Month: October 2008

Hot off the wire:

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE COUNTY & MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES P E O P L E – C00011114

  FEC-369170 Form F24 – filed 10/15/2008 – 24 HOUR NOTICE

  1. Opposes Candidate: KIRK SCHURING

       Office Sought: House of Representatives, Ohio District 16

       Payee: ADELSTEIN LISTON

       Date Expended = 10/13/2008      Amount Expended = $485900.00

       Purpose: Media Buy- TV Ads (OH)

  2. Opposes Candidate: KIRK SCHURING

       Office Sought: House of Representatives, Ohio District 16

       Payee: ADELSTEIN LISTON

       Date Expended = 10/13/2008      Amount Expended = $8500.00

       Purpose: Production Costs(OH)

With the DCCC and now AFSCME spending delivering a nearly $1.8 million moneynuke to Schuring in the past few weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the NRCC decided not to even bother with this one.

SSP currently rates this race as Lean Democratic.

Anzalone Liszt for the DCCC (10/12-14, likely voters):

Parker Griffith (D): 46

Wayne Parker (R): 38

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Those are decent numbers for Griffith as he fights to hold this open seat, but he’s also been dealing with some big hits from Republicans this week over out-of-context quotes pulled from a religious forum held last month. (You can read more about that here.) Even though, in their proper context, Griffith’s remarks were not offensive, there’s no question that this was a bit of a goof. But at least he has some help in his own defense:

David Carpenter, a Baptist minister from Florence, was the moderator of the forum last month. He said he was “shocked by the misuse of the quote from that event.

“I sat right between Wayne Parker and Dr. Griffith during the program and thought both did an excellent job discussing issues of faith and their views,” Carpenter said. “The response that is being used against Parker Griffith was part of his comment in a longer discussion of whether radical Islam was a threat to our Christian faith.

“I was there when he said these quotes and can tell you that they have been taken out of context, and it is unfortunate that anyone would misrepresent the truth in this way.”

Lake Research Associates for Darcy Burner (10/11-14, likely voters, 9/23-25 in parentheses):

Darcy Burner (D): 47 (45)

Dave Reichert (R): 40 (48)

(MoE: ±4.4%)

There was a sudden wave of pessimism about this race in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) last week in the face of two bad polls (an 8-point deficit in a public poll from R2K via Daily Kos, and a 3-point deficit in a Dem-sponsored poll). Things seem to have turned on a dime in the Eighth District, though.

Coming right after yesterday’s surprising DCCC poll giving Burner a five-point edge, here comes a second Dem poll from Lake (who found the 3-point deficit last time) showing Burner up by 7. I’d still like to see a poll from SurveyUSA of this race before I feel confident that it’s tracking alongside other possibly-successful rematches (like NC-08 and IL-10), but this has to be a real confidence booster.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, this is a district dominated by Microsoft and Boeing, and isn’t as directly impacted by chaos in the financial sector as a lot of other affluent suburban areas may be. However, Microserfs and Boeing employees still have 401(k)s, and I suspect they may have finally opened their statements last week.

Update: The full polling memo is available below the fold.

CrossPosted

Gary Pritchard is running for California State Senate in the 33rd district.  The 33rd is located in Orange County, CA, birth place of Richard Nixon and home of John Wayne Airport and Ronald Reagan Federal Building.

The 33rd Senate District includes Anaheim, Anaheim Hills, Fullerton, Villa Park, Orange, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Woods, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Aliso Viejo, Buena Park, Tustin, Silverado, Irvine, Santa Ana, Lake Forest, Coto de Caza and Foothill Ranch.

As you can see, the district is huge and covers a million people, more constituents than the State of Alaska.  And the local papers are not willing to even admit that Democratic Candidates exist.  Seriously, neither do the Republican candidates.

Republican absence kills UCI voter forum

October 8th, 2008, 4:45 pm · 1 Comment · posted by BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento Bureau Chief

UC Irvine planned to have a candidates forum this evening, but organizers had to cancel it when all of the Republican candidates said they couldn’t make it.

…

Quite a coincidence, huh? I’ve heard of Republicans in Illinois and Indiana ducking debates this year too. Maybe this is another example of how being Republican just ain’t a good thing this election year.

