Month: April 2009

Quinnipiac (4/14/-20, registered voters, March 2009 in parens):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 38 (37)

Chris Christie (R): 45 (46)

Undecided: 14 (15)

(MoE: 2.1%)

Strategic Vision (R) (4/17-19, registered voters, no trendlines):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 36

Chris Christie (R): 47

Undecided: 16

(MoE: 3%)

Both pollsters also test Corzine against a variety of lesser GOP candidates, and the numbers are pretty dispiriting – mostly a series of small leads for Corzine, but that’s due to name rec.

It’s the GOP primary where things get funkadelic. Strategic Vision gives Christie a 40-15 lead over his nearest competitor, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. But Q-pac has Christie up 39-24 among RVs and just 46-37 among LVs. I suppose we’d rather face the more conservative Lonegan, but does he have time to pull it out? The primary is on June 2nd. I’m not even sure how big a difference it would make – Q has them tied at 41, even though Lonegan is unknown by 72% of the state.

One interesting side-note: The same Q-Poll (different press release) finds that New Jersey voters approve of gay marriage by a 49-43 margin, a twelve-point shift in favor from two years ago. These numbers aren’t quite like the 14-point margin in favor in neighboring New York, but perhaps Corzine will start pushing this issue nonetheless.

NJ has civil unions, but a state panel found in December that they don’t provide full equality and recommended passage of a gay marriage bill. Corzine said he’d sign such legislation, but he hasn’t made it a signature issue like David Paterson has – yet. Even though only a small plurality supports gay marriage, it might nonetheless make political sense to push it. If Corzine does win, it’ll almost certainly be by a very narrow margin, and Karl Rove showed you can win elections like that by playing hard to issues which sharply divide the electorate, as long as slightly more voters are on your side.

New Jersey is intimately familiar with bitter, partisan races, and if Corzine wants to survive, he might have to wage some serious trench warfare.

• NY-20 (pdf): The BoE’s official tally bumps Scott Murphy’s lead up to 365, as 250 more ballots, mostly from Murphy stronghold Warren County, were added. Counting will continue for the forseeable future, unfortunately, and on Monday a judge will set a counting schedule for the ballots contested on the basis of second home residency.

The drip-drip of GOPers publicly throwing in the towel on NY-20 continues: today star strategist Mike Murphy cried uncle, as did former NRCC chair Tom Reynolds yesterday. Campaign Diaries has a thought-provoking piece on why the GOP continues to drag this out in the courts, even though they’re in too deep a hole for “case by case” examination of the ballots to salvage the count for them: it may be to set precedent for future recounts, where picking off individual ballots may be targeted to their advantage.

• NY-Sen, NY-14: Rep. Carolyn Maloney has hired a statewide finance director, Lewis Cohen. Cohen denied that Maloney (who has been rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand) will be running for Senate, but his title of “statewide” is pretty telling, considering that Maloney currently represents a few square miles in Manhattan and Queens.

• PA-Sen: Only eight weeks before jumping into the Senate primary, Pat Toomey told Pennsylvania GOP chair Rob Gleason that he “didn’t want to be a Senator” and “be number 100 and vote no on everything.” Now this wouldn’t exactly be the first time a politician has promised one thing and done another, but the Specter camp has begun beating Toomey over the head with his flip-flop.

• MO-Sen: Ex-treasurer Sarah Steelman is “moving in [the] direction” of entering the GOP senate primary, but is in no hurry to make a formal announcement as she gets her campaign’s financial house in order first. (She’s still paying off debts from her unsuccessful gubernatorial run last year.) This comes against a backdrop of increasing public discomfort by the party concerning Roy Blunt’s candidacy, caused not only by his humdrum $542K fundraising quarter and his high burn rate, but also his lobbyist ties and long ‘establishment’ track record.

• GA-Gov, GA-03: With top candidates like Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Cobb Co. Commissioner Sam Olens bailing on the race, there’s an opening for a top-tier candidate to leap into the GOP field for the Georgia governor’s race. (SoS Karen Handel and Insurance Comm. John Oxendine are still in.) Could Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, who has occasionally expressed interest in this race, be the man? Westmoreland (perhaps best known for not being able to name the 10 commandments on the Colbert Report) is “seriously considering” it. Don’t look for a pickup of his R+19 seat if it’s open, though.

