Campaign and Election News – Covering Key Races Around the Country
Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?
291 thoughts on “Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?”
AR-01: I’ve been looking over this district’s history. The last time a Republican won there was in 1872! We’re approaching a very volatile election cycle where anything can happen, and the last poll showed a close race here. How much does Causey have to do to keep this seat blue?
I woould love to see some post runoff polling. I mean, Lincoln’s pretty much toast, Tim Griffin looks like a shoo-in for AR-02, and nobody else in the state is vulnerable. It looks to me like the DCCC would be wise to be spending all Arkansas resources on keeping AR-01.
RI-Gov: With Pat Lynch dropping out of the Dem primary, it’s safe to say this race is between Chafee and Caprio. What are the poll numbers looking like there?
One other thing that’s bothering me and it is Glenn Beck’s recent book, The Overton Window. I’ve been trying to figure out the Overton Window idea in political theory, and surprisingly it seems to make sense. Most of my conservative peers agree that Beck does make sense, though I have my doubts. Has anyone heard of this Overton Window?
I just heard a rumor that the most corrupt politician in the country may be resigning soon. No one here, with the possible exception of Bob Bobson, will know who he is. My counties Sheriff Mike Deatrick. Deatrick is by far the most corrupt slimy evil disgusting person ever elected to public office. Let me tell you about the counties finest. He is a known womanizer, in fact it cost the county several hundred thousands of dollars when they settled a civil suite over him allegedly attempting to rape 911 operators. The majority of staff at the sheriffs department are related to him, that is not an exaggerating either. He has been accused taking kickbacks, although that is not proved. He has done little in terms of drug control, my county is one of the top producers of meth in the country. When his deputy sheriff finally had enough and called it quits he appointed his son in law, but when his son in law cheated on his daughter and they filed for divorce he was out and Deatrick appointed his wife (!!!!). His wife has never been to police school and does not have any law enforcement training whatsoever and she gets to be his highly paid deputy. Also an officer allegedly murdered his wife and you know what Deatrick did, came to his defense and instead of firing him suspended him with full pay and full use of his squad car (which he racked up a boatload of miles on). A few months ago they had a non violent African American offender in custody and the guards allegedly striped him completely naked put a bag over his face and sprayed mace on it beating him while using racial slurs, and allegedly Deatrick knew about it and did not act. The victim is now suing for huge sums of money. Deatrick was indicted a few months ago and still refused to resign so I hope this is for real. The only thing is, and I could be wrong about it, I think his wife will take over as Sheriff since she is Deputy Sheriff, lord help us all. If anyone here claims to know what good ol’ boy politics look like they have never been to Harrison County Indiana.
Tom Emmer is in deep shit, to put it lightly. Early last week, after visiting a restaurant for his publicity/campaign tour, Tom Emmer said that he supports a tax credit and claimed that the manager he talked to at the restaurant said servers there can make up to $100,000 a year. Ok, anyone with a brain knows that is just fucking ridiculous and a tip credit is where you can pay servers less than the minimum wage because they earn tips, with the federal minimum being $2.13 an hour, which obviously did not sit well with the many servers in the state. He wants to take away over 2/3rds of their wages in these economic times.
This was also his first big news item. Before this, he was traveling around the state with the statewide GOP endorsed slate of candidates. This is literally the first introduction for many voters who have never heard of him and now the fool has made the front pages over this several times.
Here’s where it gets really awesome, after he realized he needed to walk back these statements, the campaign decides to hold a town-hall meeting for servers! Um, did you learn nothing from the HCR town-halls? It was brutal, with the event ending 30 minutes early due to someone walking up to the table next to Emmer and dumping $20 in pennies on it and telling him, ‘Here’s your tip.’
Best quote from the linked article,
“I didn’t know of him before this,” she said. “I know him now. And I don’t like him.”
