Welcome to the workin’ week!
Tag: census
SSP Daily Digest: 4/1 (Afternoon Edition)
SSP Daily Digest: 3/30
Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, used his latest ad to again hammer his rival, Bowling Green eye surgeon Rand Paul, on national security issues.
“Paul even wonders whether 9/11 was our fault,” a female announcer says in the spot that began airing Thursday. The commercial then shows Paul speaking at a Blue Grass Policy Institute forum in March 2009, saying: “Maybe some of the bad things that happen are a reaction to our presence in some of these countries.”
I just hope that Grayson doesn’t nuke Paul before our nominee (hopefully Jack Conway) gets a chance to pummel him in the general.
Mary Wilmot, an aide to Gov. David Paterson, Assemblyman David Koon of Perinton, past candidate for state Senate and businessman David Nachbar of Pittsford, Southern Tier native Matthew Zeller, and Michael McCormick of Allegany County
Wonder if we might be missing a name, though, since yesterday word was that the Dems would be interviewing six people.
SSP Daily Digest: 3/26 (Morning Edition)
SSP Daily Digest: 3/25 (Afternoon Edition)
• CA-Sen (pdf): The apparently nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California has put out another statewide poll, and the numbers look very similar to those in the Field Poll last week. Barbara Boxer is in a dead heat with Tom Campbell, down 44-43, and not faring much better against Carly Fiorina, where Boxer leads 44-43. (She led Campbell by 4 and Fiorina by 8 two months ago.) Boxer’s doing better against Chuck DeVore, with a 46-40 edge. The big change from the Field Poll is that PPIC finds Fiorina actually in the lead in the GOP primary, the first pollster to see that in a while; she’s up 24-23-8, an improvement from January’s 27-16-8 Campbell edge. Are reluctant social conservatives getting off the fence and behind Fiorina, sensing DeVore isn’t gaining traction? Or did the Demon Sheep ad actually sway some ovinophobic voters?
• KY-Sen: Jack Conway’s on the air with a TV spot in the wake of the health care vote, trying to get some mileage out of Democratic primary opponent Dan Mongiardo’s stated opposition to the bill that passed.
• NY-Sen-B: Wall Street exec David Malpass, fresh off his smashing success as chief economist of Bear Stearns, looks like he’s doubling down on trying to be the GOP nominee to go against Kirsten Gillibrand. He’s promising $1 million of his own money to kick-start his campaign, where he first needs to get out of a primary against Bruce Blakeman and Joe DioGuardi.
• UT-Sen: It’s all still anecdotal, but the preliminary reports for how caucus night went for Bob Bennett sound pretty bad. Observers report strong anti-Bennett sentiment in general, although what might save him is that there was no coalescing behind any of his particular challengers. Turnout was maybe twice that of caucuses two years ago, suggesting a highly-motivated anti-Bennett base.
• CA-Gov (pdf): PPIC also has California gubernatorial numbers, again similar to the last Field poll. Meg Whitman’s outspending of Jerry Brown by a 200:1 margin or so is definitely paying temporary dividends, as she’s leading the gubernatorial race 44-39 (up from a 41-36 Brown lead two months ago). Brown leads Steve Poizner 46-31, basically unchanged from two months ago, suggesting this change is pretty Whitman-specific and not an across-the-boards phenomenon; Whitman leads Poizner 61-11.
• GA-Gov: Republican Governor Sonny Perdue is engaging in a remarkable end-run around Democratic AG Thurbert Baker, appointing a “special attorney general” to join in the suit against the health care reform brought by Republican AGs after Baker refused to do so and called it “political gamesmanship.” If nothing else, the fireworks between Perdue and Baker ought to raise Baker’s profile (who’s currently lagging in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but might be poised to make an impact if he switched to the mostly-vacant Senate race).
• MA-Gov: Here’s some trouble for independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill: the SEC has charged that John Kendrick, an executive with Southwest Securities, won $14 billion in bond deals after co-sponsoring a fundraiser for Cahill. That’s a violation of federal rules against contributions to officials who oversee bond sales. The SEC says that the Cahill campaign (which is returning the contributions) didn’t break any laws by accepting the money, though.
