SSP Daily Digest: 8/3 (Morning Edition)

  • CO-Sen: Colorado Dems are concerned that if Andrew Romanoff topples Sen. Michael Bennet in the primary, he’ll be badly hamstrung in the general by his refusal to take PAC money. This problem is compounded by the fact he’s been a pretty crappy fundraiser in general. Romanoff also supposedly said he won’t accept the DSCC’s help – though luckily for us, independent expenditure rules mean that he can’t tell the DS what to do. This all reminds of Russ Feingold demanding that outside groups not spend money on his 1998 re-election campaign, which he won by barely 3% in an otherwise very strong Democratic year.

    • Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is up with a quarter million dollar ad buy on behalf of Jane Norton, touting an endorsement from Jan Brewer (whose instant celebrity strikes me as something on the level of a reality TV star).

  • FL-Sen: So it turns out that Kendrick Meek, who was initially left off some notices, will participate in Barack Obama’s August 18th Miami Beach fundraiser. But a Meek staffer tells Politico that he wants nothing less than a “prominent role” at the event and is “expecting the president to strongly reaffirm his endorsement.” If you have to float these kinds of things via blind leaks to the beltway press… well… that doesn’t exactly evince a great deal of confidence, does it?

    • Meanwhile, Tom Jensen confirms empirically something I’ve felt intuitively for a while (and mentioned on our panel at Netroots Nation): Charlie Crist is better off with Jeff Greene winning the Democratic primary rather than Kendrick Meek. In particular, black voters support Meek 39-33 over Crist, while they support Crist 61-17 over Greene.

  • IL-Sen: It’s confirmed: A federal judge ruled that the candidates on the special election ballot to fill out the remaining months of Sen. Roland Burris’s term will be the same as those on the regular election ballot – meaning Burris won’t be able to seek “re-election” for those two extra months (something he actually had considered doing). Phew.
  • KS-Sen: A final SurveyUSA poll of the GOP primary shows Todd Tiahrt, who has trailed badly for the entire race, closing the gap with Jerry Moran. Moran still leads by a sizable 49-39 margin, but two weeks ago, it was 50-36, and Tiahrt has gained 10 points over the last two months. The problem is, time’s up: The primary is tonight.
  • KY-Sen: The Club for Growth just endorsed Rand Paul, and undoubtedly it’s because of College Libertarian Society bullshit like this which comes out of his mouth:

    • The Republican running to replace outgoing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) in the coal-mining hub of Kentucky said recently that Washington has no business formulating mine safety rules.

    “The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia, according to a profile in Details magazine. “You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”

    “I know that doesn’t sound… I want to be compassionate, and I’m sorry for what happened, but I wonder: Was it just an accident?”

  • CA-Gov: Fellow humans of Earth! I have traveled back through time from the year 3000! And I come to tell you that in our wondrous and awesome future, the spending record for candidate self-funding is still held by Meg Whitman! I cannot tell you how much she spent in total, lest I create a temporal paradox and cause all of you never to have been born, but I can inform you that she has already spent one hundred million of your Earth dollars! Also, everyone in the future eats Dippin’ Dots!

    • Meanwhile, a more chronologically closer reporter informs us that Jerry Brown has $23 million on hand.

