Month: October 2008

Looks like the DSCC is finally dipping its toes in the water in the Peach State:

Last week, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer described Georgia and Kentucky as “even-steven races.” The committee hasn’t, however, officially added Georgia to its list of battleground states, and has been slow to pour money into the race. A spokesman said the committee did partially fund Martin’s latest television ad, which blames Chambliss for the economic turmoil.

“We think it’s a neck-and-neck race,” said DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller. “That’s why we sent money to the state party.”

The blogosphere has really stepped it up here in just the last few days. Daily Kos raised over $42K for Martin, and we’re just shy of $5,000 here at SSP. (Who wants to put us over the top?) I’m glad to see the DSCC get involved here, but with time running out, it’s time for them to seriously kick it up a notch. If we truly want to break the GOP’s spirit, this is the place to do it. It’s time to act now.

SSP has changed its ratings of four House races today. Here’s what we did:

Despite consistently strong fundraising for Democrat Bob Lord since he entered this race in early 2007, it was hard to see GOP Rep. John Shadegg as an especially ripe target in this R+6 Phoenix-area district.

But Democrats have caught Shadegg off-guard in recent weeks, with both the Lord campaign and the DCCC hitting Shadegg on the airwaves with a series of negative ads (the DCCC alone spending $700K on the race so far). Shadegg has been slow to respond, drawing some ire from DC Republicans who say that he hasn’t taken his race seriously enough.

On top of that, Shadegg has endured several days worth of bad press after he misused the image of a WWII veteran in one of his campaign ads — a blunder that drew an awkward and not totally sincere apology from Shadegg, followed by another blistering response. A recent poll of this race by Anzalone Liszt showed a dead heat, and while that might be optimistic (Research 2000 seems to think so), this race has to be considered in play now.

Hoo boy. After taking the seat of GOP creep Mark Foley in 2006 on a platform of family values, Democrat Tim Mahoney is now caught in an explosive sex and ethics scandal of his own.

Mahoney hasn’t had the smoothest of first terms; he started off with a thud when he said: “Very candidly, this isn’t the greatest job I’ve had.” He also declined to endorse Obama, and infamously said that: “I don’t owe the party anything… If anybody owes anybody anything, it’s Nancy Pelosi who owes a debt to me.” Mahoney may have thought he was providing some needed distance between himself and his party in an R+2 district with such comments, but they only succeeded in making him seem irritable and weird.

For a while it seemed like he’d get away with these behavioral defects, but with the recent leaking of lurid details of a sex scandal with a one-time staffer, a deal to keep her quiet, and audio recordings of a profanity-laced phone call, Mahoney is going to be hard-pressed to wipe off this kind of toxic sludge from himself before November.

After three contentious races, the fourth Hill-Sodrel match-up is lacking the energy that it used to have in past years, and this seems to benefit the incumbent.

Sodrel has posted lackluster fundraising numbers all year, and has run a less visible campaign than in previous cycles. A recent SurveyUSA poll gives Hill a 15-point edge, and Research 2000 posted similar results in recent days.

And if there was any doubt that Sodrel needs to shake this race up, a recent plea to include lie detectors at an upcoming debate from Sodrel’s allies seems to be enough to confirm some level of desperation here.

It doesn’t look like we’ll see a comeback from the ‘stache this time.

Democrats were always high on the chances of John Boccieri, a state senator and Air Force vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. While this district does have a Republican lean, it’s been trending in the Democratic direction as of late, and Democrats have put themselves in a good position to pick up this open seat.

Two recent polls (one from Research 2000 and another from SurveyUSA) have given Boccieri 10 and 8-point leads, respectively, but the biggest advantage that Dems have racked up here is in the brute force column. The DCCC has already spent over $1 million defining Schuring in a negative light, while the NRCC is apparently in retreat, cutting back their $820K ad reservation in this district by $320K. When (or if?) that money kicks in, it may be too little, too late to erase the big head start that Boccieri has amassed in this race.

UPDATE: The DCCC  added IA-04 to the Red to Blue list on October 14 and moved IA-05 up from Races to Watch to Emerging Races.

There have been no public polls in the race between Republican incumbent Tom Latham and Becky Greenwald in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, and neither candidate has released any results from internal polling.

However, Latham may be increasingly concerned about holding this D+0 district amid what looks like a landslide victory for Barack Obama in Iowa.

