SSP Daily Digest: 10/28 (Afternoon Edition)

• CO-Sen: In case there was any doubt about where Ken Buck is on abortion, new video has come out from June that he’s not only against Roe v. Wade, but against the whole concept of a right of privacy (on the usual teabagger grounds that it wasn’t explicitly laid out in the Constitution).

• PA-Sen: Although there will be a Barack Obama appearance in Philly proper this weekend, Bill Clinton is left with the task of headlining rallies around the rest of the state. Today Clinton appears on Joe Sestak’s behalf in the Philly suburbs, in Bryn Mawr and Cheyney. Clinton also appears with Dan Onorato and John Callahan in Bethlehem today.

• WV-Sen: Good news for John Raese on two different fronts. The Palm Beach architecture commission approved his plans to replace a “giant dollhouse” in the yard of his Palm Beach mansion with a glass conservatory! (Just be sure to hide all the blunt objects when Colonel Mustard comes over for a visit.) Also, it turns out he’s a +13 handicap, occasionally getting down into the high 70s, so he’s definitely got some game on the links. (Unfortunately for Raese, the reason we know this is because somebody leaked his self-reported scorecards from the golf ladder at the Everglades Club, the all-white country club in Palm Beach about which he’s stonewalled on inquiries on whether he’s a member or not.)

• HI-Gov: Credit Mufi Hannemann for good sportsmanship. In response to evidence that his supporters from the primary (who tended to skew socially conservative) were tending to break toward Duke Aiona, Hannemann recently cut a TV ad urging his backers to vote for Neil Abercrombie. The ad’s part of a $200K buy by Hawaii labor unions.

• AZ-03: It’s sounding like that PPP poll that gave him a lead wasn’t a total fluke. Whatever Jon Hulburd is seeing is enough to get him to open up his personal checkbook and hand his campaign another $250K for a final push. No specific numbers are available, but the article says that his internal polling sees him “within the margin of error.” (That’s not usually the phrasing of someone who’s leading in his internals, but maybe he still can gut it out.)

• NC-11: A handful of Democrats in tough races have said that they’d rather vote for someone other than Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, but no one has actually stepped forward until now to volunteer himself as a receptacle for Blue Dog votes. Heath Shuler, previously declared as one of the “no” votes, said he’ll do it if no one else will. There’s not telling how this gambit would work out if the Dems keep the House, or if he’ll be running for minority leader if not.

• Passages: Condolences to the friends and family of Owen Pickett, the former long-time Democratic Rep. from VA-02. Pickett, who was 80, served there from 1987 to 2001.

• SSP TV:

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon’s closing argument is an endorsement from her daughter, celebrexecutive (that should be a word, if it isn’t) Stephanie

• LA-Sen: Assuming Charlie Melancon loses, still give him credit for using all the material at his disposal: his TV spot hits David Vitter as hard as possible, saying his taxpayer-paid salary paid for prostitutes and it’s a “sin” he represents Louisiana at all

• WV-Sen: Credit to Joe Manchin, too, for not Coakleying this one up; once he found himself in an unexpected close race, he buckled down, found messages that worked, and hammered on them, as in his final ad

• FL-22: Ron Klein goes positive with his last spot, touting endorsements from a variety of citizen groups

• NH-02: Ann McLane Kuster’s ad is a combo platter of hitting Charlie Bass on his Wall Street ways and going positive on her own job creation plans

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 49%, Carly Fiorina (R) 46%

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet (D-inc) 44%, Ken Buck (R) 48%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 45%, Rick Scott (R) 48%

• GA-Sen: Michael Thurmond (D) 29%, Johnny Isakson (R-inc) 59%

• ME-Gov: Libby Mitchell (D) 26%, Paul LePage (R) 40%, Eliot Cutler (I) 26%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 44%, John Kasich (R) 48%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 47%, Dino Rossi (R) 48%

(um, do you really want that to be your final answer on WA-Sen?)

364 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 10/28 (Afternoon Edition)”

  2. “A handful of Republicans in tough races have said that they’d rather vote for someone other than Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, but no one has actually stepped forward until now to volunteer himself as a receptacle for Blue Dog votes. Heath Shuler, previously declared as one of the “no” votes, said he’ll do it if no one else will. There’s not telling how this gambit would work out if the Dems keep the House, or if he’ll be running for minority leader if not.”

    I agree with the sentiment, but, technically, those candidates and representatives are Democrats!

  3. I’d love to see us pick up an upset like that in Arizona of all places and kill off the career of Quayle’s son.

    I am curious how Buck’s views on abortion play with CO-independents. CO has a lot of real liberatarians (not the fake liberatarians that are anti-choice, etc.). I wonder if that view is enough to push them to vote 3rd party or skip the Senate race.

