SSP Daily Digest: 9/23 (Morning Edition)

  • DE-Sen: Interesting – Mike Castle isn’t ruling out a write-in bid. If he does pull the trigger, let’s see if the NRSC and the Senate GOP caucus have the stomach to tell Castle to fuck off. It’d be a great test of their will – and their willingness to embrace Christine O’Donnell.
  • FL-Sen: Al Gore Alert! In a rare sighting on the campaign trail, Al Gore (still my president!) will headline a rally for Kendrick Meek in Tampa on September 30th. Have we seen Gore do events for any other candidates this cycle?
  • KY-Sen: Objectively pro-methamphetamine senate candidate Rand Paul keeps running into trouble over his views on drugs. Republican Clay County Sherriff Kevin Johnson endorsed Paul after Paul told him he supported Operation UNITE, a federally-funded anti-drug task force. Paul’s hostility to UNITE, though, is what’s gotten him into hot water in the first place – and amazingly enough, when asked to confirm his pledge to Johnson, Paul’s campaign refused to back it up! I had always hoped/prayed/expected that Rand Paul was such a hardcore libertarian that he’d rigidly – and publicly – cling to beliefs that halfway-competent politicians would be smart enough to elide, deny, or just plain hide. I just figured it would be something like the gold standard, not, you know, meth.

    • Surprisingly, Paul has smelled the glove belonging to a very different interest group, the neocons. They mistrust Paul’s views on Israel and probably just on the general concept of randomly invading countries and killing people.

  • AR-Gov: That Ipsos poll which showed Blanche Lincoln “only” 14 points into her political grave also has a gubernatorial component. Dem Gov. Mike Beebe is beating Republican Jim Keet by a 55-37 margin among LVs. You want an enthusiasm gap? Beebe wins 58-30 among RVs. (It was 57-35 among RVs back in July.)
  • CO-Gov: God, I love the smell of ratfucking in the morning. So, we all know about Scott McInnis’s now-legendary implosion thanks to his plagiarism/theft scandal, but Democrats had a big hand in consigning him to the dustbin of history. It turns out that a group called the Colorado Freedom Fund spent half a million bucks on ads blistering McInnis during the primary, in order to help bolster Dan Maes. The DGA was a big contributor to this effort, chipping in $150K, while unions and wealthy philanthropist Pat Stryker gave the rest. Excellent fucking work, guys.
  • MN-Gov: The RGA is funneling $428K to a pro-Tom Emmer group, while the DGA sent a quarter mil to an org helping Dem Mark Dayton.
  • TX-Gov: Rick Perry may not be the suckiest suck who ever sucked, but you’ll have to agree that he is pretty sucky. The Texas Farm Bureau finally agrees, too. Though they’ve always endorsed him in the past (and have always endorsed Republicans for governor), they’re giving up on his sorry ass this year and staying neutral in the race. (They previously endorsed Kay Bailey Hutchison against him in the primary.) It probably didn’t help that a Perry spokesman, in an attempt to bolster his boss’s teabagger/secessionista cred, derided the bureau as “an insurance company that supported the bailout.”
  • IL-14: We could call this the Hypocrisy State Project and still have tons to write about. The latest chapter in this never-ending saga is penned by Republican Randy Hultgren, who was responsible for marketing his investment firm’s funds. One of the firm’s offerings invested entirely in bailout-backed securities, which were described by one Wall Streeter as “an incredibly free lunch.” This is a two-fer, because this fund was also based in the Cayman Islands, to take advantage of lax tax laws, of course.
  • MA-10: Massachusetts, at least, is one place where Republicans still need to run away from their own party in order to be electable. So it’s no surprise to see Jeffrey Perry declare that he doesn’t want Sarah Palin showing up in his district. (Don’t worry, bud, I think you’re safe.) Of course, Perry isn’t exactly from the non-crazy wing of the Republican Party (to the extent there still is such a thing), since he has teabagger ties himself.
  • MI-07: Rossman Group/Team Telcom (9/20, likely voters, no trendlines):

    • Mark Schauer (D-inc): 38

    Tim Walberg (R): 42

    Undecided: 12

    (MoE: ±5.6%)

  • NY-18: This interview with Jim Russell – remember him from yesterday? the guy whose writings have been favorably cited by the KKK? – is just brutal. He doesn’t disavow anything. So we’ve gotta ask: Why isn’t the press giving this guy the Alvin Greene treatment? After all, Greene’s weirdest idea was to sell bobblehead dolls. Russell thinks there are too many Jews. Anyhow, the Westchester GOP is trying to get Russell off the ballot through legal means, and they say if they can’t, they’ll run a write-in candidate.
  • NY-19: A judge ruled against a group trying to knock Nan Hayworth off the Independence Party line for a lack of valid signatures. Hayworth gets to keep the line, while incumbent John Hall has the Working Families line.
  • NY-23: With the vote count all but completed, it looks like Matt Doheny is (still) the winner of the Republican primary, but Doug Hoffman ain’t conceding yet. I guess he feels burned after what happened in the special election, where he tried to “un-concede” after some counting errors emerged (but still lost anyway). The vote count does not officially get certified until the 27th, but Doheny could declare victory (and/or Hoffman could concede) before then. Hoffman still hasn’t said anything about how vigorously (if at all) he plans to wage war from the Conservative Party line.
  • PA-10: Another day, another NRA endorsement for a Dem. Chris Carney is the latest in a string of mostly-conservative Democrats to rack up the group’s support, even though they labeled him a “true enemy” of guns just four years ago.
  • TN-09: Heh – the Memphis Flyer commissioned a poll by Yacoubian Research, which found Steve Cohen leading Charlotte Bergmann 66-23. There were only 205 respondents, and note that we previously flagged a Yacoubian poll of the primary for attempting to screen voters by asking them if they lived in the 9th CD – how many people actually know what district they live in, by number? But whatever, Steve Cohen ain’t losing.
  • VA-09: Rick Boucher successfully got an ad by Americans for Job Security pulled off the air for making a misleading statements. The ad said “Rick Boucher supports Nancy Pelosi 96 percent of the time,” but this claim was based on the Washington Post’s “party voting” score, which Boucher rightly argued does not measure “support for Pelosi.” (A good time to remind folks that it’s much, much easier to get third-party ads yanked because stations are liable for defamation when they run these ads. Media outlets are immune from liability for candidate ads.)