Until this week, Latham’s campaign messaging touted his record and mostly ignored his challenger. But on Monday he went negative, issuing this statement blasting Greenwald’s support for the recent bailout package. (She came out against the first bailout bill the House considered but supported the version that cleared the Senate before coming up for a House vote.)

Latham voted against both bailout bills, one of very few times he’s ever refused to support something the Bush administration wanted. For months, Greenwald has been hitting him on his lockstep Republican voting record. He is clearly grateful to have this issue to separate him from the White House and Republican leadership in Congress.

Last week Latham and Greenwald held two radio debates, and Latham brought up his no votes on the bailout at every opportunity. I commented at Bleeding Heartland that the bailout was the only thing that kept the second debate from being a rout for Greenwald.

During and after the debates, Greenwald brought up Latham’s consistent Republican voting record on lots of issues, including the deregulation of the banking sector which has contributed to the current economic problems. She also linked Latham to John McCain’s failed approach on health care reform and hammered him for supporting a privatization scheme for Social Security.

Latham denies he has backed privatizing Social Security, but to paraphrase Josh Marshall, he uses classic Republican “bamboozlement” language on this issue. He has supported private investment accounts, which could be devastating to seniors’ income in a bear market.

Greenwald has challenged Latham to televised debates as well. He declined one invitation and is dragging his feet on rescheduling an Iowa Public Television debate that was postponed while Congress was considering the bailout.

The third quarter financial reports for Latham and Greenwald are not available at Open Secrets yet. As of June 30, Latham had a big cash on hand advantage, in part because he sits on the House Appropriations Committee and in part because Greenwald had to get through a four-way Democratic primary (she won with more than 50 percent of the vote).

Greenwald’s summer fundraising must have been reasonably strong, because she went up on tv in September, got the endorsement of EMILY’s List, and was put on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Emerging Races” list.

No doubt Latham still has a money edge, because he has been advertising more extensively on tv and radio throughout the district. His first two television commercials focused on a bill he co-authored to address the nursing shortage and the need to “crack down on Wall Street greed” and help Main Street businesses.

Most House race rankings still put IA-04 in the “likely Republican” category, but this is a district to watch, especially in light of the big Democratic gains in voter registration and Obama’s double-digit statewide lead over McCain, confirmed by at least ten polls.

If Latham does hold on to his seat, I think he should send Nancy Pelosi a thank-you note. Here’s Latham’s voting record on corporate subsidies. Here’s Latham’s voting record that relates to government checks on corporate power. Here’s Latham’s voting record on corporate tax breaks in general (including sub-categories on tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and for the wealthiest individuals).

Yet despite his long record of standing with corporations rather than middle-class taxpayers, the bailout has allowed Latham to position himself this way going into the home stretch of the campaign:

“Reckless Wall Street CEO’s made a mess and they asked Iowans to pay to clean it up,” noted Latham for Congress spokesperson Matt Hinch. “Tom Latham stood up in Congress and protected Iowans by twice voting no on this massive Wall Street bailout. Tom Latham believes that, as a matter of principle, it is wrong to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to reward, benefit and bailout those on Wall Street who created this mess.”

Highlights of Becky Greenwald’s endorsed Wall Street bailout plan includes:

* The largest corporate welfare proposal in U.S. history all at taxpayer expense;

* Gives the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and Wall Street veteran and former Goldman Sachs CEO, Henry Paulson a no-strings checkbook with $700 billion in taxpayer funds to spend as he sees fit;

* The Washington Post reports that there is a strong possibility of conflicts of interest, since the same companies who created the mess on Wall Street will, “be managing the assets while also selling their own troubled securities to the government.”;

* Taxpayer funded pork in the bill included tax breaks for rum, sports entities, television and the manufacturer of wooden arrows for children;

* And, no guarantee by Secretary Paulson that his plan will actually work.

“Becky Greenwald would reward the same greedy CEO’s who caused this crisis,” continued Hinch. “Becky Greenwald would spend $700 billion of Iowans’ money to fix Wall Street mistakes and greed. No accountability and no guarantee it will even work. It’s clear that Iowans can’t trust Becky Greenwald with our tax dollars.”

I don’t know whether this tactic will work for Latham, but I do know that if he were very confident, he would be sticking to a positive message.

I don’t know if this is a sign that it’s over for John McCain or simply a benefit of having so much money, but the Politico is reporting that the RNC is planning to pump $5 million into senate races to protect endangered incumbents.

