SSP Daily Digest: 10/4 (Morning Edition)

  • AK-Sen: Scott McAdams reports raising $650K since the August primary, saying over half his donations came from Alaskans and some 90% were $200 or less. The DSCC also finally registered its first public interest in the race, sending McAdams a $42,000 contribution, the maximum allowable direct donation. McAdams described this as the DS’s “first” check to him, suggesting more help might be on the way – but bear in mind that $42K was exactly what the NRSC gave Christine O’Donnell.
  • IN-Sen: Aaron Blake tweets that the DSCC appears to be up on the air with a “small ad buy… in the South Bend market.” SSP hoosiers in that corner of the state, let us know if you see anything.
  • NV-Sen: Jon Ralston obtained a 38-minute tape of an apparently private meeting between Sharron Angle and Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian, wherein Angle (among other things) pleads with Ashjian to drop out lest he cost her the election. Ralston has links to the full audio, and also posts some transcribed excerpts. The question remains: Why the hell did Angle tape this meeting – and how did it get released publicly?
  • AL-Gov: Robert Bentley, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, just told Mitt Romney to take a hike. Romney endorsed a bunch of Alabama Republicans (obviously as part of his pre-campaign ass-kissing), but Bentley declined the singular honor. Not surprised, given that you can find something about Willard Mitt which probably makes his backing unwelcome in every state in the union.
  • SC-Gov (PDF): So there’s a poll out by a firm I’ve never heard of, Cranston & Associates, purporting to show Republican Nikki Haley up just 45-41 over Dem Vincent Sheheen. There are more than a few problem with this poll, though – click a link and check out the responses to their questions. It’s apparently an RV poll, but 100% of respondents say they’re going to vote. The male-female split is twice what it was in 2008, and the African American percentage is equal to 2008. In other words, this sample is waaay too friendly.
  • CA-03: I can’t summarize this charming bit of hypocrisy better than Torey Van Oot of the Sacramento Bee, whose lede reads: “Rep. Dan Lungren likened the federal stimulus plan to a “spending spree which will add to a growing mountain of debt,” but he helped secure $30 million from the program for a local company whose leaders later contributed to his campaign.” Click the link for the full details.
  • CA-47: Clinton Alert! The Big Dog is coming to do a rally for Loretta Sanchez (a Hillary supporter, natch) on Oct. 15th. Recall that Joe Biden was in town last month to support Sanchez, who needs all the help she can get these days. After telling a radio host that “The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, (trying) to take this seat” and that her opponent Van Tran is “is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic,” Sanchez came under intense fire and offered a bullshit “I’m sorry if you misunderstood me” non-apology. This one is not going well.
  • DE-AL: Republican Glen Urquhart is touting a Wilson Research Strategies poll (n=300) which supposedly has him just three points back of Dem John Carney, 45-42.
  • MA-04: Republican newcomer Sean Bielat, running against Rep. Barney Frank, says he raised $400K in September alone (and has the same amount on hand), after raising just $230K through August 25th. Frank has $1 million on hand. Even though Obama, Kerry, and Gore all won about 65% here, Scott Brown narrowly won this district, 50-49.
  • MN-06: Jebus – Michele Bachmann says she raised over $3.4 million in the third quarter alone. $3.4 million would be a lot for an entire cycle, let alone just one quarter. Put another way: That’s probably 3 to 4 times what Lee Fisher raised last quarter.
  • PA-10: Given that things like “competence” and “judgment” were not on the list of criteria Karl Rove used when hiring US Attorneys, it’s no surprise to hear that another legal impropriety has cropped up in connection with Tom Marino. During his days as Lycoming County D.A., Marino sought to get a friend’s drug conviction expunged – and when one local judge refused to do so, he asked another, who granted the expungement, but then reversed himself upon learning what happened with the first judge. Pretty scuzzy – and why was Marino, who seems to have a history of wanting to do favors for unsavory characters, even seeking the expungement in the first place? The Luzerne County Citizens’ Voice also tantalizes us with some other unexplored alleged Marino misbehavior “including claims he hired law enforcement colleagues to serve as an “entourage” and would go days at a time without going to the office.”

    • Meanwhile, the Allentown Morning Call confirms what I’ve always assumed to be the case, that Marino resigned as US Attorney while he was under investigation in the Louis DeNaples matter (see PA-10 tags), which had the effect of halting the inquiry. Reminds me of Nathan Deal bailing on Congress to stop his ethics investigation.

  • TN-08: Uh-oh – time to get Steve Fincher on “Better Know a District.” The Republican agribusiness kingpin didn’t realize that the 8th CD includes parts of a small little town you might have heard of once… you know, Memphis, Tennessee. While declaring his ignorance, Fincher also informed the public that he wouldn’t debate his opponent, Dem Roy Herron, nor would he release his tax returns (Herron has). Herron’s also raised some questions about Fincher’s personal financial disclosures, noting that they include zero liabilities – even though Fincher obtained a $250K bank loan that he in turn loaned to his campaign.

    • SSP TV:

    • AL-02: Bobby Bright runs through a litany of numbers which he says define him – including voting with John Boehner 80% of the time
    • AZ-03: In his first ad, Dem John Hulburd strikes out at Ben Quayle for his fucked-up moral compass
    • IA-01: Republican Ben Lange has his first ad up, a biographical spot
    • LA-02: Cedric Richmond features President Obama speaking directly to the camera (and making lots of hand gestures that look like someone speaking very broken sign language)

    Independent Expenditures:

    • NRCC: $5.3 million worth of NRCC spending on too many races to count
    • SC-05: “Citizens for a Working America” spends $250K against Dem Rep. John Spratt

    117 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 10/4 (Morning Edition)”

    1. Here is a week-by-week rundown of the races in which the parties have made I.E.’s.  All of the I.E.’s have been renewed from week to week, so I am listing each race only under the week in which I.E.’s began.

