SSP Daily Digest: 5/7 (Morning Edition)

  • CA-Sen: Moose lady endorses sheep lady. Is chicken lady next?
  • KY-Sen: With the primary less than two weeks away, Jack Conway’s throwing in another $300K of his own money.
  • OH-Sen: Gov. Ted Strickland thinks that Jennifer Brunner might be getting ready to endorse Lee Fisher after all. If she wants to have a future in Democratic politics, she has to do this. If she fails to come through, this will be the kind of thing people remember forever.
  • CO-Gov: A challenging name for challenging times: Businessman Joe Gschwendtner is joining the GOP gubernatorial field, and he says he’ll seed his campaign with $100K of his own scrilla.
  • OH-Gov: Dems keep making John Kasich feel the pain over his refusal to make public all of his tax returns. Now, a couple of state legislators are proposing a bill which would require all political candidates to disclose their returns as a condition of running for office. Kasich, you’ll recall, briefly displayed a summary of his 2008 returns to reporters (who weren’t allowed to photocopy it); he made $1.1 million for doing mostly nothing, including helping to drive Lehman Brothers into the ground.
  • CA-19, CA-20: Two stones, one bird: It looks like two GOP congressional hopefuls in neighboring districts broke federal election laws by taking a flight on a private corporate jet with none other than Karl Rove. That could turn out to be one expensive ride for State Sen. Jeff Denham of Atwater (CA-19) and cherry farmer Andy Vidak (CA-20).
  • DE-AL: Wilson Research Strategies did a poll of the GOP primary for developer Glen Urquhart, who is facing off against possibly rich businesswoman Michele Rollins. (I’ve heard she may have only inherited an income interest from her late – and exceedingly wealthy – husband’s estate.) The poll showed Rollins leading 27-11 (with 60%) undecided.
  • FL-02: This is a little unexpected: Blue Dog Allen Boyd is running ads against his absurdly underfunded primary opponent, state Sen. Al Lawson. (Boyd has 29 times the cash that Lawson does.) Once again, though (say it with me), no word on the size of the buy.
  • FL-11: A fridge too far? NRCC honcho Pete Sessions is holding a fundraiser later this month in Tampa for one Mike Prendergast. Yeah, I ain’t never heard o’ him neither, but I guess he did raised about $100K in Q1, and incumbent Kathy Castor only has about $350K on hand. Still, this was a 66% Obama/58% Kerry district.
  • GA-09: In these dark-red districts, the most you can hope for is some hot wingnut-on-wingnut violence – and it looks like we’re finally seeing some. The Club for Growth is running ads targeting ex-state Sen. Lee Hawkins, alleging (what else?) that he’s not conservative enough and wouldn’t sign a pledge to repeal healthcare reform. Hawkins fired back with a press release, charging that the CFG supports illegal immigration and that their favored candidate, ex-state Rep. Tom Graves, is their stooge.
  • IL-08: Local Republican leaders met with the already-imploded Joe Walsh to see what the eff was going on with his campaign… and they’ve decided to stick with him. While running into the Melissa Bean buzzsaw might not be that enticing (even in a cycle like this), several other candidates ran against Walsh in the primary, so a replacement ought to be possible. (Read here if you need background on the Walshsplosion.)
  • MO-06: Local businessman Clint Hylton will run as a Democrat against GOP Rep. Sam Graves. Graves obliterated one of our most highly-touted recruits last cycle, former Kansas City mayor Kay Barnes.
  • NM-01: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) for Martin Heinrich (4/28-5/2, likely voters, no trendlines):

    • Martin Heinrich (D-inc): 55

    Jon Barela (R): 38

    (MoE: ±4.4%)

    Heinrich leads among Hispanics 68-24, who make up 35% of this sample. These are very nice numbers. Heinrich has over $1 million cash-on-hand, while Barela has under $400K.