The Republican National Committee, growing nervous over the prospect of Democrats’ winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, is considering tapping into a $5 million line of credit this week to aid an increasing number of vulnerable incumbents, top Republicans say.

With party strategists fearing a bloodbath at the polls, GOP officials are shifting to triage mode, determining who can be saved and where to best spend their money.

And with the House and Senate Republican campaign committees being drastically outspent by their Democratic counterparts, and outside groups such as Freedom’s Watch offering far less help than was once anticipated, Republicans are turning to the national party committee as a lender of last resort.

A decision is imminent because television time must be reserved and paid for upfront, and available slots are dwindling.

One thing that stands out is that there is no indication that they plan to help out Bob Schafer in Colorado or Wicker in Mississippi. What was also interesting is one GOP staffer who thinks the RNC shoud bail on McCain altogether.

But that the party would use new money to block a Democratic triumph in the Senate rather than boost the odds of its presidential nominee speaks volumes about what many Republicans think is still salvageable. And some in the GOP, especially those working on House and Senate races in which their candidates’ poll numbers swoon during the financial crisis, are increasingly agitated about money being spent on what all observers, including McCain, acknowledge is an uphill fight on top of the ticket.

“They should pull the money from ­McCain like [former RNC Chairman] Haley Barbour did in ’96, when Dole slid away, and funnel it to save some Senate and House seats as best they can,” said one longtime GOP strategist who is working on congressional races.

If I haf to guess, I would say such cash will go to help Saxby Chambliss, Mitch McConnell and John Sununu. If I were the DSCC, I would see if they can open up a line of credit like the nrcc did, or find a way to raise a quick $10 million. The RNC does have a lot of money and I do not want to pass up a once-in-a-generation opportunity because of money.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/6-8, likely voters):

Kathy Dahlkemper (D): 48

Phil English (R-inc): 41

Undecided: 9

(MoE: ±5)

Another brutal showing for Philly the Hutt. Remember, a recent SurveyUSA poll from late September had Dahlkemper ahead by 49-45. English’s favorable rating, at 39-45, says it all (Dahlkemper has a 49-28 rating).

With numbers this bad, it’s no surprise that the NRCC has made shoring up English priority number one in their independent expenditure shop. In a year like this, though, I’m not sure if money is gonna save him — especially with Barack Obama edging McCain by 48-46 in this culturally conservative R+1.6 district.

You can’t say that English has been caught off guard — he’s been very vocal about the danger he’s in for months, and has flooded the airwaves with ads since the early summer months in an effort to swamp out the poorly-funded Dahlkemper. You can’t dock English marks for effort, but nothing he’s been doing appears to be working at all.

OK-Sen:

     Andrew Rice (D): $899K raised (7/10-9/30)

     Jim Inhofe (R-inc): $910K raised (7/10-9/30)

MN-06:

     El Tinklenberg (D): $469K raised; $357K CoH

NH-01:

     Carol Shea-Porter (D): $320K raised

NJ-03:

     John Adler (D): >$550K raised; >$1.2M CoH

     Chris Myers (R): $369K raised; $288K CoH

NJ-07:

     Linda Stender (D): $681K raised; ~$600K CoH

     Leonard Lance (R): >$500K raised

NM-01:

     Martin Heinrich (D): $750K raised

PA-11:

     Lou Barletta (R): $400K raised (via press release)

Seen any other numbers lately?

Previous threads:

3Q Fundraising Reports Thread | Wrath of… | …and the Used Tanning Bed

Garin Hart Yang for Frank Kratovil (10/7-8, likely voters, 4/23-24 in parens):

Frank Kratovil (D): 43 (34)

Andy Harris (R): 41 (43)

Undecided: 16 (23)

(MoE: ±5)

The last poll we saw from this open seat race, a DCCC internal from Grove Insight, had the race tied at 36-36 — a result fueled in part by outgoing GOP Rep. Wayne Gilchrest’s endorsement of Kratovil in early September. Since then, the DCCC has come in with over $630,000 in expenditures against Harris.

While the Harris campaign predictably is scoffing at these numbers, it seems telling that we haven’t seen a GOP-sponsored poll of this race since July. So in response to two promising polling results for Kratovil in a row, will they now put out some of their own numbers?

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

Everyone heads up. The Georgia Race has been offically declared red hot by the beltway pundits with this email just now hitting my box.

