SSP Daily Digest: 8/16 (Afternoon Edition)

• CO-Sen: Ken Buck twisted himself into a knot that’s unlikely to satisfy anyone. After it came out that, about a year ago, he’d announced his support for the repeal of the 17th Amendment (which allows for direct election of Senators, and should alarm any non-teabagger), on Friday he clarified that, no, he’s changed his mind and supports the 17th now (which should piss off any teabagger). While several House GOP candidates have touted the idea, Buck is the first Senate candidate to discuss why it’s a good idea for people to vote for him so he can go to Washington and take away their right to vote… for him.

• FL-Sen: There’s one more Florida poll to add to the growing pile; it’s only of the Democratic Senate primary, though, and it’s from Republican pollster Susquehanna on behalf of online media outlet Sunshine State News. They join in the chorus seeing Kendrick Meek pulling away from Jeff Greene, 45-30.

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak’s getting some support from an unexpected place: Michael Bloomberg, the loudly post-partisan New York mayor. Bloomberg, who’ll stump on Sestak’s behalf in Pennsylvania tomorrow, seems to like Sestak’s efforts on better lending for small businesses. Another bright spot for Sestak: Green Party candidate Mel Packer is dropping out of the Senate race, not seeming able to withstand the pending court challenge to his petitions from the Sestak camp.

• AL-Gov: With friends like Artur Davis, who needs enemies? The ostensibly Democratic Rep., who seems to have gotten consumed with bile after his surprising yet thorough loss to Ron Sparks in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, published an op-ed in the Montgomery Advertiser yesterday titled “A lack of vision” that said that Sparks is “no champion of real change.” The key quote: “In a break with tradition, I did not attend that [unity] event and will not be campaigning for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.” But really: read the whole thing, especially if you still had any shreds of respect left for Davis.

• CA-Gov: You know that saying about how if you want to experience the sense of yachting, just go stand in the shower with your clothes on and keep continuously flushing money down the toilet? I wonder if Meg Whitman is starting to get that sense about her own campaign and its nine figures worth of out-of-pocket sunk costs. She just wrote herself another $13 million check, saying that she had to throw down more because of the nerve of those unions and their insistence on using independent expenditures.

• IA-Gov: You might remember the gadflyish Jonathan Narcisse, a former Des Moines school board member and alternative newspaper publisher who’d made some motions about challenging Chet Culver in the Dem primary. Well, now he’s back, and he’s planning to mount an independent bid instead. He claims to have enough signatures to qualify, and despite his ostensibly left-of-center orientation claims to be getting a lot of interest from disgruntled Bob Vander Plaats supporters looking for an option to Terry Branstad.

• LA-Gov: In case there was any doubt, Bobby Jindal confirmed that he’ll be running for re-election for Governor in 2011. That makes a 2012 presidential run seem less likely, given the quick turnaround, but he’s young enough that he needn’t hurry.

• MS-01: Travis Childers is out with his second ad in as many weeks, this one a negative spot against Alan Nunnelee (although self-narrated by Childers, rather than using the usual grainy black-and-white photos and angry-sounding voice of doom like most negative ads). Childers hits Nunnelee for raising various taxes while in the state legislature.

• NH-01: Frank Guinta, the presumed frontrunner in the GOP primary for the right to face Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, has some good news and bad news. The good news: he seems to have discovered an extra bank account in his name that had somewhere between $250K and $500K in it, which hadn’t been on previous disclosure forms because of “an inadvertent oversight.” The bad news: now he has to explain where all that money came from, which isn’t exactly clear, as Guinta has partially self-funded his run but also done a lot of outside fundraising. This looks serious enough that ex-Rep. Jeb Bradley is calling for Guinta to drop out if he can’t provide a credible explanation (although it should be noted that, although Bradley hasn’t officially endorsed, he was already informally backing GOP primary rival Sean Mahoney).

• NY-06, NY-13: The New York AFL-CIO endorsed all but four New York House incumbents over the weekend: the two Republicans, naturally, but also Reps. Mike McMahon and… Greg Meeks? Turns out they’ve had a beef with Meeks (who’s a bit of a mismatch with his dark-blue district) for a while, going back to his CAFTA vote. So this means they did endorse Mike Arcuri in NY-24, despite his HCR vote and subsequent antipathy from the Working Families Party.

• Ohio: We Ask America, an auto-dialing pollster with Republican connections that occasionally pops up with flurries of polls, rolled out three polls of different House races in Ohio last week. They add one more poll to the heap of doom for Rep. Steve Driehaus in OH-01, finding him losing to ex-Rep. Steve Chabot 51-39. They also find Paula Brooks unlikely to prevail in her right-candidate-wrong-year challenge to GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi in OH-12; she trails 51-34. Perhaps most interesting is OH-15, which I believe is the first poll released of this race, which many Dems have mentally written off already. While they have freshman Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy trailing, it’s not that bad, in comeback-able range with a 46-41 lead for GOP rematch candidate Steve Stivers.

• Stumping: Barack Obama is making a three-state road swing over the next few days, appearing on behalf of three vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbents: Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Barbara Boxer in California, and Patty Murray in Washington. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is making three appearances around Florida today on behalf of Hillary-endorsing Kendrick Meek in his Senate primary.