  4. Young's campaign isn't too pleased with the recent Penn poll showing Hill narrowly ahead, with his campaign now saying their internals show Young with a 12 point lead. I've not seen the actual poll, so I'm skeptical.

    Jim Shella also is reporting today that the IN Dems are planning to send out mailers in the 9th, not on behalf of Hill, but instead in support of Libertarian candidate Greg Knott. It's worth a shot; splitting off one or two percent of the vote from Young to Knott could win this for Hill. 

  5. The Kuster ad is bland and predictable. Klein must feel like he’s made his point in driving up West’s negatives and is going for the positive, and does so effectively. WV-SEN is bland, but more than anything it appears he’s mouthing words that were later dubbed on separate audio and are slightly off the movement of his mouth, and most of all he’s continuing to not run against the Republican narrative, he’s just trying to run with it, and inoculate himself from criticism. He’s effectively throwing his party and it’s ideology under the bus rather than taking a more proactive stance and sticking up for it, and criticizing silly, shallow anti-Washington messages.

    The Melancon ad is brutal. Truly brutal. Mudslingus is well-pleased.  

  6. manchin previously implied that he wouldn’t support reid for senate, akin to dems saying they won’t vote for pelosi.  this is fine in a body as large as the house, but i’m more skeptical about the senate.  does anyone think manchin will keep his word if the senate is 50/50 (after any possible party changes)?  furthermore, who would the alternatives be?  Schumer, Durbin?  I doubt either would sell well in WV.

  7. He’s either going to be very right or very wrong.  I do give him a couple of points for drawing attention to races earlier than maybe we’d have known (WI-Sen/Co-Gov/ND-AL).  If his goal really was to set a narrative (which I personally don’t believe), he may have helped Democrats by giving them enough early warning to kick their campaigns up a notch.

  8. She hasn’t cracked 30% since day one has she? A Dem that can’t do that in Maine ought to smell the coffee and get out.  

    Better an Indie Governor than a teabagger nut like LePage.

    If memory serves, she ran for Senate in the ’80’s and ran a lousy campaign then too.  I think she lost to Bill Cohen handily, IIRC.  

  12. For my local elections I voted for everyone who didnt have a townie last name.  And I drove around to see how many yard signs there were and I only saw city council ones.  Maybe the big storm that hit instinctively knew to take out only the Emmer and Bachmann ones?

  18. Pretty impressive, though I think probably largely meaningless.  I recall a frantic phone banking push for Coakley the last week too, but I guess it’s better than doing nothing like me.

    Dems carry more than 52 senate seats I’ll be surprised.  Same if the Dems have more than 210 house seats.  

  24. Sorry to go off topic but I was wondering if the results for that are starting yet, or does the voting not begin until late this week?

  25. I don’t know much about LA politics, but I’m just going to make an assumption that it is never civil, as seen in that debate, and then switched to NH sen debate.

    I am liking how hodes defended the HCR bill.  He seems strong and confident, while Ayotte doesn’t seem so confident.  It’s interesting to say the least.

  28. Iowa’s Republican National Committeewoman Kim Lehman tweeted today:

    Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, her Dem opponent, Sen. Harry Reid’s name was already checked.

    This will be their excuse if Reid hangs on.

  29. That one Republican pollster (which I would term shady), Landmark Communications gives the following results in a new GA-Gov poll:

    Nathan Deal (R) 48.5%

    Roy Barnes  (D) 41.6%

    John Monds  (L) 4.2%

    If you go by a rule that I have for partisan pollsters, the results would look something more like this:

    Nathan Deal (R) 43.5%

    Roy Barnes  (D) 43.6%

    …with third party candidates and undecideds changing a little bit too.

    Oh, and of course, Georgia has a runoff law, where if no candidate gets a majority, a runoff is held later.  

  30. Alaska Dispatch: Poll conducted for Alaskans Standing togetherr (group supports Murkowski) has Murkowski leading with 44%, 29% for Miller and 23% for McAdams. Adjust for probable bias and this poll makes a lot of sense. Poll conducted by Alaska-based Hellenthal and Asscociates.

  32. Pretty much all of the NM-01 vote is in Bernalillo County, which has put out some early vote numbers with partisan breakdowns:

    http://www.bernco.gov/upload/i…

    I did the numbers… early vote in person + requested mail-in ballots, making the assumption that most requested ballots will be returned by both side.

