Month: June 2010

• AR-Sen: Here’s a non-surprise. Americans for Job Security, who poured $1.8 million into anti-Bill Halter ads during the primary, say they probably aren’t going to be doing any further work on behalf of Blanche Lincoln. The anti-labor group already got what it wants (two anti-labor candidates), so its work is done. Also worth noting, Nate Silver points out what a tough lift a Bill Halter victory would have been, revealing something called the ‘blogginess’ index (a factor of being white, liberal, and college-educated), on which Arkansas scores very low and Pennsylvania scores pretty high (by way of explaining how Pennsylvania was more responsive to a labor/netroots primary challenge — although I’d point out that actual labor and netroots support wasn’t the main factor in pushing Joe Sestak past Arlen Specter, whereas it was the driving force in Halter’s bid). I’m not sure if he noticed or not, but the rank ordering of the states on that index is quite similar to the graph of most liberal-to-conservative Democratic electorates that Andrew Gelman introduced last week.

• CO-Sen: Jane Norton is making a rhetorical rush to the right, if her new advertising is any indication: it’s all about stopping “Obamacare” and “yanking it out by the roots,” and it’s playing mostly in the dark-red Colorado Springs market. Wondering why? She’s probably seeing the same thing in her polling as what Republican pollster Magellan (who are getting quite active in offering public polls of Republican primaries where they don’t have a horse in the race) is seeing. They have a poll out today showing Weld County DA Ken Buck leading Norton, 42-32.

• IL-Sen: Worse to worst for Mark Kirk? It looks like frustration with his constant politicizing of his military service was present even within the Department of Defense, as a DoD memo has surfaced that expressed “concerns arising from his partisan political activities during his last two tours of active duty.” Kirk was required to get a waiver before deploying to Afghanistan in 2008, which required him to write out “an acknowledgment of limitations required for all candidates on active duty.”

• NC-Sen: This is kind of an out-of-the-blue endorsement, but it may help Elaine Marshall gain a little traction with the national netroots. Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner is apparently OK with endorsing outside her own state’s boundaries, as she offered her support to Marshall.

• NV-Sen: Echoes of Rand Paul’s still-in-progress post-primary makeover? Jon Ralston notices that Sharron Angle’s wacky website just got scrubbed, with no discussion of her positions at this point (no mention of Social Security elimination, for instance). Meanwhile, the GOP signals that they’re going to actively get involved in breaking out the message massage oil and work on rehabbing Angle: RNC head Michael Steele has pledged his support. RNC funds will go to the Nevada GOP rather than directly to Angle, whose campaign actually was in the red ($139K CoH, $179K debt) on May 19. (Compare that to Harry Reid’s $9.1 million.) And Angle’s reaching out to the GOP establishment, too, to the extent that she says she’s willing to accept campaign help from John Ensign, a flip-flop from her pre-primary position. Fitting, though, since she’s been a big proponent of embracing radioactive waste in Nevada. (And while I don’t ordinarily like to honk my own horn, after looking back through the SSP attic, I have to remind everybody that I forecasted an Angle primary victory back in October.)

• SC-Sen: There’s a growing sense that something’s amiss with Alvin Greene’s entry to the race, to the extent that Jim Clyburn explicitly called him a “plant” today and asked for a probe. The real puzzle is the timeline on Greene’s obscenity arrest, obtaining a public defender because of his indigence, and then his filing for the race:

The South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, which operates the state’s public defender program, makes clear that courts take into account “the number of people in your household, whether you own any real estate, or have money in the bank” when deciding whether to assign a public defender to a defendant.

Greene has claimed that he paid the $10,400 filing fee out of his savings from his military pay. But he was discharged from the Army in August 2009 and says he hasn’t held a job since then.

So, in economic terms, the timeline goes like this: Greene’s military paychecks stopped in August. Three months later, he filed an affidavit with a South Carolina court claiming to be indigent. And four months after that he walked into the South Carolina Democratic Party headquarters with a personal check for $10,400.

