Month: January 2010

Some are beginning to talk up the possibility of the GOP not only taking the House but also the Senate this November. To do that they would have to win ten Democratic seats. In my view they currently lead in North Dakota, Nevada, Arkansas, Colorado and Delaware. Illinois and Pennsylvania are too close to call. Despite the loss of Massachusetts this week I still don’t think they will win all of these. But say for the sake of argument they did. They would then need three more from somewhere. Unless they can get fresh challengers in Washington, Wisconsin and more likely Indiana then they would have to win Connecticut, New York AND California to get control. To cut a long story short the gold standard of polling in the Golden State suggests the latter is very unlikely to happen.

Field Poll (1/5-17) MoE 3.3%

General Election

Barbara Boxer (D) 48%

Tom Campbell (R) 38%

Boxer (D) 50%

Carly Fiorina (R) 35%

Boxer (D) 51%

Chuck DeVore (R) 34%

The incumbent has a positive favorability rating of 48-39. The Republicans have far less name ID and only Campbell is in positive territory.

GOP Primary

Campbell 30%

Fiorina 25%

DeVore 6%

Undecided 39%

http://www.field.com/fieldpoll…

It’s been over two months since we last took stock of the open seat situation in the House, and a lot has happened since then. So, once again, our crack team of open seat forensic analysts down at SSP Labs have put together a new edition of the 2010 House Open Seat Watch.

As always, we’ve compiled three separate lists: one of confirmed vacancies/retirements, another of potential open seats, and a third – available below the fold – of names that have dropped off the watch list. As always, please note that “age” in our charts reflects the incumbent’s age on election day, 2010. Blue boxes indicate a new entry (or an incumbent who has been shuffled between categories). All tables are sortable – just click on any column header to sort.

We’ve got eight new additions to our big board of House retirements and vacancies, five of them Democratic, and three Republican. We’ve also had one subtraction, from GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach — although since he still technically has a primary challenger, he’s staying on the watch list for now.

What’s notable is that, just two months ago, we had zero “true” retirements (as opposed to attempts to seek higher office), and now we have exactly eight members saying goodbye to elected office in 2011.  Of the twelve Democratic-held open seats, Republicans have a chance of winning all but AL-07, FL-17, and FL-19. On the other hand, I think I count about two and a half legitimate pick-up opportunities for Democrats among the R-held seats up for grabs.

Meanwhile, eight new names are added to our watch list, and 11 have come off:

A list of incumbents whose names we’ve removed from the Open Seat Watch is available below the fold.

Resolved vacancies.

With SSP focusing its guns on Massachussetts earlier in the week, we held this poll in reserve until things got a little less crazy. Let’s have a look.

Rasmussen (1/14, likely voters, 10/15 in parens):

Charlie Melancon (D): 35 (36)

David Vitter (R-inc): 53 (46)

SOther: 4 (5)

Not sure: 8 (13)

Charlie Melancon (D): 31 (33)

Jay Dardenne (R): 53 (46)

Other: 6 (6)

Not sure: 10 (15)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

The second match-up, of course, is now a moot point:

Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne on Tuesday announced that he will not challenge Sen. David Vitter in the GOP primary this fall, ending months of speculation about the possibility of a high-profile intraparty fight in the Bayou State.

“After much consideration, I have decided not to seek the U.S. Senate seat this year,” Dardenne said in a statement. “My family and I thank the many Louisianians who have encouraged me to run, but I believe my role is to serve the people here in Baton Rouge rather than in Washington.” […]

“I have spoken to Sen. Vitter and encouraged him to continue fighting for fiscal responsibility and common sense in our nation’s capital,” Dardenne said.

A Dardenne run always struck me as more wishful thinking than an active possibility, but Vitter has to be pleased, nonetheless — this is probably the best week for him in a long time.

RaceTracker Wiki: LA-Sen

The Las Vegas Sun:

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki is now strongly considering a run for the U.S. Senate this year against Sen. Harry Reid, he told the Sun today.

“There are serious people making compelling arguments to me both in the state and out of the state to reconsider the Harry Reid race, and based on that pressure and those conversations I am indeed looking at it,” Krolicki said.

Republicans in Washington are displeased with the current crop of candidates taking on Reid, which includes former state Sen. Sue Lowden, former UNLV basketball star Danny Tarkanian and former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle.

All are viewed as second-tier.

Krolicki said Sen. John McCain, whose Nevada presidential campaign he chaired, had reached out to him in the past week.

“It’s hard not to consider this when you have people like John McCain asking you to,” Krolicki said.

You may recall that Krolicki was strongly considering challenging Reid, but terminated his plans after going through a drawn-out legal fiasco for much of the year. Krolicki was indicted for his alleged mismanagement of a college savings program, but the charges were thrown out by a Clark County District Court.