• OH-Gov, TX-Sen: Two more GOPers who still seem to be charging full speed ahead on “repeal” are Ohio’s John Kasich and, more interestingly, John Cornyn, who’d been cited in Ezra Klein‘s piece yesterday, on the GOP’s rapidly dialed-down rhetoric, as supporting only piecemeal tinkering but now seems to be reversing course again.
• WY-Gov: Whoops, that was a short-lived candidacy-to-be. Wyoming Democrats looking for a gubernatorial candidate are back to square one after attorney (and gubernatorial progeny) Paul Hickey reversed course and said “no” to a run.
• CO-07: Tom Tancredo weighed in with an endorsement in the Republican primary field in the 7th and, guess what… he endorsed the white guy. He gave the nod to former John McCain campaign official Lang Sias, despite Tancredo’s general antipathy toward all things McCain.
• HI-01: State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa is finally making some moves in the special election to replace resigned Rep. Neil Abercrombie. She’s out with her first TV ads, for the all-mail-in election with a May 22 deadline.
• NY-13: More blowback for Rep. Mike McMahon for his “no” vote on HCR, which could cost him the Working Families ballot line and/or get him a primary opponent. NYC council speaker Christine Quinn has backed out of a previously planned fundraiser for McMahon, citing his vote.
• SC-05: The NRCC seems to be feeling confident about state Sen. Mick Mulvaney, their challenger to Rep. John Spratt in the reddish 5th. They’ve promoted him to the 2nd level (“Contender”) in their 3-tiered fundraising pyramid scheme for challengers.
• Illinois: We Ask America seems to be taking great pains to confirm that, yes, they really are a legitimate pollster. I don’t know if they’re helping their case by releasing results with two significant digits, but they have a lot of Illinois House race data; we’ll leave it to you to decide how much salt you want to apply. Perhaps weirdest, they have teabagging businessman Joe Walsh leading Melissa Bean in IL-08 by 38.33%-37.61%. They also have leads for GOPers in the 11th (Adam Kinzinger leads Debbie Halvorson 42-30, way worse than Kinzinger’s own recent internal) and the 14th (Randy Hultgren leads Bill Foster 38-36), while Dems lead in the 10th (Dan Seals beats Bob Dold 40-37) and the not-on-the-radar 17th (Phil Hare leads pizza parlor owner Bobby Schilling 39-32).
• CA-Init: It’s been confirmed that the initiative to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana in California has qualified for the ballot in November. A 2009 Field Poll shows such an initiative could actually pass, with 56% of Californians supporting such an initiative. Of course, it’s unclear how such a change in state law would mesh with federal law, but if nothing else, it may help motivate a lot of bong-toting slackers to get off their couches to vote in November who otherwise might not vote (and cast votes for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer while they’re at it).
• DCCC: Freshman Rep. Jared Polis has been a strong fundraiser (and has his own fortune, too), and he’s looking to spread the wealth. His joint fundraising committee, the Jared Polis Majority Fund, has already distributed $400K this spring to the DCCC, to vulnerable incumbents (Frank Kratovil, Betsy Markey, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Harry Teague, Dina Titus), and to four up-and-comers (Ami Bera, Steve Pougnet, John Carney, and David Cicilline).
• DNC: I guess the DNC is feeling its oats these days, or just figuring that the best defense is a good offense: they’ve doubled the number of GOPers on the receiving end of pro-HCR attack ads for their “no” votes. They’ve added Pat Tiberi, Lee Terry, Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, and Charlie Dent.
• Census: Remember the Census? It’s back! In Pog form!
SSP Daily Digest: 3/24 (Afternoon Edition)
• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio seemed to beat Charlie Crist to the punch on calling for repeal of the health care reform bill passed over the weekend, but now the allegedly-moderate Crist is getting in on the act too, saying he opposes the entire bill and supports the lawsuit by Republican AGs (including Florida’s Bill McCollum) against the package.