• AL-Gov: Republican treasurer Kay Ivey will be running for governor after all, according to party insiders. The perception was that her role in Alabama’s floundering prepaid tuition plan may have wounded her too much to run for governor, but she’s still going for it.

• CA-32: More endorsements as we approach the May 19 special election. Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu got the endorsement of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. (The district doesn’t include any of LA, but obviously he’s a big figure in the media market.) The United Farm Workers and the locals of the Southern California District Council of Laborers went for state senator Gil Cedillo.

• FL-08: Republican Orlando mayor Rich Crotty was looking like a major threat to just-elected Rep. Alan Grayson, but he’s getting tarnished with some legal troubles that may preclude him from running. A grand jury accused him of pressuring vendors to contribute to his re-election campaign. There’s still a deep Republican bench eyeing the race in this R+2 district, including state senate majority whip Andy Gardiner, ex-state senator Daniel Webster, and state rep. Steve Precourt. Grayson raised only $144K in the first quarter, but he may plan to self-finance, as he partially did in 2008.

• Demographics: Here’s some interesting data from the Census Bureau: fewer people moved in 2007 (35.2 million) than any year since 1962 (when the nation had 120 million fewer people). This has its roots in the housing bubble pop, as people underwater in their houses are unlikelier to relocate for work. This may show up in a big way in 2012 reapportionment, though, as more people staying in place may save a few seats in the northeast or midwest and limit growth in the south or west.

That’s Bond, Michael Bond:

State Sen. Michael Bond (D) is gearing up to run for Rep. Mark Kirk’s (R) seat, according to sources familiar with the situation. Kirk is pondering a bid for Senate in 2010, and his departure would make his north Chicagoland seat a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats.

Bond has tapped John Lapp to do his media campaign, Bennett, Petts & Normington to his polling and Ed Peavy to do direct mail for the race, according to one source familiar with the arrangement. The source also said a former aide to Rep. Melissa Bean (D), Brian Herman, will manage his campaign.

Kirk himself has set a pretty definite timeline for deciding his 2010 plans (“by the end of the month”), but the fact that Bond is already putting a campaign team together may indicate a willingness to run regardless of Kirk’s intentions. In any case, Bond may have company in an open seat race — fellow state Sen. Susan Garrett says that she’s considering a bid, and ’06/’08 nominee Dan Seals is known to be interested to run again if Kirk bails on the seat.

More info on Bond is available here.

Last October, Representative Michele “Crazy as Steve King” Bachmann (MN-06) disgraced herself on “Hardball” and sparked a ridiculously successful fundraising drive for her Democratic opponent, El Tinklenberg. I was impressed by the enthusiasm and kicked in a few bucks for Tinklenberg myself, but I was dismayed to see bloggers continue to help him raise money even after he’d raised more than $750,000 and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had promised to spend an additional $1 million in his district. Within a few days of Bachmann’s notorious comments, Tinklenberg had more money than he needed to run a solid media and GOTV campaign during the final two weeks before the election.

Since most Congressional races against incumbents are longshots, I wanted to see the netroots expand the field by raising $50,000 or more for a large number of unheralded challengers.

Instead, the fundraising frenzy for Tinklenberg continued.

Yesterday Markos linked to this piece from CQ Politics about how Tinklenberg’s campaign committee was the largest donor to the DCCC in March, giving a total of $250,000:

You may recall that his Republican opponent was Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose mid-October comment that Obama “may have anti-American views” angered Democrats nationwide and spawned an avalanche of contributions to Tinklenberg in the waning days of a campaign that Bachmann won by 46 percent to 43 percent, with a third-party candidate taking 10 percent.

Apparently the money was coming in too fast for Tinklenberg to spend completely: he raised $3 million for his campaign, of which $1.9 million came in after October 15, and had $453,000 in leftover campaign funds at the end of 2008 and $184,000 at the end of March.

