SSP Daily Digest: 11/9

• FL-Sen: It seems like the “permanent campaign” is pretty much the new normal these days, as everybody’s already talking about who’s gonna run in 2012. In Florida, the list of potential GOP challengers to Bill Nelson is deep even if Jeb Bush doesn’t follow through on an unlikely bid. Appointed (and soon to be ex-)Sen. George LeMieux seems to be ramping up for a bid, although he might suffer for his Charlie Crist ties. Other GOPers mentioned include Rep. Connie Mack IV, state House majority leader Adam Hasner, state Senate president Mike Haridopolos, and newly-elected Rep. Daniel Webster.

• MA-Sen: As for the Dem field in Massachusetts, one prominent potential candidate is staying mum for now. Boston mayor Tom Menino welcomes the attention but is “focused on being mayor.”

• MT-Sen: And then there’s Montana, where freshman Jon Tester is probably one of the most vulnerable Senate Dems. At-large GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg is usually the first name you hear mentioned in that context, but he seems to be in no hurry to decide. Two other GOPers are making moves, though: businessman and losing 2008 Lt. Gov. nominee Steve Daines, and Neil Livingstone, CEO of a “crisis management firm” and frequent anti-terrorism talking head, are both actively looking at the race.

• WV-Sen, NE-Sen: It looks like Joe Manchin’s spokesperson’s denial yesterday of any interest in switching parties wasn’t vehement enough, because Manchin had to reiterate that, no, he isn’t considering it; in addition, Senate GOP spokespersons said those conversations alleged by Fox News apparently never even took place. The same situation applies in Nebraska, where Ben Nelson says that not only is he not interested in switching but that no one has reached out to him to do so. Encouragingly, at least from a rhetorical standpoint, Nelson also says “the party hasn’t left me.”

• MS-Gov: With two well-liked former Reps. idling around wondering what to do next year (Gene Taylor and Travis Childers), you’d think the Dems might actually be able to field a competitive candidate for Mississippi next year. According to at least one local pundit, a Childers comeback doesn’t seem likely (more interested in state party chair), while Taylor seems to have running for something in mind but potentially just his old seat again in ’12.

• OH-Gov: Here’s a good post-mortem on Ted Strickland from Jonathan Chait, which suggests that Strickland managed to keep things close (despite the rest of the wipeout in Ohio) because a solid campaign that focused on just the right amount of populism. He ran well ahead of national Dems on average among groups like seniors and persons with high school educations.

• FL-22: Is Allen West the Bizarro World version of Alan Grayson? He’s an ideological mismatch with his Florida district that leans the wrong way away from his party let alone his own amped-up version of its message, he has no built-in self-censor like most politicians, and he was elected more so by nationwide online supporters than the locals. And now he’s hiring from his own echo chamber, turning for his Chief of Staff not a Capitol Hill pro but the conservative talk show host who helped bolster his campaign. Joyce Kaufman is the one who said on her show this summer that “if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

• NY-23: Doug Hoffman is truly the gift that keeps on giving. The election’s over, and he’s still giving. He now says he didn’t mean to send out a statement that he put out last week post-election, calling local Republican bosses the real “spoilers in this race.” (Hoffman, of course, pulled in 6% of the vote last week, saving Bill Owens yet again.)

• NY-25: Trailing slightly with the absentee-counting process looming, Dan Maffei (like Tim Bishop in NY-01) is requesting a hand count of ballots (the electronic voting machines generate a paper trail). A judge also ruled that both camps may inspect the list of 11,000 absentee ballot requests, a prelim to each camp developing the list of which ballots they want to challenge.

• DCCC: It’s sounding more and more like Rep. Steve Israel will be on tap to head the DCCC for the 2012 cycle. He was one of the three key deputies at the DCCC last year (along with Joe Crowley, who seems to be edging away from the job, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who seems interested too but not in as strong a position with the Pelosi-led core of leadership).

• House: Here’s an interesting piece of trivia: only eight (8) House Dems did better, percentage-wise in 2010 than they did in 2008. Most are from safe urban districts (most notably Nancy Pelosi herself, despite the seven figures the right-roots raised for her opponent), although Jim Himes and Chellie Pingree were in competitive races and managed to gain ground.

• Polltopia: PPP puts together a helpful table of approval ratings on the various Senators up for re-election in 2012. It corresponds pretty closely with the general conventional wisdom about who’s vulnerable: Joe Lieberman is in worst shape at 33/54, followed by Claire McCaskill and Debbie Stabenow (who actually are in slightly worse condition than John Ensign, though his problems go well beyond his approvals). Interestingly, the best-liked Senator statewide (Olympia Snowe at 56/34) may also be one of the most vulnerable, not in a general but to a teabagging in the GOP primary.

165 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 11/9”

  1. I thought Mike Moore would be on tap for the Dem nomination. Travis Childers is young enough that he can probably hang around until Thad Cochran retires, and I hope he takes the plunge. He’d be a spectacular senator for Mississippi.

    And if Denny Rehberg doesn’t jump into MT-Sen (or even if he does) any chance that Marc Raciot would make a bid? I think Tester would be in fine shape if both of them took a pass, but otherwise, he’s got a tough battle ahead it seems.

  2. you’d think directly after an election there would be A more voters familiar with her and B people who voted for her and are holding firm in their support for her (until the new term begins at least).

  3. She might break the streak, and be the first senator to be reelected since 1996 in Minnesota. (A total of 7 people have served as senators from Minnesota in those 14 years)

  4. yes, that was supposed to be a draft.  I havent even gotten to the hard part and scrounged up all the presidential numbers!