• KY-Sen: I really can’t decide who I’d rather have in my corner. Rand Paul has the backing of lots of crackpots with computers and open wallets, as he had another online moneybomb yesterday to the tune of $262K. Trey Grayson, on the other hand, has the backing of establishment favorite… Dick Cheney?
• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B: Earlier in the day, there were rumors that the state GOP in New York was desperately trying to get someone from the GOP field against Kirsten Gillibrand (which doesn’t have any top-tier talent, but at least has a bunch of warm bodies) to switch over to the even more unenviable task of facing off against Chuck Schumer, where they’ve got nobody. Their favored candidate for that job seemed to be former Bush spokesperson Dan Senor. Maybe that rubbed Senor the wrong way, or maybe there’s more to the story, but either way, that changed by mid-day today, as Senor suddenly said he not only wasn’t running against Schumer but not running for anything, period, saying the timing wasn’t right for him. (Well, maybe they’ll have better luck getting David Malpass to switch over.)
• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): More up-and-down numbers from Franklin & Marshall this month, as their latest look at the Senate race finds Pat Toomey beating Arlen Specter 33-29 among RVs. Last month, Specter (currently at a terrible 30/45 favorable) led by the same 33-29 margin. (Recall that for the last couple months, F&M was releasing separate numbers for RVs and LVs. They seem to have dropped that unwieldy formulation in favor of RVs only, for now.) They find Toomey beating Joe Sestak 27-19 in the general, Specter beating Sestak 32-12, and in the forgotten GOP primary, Toomey defeating pro-life activist Peg Luksik 30-4. They do only the primaries in the slow-to-take-shape Governor’s race, finding Dan Onorato leading among Dems at 11, followed by Jack Wagner at 7, Joe Hoeffel at 5, and Anthony Williams at 4. Tom Corbett leads state Rep. Sam Rohrer 28-4 on the GOP side.
• UT-Sen: Last night was caucus night in Utah, where precincts chose delegates to the state convention which may or may not be Bob Bennett’s Waterloo. It’s hard to gauge, at this point, how things turned out for Bennett last night; the convention, which will determine whether he can avoid (or even make it to) a primary will be real proof. With filings closed in Utah, Democrats left a lot of seats unchallenged in the dark-red legislature, leaving 15 of 75 House seats and 2 of 15 Senate seats without Ds.
• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi was spotted in DC yesterday to meet with Michael Steele about a possible Senate run. He isn’t expected to make a decision until close to the June 11 primary, though (which seems odd, since he’d be basically starting from scratch at that point to go against Patty Murray’s mammoth war chest).
• IL-10: Bob Dold doesn’t need this. Turns out that Dold, who cozied up to the teabaggers in his primary run and touted his opposition to abortion (in order to squeak past moderate state Rep. Beth Coulson), has turned on a dime and is now calling himself “pro-choice” and “a fiscal conservative and social moderate” in order to run against Dan Seals in the general in this D+6 district.
• MA-10: Republican flavor-of-the-month Scott Brown has weighed in on the GOP primary in the open seat in the 10th, not coincidentally the district where he fared the best in the special election. And he chose new over old, opting for state Rep. Jeff Perry instead of long-ago state Treasurer Joe Malone.
• MI-01: Connie Saltonstall’s primary challenge to Bart Stupak may have lost some of its raison d’etre over the weekend, but it’s still proceeding full speed ahead with some new supporters that may be able to make it rain money for her: Planned Parenthood and NARAL’s PACs. NOW had previously endorsed Saltonstall as well.
• NJ-12: Scott Sipperelle, the random businessman running against Rush Holt in the D+5 12th, apparently has money to burn as he’s already hitting the TV airwaves, with an ad blasting Holt for his health care vote. It’s a cable buy, though (in case you were having visions of him blanketing the NYC and Philly markets), so it could be a tiny expenditure aimed at getting free media for all we know.
