SSP Daily Digest: 9/22 (Morning Edition)

  • DE-Sen: Christine O’Donnell has decided to go the J.D. Salinger route: She told Sean Hannity that she’s doing no more interviews, ever. Okay, well, at least as far as the national media are concerned. But it’s nothing to get upset over, sports fans: Thanks to the advent of the Internet, we will hear about all her gaffes and insanities even if she’s only talking to the Kent County Evening Bugle-Reporter-Sentinel. In that same interview with Hannity, she also managed to tell some nice lies about Chris Coons, claiming that he “made some very anti-American statements, apologizing for America and calling himself a bearded Marxist.” Of course, the “bearded Marxist” line was a joke, though undoubtedly O’Donnell is too dense to grasp that.
  • CO-Gov: You know, as we were getting to know Christine O’Donnell, I had a feeling that she was so low-rent, she’d make even Dan Maes look good. Well, that appears to be all but fucking impossible, even for O’Donnell. Maes raised just $14K in the first two weeks of September and currently has $24K in the bank. Not sure there’s a sack big enough fit that much sad.
  • MI-Gov: WLNS-TV could have saved themselves some money by just reading the Swing State Project, but they went ahead and commissioned a poll of the gubernatorial race anyway. Anyhow, the Marketing Resource Group shows exactly what you’d expect: Rick Snyder beating Virg Bernero 49-31.
  • AL-02: The NRA’s infiltration of the Democratic Party continues apace, this time with an endorsement for Bobby Bright.
  • AZ-07: This smells fishy to me. A Republican operative is saying he’s seen internal polls showing Some Dude Ruth McClung in a dead heat with Rep. Raul Grijalva in this 57% Obama district. But local Dem and GOP pols say they’ve seen nothing of the kind. McClung has only $15K on hand, but this ain’t good: Grijalva, after spending half a mil so far this cycle, has just $77K in the bank.
  • IA-02: Evidently Mariannette Miller-Meeks did not get the Club For Growth’s memo: She’s now saying she opposes privatizing Social Security, ostensibly because she thinks its finances are rickety. But isn’t the whole reason conservative douchewads want to private Social Security is because that’s how they think they can “save” it? I’m confused!
  • ID-01: Heh – fucker couldn’t buy a break even if Ron Popiel was selling `em. Even though the NRA gave Raul Labrador a better grade than Walt Minnick, they declined to endorse either candidate. Suckaaaaa.
  • WATN?: Remember this story? Last cycle, Chris Shays’ former campaign manager, Michael Sohn, stole a quarter million dollars from his boss’s election accounts. Now, Sohn has been sentenced to 37 months in prison. Shays must go to sleep every night wondering if that extra $250K would have meant the difference between winning and losing….

    • SSP TV (by James L.):

    • FL-Sen: Charlie Crist’s new ad hits Rubio for all the pork-laden bills that he sent to the Governor’s desk while serving as Speaker of the Florida House
    • KY-Sen: Conservative group American Crossroads spending $235K against Jack Conway (D) – no copy of ad yet
    • NH-Sen: Paul Hodes’ new ad is a folksy spot on fiscal conservatism, including chiding Kelly Ayotte for supporting tax cuts for the rich
    • CO-07: Ryan Frazier wields some kind of laser pen while reciting a bunch of B.S. GOP boilerplate
    • FL-22: Allen West says that Ron Klein is no moderate
    • FL-24: Suzanne Kosmas would like you to know that she’s never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down
    • MO-04: Ike Skelton issues a fierce but vague attack on GOPer Vicky Hartzler’s support for veterans, from the mouths of veterans
    • NY-20: Chris Gibson says that we have to let market forces drive healthcare costs down. Yeah, like that worked the first time, moron.
    • PA-03: Mike Kelly and the NRCC team up to hit Kathy Dahlkemper on SPENDING OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE INTO OBLIVION!!!!11!
    • PA-04: Keith Rothfus’ new ad takes the ice cream sandwich approach: two layers of delicious cookie crunch surrounding a mid-section of negative ice cream. I realize that makes no sense, but… God, I’m hungry.
    • PA-10: Tom Marino’s first ad plays defense against Chris Carney’s hard-hitting ads against his sleazy record

    Independent Expenditures (all from the DCCC today):

    • AL-02: $82K media buy
    • HI-01: $53K media buy
    • IA-03: $71K media buy/production
    • IL-14: $19K on direct mail
    • MI-01: $24K media buy
    • MI-07: $67K media buy
    • MS-01: $49K media buy/production
    • NC-08: $200K media buy/production
    • NY-24: $27K media buy/production
    • OH-13: $232K media buy/production
    • OH-16: $26K media buy/production
    • WI-07: $61K media buy
    • VA-02: $86K media buy/production

    149 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 9/22 (Morning Edition)”

    2. with THAT Quinnipiac sample is heartening to me.  He may actually be narrowing the gap a little, although I expect he is still behind somewhere between, say, 3 and 7.

