 7th and, guess what… he endorsed the white guy. He gave the nod to former John McCain campaign official Lang Sias, despite Tancredo’s general antipathy toward all things McCain.

• HI-01: State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa is finally making some moves in the special election to replace resigned Rep. Neil Abercrombie. She’s out with her first TV ads, for the all-mail-in election with a May 22 deadline.

• NY-13: More blowback for Rep. Mike McMahon for his “no” vote on HCR, which could cost him the Working Families ballot line and/or get him a primary opponent. NYC council speaker Christine Quinn has backed out of a previously planned fundraiser for McMahon, citing his vote.

• SC-05: The NRCC seems to be feeling confident about state Sen. Mick Mulvaney, their challenger to Rep. John Spratt in the reddish 5th. They’ve promoted him to the 2nd level (“Contender”) in their 3-tiered fundraising pyramid scheme for challengers.

• Illinois: We Ask America seems to be taking great pains to confirm that, yes, they really are a legitimate pollster. I don’t know if they’re helping their case by releasing results with two significant digits, but they have a lot of Illinois House race data; we’ll leave it to you to decide how much salt you want to apply. Perhaps weirdest, they have teabagging businessman Joe Walsh leading Melissa Bean in IL-08 by 38.33%-37.61%. They also have leads for GOPers in the 11th (Adam Kinzinger leads Debbie Halvorson 42-30, way worse than Kinzinger’s own recent internal) and the 14th (Randy Hultgren leads Bill Foster 38-36), while Dems lead in the 10th (Dan Seals beats Bob Dold 40-37) and the not-on-the-radar 17th (Phil Hare leads pizza parlor owner Bobby Schilling 39-32).

• CA-Init: It’s been confirmed that the initiative to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana in California has qualified for the ballot in November. A 2009 Field Poll shows such an initiative could actually pass, with 56% of Californians supporting such an initiative. Of course, it’s unclear how such a change in state law would mesh with federal law, but if nothing else, it may help motivate a lot of bong-toting slackers to get off their couches to vote in November who otherwise might not vote (and cast votes for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer while they’re at it).

• DCCC: Freshman Rep. Jared Polis has been a strong fundraiser (and has his own fortune, too), and he’s looking to spread the wealth. His joint fundraising committee, the Jared Polis Majority Fund, has already distributed $400K this spring to the DCCC, to vulnerable incumbents (Frank Kratovil, Betsy Markey, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Harry Teague, Dina Titus), and to four up-and-comers (Ami Bera, Steve Pougnet, John Carney, and David Cicilline).

• DNC: I guess the DNC is feeling its oats these days, or just figuring that the best defense is a good offense: they’ve doubled the number of GOPers on the receiving end of pro-HCR attack ads for their “no” votes. They’ve added Pat Tiberi, Lee Terry, Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, and Charlie Dent.

• Census: Remember the Census? It’s back! In Pog form!

• CA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Tom Campbell is getting an endorsement that may boost his cred with the socially conservative right: from the man who couldn’t even beat Gray Davis, Bill Simon. Simon hopes socially conservative voters will still take a look at Campbell’s fiscal credentials.

• IN-Sen: Retiring Evan Bayh hasn’t said anything specific about what he’s doing with his gigantic $13 million federal war chest. But a spokesperson gives some hints: “What he has said is that you can expect him to help the Democratic Senate nominee in Indiana and to help like-minded Democrats – people who want to get things done, who are practical and who want to reach out and forge principled compromises.”

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway is pointing out an important ideological fracture line, which seems to have gotten little media attention in the Democratic primary in the Bluegrass State. Conway says he supports the health care legislation passed yesterday, while Dan Mongiardo has previously said he’d “throw it out and start over.”