• SD-AL: Even with Scott Hildebrand having folded his hand quickly on a threatened Stephanie Herseth Sandlin primary challenge, it sounds like another less-known Dem is getting in on it. Rapid City doctor Kevin Weiland is sounding out a run.
• VA-05: “We’ve given the word ‘mob’ a bad name.” The gas line at the Perriello household was mysteriously cut, after Rep. Tom Perriello’s gutsy HCR vote. Um, oooops… that was the Bo Perriello household, as several local teabaggers mistakenly posted the Congressman’s brother’s address on their websites and urged protesters to stop by for a friendly visit. The guy who posted the address (and refused to take it down after finding out it was the wrong Perriello) is now publicly “shocked” that one of his ilk would resort to violence. Oh, and the FBI is investigating. Tom Perriello, on the other hand, displayed only sangfroid, saying “If the worst thing that happens is that special-interest groups spend millions of dollars against me and my most ardent opponents organize against me, it’s hardly a ‘cry me a river’ moment – as long as people act civil and within the law.”
• WV-01: In the choice between conservadem and even-more-conservadem in the Democratic primary in the 1st, it’s becoming pretty clear which one is which: state GOP chair Douglas McKinney praised Alan Mollohan’s opponent state Sen. Mike Oliverio, saying he “has always been a conservative guy. He votes with the Republican on committees. We’ve joked for years he needs to come over to the party who thinks like he does.”
• HCR: Are some of the saner GOP members of Congress starting to come to their senses as the fog of war starts to dissipate? (Or are they just seeing the shift in the polls and engaging in some pre-emptive ass-covering?) The oft-blustery Rep. Pete King is urging his fellow GOPers to “get constructive” and “stop demonizing” health care reform and the Dems. And Chuck Grassley, almost single-handedly responsible for bogging the bill down and giving legs to the “Death Panel” lie in the August of Dems’ discontent, is now happily talking up his own positive contributions to the bill, regarding tax-exempt hospitals.
• DNC: The DNC is wheeling out a seven-figure budget for running ads in the wake of health care’s passage. It’s two-pronged, with attack ads against vulnerable Republicans who voted “no” (I guess the “voted no” part is redundant): Mark Kirk, Jim Gerlach, Dave Reichert, Mike Castle, and Joe Cao. And “thank you” ads are planned for vulnerable Dems, tentatively including John Boccieri, Dennis Cardoza, Brad Ellsworth, Paul Hodes, Tim Walz, Bob Etheridge, Tom Perriello, Leonard Boswell, Betsy Markey, and Gerry Connolly.
• SARAH’s List: Shortly after tweeting for her supporters not to retreat, but RELOAD, Sarah Palin’s website posted a map with gunsights targeting 20 Representatives for her supporters to shoot. Or to work to defeat for re-election, I suppose. It’s pretty much all the districts that went for McCain in 2008 and where there was a “yes” on HCR, without much regard for the race’s actual vulnerability or whether it’s an open seat: AR-02, AZ-01, AZ-05, AZ-08, CO-03, CO-04, FL-02, FL-24, IN-08, IN-09, ND-AL, OH-06, OH-16, PA-03, PA-10, SC-05, TN-06, VA-05, WV-01, and WV-03.
• Teabaggers: Quinnipiac released another poll showing the peril and promise of the teabagger movement for the GOP, as seen in the contrast between the basic generic ballot (44 R, 39 D) and one with a third-party element thrown in (36 D, 25 R, 15 T). Various commenters, like Ed Kilgore and TPM’s Zachary Roth are paying close attention to the poll, wondering, as they’ve done in the past, if there really even is a new-and-different “Tea Party” movement or if it’s just a new name for the most-extreme, riled-up part of the Republican Party that’s always been there (through the militia movements of the 90s and the Birchers of the 60s).
• NRCC: The NRCC claims to have pulled in $7 million last night at their annual fundraising dinner. That’s a lot of scratch, but bear in mind much of that’s in “pledges,” mostly from House members, some of whom haven’t had a good track record of helping the NRCC in the past.
