SSP Daily Digest: 5/26 (Morning Edition)

  • AR-Sen: The Big Dog is coming back home to stump for Blanche Lincoln, the first time he’s done so this race. Meanwhile, the SEIU just tossed in another $100K for phonebanking and another $100K for field on behalf of Bill Halter. (There’s also an amusing negative $100K entry for “reverse phonebanking.”)
  • CA-Sen: Chuck DeVore is as insane as this ad. A true must-see. In news of the normal, President Obama kept to his promise to return to CA for two more Barbara Boxer fundraisers. The events raised $1.75 million, $600K of which will go to Boxer and the balance to the DSCC.
  • KY-Sen: Heh, that was quick. Rand Paul is already planning the dreaded “staff shakeup.” The only problem is that he can’t fire himself. Barring that, Mitch McConnell is telling his least-favorite fellow Kentuckian to shut the fuck up and hide under a rock – “for the time being.”
  • PA-Sen: I agree – this is a magnanimous move. Arlen Specter introduced Joe Sestak to his Senate colleagues at their weekly lunch yesterday. Very gracious.
  • AL-06, AL-07: Unsurprisingly, corporate lawyer Terri Sewell is the only Democrat airing TV ads in the primary to succeed Rep. Artur Davis, spending about $200K so far. With $783K, she’s far outraised her chief competitors, Earl Hilliard, Jr. ($328K) and Shelia Smoot ($100K). Sewell can also count among her contributors Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

    • Crazily, though, ten-term GOP Rep. Spencer Bachus is also airing ads in advance of his primary in AL-06, some $70K worth. Bachus has spent an amazing $680K on his campaign so far, even though his challenger, teabagger Stan Cooke, has raised just $29K total. This is the reddest district in the nation according to Cook PVI (R+29), which may explain Bachus’s anxiety, since he is the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee and voted in favor of the bailout.

  • AR-01: A similar situation in AR-01 as in AR-02 below, where first-rounder David Cook endorsed the somewhat less-conservative Chad Causey over the extremely conservative Tim Wooldridge in (you might be a little surprised to hear me say this if you don’t already know the names) the Democratic runoff.
  • AR-02: Some runoff endorsements on both sides from the also-rans. Patrick Kennedy and John Adams (great names, huh?) both endorsed Robbie Wills in the Democratic race, while David Boling endorsed Joyce Elliott. I suspect national Dems would prefer Wills over the more-liberal Elliott, but this race is probably too touchy to get involved in.
  • DE-AL: Joe Biden returned home to do a fundraiser in Wilmington for John Carney. No word on whether he’ll also do one for Senate candidate Chris Coons, but it’s not like it’s a big schlep.
  • FL-25: The statewide Florida AFL-CIO, following the lead of its South Fla. branch, endorsed little-known longshoreman Luis Meurice in the Democratic primary, rather than Joe Garcia. The union, Florida’s biggest, backed Garcia in 2008.
  • IN-05: This is exactly the kind of weird that Dave Weigel specializes in. Tim Crawford, the teabagging “Democrat” who snuck to victory in the Democratic primary here, abruptly dropped out of the race after an unpleasant meeting with, you know, actual Democrats… and then wrote a long, rambly email saying he was un-dropping-out. Ah well.
  • IN-09: Speaking of Joe Biden, he’ll also be doing a fundraiser in late June for Rep. Baron Hill in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
  • NC-08: I would really freakin’ love to see Tim D’Annunzio pull this one off. The entire NC House GOP delegation just collectively endorsed former TV sportscaster Harold Johnson, terrified as they are of the spastic-fantastic Tim-diana Jones. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here stat.
  • RI-01: Scott Brown is coming to Rhode Island for a fundraiser with state Rep. John Loughlin, the GOP’s candidate in this open seat. To date, Loughlin’s raised about $344K, which might not seem too bad, but in fact he’s been running for a long time, since well before Rep. Patrick Kennedy announced his retirement.
  • VA-11: Businessman Keith Fimian has a new poll from McLaughlin & Associates showing him with a 36-23 lead over Fairfax Co. Supervisor Pat Herrity in the GOP primary. A March poll had Fimian up 29-17. Herrity had his own poll out last month, though, showing him with a 42-21 lead – and pointed out that Fimian claimed his internals had him just three points behind Gerry Connolly before election day 2008, but lost by twelve.
  • DSCC: Uh, good, I guess. The DSCC has cancelled plans to have EPA chief Lisa Jackson headline an NYC fundraiser next week – but what a retarded idea in the first place. It seems pretty inappropriate to me to have cabinet members doing hackwork like this (can you imagine Hillary Clinton or Eric Holder shilling for dollars?), but it’s even worse when you’re talking about the head of the EPA in the midst of the oil spill crisis in the Gulf. I also find it unctuous that the original invitation promised that the event would be “intimate, so each of you will have a real opportunity to get to know and to speak to Lisa about issues of concern to you and our nation.” Pretty gross when it’s our team selling access to the ultra-wealthy. Barf.
  • Ideology: Alan Abramowitz has a great piece up at the Democratic Strategist, looking at the correlation between ideology (as measured by DW-NOMINATE) and election performance by Republican senators. Using a modified eight-point DW-N scale, Abramowitz finds: “For every additional one point increase in conservatism, Republican incumbents lost an additional three percentage points in support relative to their party’s presidential candidate.” But shhh… don’t tell the Republicans!