OC Register

The short article then went on to list every Republican who was invited and did not mention one Democratic candidate.  I posted the second comment to the story asking why didn’t they list the Democrats who agreed to come rather than just listing the Republicans.  My comment was removed or not approved.  It was polite and it was a very simple question.  But in admonishing the Republicans for not admitting that Democrats exist in Orange County they refused to admit their presence as well.  Talk about an uphill battle.

Local liberal blogger extraordinaire, Dan Chmielewski asked a very good question of the OC Register at the Liberal OC.  

Ever since Robert Novak was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the OC Register has been trying out a number of hard right columnists in spite of the growing purpleness of Orange County and the paper’s readership.  I’m on the record calling for them to add Paul Krugman of the New York Times as a worthy voice to the paper’s syndicated columnists.

In these trying times, wouldn’t it be good to hear from someone who’s beyond bright about economics?  Well, the Nobel committee this morning validated my rationale for my pitch to the Register by naming Krugam the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Liberal OC

So what was the response?  Steven Greenhut had this to say,

Steven Greenhut, on October 13th, 2008 at 9:17 am Said:

Although I am not the columns editor, I might point out that we have a free-market editorial page, so we’re not likely to run a lefty economist. Our running Krugman would be similar to you – who operates a Democratic blog – to start including bloggers who were Republican partisans.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think there is a huge difference between a Newspaper opinion section and a local blog?  Yes?

No wonder no one wants to run as a Democratic Candidate in this County.  It’s just so frustrating for local Candidates that have a D on the ballot.  Gary chose to run this race because no one else was going to.  He’s a community college teacher, musician and father but he also knew that he couldn’t stand the idea of people not having a choice when entering their voting booths or opening their absentee ballots.  

So we keep going, doing what we can when can.  I work full time as well and we are not financially well off.  Many came to our aid when we needed to raise money for Gary’s ballot statement but we are a spot again since the Republican Candidate did not put up her own Ballot Statement.  That means we out the Registrar of Voters at least another $7,400.  That’s about 40% of what we’ve managed to raise so far.  The Republican Candidate has at least $200,000 on hand and will probably not spend another dime as many have already declared her the victor in the election.

So here I am, asking again for your help.  I’ve dedicated myself to a handful of projects to work for, one of them being our Five year old daughter, who is the most important of these things in our life right now, the other is getting Proposition 8 defeated, saving some dogs from being put to sleep by fostering and adopting dogs taken from high kill shelters and raising money for Gary’s election.

So here is Emma and Charlotte:

if you have no desire to donate to Gary Pritchard’s campaign, donate to this rescue to help save more dogs from being euthanized.

and here is where you can donate to Non On Prop 8 if you decided you don’t want to help Gary Pritchard.  Do something if you haven’t yet.

But if you do want to help Gary, you can donate at his Act Blue site or email me and I will be happy to send you a self addressed donation envelope.

and our other woozle, Kona.  A sweet and much older Dachshund mix.

From the Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

By late Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had bought about $500,000 worth of advertising time on at least five metro Atlanta television stations for spots to support Democratic senate candidate Jim Martin in his uphill battle against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Moultrie. The spots begin running today. […]

As of late Tuesday afternoon, Atlanta’s five network affiliates: WSB, WXIA, WAGA and WGCL and WATL had not received copies of the ad, which is slated to run Wednesday morning. The ad will run largely during news broadcasts and in prime time, during such popular programs as “Dancing with the Stars,” “House” and NFL Sunday pre-game show.

The size of DSCC order is substantial. At $514,950, it is much larger than any weekly TV ad buy made by Martin since of the start of his campaign. The ad is scheduled to run 369 times by next week.

There’s no word yet on whether the DSCC is airing ads in Georgia’s other media markets (although metro Atlanta is certainly the biggest), but this is certainly a good start and an encouraging sign for Jim Martin. If we hope to win this race, all of us will need to kick it up a notch.