      DCCC

      9/5 MI-01, WI-07

      9/12 MI-07, PA-03

      9/19 AL-02, HI-01, IA-03, IL-14, MS-01, NC-08, NY-24, OH-13, OH-16, VA-02

      9/26 AR-01, AZ-05, CA-11, FL-25, GA-02, IL-10, IL-17, MA-10, MD-01, MO-04, PA-11, SC-05, VA-11, WA-03, WV-01

      NRCC

      9/5 KY-06, IN-02

      9/12 AL-02, AZ-01, CA-11, FL-02, IL-10, IL-11, IL-14, MI-01, MI-07, MS-01, NC-07, NJ-03, PA-03, PA-07, PA-08, PA-11, TN-08, TX-17, VA-05, VA-09, WI-07

      9/19 GA-08, IN-09, MO-04, ND-AL, NV-03, NY-20, SC-05, WA-03

      9/26 AR-01, AZ-05, FL-08, FL-24, IN-08, MD-01, NM-01, NY-24, OH-16, OR-05, PA-10, SD-AL, WI-08, WV-01

    2. Apparently it wasn’t Angle who recorded the meeting, but Ashijan – and he leaked it out of spite:

      “Ashjian, who confirmed the authenticity of the tape to CNN Sunday night, said he had decided to record the session in case there were misrepresentations in the press. He decided to leak it after he got upset with some of the initial portrayals of the meeting and an earlier phone conversation with a lawyer for Angle, which he said was condescending to him.”

      http://edition.cnn.com/2010/PO…

      Strange story.

    4. This piece has some key info not common to these mainstream political news stories.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10…

      The key graf to me, with key text boldfaced by me:

      By now, Republicans had hoped to put away a first layer of Democrats and set their sights on a second tier of incumbents. But the fight for control of Congress is more fluid than it seemed at Labor Day, with Democrats mounting strong resistance in some parts of the country as they try to hold off a potential Republican wave in November.

                            * * * * * *

      Yet even as spending from outside groups is threatening to swamp many Democratic candidates, Republican strategists estimated that only half of the 39 seats they need to win control of the House were definitively in hand.

      Many Democratic incumbents remain vulnerable, but their positions have stabilized in the last month as they have begun running negative advertisements to raise questions about their Republican challengers and shift the focus of voters away from contentious national issues like health care, bailouts and President Obama’s performance.

      This just shows how steep a climb 39 seats really is, and that steepness is the one thing we still have going for us.

      We still have a real shot to hold the House.  It’s no pipedream.  The key question is whether enough of our incumbents can hold their poll positions through a big onslaught of attacks through October.

      I’m still not giving up hope.

    6. I wonder if Chris Murphy or Jim HImes will be the one running. Its kind of too bad that Murphy didn’t run this time because Blumenthal is only two years younger than Dodd.  

    7. Boy, I wouldn’t call it that.

      I’d call it vapid.

      He talks and talks and yet doesn’t say anything at all.  He explicitly rejects party labels, I suppose he realizes he needs a lot of crossover votes to have a shot.  But he goes further and makes a point of not saying anything that liberals might not like!

      This is the kind of ad I’d expect a Republican to air in a STRONGLY DEMOCRATIC year.

      Tells you something about this district.  And hard to believe the very conservative Jim Nussle represented it not that long ago.

    8. http://www.rasmussenreports.co…

      He has support for HCR repeal among LV’s at 50-44 in favor.  This is a huge swing towards the anti-repeal position.  The margin in favor of repeal has been sky high from day one, including 61-33(!) just two weeks ago.  It has easily been a double digit spread all year.  

      It could be that a lot of people have just re-thought HCR over the past two weeks, all at once.  More likely though, and why I find it interesting, is that it may reflect a drastic shift in Rasmussen’s turnout assumptions.  Or it could be an outlier.  I’ll be on the lookout for corroborating evidence though.

    11. I cludes wisconsin, west Virginia, new Hampshire, California, Washington, Florida and nevada.

      I suggest New Hampshire!  If we pick up any seats, it’s going to be NH-sen.  Plus, I’d like to see how badly Lynch is beating his GOP opponent.

    12. Which is admittedly on the opposite side of the state from South Bend. Anyways, I haven’t seen Ellsworth on the air for weeks. Coats is on all the time (and all of his ads have grainy, gray footage of Obama).

      Maybe Ellsworth is saving up for a last-minute blitz. He’d better start soon, since early voting starts today in Indiana.

    13. makes it seem like IL-Sen is becoming safer for Democrats. I haven’t seen this supported in public polling, which basically seems to show a tie race.

      Could this be the case of “super-secret Charlie-Cook-style insider polling”? Or just sloppy reporting? The article seems well-researched and supported by lots of sources, so I’m not sure what to make of it.

      Democratic-held Senate seats in Washington, California and Illinois that party strategists once fretted about appear to be returning to blue-state form – and, along with Delaware, the result may be to ultimately ensure that Republicans don’t seize control of the 10 seats necessary to win back the Senate.

      And later:

      In the Senate, incumbent Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Patty Murray of Washington have staked out leads, and Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, the GOP Senate nominee in Illinois, appears to be slipping.

      Here’s the link:

      http://www.politico.com/news/s…

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