    4. was updated yesterday.

      Obama approval rating:

      Disapprove – 50.5%

      Approve – 45.4%

      National Congressional ballot:

      Republicans – 45.1%

      Democrats – 43.0%

      This is the first time all year I have seen the congressional democrats running this far ahead of Obama in terms of absolute margin (-2 vs -5).  I think the democrats’ advantage in local politics might be working it’s way up to the national ballot a bit.  

      It should be noted that the national congressional ballot has closed by 3% in the past 2 weeks.  

    5. WSMV Channel 4 Nashville has released a poll by Crawford Johnson and Northcott that indicated Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam is crushing Mike McWherter, 55% to 24%. Poll conducted with 600 registered voters with a error of +/-4.

      The whole McWherter will bolster the Democratic vote to help down ballot races for the state legislature looks to be collapsing like a house of cards when a brick is dropped on it. I am having doubts McWherter will break 40% statewide. What is most telling about this race is that McWherter is MIA in Jackson/Madison County, his home, and has no visible  support; while Haslam is here all the time making visits, knocking doors, talking to the paper, and has a lot of visible support. What does it say about a candidate if he is willing to cede his home county to his opponent? All I  assume is that he is following the example of another notable Tennessee politician who took their home for granted, Al Gore.

    7. There was a the-sky-is-falling diary at dKos last week, saying Grijalva is endangered and needs our help.

      Naturally, I was eviscerated for pointing out the obvious, that Grijalva is totally safe and that there are more productive uses of our money.

    8. The Perriello campaign has released an internal poll showing them down by only 2: http://voices.washingtonpost.c…

      Similar to the DCCC poll showing a similar spread from a few weeks ago. And similar to the GOP poll released a few months ago that showed Perriello down by 6 but didn’t include the independent Tea Party candidate in poll. I think this is down to a statistical tie, much closer than the Survey USA polls.

    10. POS has another poll out here – this one showing Martinez up 11 with leaners (52-41).  The GOP looks likely to emerge from this cycle with three prominent Hispanics – Rubio, Sandoval and Martinez.  Let’s hope that this will help limit some of the damage from the anti-immigration talk (which I don’t much like).

      http://nmpolitics.net/Document…

    12. For some reason that I can’t get my head around and that has me concerned that runoff from an old mine is getting into Arizona’s drinking water, but if you talk to conservatives around here they really super seriously believe that a down-the-line conservative “some gringa” Ruth McClung is going to beat Grijalva. The central issue seems to stem around Grijalva’s support for a boycott of Arizona over SB 1070. Calling for a move that could be economically damaging to an already poor district might cost him some votes, though, unfortunately for McClung, I feel that AZ-07 is a sufficiently liberal and Hispanic district that enough people are going to be more upset for Brewer and the legislature for crafting the bill in the first place for Grijalva to not have anything to seriously worry about. Most of that outrage over Grijalva seems to be coming from outside his district (I keep seeing McClung signs in the 8th for some reason). Yet, McClung is apparently not a good enough campaigner to turn that anger into fund-raising dough.

      Ruth McClung will probably do somewhat better than Grijalva’s last opponent, noted white-supremacist Joe Sweeney, who only got 32% of the vote. However, even with a small but uber-motivated base of White conservatives in Yuma and Pinal Counties, I just don’t see how she has path anywhere terribly close to 50%.

    13. NBC10/Quest Research

      Caprio 36% (D)

      Chafee 24% (I)

      Robitaille 13% (R)

      Block 2% (Moderate)

      Lt. Gov:

      Roberts 44% (D)

      Healey 19% (I)

      Rogers 11% (R) – Rogers pulled out of the race after the poll was done

      Attorney General:

      Kilmartin 37% (D)

      Wallin 9% (R)

      McKenna 9% (I)

      Little 3% (Moderate)

      Rainville 3% (I)

      Secretary of State:

      Mollis 52% (D)

      Taylor 23% (R)

      CD-1:

      Cicilline 49% (D)

      Loughlin 26% (R)

      CD-2:

      Langevin 54% (D)

      Zaccaria 20% (R)

      http://www2.turnto10.com/news/…

    14. AZ-GOV in AZ-05: Harstad Strategic Research for Project New West

      Jan Brewer 52%

      Terry Goddard 45%

      Poll is of 509 likely voters

      A poll of only one congressional district (and one a couple of points more Democratic than the state as a whole at that) should probably be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, it’s good to have something to go on besides those barrage of Rasmussen polls, which I don’t completely trust. If you look back at ’08, Rasmussen completely missed Obama gaining ground in Arizona in September, shooting out a “business as usual” 21-point McCain lead at the end of September while several other pollsters had already found a much closer race.

      This may yet be a single-digit race.

    18. Could Paladino’s I am “F-ing nuts vote for me strategy” really work?  If I was Cuomo I would not attack him on his terms, but this staying above the fray thing could really backfire.  Paladino is a nutcase, but New York has a tendency for liking ego driven individuals.

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