  6. Question, are we allowed to talk or speculate about who might run for the GOP nomination for Prez?  I understand that SSP stayed out of the primary battle in 2008 because it’s a Dem blog and didn’t want fights between supporters, but that might not be an issue on the GOP side.  Anyway, I wanted to ask management for a ruling before posting anything on that race.

  7. the only thing not certified is SQ755 (the anti-Sharia amendment).

    the results (.pdf)

    But the state results are still pretty depressing, as Democrats, who held every statewide office on the ballot (except a corporation commissioner spot) lost every statewide office, and Dan Boren couldn’t run up high percentages in SE Oklahoma and lost the Tulsa suburban ring too.

    And in a state with 186K more registered Dems than Reps earlier this year, Republicans got 256K straight-ticket votes for statewide offices and Dems got 158K straight ticket votes for statewide offices, which was around 40% of all the ballots. The straight ticket total for federal offices was 255K to 149K for Republicans. Stunning that Jim Rogers couldn’t draw the votes.

    So the SQ results, since we know of the mass beating Oklahoma Democrats took (especially in low visibility offices where people just voted Republican*)..

    [* – When do we get the first non-New Hampshire “Oh crap, we elected THAT guy by accident” story out of the landslide?]

    Info on the SQs

    SQ744 (Requires Oklahoma to spend the same per student as the average of bordering states) – lost big (828K to 189K)

    SQ746 (Voter ID) – won big (746K to 257K)

    SQ747 (Statewide Term Limits) – won big (695K to 299K)

    SQ748 (Changes the Redistricting Commission to 3 D/3 R, but that commission only meets if the legislature can’t figure out a map) – won 567K to 403K

    SQ750 (Lowers signature requirements for initiatives) – won 485K to 478K

    SQ751 (English is the languages for official actions. Seriously, read it, it’s swiss-cheese. “Native American languages could also be used” / “These language requirements apply to the State’s “official actions.” The term “official actions” is not defined.”) – won 740K to 239K

    SQ752 (Judicial nomination commission change) – won 606K to 358K

    SQ754 (Legislature not required to make expenditures based on pre-determined formulas) – lost 361K to 614K

    SQ755 (You know what it does) – Frozen in time until judges can judge it

    SQ756 (Allow residents to opt out of any federal health care mandates) – won 638K to 347K

    SQ757 (Increases amount of money to be put into constitutional reserve fund.) – won 499K to 479K

    The no vote on 756 was higher than the vote for Kenneth Corn (Lt. Gov candidate) and Stephen Covert (Treasurer candidate).

    So yes, Dan Boren may not have a winnable district in 2012.

  10. pretty much all the provisional ballots and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted now. It looks like a 60-40 Republican majority in the Iowa House.

    There may still be a recount in one Iowa Senate district, where the GOP candidate leads by 13 votes. Assuming that lead holds, the Iowa Senate will have 26 Democrats and 24 Republicans.

  13. won by a comfortable 8 points in his FL-22 district, whereas Grayson squeaked in with a much thinner 4 points in a strong Democratic 2008. Not sure how ‘liberal’ West’s district really is. Didn’t it elect Clay Shaw (R) for many years before?

  15. … and it doesn’t look good for Kamala Harris.

    The SOS website hasn’t updated anything all day, but the LA County results page shows new numbers than that of the SoS website: http://rrccmain.co.la.ca.us/00…

    If my calculations are correct, Harris picked-up 71,866 votes and Cooley picked-up 62,095 votes – a net of just 9,700 votes for Harris. That’s undeniably smaller than what she needs. (SSP’s chart projected she’d pick-up 45,000 out of 330,000 remaining LA ballots.)

  17. She trails 2:1 in Orange County, so not sure where this came from, but here’s the link to the county registar: http://www.ocvote.com/live/gen…

    Compared to the SoS’s totals from this morning, Harris netted 3592 votes and Cooley 3166 votes.

    This won’t win her the election, especially if she doesn’t pick-up the pace in LA County dramatically, but Cooley was counting on the remaining Orange County ballots (54,000 according to SSP’s count from yesterday) to build up his lead.

    But a cold shower from San Diego: Cooley pockets 7680 votes, Harris 5110, a net difference of 2570. That’s better for Cooley than San Diego’s results up to now.

  19. From Nate Silver:

    Some House polls had a real severe bias. The 17 Mark Penn polls for the Hill were biased by 6.2 points toward Democrats on average.

    And here we thought that Penn was biased the other way!!!  Man, what a lousy cycle!

  20. Via Doug Sovern’s Twitter feed (very good CBS Bay Area reporter)  https://twitter.com/#!/SovernN…

    I’m not in his district, but from what I know Yee’s pretty well known and well liked by his constituents.  His biggest problem is probably that his district covers only the western half of the city.  This may be offset by his long history in SF politics: he’s been an assemblyman, supervisor, and President of the San Francisco School Board.

    And in case anyone’s worried, Obama won almost 76% here in 2008.

  22. I’ve been thinking that Boston needs some fresh blood in office anyway. Possibly someone who’ll work to expand the MBTA service so I don’t have to walk back to campus from Allston completely hammered.

  23. Still counting votes in Washington, and it looks like DelBene is going to lose by 4% or so to Reichert.

    That’s honestly pretty damn good. I think DelBene will be in Congress within 5 years. She already would be if she had run instead of Burner in 06 or 08.

    BTW, Murray’s lead over Rossi is now close to 5%.

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