So not only was his first introduction to the state a policy position that literally cost him hundreds if not a couple thousand votes from servers, but his campaign is so inept that they decide to hold a town-hall meeting inviting only people who are pissed at him and will never vote for him now. My roommate is a server and he says they talk about Emmer at his work now, and my other friend whose a server and who asks me lots of political questions (she tries, bless her heart) is like all hands on deck. I would not be surprised to see a Servers Against Emmer group closer to the election.
Emmer is very much in the Angle/Paul position where he came out with something batshit crazy (love that this is batshit crazy for MN, tip credits are very prevalent across the nation in a spectrum of states) and now he has to backpedal very quickly. The article showcases that nicely and so does this accidentally made public tweet from Emmer’s research director.
1. We know this is a problem. Today is the last day. Over. Done. No Mas. Just help us stay on message: courage and willingness to listen. DS. 2. No more tip credit after today. We won’t win the issue. DS
-name the only CD to have 4 women representing it (Gov., SenA, SenB, Rep.
five relatively prominent (must have been Gov., Sen., Rep., US Cabinet) Dems who became GOP and vice versa
Dixiecrats becoming GOP DOES NOT COUNT
Recent polling has been pretty good, particularly in the Senate, but I can’t help but feel that this is the calm before the storm. Whenever there’s a wave election one party usually wins most of the contested seats so I find it hard to believe that Dem losses can be measurably limited. Should the generic come close to resembling what it is now we should experience a real shellacking at the polls. To compound our problems the fed looks like they’ll maintain (comparatively) tight supply of the money, further stimulus won’t get enacted and business has shown little interest in spending so the economy won’t improve appreciably. Sigh.
Dems are largely unknown however. Still, at least the GOP has some serious fundraising to do in a bad economy.
Lt Gov:
ARD-R Cooper-D
-300k +186k
AG:
Wilson-R Richardson-D
-18k +327k
BTW, in the Governor’s race Sheheen-D has about a 80-90k advantage.
for outrageous and laughable conduct against one’s primary opponents. The recipient this time is John McCain, for this howler:
McCain, in turn, said voters in Hayworth’s former congressional district ousted him because he promised to be a conservative but went to Washington to spend public money on “earmarks.”
“Congressman Hayworth was one of the big spenders,” the senator said.
First of all, McCain attacking someone else for flip-flopping? And second, let’s get this straight: voters rejected Hayworth for being insufficiently conservative…by electing a liberal Democrat in his place, who votes for Nancy Pelosi. Harry Mitchell is laughing all the way to re-election.
try to read candidates websites from time to time and I was just on Vincent Sheheen’s site and it is weird that one of the first things it says is “restoring conservative leadership”. Just a little odd, I thought.
like writing another edition of my California race rankings. Should I? Or is it too premature?
claiming that the PPP poll was skewed. How is TIME showing Obama up 21 on Palin while PPP shows a tie? Which sample seems more realistic to you: 40/26 Democrat/Republican in TIME or 39/34 Demorat/Republican in PPP?
The reason why PPP found a 46/45 Obama/McCain sample is because fewer voters are willing to admit they voted for Obama. You saw the same thing happen with the number of people who claim they didn’t vote for Bush in the 2008 polling.
this has been a lovely night. I went out on a blind date tonight, my darling friend (who I am not going to speak to for a while) described her as cute and a political junkie. I was more interested in the cute part as I was hoping for a good dinner with non political talk and then…. However my friend set me up with a birther who talked incessantly of “where’s the birth certificate? That’s a certificate of live birth, not the real thing”. Literally I tried so hard to steer away from politics but no, she keeps blabbing her mouth. So I had a lovely evening of birther talk and how Medicare is a ponzi scheme, the death panels, the BP slush fund and the whole nine yards. I swear she has to be related to Sharron Angle or something. The sad thing is she was, well don’t think I’m a pig, but really hot. What a let down.
the California Nurses Association. They keep getting under Whitman’s skin like a pack of fleas.
There were some questions a few weeks ago about whether he was black or Hispanic. According to his filing with the SoS, he’s black. http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/t…
up by 2. The trendlines are all in the right direction as Heck had led this race earlier in the year. Still a close race. PPP will have numbers to confirm it this week.
