Month: July 2008

Polls have closed in Georgia as of about 40 minutes ago. We’ll be using this thread to track the results for the GA-Sen (D), GA-10 (R), and GA-12 (D) primary elections.

Results: Associated Press

[Update by Crisitunity]: If you’re looking for county-by-county results, here are the Georgia SoS pages for each of the three big races: GA-Sen, GA-10, and GA-12. They might also be a smidge faster than the AP.

For GA-12, the county to watch is Chatham (home of Savannah). This is where Thomas lives; she has to post huge numbers here to have any hope. Also watch Richmond (home of Augusta), where she’s mostly unknown; if she’s running even or close there, it’s probably a good sign too.

For the Senate primary, the state’s population centers are Fulton, De Kalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties. Vernon Jones’s power base is De Kalb, so look for big numbers for him there.

7:57PM ET: With 1% reporting, Martin holds a 41-32 lead over Jones. Over in GA-10, with just a handful of precincts reporting, Broun holds a big 76-24 lead. No numbers yet from GA-12.

9:04 ET: Things are becoming pretty clear in the House races. In GA-12, with 36% reporting, Barrow has 80.5%, Thomas has 19.5%. One caveat: no votes reported yet from Chatham County, where Thomas is from. But she’s way down everywhere else, so this one looks DOA. In GA-10, with 45% reporting, Broun has 73.5%, Fleming has 26.5%. Looks like the local GOP establishment wound up with egg on their faces over this one.

Shades of an upset in the making in the Senate primary? With 23% reporting, Martin is in the lead, with 39.3%. Jones would make the runoff, with 35.5% reporting. Lagging behind it’s Cardwell at 14.8%, Lanier at 5.5%, and Knight at 4.9%. Bear in mind, though: no votes from Fulton or DeKalb counties, so the Atlanta area hasn’t weighed in yet.

10:00 PM ET: In GA-Sen 57% are reporting. The Atlanta area votes are starting to come in, and Jones has pulled into the lead, with 38%. Martin is close at 35%; it’s pretty clear they’ll be in the runoff together. (Cardwell is 3rd at 16%.) Jones is up big in DeKalb and Clayton counties (black-majority burbs), but Martin is holding even with Jones in Fulton (Atlanta) and Cobb, so that bodes well for Martin in the runoff.

AP has called GA-10 for Broun, 72% to 28% with 86% reporting. GA-12 isn’t called yet, but Barrow is up 76% to 24% with 62% reporting. Thomas is even with Barrow in Chatham and getting swamped everywhere else, so this one’s over too.

11:05 PM ET: OK, we’re about done here. AP has called GA-Sen (runoff between Jones and Martin) and GA-12 (Barrow). As more Atlanta area ballots come in, Jones is a little further ahead at 41%, with Martin at 34%. Interestingly, Jones did better in black-majority downstate counties (like Chatham (Savannah) and Dougherty (Albany)) than in DeKalb, indicating that maybe the more people know him, the less likely they are to vote for him.

A few other minor notes: Jim Marshall won his primary in GA-08 easily, beating Robert Nowak 86% to 14%. The winner of the GOP primary in GA-12, who’ll get flattened by Barrow in November, is former congressional aide John Stone, who escaped a runoff by winning the three-way race with 59%. And the closest primary challenges were actually the lowest profile ones (the ‘you supported Clinton!’ ones): in GA-05 John Lewis got 68% against Markel Hutchins (17%) and Mable Thomas (15%). In GA-13 David Scott got only 64% against Donzella James (36%); Scott faces off against Deborah “The Defrauder” Honeycutt’s vast resources in November.

So the Staten Island GOP has finally settled on a candidate — former Assemblyman Robert Straniere, who lost a bitter race for Staten Island’s Borough Presidency in 2001 that left many local party players permanently turned off by him:

Straniere was tabbed by a five-member GOP committee on vacancies last night to replace the late Frank Powers as the party designee for the bi-borough seat. Straniere is now set to battle Dr. Jamshad Wyne, the GOP finance chairman, in a Sept. 9 party primary.

