Month: October 2008

SurveyUSA (10/14-15, likely voters, 9/5-7 in parens):

John Yarmuth (D-inc): 57 (53)

Anne Northup (R): 41 (45)

(MoE: ±4%)

Anne… let it go.

According to the Politico, Jim Martin pulled in $1.3 million in the third quarter compared to Saxby Chambliss' total of $1.1 million. While this number is encouraging, Jim's spending leaves him with only $93,000 left in COH.

However, this number does not take into account the $100,000+ raised in the last week on ActBlue. Of which, Swing State donors have contributed over $5000! This race is close in the polls and the fundraising numbers are certainly a sign people are investing to send Saxby home in November.

It is beginning to look like the senate race in Alaska may no longer hinge on Ted Stevens’ trial verdict. According to court testimony by his wife, senate staffers handled the privte bills of both the senator and his wife.

This seems to have little to do with the specific charges against Ted Stevens, but Catherine Stevens’ testimony has revealed that the senator used a well paid Senate aide to pay personal credit cards and home utility bills and run other personal errands for the senator and his wife.

Prosecutors in the corruption trial of Stevens have gone on the attack as the senator’s wife heads into her second hour of testimony, accusing the couple of using Senate staff for all sorts of things, like cutting the grass in the D.C. home and paying Nieman Marcus bills for Mrs. Stevens — all out of the Stevens family account.

It’s not unusual for senators to use staff as gophers, including running errands and driving them around town, but the testimony seems designed to show the jury that Stevens and his wife lived a privileged life in which Senate staff were put to use for personal needs.

The aide in question is Barbara Flanders, an aide who made $126,000 as part of Sen. Stevens’ staff in 2007, according to the legislative database legistorm.com

“Didn’t your husband’s staff pay your credit card bills?” lead prosecutor Brenda Morris asked Catherine Stevens. “Did Barbara Flanders pay your Saks Fifth Avenue bills?”

“She could have,” Catherine Stevens said. “She had authority to sign on our accounts.”

Stevens’ explanation is that she and her husband have a joint Senate credit union account for their personal checking, and Flanders was put in charge of personal bills, including paying utilities, insurance and other bills for the chalet in Girdwood, Alaska, that is the subject of this investigation.

Stevens has said she paid every invoice that came to her home as part of the renovations that led to the FBI investigation that has Stevens on trial in federal court.

I know it is not an illegal act to have congressional staffers handle these kinds of errands and it has happened before. But given the heavy stench of corruption that has permiated the state on all levels of government, voters may decide they have had enough of this, whether he is found guilty or not.

Cross-posted at 21st Century Democrats blog.

Afraid that they will lose this election, Republicans have turned ACORN into the boogie man. They are making baseless claims that ACORN is perpetuating voter fraud due to its voter registration activities.

In fact, the Republican National Committee’s chief lawyer has labeled ACORN a “quasi-criminal organization,” and McCain’s campaign has launched ads accusing the group of “massive voter fraud” and bullying banks into making risky home loans. McCain’s camp is also trying to link Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to ACORN. Last night, McCain said, “ACORN is destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Rather than cower in fear, 21st Century Democrats is proud we honored Katy Gall of Ohio Acorn with our 2008 Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award. And we are equally proud to have honored Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, as one of our Leaders-in-Action – another target of Republican voter suppression tactics.

Now we will be partnering with No Voter Left Behind to fight voter suppression and vote theft in Ohio and throughout the country because these charges are just another chapter in the long history of conservatives trying to suppress and steal votes.

Paul Weyrich, “father” of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and various other groups telling a gathering of conservatives that he doesn’t want people to vote. In fact he says, “Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Here are some additional facts:

• ACORN has helped 1.3 million citizens from all parties and all walks of life register to vote.
• In most states, ACORN is required by law to turn in every voter registration card – even in cases where the cards are not valid.
• It is ACORN that has reported almost all of the issues regarding voter registration cards.
• Invalid voter registration cards do NOT constitute voter fraud. Even RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has recently acknowledged he is not aware of a single improper vote cast as a result of bad cards submitted in the course of an organized voter registration effort.
• A 2005 study by the League of Women Voters and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio found that only 4 of about 9, 000,000 votes cast in the state from 2002-2004 were fraudulent.

Here are some additional links to the voter suppression efforts in Michigan this cycle: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Rasmussen (10/14, likely voters, 9/15 in parentheses):

Jeff Merkley (D): 47 (45)

Gordon Smith (R-inc): 47 (46)

(MoE: ±4.0%)

There seems to be a lot of preemptive celebrating of a pickup of this seat, but Rasmussen’s newest poll indicates that Gordon Smith isn’t going to go quietly into the night. It’s a tied race, although that’s actually an improvement from last month, where Smith had a 1-pt. lead.

Rasmussen has tended to be a litle more favorable to Smith than other pollsters recently. Part of that may be that they don’t account for Constitution Party candidate Jeff Dave Brownlow, who vacuumed up 7% of the vote in SurveyUSA polls. Looks like one of the big questions, come election day, will be how many hard-right rural voters come home to Gordo (whom they tend to view as an effete RINO, although their dissatisfaction is more likely to be more from a nativist Paulist angle than a theocon angle) instead of registering the protest vote.

