SSP Daily Digest: 9/2 (Morning Edition)

  • AR-Sen, AR-01: Bill Clinton is heading back home to Arkansas to do events for Blanche Lincoln (probably not a good use of resources) and Chad Causey (better use of resources). Incidentally, Politico notes that Causey’s primary opponent, Tim Wooldridge, still has yet to endorse him. Jeez.
  • DE-Sen: It’s official: The Tea Party Express has spooked Mike Castle into going up on the air before the primary, to a six-figure tune. In fact, the Hotline’s Jeremy Jacobs has an unusual level of detail on the nature of the buy, noting that “Castle has purchased $113K worth of airtime for Aug. 31 to Sept. 6 in the Salisbury, MD, media market,” as well as “$26K worth of time on cable in New Castle County and $42K on radio.”
  • NH-Sen: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is throwing down for a big buy against Paul Hodes. As the Hotline notes, the Chamber’s FEC filing says they’re spending $1 million, but apparently the buy is for less – a spokesbot will only say that it’s “sizable.” You can see their ad at the link.
  • AK-Gov: Republican Bill Walker, who held Gov. Sean Parnell to just 50% in the GOP primary while taking 33% himself, is talking to the Alaska Independence Party about filling their ballot line, since the AIP’s nominee, Don Wright, has withdrawn from the race. Remember that in 1994, Dem Tony Knowles very narrowly won the gubernatorial race because an AIP candidate split the right-wing vote, taking 13%.
  • FL-Gov: I’m not sure whether these are new names or not, but Alex Sink is trying to stick it to Rick Scott by putting out a list of ten Republican elected officials in central and south Florida who have endorsed her campaign. Speaking of Scott, he’s reportedly going to tap state Rep. Jennifer Carroll, an African American legislator from the Jacksonville area, to be his running mate.
  • NM-Gov: Local blog New Mexico FBIHOP has two new ads, one each from Republican Susana Martinez and Dem Diane Denish. NWOTSOTB in either case.
  • AZ-03: Dem Jon Hulburd is hitting noted d-bag Ben Quayle where it hurts: on Christian radio. Politico has the audio of the ad, which of course references TheDirty.com, but NWOTSOTB.
  • CA-47: Ya know, usually when we do an Obama Alert! or a Biden Alert! we’re at least a little bit excited at the prospect that the (V)POTUS is doing an event for some Dem or other. But once in a while, it just makes me nervous. This is one of those occasions. Joe Biden is headlining a fundraiser for Rep. Loretta Sanchez in DC on Sept. 15th. I’m thinking a rating change might be in order here soon.
  • MD-01: Dem Frank Kratovil is up with his first ad of the season. NWOTSOTB.
  • NJ-12: The so-called “Emergency Committee for Israel,” led by jerkass extraordinaire Michael Goldfarb and backed by lunatics like Bill Kristol and Gary Bauer, is now targeting Rep. Rush Holt with their latest bullshit. Holt, for his part, is fighting back, calling the ads “blatant lies” and trying to convince cable companies to pull them.
  • ND-AL: A break for Rep. Earl Pomeroy: The House’s Office of Congressional Ethics said earlier this week that they were dropping an investigation into Pomeroy’s fundraising practices.
  • NY-01: If anything saves Tim Bishop’s bacon, it might be the fact that the Republican primary has been a festering pit of raw sewage, with outraged attacks traded among Bishop’s GOP rivals daily – or more often. In fact, the three-way nature of the race seems to have tripled the likelihood of open warfare at any given moment – and it also makes things damn confusing at times. Anyhow, it looks like Chris Cox is hitting Randy Altschuler for failing to show up to a debate… but then the third dude, George Demos, also had a staffer show up at Altschuler’s offices and catch him on camera, right when the debate was supposed to start. Meanwhile, Cox also won a court ruling allowing him to fight Altschuler for the Conservative Party nomination, but he’ll have to run as a write-in.
  • NY-13: Another nasty New York primary also continues to get nastier. Local establishment fave Michael Allegretti keeps piling on attacks against Mike Grimm, the golden boy of national GOP figures like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Among other things, Allegretti is pointing out that Grimm has never voted in a single Republican primary in the 13th CD.
  • OH-17: Jim Traficant got beamed back on to the ballot yesterday, running as an independent. He’ll face Dem Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican Jim Graham, who has raised bupkes.
  • PA-15: PA2010 is reporting that Dem John Callahan is going up on the air with his first ad, perhaps as early as today. NWOTSOTB, and we also don’t have a link to the ad yet, but we’ll try to bring it to you once it’s public.
  • TX-23: Republican Quico Canseco is refusing to meet with the editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News, claiming they have an “inherent bias” in favor of Dem Rep. Ciro Rodriguez. Only problem: The paper endorsed the last two Republicans who ran against Ciro.
  • WI-07: Republican Sean Duffy is finally scrambling on to the air with a positive bio spot. Dem Julie Lassa was up with her first ad last week, and the DCCC made its first independent expenditure (anywhere in the nation) here earlier this week. NWOTSOTB, though CQ notes the ad will air “in the Wausau-Rhinelander, Duluth-Superior, Minneapolis-St. Paul and LaCrosse-Eau Claire markets”.
  • WV-03: Republican Spike Maynard is out with a new ad (watch it here) in which he says he wants to “stop the Obama-Rahall-Pelosi war on coal.” That a serious mouthful, dude. (James Hell sez: “He should add Rand Paul to the list!”) Anyhow, props to the Charleston Daily Mail for these details: “The ad is the first of two ads that will be released by Maynard’s campaign as part of a $100,000 ad buy in the Beckley-Bluefield and Charleston-Huntington TV markets.”