    • 48 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 5/26 (Morning Edition)”

    2. if there is a state that Rasmussen hasn’t polled this cycle, excluding the four with no statewide races (Mississippi, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia)? I would guess Montana to be the only one left out, since all that’s there is the House race.

    3. Using that term as a slur is kinda gay insensitive.

      Onto substance: I assume the Rand Paul thing is one of those deals whee the RSCC says, “if you want our fundraising help, you need to take on our people as consultants/staff.”

    6. Yours truly was the only person to publicly venture a prediction on ID-01 yesterday IIRC.  I called it Labrador by 10 and it ended up Labrador by 9.  

      And because SSP did not specify that there was no babka for predictions last night, that means I get babka.  It’s in the fine print of the SSP User Agreement!

    8. the “Nuke their ass, take their gas” candidate didn’t win the primary.  That would’ve been something, to find someone nuttier than Bill Sali was.

      And wow, most of the comments in that piece come from people DEFENDING Brown’s racist/homophobic/xenophobic/fundamentalist viewpoints.

    9. The 8 point scale is a little arbitrary. It assumes the Jeffords ’00 (VT) and Chafee ’06 (RI) campaigns as 0 points as the most liberal R Senate candidates

      and assumes Imhofe ’08 (OK) at 8 points as the most conservative R Senate candidate.

      In other words, the study suggests that someone like Jeffords/Chafee would be expected to outperform Bush by 12 points – and someone like Imhofe would underperform Bush by the same 12 points.

      Of course, there are wide variations in actual campaigns. But I think it can be taken as “Generic R” +/- levels of conservatism.

      And that’s confirmed by the “standard error”. In other words, 6.9% is essentially the standard deviation. AKA, maybe 95% of the candidates would fit within +/- 14% of the expected result. (proviso, 95% is not quite accurate, as the distribution is not gaussian)

      One of the limits of the study is that it’s based on R Senate incumbent candidates.

      Gosh, I’m not a stats geek, so I hesitate to put this into a diary. But it should be one, with an attempt to project results for some of the key races. While 14% is quite a wide range, it can at least establish possible support floors/ceilings for various R candidates.

    11. You are a true mensch, and have well dispelled any lingering doubt in my mind as to your motives and loyalty. Our country is better off for your service.

    12. I don’t really know anything about the republican candidates, anyone know who would make for an easier opponent for Connolly?

    13. Plays the “gay” card:

      “My opponent isn’t married and doesn’t have kids,” Wooldridge said. “I’ve changed diapers and put training wheels on a bike. I think a lot of Arkansans can relate to that.”

      And then comes out of the closet as a tried and true Republican:

      “On the first day I’ll introduce an amendment to balance the federal budget,” Wooldridge said.

      Cutting services and programs may be the only way to balance the budget, and raising taxes isn’t an option, Wooldridge said. “You and I spend our money more wisely than the government, any government.”

      Makes Oliverio look like Bernie Sanders.

    17. He simply had nothing to gain by reverting to being a prick.  He was always someone who came off selfish, and thus I think it only makes sense he wouldn’t cut off his nose to spite his face.

      Being a good Dem will help his political legacy last well beyond this November.  

    18. I suspect the most likely result of the CA senate and governor races will be that a lot of money will be sunk in those races that otherwise would go national.

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