Mon Oct 13 14:48:57 CDT 2008Race: 2008 Senate – GAThe Cook Political Report Race Rating for this race has been changed from LeanRepublican to Toss Up.

Yep, DC has labled it a toss-up and with Oregon going blue this could be the biggest race on Election Night. All hands of deck!

The Cook PVI rates every House district according to how its vote compared to the national Presidential vote in 2000 and 2004.  Overall, a majority of the House seats, 234 have at least some Republican lean at the Presidential level.  A strong minority, 201, have a Democratic lean.  Democrats currently hold 50 seats that tend Republican at the Presidential level while Republicans hold a dwindling number, 15, with a Democratic lean.

Republican held seats with a D PVI were major targets in 21006 and they continue to be major targets this year.  The status of these 15 seats in four prediction systems (SSP, Open Left/Chris Bowers, Charlie Cook, and Larry Sabato) are discussed below.  These predictions were, for the most part similar and would tend to point to Democrats winning somewhere between 5 and 8 of these seats in the upcoming election.  The number would be higher but for feeble efforts in at least three of these districts.

The two most likely seats to flip both on this list and in the entire country are both located in NY state.  The troubles and travails of the Republicans in Staten Island based NY-13 sound like the “plot” of an old Mel Brooks film.  Chris Bowers over at Open Left gives this D+1 district its most pessimistic rating, “Lean D.”  SSP, Cook and Sabato rate it as Likely D. In NY-25, there is a lot less drama but a safer district (D+3) with Dan Maffei leading the last poll by 18 points.

Five of the 15 seats were labeled Tossups by SSP (CT-4, IL-10, NV-3, NJ-3, and NM-1).  Chris Bowers also had 5 tossups but he had NM-1 as Lean Dem and added PA-15 as a Tossup.  Charlie Cook had 5 Tossups including WA-8 but having IL-10 as Lean Republican.  Larry Sabato agreed with Cook on both WA-8 (Toss up) and IL-10 (Lean R).  I’d agree with SSP although in my heart of hearts Democrats lead in both NJ-3 and CT-4.

Three or four of ther other seats are labeled competitive and three or four become “safe.”  SSP sees one seat as Lean R, WA-8.  That makes sense as it is Lean R with Bowers and Tossup elsewhere.  Matt Stoller’s pieces from the district are interesting but negative.  Darcy Burner has lost the mojo, in fact he sees Obama as sucking all the oxygen and all the juice out of the Washington Governor’s and the WA-8 House race.  The incumbent (Reichert) is pushing blue collar like you wouldn’t believe with repeated public appearances in T shirt (usually white) and jeans.  Seems to be working.  

SSP places IA-4 (the least D of these disericts at D+0) and PA-15 as Likely R.  I’ve lived in PA-15 as recently as 1999.  He can be winnable if everybody is on the same page.  It’s a de-industriaslizing district.   Charlie Dent get a pretty stiff challenge from a candidate who barely made the ballot.  He’s 30 years out of touch with this district.

PA-6 is a solid D+2 that was barely lost in 2006.  Racws to Watch or Likely R.  I’d pkace it as Likely R but … SSP is the pessimist.  Bowers, Cook, and Sabatp give it Likely R status.

FL-10 was long a favorite at SSP but it has dropped off the list.  It’s D+1 and Bowers places it as Likrly R.  Otherwise no bites.  We have a Mayor rrom a mid-sized town running (Duneddin).  Young is the senior GOPer in the House, first elected in 1970.  Ralph Regula (retiring) and Alaska’s Don Young follow in the GOP pecking order.

Nobody puts any of the other three on the boards and it is a shame.  DE-At Large has a gaudy D+7 PVI with the added allure of Joe Biden running for VP (and the Senate).  Yes Castle has a lot of money but this was the year to a) drain the treasury and b) maybe surprise him.  If the DCCC is really flush they ought to run a few ads just to see.

NJ-2 is the third most D heavy district on the list.  Frank Lo Biondo is getting a little challenge but not the major push Jersey Democrats thought they’d muster.  

Peter King represents a sliver of Long Island covering the edges of Nassau and Suffolk counties,  Rumor has it he’ll run for Governor in 2010.  Then rumor had it he’d be more solidly opposed.  King and McHugh could conceivably be all that’s left of the NY GOP at the federal level in under a month.

So what’s your take.  Are we more likely to pull a major upset in one of those R+16 type districts we fight in or somehow wind up with the Christmas present from DE-At Large?