SSP Daily Digest: 4/5 (Morning Edition)

Welcome to the workin’ week!

  • FL-Sen: Rudy & Rubio, together at last. Giuliani will become the latest johnny-come-lately to endorse Marco.
  • GA-Sen: Johnny Isakson, who had been hospitalized twice in one week, is now back home.
  • KY-Sen: Weirdo Rand Paul is launching a 1,000-point ad buy (that’s big) attacking Trey Grayson as a pro-bailout insider too cozy with DC. The primary is about six weeks away. On the Dem side, The Lexington Herald-Leader reviewed state records and found that Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo has spent four times as much taxpayer money on travel, hotels and meals as AG Jack Conway. Mongiardo has also racked up expenses for the security detail that travels with him (Conway doesn’t have security).
  • NV-Sen: Jon Ralston says that federal investigators are looking to nail John Ensign for “structuring,” which is “a broad term that refers to the crime of creating financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.” Ensign, you’ll recall, had his parents give a $96,000 “gift” to his mistress instead of reporting it as a severance payment. The DoJ is moving very methodically, though, ever-mindful of the wretchedly botched prosecution of ex-Sen. Ted Stevens (which was thrown out on appeal due to prosecutorial misconduct.)
  • SD-Sen: Ugh. Not only did no Democrats file to run against John Thune, but he’s become the first senator in South Dakota history to run without major-party opposition. My advice to John Thune: Save your $6 million warchest for a 2012 presidential run.
  • UT-Sen: Sen. Bob Bennett and his Republican challengers faced off in a debate last Friday, which saw Bennett defend earmarks and get attacked for supporting an individual mandate to buy health insurance. The GOP state convention, which will choose a nominee, is May 8th.
  • AL-Gov: Hah – Artur Davis, fresh off his vote against healthcare reform, is now pushing a petition on his website attacking Alabama state legislators who voted to “obstruct” the new bill.
  • IA-Gov: Republican pollster Magellan Data and Mapping Strategies has a survey of the Iowa gubernatorial race, showing Terry Branstand crushing incumbent Dem Chet Culver 50 to 34. Culver leads Bob Vander Plaats 40-39 and Rod Roberts 38-32. It’s unclear to me whether Magellan was polling for fun or if this was on behalf of a client.
  • MA-Gov: Politico has a piece describing the extraordinary efforts Obama’s political team is making to help Gov. Deval Patrick win re-election. Patrick has visited the White House half a dozen times over the past year, and he’s the only office-seeker so far (other than Harry Reid) to have a fundraiser headlined by the president himself.
  • PA-Gov: The Philadelphia Daily News obtained an interesting strategy memo penned by the campaign of Dem Dan Onorato. Apparently, Onorato was prepared to challenge the signatures of opponents Joe Hoeffel and Anthony Williams. However, since Hoeffel didn’t move to challenge Williams’ signatures, Onorato’s campaign apparently decided it was better to leave both of them alone, figuring it would be better to have two candidates from the Philly region in the race rather than one. (Onorato hails from Western PA.)
  • UT-Gov: Salt Lake County Mayor and Dem gubernatorial candidate Peter Corroon says he raised more than $360,000 since the start of the year. No word yet on GOP Gov. Gary Herbert’s haul.
  • AL-03: Dems found someone to replace Josh Segall on the ballot at the last minute: Montgomery native Steve Segrest, who lost to GOPer Kay Ivey in the Treasurer’s race in 2006. Segrest comes from a political family: His father served in the Alabama House and his grandfather, Napoleon Broward, was elected governor… of Florida… in 1905. In some other Alabama news, state Sen. Jim Preuitt, who had long been on the outs with the Democrats, switched parties to the GOP.
  • FL-08: GOP Bruce O’Donoghue says he raised $300K since joining the race, and has a similar amount on hand. O’Donoghue’s camp says that this sum does not include any self-donations.
  • NH-01, NH-02: Dem Ann McLane Kuster, seeking Paul Hodes’ open seat in NH-02, says she raised $285K in Q1, and apparently has made a record haul from New Hampshire residents. Supposedly Katrina Swett will announce a bigger haul, but no numbers yet. Meanwhile, GOPer Frank Guinta, running in NH-01, supposedly raised $250K, including $100K of his own money. (Guinta’s fundraising had been pretty sucky prior to this.)