The vote was 4-1 in Straniere’s favor, with only Joseph Borelli, chief of staff to South Shore City Councilman Vincent Ignizio, casting a vote against Straniere.

Ignizio defeated Straniere in a 2004 GOP Assembly primary, ending Straniere’s 24-year career in the Legislature, and last night said that he “will not be supporting Bob Straniere for Congress.”

Straniere has a few more black marks against him, including the fact that he lives outside the district in Manhattan:

On his petitions for the 2008 primary Straniere listed an East Side (Midtown Manhattan) address.

Media reports also indicate that Straniere was fired from a position as assistant counsel with the state Health Department last year after it was discovered he failed to notify the department he also was working at a lobbying firm.

For his part, former Borough President Guy Molinari, who — up until now — had been considered the unofficial leader of Staten Island’s Republicans, is beyond livid:

The Straniere move also drew an acid response from former GOP Borough President Guy Molinari, a longtime Straniere foe.

“I’m terribly outraged by the actions of the committee on vacancies,” said Molinari, who already has pledged to work to remove borough GOP chairman John Friscia and other party leaders when they are up for re-election next year. “They couldn’t have made a worse mistake. The party was already in desperate shape. They’ve all but buried it.” […]

“Two words that strike me: Ethics and morality,” said Molinari. “There have been so many questions raised about ethics in government over the last few months, the last thing we could have expected is to see someone put up for office with serious ethical concerns. That’s mystifying.”

So incensed is Molinari that, in addition to pledging to take out Staten’s GOP chairman, he’s now talking about challenging Councilman Jimmy Oddo for the Borough Presidency next year. Here’s Oddo’s response:

“I guess we all should be grateful that Guy didn’t challenge anyone to a duel,” Oddo said. “I’d hate to go down in history as Staten Island’s Aaron Burr.”

This debacle keeps on getting better by the week.

SSP currently rates this race as “Leans Democratic“.

Democrat Michael Skelly has launched his first ad of the campaign against Republican incumbent John Culberson. The ad will air on both broadcast and cable. I think it’s a nice introduction. Check it out:

If there was any doubt that Democrat Paul Kanjorski was facing a difficult re-election this year, it should be erased now:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has purchased ad time in Pennsylvania’s 11th Congressional District targeting Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, the Republican challenger who is looking to unseat Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski. […]

The DCCC ad in Pennsylvania ties Barletta to President George W. Bush, stating that Bush has a friend in Pennsylvania in the Republican challenger. It begins running on Scranton-area television stations on Tuesday and is scheduled to stay up for several weeks.

A DCCC official confirms the ad was shipped to stations in Pennsylvania today and will begin airing tomorrow.

Kanjorski has already gone up on the airwaves early last month, in a move that signaled his concern with Barletta’s challenge. Evidently, the DCCC has seen numbers that show Kanjorski, a 12-term incumbent, in danger this year, and are moving to cut Barletta off at the pass.

There’s no word yet on the size of the DCCC’s buy, but this is a noteworthy expenditure. Kanjorski has not engaged the campaign particularly gracefully, and despite the big advantages that Democrats enjoy across the country, perhaps the atmosphere is there for Barletta to turn this race into a populist revolt against D.C. incumbency. It looks like the DCCC is trying to change the narrative before Barletta can catch on.

SSP currently rates this race as “Likely Democratic“.

Public Policy Polling (likely voters, 7/9-11):

Bob Conley (D): 21

Lindsey Graham (R-inc): 52

Mark McBride (I): 10

(MoE: ±4.2%)

Without McBride (the GOP-turned-independent mayor of Myrtle Beach) on the ballot, the head-to-head looks like this:

Bob Conley (D): 32

Linsey Graham (R): 54

Now, Bob Conley isn’t much of a Democrat. In fact, he was last seen voting for Ron Paul in South Carolina’s Republican primary, and has even served on the executive committee of the Horry County Republican Party in recent years.