• NH-Sen: Speaking of HCR, Kelly Ayotte was quick to abandon her previous flavorless, position-less campaign and get on the “repeal!” bandwagon. With Paul Hodes having been a “yes” in the House, this may become one of the marquee issues in this race, and by extension, the battle for the Senate.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena has a new poll out of the Empire State which includes a couple head-to-heads in the Senate race. They just won’t let up on the George Pataki front, finding that he leads Gillibrand 45-39 in a hypothetical race, while Gillibrand leads actual candidate Bruce Blakeman 48-24. There are a couple other names on the “actual” candidate front they might want to try out instead — Joe DioGuardi and David Malpass — and now it looks like one more is poised to get in. Dan Senor apparently has enough Wall Street support behind him to go ahead and launch his bid. One other name who’s now saying she won’t run, though, is former Lt. Gov. and malfunctioning health insurer spokesbot Betsy McCaughey, who it turns out is backing Malpass.

• MI-Gov (pdf): It turns out there was a lot more meat to that Insider Michigan Politics/Marketing Resource Group poll than what got leaked on Friday. They also looked at the Democratic primary, finding state House speaker Andy Dillon in charge at 21, followed by Lansing mayor Virg Bernero at 9 and state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith at 6. They also did a whole bunch of general election permutations, all of which were won by the GOPers by suspiciously large margins (at least when compared with other recent polls): Mike Bouchard over Dillon 41-26, Mike Cox over Dillon 44-27, Peter Hoekstra over Dillon 43-27, Rick Snyder over Dillon 42-26, Bouchard over Bernero 45-23, Cox over Bernero 45-26, Hoekstra over Bernero 43-27, and Snyder over Bernero 44-24.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Naturally, Siena also has a gubernatorial half to its poll. They find newly-minted Republican Steve Levy’s entry to the field to be rather unwelcome: ex-Rep. Rick Lazio is beating him 45-16 in the GOP primary. Either way, Democratic AG Andrew Cuomo (with a 63/22 approval) seems to have little to worry about; in November, Cuomo beats Lazio and Libertarian candidate Warren Redlich 59-21-3, while beating Levy and Redlich 63-16-4.

• OH-Gov: John Kasich is still reaching out to teabagger nation as his core of backers, and consistent with that, he’s having Fox gabber Sean Hannity host a Cincinnati fundraiser for him on April 15. I sure hope Kasich gets a bigger cut of the proceeds than Hannity’s military charity recipients seem to.

• OR-Gov: The last big union left to endorse in the Democratic gubernatorial primary finally weighed in, and Oregon’s AFSCME went with ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber rather than ex-SoS Bill Bradbury, who’d gotten the teachers’ union endorsements. The AFSCME also endorsed newly appointed Treasurer Ted Wheeler in his primary bid against state Sen. Rick Metsger, and also, in an unusual step, endorsed two Republican state Reps. in rural eastern Oregon who voted “yes” on raising income taxes, probably figuring that non-wingnut GOPers is probably the best we’re going to do in those districts.

• LA-02: Republican Rep. Joe Cao probably ended any hopes of hanging onto his dark-blue (and 21.7% uninsured) seat by voting against health care reform yesterday, but just in order to emphasize the way in which he slammed the door shut on himself, he also compared abortion as a moral evil comparable to slavery. Because that’s a comparison just bound to go over well in his black-majority district.

• MA-10: Former Republican state Treasurer (from the 1990s) Joe Malone made it official: he’s running in the 10th to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt. He’ll still have to get past state Rep. Jeff Perry in the GOP primary, though.

• PA-06: Manan Trivedi and Doug Pike traded union endorsements in their Dem primary battle in the 6th. Trivedi got the backing of the Iron Workers local, while Pike got the nod from the local AFSCME.

• PA-12: Bill Russell seems like he just can’t take a hint, despite the GOP uniting behind Tim Burns. Russell says he’ll write himself in for the special election between Burns and Democrat Mark Critz, in addition to continuing to contest the same-day GOP primary against Burns. Meanwhile, the pro-life Critz’s main opponent remaining, Navy vet Ryan Bucchanieri, got an endorsement that ought to give him a financial boost, from the National Organization for Women.

• WV-01: We’ve heard rumors that the local Democratic establishment wasn’t very enthused about propping up Rep. Alan Mollohan, who faces both a credible primary challenge and a self-funding Republican opponent. Here’s some of the first public whiff of that: the state Democratic chair, Nick Casey, says he won’t be taking sides in the primary battle between Mollohan and state Sen. Mike Oliverio (although he did predict that Mollohan would be the eventual victor).