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy (D) 48%, Tom Foley (R) 33%

• GA-Sen: Michael Thurmond (D) 41%, Johnny Isakson (R-inc) 55%

• ME-Gov: Libby Mitchell (D) 30%, Paul LePage (R) 38%, Eliot Cutler (I) 16%

• ND-Sen: Tracy Potter (D) 25%, John Hoeven (R) 69%

• ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy (D-inc) 44%, Rick Berg (R) 53%

163 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 8/16 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. True, Hoeven was always the heavy favorite.  But in DE and IN, the Dems have been able to stay about 10 points behind the Republicans.  Why has Tracy Potter been such a washout?

  2. Eat a bag of dicks, Artur Davis. Seriously, what an effin’ jerk. Not only is the tiny shred of respect I had for Davis gone (and that was mostly because he managed to unite black & white Alabama Democrats … in rejecting him), but if he ever runs for office again, I will donate to whomever his opponent is, even if it’s a friggin’ Republican.

  3. Why shouldn’t they endorse Arcuri?  It’s pretty simple:  he didn’t support the corporate friendly Baucus bill while Meeks supported the job killing and wage draining CAFTA.  See the difference?

  4.   I am glad he is dropping out.  This means that I will not have to listen to complaints about the big, mean Democrats pushing the lowly Greens off the ballot.  I hear it every year, and every year it gets less convincing.  PA greens would be much more sympathetic if they hadn’t taken Republican money in 2006.

  6. Rick Berg’s at a crazy high 53%…he completely shattered the sacred 50% mark (and I’m not being sarcastic). I’m hoping that Pomeroy can shit all over Berg after labor day with his humongous pile of cash, but this is ND in a strong GOP year with John Fuckin’ Hoeven at the top of the ticket. Any reason for hope in this district?

  7. I’ll finally say what should have been said on OH, Brunner sucks and should have just ran for SoS and found a different way to fulfill her potential in politics, instead of going down in flames for little reason.  Because with her winning and if Strickland could pull it out, we’d control congressional redistricting.  Kilroy and Dreihaus could easily retake their old seats with some new lines, although I kind of prefer different candidates to be honest if we draw ourselves solid blue seats

    As for LA, Jindal will probably be running for Senate then in 2014, it all just lines up for him.  HIm and Vitter would rival Inhofe and Coburn I’d think.

  9. Thurmond is doing about as well as I would expect against Isakson and he is actually trending up but so is Isakson as more undecided voters take a side.

    Obama’s approval is also pretty decent considering it equals out to what he received on election day in 2008.  

  10. If it were implemented

    what would happen to states that had split party control?(i.e Dems control state house and Reps hold the state senate)

    Would each house elect one senator a piece?

    And who would Nebraska’s unicameral non-partisan legislature elect as its senators?

    An why have Republicans been supporting this while if anything the move would benefit Democrats:

    Dems would gain senate seats in:

    Mississippi: +2

    Alabama: +2

    Louisiana: +1

    Maine: +2

    New Hampshire: +1

    Massachusetts +1

    North Carolina: +1

    Total: +10

    Republicans would only gain

    Florida:+1

    Missouri: +1

    Total:

    I decided to leave off states with split control:

    Montana, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Kentucky  

  11. The local alternative paper, The Pitch, is having a field day with Republican nominee Kevin Yoder’s constant campaign fakery: http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/20…

    Americans for Prosperity are dumping money into the district, trying to tie Stephene Moore to Nancy Pelosi [yeeeah, good luck with that]. Meanwhile, in reality land, Moore landed the endorsement of the Blue Dogs (her husband Dennis was one).

    And local voters may get a ton of debates: Yoder challenged Moore to 6 debates, trying to boost his name recognition, obviously, and expecting relative neophyte Moore to try and get away with just one or two. But Moore’s response was basically: Bring it.

    Personally, I’m really starting to like Stephene Moore. She is feisty and brassy, while still maintaining that “I’m a grandma who bakes pies” appeal.

  15. the Democrat got the post-primary bounce for once, as Malloy’s big surge, (coupled with Foley’s near collapse in the GOP primary), have given the Democrat a boost.

    I wonder if LePage wins, whether moronic leftists will finally quit running as independents in Maine with the delusion they are accomplishing something. A LePage win might be the best thing to ever happen to Democrats in Maine, as it would be thorough disaster for the Republican party there; in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it caused a collapse and a large scale realignment to the Democrats that would effectively seal the state as a Democratic one, and maybe even force Snowe into a party switch with a nasty primary.

  16. Next year. If Webb is selected to replace him (would be a stupid pick politically, but a great pick experience wise), that could tip the senate to Republicans if we pick up 9 seats this year. I’m sure if Obama picked Webb though, he would get McDonnell to agree to a Democratic placeholder.  

  20. Mitchell is very liberal AFAIK, LePage – very conservative, but tries to hide that behind populist rhetoric. So there is, surely, rather big room to grow for Cutler, with his “left-of-center” positions being not far from those of majority of Maine voters.

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