SSP Daily Digest: 4/22

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: I keep saying that there’s no way Jeff Flake waltzes to the GOP nomination, but the Republican party has yet to prove me right. Fortunately, my deliverance may come in the form of rich guy Wil Cardon, who is supposedly giving the race a “very strong look” – and can self-fund.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov, etc.: Like another failed Republican gubernatorial candidate before her, it looks like we won’t have Meg Whitman to kick around anymore. Actually, that’s kind of confusing, because of course we did get to kick Dick Nixon around quite a bit more… but not until he kicked all of us around first. Anyhow, uh, where was I? Oh yeah, the former eBay chief says she “doubts” whether she’ll run for office again. Let’s hope she means it.

• MA-Sen: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, and Deval Patrick still won’t run for Senate.

• MT-Sen: For once, I’m hoping a Republican schedules more fundraisers – at least, fundraisers like this. Denny Rehberg just did an event in Denver that was co-hosted by BP’s “director of government and public affairs” (i.e., their chief in-house lobbyist)… on the one-year anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Good optics!

• ND-Sen: This should scare absolutely no one off, from either party: Republican Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk, the only declared candidate to succeed retiring Sen. Kent Conrad, raised all of $32K in Q1. John Hoeven he ain’t. While we’re on the subject of North Dakota, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, who retired last year, just donated the bulk of his remaining campaign funds – $1 million – to a new charity he founded, the Center for Native American Youth. A worthy cause, I’m sure, but I’ll bet Joe Sestak would have really appreciated that extra mil.

• OH-Sen: It’s weird how the GOP went from utterly dominating last year’s Senate election in Ohio to digging out their barrel-bottom scrapers from the back of the utility shed. Ken Blackwell says he’s talking to the NRSC about a possible run… though I guess it’s not really clear if the NRSC is talking back. A lulzy quote: “You don’t just come out and build the sort of support base that I have overnight.” True – you probably need to spend two years running a crappy campaign to do as terribly as he did in the governor’s race back in 2006.

• TN-Sen: This is a little odd: Sen. Bob Corker said he “came close” to not seeking re-election this cycle. Too bad we don’t have a candidate who could make hay out of Corker’s lack of fire in the belly (a phrase he actually uses with respect to some fantasy presidential run, but seems applicable to his day job, too).

• VA-Sen: It’s starting to feel like the wingnut candidates are doing everything they can to make life easier for George Allen by piling into the clown car that is the GOP primary field. The latest is rich dude Tim Donner, whom we mentioned last month. Almost all of these weirdos claim to be teabaggers in good standing, so this almost assuredly means we’ll see some People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front nonsense, rather than a united effort to stop Allen. Lame.

Gubernatorial:

• KY-Gov: Republican frontrunner David Williams raised just $450K in Q1 and has $670K on hand. (This compares to Gov. Steve Beshear, whose numbers we mentioned previously: $1.3m/$3.3m.)

• NC-Gov: PPP’s monthly home-state poll shows Gov. Bev Perdue inching up against Republican Pat McCrory, trailing 49-38 instead of 50-36. That’s very similar to a new SurveyUSA poll which has McCrory up 51-39.

• SC-Gov: The issues are a little too complex for me to try to summarize here in a digest bullet, but the link will take you to an interesting story exposing some pretty naïve political incompetence on the part of supposed GOP wunderkind Gov. Nikki Haley. One thing I’d like to remind folks of is that despite the Republican bloodbath of 2010, Haley didn’t perform all that impressively. In fact, she had the second-narrowest win out of all 20 victorious GOP gubernatorial candidates, just 4.3%. Only Rick Scott won more narrowly, and he’s Rick Scott. Dem Vincent Sheheen got almost no national attention but should have, given his strong performance in a tough state in an impossible year. If Haley continues to stumble, I think she could prove surprisingly vulnerable in 2014.

134 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 4/22”

  2. He had no interest in the race prior to PPP polling his name out of the blue.  And PPP has been very helpful in encouraging Trump!  We should all thank Tom Jensen for his valuable work getting unelectables interested in races.

  3. I’ll be surprised if any of these pipsqueaks get on the ballot, except maybe Radtke. Virginia has a high signature requirement — 10,000 signatures including 400 from each of the state’s Congressional districts — which usually keeps most candidates on a shoestring budget off the ballot.

  4. Well, despite not being officially in, let alone actually winning a primary, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez appears to be the front runner, if only by default, for the Democrats. There are definitely legitimate questions about him and about his tenure in Iraq, and about the general effectiveness of running him and whether it represents more of the same in regards to hoping he catches on despite having no electoral experience in a pretty conservative state that has provem hostile to a lot of Democrats lately. I say the difference is that there will be much more thorough institutional support in the form of an Obama campaign that (I’m almost certain) will be in the state in a way that no Democrat has been in decades. Still, it’s not clear whether he should be the candidate, or what might happen if he’s not for some reason.

    I’m trying to figure this out, so last night, I did a little searching as I struggled to fall asleep. I found the following link, which contains links to many other pages, which contain yet even more links to other pages. Some of it’s a little bit circular since they redirect back to one another, but there is a variety here. And while I haven’t read through all of it yet–I’d like to get something accomplished today, after all–what I have read is interesting. Some of these links aren’t entirely about elections, but all relate back to his candidacy, so they are worth posting. If anyone knows of anything else interesting–and this definitely includes our conservative friends, who opened my eyes to a book I need to pick up–please share. I’m eager to learn more about this.

    http://www.burntorangereport.c…

  5. One thing that needs to be said – it’s likely her race was so close last fall in part because of racism and (maybe) sexism as well. Full disclosure: she was probably the only Republican I was rooting for last year, because of the history of racism in South Carolina and also because her opponent seemed pretty conservative himself.

    That said – this isn’t the first time she’s been accused of incompetence and questionable acts. The story does not make her look good.  

    1. But yeah. The GOP in Arkansas is pretty much an example of Amateur hour. I’m waiting to see if they become a serious party in the next few years. I’m also waiting to see if Obama gets serious about helping the AR-DP. Seriously, 1 million in Arkansas by the Obama campaign could do a massive amount of work, not just in GOTV among Hispanic voters in the NW, but also in providing a crutch to the state party and trying to hold the Republican margin under 56%.  

  7. I’m doing a map of the PA State Senate, and I have been unable to find district by district Obama results for the State Senate. If anyone knows where I could find it, pass it on.

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