• Census: Two neat Census-related maps worth checking out. One is a constantly-updated real-time map at the Census website which shows the response rates by state and municipality so far. (While the national return rate so far is 16%, the best municipality return rate so far is the civic minded folks of Westside, Iowa at 74%. And despite the popular image of it being full of paranoid militia types living in the hills who would rather use fiat money than fill out a Census form, Montana has the best return rate of any state, at 33%.) The other map is much sadder, courtesy of the Prison Policy Initiative: it shows state-by-state how much distortion of districts occurs through the counting of prisoners where they’re incarcerated rather than where they’re actually from.
SSP Daily Digest: 3/24 (Morning Edition)
SSP Daily Digest: 3/17 (Afternoon Edition)
• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: As we mentioned on the front page yesterday, Andrew Romanoff won the Democratic primary precinct-level caucuses last night; the final tally, percentage-wise, was 51-42 (with 7% uncommitted) over Michael Bennet (who, by the way, hit the airwaves with the first TV spot yesterday, a decidedly anti-Washington ad). Things were actually much closer on the GOP side, where it looks like ultra-conservative Weld County DA Ken Buck is actually leading establishment fave Jane Norton by a paper-thin margin (37.9% to 37.7%). Of course, the activist-dominated straw polls are going to be Buck’s strong suit and his strength here may not translate as well to the broader GOP electorate, but he performed well enough to show that he’s in this for the long haul. (A similar dynamic played out in the Governor’s race, where ex-Rep. Scott McInnis easily beat teabagger Dan Maes, 61-39, although Maes has polled in the single digits out in reality.)
• NC-Sen (pdf): PPP’s monthly poll of the North Carolina Senate race general election shows little change, with Richard Burr (with a 35/37 approval) still winning in very humdrum fashion. Burr leads Elaine Marshall 41-36 (a positive trend, as she was down by 10 last month, although she was also within 5 of Burr in December). He also leads both Cal Cunningham and Kenneth Lewis 43-32, and leads Generic Dem only 41-39. With low familiarity for all three Dems (Marshall’s the best-known, but even she generates 71% “not sure”s), PPP’s Tom Jensen expects the race to tighten once they actually have a nominee.
• WA-Sen: Here’s some food for thought on why Dino Rossi has retreated back to the private sector and has seemed reluctant to come back out to play, despite the NRSC’s constant entreaties: his financial links to Seattle real estate developer Michael Mastro, whose local real estate empire collapsed in late 2008, leaving hundreds of investors out to dry.
• MA-Gov: Here’s more evidence that Tim Cahill, a Democrat until a few months ago, is heading off to the right to try and claim some of Republican Charlie Baker’s turf for his independent challenge to Deval Patrick: he fessed up to having voted for John McCain and is attacking Massachusetts’s universal health care plan (which even Scott Brown didn’t have a beef with, during his campaign) and saying that if the nation took the same approach it would be bankrupt “in four years.”
• NM-Gov: Oooops. Pete Domenici Jr. got a little presumptuous prior to the state’s Republican convention, issuing fliers touting his “great success” and his getting put on the ballot. Turns out neither happened — his 5% showing was last place, not a great success, and didn’t qualify him for the ballot either (he can still do so by gathering signatures).
• NY-Gov: This may be a tea leaf that Democratic Suffolk Co. Exec Steve Levy is gearing up to challenge ex-Rep. Rick Lazio for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. He hired a Republican consultant, Michael Hook, to help with preparations. Meanwhile, will the last person left in David Paterson‘s employ please turn the lights out? Another top staffer, press secretary Marissa Shorenstein just hit the exits today.
