• CT-Sen: This may be the first time we’ve ever linked to Jezebel, but they have a nice deconstruction of the public face of the new image that Linda McMahon has built up for herself, and its complicated relationship to the WWE, the source of the millions that Linda McMahon plans to spend on her Senate bid. (Although I wish they’d focused more on the behind-the-scenes stuff: the steroids, the lack of health care, the union-busting, and so on…)
• KY-Sen: Is this really the kind of headlines that Rand Paul (or any candidate, for any office) would want to be seeing today? “Woman Says Paul Did Not Kidnap Her,” and “Paul Apologizes for Fancy Farm Beer Flub.” The former story isn’t that surprising, in that Paul’s college acquaintance clarifies that the whole let’s-tie-her-up-make-her-smoke-pot-and-pray-to-a-graven-idol thing was more of a consensual hazing than an out-and-out kidnapping (of course, other than the “kidnapping” semantics, all that Bong Hits for Aqua Buddha stuff still seems to stand). The latter story has its roots in Paul’s worries that the audience at the Fancy Farm church picnic (the same ones who got the vapors last year when Jack Conway used the words “son of a bitch”) were going to start throwing beer at him – even though the event was dry. Having realized that you don’t go around dissing politically-legendary church picnics unless you have the political instincts of a brick, Paul later apologized.
• LA-Sen: Southern Media & Opinion Research finds that David Vitter leads Charlie Melancon 46-28, not much changed since their last poll from spring, where Vitter led 49-31. They also take a look at the Republican Senate primary, finding (as did POS a few weeks ago) that Chet Traylor is really turning into something of a paper tiger: Vitter leads Traylor 78-4! They also do a quick look at the jungle-style Lt. Governor special election, giving the lead to current Republican SoS Jay Dardenne at 26.
• OR-Gov: Well, it seems like the John Kitzhaber campaign has finally acknowledged what the blogosphere realized a while ago, that it’s time to shake things up and bring in a more feisty and uptempo approach. That’s hopefully what they’re doing with a new campaign manager, Patricia McCaig. Interestingly, McCaig is a former right-hand woman to ex-Gov. Barbara Roberts, who Kitzhaber shoved over in 1994 and whose relations with Kitz have been rocky since then.
• AZ-03: Will today’s double-whammy be enough to knock Ben Quayle out of his seeming frontrunner position in the GOP primary in the 3rd? Rocked by controversy over having denied and then having gotten outed as having written pseudonymously for sleazy local website DirtyScottsdale.com (a forerunner to today’s TheDirty.com), he’s out with a TV spot that he hopes will take some of the heat off. Unfortunately for him, the ad seems to have gotten an almost universally derisive reaction, based on his odd combination of hyperbolic claims (“Barack Obama is the worst president in history”), slow, droning delivery, and strange robotic motions.
• IA-03: When we moved Leonard Boswell in the 3rd to Tossup a few weeks ago, we weren’t fooling around. A second Republican poll was released today giving his GOP challenger, state Sen. Brad Zaun, a decent-sized lead: Victory Enterprises, on behalf of the Polk County GOP and not the Zaun camp, finds a 45-38 lead for Zaun. (There was also a June poll giving Zaun a 41-32 lead. It was also by Victory Enterprises, and shared the same Republican-friendly party ID composition, but that one was for the Zaun campaign.)
• OR-05: He’s Scott Bruun, and he drives a truck. He also supports privatizing Social Security. Or doesn’t he? Bruun has reversed himself several times on how he frames the issue, depending on who his audience is, but either way, he seems to be relying on the Paul Ryan roadmap for his ideas.
• Passages: Here’s a sad bookend to yesterday’s death of Ted Stevens: today’s death of another legendary, long-time Congressman who was a master at horse-trading and pork-wrangling, this one from the other side of the aisle. Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, one of the biggest Democratic names to fall in 1994, died at age 82.
• Rasmussen:
• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 38%, Charlie Crist (I) 33%
• FL-Sen: Jeff Greene (D) 20%, Marco Rubio (R) 36%, Charlie Crist (I) 37%
• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 40%, Mark Kirk (R) 40%
• TN-Gov: Mike McWherter (D) 31%, Bill Haslam (R) 56%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 46%, Ron Johnson (R) 47%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 48%, Dave Westlake (R) 39%
Victory is still a Republican-connected firm, and the poll was for the Polk County GOP. It’s an internal, and should be taken with a grain of salt.
If desmoinesdem starts thinking this race is a tossup, then I’ll believe it.
What an amazingly bad ad.
I think my original thoughts on IA-3 were correct, that Boswell is a weak incumbent in a swing district, that in a year like this will lose to Generic R. Crud.
I think Desmoinesdem and IA-3 might be in the same place as me and OH-15, we have our reasons for thinking that Leonard Boswell/Mary Kilroy might win, but homerism might be playing a role as well.
20% undeiced or another candidate?
In 2008 for Durbin, less than 4% came in for other candidates. In 2006 for Obama’s race, other came in at 3%.
So if we assume that 3-4% is actually other, then 17% are undecided. Seems a little high to me. Strangely, this is one race I’d like to see polled where respondents are pushed to vote for either candidate and not given the option of other and undecided, just to see the leanings.
I’m sure the negatives are high on both, but if the respondents are going to vote they should have a better lean than 17% undecided today.
I still think Boswell will pull through, but we haven’t had any public polling of the IA-03 race, and Boswell hasn’t released his own internal polling.
The Iowa Democratic Party’s GOTV effort will be crucial for this and many other down-ticket races. They need to push the unreliable off-year D voters to vote early. The seniors demographic will be important for Boswell, so I expect to hear more about the prescription drug “donut hole” closure, Medicare reimbursement rates, etc.
Zaun is unusually strong for a Republican in Polk County (the Des Moines area, where 2/3 of the district’s votes are). Boswell has potential to outperform the top of the D ticket outside Polk County, however. Zaun knows nothing about rural/ag issues and has already gotten tripped up over ethanol subsidies.
Boswell’s campaign has also criticized Zaun for being against government flood relief aid, defending a dodgy former state division director and not understanding the Medicare reimbursement disparity that the health care bill corrected. Looks like we are headed for a very negative campaign.
I will say it every time: it’s not about the sex or the violence. It’s about the deaths of young wrestlers from business practices which the WWE implemented.
http://www.dailymail.com/elect…
Capito has big leads over every possible Dem candidate, except for SoS Natalie Tennant, whom she leads by 3. Former SoS Betty Ireland (R) does much worse.
Remember at Washington’s filing deadline there was a 24 yr old guy trying to get on the ballot named Bryan Baird, but he wouldn’t be 25 by January 3rd and there was conflict about whether he should be allowed to qualify? Well, he didn’t. 🙁
I was looking at my old HS yearbook and I remembered something funny. My old science teacher was named Kent Conrad.
I think he’ll be Ok. But he’s the clearest victim of the economic slowdown. And I’m not sure being more aggressive will help because he’s a known commodity. He doesn’t want to come across as a phony.
He should let surrogates and the DGA do the dirty work.
Political analyst Jon Ralston calls it one of Reid’s best ads of the cycle.
Also, new ad from “Patriot Majority”
What say you to these ads? 🙂