    The numbers aren’t too bad.  50.2 D, 38.6 R.  Registration numbers in 2008 were 48 D, 32 R.  Like Nevada, Republicans are turning out and requesting ballots at a slightly higher clip than registered Democrats as a percentage of their registration, but Dems are turning out hard as well, and the party breakdown in Bernalillo County is so crushing that the Democrats can move over 50% of the vote in the early turnout.

    It’s hard to say how this compares to 2006, because partisan breakdowns weren’t really available.  But regardless, this seems like a good sign to me that NM-01 is not in a particularly perilous position.

  33. you go positive at the end IF your internals indicate you are winning(also; this clearly shows melancon thinks he is losing, so he not only went negative, he went NUCLEAR)

  34. …that postseason baseball is now poised to go beyond election day?  I really detest it.  I used to love postseason baseball but now it goes on a full month and cuts deeper and deeper into election season every year.  I can’t even enjoy the World Series this year as a result and it would probably be secondary for me even if my Minnesota Twins managed to get out of the first round of the playoffs.

  35. Just found out about this:

    http://www.wwe.com/inside/stan…

    Per WWE press release, they will be handing out merchandise at poll sites.  75 feet away to apparently keep it legal, but really…is this actually legal?

    At this point it’s practically an admission that they’re trying to buy votes.

  39. Terry Branstad is still running tv ads containing lies that were debunked months ago. Many Republican candidates in Iowa are running ads about the alleged $500 billion in Medicare cuts caused by Obamacare–fact-checkers declared that claim to be false weeks ago.

    On the plus side, a Republican lie about Iowa Democrats spending taxpayer money on heated sidewalks is driving lots of traffic to a Bleeding Heartland post I wrote. This claim appears in direct mail and tv ads targeting lots of Iowa House Democrats. You’d be surprised how many people are doing web searches for “Iowa heated sidewalks,” “heated sidewalks Des Moines” or some such.

  40. So the GOTV effort appears in full swing.  

    To be up front, I jsut moved to South Philly after having lived in other parts of the city for 10 years.

    But tonight driving home for work, I saw an insane amount of signs with pictures of Obama at the president’s desk, the wording on ths sign “Help Obama, vote November 2.”  No mentiond of a single candidate, just Obama and voting.

    Then I get home and have a voicemail from someone (sorry I deleted it) telling me to vote in the election, stressing the importance of voting and asking me to help do phonebanking over the weekend.

    I’ve obviously never seen signs for a candidate not on the ballot urging voters top the polls while not mentioning a single candidate.  I’ve also never been called and asked to phone bank.  I think the GOTV is in full effect, and we can only hope it produces the results we want.

    And this is South Philly, which is more Italian and more retail (too many shops if you ask me) than some other parts of the city are certainly going to be better targets for the signage.  But I’m sure the signs are already there.

  45. … of OK-SEN in 2004. We’ll see what happens next Tuesday, but it looks like it’s going to be a near-repeat.

    To recap for you young’uns, in Oklahoma, 2004, Democrats recruited their strongest possible candidate, Rep. Brad Carson. Republicans saw their best-laid plans go up and smoke when their establishment pick, Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys get beaten (aka “proto-teabagged”) but a crazy, archconservative doctor (and former congressman) Tom Coburn.

    Throughout the race, Coburn’s extreme views, personal baggage (sterilizing someone without their consent), and outrageous statements (lamenting an “epidemic” of lesbianism in high schools) kept the race seemingly close. Carson even lead much of the polling a few months out. Yet on Election Day, Coburn won decisively, by an 11-point margin.  

  50. I have never seen a panel go after candidates as much as these panelists did tonight. I’m still watching it, but they are both doing good. Getting their attacks in. MElancon may have made a mistake though, in attacking one of the most popular men in Southeast LA, US Attorney Jim Letten. Attacking Letten really hurt a mayoral candidate this year, taking him from a strong second place finish to 3rd place.  

    2. No wonder she can’t crack 30%.

      She makes Harry Reid look like Bobby Jindal by comparison.

      Give me a break, she needs to take one for the team and tell her supporters to vote for Cutler.    

  54. Save me from the circular firing squads…Sometimes, I swear that I hate being a Democrat for that reason.  When they lose, Republicans blame the electorat and run to the right. The media does not tell them to moderate at all.  

    When Democrats don’t win, we blame each other.  Obama didn’t save us…Nancy was to mean…We were too Liberal…We were not Liberal enough…

    I am telling you people that it is just not cute. STOP. IT. I mean really.  I am depressed as anyone but I am not going to blame any other Democrat for it.

    We lost before and we came back.  We can do it again.    

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