If the national GOP is hoping that they can clear the field with a preferred candidate, I don’t think they’ll have much success. But Krolicki should have a leg up in the primary in terms of name recognition, and he may have the sympathy of a primary base who see him as the victim of a partisan witch-hunt by the Democratic state AG’s office. Ultimately, whether he’s facing Krolicki, Lowden, or Tarkanian, Harry Reid is still on pace to lose re-election.

In other Handsome Harry news, Barack Obama is set to make a trip to Nevada next month for Reid. I’m sure that will be time well spent.

RaceTracker Wiki: NV-Sen

When it comes to writing about elections after the fact, I’m not a big post-mortem guy — I feel it can sometimes be a little disingenuous to diagnose a race with absolute certainty a day or two after, in many cases, you were hedging your bets as to the final outcome. That said, though, there are an endless supply of post-mortems out there on Martha Coakley’s mind-numbingly bad result last night, and some of them actually have some worthwhile observations to offer. Let’s round up a few of these pundit attempts to leave their mark on the CW:

• Jeff Zeleny, “Blogging the Massachusetts Senate Race” (The Caucus/NYT).
• Tom Jensen, “Takeaways from Massachusetts (Public Policy Polling).

• Neil Newhousie, “Massachusetts Voters in their Own Words… (Public Opinion Strategies).
  
  Neil Newhousie, “Scott Brown’s Twelve Keys To Victory… (Public Opinion Strategies).

• Chris Cillizza, “First thoughts on Scott Brown’s special election victory (The Fix/WaPo).
• Emily Cadei, “Brown Victory Sends Democrats Big Wake-Up Call” (Roll Call).
• Markos Moulitsas, “One candidate campaigned to win” (DailyKos).
• E.J. Dionne, “How Massachusetts was won (Post Partisan/WaPo).
• Nate Silver, “Let’s Play the Blame Game!” (FiveThirtyEight).
• Ben Smith, “Coakley called ‘machine,’ didn’t use machine (Politico).
• Richard E. Berg-Andersson, “What Was It All About, Then?” (The Green Papers).
• David Weigel, “Conservative Grassroots Strategy Propels Brown to Senate” (Washington Independent).
• Steve Lombardo, “Why Brown Won” (Pollster.com).
• Jazz Shaw, “The GOP Love Affair with Scott Brown Will Be a Short Fling” (The Moderate Voice).

• Reid Wilson, “Menendez Promises Review Of Dem Campaigns” (Hotline OnCall).
  
  Reid Wilson, “Pracitcal Lessons From Brown’s Win (Hotline OnCall).

• Steve Singiser, “MA-Sen: The Turnout Tells A Tale” (DailyKos).
• Andrew Gelman, “Scott Brown is More Liberal Than Olympia Snowe, and Now He’s Pivotal, Too (FiveThirtyEight).

DemFromCT also has a pundit roundup. If data, rather than chatter, is your drug, the WVWV exit poll is now available, as is Rasmussen’s not-surprisingly dead-on election night poll.

SurveyUSA for Firedoglake (1/16-18, likely voters):

Tim Bishop (D-inc): 47

Randy Altschuler (R): 45

Undecided: 8

(MoE: ±4.1%)

First of all, there is a pretty glaring peculiarity from this poll: it contains almost no young voters in its sample. Voters between the ages of 18-34 make up exactly 1% of its sample. Look: I wouldn’t be surprised if the youth vote is severely depressed in November, but that seems a little extreme. (Similarly, SUSA’s AR-02 poll had a 5% sample of young voters, and 3% in OH-01.)

I have no interest in discussing the healthcare portions of this poll (and neither should you), but the top lines are still worth having a look at. Critics of a poll like this might point to an Altschuler internal poll from mid-November that had Bishop ahead by 46-26. However, I think you can defensibly argue that the environment has gotten weaker for Democrats in the interim. Remember, this is not a deep blue district — Obama only won Bishop’s CD by 52-48. Moreover, this is one of the few races that have actually been engaged: Altschuler went on the air in late December with blistering ads hitting Bishop on his TARP votes. Still, the lack of young voters here seems like a pretty glaring weakness of SUSA’s likely voter screen. I would suspect that a more realistic model would give a few extra points to Bishop, but that still wouldn’t be enough to say that he’s out of the woods.

UPDATE: Nate Silver has noticed the demographic quirk, too, and is currently “doing some digging” on the poll.

RaceTracker Wiki: NY-01

• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: After some flirtation with the idea of switching over to the open seat Governor’s race, or even endeavoring to become Lt. Governor, former State House speaker Andrew Romanoff announced yesterday that he’s going to keep doing what he’s doing (despite having made little headway at it so far): challenging appointed incumbent Michael Bennet in the Democratic Senate primary. Romanoff also threw his support to Denver mayor John Hickenlooper in the gubernatorial primary.