• Redistricting: Cillizza has a little more background on the Democrats’ efforts to gear up for the 2012 redistricting battles, which we discussed last week in terms of the DLCC’s efforts. The DGA is getting in on the act, too, with a Harold Ickes-led effort called Project SuRGe (for “Stop Republican Gerrymandering”), also focused on maximizing Dem control of state legislatures.

• Votes: Lots of slicing and dicing in the media today regarding who voted which way, and why, on yesterday’s historic health care reform vote. Nate Silver has a bunch of nice charts up, which show that district lean and Reps’ overall ideology was much more determinative than whether the Rep. is considered vulnerable in November in terms of a “yes” or “no” vote. And Some Dude over at Salon has a more concise look at Reps who most mismatched their districts with their votes. Finally, if you want to see the “(some) Dems are still doomed” conventional wisdom in full effect, they’ve got that in spades over at Politico.

• Passings: Our condolences to the Udall family, which lost family patriarch Stewart Udall over the weekend. Udall, 90, was Congressman from Arizona and then John F. Kennedy’s Interior Secretary, and many of our environmental protections that we take for granted today bear his stamp.

• $$$: The fundraising quarter is almost over, and Adam B. is opening up another round of “We’ve Got Your Backs” over at Daily Kos (and cross-posted here), dedicated to showing some (financial) love to the House Dems in the most difficult districts who did the right thing on health care reform.

AR-Sen: As Reid Wilson says, here’s something you don’t see every day – at least, not in a Dem primary. Blanche Lincoln is attacking the labor unions who are supporting her opponent, Bill Halter. Lincoln is also doing her best to warm the hearts of the faithful by taking John Boehner’s side in the latest kerfuffle over House procedural tactics with regard to healthcare reform.

CO-Sen: Dem Sen. Michael Bennet has his first TV ad up, a $300K buy in Denver and Colorado Springs. Greg Giroux suggests that the timing is deliberate, since Bennet will be looking to blunt any possible momentum Romanoff might have received coming out of last night’s precinct caucuses.

FL-Sen: All the cool kids have already done it, which means anyone getting on the Marco Rubio bandwagon at this late date is just a fair-weather fan. Still, GOP Rep. Tom Price is chair of the Republican Study Committee, which is the Borg collective mothership of right-wing crazy, so this gives Rubio the Good Wingnut Seal of Approval™. Resistance is futile.

MA-Sen: That didn’t take long – newly-minted GOP Sen. Scott Brown will be hosting his first inside-the-beltway fundraiser, at $1000 a head. Of course, it’ll be at the offices of lobbying firm Duane Morris. My advice to Scott Brown is to hold lots and lots of events with lobbyists. Also, become the anti-healthcare frontman for your party. Thanks for helping out with that, Mitch McConnell!

NV-Sen: Memo to reporters: Please include information about the size of ad buys (especially for attack ads) when you’re writing them up. There are too many tiny buys made solely for the purpose of spinning the media. We the people need to know if we’re being spun, too.

NY-Sen-B: Republican ex-Rep. Joe DioGuardi officially offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb entered the race to take on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand yesterday.

PA-Sen: Arlen Specter snagged another valuable endorsement yesterday, this time from the 191,000-strong Pennsylvania State Education Association. (JL)

WI-Sen: A source close to Tommy Thompson’s jowls says that the former governor is “50-50” on whether he will play Droopy Dog in the upcoming remake.

SC-Gov: It’s payback time – Willard Mitt Romney is endorsing Mark Sanford protégé and state Rep. Nikki Haley for governor. Haley, as you’ve probably gathered, had endorsed Mittens in 2008 for the key SC primary. Other presidential wannabes have also returned the favor to their respective buddies; Reid Wilson has the full scorecard.

AZ-08: GOPer Jonathan Paton, who recently resigned from the state Senate to challenge Rep. Gabby Giffords, was added to the NRCC’s Young Guns program. Three other Republicans are seeking their party’s nod, including one candidate already on the Young Guns list, Marine Corps vet Jesse Kelly. Paton is almost certainly the establishment favorite, though.