Chuck Grassley still has a huge cash on hand advantage over Roxanne Conlin, but she has the resources to run a statewide campaign.
I don’t see it coming together for Republican Brad Zaun, who hopes to knock off Leonard Boswell in IA-03. The big Republican money hasn’t shown up yet for Zaun, and Bill Clinton is coming to town to raise money for Boswell, which should add to the 7-1 cash on hand advantage Boswell already has over Zaun.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the implications of Dillon winning the primary for organized labor? I would argue being unable to win a Democratic Michigan primary would be a serious problem for organized labor.
Democrat Stephene Moore reported in for her first quarter as an official candidate for Congress–$352k raised with $270k on hand. It’s a solid start and as an official Red-to-Blue candidate, she’ll probably be able to keep pace.
However, her likeliest opponent in November, state Rep. Kevin Yoder, started with a lead, and maintains it, raising $293k to boost his CoH to $618k. While he does face a crowded primary, his toughest remaining Republican primary opponent, Patricia Lightner, raised just $31k and has only $27k in the last pre-primary report. It looks as if Yoder will almost certainly win the Republican primary at this point.
And for anyone hoping that Lynn Jenkins in KS-02 will be teabagged, her opponent, state Sen. Pyle, raised less than $20k and is sitting on a “warchest” of $33k. Jenkins, meanwhile, padded her cash stash a bit, raising $155k and with CoH of $827k. If Jenkins can win a primary against the former Congressman of the district, she can probably win against a no-name state Senator.
Checking the latest disclosure forms filed by Iowa House and Senate candidates (covering period ending July 14). They’re not due until close of business Monday, but many candidates have already submitted them.
I am shocked by the paltry fundraising in some districts that are supposedly battlegrounds. The Republican candidate in Iowa Senate district 5 (Bacon) raised literally zero dollars during the last period. This is a district with a GOP registration advantage, where the Democratic incumbent (Olive) won his first election in 2006 by all of 62 votes. Should be a prime pickup opportunity for GOP.
The former mayor of Waterloo (Rooff) is running in the open Iowa House district 21. This Democratic-held seat has a Dem registration advantage, but it’s open and our candidate is in her early 20s, so the GOP should be making a play for it. You would think a middle-aged guy who used to be mayor of a decent-sized city would be able to pull some money together for a campaign. He raised a few hundred bucks and has less than $1K cash on hand.
Open seat in House district 99 (Council Bluffs). Retiring state representative was elected as a Democrat in 2002, became a turncoat a few years later. Has held the seat for Republicans, but by a narrow margin in 2008. Our 2008 candidate is running again and is working hard. The Republican candidate, Mary Ann Hanusa, lived in the DC area for a long time and supposedly has a lot of GOP connections, but she has only raised a few thousand bucks. Weird.
Rs have gained in Nate’s model as polls move to “likely voter” screens.
11 or 15% chance that R gain the Senate, depending on Charlie
The model gives Republicans a 15 percent chance of taking over the Senate if Charlie Crist caucuses with them, up significantly from 6 percent three weeks ago. If Crist does not caucus with them, their chances of a takeover are 11 percent.
In contrast, statistically, there is a chance of D gains:
Democrats’ chances of gaining a net of one or more seat and re-claiming a 60-seat majority are 7 percent, down from 12 percent three weeks ago. If they could persuade Charlie Crist to caucus with them, however, their chances would improve to 10 percent
Rs have gained in Nate’s model as polls move to “likely voter” screens.
11 or 15% chance that R gain the Senate, depending on Charlie
The model gives Republicans a 15 percent chance of taking over the Senate if Charlie Crist caucuses with them, up significantly from 6 percent three weeks ago. If Crist does not caucus with them, their chances of a takeover are 11 percent.
In contrast, statistically, there is a 7 or 10 % chance of D gains:
Democrats’ chances of gaining a net of one or more seat and re-claiming a 60-seat majority are 7 percent, down from 12 percent three weeks ago. If they could persuade Charlie Crist to caucus with them, however, their chances would improve to 10 percent
The current average estimated result (D loss of 5, assuming Charlie caucuses with Ds)
an average of 53.5 Democrats (counting Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders), 46.0 Republicans, and 0.5 Charlie Crists.