    • SSP TV (by James L.):

    • LA-Sen: “Diaper” David Vitter hits Charlie Melancon for attending a fundraiser in Canada, of all places.
    • AR-01: Chad Causey’s latest spot takes a shotgun approach to messaging, touting his heritage, his support for a balanced budget amendment and a paycut for Congress, while hitting Republican Rick Crawford over the bad kind of SSP and for his support of a 23% national sales tax
    • FL-22: Allen West takes on Ron Klein over a Florida Democratic Party mailer that boneheadedly revealed West’s Social Security number
    • GA-08: Dem Rep. Jim Marshall goes heavy negative on GOP state Rep. Austin Scott on immigration – not once, but twice
    • MI-07: GOP douche Tim Walberg says that Dem Rep. Mark Schauer is spending America into ruin, and also makes the dubious claim that he “strongly supports” Social Security. The ad, a coordinated expenditure partially paid for by the RNC, is airing in the Lansing media market and cost $85,000.
    • MI-15: John Dingell goes negative on Republican Rob Steele over his support from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is Wall Street, while Steele has gone up with an ad of his own touting his record as a physician and poking Dingell over spending
    • NC-02: Dem Rep. Bob Etheridge’s latest ad features the testimonials of locals who say that Etheridge saved their jobs
    • OH-12: Dem Paula Brooks touts her record on the Franklin County Commission while spilling marbles all over her kitchen island
    • OR-05: GOPer Scott Bruun will stop the spending… except when it comes to restoring Medicare cuts, apparently
    • SC-02: Libruhl Rob Miller and libruhl Nancy Pelosi will liberally kill all your jobs; meanwhile, Joe Wilson still sounds like he uses a speech synthesizer instead of a functional set of vocal cords. Seriously, what a creepy-sounding asshole.
    • VA-09: Republican Morgan Griffith plays a clip of Barack Obama saying “I love Rick Boucher” – four times in thirty seconds

    105 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 9/23 (Morning Edition)”

    2. I posted this in an earlier thread, but Franklin & Marshall poll has Fitzpatrick ahead by 14 among likely voters, and 10 among registered voters:

      http://www.philly.com/philly/n…

      You would think with these bad numbers Sestak would be further than 6 or 7 points behind.  I think it shows Toomey’s weakness.  And people should remember that these PA districts were the result of Republican gerrymandering.  Several Democrats are in districts that lean Republican, in some cases decidedly so.  Since it looks like Republicans again will control the redistricting this time around, if the gain 4 or 5 house seats this year, it will make if harder for them to gerrymander the remaining Democrats, and to gain any seats as a result.

    3. Franklin and Marshall have the first private poll in PA-8.

      Likely Voters

      Fitzpatrick 49

      Murphy 35

      Registered Voters

      Fitzpatrick 46

      Murphy 36

      Obama approval in PA-8 – 37 percent

      http://www.philly.com/philly/n…

      I am shocked.  I was estimating that Fitzpatrick was up by 1 to 5 points, but this pushing it.  

      Remember, the NRCC moved PA-13, the neighboring D+7 district helped by Schwartz onto the Contender tier, the tier right below Young Gun, out of nowhere on Monday.

      Maybe things are worse in the Philly suburbs than even I suspected.  I admit my support of my suburban implosion theory has been fanatical, but maybe I was even underestimating it.  

    7. Meek can’t win, but he can play spoiler to elect Rubio.  Brilliant idea – Clinton and Gore are working to see Jeb Bush acolyte get elected.  And who says American politics isn’t all Kabuki…

    8. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…

      The former eBay CEO and Brown each have the support of 41 percent of voters, according to the poll, with 18 percent unsure about which candidate to back – that’s up from 13 percent in Field’s last survey in July.

      no gender gap

      tied among indies

      Whitman leading in LA County 41/38

      Brown leading in Bay area 64/24

    9. There are news reports that Coons wrote a paper in college where he called himself a “bearded Marxist”.  

      Do people think this will hurt him at the polls?  I’m worried about the consequences.  This may not make Coons less popular in a blue state.  But it could neuter the Dems’ ability to criticize O’Donnell’s past statements, as they’ll be telling us to ignore this college paper at the same time.  It could also galvanize support for O’Donnell.

    15. is on the air trying to portray Boxer as an arrogant Washington politician because of the “Call me Ma’am” incident. Would of been more effective if Fiorina trotted out the same veterans who swift boated Kerry into speaking instead of herself.

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