Losing gubernatorial candidate Robert Ford (who’s African-American) also sheds some light on how Greene might have won despite his complete unknownness: apparently, in South Carolina, “Greene” (as opposed to “Green”) is understood to be an African-American last name. With South Carolina’s Democratic electorate with a black majority, voters with no other information about the two choices might vote based purely on that.

• UT-Sen: After previously having had some nice things to say about him, 4th place finisher Cherilyn Eagar went the whole way and endorsed Tim Bridgewater for the GOP Senate primary against Mike Lee.

• WI-Sen: Republican businessman Ron Johnson, who has some personal wealth to draw on in his bid against Russ Feingold, is launching his first television ads. A source tells SSP that this is a one-week statewide ad buy for about $350K.

• AL-Gov: Second-place finisher Robert Bentley is out with an internal poll (by Dresner Wicker) giving him a big lead in the runoff against Bradley Byrne, 45-29. That’s somewhat plausible, since Bentley seems likelier to consolidate the votes for the most conservative options, Roy Moore and Tim James, than is “moderate” Byrne. (Of course, since James is paying for a recount, it’s not a done deal that Bentley’s in the runoff.)

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis, facing a primary from teabagger Dan Maes (who pulled even with him at the state convention), now says he “doesn’t remember” serving on the board of pro-choice group Republicans for Choice. However, paperwork filed with the FEC lists him on the group’s letterhead as a board member from 1996 to 2005… that’s ten years.

• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley is out with an internal poll giving her a big lead heading into the runoff against Gresham Barrett, 62-28 (suggesting she’s gotten the majority of the gains from the primary, where she led 49-22). Barrett‘s staying in (despite a sandbagging by the RGA), and he’s already out with a TV ad, where he appears with a drill sergeant who calls him “a Christian family man who won’t embarrass us.” I’m not sure if that cringeworthy line is supposed to be an anti-Mark Sanford dogwhistle or an anti-Haley dogwhistle; maybe it’s intended to do double-duty.

• GA-09: Despite losing the runoff in the special election in the 9th, Lee Hawkins is continuing to fight on; he’ll also challenge Rep.-elect Tom Graves in the regularly scheduled July primary. Hawkins didn’t fare as poorly as expected, staying within 56-44, and may be counting on the late-breaking news about Graves’s attempts to dodge a lawsuit over an unpaid business loan continuing to be a story in coming months.

• ID-01: Greg Smith & Associates released a poll (apparently not on any candidate’s behalf), showing Raul Labrador leading Democratic freshman Walt Minnick, 36-24. Recall, though, that this is the same pollster that found Minnick leading “the Republican” candidate 50-20 before the primary (and the link also helpfully provides a list of other times Smith has been way off the mark).

• VA-05: This should put to rest any notions that ex-Rep. Virgil Goode was considering a third-party independent teabagger-powered run in the 5th, or that he might throw his backing to one of the minor-league third-partiers running. Goode endorsed establishment Republican Rob Hurt to go against Rep. Tom Perriello.

Quinnipiac (6/2-8, likely voters, no trendlines):

Rick Scott (R): 44

Bill McCollum (R): 31

Undecided: 24

(MoE: ±3.4%)

Kendrick Meek (D): 29

Jeff Greene (D): 27

Maurice Ferre (D): 3

Undecided: 37

(MoE: ±3.5%)

Here’s a “holy crap!” moment from Quinnipiac: the two random sketchy ultra-wealthy guys, Rick Scott and Jeff Greene, whose entries into the GOP gubernatorial primary and Democratic Senate primary (respectively) initially seemed like go-nowhere vanity projects, are actually in serious contention thanks to lavish TV spending.

In particular, Rick Scott (former CEO for hospital corporation Columbia/HCA) has shot ahead of Bill McCollum. Scott’s favorables are a very high 40/12 among GOPers, indicating that McCollum’s (or Mary Cheney’s, really) attempts to point out that whole Medicare fraud thing on Scott’s part have gotten drowned out by the sheer volume of Scott’s advertising. Of course, it doesn’t look like McCollum has gotten too badly harmed by Rentboy; he’s also a 41/19 among GOPers, so he might be able to fight his way back if he can find his financial footing, ad-wise.