  • NY-19: The Republican field to take on Dem Rep. John Hall still seems very unsettled. Ophthalmologist Nan Hayworth has gotten a lot of love from the NRCC, but a broad swath of the GOP establishment in the 19th CD doesn’t seem to feel similarly, and she faces several strong opponents. One of them, former Pentagon analyst Kristia Cavere, says she raised $200K in Q1 & will soon convert her exploratory committee into the real thing. Meanwhile, ex-Tuxedo Mayor David McFadden says he’s raised about $100K. He also says that if he doesn’t win the party’s nomination at the May convention, he’ll drop out.
  • PA-07: Dem Bryan Lentz is challenging the validity of GOP opponent Pat Meehan’s signatures. As we noted previously, Lentz is also questioning the impartiality of the investigator, which happens to be Republican AG Tom Corbett’s office. Lentz now has a new arrow in his quiver: Some of the same people who circulated petitions for Meehan also did so for Corbett. Even better, it looks like some local GOP leaders may have signed false affidavits saying they personally gathered signatures, even though others may have actually carried the petitions.
  • SD-AL: Physician Kevin Weiland had planned to challenge Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in the Democratic primary after she voted “no” on healthcare. But Weiland pulled out at the last minute, after receiving calls from Steny Hoyer, and Chris Van Hollen. He also spoke with Herseth Sandlin herself, and reportedly “negotiated an assurance from Herseth Sandlin that she would reconnect with her Democratic base in South Dakota and never vote for a repeal of the health care plan.” Doesn’t sound like much. He also apparently cheesed off one-time Obama strategist Steve Hildebrand, who declined to run himself but worked overtime to help Weiland gather signatures (he only had a week in which to do it) to qualify for the ballot.
  • TN-06: Another veteran is entering this open-seat race on the Democratic side. Brett Carter, an attorney and TN National Guardsman who served in Iraq, joins Marine Capt. Ben Leming in the Dem field.
  • TN-08: Things are really starting to get hot in the GOP primary in Tennessee’s 8th CD. The Republican establishment isn’t just stumping for agribusiness magnate Steve Fincher – they’re actively attacking his opposition. Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, whose trip to Fincher’s district we noted in an earlier digest, slammed physician Ron Kirkland for allegedly being wobbly on the healthcare reform bill and for his past support of Democrats. (Kirkland previously said he liked most of what was in the bill, except for the public option – and when he was chair of the American Medical Group Association when they made donations to Max Baucus.) Kirkland is no random teabagger pushover, which is why he’s drawing fire. This could be an unusually interesting primary.
  • TX-17: The Texas Tribune takes a look at the two Republicans in a run-off for the privilege of facing Dem Chet Edwards in the fall: 2008 nominee Rob Curnock and oil exec Bill Flores. Here’s an interesting detail: Flores voted in the Democratic presidential primary in 2008, supposedly “casting his ballot against Barack Obama.” That’s some cute spin, but if he voted for Hillary Clinton (he won’t say), I don’t really see how that helps him. But in any event, Flores outraised Curnock by a huge margin, $214K to $16K, in newly-filed pre-runoff FEC reports.
  • WA-03: Ex-state Rep. Denny Heck (D) says he raised $350K in the first quarter (including $150K of his own money), leaving him with $530K on hand.
  • Census: There’s a bill pending in both houses of the NY state legislature that would require counting prison inmates as part of their home communities, rather than upstate, where most prisons are located. Given how dysfunctional the lege is, though, there’s no telling if this badly-needed reform will actually see the light of day.
  • Fundraising: GOP bigs are hitting the trail on behalf of their brethren during the congressional recess. John Boehner is helping Californians Mary Bono Mack and Ken Calvert, Pete Sessions is helping Illinoisans Randy Hultgren and Adam Kinzinger, and a bunch of other top Republicans are also putting their backs into things.
  • Redistricting: Former DCCC nat’l field director Casey O’Shea will replace Brian Smoot as head of the National Democratic Redistricting Trust. Smoot is leaving to head up the DSCC’s independent expenditure arm. (And O’Shea and Smoot are consulting partners.)
  • WATN: Dede Scozzafava says she’s working on a memoir about last year’s special election race. Can’t wait to read it! She also says she’s unsure about whether she’ll seek reelection to her seat in the Assembly this year.
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    • 75 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 4/5 (Morning Edition)”