• FL-Sen: I wonder if we’ll see more of this from insurgent Democratic candidates. Former Miami mayor Maurice Ferre, looking for some sort of angle to use against front-running Rep. Kendrick Meek for the Democratic Senate nomination, has come out against the current health care reform plan (although not against HCR in general), calling it “a special interest plan that raises taxes and favors insurance and pharmaceutical companies.”

• KS-Sen: The PMA scandal has mostly left House Democrats tarred with its brush, especially crusty old-school guys from that Appropriations clique, like John Murtha and Pete Visclosky. However, it’s now expanding to take in a key Republican member on Appropriations – one who’s in a tight battle for a promotion to the Senate and can’t afford to get besmirched in any way. The House ethics panel is now looking at the links between Rep. Todd Tiahrt’s donations and defense earmarks.

• NY-Sen-B: Rasmussen checks out the race that’s suddenly on everyone’s mind (and that doesn’t even exist yet, although Harold Ford Jr. just took a monthlong leave of absence from Merrill Lynch to “explore” the race – I wonder if he’ll be doing most of his recon by helicopter). They find numbers very similar to local pollsters Marist and Siena: Kirsten Gillibrand beats Ford, 48-23 (with a surprisingly large 10 for “some other,” presumably Jonathan Tasini although maybe it’s more just “anybody else, please”). Where Rasmussen parts ways with the other pollsters is Gillibrand’s high favorables (and high knowns, period): they have her at 59/27.

• OH-Sen, OH-Gov: Take this with a bag of quick-melting rock salt, if you choose, as it’s a poll commissioned by Ohio Right to Life and conducted by Republican pollster Wenzel Strategies. Still, the numbers clock in pretty close to what Rasmussen has been seeing lately. They see John Kasich with a 43-33 lead in the Governor’s race, and Rob Portman up in the Senate race: 37-31 over Lee Fisher and 40-35 over Jennifer Brunner.

• MD-Gov: One more poll, and it actually shows a Democrat in reasonably good shape. Incumbent Gov. Martin O’Malley is up 9 points against the GOP’s best possible offering, potential candidate ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich, 48-39, according to local pollster Gonzales Research. (Gonzales saw it an 11-point race last September.) O’Malley’s approvals (46%) could use some improvement, but considering that Ehrlich hasn’t sounded likely to get in (although he might be doing a rethink given last night’s events), there are certainly many other races higher on the worry-about list.

• AL-05: If Rep. Parker Griffith thought he’d be welcomed with open arms into the Republican fold, well, he’s got another thing coming. The only good news for him from last night’s meeting of the Madison County (i.e. Huntsville) Republican Executive Committee was that, in the end, they decided not to attempt to get Griffith removed from the primary ballot as a Republican. The real question of the meeting, though, was whether it would be better strategy for Republicans to try to beat him in the primary or via an independent candidacy in November.

• AR-02: Democratic candidates who sound committed to running to replace retiring Rep. Vic Snyder are already piling up – and we haven’t even gotten to Lt. Gov. Bill Halter or ex-Gen. Wesley Clark yet. State House Speaker Robbie Wills today stopped short of saying he’s running, but says he’s “excited” about running. State Sen. Joyce Elliott also sounds very likely to run, while Public Service Commissioner Paul Suskie is in the “seriously considering” stage.

• AZ-03: On the other side of the aisle and of the country, Republicans from the deep local bench are piling into the open seat race in the 3rd, vacated by Rep. John Shadegg. Paradise Valley mayor Vernon Parker is ending his long-shot gubernatorial campaign and heading over to the 3rd, and he’s being joined by state Sen. Jim Waring (who’s dropping his state Treasurer campaign to do so). They join already-in state Sen. Pamela Gorman and state Rep. Sam Crump.

• IL-10: State Rep. Julie Hamos and Dan Seals continue to split key endorsements in their primary fight for the Democratic nod in the open 10th. Hamos got the endorsements of both the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, while Seals picked up the smaller-circulation Daily Herald’s endorsement.

• ND-AL: Add one more confirmed name to the list of GOPers sniffing out the at-large House seat in North Dakota, hoping John Hoeven’s Senate bid gives them some coattails against the entrenched Democratic incumbent, Rep. Earl Pomeroy. Former House majority leader Rick Berg kicked off his campaign yesterday.

• TN-04: Rep. Lincoln Davis has been pretty much assured a bumpy ride, thanks to Tennessee’s rapidly-reddening status. He got a new Republican challenger today, in the form of attorney Jack Bailey. It’s unclear whether the never-before-elected Bailey will be stronger than physician Scott DesJarlais (or can even get past him in the primary), but he’s a former Hill staffer (ex-CoS for Missouri Rep. Scott Akin) so he probably still has a full Rolodex for fundraising purposes.

