SSP House Race Ratings Changes: 10/13

SSP has changed its ratings of four House races today. Here’s what we did:

Despite consistently strong fundraising for Democrat Bob Lord since he entered this race in early 2007, it was hard to see GOP Rep. John Shadegg as an especially ripe target in this R+6 Phoenix-area district.

But Democrats have caught Shadegg off-guard in recent weeks, with both the Lord campaign and the DCCC hitting Shadegg on the airwaves with a series of negative ads (the DCCC alone spending $700K on the race so far). Shadegg has been slow to respond, drawing some ire from DC Republicans who say that he hasn’t taken his race seriously enough.

On top of that, Shadegg has endured several days worth of bad press after he misused the image of a WWII veteran in one of his campaign ads — a blunder that drew an awkward and not totally sincere apology from Shadegg, followed by another blistering response. A recent poll of this race by Anzalone Liszt showed a dead heat, and while that might be optimistic (Research 2000 seems to think so), this race has to be considered in play now.

Hoo boy. After taking the seat of GOP creep Mark Foley in 2006 on a platform of family values, Democrat Tim Mahoney is now caught in an explosive sex and ethics scandal of his own.

Mahoney hasn’t had the smoothest of first terms; he started off with a thud when he said: “Very candidly, this isn’t the greatest job I’ve had.” He also declined to endorse Obama, and infamously said that: “I don’t owe the party anything… If anybody owes anybody anything, it’s Nancy Pelosi who owes a debt to me.” Mahoney may have thought he was providing some needed distance between himself and his party in an R+2 district with such comments, but they only succeeded in making him seem irritable and weird.

For a while it seemed like he’d get away with these behavioral defects, but with the recent leaking of lurid details of a sex scandal with a one-time staffer, a deal to keep her quiet, and audio recordings of a profanity-laced phone call, Mahoney is going to be hard-pressed to wipe off this kind of toxic sludge from himself before November.

After three contentious races, the fourth Hill-Sodrel match-up is lacking the energy that it used to have in past years, and this seems to benefit the incumbent.

Sodrel has posted lackluster fundraising numbers all year, and has run a less visible campaign than in previous cycles. A recent SurveyUSA poll gives Hill a 15-point edge, and Research 2000 posted similar results in recent days.

And if there was any doubt that Sodrel needs to shake this race up, a recent plea to include lie detectors at an upcoming debate from Sodrel’s allies seems to be enough to confirm some level of desperation here.

It doesn’t look like we’ll see a comeback from the ‘stache this time.

Democrats were always high on the chances of John Boccieri, a state senator and Air Force vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. While this district does have a Republican lean, it’s been trending in the Democratic direction as of late, and Democrats have put themselves in a good position to pick up this open seat.

Two recent polls (one from Research 2000 and another from SurveyUSA) have given Boccieri 10 and 8-point leads, respectively, but the biggest advantage that Dems have racked up here is in the brute force column. The DCCC has already spent over $1 million defining Schuring in a negative light, while the NRCC is apparently in retreat, cutting back their $820K ad reservation in this district by $320K. When (or if?) that money kicks in, it may be too little, too late to erase the big head start that Boccieri has amassed in this race.