AR-01: I’ve been looking over this district’s history. The last time a Republican won there was in 1872! We’re approaching a very volatile election cycle where anything can happen, and the last poll showed a close race here. How much does Causey have to do to keep this seat blue?
I woould love to see some post runoff polling. I mean, Lincoln’s pretty much toast, Tim Griffin looks like a shoo-in for AR-02, and nobody else in the state is vulnerable. It looks to me like the DCCC would be wise to be spending all Arkansas resources on keeping AR-01.
RI-Gov: With Pat Lynch dropping out of the Dem primary, it’s safe to say this race is between Chafee and Caprio. What are the poll numbers looking like there?
One other thing that’s bothering me and it is Glenn Beck’s recent book, The Overton Window. I’ve been trying to figure out the Overton Window idea in political theory, and surprisingly it seems to make sense. Most of my conservative peers agree that Beck does make sense, though I have my doubts. Has anyone heard of this Overton Window?
I just heard a rumor that the most corrupt politician in the country may be resigning soon. No one here, with the possible exception of Bob Bobson, will know who he is. My counties Sheriff Mike Deatrick. Deatrick is by far the most corrupt slimy evil disgusting person ever elected to public office. Let me tell you about the counties finest. He is a known womanizer, in fact it cost the county several hundred thousands of dollars when they settled a civil suite over him allegedly attempting to rape 911 operators. The majority of staff at the sheriffs department are related to him, that is not an exaggerating either. He has been accused taking kickbacks, although that is not proved. He has done little in terms of drug control, my county is one of the top producers of meth in the country. When his deputy sheriff finally had enough and called it quits he appointed his son in law, but when his son in law cheated on his daughter and they filed for divorce he was out and Deatrick appointed his wife (!!!!). His wife has never been to police school and does not have any law enforcement training whatsoever and she gets to be his highly paid deputy. Also an officer allegedly murdered his wife and you know what Deatrick did, came to his defense and instead of firing him suspended him with full pay and full use of his squad car (which he racked up a boatload of miles on). A few months ago they had a non violent African American offender in custody and the guards allegedly striped him completely naked put a bag over his face and sprayed mace on it beating him while using racial slurs, and allegedly Deatrick knew about it and did not act. The victim is now suing for huge sums of money. Deatrick was indicted a few months ago and still refused to resign so I hope this is for real. The only thing is, and I could be wrong about it, I think his wife will take over as Sheriff since she is Deputy Sheriff, lord help us all. If anyone here claims to know what good ol’ boy politics look like they have never been to Harrison County Indiana.
Tom Emmer is in deep shit, to put it lightly. Early last week, after visiting a restaurant for his publicity/campaign tour, Tom Emmer said that he supports a tax credit and claimed that the manager he talked to at the restaurant said servers there can make up to $100,000 a year. Ok, anyone with a brain knows that is just fucking ridiculous and a tip credit is where you can pay servers less than the minimum wage because they earn tips, with the federal minimum being $2.13 an hour, which obviously did not sit well with the many servers in the state. He wants to take away over 2/3rds of their wages in these economic times.
This was also his first big news item. Before this, he was traveling around the state with the statewide GOP endorsed slate of candidates. This is literally the first introduction for many voters who have never heard of him and now the fool has made the front pages over this several times.
Here’s where it gets really awesome, after he realized he needed to walk back these statements, the campaign decides to hold a town-hall meeting for servers! Um, did you learn nothing from the HCR town-halls? It was brutal, with the event ending 30 minutes early due to someone walking up to the table next to Emmer and dumping $20 in pennies on it and telling him, ‘Here’s your tip.’