• TN-08: State Sen. Roy Herron keeps looking like he’ll have an easy path to the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Rep. John Tanner. Former state Rep. Phillip Pinion, an oft-floated name, said he wouldn’t get into the race.

• OR-Init: Oregon voters have a chance to deal a major setback to the coalescing conventional wisdom that voters prefer service cuts to tax hikes to plug state budget gaps, with Measures 66 and 67. The state legislature passed raises in the $250,000-plus tax bracket and certain corporate income taxes, which are now subject to a people’s veto (via an all-mail special election with a deadline of Jan. 26). Well-regarded local pollster Tim Hibbitts, paid for by a coalition of local media, finds both measures passing: 52-39 for 66 and 50-40 on 67.

• Mayors: One other election result from last night: Jefferson Co. Commissioner William Bell defeated attorney Patrick Cooper in a runoff, to become Birmingham, Alabama’s new mayor, 54-46. Cooper had won the most votes in the general, but Bell seemed to consolidate previously-split African-American votes.

• Polltopia: One more interesting follow-up on the increasing democratization of polling (on the heels of yesterday’s piece by Mark Blumenthal): the Hill looks at the increasing move by groups like Firedoglake and the PCCC toward commissioning polls – and even has an anecdote about PPP’s Tom Jensen getting berated by a nameless Beltway person for broaching the unmentionable and polling potential alternatives to Harry Reid.

• Social media: At some point during the flurry of activity yesterday, Swing State Project shot past 1,000 Twitter followers (gaining more than 100 yesterday alone). Not a follower yet? Check us out. You can also receive SSP updates via Facebook, if you’re one of those Luddites who like to read things that are longer than 140 characters.

The Hill:

After more than a year of waiting, Republicans have landed their candidate to run against Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.).

Richard Hanna (R), who came surprisingly close to upsetting Arcuri in 2008, has signed up for a rematch.

“I am running as an Independent minded, pragmatic American who believes that it is government’s responsibility to clear the way for individuals to solve problems, to foster all those productive economic and educational elements that create jobs and opportunity, which has allowed our nation’s citizens to enjoy the highest standard of living in the world,” Hanna said on his website.

While I’ve heard some voices say that last night’s special election win in Massachusetts for the Republicans should be taken as an isolated event that isn’t necessarily predictive of what will happen in November (and, indeed, special elections are special), don’t think that it won’t have a big impact. Guys like Hanna, who almost beat Arcuri in a stunning near-upset in 2008, are probably feeling more juiced-up than ever about running. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott Brown’s win gave Hanna the extra boost to press forward.

This will be a top-tier race, for sure. In Arcuri’s favor, he won’t be caught flat-footed this year. However, he’ll be running in a more volatile environment than the one in which he was nearly defeated last time. Expect a barnburner.

RaceTracker Wiki: NY-24

Looks like one big shoe is already dropping in the wake of the Massachusetts special election — one more big-name Republican is weighing a Senate bid, against a Democrat previously thought to be unassailable: Evan Bayh.

In the wake of winning MA, GOPers are looking to put 1 more state in play if they can convince House GOP Conference chair Mike Pence to run against Sen. Evan Bayh (R-IN).

Pence and his aides will meet with top staffers at the NRSC tomorrow, several sources tell Hotline OnCall, where they will discuss a possible bid. The NRSC has polled IN, and their survey shows Pence in a competitive position, though he trails Bayh in initial matchups.

My first response, when this was bubbling up as a rumor, was puzzlement, as Mike Pence would be giving up a coveted #3 slot on the GOP leadership ladder for an uphill run against a man with huge name rec and an eight-digit war chest. Pence seems better-known among national-level news junkies than he probably is in, say, Gary or Evansville or anywhere else outside his district — and he starts way behind the 8-ball on fundraising, with only $462K banked (thanks to not having to run competitive races in his red district). Also, rumors have previously had Pence, if looking for any promotion, to be considering the Presidential race in 2012 instead (although he’d have a number of movement conservative activists in his corner, he’d still be an extreme dark horse there, though).

Still, with his House leadeship position, he should be able to start filling his coffers quickly if he did jump into the Senate race. And as for the national ambitions, the NRSC has apparently has though that through, too: “Senate strategists plan to point out those ambitions are difficult to achieve without a Senate seat.”

One other point: ex-Rep. John Hostettler is already in the race for the GOP, along with a few other odds and ends (maybe most notably state Sen. Marlin Stutzman). I’m sure, though, the NRSC would like an upgrade from the often-embarrassing Hostettler, but given Hostettler’s previous track record of uncooperativeness with the national party, he seems unlikely to step aside in a primary. Pence could find himself stepping into an unenviable situation that replicates a lot of other Republican Senate primaries: he’d be running as the “establishment” candidate against a movement conservative outsider even further to his right.

RaceTracker Wiki: IN-Sen