Month: October 2008

September fundraising numbers for the four party committees:

Note that these figures do not include recent loans obtained by the DCCC ($15 million) and the NRCC ($8 million). I would expect their Senate counterparts to take out loans as well.

While we don’t yet know the details of the NRSC and the DSCC’s spending this month, the DCCC has made about $19.6 million worth of independent expenditures so far in October according to our IE tracker. By contrast, the NRCC has only spent about $6 million on IEs so far in October.

Princeton Survey Research for the Minneapolis Star Tribune (10/16-17, likely voters, 9/30-10/2 in parens):

Al Franken (D): 39 (43)

Norm Coleman (R-inc): 36 (34)

Dean Barkley (IP): 18 (18)

(MoE: ±3.8%)

The previous Strib poll seemed like a bit of an outlier, but this one is right in line with most other recent polls. The Barkley factor still looms large here — only 18% of his supporters say that they back him strongly, indicating a lot of parked votes that could fall off the fence in one direction or the other come election day.

Roll Call is back with a pair of Mountain West SurveyUSA polls in two deeply conservative districts (10/18-19, likely voters, no trend lines).

ID-01:

Walt Minnick (D): 51

Bill Sali (R-inc): 45

(MoE: ±4%)

These numbers confirm Minnick’s own internal polling, which also has Sali trailing by six points.

Sali’s favorable rating? A dismal 33-47, compared to Minnick’s 45-23. Minnick is taking 21% of self-described conservative voters, and sweeping among moderates (80-16) and liberals (94-5). No wonder the NRCC went up with a $200K ad buy last week to help stall Minnick’s momentum.

WY-AL:

Gary Trauner (D): 44

Cynthia Lummis (R): 50

David Herbert (L): 4

(MoE: ±4%)

Two recent polls by Mason-Dixon and Research 2000 have given Trauner a 44-43 lead, with a high share of the undecided vote coming from Republicans. These numbers are not so kind. Also of concern are the favorable ratings of both Trauner and Lummis — they are virtually identical (41-35 for Lummis and 42-36 for Trauner), and Lummis takes a decent chunk of the moderate vote (33%) and even 10% of self-described liberals. Democrats had hoped to portray Lummis as another Barbara Cubin, the retiring GOP Rep. who has a dismal 23-53 approval rating in this poll. When Trauner and Lummis are sitting at an equal position in terms of likeability, that doesn’t bode well.

Bonus findings: McCain beats Obama by 57-37 in Idaho’s 1st, and by 58-37 in Wyoming.

Below is our final SSP Cash Power Index chart for the quarter, which looks at Senate races (both open seats and those with incumbents running for re-election). Our 1Q cash power chart is here, and our 2Q chart is here.

Once again, the same caveats apply: Many campaigns made final spending decisions before the filing deadline, so cash-on-hand figures may look artificially “low” in some cases. In other words, just looking at the final Cash Power Rankings often won’t give you a complete picture of where things stand. That’s why it’s important to consult our 3Q Senate fundraising chart in concert with this listing. Third-party expenditures are also, of course, important indicators of a race’s competitiveness.

Note that Jim Gilmore has refused to release his fundraising totals to the media (and his FEC reports are not online yet), hence our resort to mathematical symbols. But we’re pretty confident Mark Warner will retain the number one slot regardless, as he has all year.

Americans appear ready to sweep a lot of Democrats into office on November 4. Not only does Barack Obama maintain a solid lead in the popular vote and electoral vote estimates, several Senate races that appeared safe Republican holds a few months ago are now considered tossups.

Polling is harder to come by in House races, but here too there is scattered evidence of a coming Democratic tsunami. Having already lost three special Congressional elections in red districts this year, House Republicans are now scrambling to defend many entrenched incumbents.

In this diary, I hope to convince you of three things:

1. Some Republicans who never saw it coming are going to be out of a job in two weeks.

On a related note,

2. Even the smartest experts cannot always predict which seats offer the best pickup opportunities.

For that reason,

3. Activists should put resources behind many under-funded challengers now, instead of going all in for a handful of Democratic candidates.

