CT-Sen: Yet another thing the New York Times appears to have gotten wrong: Dick Blumenthal was on his college swim team, and no, he never claimed to have been the captain. In light of recent revelations, SSP is retracting the accusation we made in our first post on the NYT article that Blumenthal “lied.” Subsequent information has show that the NYT’s piece was misleading, at best.
NV-Sen: Chicken Lady is up on the air with an ad attacking Crazy Lady, aka enriched weapons-grade wingnut Sharron Angle, for some pretty lulzy stuff. No word on the size of the buy. Meanwhile, Danny Tarkanian is also aiming (indirectly) at Angle, with a press release criticizing the Tea Party Express, which endorsed her and not him.
NY-Sen-B: Even I had given up on all the people who have given up, but it looks like there may be yet one more name on the list of people who want to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand. Gail Goode, a staffer for the NYC Corporation Council (the city attorney’s office) supposedly wants to give it a go. Goode has a pretty unimposing pedigree and would have to go through the arduous and expensive process of petitioning to get on the ballot. Meanwhile, one of the hapless Republicans trying to take down Gillibrand, David Malpass, is on the air with a TV ad (this early? really?), but of course, no word on the size of the buy.
AL-Gov: Mystery wingnutty (?) birthery (?) teabaggy (?) group New Sons of Liberty was caught making prank calls to Moe’s Tavern said “psych!” and cancelled their vaporware $1 million ad buy that was set to asplode in the Alabama governor’s race. If this was just a gambit to gain free media by pretending to buy paid media, it’s an awfully weird one, since we know little more about this group now than we did a week ago. Anyhow, how come ad buyers don’t have to put down deposits, especially when they book so much airtime during ad peak season?
IA-Gov: Chet Culver has raised $1.5 million this year so far, but more than half his haul came directly from the Democratic Governors Association. Chief rival Terry Branstad raised $1.6m in the same timeframe. Culver leads in cash-on-hand, $3.3m to $1.2m. You also may have seen that Culver lost his campaign “briefing book,” the bible by which any campaign is run. Reminds me of when the Indiana Pacers lost their playbook right before a playoff series with the Knicks. (The Knicks won.)
AL-05: Mo Brooks, mankind’s last, best hope of defeating turncoat Parker Griffith in the GOP primary, announced a whole slew of endorsements from local elected officials and party bigwigs. Interestingly, on the list was the GOP chair for Limestone County, who elected not to support the incumbent, which is a fairly unusual move for a party official.
AR-03: Damn – looks like we won’t have Gunner DeLay to kick around anymore, at least for this cycle. The ex-legislator, who narrowly missed out on the runoff, backed off his plans to seek a recount and instead endorsed second-place finisher Cecile Bledsoe, a state senator. She squares off against Rogers (pop. 39K) Mayor Steve Womack. With Gunner gone, we’re getting desperately low on awesome names.
CA-11: After previously saying he wished he could issue “hunting permits” for liberals because we “need to thin the herd,” Republican jackass Brad Goehring isn’t backing down in the least – rather, he says he’s “proud” of all the flack he’s been getting. What a guy!
ID-01: In his ongoing quest to assume the title of Bill Sali 2.0, budding SSP fave Vaughn Ward repeatedly referred to Puerto Rico in a debate as a “country.” When corrected by his Puerto Rican opponent, he proudly reveled in his ignorance, saying he didn’t “care what it is.” That alone should garner him some good wingnut cred.
LA-03: Make them sweat? Despite not really having a candidate in this deep-red seat that most Dems have mentally given up on, the DCCC put out a press release walloping former Louisiana Speaker Hunt Downer, who just got into the race. They accuse Downer, who just retired as a major general from the National Guard, of abandoning his state in favor of his political ambitions instead of dealing with the BP oil spill. Dunno if this charge is really going to stick, though, seeing as Downer said he planned his retirement long ago.
MN-06: It’s always rich when anti-tax zealots fuck up paying their taxes – something Michele Bachmann just did by failing to pay her own property taxes on time.
