Month: October 2008

Looks like the Noriega campaign didn’t send an e-mail blast to us donors with the Oct 21 Rasmussen poll

🙁

and I missed the news.

James L. let me know that Rasmussen calls it John Cornyn 55, Rick Noriega 40.

This particular poll is probably not gonna hold up too well. It won’t be a 15 point margin, more likely less than 7 points.

In 1996, a high school government class teacher, with a pick-up truck gimmick and the same last name as the state’s Democratic Attorney General, won the Senate nomination to lose to Phil Gramm. But despite being all but ignored by elected Democrats and most Hispanic leaders in the state, Victor Morales got 44% of the vote against Phil Gramm, a seasoned politician riding the Repub growth in the state.

So 44% could be the floor for a Hispanic Senatorial candidate in Texas.

Then in 2002, after 9/11 changed everything — for that election, at least — the African-American former Mayor of Dallas was part of the Democratic Dream Team of one black, one brown, one white in the state’s three top races, er, contests. Despite spending about $10 million, Ron Kirk got only 43% of the vote against then-Attorney General John Cornyn.

So 43% could be the floor for a minority Senatorial candidate in Texas.

Rick Noriega is a much more solid and respected candidate than Victor Morales (although a bit duller!), and he’s not from Dallas (Dallas is to Texas as New York City is to the US), so his floor is probably a bit above 45%.

Add in strong Hispanic population growth. Top it off with the Obama campaign energizing the black voters, the youth, and the Presidential-primary-organized Anglo Dems, and it began to look like there was a chance.

Of course, the needed money was still missing. Cornyn has owned the airwaves while Noriega remains broke.

BTW I am borrowing heavily from an analysis of the race by Prof Richard Murray at the University of Houston, who blogs for TV13. http://prof13.abc13.com/

But it’s the economy, Woody. The state’s economy has been propped up by high oil & gas prices, the associated exploration activity, strong employment, and earnings. (No oil money in my family, alas, but 20 miles from my mother’s house you can drive through a town where the air smells of sulfurous petroleum. It’s said to stink — unless the well is in your yard. Then you collect a royalty check for the rest of your days, and the figures go up when the price of a barrel of oil goes up.) Texas also has protections for homesteads written into its Constitution and laws, which may have limited the degree and amount of funny-money mortgage lending compared to most other fast-growing states. So Texas is not yet feeling the pain too much.

In conclusion: Cornyn will get less than Rasmussen’s 55%, more like 52%. A Libertarian will get a point. Noriega will outperform Morales, Kirk, and his own earlier 43 and 44% showings in the polls, coming in around 46 or 47%.

It will be close enough that I’ll be joined on the morning on Nov 5 by others exclaiming, Damn, if only the Democrats would have put a few million into that race back in September, we could have grabbed that one!

Here’s some good news from Nebraska: there are now more registered Democrats than Republicans in Douglas County (Omaha) for the first time since 1994. Incidentally, 1994 was the last year that the Omaha-based 2nd District had a Democratic representative in the House.

The raw numbers: there are now 125,602 Democrats to 122,955 Republicans in Douglas County (the entirety of which is in the 2nd Congressional District, currently held by GOP Rep. Lee Terry). That’s a big change from the start of the year, when Republicans held a 122,140 to 110,016 advantage. And it seems like this new energy is translating into a sizable early voting edge for Dems in Douglas County — where almost 50% of the early votes have been from registered Democrats, while only 36% have been from registered Republicans.

Now, this advantage isn’t going to hold though until election day, and Douglas isn’t the only county in the 2nd Congressional District (although, with about 80% of its population, it is certainly the most important) — there’s also Sarpy, a more conservative-leaning county that gave Terry a 26-point edge in 2006. But these numbers are another good sign that Democrat Jim Esch has a fighting chance to take this seat.

If you’re not familiar with the sordid story of Henry Brown (which Democrat Linda Ketner nicely summed up in thirty seconds), I’d suggest that you educate yourself. Long story short: GOP Rep. Henry Brown started a forest fire that destroyed 20 acres of a national forest. Brown was fined $7,000 for the damage, but he refused to pay up and fought tooth-and-nail to change the law in order to make it harder to prosecute people who burn down national forests. Pardon my language, but that’s fucked up.

Democrat Linda Ketner has been waging a long shot but well-funded campaign against Brown since the start of the year, and she appears to have blindsided the extremely crusty, extremely arrogant Brown with her attack ads on the issue. So what does Henry Brown do in response?