(Hat-tip: Ectoras)

Update: Here’s the ad:

Following the death of long time U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, Democrat Marcia L. Fudge, (mayor of Warrensville Heights) won a special election primary on Tuesday. Fudge had previously served as Tubbs-Jones chief of staff. She defeated a field of eight other candidates (not counted four who dropped out.)  This means that she will serve out the remaining few weeks of Tubbs-Jones term in the House, thereby giving her seniority over anyone else elected to the House next month.

Located in the Cleveland area, OH-11 has the greatest concentration of urban minority voters of any present Ohio U.S. House seat.

In recent years, the GOP has completely controlled state government in Ohio, including having veto proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.  This has allowed them to gerrymander both the Ohio U.S. House Districts and the seats in the state legislature.  In some cases (Cincinnati and Dayton, for example) the GOP was able to carefully split up urban areas and mix them in with upscale suburban and rural populations in order to produce U.S. House Districts that are securely but not overwhelmingly Republican.

As a result, eight of our Districts usually vote somewhere between 55 to 65% Republican, assuming a sitting, breathing and un-indicted incumbent. In 2006, the highest vote percentage for a Republican congresscritter was in OH-08 where tanning aficionado John Boehner  took 63.80% of the vote. On the other hand, we have three House Districts where the GOP has tried to “quarantine” as many Democratic voters as possible. This means that effectively, whoever gets the Democratic nomination is essentially unbeatable.

In 2006, in OH-09 Kaptur took 73.63%, in OH-17, Ryan got in 80.25%, and despite a serious primary challenge in OH-10, Kucinich got 66.41%. But the big winner was in OH-11 where Tubbs-Jones who took a whopping 83.44% of the vote.

But following the 2010 census, reapportionment is going to hit Ohio HARD. We are on track to lose two U.S. House sets out of our present eighteen.

If that process were held today, Democrats would have a one vote majority on the board that draws the districts for the state General Assembly .  GOP legislative leaders have bragged that under the present layout,  if Ohio votes an even 50-50 split, the GOP would control over 60% of the seats.  However, with a swing of just four seats this year, Democrats could gain control of the Ohio House which would vastly improve the functional balance of power in this state. At this point, the Ohio senate is hopeless both because of gerrymandering and an incompetent state campaign organization.

This is critical and has national implications, because the General Assembly draws the U.S. House districts, and the governor only has veto power over the plan.

IF, somehow, the Democrats are able to control the U.S. reapportionment process, I don’t see how we can afford to have three completely  whopperjawed Districts. This is particularly true given that two seats will have to be eliminated.

Which brings us back to the special election primary in OH-11, where just over 10,000 voters elected Ms. Fudge, out of 175,973 voters in the 2006 general election. Will her “seniority” result in special consideration during reapportionment? Will this House seat retain it’s present population make-up?

Local politics — national implications.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the DSCC has bought $514,950 worth of TV-ads in on five Atlanta TV stations.

http://www.ajc.com/news/conten…

From AJC.com:

As of late Tuesday afternoon, Atlanta’s five network affiliates: WSB, WXIA, WAGA and WGCL and WATL had not received copies of the ad, which is slated to run Wednesday morning. The ad will run largely during news broadcasts and in prime time, during such popular programs as “Dancing with the Stars,” “House” and NFL Sunday pre-game show.

The size of DSCC order is substantial. At $514,950, it is much larger than any weekly TV ad buy made by Martin since of the start of his campaign. The ad is scheduled to run 369 times by next week.

$500,000 is not much, but at least they are finally in. There should be more where that came from.  

The DCCC and NRCC filed a number of big expenditures tonight. All told, today was the biggest single day of expenditures by the DCCC so far this cycle. Here’s the rundown:

*RCCNM = Republican Campaign Committee of New Mexico

Tonight marks the first time that the DCCC has spent in IN-03, NE-02 and NY-29. For the NRCC, this is their first big expenditure against Democrat Raul Martinez in FL-21. (No word yet on any DCCC response.) Not included in this rundown is Freedom’s Crotch, who are spending $220K against Martin Heinrich in New Mexico’s 1st District.

For more details on these and other expenditures, please consult SSP’s Independent Expenditure Tracker.