• PA-Gov, PA-Sen: Could ex-Rep. Joe Hoeffel be knocked off the Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot? That’s what Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato is trying to make happen, as his team is challenging the validity of Hoeffel’s 7,632 ballot petitions. In order to qualify for the ballot, candidates need 2,000 valid signatures, including at least 100 from 10 different counties. (JL) Hoeffel’s not the only one; Joe Sestak‘s also challenging signatures in the Senate primary. Sestak’s target isn’t Arlen Specter, though, but rather Joseph Vodvarka, a Pittsburgh-area businessman who was a surprise last-minute filer and is the primary’s only third wheel. Sestak, no doubt, is worried that Vodvarka could peel off enough anti-Specter votes to throw a very close election.
• HI-01: Here’s a sign of life from the seemingly placid Colleen Hanabusa campaign; she just got the endorsement of the Hawaii State Teachers’ Association. (Not that it was likely they’d endorse Ed Case, but it’s still important for GOTV.)
• NY-13: Politico’s Ben Smith reported that Republican state Senator Andrew Lanza was taking a second look at the race in the 13th, now that the possibility of the Working Families Party withdrawing its support for Rep. Mike McMahon (if he votes against health care reform) could make a GOP challenge easier in the face of a divided left. The NRCC denied having reached out to Lanza; Lanza confirmed, though, that they had, but said that he was still unlikely to get in the race, preferring to focus on taking back GOP control of the state Senate. While the two GOPers in the race, Michael Grimm and Michael Allegretti, both have had some fundraising success, Lanza would be a definite upgrade for the GOP in the unlikely event he runs.
• PA-06: Another bummer for Doug Pike, who seems to be losing as many endorsements as he’s gaining these days. State Rep. Josh Shapiro, who briefly explored a bid for U.S. Senate last year, has officially switched his endorsement from Pike to “neutral”. (JL)
• SC-03: With rivals Rex Rice and Jeff Duncan (both state Reps.) having gotten the lion’s share of the endorsements and money, state Sen. Shane Massey appears ready to drop out of the GOP primary field in the 3rd. It looks like it’ll be a two-man fight between the Huckabee-backed Rice and CfG-backed Duncan.
• VA-05: I’ll repeat all the usual caveats about how straw polls reflect the most extreme and engaged activists, not the broader electorate, bla bla bla, but there’s just no good way for state Sen. Robert Hurt to spin his showing at the Franklin County GOP Republican Womens’ straw poll. The establishment pick drew 11.6% of the vote, while self-funding teabagger Jim McKelvey grabbed 51%.
• WA-03: The Dick Army (aka FreedomWorks) has weighed in with a rare primary endorsement in a rather unexpected place: the GOP primary in the open seat in the 3rd. They endorsed David Castillo, the financial advisor and former Bush administration underling who stayed in the race despite state Rep. Jaime Herrera’s entry. Here’s the likely explanation: Castillo actually used to work for FreedomWorks’ predecessor organization, Citizens for a Sound Economy. Still, that’s a boost for Castillo, who’s been faring pretty well on the endorsements front against the establishment pick Herrera (and a boost for Dems, who’d no doubt like to see a brutal GOP primary). Meanwhile, on the Dem side, state Sen. Craig Pridemore is holding outgoing Rep. Brian Baird’s feet to the fire to get him to switch his vote to “yes” on health care reform; primary opponent Denny Heck has avoided taking much of a position on HCR.
• Census: Here’s some interesting background on how the Census protects respondents’ privacy. Not only are individual responses sealed for 72 years, but the Census intentionally adds “noise” that camouflages individuals whose particular combination of data would make them unique in some way and thus not be anonymous, at least to someone seeking them out (for instance, they cite the hypothetical only 65-year-old married woman attending college in North Dakota). (P.S.: You probably got your form in the last day or two. Please fill it out!)
SSP Daily Digest: 3/16 (Morning Edition)
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SSP Daily Digest: 3/9 (Morning Edition)
We are going to have absolutely brutal numbers out on Charlie Crist tomorrow.
Here’s a little preview: among Republican primary voters 19% would like to see him as Governor a year from now, 14% want him in the Senate, and 56% want him out of elected office.
If there is any path to his winning office in Florida again – and there may not be – it’s as something other than a Republican.