Allow me to elaborate.

1. A lot of seemingly safe incumbents have lost in wave elections, even in districts tilted toward their own party.

The Republican landslide of 1994 claimed my own Congressman Neal Smith, a 36-year incumbent who had a senior position on the House Appropriations Committee. Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley spent “what aides say may total $1.5 million to $2 million, a staggering amount for a House race” in 1994, but he still lost to George Nethercutt in Washington’s fifth district.

Many of you probably remember long-serving House and Senate Democrats in your own states who were swept away in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

By the same token, a lot of entrenched Republicans lost their seats during the 1974 post-Watergate wave. That was the year Iowans elected Tom Harkin and Berkley Bedell in the fifth and sixth Congressional districts, where both candidates had lost elections in 1972.

2. Even the political pros and the best analysts cannot always handicap Congressional races accurately, especially House races where public polls are scarce.

In 2006, could anyone have predicted that Lois Murphy (who almost beat Republican Congressman Jim Gerlach two years earlier) would fall short again in PA-06, while the massively under-funded Carol Shea-Porter would defeat Jeb Bradley in NH-01?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee poured millions into IL-06 in 2006, only to see Tammy Duckworth lose to Peter Roskam. Meanwhile, Larry Kissell didn’t get the time of day from the DCCC and came just a few hundred votes short of beating Republican incumbent Robin Hayes in NC-08.

My point is that we can’t always know where our best chances lie. Sometimes a stealth candidate can catch an incumbent napping in a race that hasn’t been targeted by either party.

Look at the seats Republicans are now worried about, according to Politico:

GOP Reps. John B. Shadegg of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina and Dan Lungren of California are all fighting for their political lives, a reversal of fortunes that has caught even the most astute campaign observers by surprise.

Markos commented on the Politico piece,

Shadegg’s AZ-03 is R+5.9.

Terry’s NE-02 is R+9.0.

Brown’s SC-01 is R+9.6

Lungren’s CA-03 is R+6.7.

We haven’t had any public polls in Iowa’s fourth or fifth district races, but last week Republican incumbent Tom Latham (IA-04, D+0) released his first negative television ad, suggesting that his internal polls may show Becky Greenwald gaining on him.

I can’t tell you today who will win on November 4, but I guarantee you that some Democrats in “tossup” seats will lose, even as other Democrats take over “likely Republican” or “safe Republican” districts. Which brings me to my third point.

3. We need to expand the field of Republican-held districts we’re playing for.

Thankfully, the bad old days when the DCCC would target 22 races, hoping to win 15, are just a memory. The DCCC has put more than 60 Republican-held seats in the “Red to Blue” category. Not all of those seats have seen media buys or other significant financial investment from the DCCC, however.

Plus, as I mentioned above, Dan Lungren is sweating bullets in CA-03, which isn’t even on the Red to Blue list.

In 2006 we won at least two seats that were not in the Red to Blue program (IA-02 and NH-01) and came oh, so close in NC-08.

The bottom line is that a lot of Democratic challengers with the potential to win are not getting the support of the DCCC. This post at Swing State Project lists lots of seats once thought safe for Republicans, which are becoming competitive.

Where can netroots fundraising have the most impact? In my view, it’s in the winnable districts where there will be no influx of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the DCCC or other outside groups. Many of these are districts where an additional $50,000 or even $25,000 can make the difference.

The mother of all moneybombs dumped three-quarters of a million dollars into Elwyn Tinklenberg’s campaign in 24 hours over the weekend. It was a strong statement against the intolerance and bigotry Michelle Bachmann (MN-06) displayed on Hardball.

While I respect the enthusiasm, I can’t agree with those who are still asking the netroots to give to Tinklenberg, even after he’s collected more than $750,000 and the DCCC has promised to put $1 million into this race. Tinklenberg now has the resources to run an aggressive paid media and GOTV effort for the next two weeks. He probably has more money than he can spend effectively with so little time left.

