SSP Daily Digest: 8/26 (Morning Edition)

  • FL-Sen: Five Teamster locals, representing union member across the state, endorsed Charlie Crist yesterday. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio is out with a new ad, a positive family bio spot that is about as un-partisan as you can get. The Palm Beach Post suggests Rubio is trying to appear “above the fray” and let Crist and Kendrick Meek go at each other. NWOTSOTB.
  • FL-Gov: Mark Blumenthal (with assists from Charles Franklin and Harry Enten) has an interesting look at the final five FL-Gov polls, in an attempt to understand why PPP and Susquehanna came closest. (In passing, Blumenthal also points out that the average error in this batch of FL-Sen polls was twice as big as the FL-Gov average, but because several high-profile pollsters “called” the gube race wrong, those polls are getting more attention than the senate polls.)
  • AZ-03: State Sen. and fifth-place finisher Pamela Gorman, best-known for her ad in which she fires a bunch of guns, says she won’t endorse Ben Quayle (at least not yet), on account of the vileness he spewed on TheDirty.com. Second- and third-place finishers Steve Moak and Jim Waring, however, say they will support Mr. Potatoe-son.
  • AZ-08: Those GOPers really can’t shut up about how much they want to destroy Social Security, huh? Check out Jesse Kelly, fresh of his teabagger-fueled upset victory:

    • “We have to fulfill our promises that we’ve made to people who are on it now, because the government has stolen their money their entire lives, while phasing future generations off. You have to get the future generations off or you’re going to go broke,” he said. “Individual accounts is the key to it.”

    Sounds almost exactly like Tom Marino, huh?

  • FL-22: Ron Klein is up with his first ad of the campaign season, a spot attacking GOPer Allen West for failing to pay taxes. I’m glad to see Klein going on the attack, but given how much utterly insane shit has come out of West’s mouth, it feels a little limp to be going after him on IRS liens. Maybe that issue polled better, who knows. NWOTSOTB.
  • FL-24: Karen Diebel, one of the crazier GOP candidates in a year just chock-full of `em, has gone AWOL in the wake of her narrow loss to state Rep. Sandy Adams. While third-place finisher Craig Miller has endorsed Adams, Diebel hasn’t said a word. With 100% of precincts reporting, she trails by 0.8%. She’d need to get under 0.5% to trigger a recount (unless she can demonstrate fraud), which I suppose is conceivable once absentee ballots are counted. But even if that were to happen, she’d still have to make up a few hundred votes, which seems impossible.
  • ID-01: Heh. Remember when the RNC gave money to the Idaho GOP to hire two staffers to help out the utterly feeble Raul Labrador? Turns out things haven’t quite played out that way. One of the two staffers has been re-tasked to work on state races. As for the other guy, who knows?
  • MI-07: Yesterday we mentioned that AFSCME was launching a new ad against Republican Tim Walberg. Well, those guys don’t mess around. The size of the buy? A cool $750K.
  • ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy is up with his second negative ad in a week, this one attacking GOP Rick Berg on a somewhat unusual issue. Berg apparently promoted a law early last decade which, according to the ad, would allow banks to sell customers’ financial records. The bill was later rejected by voters in a referendum. I call this issue “unusual” because you don’t typically see privacy matters make a big impact on the campaign trail. NWOTSOTB.
  • VA-02, VA-05: This is nice to see: Sen. Mark Warner is spending some time this recess campaigning for both Glenn Nye and Tom Perriello. It sounds like he just did a fundraiser for Nye yesterday, and has some events on tap with Perriello this weekend. Speaking of Nye, he’s up with his first ad, touting his work in Iraq and how much he enjoys voting against the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Nye’s opponent, GOPer Scott Rigell, is also up with an ad, attacking Nye for… supporting the Democratic Party. Do you get it yet, dude? They’re going to attack you no matter what, so you might as well sack up and do the right thing. No word on the size of either buy.
  • Unions: The AFL-CIO and SEIU, which split apart several years back, are trying to join forces once more. The two labor organizations say that they plan to spend at least $88 million between them this cycle, and perhaps more.

    • 99 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 8/26 (Morning Edition)”

    1. When Republicans refused to show a hint of independence from Bush because we knew it made it easier to defeat them. I know it is frustrating but don’t see the difference now Democrats are doing it.

    2. recently debated Rigell and Kenny Golden at a local high school. By all accounts, he bombed; Golden was apparently the winner on style, but of course nobody’s going to vote for him.

    3. Franklin & Marshall has a new poll out on the PA US Senate and Governor’s races.  In typical F&M fashion, the undecideds are high in the poll.

      http://edisk.fandm.edu/FLI/key…

      Corbett 38 – Onorato 27

      Toomey 40 – Sestak 31

      Like most F&M polls over the last few years, I am highly skeptical.  Some of the crosstabs make no sense in the poll.

    4. That ad is the opposite of exciting, while also confounding – who’d really be excited to vote for an anti-Democratic Democrat? I’ve never understood that strategy.

    6. Finally we got a PA-8 poll.  The Fitzpatrick campaign has released a poll saying he is up 48 to 41 on Patrick Murphy.

      As I am always skeptical of congressional polls, this is one of the few districts I actually think you can do an accurate poll in seeing its one county and slivers of two others.  Additionally seeing its D+2 in terms of PVI, it is easy to compare the statewide candidate numbers here to the statewide totals seeing the state has a similar PVI number.  Corbett and Toomey’s numbers match their statewide performance.  

      That said, I am skeptical of polls released by campaigns.  

      http://www.pa2010.com/2010/08/…

    10. I think he now needs to carpet-bomb the airwaves with positive and bio ads.  This is the icing on the cake to define Angle.  He now needs to try to boost himself.

    13. meet Chris Young, one of the craziest mofos in Rhode Island. He’s running for mayor of Providence as a Democrat, I guess because he realizes the political reality of running in Providence. Of course, that’s about the only political reality he realizes. For one thing, he’s running as a social con in uber-liberal Providence, and well…that’s probably the least of his issues. He once got arrested at a health care forum at Brown and got banned from campus. He then claimed this ban made him afraid to even enter the city of Providence. (note: Providence is a LOT bigger than just Brown.) a while back he got booted out of a mayoral debate for bringing in a statue of the Virgin Mary and going on a big tirade about abortion or something.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

      Afterwards, he “treated” Rhode Islanders to one of the weirdest interviews ever.

      http://politicalwire.com/archi…

      And then finally on Tuesday night, he proposed to his girlfriend, RI-01 Some Dude Republican candidate Kara Russo…in the middle of the mayoral debate. (Even though they had been reported as engaged for months.)

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

      And there you have it. I’d love to hear about other SSPers’ local crazies. 🙂

    15. North Dakota from everything I hear is a pretty libertarian state and the fact that voters rejected the issue on a statewide ballot could be a sign that they care at least somewhat about privacy issues.

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