LA-02: It’s hard to know what to make of the GOP’s attitude toward Joe Cao’s seat. On the one hand, they let him get mixed up with the sketchmeisters at BMW Direct. On the other, John Boehner just held a $500/person fundraiser for Cao last night on Capitol Hill. But then on the flipside, it looks like Cao will flip-flop and vote against healthcare this time, which will surely doom him in November. So why waste the money on him? Perhaps GOP bigs figure that buying Cao off will pay dividends when the party is able to point to unanimous opposition to the healthcare bill.

ND-AL: The campaign manager for former state House Majority Leader Rick Berg, a leading challenger to Earl Pomeroy, resigned yesterday, after misusing a state Republican Party email list and lying about it.

NY-13: Andy Stern wasn’t kidding. The SEIU is running a full-page ad in today’s Staten Island Advance urging Rep. Mike McMahon to vote in favor of healthcare reform. Greg Sargent has a copy of the full ad (PDF). This ad could presage a primary or third-party challenge should McMahon vote no, something Stern has already threatened.

SD-AL: Steve Hildebrand, a top Obama campaign official, says he’s considering a challenge to Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in the Democratic primary, particularly if she votes against healthcare.

DNC: This is Not News. DNC chair Tim Kaine says that Organizing for America will help Dems who vote “yes” on healthcare reform… but of course doesn’t say that he’ll withhold help from Dems who vote “no.” I wouldn’t expect him to, hence why this is Not News.

Healthcare: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce absolutely, definitely, most assuredly is not not NOT concern trolling House Democrats on the upcoming healthcare vote. They have our best interests at heart, and spent money on polling because they genuinely care about us.

Much more interesting poll numbers on healthcare can be found here. It turns out that the public was evenly divided on Medicare before it became law, too. Now, of course, the program is unassailable.

Kentucky: A bill to let independents vote in Democratic or Republican primaries died in the KY House.

WATN: I guess with Eric Massa stealing the limelight these days, Mark Foley feels emboldened to make his return to DC. He’ll be a guest at one of those unduly cozy black-tie beltway affairs, the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner.

SSP: I’m not done begging. We’re at 1,386 Twitter followers. SO close to 1,400. Make it happen. Pretty please?

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: The filing period in Nevada is now open, and there was one more surprise credible entrant in the Republican field for the Senate race, attracted by the stink lines coming off of Harry Reid. Assemblyman Chad Christensen of suburban Las Vegas, who at one point was minority whip, decided to take the plunge. That takes the number of Republicans jostling to face Reid up to a whopping 10. In other filings news, New York investment banker John Chachas decided to follow through on his planned expensive run despite usually polling with 0%, and on the gubernatorial side, Jim Gibbons put to rest any retirement rumors by filing for re-election.

• NY-Sen-B: It looks like the GOP has managed to find another warm body to take on Kirsten Gillibrand. Ex-Rep. Joe DioGuardi, ousted by voters from Congress over 20 years ago and now a darling of the local teabaggers, says that he’ll enter the race. (JL) (Port Authority commissioner Bruce Blakeman is already in the race, and has gotten a lot of county-level endorsements, while the Beltway media is treating former Bush aide Dan Senor as their flavor of the day, seeing as how he’s a guy they’re all familiar with.)

• UT-Sen: The start of the Utah Republican caucus process is in just two weeks, and Utah’s GOP chair is busy telling outside groups to butt out, warning them that they risk a backlash for their negative campaigning. He’s referring to Club for Growth, who’ve been advertising and robocalling to attack incumbent Bob Bennett (although they aren’t endorsing a particular opponent).

• MI-Gov: Much has been made of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andy Dillon’s poor relations with organized labor, with the assumption that labor is now getting behind Lansing mayor Virg Bernero instead. However, Dillon managed to nail down at least one union endorsement, from the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council.

• CO-07: He’d gotten Tom Tancredo’s endorsement, but that wasn’t enough to keep music promoter Jimmy Lakey in the race. Not having gotten much traction against Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier in the primary, he bailed out.