    • For Nick Rahall’s part, he’s apparently going to go on the radio with biographical spots to “familiarize folks with the congressman and his record.” Uh, the guy has been in office since before I was born. The paper also reports that Rahall “is expected to run TV ads starting in late September.” Can’t say I love that pace.

  • Cat Fud: Think Progress has carefully stacked up an entire pallet’s worth of cat fud tins in one of those lovely supermarket displays. They’ve assembled a long list of Republican primary losers who have refused to endorse the winners. I can think of two more off the top of my head: Pamela Gorman, who didn’t want to catch Ben Quayle’s cooties in AZ-03, and of course Lisa Murkowski, who maybe kinda sorta doesn’t feel all that warmly about the guy who just called her a whore (or a john, take your pick) before the ballot counting was even over. Recall any others?
  • DSCC/DCCC: This is actually the same link that I got all emo about in that CA-47 item up above, but anyhow, uh, Obama Alert! The POTUS will be in NYC on September 22nd to do a joint event for the two congressional party committees.

    • 78 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 9/2 (Morning Edition)”

    1. Indeed it is Sabato. House down 47, Senate  down 8/9, Governor down 8. And that is meant to be conservative. Maybe I’ve suddenly become very poor at this but for the life of me even trying to be pessimistic I can’t get anywhere near those.

      http://www.centerforpolitics.o…

    2. had an orgasm while writing this one up.  He’s been waiting in breathless anticipation for the big Republican wave for awhile.

      The prediction of 47 House seats, 8-9 Senate seats, and 8 governors, while not wildly over-the-top, seems to be based on an assumption that things will get even better for the Republicans than they are now.  My sense is that they’ve peaked and that things will tighten a little or least flatline into November, but who knows.  Presidential approval and generic ballot averages are FINALLY starting to flatten out after over a month of Republican gains.

      http://politicalwire.com/archi…

    5. I like how the narrator doesn’t bother introducing herself, and just starts in with the “I” and the royal “we” without staking out any credentials whatsoever.

      But the content of the ad?  Um, does Hulburd support censoring the internet?

    7. While this news is unfortunate to hear and we many of us may not want to hear it I still have a hard time seeing how this will come to fruition. Major losses are going to happen and we could very well lose the House. I truly believe that the GOP has not acted in good faith to try and help fix the economy that they helped to wreck and the result of a GOP House would be a disaster in exhibiting that obstruction works. Many of the losses can be attributed to Pelosi forcing tough votes by the members and then the Senate totally killing any debate about it (ie Energy). Reasons why I believe 47 seats is too high.

      1) Where are the multitude of easy open seats and scandalized seats? I count at most 15 seats for them that are open seats in friendly territory or scandalized (Massa’s).

      2) Not every toss up is going to the GOP. Do I see Leonard Boswell losing after revelations that his opponent is a woman beater? Things like this begin to shake out during the campaign and question the electability of their opponent. Dems are not popular but the GOP is about as unpopular now as well. They aren’t a great alternative to many.

      3) The biggest pill to swallow besides the fact that obstruction works is that many good solid Dems are going to lose their seats due to several members grandstanding and holding up issues (paging the gang of 6, Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase and Bart Stupak). Guys like Martin Heinrich, Tom Perriello, John Boccieri and Patrick Murphy could be future faces of the party and are fighting for their lives in part because of those bozos failing to govern.

      4) I am predicting a loss of about 32-35 seats barely enough for a majority and if people like Bobby Bright and Walt Minnick survive we are going to hear them and centrist Republicans like Jim Gerlach, Charlie Dent, Dave Reichert and Frank Wolf way too much!

    8. All from the conservative American Action Forum.

      AZ-01

      Gosar 47% ( R)

      Kilpatrick 41% (D)

      (I saw a commenter above wondering why Sabato thought this race might flip. Guess this could be)

      AZ-05

      Schweikert 50% (R)

      Mitchell 44% (D)

      CO-O3

      Tipton 51% (R)

      Salazar 43% (D)

      CO-04

      Gardner 50% (R)

      Markey 39% (D)

      NM-01

      Martin Heinrich is up 7 points over Jon Barela.

      OR-05

      Kurt Schrader, the Dem, is up 8 points over Scott Bruun.

      AZ-08

      Gifford 46% (D)

      Kelly 46% (R)

      NV-03:

      Titus three points behind

      CA-11

      McNerney at 44%, and in a “virtual tie” with attorney David Harmer

      CA-47

      Sanchez 45% (D)

      Tran 43% (R)

      And DavidNYC might have a reason to be concerned…

      http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/ey…

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