Jeff Greene, the derivatives pioneer who increased his fortune betting on an economic collapse caused in part by those same derivatives, isn’t leading, but is nipping at Kendrick Meek’s heels in the Democratic Senate primary. Meek has spent little on advertising so far, so despite his institutional frontrunner status, he isn’t particularly better-known than Greene right now.

Quinnipiac released its general election numbers separately:

Quinnipiac (6/2-8, registered voters, 4/8-13 in parentheses (Sen, Gov)):

Kendrick Meek (D): 17 (24)

Marco Rubio (R): 33 (30)

Charlie Crist (I): 37 (32)

Undecided: 11 (13)

Jeff Greene (D): 14

Marco Rubio (R): 33

Charlie Crist (I): 40

Undecided: 11

Alex Sink (D): 32

Rick Scott (R): 42

Undecided: 21

Alex Sink (D): 34 (36)

Bill McCollum (R): 42 (40)

Undecided: 19 (21)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

Alex Sink (D): 26

Rick Scott (R): 35

Bud Chiles (I) : 13

Undecided: 23

Alex Sink (D): 25

Bill McCollum (R): 33

Bud Chiles (I) : 19

Undecided: 19

(MoE: ±4.7%)

Charlie Crist may actually be able to thread the needle here (especially if he gets an assist from Jeff Greene, as Crist breaks off an extra 3% from the Dem column if it’s Greene instead of Meek); he leads Marco Rubio in both configurations, thanks to, if you believe the trendlines, eating up a further share of Dem votes.

Things aren’t looking so good for Alex Sink in the gubernatorial race, with similar underperformances against both Scott and McCollum. (Interestingly — and I don’t know if this is a trend or a blip — Rasmussen finds the Governor’s race a much better bet for the Dems right now than Quinnipiac does.)

It looks like Quinnipiac added a Bud Chiles option mid-sample once the indie candidate announced (as explained by the higher MoE on the three-ways). Despite his Democratic lineage, Chiles’ entry doesn’t seem to hurt Sink disproportionately, as he seems to have enough Dixiecrat appeal to draw equally from both column D and column R. The 8-to-9 point margins between the Rs and Sink remains unchanged with Chiles in the mix.

So I’ve made some predictions about 2010, using 2004 and 2006 partisan turnout data and ascribing percentages to each candidate for each party affiliation in my own, subjective way.  The polling industry has failed us this cycle, so I’m ignoring the polls and going with my gut.  I am only predicting races where the primaries are over, as I did not want to guess who is going to win primaries.  That would be too speculative even for me!  And obviously, these are predictions of the two-way vote.  Pickups are in bold.

AL-SEN – Shelby (R) 65, Barnes (D) 35 – No trouble for Shelby.

AR-SEN – Boozman (R) 56, Lincoln (D) 43 – Very little shot for Lincoln here.

CA-SEN – Boxer (D) 51, Fiorina (R) 48 – Boxer is a flawed candidate, but she will hold on.

IA-SEN – Grassley (R) 57, Conlin (D) 43 – Conlin a strong challenger, but not this year.

ID-SEN – Crapo (R) 75, Sullivan (D) 24 – Sullivan is not a serious challenger.

IL-SEN – Giannoulias (D) 50.2, Kirk (R) 49.8 – Good thing “none of the above” not on the ballot.

IN-SEN – Coates (R) 53, Ellsworth (D) 46 – Too tough a year for Ellsworth to get over the hump.

KY-SEN – Conway (D) 50, Paul (R) 49 – Paul makes more unforced errors; Conway consolidates Dems.

ND-SEN – Hoeven (R) 67, Potter (D) 32 – Easy pickup.

NV-SEN – Angle (R) 50, Reid (D) 49 – Harry Reid is just THAT unpopular.  We seem to be forgetting that.

OH-SEN – Portman (R) 51, Fisher (D) 49 – Portman cash advantage proves too much.

OR-SEN – Wyden (D) 56, Huffman (R) 44 – No cakewalk, but Wyden stays on his game and wins.