  • FL-Gov: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Florida’s public financing law, whereby candidates whose opponents spend more than $25 million (as Rick Scott has) get added matching funds from the state. Apparently this system “chills free speech” (whatever). Bill McCollum is obviously none too happy, and is weighing a possible appeal – or an attack on another part of the law which limits the size of donations he can accept.
  • GA-Gov: Landmark Communications, a Republican pollster which says it has no ties to either candidate, is out with the first poll of the GOP runoff. They find Karen Handel leading Nathan Deal by a 46-37 margin. Deal, meanwhile, is out with a new ad, and props to the AJC’s Jim Galloway for getting the Deal campaign to cough up that the buy is for 850 gross ratings points in the Atlanta area. One rating point is equal to one percent of a potential audience, but because the same viewer might see the same ad more than once, you need a lot more than 100 GRPs to reach your full target audience. As things go, 850 is a pretty decent-sized buy, especially in an expensive market like Atlanta.
  • CA-47: This really doesn’t seem wise: Rep. Loretta Sanchez, locked in a competitive race with Assemblyman Van Tran, filed paperwork for state bid in 2014. She really couldn’t have waited until after November? Now-Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-04) did something similar last cycle, and it certainly did not seem to help him (he barely eked out a win in a decidedly red district). Speaking of Tran, by the way, here’s an interesting item from late last week: He secured the backing of the grifters running the Tea Party Express – not exactly a popular gang, I’m sure, in this 60% Obama district.
  • FL-08: You know how they say that if you wind up in prison, you should act all crazy on your first day so that the other inmates know better than to mess with you? Well, Alan Grayson’s tack seems to have been to act crazy so as to get his opponents to act even crazier and thus blow themselves up in the process. Republican state Rep. Kurt Kelly, reacting to Grayson’s absence during a vote on an Afghanistan war funding bill, spazzed: “He put our soldiers, our men and women in the military, in harm’s way and, in fact, maybe he wants them to die.” Said a Grayson spokesperson in response: “Kurt Kelly thinks the stupider he sounds, the more Republican votes he’ll get.” Heh.
  • HI-01: GOP Rep. Charles Djou is out with an internal poll from the Tarrance Group showing him up 50-42 over Colleen Hanabusa. Djou has about $380K on hand to Hanabusa’s $220K. I wonder if Hanabusa will release her own internal.
  • ID-01: I swear, some days it really feels like Bill Sali actually is running again. This time, apprentice fuckup Raul Labrador moved his campaign headquarters outside of the 1st Congressional District – a pretty remarkable feat given that Idaho has only two CDs. If this sounds extremely familiar, that’s because it is: Sali himself did the exact same thing, situating his campaign office in ID-02 as well. Let’s hope history repeats in November, too.
  • IL-10: Dem Dan Seals has donated $5,000 he received from ethically embattled Rep. Maxine Waters to charity – even though she gave that money to him last cycle. I wonder if other candidates will follow suit, ala Rangel.
  • NY-10: Even though he’s already spent an absurd $1.1 million and held 2008 challenger Kevin Powell to just 32% in the primary, Rep. Ed Towns is taking no chances in his rematch and is attempting to get Powell kicked off the ballot. However, Powell (who has raised very little and has just $30K on hand) collected 8,000 signatures, far more than the 1,250 he needed. So unless there are massive flaws (or fraud), this is going to be difficult for Towns.
  • WI-08: Organic farmer, Door County supervisor, and teabagger Marc Savard, who had raised very little, dropped out and endorsed roofing contractor Reid Ribble in the GOP primary. Ribble, who leads the fundraising field (but only has about $180K on hand), still faces former state Rep. Terri McCormick and current state Rep. Roger Roth. (And here’s a rather disturbing item we missed: While we noted retired radiologist Marc Trager’s departure from the race in mid-June, we were previously unaware that he committed suicide just a couple of weeks later.)
  • DCCC: Obama alert! The POTUS will do a fundraiser for the D-Trip on August 16 at the Los Angeles home of “ER” and “West Wing” executive produce John Wells. Nancy Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen are also expected to attend.

    • 117 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 8/3 (Morning Edition)”

    1. Colorado Dems are concerned that if Andrew Romanoff topples Sen. Michael Bennet in the primary, he’ll be badly hamstrung in the general by his refusal to take PAC money. This problem is compounded by the fact he’s been a pretty crappy fundraiser in general. Romanoff also supposedly said he won’t accept the DSCC’s help – though luckily for us, independent expenditure rules mean that he can’t tell the DS what to do. This all reminds of Russ Feingold demanding that outside groups not spend money on his 1998 re-election campaign, which he won by barely 3% in an otherwise very strong Democratic year.

      Well ain’t that fucking great.

      On side not after reading the round-up Rand Paul is very dangerous if he becomes a Senator and Alan Greyson well what can I say than I like his tatics.

    2. I’m pretty sure it was Tom McClintock, not Tom Campbell, who filed paperwork to run statewide as he was running in CA-04.