  • MA-09: SEIU political director Mac D’Alessandro submitted 5,000 signatures as part of his nominating papers, but still needs an additional 2,000 by June 1 to qualify for the ballot. He’s aiming to take on Rep. Stephen Lynch, who earned lifetime douchebag status by infamously switching from “yes” to “no” on the healthcare reform bill.
  • OH-18: 2008 loser Fred Dailey trails establishment fave Bob Gibbs by 164 votes after Tuesday’s GOP primary, but there are still ballots left to be counted. In fact, provisionals and absentees, as long as they were postmarked on time, will still be accepted up until ten days after the election. No one knows how many ballots are outstanding, though. If the final margin is less than one half of one percent, there will be an automatic recount. Still, the odds have to be against Dailey – though a prolonged fight is probably good for Rep. Zack Space.
  • PA-06: While NARAL doesn’t usually endorse in primaries, their former president, Kate Michelman, is backing Manan Trivedi over Doug Pike. Pike, in the past, has written columns that suggested he has wobbly views on reproductive choice. Other pieces of his have made very questionable remarks about women – click the link if you want the exact quotes. Pike says he “apologizes” for these columns, about the 99th time he’s had to apologize for something on this campaign.
  • PA-12: Public Opinion Strategies (R) Tim Burns (5/4-5, likely voters, 3/15 in parens):

    • Mark Critz (D): 41 (41)

    Tim Burns (R): 43 (45)

    Undecided: 14 (13)

    (MoE: ±4.9%)

    106 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 5/7 (Morning Edition)”

    1. Seven thousand signatures to get on the ballot for a House race? That is goddamn ridiculous.

    2. Usually it’s the bad guys self funding against us as Republicans or bad Democrats in primaries so its good to see a good guy put so much of his own money in.  I really hope Conway pulls it out.

    8. I got an e-mail from her on behalf of Conway this morning. I hope she’s gearing up to take on McConnell in 2012. She’d be great and could definitely take a couple pages from McCaskill and Carnahan on how to run as liberal woman in a Rust Belt state. Sometimes it seems as though white men give white women a pass on being liberal as if it’s almost expected that a woman would be more receptive to social justice and cvil rights. There might be something to the stereotype of Southern courtesy at least towards white women.

      On another note, glad to see Heinrich in a good position to hold NM-01.  

    9. That is some interesting facial hair on Tim Hylton. I will say this, though: he looks like he lives and works in rural Missouri much more than Kay Barnes ever did.

      Ole Kay was a pretty good KC mayor, but Graves stuck her with the “big city/liberal values” charge and it stuck. That’s not gonna work on a guy who’s biggest claim to fame is his two-term presidency of the Excelsior Springs Chamber of Commerce.  

      Knowing almost nothing about him, I can almost certainly say he’s a better fit for this district, profile-wise. If he can raise money (a big if…but how big is the Excelsior Springs Chamber of Commerce, anyway?) he could be a reasonably strong competitor…although it’s R+7 and he’s going against a reasonably popular incumbent, which will be a very tough slog this year.

    12. That 43-41 Burns lead from his own internal looks good to me as a Democrat.  It’s the mirror image of the DCCC’s 43-41 Critz lead, and of course Critz’s internal polling has him up by more.

      I’m thinking some people panicked too soon when the DailyKos/R2K poll came out.  We’re still very much in the game up there.

    13. In Ohio, Jennifer Brunner at first said she could not outrightly endorse Fisher because of her current job as Secretary of State (in charge of the voting system).  Apparently not so, if the Governor thinks she’ll do it. Although the election was closer than the polls predicted, she was a sure loser months ago.  Why didn’t she drop out and save the Dems a lot of money that could have been used in the general election?  Who did she think she was, Hilary Clinton?  I’m not a big fan of Lt. Gov. Lee (who hasn’t won an election on his own in a long time), but I’d sure like to see Voinovitch’s seat turn over to the Dems in November.  Ohio hasn’t had two Dems in the Senate since the days of Metzenbaum and Glenn.

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