PA-SEN – Sestak (D) 52, Toomey (R) 48 – PA says no to Santorum II.

SC-SEN – Demint (R) 75, Greene (D) 25 – Please go away, Alvin!

SD-SEN – Thune (R) unopposed.

AR-GOV – Beebe (D) 64, Keet (R) 35 – Smooth sailing for Beebe.

CA-GOV – Brown (D) 52, Whitman (R) 48 – Whitman’s millions hard to overcome, but Brown can do it.

IA-GOV – Branstad (R) 60, Culver (D) 40 – Culver’s approvals are low and Branstad is just too tough.

ID-GOV – Otter (R) 60, Allred (D) 39 – Allred could compete in a different cycle.

IL-GOV – Brady (R) 52, Quinn (D) 48 – Quinn is VERY unpopular.

ME-GOV – Mitchell (D) 52, LePage (R) 47 – LePage a little too teabaggy for Maine.

NE-GOV – Heineman (R) 69, Lakers (D) 30 – Lakers a non-trivial candidate, but will not be close.

NM-GOV – Denish (D) 51, Martinez (R) 49 – Martinez steals some Hispanic Dems, but not enough.

NV-GOV – Sandoval (R) 59, Reid (D) 41 – Whose idea was it to get behind Rory Reid?

OH-GOV – Strickland (D) 50.4, Kasich (R) 49.6 – Don’t think much of Kasich as a candidate.

OR-GOV – Kitzhaber (D) 52, Dudley (R) 48 – This will be no cakewalk for Kitz, but he pulls through.

PA-GOV – Corbett (R) 52, Onorato (D) 48 – Onorato will grow on PA voters, but not enough.

SD-GOV – Daugaard (R) 56, Heidepreim (D) 44 – Heidepreim runs pretty strong in a tough year.

TX-GOV – Perry (R) 51, White (D) 49 – White wins Indies comfortably, but still not enough.

Here’s a fun chart – it’s a list of all the members of the House who have scored 70% or less in a primary so far this year:

I’ve also included some notes on possible reasons for these poor performances: Dems who voted against healthcare reform, Republicans who voted for the bailout or cap-and-trade, ethical issues on either side, and a few other odds-and-ends. For a complete list of all members of Congress and their primary percentages, click here. So far, 89 (38D, 51R) incumbents have faced primaries while 141 have not (and another 13 open seats have been contested). Of those in primaries, the median vote share has been 74% (76% D, 73% R).

“Well, you know what, when you get to be 85 or 90 years old, you’re going to die. And I’m sorry, you call it, Sarah Palin, what you want, but the fact is that it is absurd for us to be spending the types of money we’re spending to extend life three months.”

Asked what he’d do as a Senator to control such costs, Ferre said: “I would absolutely say that this is the cap on how much is available for you to spend at age 90, 87, with a heart condition of this sort, with diabetes of this sort, two legs missing and, you know, this is how much is available for you to spend. And you spend it any way you want.”

There are other ways to lose races in Florida, but this is the simplest and most direct.

Throughout the ages, the finger painter, the Play-Doh sculptor, the Lincoln Logger stood alone against the daycare teacher of her time. She did not live to earn approval stamps. She lived for herself, that she might achieve things that are the glory of all humanity. These are my terms; I do not care to play by any others. And now, if the court will allow me, it’s naptime.

In one paragraph, he says Stutzman knew nothing of the affair and therefore couldn’t have tipped off the media. In another, he mentions that Stutzman or a political consulting firm leaked word of the affair to Fox News after getting information from the staffer’s husband, Brad Jackson a Kosciusko County commissioner.

Hmm, I thought it was Mike Pence who dimed out Souder?

A lot of beltway pundits have said a lot of stupid beltway things about the result of the Arkansas senate runoff between Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter. But at least a couple of outsider analysts have the right take. First is Ari Melber, who works for the Nation but also has a monthly column in the Politico. It’s really worth reading his newest piece in full, but here’s a good excerpt:

Take the senior administration aide who called Politico’s Ben Smith on Wednesday morning, eager to declare that unions “”flushed”” ten million down the toilet in a “”pointless”” primary. That public servant is either disingenuous or clueless.