I’m not saying it wasn’t worth getting behind Tinklenberg. Bachmann is among the worst Republicans in Congress, and this district rightly seemed winnable. However, the netroots clearly funneled way more money to Tinklenberg than he could spend effectively. We got carried away by emotions and were not thinking strategically.

What if a million of the dollars we sent to the MN-06 race had been spread around 10 or 20 other districts? A bunch of the candidates I wanted to support as part of an expanded field got blown out by large margins, but an extra $50,000 could have made the difference for Josh Segall in AL-03, or for several candidates who weren’t on my radar, such as Bill Hedrick in CA-44.

The netroots rally for Tinklenberg started out as a good cause but took on a momentum of its own. It didn’t help that Tinklenberg sent fundraising e-mails to his new donors every day or two during the home stretch, even after he had more than enough money to close out the campaign.

Maybe the majority of blog readers who gave $10 or $20 or $50 to Tinklenberg wouldn’t have given to some other longshot Congressional challenger. Maybe people need an emotional trigger before they are willing to open their wallets. But in future election cycles, we need to be smarter about how we focus our energy and our fundraising efforts during the final weeks of a campaign. There’s no shortage of wingnuts worth targeting. Also, a fair number of good incumbent Democrats will probably need our help in 2010, depending on how the economy looks 18 months from now.

Any ideas or suggestions on how to raise money effectively during the next cycle would be welcome in this thread.

CQ politics has finally released its ratings for the 2010 Senate and gubernatorial elections. Here they are:

Incumbent in parenthesis, *=retiring

First, the Senate races:

Safe Democrat

California (Boxer)

Hawaii (Inouye)

Indiana (Bayh)

Maryland (Mikulski)

New York (Schumer)

North Dakota (Dorgan)

Oregon (Wyden)

Vermont (Leahy)

Washington (Murray)

Democrat Favored

Arkansas (Lincoln)

Colorado (Bennet)

Delaware (Kaufman*)

Leans Democrat

Nevada (Reid)

New York (Gillibrand)

Wisconsin (Feingold)

No Clear Favorite

Connecticut (Dodd)

Florida (Martinez*)

Illinois (Burris)

Kentucky (Bunning)

Missouri (Bond*)

New Hampshire (Gregg*)

North Carolina (Burr)

Ohio (Voinovich*)

Pennsylvania (Specter)

Leans Republican

Louisiana (Vitter)

South Carolina (DeMint)

Republican Favored

Arizona (McCain)

Georgia (Isakson)

Kansas (Brownback*)

South Dakota (Thune)

Safe Republican

Alabama (Shelby)

Alaska (Murkowski)

Idaho (Crapo)

Iowa (Grassley)

Oklahoma (Coburn)

Utah (Bennett)

Now the governor’s races:

Safe Democrat

Arkansas (Beebe)

Maryland (O’Malley)

New Hampshire (Lynch)

Democrat Favored

Hawaii (Lingle*)

Ohio (Strickland)

New Mexico (Richardson*)

Leans Democrat

California (Schwarzenegger*)

Colorado (Ritter)

Illinois (Quinn)

Iowa (Culver)

Maine (Baldacci*)

Massachusetts (Patrick)

New York (Paterson)

Oregon (Kulongoski*)

Wisconsin (Doyle)

No Clear Favorite

Michigan (Granholm*)

Minnesota (Pawlenty*)

Nevada (Gibbons)

New Jersey (Corzine)

Pennsylvania (Rendell*)

Rhode Island (Carcieri*)

Virginia (Kaine*)

Wyoming (Freudenthal. Apparently he is considering suing to overturn the term-limits law, so CQ is unsure about rating this race until that is resolved)

Leans Republican

Alabama (Riley*)

Arizona (Brewer)

Oklahoma (Henry*)

South Carolina (Sanford*)

Tennessee (Bredesen*)

Texas (Perry)

Vermont (Douglas)

Republican Favored

Alaska (Palin)

Connecticut (Rell)

Georgia (Perdue*)

Florida (Crist)

Idaho (Otter)

Kansas (Parkinson*)

South Dakota (Rounds*)

Safe Republican

Nebraska (Heineman)

You can see the maps here:

http://innovation.cq.com/senat… http://innovation.cqpolitics.c…

Please comment and say what you think of CQ’s first batch of race ratings!