Best quote from the linked article,
So not only was his first introduction to the state a policy position that literally cost him hundreds if not a couple thousand votes from servers, but his campaign is so inept that they decide to hold a town-hall meeting inviting only people who are pissed at him and will never vote for him now. My roommate is a server and he says they talk about Emmer at his work now, and my other friend whose a server and who asks me lots of political questions (she tries, bless her heart) is like all hands on deck. I would not be surprised to see a Servers Against Emmer group closer to the election.
Emmer is very much in the Angle/Paul position where he came out with something batshit crazy (love that this is batshit crazy for MN, tip credits are very prevalent across the nation in a spectrum of states) and now he has to backpedal very quickly. The article showcases that nicely and so does this accidentally made public tweet from Emmer’s research director.
Cheeks Kilpatrick is down in two new polls:
http://www.detnews.com/article…
http://www.freep.com/article/2…
don’t cheat and look this up:
-name the only CD to have 4 women representing it (Gov., SenA, SenB, Rep.
five relatively prominent (must have been Gov., Sen., Rep., US Cabinet) Dems who became GOP and vice versa
Dixiecrats becoming GOP DOES NOT COUNT
Recent polling has been pretty good, particularly in the Senate, but I can’t help but feel that this is the calm before the storm. Whenever there’s a wave election one party usually wins most of the contested seats so I find it hard to believe that Dem losses can be measurably limited. Should the generic come close to resembling what it is now we should experience a real shellacking at the polls. To compound our problems the fed looks like they’ll maintain (comparatively) tight supply of the money, further stimulus won’t get enacted and business has shown little interest in spending so the economy won’t improve appreciably. Sigh.
Dems are largely unknown however. Still, at least the GOP has some serious fundraising to do in a bad economy.
Lt Gov:
ARD-R Cooper-D
-300k +186k
AG:
Wilson-R Richardson-D
-18k +327k
BTW, in the Governor’s race Sheheen-D has about a 80-90k advantage.
http://www.thestate.com/2010/0…
How are the polls looking? Martinez and Denish are essentially tied at this point still?
Yawn….
Sandoval- 47%
Reid- 36%
http://www.lvrj.com/news/sando…
for outrageous and laughable conduct against one’s primary opponents. The recipient this time is John McCain, for this howler:
First of all, McCain attacking someone else for flip-flopping? And second, let’s get this straight: voters rejected Hayworth for being insufficiently conservative…by electing a liberal Democrat in his place, who votes for Nancy Pelosi. Harry Mitchell is laughing all the way to re-election.
try to read candidates websites from time to time and I was just on Vincent Sheheen’s site and it is weird that one of the first things it says is “restoring conservative leadership”. Just a little odd, I thought.
http://www.vincentsheheen.com/
like writing another edition of my California race rankings. Should I? Or is it too premature?
claiming that the PPP poll was skewed. How is TIME showing Obama up 21 on Palin while PPP shows a tie? Which sample seems more realistic to you: 40/26 Democrat/Republican in TIME or 39/34 Demorat/Republican in PPP?
The reason why PPP found a 46/45 Obama/McCain sample is because fewer voters are willing to admit they voted for Obama. You saw the same thing happen with the number of people who claim they didn’t vote for Bush in the 2008 polling.
this has been a lovely night. I went out on a blind date tonight, my darling friend (who I am not going to speak to for a while) described her as cute and a political junkie. I was more interested in the cute part as I was hoping for a good dinner with non political talk and then…. However my friend set me up with a birther who talked incessantly of “where’s the birth certificate? That’s a certificate of live birth, not the real thing”. Literally I tried so hard to steer away from politics but no, she keeps blabbing her mouth. So I had a lovely evening of birther talk and how Medicare is a ponzi scheme, the death panels, the BP slush fund and the whole nine yards. I swear she has to be related to Sharron Angle or something. The sad thing is she was, well don’t think I’m a pig, but really hot. What a let down.
the California Nurses Association. They keep getting under Whitman’s skin like a pack of fleas.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…
There were some questions a few weeks ago about whether he was black or Hispanic. According to his filing with the SoS, he’s black. http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/t…
http://www.onlineathens.com/st…
Handel 29% (23%)
Oxendine 22% (31%)
Deal 20%
Johnson 13%
They were: policy director Mac Zimmerman, political director Dustin Zvonek and regional director T.Q. Houlton.