Want to help defeat conservatism right in the heart of Red America?  How about Alabama, Heart of Dixie, where 29 year old attorney Josh Segall is the latest addition to the DCCC’s Red to Blue list.  If elected, Segall won’t be just another Blue Dog Democrat — he’s a true progressive, a better Democrat in a place where merely more Democrats would be welcome.

The Democratic party can and should take back Alabama’s 3rd District this year. The seat was held by a Democrat from 1875 until the 1996 election when Glen Browder retired and (now governor) Bob Riley won election to Congress as a moderate Republican. It was an open seat in 2002, a terrible year for Southern Democrats. The DCCC pulled out of the race late and Joe Turnham was completely off the air for a full two weeks before election day.  He lost by only 3800 votes. It’s kind of poetic justice that the DCCC is stepping in to help Segall — late, but not too late to make a critical difference in the race.

Josh Segall is running in AL-03 against 3 term incumbent Mike Rogers, the least effective Alabama Congressman in recent, and maybe not so recent, memory.  He’s been a rubber stamp for Bush, ranked 403rd out of 435 by Congress.org and is such a sucker he voted for CAFTA after receiving assurances from textile plant officials that the trade agreement would be be good for the local textile industry.  Good for the business owners who paid Alabama employees to pack up the manufacturing equipment for shipment to Central America; not good for East Alabama workers whose wages have plummeted as manufacturing jobs disappeared.  In the video below, Segall makes the point that sending jobs overseas should be regarded as a national security issue.

There’s more information about Segall and the nature of this race in my diary from a couple of months ago, including this list:

What Josh Segall supports:

– Network neutrality legislation and bringing affordable broadband internet access to every household in Alabama,

 – Health care benefits for national guardsmen and reservists,

– The GI BIll for the 21st Century,

– A moratorium on unfair trade deals such as CAFTA

– Investing in renewable energy and alternative fuels.

– The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

And he’s pro choice, recently telling a reporter “We should have fewer abortions, and I wouldn’t advise it for a family member, but I don’t think the federal government should decide that for you.”  

Introducing Segall for a recent liveblog, Howie Klein said:

Rogers is a classic rubber stamp Republican with an abysmal and indefensible voting record. Yes, it’s Alabama but Rogers is part of the right-wing jihad against working families and on those kitchen table issues Alabama is just like the rest of the country. And right now, they are steaming. Even in Alabama Bush’s approval rating is in negative territory, with barely 45% of the voters feeling he’s doing an acceptable job.

Rogers has the appearance of a beaten man lately, so much so that the publisher of the Anniston Star (they backed Rogers last time he had significant opposition) wrote this, emphasis mine.

We sat down with our congressman, Mike Rogers, the day after he voted for the unpopular but apparently necessary financial bailout bill. He seemed different, not particularly energized by the prospect of two more years in the House.

He was fatalistic, as if he were a helpless observer-victim of political earthquakes over which he had no control, whose direction and personal consequences were unknowable. “I might be defeated,” he said flatly.



…

Segall is a long shot but he could win, and what I gathered from our sit-down with Mike is that he doesn’t care all that much.

Maybe having to vote in favor of that 700 billion dollar bailout has left Mike Rogers demoralized, or maybe he realizes that he’s in over his head in Washington.  After all, he still thinks the decision to invade Iraq was a good one and that al Quaeda was in Iraq and that the Chinese were drilling for oil off the Florida coast.  Whether out of touch or out of his depth, Rogers needs to be out of Congress.

Here’s video of a recent debate between Segall and Rogers. It’s rather long (15 minutes — I’ll work on a highlights cut soon) but you can tell from just the opening statements that Josh Segall has substantive ideas for improving conditions in East Alabama.  Unlike Rogers, he’s not satisfied with the status quo.  Josh is the kind of Democrat who will rebuild the Democratic brand in the South — pushing infrastructure improvements, alternative energy and other legislation that will make a real difference in the lives of working families.

Mike Rogers has lost ground recently and is now polling below 50%.  This is no forlorn hope; Democrats can take this race.  If you want to see more and better Democrats, especially in Southern states, please support Josh Segall with a contribution, small or large.  We need to make sure Josh Segall has the resources to stay on the offensive right up to election day — this is the time to press the attack, not back away from the fight.