• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist has to be feeling good about having limited this damage: few major Republican donors have switched over from Crist to Marco Rubio, after his switch to an independent campaign. Only five of Crist’s donors who gave more than $200 pre-switch have given similar amounts to Rubio since then, totalling only $6,340.
• LA-Sen: Clarus Research, on behalf of local TV station WWL, finds a somewhat closer Senate race in Louisiana than other pollster have; they see David Vitter leading Charlie Melancon 48-36 (with Vitter sporting a 51/37 approval). Vitter’s also in solid shape in his primary (suggesting that Chet Traylor internal was pretty thoroughly ginned-up with “informed ballot” questions); Vitter leads Traylor 74-5, with 3 for Nick Accardo.
• MO-Sen: The Missouri Senate race, not the recipient of much national attention until just recently, is now at the epicenter of ad spending. The DSCC is plowing $4 million into ads here (along with $1.3 million in KY-Sen), while Karl Rove-linked American Crossroads is also launching a new ad in Missouri, as well as one in NV-Sen. The combined buy is for $2 million (no word on how it breaks down between the states); maybe not coincidentally, Crossroads raised $2 million in July, almost all of which came from exactly two donors (prominent conservative donors Harold Simmons and Jerry Perenchio).
• WA-Sen: Maybe that usual calculus of adding Dino Rossi and Clint Didier votes in the primary to see if they add up to the Patty Murray votes shouldn’t apply… Didier just held a press conference today to announce that he’s not endorsing Rossi (at least not yet). He said he’d back Rossi if he promised to pledge to support no new taxes, sponsor an anti-abortion bill, and… get this… never vote for anything that would “increase the federal budget.” We’ll have to see if Rossi even bothers dignifying that with a response.
• WV-Sen, WV-Gov: A new “MindField Poll” (yes, that’s what they call it) by local pollster R.L. Repass finds an unsurprisingly large lead for Gov. Joe Manchin in the Senate special election; he leads GOPer John Raese 54-32, and is sitting on a 65% approval. They also look at the gubernatorial election in 2012 in the post-Manchin world, and find GOP Rep. Shelly Capito in the best shape. She beats all Democrats mentioned: Senate President (and Governor, if Manchin quits) Earl Ray Tomblin (43-29), state House Speaker Rick Thompson (44-29), Treasurer John Perdue (44-32), and SoS Natalie Tennant (40-37). Former Republican SoS Betty Ireland was also polled, but loses to all the Democrats (by margins as large as 44-24 to Tennant).
• CO-Gov: On what seems like a quest to be the first ever major party candidate to get 0% in a gubernatorial race, Dan Maes is busy pissing off his one remaining clutch of supporters, the teabaggers, with his choice of the somewhat centrist Tambor Williams as his running mate. She was a supporter of anti-TABOR Referenda C and D, but more aggravating to Maes backers is that although she says she’s anti-abortion, she’s taken some notably pro-choice votes in the leigslature. Maes hasn’t lost any major endorsers over it, but is running damage control on the right.
• IL-Gov: It seems like Pat Quinn may be racing Maes to the bottom, in terms of campaign woes. He and his media team — David Axelrod’s former firm, AKPD — parted ways, seemingly at Quinn’s decision. AKPD doesn’t seem to sad to be heading out the door; their terse statement about the parting of ways was, “We and the Quinn campaign agreed that our divergent approaches to disciplined, professional communications are incompatible. We wish Pat well.”
• FL-08: Daniel Webster is getting some last minute help on the stump in the closing days of the Florida primary campaign. Mike Huckabee (who endorsed Webster a long whiel ago) will appear with him this weekend.
• FL-22: Here’s a hilarious little piece on Allen West’s attempts to surround and conquer his district, rather than actually do anything in it: he just opened his new campaign office in West Palm Beach… in FL-23. He recently also held a town hall in FL-19, and perhaps most significantly, lives in Plantation, in FL-20. (It is worth noting the 22nd is one convoluted-looking district.)
• Mayors: That vaunted “anti-incumbent” year hasn’t panned out much in the primaries, but there is one other race coming up soon that looks like it’s on track for a loss by an incumbent. A new Clarus poll of the Washington, DC mayoral race finds Vincent Gray leading incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty, 39-36, in the Democratic primary.
• Rasmussen:
• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks (D) 34%, Robert Bentley (R) 58%
• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 27%, John Boozman (R) 65%
• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 38%, John Robitaille (R) 20%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 32%
• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 40%, Victor Moffitt (R) 17%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 33%
• WY-Gov: Leslie Petersen (D) 24%, Matt Mead (R) 58%
thinks Republicans will fall about 5 seats short of taking back the House majority.
I’d find it hard to set up a campaign office in the district too, let alone know your town hall meeting will definitely take place within its boundaries.
38 point lead for Boozman. I wonder if that would be a record-setting margin for a loss by an incumbent senator. Does anyone keep track of such trivia?
I’m not even sure a dead girl/live boy scandal by Boozman could save Blanche now.
since mcgovern’s senate loss, if i remember correctly
this whole listing our age, demo and district thing as our sig going to be mandatory? I’d rather not, if it’s avoidable.
must be the first time this year Frank Caprio is actually leading in a Rasmussen poll. Wtf is going on there!
on the air. (She’s just wasting money in my opinion at this point.)
http://hotlineoncall.nationalj…
What’s TABOR?
I know (even if I hope it will!) won’t hold when voters go to the polls and see only one name they are familiar with, but it is interesting how unknown he is with Dems in the state.
Pretty remarkable, really.
by Charlie Cook, it was in an article posted yesterday on National Journal and Cook Political Report, it’s in reference to President Obama’s support of the right to build the Cordoba House community center in lower Manhattan.
“At the risk of sounding like an unlicensed psychoanalyst, it seems that President Obama is so supremely self-confident, so self-assured of the righteousness of his positions, that perhaps he believes if he does what he thinks is best and lets the chips fall where they may, everything will eventually work out. And, if it doesn’t, well, he’ll still think he did the right thing anyway.”
Oh…my…god. That sounds like something Karl Rove or Bill O’Reilly would come up with. I guess from now on it’s, Cook Political Reports, You Decide, just like Scotty Rass.
(Hell, this makes Scotty Rass look good by comparison)
the WV poll is a little old, from August 6th.
Here is the poll, in .pdf form.
Either that, or a later MindField poll has produced exactly the same results.
But I expect that Manchin will win by an easy 20 points.
This race is going down to the wire… which is really exciting, given the fact that close elections never, ever happen in the District.
FYI, for interested parties: I intend to liveblog the primary here at SSP on September 14th.
A poll in January showed him down 38-31.
He blasted a campaign tracker following him for his “gestapo-like” intimidation techniques. However, the tracker was a grandson of Holocaust survivors. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…
Daniel Webster may be the first politician to try to trade on a famous name that only history buffs will recognize!
I can very easily see how Carnahan gets within a couple of points of Blunt. But it’s hard to see her winning unless the overall political climate improves at least somewhat for Democrats.
Let me put it this way: I can see Crist or Conway – or even both! – winning their races even in the face of a big GOP wave that gives them the House and 6-7 other Senate seats. I can’t see Carnahan doing the same. So unless the GOP tide subsides a bit, keeping losses in the House at 25-30 seats and losses in the Senate to just 3-4, I think, unfortunately, she’ll lose.