NY-13: Vito Fossella is shocked, shocked!… I mean, surprised! that he was nominated for his old seat by the Staten Island GOP on Wednesday. (Read this if you need to catch up on one of the most remarkable bits of WTF? this cycle.) He says he’ll “take a short period of time” to decide if they like him, they really, really like him – i.e., whether to take the plunge. I’m not buying the “short period of time” business, since Fossella said he wants to talk this over with “loved ones,” which ought to take him quite a while, given how many families he has.
Meanwhile, Michael Allegretti, one of two candidates (not including Vito Fossella) seeking the GOP nomination to take on Rep. Mike McMahon, says he plans on staying in the race regardless of what Vito does. There had been some chatter that local Republicans wanted him to run for the state Assembly instead, but that would be a pretty sucky alternative, to say the least.
FEC: Instant SSP hero Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA-53) offered an amendment to the DISCLOSE Act (the bill designed to take the Citizens United ruling down a peg or two) which would require that all independent expenditures be filed electronically with the FEC, and be “searchable, sortable and downloadable.” The amendment passed unopposed, so hopefully it will emerge intact in the final bill. Now if only the damn Senate would join the 20th century and file electronically, too.
Spoilers: Don’t even think about talking about LOST.
I don’t understand why Culver’s briefing book is being made out to be a big deal. He was being briefed on the unemployment rate in various places he visited, as well as specific programs being funded there by his I-JOBS state bonding initiative for infrastructure and flood recovery projects. Oh yeah, and the book said he should wear a tie to the event with Joe Biden on Tuesday.
I get that it’s not good for his briefing book to be leaked to Politico, but what did Ben Smith find so newsworthy in there?
On the fundraising, I agree, it doesn’t look good for half of Culver’s money to come from the DGA in the latest reporting period. Then again, it’s hard to raise money when you’re behind in the polls, and during the Iowa legislative session (January through March) he wasn’t able to do as much fundraising. Throw in the campaign staff turmoil and the numbers are not surprising. At Bleeding Heartland I listed all the contributors of at least $10K to Culver and Branstad.
The latest set of financial reports show that the Democratic state treasurer and secretary of state have huge financial advantages over their Republican challengers. The Republican secretary of agriculture also has way more money than the Democrat. However, the Republican candidate for attorney general, Brenna Findley, has almost as much cash on hand as our 28-year incumbent Democrat Tom Miller. She is the longtime chief of staff for Congressman Steve “10 Worst” King, and former Governor Terry Branstad is talking her up everywhere he campaigns.
Chuck Grassley voted several times to stop debate from starting on the financial reform bill, then this week voted twice against cloture motions to end debate on the bill, then turned around and voted for the bill yesterday (along with New England Repubs Snowe, Collins and Brown). In his statement Grassley said the bill was “a step in the right direction” despite flaws and bragged about his amendments that were included. Worried about the challenge from Roxanne Conlin? Maybe. Conlin’s campaign released a statement taking credit for grassroots pressure that got Grassley to support the bill after voting five times to block it.
For backing off from the lie claim regarding Blumenthal.
Sangisetty is in the race, but doesn’t have much of a chance. This is the second most likely district to flip to the Republicans, behind only TN-6.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201…
Of all the people to defend, BP?
I haven’t seen this poll posted anywhere. It show Gov. Culver improving at 41% to 48% to Gov. Branstad.
It also shows something more interesting, the US senate race where Conlin continues to gain on Sen. Grassley, 49% to Roxanne’s 40%.
I haven’t seen any reporting on this at all. Has anyone else?
You will notice that “Rand Paul” is trending. I’m trying to start my own trending topic that includes Rand Paul. I’m using the Hashtag #RandPaulSupports followed by something crazy. My examples include:
#RandPaulSupports the war against Zenu
#RandPaulSupports cupcakes
#RandPaulSupports the Dallas Cowboys winning the World Series
It’s a fun time to be had for all.
David, you do realize that after the finale, you’re not going to be able to avoid hearing what happened on Lost. Maybe you can keep it off this blog, but let’s be honest its going to be the biggest series finale since Seinfeld.
Get cracking on the episodes you missed.