He sends out mailers featuring Smokey the Bear:

I shit you not, my friends.

(H/T: Elonkey)

Two new polls now shows longtime Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha in serious trouble for reelection.  http://www.ourcampaigns.com/Ra…

His Republican challenger has an internal poll that shows the Republican up 48%-35% and a local newspaper has Murtha up just 46%-41%.  

If anything, Murtha needs to quickly start hitching himself to Obama’s coattails if he wants to win reelection.  We already appear likely to lose Kanjorski in the solidly Democratic PA-11 and now we may lose Murtha as well.  This is not good.  

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for the DCCC (10/20-21, likely voters):

Bobby Bright (D): 50

Jay Love (R): 43

(MoE: ±4.9%)

This is the first poll we’ve seen of this race since a Bright internal showed Jay Lovin’ closing a 10-point Bright lead into a dead heat. GOP state Senator Harri Anne Smith, who lost the GOP primary to Love in a vicious battle, endorsed Bright on Monday — so we might be seeing the effect of a Smith bump here.

Daily Kos will be releasing a poll of this district soon, so we’ll have an independent view of this race shortly.

Faced with the likelihood of unprecedented November losses and piss-poor fundraising, the NRCC has been forced to make some very hard choices lately, including ones to cut the plug on GOP Reps. like Marilyn Musgrave, Tom Feeney, Michele Bachmann, and Joe Knollenberg. Understandably, though, some major GOP allies are furious with NRCC Chair Tom Cole for abandoning some staunch social conservatives without so much as a life preserver.

From The Hill:

The Family Research Council’s (FRC) political arm ripped Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) Thursday for withdrawing ad spending on behalf of two endangered Republican candidates.

FRC President Tony Perkins said in a letter to Cole, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), that the committee “is abandoning social conservative candidates” by pulling ads from the reelection races of Reps. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) and Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.). […]

Perkins, an influential conservative leader, said in his letter that he believes Cole, whose committee has been hemorrhaging money in an uphill battle against Democratic congressional candidates, “made a grave error in judgment” by pulling ads from Musgrave’s and Bachmann’s districts.

“The left is attacking both of these outstanding women because they are true conservatives,” Perkins said. “They vote pro-life and pro-family.”

Perkins wrote that both candidates are in “winnable districts,” and that “pulling funds from their campaigns sends the wrong message to their supporters and gives their opponents a chance to produce headlines that the NRCC has undermined these campaigns.”

“This is no time to cut and run from a fight,” Perkins wrote.

He added that he will “urge supporters” of the FRC to stop contributing to the NRCC “until it starts supporting and fighting for conservative candidates in close races.”

Time’s almost up, Mr. Cole.

Rasmussen (10/22, likely voters, 9/25 in parens):

Mary Landrieu (D-inc): 53 (54)

John Kennedy (R): 43 (41)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Kennedy is inching upward (and has been since August), but will it be enough? I seriously doubt it.

Today I was handed this flyer and it makes me wonder… should I vote Udall now that I know that he is working with Bigfoot! Enjoy everyone knowing Bigfoot is the reason Mark Udall will win his senate election! Mark Udall is facing Republican Bob Schaffer in one of the toughest senate battles in the country. Seeing smear attacks such as this one you can see why it is so close. Linking Mark Udall with Big Foot can sway a crucial vote in Colorado known as the Bigfoot for President Change Party.

Mark Udall faces attacks daily from shady republican groups and now he faces attacks on a new front.  The mythical creature front, Bigfoot clearly does exist but also is working hard to elect Mark Udall. Mark Udall has shown no clear indication that Bigfoot is on payroll via any FEC report or on the endorsement page of his website.

As shown in the flyer shows, Bigfoot has become biggest threat to America.  Not terrorism, not the crumbling banking system, not the healthcare crisis or global warming but Big Foot trumps all of them all.

It is rumored Democratic Senatorial Candidate Mark Udall who has been a champion of protecting the environment of the beautiful Second Congressional District met Bigfoot on one of his many survey trips to the district to witness the damaged caused by the Pine Beetle. Clearly global warming has even caused harmed to the most of our mythical creatures.

Bigfoot now has to lobby Mark Udall to bring back Government Grants to protect the shrinking Bigfoot habitat area. Bigfoot has also stated that he has asked from help from environmental leaders such as Al Gore and Jane Goodall to no avail for habit protection.

Clearly this is a joke but in this crazy election season I figured we could all use a little laugh. Pass it around to everyone who has enough of the mudslinging for a little bit of light hearted humor.