Funny thing is these three once were staffers to Tom Tancredo.
Read about it here: http://www.denverpost.com/elec…
up by 2. The trendlines are all in the right direction as Heck had led this race earlier in the year. Still a close race. PPP will have numbers to confirm it this week.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/titus…
Finally finished my roundup of Iowa Congressional candidate 2Q fundraising at Bleeding Heartland.
Chuck Grassley still has a huge cash on hand advantage over Roxanne Conlin, but she has the resources to run a statewide campaign.
I don’t see it coming together for Republican Brad Zaun, who hopes to knock off Leonard Boswell in IA-03. The big Republican money hasn’t shown up yet for Zaun, and Bill Clinton is coming to town to raise money for Boswell, which should add to the 7-1 cash on hand advantage Boswell already has over Zaun.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the implications of Dillon winning the primary for organized labor? I would argue being unable to win a Democratic Michigan primary would be a serious problem for organized labor.
Democrat Stephene Moore reported in for her first quarter as an official candidate for Congress–$352k raised with $270k on hand. It’s a solid start and as an official Red-to-Blue candidate, she’ll probably be able to keep pace.
However, her likeliest opponent in November, state Rep. Kevin Yoder, started with a lead, and maintains it, raising $293k to boost his CoH to $618k. While he does face a crowded primary, his toughest remaining Republican primary opponent, Patricia Lightner, raised just $31k and has only $27k in the last pre-primary report. It looks as if Yoder will almost certainly win the Republican primary at this point.
And for anyone hoping that Lynn Jenkins in KS-02 will be teabagged, her opponent, state Sen. Pyle, raised less than $20k and is sitting on a “warchest” of $33k. Jenkins, meanwhile, padded her cash stash a bit, raising $155k and with CoH of $827k. If Jenkins can win a primary against the former Congressman of the district, she can probably win against a no-name state Senator.
Checking the latest disclosure forms filed by Iowa House and Senate candidates (covering period ending July 14). They’re not due until close of business Monday, but many candidates have already submitted them.
I am shocked by the paltry fundraising in some districts that are supposedly battlegrounds. The Republican candidate in Iowa Senate district 5 (Bacon) raised literally zero dollars during the last period. This is a district with a GOP registration advantage, where the Democratic incumbent (Olive) won his first election in 2006 by all of 62 votes. Should be a prime pickup opportunity for GOP.
The former mayor of Waterloo (Rooff) is running in the open Iowa House district 21. This Democratic-held seat has a Dem registration advantage, but it’s open and our candidate is in her early 20s, so the GOP should be making a play for it. You would think a middle-aged guy who used to be mayor of a decent-sized city would be able to pull some money together for a campaign. He raised a few hundred bucks and has less than $1K cash on hand.
Open seat in House district 99 (Council Bluffs). Retiring state representative was elected as a Democrat in 2002, became a turncoat a few years later. Has held the seat for Republicans, but by a narrow margin in 2008. Our 2008 candidate is running again and is working hard. The Republican candidate, Mary Ann Hanusa, lived in the DC area for a long time and supposedly has a lot of GOP connections, but she has only raised a few thousand bucks. Weird.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…
Rs have gained in Nate’s model as polls move to “likely voter” screens.
11 or 15% chance that R gain the Senate, depending on Charlie
In contrast, statistically, there is a chance of D gains:
Democrats’ chances of gaining a net of one or more seat and re-claiming a 60-seat majority are 7 percent, down from 12 percent three weeks ago. If they could persuade Charlie Crist to caucus with them, however, their chances would improve to 10 percent
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…
Rs have gained in Nate’s model as polls move to “likely voter” screens.
11 or 15% chance that R gain the Senate, depending on Charlie
In contrast, statistically, there is a 7 or 10 % chance of D gains:
The current average estimated result (D loss of 5, assuming Charlie caucuses with Ds)
where you can get historical pvi?