When Fossella said that he wanted to talk about the race with his loved ones, I thought the same thing.
CT-Sen: I continued to feel embarrassed that I bought wholesale the NYT story, based on my respect for the paper. But not only did the Times paint a very incomplete history of Blumenthal’s rhetorical history regarding his military service, but they now turns out to have been wrong about Blumenthal on the Harvard swim team.
It was really sloppy journalism, and that they’re digging in is embarrassing and disgusting. The professional response would be to admit substantial error and do a new story painting a complete picture, which I’m not sure completely exculpates Blumenthal, but raises substantial doubt whether he’s been dishonest.
But now the NYT rightfully is getting bashed for poor work, and worse yet sticking by poor work.
I, for one, will never trust the NYT at face value ever again.
ID-01: I had always assumed and argued that this district is just way too conservative for any Democrat to hold it. Sali was the one guy I figured Minnick could beat, and of course even then it was a narrow 50-45. But Minnick’s voting record, the recognition he’s getting for it, and the problems the Republican alternatives are having are leaving Minnick with a very realistic path to victory. Republicans ought to be nervous, and ought to be kicking themselves that they might be letting this one slip away.
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/…
This makes yesterday’s Kentucky poll look reasonable.
Meg Whitman (R) 46 (52)
Steve Poizner (R) 36 (19)
Undecided 18 (29)
Jerry Brown (D) 46 (45)
Meg Whitman (R) 42 (41)
Undecided 18 (29)
Jerry Brown (D) 47 (48)
Steve Poizner (R) 37 (33)
Undecided 16 (19)
Tom Campbell (R) 37 (33)
Carly Fiorina (R) 22 (24)
Chuck DeVore (R) 14 (7)
Undecided 27 (36)
Barbara Boxer (D) 47 (47)
Tom Campbell (R) 40 (43)
Undecided 13 (10)
Barbara Boxer (D) 48 (49)
Carly Fiorina (R) 39 (40)
Barbara Boxer (D) 47 (49)
Chuck DeVore (R) 38 (39)
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…
Other then the recall of Governor Davis the Republicans haven’t won a statewide federal or governors race in either since 2000.
Brewer 52, Goddard 39 http://www.rasmussenreports.co…
You know, maybe this is just the Republican in me, but I believe this one much more than I do the Paul and Boozman polls. The immigration bill has been very popular in Arizona, and Brewer is trying to make the election a referendum on the bill. The other Republican candidates have much smaller leads.
might still go to a runoff – between an incompetent incumbent and a anti-evolutionist.
http://www.blueoregon.com/2010…
It’s a two person race between Susan Castillo, the Incumbent, and Ron Maurer, who per the Portland Mercury:
http://www.portlandmercury.com…
Even though it’s a 2-person race, there were 2k+ write-in votes. Castillo currently has 50.09%, http://egov.sos.state.or.us/di…
which is about 600 votes above the 50%+1 threshold.
with 17k votes to be counted per the Blue Oregon link, which Kari Chislom of Blue Oregon suggests are mostly from commuters who dropped off their ballots in the wrong county, aka suburban voters.
Maurer was boosted by an endorsement from Willamette Week, per http://wweek.com/editorial/362… which suggests that Castillo is somewhat incompetent.
If there’s a runoff, it’ll be held on the normal Nov election day.
The NRCC outraised the DCCC in April.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/ey…
But a big chunk of that was from GOP members.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/ey…
Meanwhile, the DNC took in $3.6m more than the NRC for the month.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…
http://minnesotaindependent.co…
Michele Bachmann and her husband have so far accepted $53,709 in state tax payer funds so that they can get free money to help run the Christian mental health clinic her husband opened.
Good ole typical Republican politician.
About half the Puerto Ricans refer to the island as a country, or pais. Others refer to it as a state. It’s technically a commonwealth, but there is no convenient translation to that in Spanish. Estado libre asociado (freely associated state) is used, but not exactly spot on accurate either. Territory is probably most symantically correct, or colony, which isn’t PC.
“Whatever the hell it is” is a pretty good description.