    1. I wonder if that might backfire if it fails. Meehan could make it look like Lentz was scared to face him.

    2.  Not exactly the brighest poll in the world. Whitman is leading by 3 points but this is after she spent all that money and Jerry Brown spent almost nothing. Tom Campbell is ahead of Fiorina in the primary by three points. The good news is that Boxer is ahead of Generic Republican by 14 points and Obama has 58%-34% approval rating in California.

      http://realclearpolitics.blogs…

    3. Keep in mind, Rudy fully expected Crist to back his Presidential bid, even as he was free-falling in the polls to McCain/Romney/Huck. And then came the 11-o’-clock-hour endorsement for McCain.

      PAYBACK BAY-BAY.

    4. Even Mike Crapo in Idaho is likely to at least get token major party opposition. I don’t think Thune is presidential material coming from a small rural state that is drastically different from the rest of America, but certainly he has a golden opportunity if he wants to go that route.

    5. Which is worse– having no Democrat in the race at all (Thune for Senate) or having the only Democrat who files for the race essentially run to the right of the presumptive Republican nominee (Heidepriem (D) vs. Daugaard (R)).  

      Maybe Heidepriem is more liberal on social issues, but on fiscal issues, he certainly seems to be running to the right of Daugaard.  He has every right to do so, of course, but if you are an economic progressive, it does not look like Heidepriem is your friend.

    9. I haven’t heard talk of a 50-state strategy since Tim Kaine took over as DNC chair, and now I see there wasn’t even a token attempt at the SD senate race. That stinks. Of course you can’t win the seat when you concede the race. The 5-state strategy worked because if you at least try a token campaign, you never know when the safe incumbent will get caught storing money in his freezer or texting the teenage pages. You have to be there to take advantage. All that blather about focusing on local races and building the party: bull—-

    12. anyone want a free Brad Ellsworth bumper sticker? He has this form on his website were you just sign his petition and you get a free one (S/H included). You don’t have to live in Indiana either. I got four for myself. I’m just posting this because I assume there have to be other people that collect political items like I do (4 books signed by both Obama and Biden, 2 Time magazines signed by both Obama and Biden, 1 book signed by just Hillary, 1 book by Hillary and Bill, about 20 bumper stickers and 150 pins dating all the way back to the late 1800’s, man it feels great to brag). I’m also satisfied because my sister had to pay $8 for her Alexi bumper sticker in Illinois.  

      http://www.ellsworthforindiana…

    15. seemed to be a bit skewed toward the Republicans. The likely voter screen was very tight–86 percent of sample said they were said they were “extremely likely” to vote and another 9 percent said they were “very likely” to vote. Culver’s and Obama’s approval ratings were lower in this poll than I’ve ever seen in any other Iowa poll. Republicans led the generic ballot among this poll’s respondents in all five of Iowa’s Congressional districts, including a difficult-to-believe six-point edge in IA-02 (D+7).

      More thoughts on the subject at Bleeding Heartland. Bottom line is that with this sample, I am a little surprised Branstad’s lead over Culver was “only” 16 points. But we’ve now seen several polls showing Branstad at or above 50 percent and leading Culver by more than 15 percent. Even if you figure this poll is a bit skewed, Branstad has clearly got a solid lead over Culver.

    16. http://minnesotaindependent.co…

      And within that story, is a link to this one which talks more about his possible candidacy, but from at the beginning of the race.  But what i found in the article is that Anderson describes himself as a “right leaning centrist”.  I didnt know that before and it is certainly bad for us.  If we need to pick-up voters who normally would vote GOP but wont vote for Bachmann, Anderson is a much better place to go compared to who our nominee would be.

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