Ohio Republicans appear to have won a major court “victory” that could throw this year’s election into chaos.  A Federal Appeals Court in Cincinnatti ruled 9 to 6 that the Secretary of State must provide detailed localized lists of newly registered voters whose Motor Vehicle IDs and/or Social Security numbers provided for voter ID don’t match centralized lists.  Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimates that at least 200,000 of the 666,000 voters registered this year would fall in this category.

Newspapers in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnatti and Akron reported this matter of factly, largely relying on the AP feed.  Brunner felt that the decision was too late, relied on an incorrect reading of the Federal HAVA (Help America Vote Act) law, and planned to appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court.

It is totally clear that much of the same obstructionist policy implemented by Ohio Republicans under Ken Blackwekk would return in 2008.  More Republican challenges.  Hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots.  :ong lines and lots of problems in Democratic districts.  Easy times and no challenges in predominantly Republican districts.  

These votes are primarily Democratic and many were triggered by the high intensity Ohio primary.  Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) said that it had 100,000 new voters with 34,000 coming after the primary and the rest coming earlier.

CNN reported that many of these voters participated in the heated Ohio primary.  That would tend to make those results at least suspect.  CNN suggested in its broadcasts that the fairest result would be to clean this up after the 2008 elections are held.

From The Hill:

The National Republican Congressional Committe (NRCC) has canceled nearly $320,000 in planned ad buys in favor of Rep. Joe Knollenberg’s (R) reelection efforts in Michigan’s 9th congressional district.

According to numbers obtained by The Hill, the NRCC has canceled its buys in the next two weeks, while preserving an expenditure in the last week of the campaign.

The NRCC canceled one buy from October 14-20 for $150,000, and another October 21-27 for almost $170,000. The preserved expenditure, to run from October 28-November 4, amounts to almost $314,000-just slightly less than the sum the NRCC had planned to spend in the race in the preceding weeks.

By my count, that makes eight ten confirmed districts (including OH-16 and NM-01) where the NRCC has scaled back their ad time (although, in FL-16’s case, it doesn’t look like they’ll need to spend much money to topple Mahoney there).

They must be bracing themselves for something big over at the NRCC’s headquarters.

This list is entirely made up of shifts in favor of Democrats, seems mostly reactionary to fundraising reports.  

The single-handedly biggest surprise to me is the shift of KS-02 from Toss Up to Lean Democrat.  Boyda got killed in fundraising, and he still bounced the race in her favor…  He obviously is seeing more there than we are.  

There are 25 shifts, that filled up his entire “Recent History” list.  It makes me wonder if there were more than 25 and I can’t see the rest because I’m not a subscriber.  

Arizona-01 (Kirkpatrick v. Hay)

Likely Dem <—- Lean Dem

Arizona-05 (Mitchell v. Schweikert)

Likely Dem <—- Lean Dem

Arizona-08 (Giffords v. Bee)

Likely Dem <—- Lean Dem

California-03 (Dursten v. Lungren)

Likely Republican <—- Solid Republican

California-04 (Brown v. McClintock)

Lean Republican <—- Likely Republican

California-46 (Cook v. Rohrabacher)

Likely Republican <—- Solid Republican

California-50 (Leibham v. Bilbray)

Lean Republican <—- Solid Republican

Connecticut-05 (Murphy v. Cappiello)

Solid Democrat <—- Likely Democrat

Georgia-12 (Barrow v. Stone)

Solid Democrat <—- Likely Democrat

Illinois-08 (Bean v. Greenberg)

Solid Democrat <—- Likely Democrat

Illinois-14 (Foster v. Oberweis)

Likely Democrat <—- Lean Democrat

Indiana-03 (Montagano v. Souder)

Lean Republican <—- Likely Republican

Indiana-09 (Hill v. Sodrel)

Likely Democrat <—- Lean Democrat

Kansas-02 (Boyda v. Jenkins)

Lean Democrat <—- Toss Up

Maryland-01 (Kratovil v. Harris)

Toss Up <—- Lean Republican

Mississippi-01 (Childers v. Davis)

Lean Democrat <—- Toss Up

Missouri-09 (Baker v. Luetkemeyer)

Toss Up <—- Lean Republican

New Hampshire-02 (Hodes v. Horn)

Solid Democrat <—- Likely Democrat

Ohio-02 (Wulsin v. Schmidt)

Lean Republican <—- Likely Republican

Ohio-16 (Boccieri v. Schuring)

Lean Democrat <—- Toss Up

Pennsylvania-04 (Altmire v. Hart)

Likely Democrat <—- Lean Democrat

Pennsylvania-08 (Murphy v. Manion)

Solid Democrat <—- Likely Democrat

South Carolina-01 (Ketner v. Brown)

Likely Republican <—- Solid Republican

Tennessee-04 (Davis v. Lankford)

Solid Democrat <—- Likely Democrat

Virginia-11 (Connolly v. Fimian)

Likely Democrat <—- Lean Democrat

Grove Insight for the DCCC (10/10-12, likely voters):

El Tinklenberg (D): 38

Michele Bachmann (R-inc): 42

Undecided: 15

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Interesting numbers. Could there be some truth to them? Well, considering that the NRCC has been canceling buys for GOP “star recruit” Erik Paulsen and shifting them to the 6th District instead, these numbers could very well be close to the truth.