    3. Gongwer News is reporting that a poll from the Troy and Detroit-based Foster, McCollum White and Associates has been released. The poll shows Lansing mayor Virg Bernero leading Andy Dillon 49.9 – 21.8.

      The sample size for the automated phone poll was 1,648 registered Democrats. I would post the link but the article is gated.

    4. though Obama got 60% here and Gore performed similarly, Bush did win it narrowly in 2004, so I’m not sure how solidly Democratic it is. Nevertheless Sanchez seems entrenched enough to me and I can think of plenty of incumbents I’d worry about before her.

    6. for those who were wondering, I believe Missouri and Michigan polls close at 8 PM Eastern(with a small slice of the UP in Michigan closing at 9 PM), while Kansas polls close at 9 PM with a small slice of the state closing at 10.

    7. Both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. Dems don’t need another mini-me in Romanoff. Go Bennet.

    8. This is one of the many reasons I am supporting Bennet. Romanoff as our nominee makes things much more difficult and if Buck is the nominee this should be a fairly easy hold but Romanoff makes things more difficult while Bennet should win fairly comfortably against whack job Buck. Let’s not screw this up people.  

    9. If Romanoff wins, he will pick up some money that has been flowing to Bennett.  The DSCC is also going to strongly support the winner, as its another “cost effective investment” on their part.

      As for not taking PAC money, maybe it will help him with voters.

      If Romanoff wins, he has more fire but less money than Bennett.  If Bennett wins, vice versa.

      Time to pick our poison.

    10. I’d love to see the polling memo on that Hawaii poll. Hawaii has given Obama some of his hottest approval ratings so that number might give a better indicator as to how reliable this poll is.

      And can anyone comment on Tarrance’s reputation? I’m a bit skeptical of a lot of these GOP internals that are being conducted by all of these relatively obscure polling firms.

    13. it’s now officially Wednesday, August 4 here in Beijing. I’ve already seen the results of the KS, MO, and MI primaries. I could tell you guys what happened, but it’d be more fun to let you guess. 😉

    14. PPP vs. Rasmussen continues. PPP did well in 2008 and NC is their home state, so I’m just going to tell myself they’re right in order to help me sleep at night. 😛

    15. Jim Geraghty has news of two new polls. The first is a poll from Public Opinion Strategies that purports to show Schilling down only 2 to Phil Hare. Hare’s re-elects are 26/46. Geraghty doesn’t make clear whether this is an internal poll or not.

      The second is an internal poll from Republican Ann Marie Buerkle in NY-25. It purports to show Buerkle down only 9 to Dan Maffei, 46-37.

      Links to the polls themselves aren’t provided and I didn’t find the one on POS’ website, so here’s Campaign Spot itself:

      http://www.nationalreview.com/…

    16. hasn’t Todd Tiarht gotten more traction in the primary. The MSM makes it seem that Moran is more “moderate,” which is true, I guess, if the other candidate is batshit crazy. Still, aren’t Kansas Republicans really, really right wing?

    19. I sent in a request for an absentee ballot for the Georgia Primary Runoff.  I’m moving to Athens within the next week.  So, I can’t vote in person on election day, and my county doesn’t have early voting for the runoff.  

      Yesterday, I got a postcard from Karen Handel addressed specifically to me thanking me for requesting an absentee ballot and urging me to vote for her.  Someone didn’t do their reserach.  They were able to find me name on some list, but apparently weren’t smart enough to check my voting history to see that I have voted in two Democratic Presidential primaries versus none for Republicans, three Democratic state primaries versus none for Republicans, and one Democratic state primary runoff versus none for Republicans; chances are, I’m probably not voting for her.  They knew about my request but didn’t know that I had requested a Democratic runoff ballot.  

      And considering she is the former secretary of state, she should know that I couldn’t vote for her even if I wanted to because I voted in the Democratic primary and can only get a Democratic runoff ballot and there is no write-in option for the primary.

      Oh, and the postcard got there several days after my request.  I had already mailed it in.

    21. a Republican primary in Colorado while illegal immigration is a big issue for the activists. I would not downplay this endorsement. It is a “relevant” endorsement.  

    Comments are closed.