• IN-03: I’m not sure if that rumored teabagger challenge to Republican Rep. Mark Souder – near-legendary for his lackluster campaigning – from attorney and former Dick Lugar staffer Phil Troyer ever came to pass, but now it sounds like Souder is facing another challenge from the right (or at least from the land of the awake). Auto dealer Bob Thomas (a former head of the national Ford dealers association) is planning a run and expected to advance himself $500K to get things rolling. If he has two insurgent opponents, look for Souder to survive the split… but one well-financed one could give him fits.

• MA-10: I’m not sure that “top aide to Deval Patrick” is the thing you want on your resume right now, but Ted Carr is now considering a run for the open seat in the 10th in the Democratic primary (where he’d join state Sen. Robert O’Leary and Norfolk Co. DA William Keating). Carr is currently the director of the Massachusetts Office of International Trade and Investment and is also a selectman in Cohasset.

• NJ-07: Looks like Dems finally have a candidate nailed down in the 7th, although probably not one who’s going to put the contest against freshman Rep. Leonard Lance squarely on the map. The Union Co. Dems endorsed educator and former Hill aide Ed Potosnak for the race, and his principal rival, Zenon Christodoulou, vice-chair of the Somerset Co. Democrats, dropped out and endorsed Potosnak.

• NY-29: Here’s a big break for Corning mayor Tom Reed, and, in terms of avoiding a toxic split of the kind that’s sabotaged many a House special election for them, possibly for Republicans in general. Monroe Co. Executive Maggie Brooks has decided not to run in the special election to replace Eric Massa, whenever that might be held, which leaves Reed (who was running before Massa’s resignation) as the consensus choice. On the other hand, Brooks is probably better known than Reed and may also have better fundraising connections (on which front Reed has been lackluster so far), so she might have turned out to be a better bet for the GOP. The Dems still have nobody lined up, although several Assembly members have floated their names.

• PA-06: The Manan Trivedi Express keeps gaining steam, scoring a big endorsement last night from the Montgomery County Democratic Committee. Trivedi can place this endorsement in his back pocket — right alongside his endorsement from the Chester County Democrats last month. (The MontCo Dems also endorsed local fave Joe Hoeffel for Governor, and declined to endorse for Senate.) Meanwhile, The Hill notes that Trivedi’s primary opponent, the moneyed Doug Pike, is taking a “silence is best” approach on the topic of healthcare reform, refusing to respond to multiple requests for comment on the bill. (JL)

• DCCC: Barack Obama’s wading into the Congressional electoral fray on May 13, hosting a big-dollar fundraiser in New York hosted by the DCCC.

• CA-LG: State Sen. Dean Florez decided to jump out of the way of the Gavin Newsom juggernaut, ending his own Lt. Governor bid. It looks like the LG race will come down to Newsom vs. Los Angeles city councilor Janice Hahn.

• NY-St. Sen.: Here’s one of those polls that helps restore your faith in humanity. Ex-state Sen. Hiram Monserrate does not appear to be on track to win back the Senate seat he got expelled from after being convicted of assault, according to a new Siena poll of the SD-13 special election. Democratic Assemblyman Jose Peralta is polling at 60%, followed by Monserrate (now an independent) at 15, with Republican Robert Beltrani at 9. The election is scheduled for next Tuesday.

• Georgia: I can’t think of how to connect this story to national politics, but it’s certainly interesting just from the perspective of geographical geekery. Ever wonder about the strange shape of Fulton County, Georgia (which is kind of arrow-shaped, where the pointy part is a cluster of right-leaning mostly-white exurbs far to the north of Atlanta)? It turns out that Fulton County is a conglomerate of three former counties (Milton and Campbell), and now the Republicans in the state House are pushing legislation that would allow historic merged counties to reconstitute themselves. The racial undertone, of course, is that the wealthy exurbs of former Milton County (like Roswell and Alpharetta) would like to split off from mostly-black Fulton County… which would be a big hit on Fulton County’s property tax base, so Democrats are opposed. The plan may not succeed though, as it would require two-thirds of the legislature because it requires amending the state constitution.

• Humor: If you missed Scott Rasmussen’s appearance on the Colbert Report last night, check it out. The actual interview itself wasn’t revelatory, but the self-feeding sausage machine bit that precedes it is amazing.