Raising $50,000 for each of ten good challengers would be a better use of our energy than continuing to push activists to give to Tinklenberg.

Remember, few challengers are able to match incumbents dollar-for-dollar, but that doesn’t mean they can’t win. They don’t need to match incumbent spending, but they do need the resources to improve their name recognition and capitalize on the Democratic wave.

Which House races should we target for a moneybomb? I would suggest looking at the list of candidates on the Blue America ’08 page at Act Blue, as well as the candidates endorsed by Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund. We have good reason to believe that those candidates will stand up for progressive values.

I would then pick a few Democrats on those lists who are not benefiting from large independent expenditures by the DCCC or others.

Our money will go further in districts with relatively inexpensive paid media.

I would also favor candidates taking on particularly odious incumbents, such as Dennis Shulman (running against Scott Garrett in NJ-05) and Debbie Cook (facing Dana Rohrbacher in CA-46). RDemocrat has written a book’s worth of material on why we should support Heather Ryan against “Exxon Ed” Whitfield in KY-01.

And what kind of Iowan would I be if I didn’t mention Rob Hubler, who is taking on Steve King in IA-05? My fellow Iowa blogger 2laneIA published this comprehensive diary showing that if we’re talking about the most ignorant and bigoted wingnuts in Congress, King gives Michelle Bachmann a run for her money. Click the link to read all about King’s “greatest hits,” including his suggestion that we electrify the border fence with Mexico like we do “with livestock,” his prediction that terrorists will be “dancing in the streets” if Obama becomes president, and his pride in working to scale back funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (which he calls Socialist Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents). King considers his work to reduce SCHIP funding a “key moment” in his Congressional career.

Amazingly, there’s even more to dislike about King than 2laneIA had room to mention in that piece. For instance, while still a state senator, King was a leading advocate for Iowa’s “official English” law, which was adopted in 2002. Then he filed a lawsuit in 2007 to stop the Iowa Secretary of State’s office from providing voter information in languages besides English. It’s not for nothing that Ann Coulter calls King “one of my favorites.”

Hubler is a good progressive who spoke out against the FISA bill and supports the Responsible Plan for Iraq. I just found out yesterday that during the 1980s he was INFACT’s national director of the boycott against Nestle. Hubler also happens to be running a great campaign, but he is not getting much outside help except from Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund, which has sent an organizer to work on the campaign.

Two dozen House Democrats already represent districts with a partisan voting index of R+5 or worse. We should be able to increase that number in two weeks and send home Republicans who didn’t even realize they were in trouble.

Few people have enough money to donate to every worthy Democratic candidate. But if the netroots could raise more than three-quarters of a million dollars for Elwyn Tinklenberg in just over 48 hours, we ought to be able to raise $50,000 each for ten good challengers, whose races are relatively low-profile.

Who’s with me on this, and which districts should we target?

We posted earlier about the bizarre case of Arizona GOP Rep. John Shadegg’s campaign credit card being discovered on the floor of the Arizona Democratic Party’s headquarters. Shadegg’s campaign rushed out an email in response saying that a “volunteer” accidentally dropped the card while paying for an Obama bumper sticker (on a total whim). That seemed like a pretty odd explanation (to be generous), but the Arizona Democratic Party just rushed out this release exposing a few holes in that story. Once again, here is the release in full:

Lost and Found, Part Two: The TRUTH About John Shadegg’s Campaign Credit Card

John Shadegg’s campaign isn’t being honest.