“If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country,”the aide said, “that could have made a real difference in November.”

This criticism misreads the entire insurgency on the left – and may cause more heartburn in November.

President Barack Obama’s political team can wish that its base was focused on defending a governing majority. But labor has joined cause with anti-establishment, liberal groups that believe changing the membership of the party’s congressional majority is as important as growing it.

After watching Democratic incumbents freeze out a litany of progressive proposals, from the famous public option to the Employee Free Choice Act – which Democratic politicians have decided to support through speeches, not floor votes – some allies are wising up.

Greg Sargent is on the money as well:

For labor, not doing anything was tantamount to losing.  Blanche Lincoln is terrible on issues important to labor. As long as she remains in the Senate, unions lose.

Yes, labor dumped $10 million on the effort. But they, you know, almost won. If anything, the closeness of the contest — recall that Halter forced Lincoln into a runoff three weeks ago — underscored that labor was right to undertake this effort. And putting aside that $10 million, unions are in some ways in a better position than they were before: It’s a simple fact that other Dems will think longer and harder before crossing labor on issues that are dealbreakers for them.

If labor had never entered this race at all, they’d still be in a losing position with Lincoln in the Senate. This is an unbearably simple and obvious point, but the only way for labor to reverse this situation was to try to replace her with someone better on their issues. They couldn’t do this, of course, without running the risk of losing. Doing nothing would have amounted to a loss, anyway — with no chance of ever winning. They were absolutely right to give it a shot. The alternative was much worse.

I’ll add a final thought, which is that for all the claims that DC loves to play the “expectations game,” the only thing that beltway bobbleheads understand is winning and losing. Smart baseball analysts know that good teams don’t win many close games – they win a lot of blowouts, because narrow wins are more a product of luck than skill. But in the cloistered minds of most tradmed pundits, only the won-lost record matters: you win, you’re golden, you lose, you suck – no matter how close the margin. This, of course, is foolish, and the establishment ignores Lincoln’s tight escape at its peril.

Isn’t it obvious, Mandrake?

The Assembly voted 26-16 Thursday for a bill that requires the fluoridation of water in Clark and Washoe counties.

Before the vote, Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, R-Reno, sought to postpone the vote so she could add an amendment to block fluoridation in Washoe County. …

But Angle said she simply does not like fluoride.

“The fluoride solutions used in fluoridation must not contain any quantity of lead, arsenic, mercury, or any other substance that may be considered hazardous to human health,” she said. During hearings, Angle said witnesses testified most states use an industrial fluoride that contains such substances.

Cross-posted at Politics and other Random Topics and Daily Kos

Before starting this little rant, I'd like to say that as a progressive Democrat, I would've preferred that Lt. Gov. Bill Halter win his primary challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (and, in fact, it was my prediction that Lincoln would lose the run-off). Having said that, the progressives who really think that Halter was going to be able to defeat Republican congressman John Boozman need a reality check, and should reflect a little on what happened here before getting so bummed out by the events of the Arkansas race.

This is Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas:

The GOP establishment tries to nominate electable candidates, and gets sabotaged by the teabaggers. We're trying to nominate electable candidates, and we get sabotaged by the Democratic Party establishment. We won in Pennsylvania, lost in Arkansas. You can't win them all. But make no mistake — we made the politically smart move.

Unfortunately, the smart political move lost. So say hello to Sen. John Boozman, the next senator from the great state of Arkansas. It's the political reality. No need to sugarcoat it.

How much do you think the Chamber of Commerce and its corporatist allies will spend on behalf of Blanche Lincoln through the fall? Zero. Suddenly, you're going to see Lincoln quite friendless

Those evil “out of state” unions and progressive groups sure won't lift a finger to help her. The only question is how much the DSCC wastes on the losing effort.

I've long since quit being impressed by moral victories. In this case, we forced Blanche to dramatically improve the financial reform bill, and it may be too late to strip out her derivatives reform language. And we delivered the kind of pain that no other incumbent wants to suffer. So congressional Democrats have two options — they can either shape up and be spared primary pain (I'd be happy focusing solely on Joe Lieberman in 2012), or they can be Blanched

It's much easier to keep your job if you don't have to fight for it twice in a single year.