Thanks to everyone who already voted in that little Condorcet poll I put up on Sunday about which senate races are likely to flip in 2010.  

I said I’ll leave the poll open, so I will, in case anyone still wants to vote:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~…

… but here are the results with 42 votes. [Edited from original version]

The results were actually pretty decisive – in the top 10, most of the races “beat” the next one on the list pretty decisively.  Kentucky and Ohio are now close at #4 & #5, but that’s about it.  There’s a near-tie at #10 and #11 (Illinois, Louisiana) with Nevada also close at #12.  But other than that, the top of the list looks very stable.  Here’s what you all said:

1. New Hampshire (OPEN-R)

2. Pennsylvania (Specter-R)

3. Missouri (OPEN-R)

4. Ohio (OPEN-R)

5. Kentucky (Bunning-R)

6. North Carolina (Burr-R)

7. Connecticut (Dodd-D)

8. Florida (OPEN-R)

9. Colorado (Bennet-D)

10. Illinois (Burris-D)

11. Louisiana (Vitter-R)

12. Nevada (Reid-D)

13. Arkansas (Lincoln-D)

14. Delaware (OPEN-D)

15. New York-B (Gillibrand-D)

16. Iowa (Grassley-R)

17. Arizona (McCain-R)

18. Georgia (Isakson-R)

19. Kansas (OPEN-R)

20. Wisconsin (Feingold-D)

21. Oklahoma (Coburn-R)

22. California (Boxer-D)

23. Tied: Alaska (Murkowski-R) & North Dakota (Dorgan-D)

25. Washington (Murray-D)

26. South Dakota (Thune-R)

27. South Carolina (DeMint-R)

28. Hawaii (Inouye-D)

29. Indiana (Bayh-D)

30. Maryland (Mikulski-D)

31. Oregon (Wyden-D)

32. Alabama (Shelby-R)

33. Vermont (Leahy-D)

34. Utah (Bennett-R)

35. New York (Schumer-D)

36. Idaho (Crapo-R)

PPP (pdf) (4/17-19, registered voters):

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 42

Bob Beauprez (R): 43

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 39

Ryan Frazier (R): 35

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 40

Ken Buck (R): 36

Michael Bennet (D-inc): 41

Josh Penry (R): 34

(MoE: ±3%)

This is the second time PPP has examined the fortunes of Colorado’s appointed senator Michael Bennet. Bennet’s approvals are down in net negative territory, at 34/41 (with a large 25% not sure). PPP also polled Bennet in January, and Bennet isn’t making much headway at winning friends and influencing people: his favorable/unfavorable was 33/21 then, so most people who’ve formed an opinion since then have formed a negative opinion. It’ll be interesting to see whether the charisma-challenged Bennet can improve his standing, and what happens if he doesn’t. The real race to watch (and one I hope PPP polls next time) is a possible Democratic primary: former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff, who wanted the appointment and has weighed a challenge, has to be encouraged by these numbers to start testing the waters.

PPP also tried out some head-to-heads. There aren’t any trendlines from the previous poll, though, as none of the four guys PPP polled in January have taken any steps to run, and a new, lesser set of contenders has taken their place: Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier is officially in, while Weld County DA Ken Buck is likely to enter and ex-Rep. Bob Beauprez has at least made some noises. (State senate minority leader Josh Penry is more associated with the governor’s race, but it’s possible he may jump over to senate if he wants to avoid an awkward primary clash with his former boss, ex-Rep. Scott McInnis.) Beauprez can’t really be seen as lesser, I suppose, considering he’s just as well-known as Bennet, if just as little-liked; his favorability is 33-43. At any rate, Bennet is in a dead heat with the somewhat-well-known Beauprez (who lost the 2006 governor’s race), while the others seem to operate as “generic R” and lose to Bennet by a not-so-comfortable margin. (Discussion underway in conspiracy‘s diary.)