While many South Carolinians are clearly not in love with Graham, this race isn’t likely to get off the ground any time soon.

In other, and more interesting news, PPP finds that McCain is leading Obama by a mere 45-39 margin in South Carolina. Strong margins with African-Americans (77-10) and voters between the ages of 18-29 (54-32) fuel Obama’s strength here. I don’t think it’s likely that Obama will win, but I find it especially heartening that the younger generation of voters in states like South Carolina and Mississippi are poised to turn the page from the GOP dominance of their parents’ generation.

Rasmussen (7/9, likely voters) (5/28 in parentheses):

Mary Landrieu (D-inc.): 49 (47)

John Kennedy (R): 44 (44)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Mary Landrieu is holding steady against John N. Kennedy, although not outside the margin of error. (Rasmussen has started giving ‘alternate’ results if leaners are pushed, which gives her a slightly better-looking 51/45.) This despite the huge momentum that Kennedy got from his campaign kick-off event.

Bear in mind that this is the same sample that gave John McCain such a huge lead over Barack Obama, 54-34. This may be an overly Republican sample, or it may simply indicate a lot of ticket-splitting: only 67% of McCain’s voters say they’ll vote for Kennedy as well. (This reflects Landrieu’s conservative profile, as well as the symbolic power of the Landrieu dynasty and the porousness of political party boundaries in Louisiana).

Last year, following the governor’s race in Louisiana, I did an experiment where I applied the parish-by-parish percentages in the 2002 senate race to the parish-by-parish turnout numbers (which reflect post-Katrina demographics) in the 2007 gubernatorial election. Bottom line: Landrieu won, although it was close (about 50.5 to 49.5). The Louisiana demographics have changed, certainly, but not to the extent that it’s fatal for Landrieu, since a) a lot of white people left Louisiana, too (there was catastrophic storm damage in white areas like St. Bernard Parish too, which nearly emptied out), and b) a lot of African-Americans from New Orleans moved to Baton Rouge, Shreveport, or Lafayette.

Finally, another consideration is that people are returning to New Orleans at a fast clip. The Census Bureau just announced that New Orleans was the fastest-growing (by percentage) large city in the country in the period from July 2006-July 2007, gaining almost 30,000 people, or about 14%. It’s still less than 60% of its size pre-Katrina, but the people are returning (although there’s no way to measure whether the returnees are coming back from Houston and Atlanta, or from Baton Rouge and Shreveport, which would be less of an advantage).

H/t Safi.

Missouri continues to be the Democrats’ best chance at picking up a governor’s seat in 2008, as four-term Attorney General Jay Nixon has a substantial edge over both likely GOP nominees. Research 2000 offers up slightly better numbers than last week’s Rasmussen and PPP polls.

Research 2000 (7/7-7/10, likely voters):

Jay Nixon (D): 52

Kenny Hulshof (R): 35

(MoE: ±3.5%)

Jay Nixon (D): 53

Sarah Steelman (R): 34

Nixon also has a high 56% favorable rating, with 38% unfavorable and only 6% no opinions. (This contrasts with outgoing GOP governor Matt Blunt, with 42%/54% favorable/unfavorable.)

In the Republican primary, it looks like Rep. Hulshof (from MO-09) has a better shot than Steelman, the state treasurer. (27% remain undecided for the fast-approaching Aug. 5 primary, though.) Both Hulshof and Steelman are giving up their current jobs to run for this seat, creating a situation like NM-Sen where we can potentially clean house in three GOP seats in one fell swoop.

Kenny Hulshof (R): 32

Sarah Steelman (R): 24

Scott Long (R): 12

Jen Sievers (R): 5

State Senator Andrew Rice raised 451k for the 2nd quarter, and now has an impressive (for Oklahoma) 748k COH.

He has raised $1.4 Million for the overall campaign.

Info. from here:

http://andrewforoklahoma.com/n…

Inhofe will be in a dogfight once Rice goes on TV.

website:

http://andrewforoklahoma.com/