MYTH: According to both John Shadegg’s campaign manager and spokeswoman, a campaign “volunteer” accidently dropped John Shadegg’s campaign credit card at an Arizona Democratic Party office while purchasing a bumper sticker. (AP, 10/20/08; PolitickerAZ, 10/20/08)

FACT: Shadegg’s so-called “volunteer,” Ryan Anderson, is actually Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager. (Yellow Sheet Report, 9/10/08)

MYTH: Shadegg’s campaign “volunteer” entered the Democratic office to purchase a bumper sticker. (AP, 10/20/08; PolitickerAZ, 10/20/08)

FACT: Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager did not purchase a bumper sticker. The Democratic Party requires that individuals fill out contribution forms when they buy bumper stickers, but has no record of a purchase by Ryan Anderson.

STATEMENT: “John Shadegg’s campaign is being dishonest,” said Maria Weeg, Executive Director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager entered our office, likely to spy on supporters of Bob Lord’s campaign for change and attempt to obtain confidential information on Lord’s strategy. Congressman John Shadegg should make clear whether he condones his campaign’s behavior and whether he will continue to employ the individuals responsible for spying on the people of Arizona.”

NEW QUESTIONS:      

1) Why would an employee of both John Shadegg’s congressional office and his campaign provide a “volunteer” with the campaign’s credit card?

2) Why did John Shadegg’s campaign claim that Ryan Anderson is a “volunteer” when in fact he is Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager?

3) Why would John Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager purchase a Democratic bumper sticker?

4) Did John Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager access any information in the office or remove any materials – and, if so, will he return this information and materials?

5) Does Congressman John Shadegg condone his campaign’s behavior and will he continue to employ the individuals responsible for spying on the people of Arizona?

University of Connecticut for the Hearst Newspapers (10/8-15, likely voters, no trendlines):

Jim Himes (D): 44

Chris Shays (R-inc): 44

Other: 2

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±4.4%)

As DemFromCT says, 44 is an ugly, ugly place for an incumbent to be – especially when Barack Obama is leading John McCain by a 54-34 margin.

I hate to sound like I’m starting to do a victory dance about five yards shy of the end zone, but for practical purposes, the presidential race is all but over. (John King from CNN just reported that the McCain campaign has more or less ruled out the possibility of winning Colorado along with Iowa and New Mexico, which is tantamount to ruling out the possibility of winning the election. King reports Team McCain’s considers its last hope to be a triple-bank-shot approach of holding all the other battleground states and somehow picking up Pennsylvania.)

That doesn’t absolve anyone of doing the hard work of GOTVing, of course; it just should lead to some discussion of what we might do with the Obama campaign’s gigantic financial bounty. Considering that I write for Swing State Project, you might assume (correctly) that I would call for some of that money to be released to be spent on downballot races. The Obama campaign has seemingly read my mind, as he seems serious about not just bringing with him the 60-seat Senate and progressive-heavy House that he’ll need to enact his agenda, but even building at the state legislature level.

The Washington Post is reporting, in an aside in a piece of Obama’s advertising plans, that some of the campaign’s money may go to the DSCC and DCCC:

The campaign has raised so much money that it is considering passing some along to Democratic Party committees to try to help grow the party’s majorities in Congress, according to a campaign source.

Marc Ambinder also reports that the DNC may be moving money to state legislative races (as much as $20 million), especially in key contests like the New York Senate, Ohio House, and Texas House. This is, to my mind, extremely important, as expanding state legislative majorities serves to build the Democratic bench and Democratic brand, and will help establish as much Democratic control as possible over the 2010 redistricting process… one more example of how both Obama and Dean are playing 3-D chess after decades of Democratic committees playing tic-tac-toe. (H/t Kos.)

Which brings me to one more item on my wish list: that Obama himself, in the last week of the campaign, hold some rallies in Mississippi and Georgia, even if it means passing up the chance to try to nail down, say, the EVs of Indiana or West Virginia. Part of that, of course, stems from the need to call attention to and bolster enthusiasm for the campaigns of Ronnie Musgrove and Jim Martin, either of whom could be that Senate Seat #60. But there’s also the sheer symbolic power of it: the nation’s first African-American president marching confidently into the reddest corners of the Deep South, and making his last stand there.