• PA-Sen: The founder of the PA chapter of the Club for Growth has called on Pat Toomey to drop out (!), saying that he’s too conservative for Pennsylvania. (No shit.) The Toomey camp fired back with some mostly non-responsive B.S. (D)

• CA-Gov: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom made the official leap from exploring the California governor’s race to being an officially announced candidate yesterday. He joins Lt. Gov. John Garamendi as the only formal candidates in the race, although Garamendi’s campaign is on hold while he pursues the CA-10 special election.

• CA-Sen: The California GOP has lined up a “strong second choice” to challenge Barbara Boxer if ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina doesn’t get in the race. African-American talk radio host Larry Elder, who was on Los Angeles’s KABC for 15 years, is meeting with GOP officials, but still sidelined while waiting for Fiorina. (The pro-choice, pro-pot legalization Elder is very much from the libertarian wing of the party.) Assemblyman Chuck Devore is already officially a candidate, but the party seems unenthused about his odds.

• NC-Sen, NC-07: Dem Rep. Mike McIntyre says that his re-election to the House is his current “concentration”, but when asked if he’s considering a Senate bid, McIntyre told a local ABC affiliate that “you never say never to anything.” A recent PPP poll had McIntyre trailing Richard Burr by only five points. (J)

• TN-09: Rep. Steve Cohen, as a white Jewish man representing a mostly African-American district, is going to always be vulnerable to primary challenges (as seen with last year’s mudfest with Nikki Tinker). It looks like he’ll be facing a serious test this year, as Memphis mayor Willie Herenton has formed an exploratory committee for the House race. Herenton is African-American and has been mayor since 1991, elected five times. On the other hand, there may be some Herenton fatigue going on in this district, as he is under federal investigation, was re-elected most recently with less than 50% of the vote, and announced his resignation in 2008 only to withdraw it shortly after.

• NY-20: You know it’s over for Jim Tedisco when major Republicans are telling him to pack it in. Yesterday, ex-Rep. Tom Davis said it was over, and today, state senator Betty Little (who lost the special election nomination to Tedisco) and Dan Isaacs (who’s running for state GOP chair) also called for the pulling of the plug. Isaacs is so upset that he’s reduced to making up new words: “Tedisco appears not able to pull out a victory in an overwhelmingly Republican district; to me that’s the final indignancy.”

• MI-02: Roll Call takes a quick look at the race to replace retiring Rep. Pete Hoekstra. On the GOP side, former state rep. Bill Huizenga is the “biggest voice that’s out there,” but state senator Wayne Kuipers is poised to get in, as is former NFL player Jay Riemersma, who’s well connected with the Christian right. (Notice a common thread in those names? This is the nation’s most heavily Dutch-American district.) There are three Democratic state reps in the district, too, but none of them seem to be making a move yet.

• Michigan: An interesting white paper obtained from the Michigan GOP shows that they’re quite pessimistic about getting back into power in 2010, despite the advantages they seem to be taking into next year’s governor’s race. Their suburban base has eroded since the 1990s, and their one-note message just isn’t resonating with swing voters anymore.

• NRSC: Continuing our theme of unusually reality-based Republicans today, NRSC John Cornyn is sounding an increasingly cautious note about senate prospects in 2010, telling the Hill that it’s “going to be real hard” to keep the Democrats from breaking 60 seats in 2010.

• NH-St. Sen.: Ex-Rep. Jeb Bradley, who lost twice to Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, has begun a new, more low-key chapter in his career, as a state senator. He easily won a special election, 61-39, over retired judge Bud Martin, to retain a GOP-held open seat. Dems continue to hold a 14-10 edge in the chamber.

John Sununu Sr. (the state GOP chair) didn’t seem interested in spinning the victory as indication of a new GOP trend in New Hampshire, though. Always a charmer, Sununu’s thoughts instead were:

He said Bradley’s election actually helps [Gov. John] Lynch. Bradley could be counted on to sustain a Lynch veto of the gay marriage and transgender discrimination legislation, “if he (Lynch) finds the strength to veto that garbage,” Sununu said.

I know it’s been a while, but some of the data from the Blogads reader survey is now available. Since there seems to be a good deal of interest in SSP demographics of late, we wanted to share these numbers with you. So far only a few questions are up, but we’ll post a note when more information (like what percentage of you watch the Simpsons) becomes available. Have fun!