Kos seems to be arguing a few things here; one that the Democratic establishment (really, the White House) was being stupid by supporting Lincoln, that Bill Halter would've been able to win while Lincoln would not, and that this primary challenge will make conservative Democrats in congress somewhat more progressive.

The first thing, that the Democratic establishment should have thrown Lincoln out the door for Halter ignores one simple truth: political parties, at their core, are incumbent protection rackets, period. This is not an ironclad rule that can never be broken, but those circumstances usually involve some pretty bad scandals (for example, the Republican Governor's Association (the RGA) actively endorsed Brian Sandoval against incumbent Governor Jim Gibbons, mostly because of how scandal plagued he was). The Democrats had no business supporting incumbent Congressman Bill Jefferson in Louisiana's second district, and they should have been criticized heavily for it, as Jefferson was accused of and later convicted of bribery, but that was simply not the case for Lincoln. Political parties protect incumbents for good reason, they are the power-base of the party, without incumbent members in government, the party has no power (just look at the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and many others) and if the party isn't going to go to the mat for its incumbents, then its incumbents will stop supporting the party, period. This isn't limited to the Democrats either, the Republicans support their incumbents as well, and Kos is, frankly, delusional if he thinks that any political party should abandon incumbents who aren't scandal-tainted (but for the record, it was pretty stupid of the White House aid to shoot his/her mouth off about the labor unions, though I suspect that he/she wasn't authorized by the White House to talk either).

On the second argument, electability, I'd find that view a lot more convincing if Bill Halter were either winning or were within range of John Boozman in polling, but the fact is, Boozman is beating Halter by double-digits too and there's no prize for only losing by 15 instead of losing by 20. To be clear, yes, I believe that Halter was more electable than Lincoln, but to pretend that Halter's chances of victory were really that much better than Lincoln's doesn't do progressives well in the credibility department.

On the final point, well, frankly, I know that Kos means well, but there's a case to be made that Lincoln's derivatives language isn't really that good an idea. Just because something sounds good on paper and looks like it's putting the screws to the banks and everything which is evil, doesn't mean that it actually is or that this has somehow created better policy. Frankly, it's even arguable that this was good politics for just the general election, as everyone hates the banks and appearing to be tough on them just looks good.  In addition there was a point made by a regular commenter on Swing State Project who goes by DCCyclone which I'd like to bring to light:

And, frankly, to a substantial extent it bothers me, because the singling out of Lincoln for demonization shows a big lack of perspective.  Lincoln is from a most conservative state and the strongest anti-Obama state of any Democratic Senator up for reelection this year.

I suppose this is about making an example out of her for the sake of doing so, and winning in politics does, ultimately, require demonizing the opponent.  That's just a fact of political life, I accept that.

But if Halter wins tonight and goes on to lose by 20 to Boozman, I don't think the left benefits.  ConservaDems don't feel pressured to be more responsive to the left, instead they just feel more tightly squeezed with a narrower needle to thread to win.  The only way the left wins politically out of this is for Halter to win not only tonight but to pull off the massive upset and win in November.  If that happens, then the intense emotional energy will have been fully vindicated, and I'll be proven a fucking moron.  But it's hard to see a “Senator Halter” getting sworn in in January.

DCCyclone's point is a good one, what if Halter had won the primary? Maybe there would have been a polling bounce for him, but I doubt he'd even get a lead in that situation (or even close to it) and he'd probably return to where he was, 10-15 points behind Boozman which is almost certainly what the final result would have been. If that would have happened (hypothetically), it could easily by Democratic operatives to argue “see, this is what happens when you primary incumbents, you lose seats, you're no better than the Club for Growth!” (not to say that their point would be all that good, but it'd be pretty easy to make it, and suddenly the progressive groups who supported the primary look stupid for being successful). And that's really the main point, a loss for the progressives who backed Halter was probably inevitable no matter what, whether it would've been now or in November is sort of beside the point.