Judy Baker has raised 1.3 million to Blaine Luetkemeyers 596K (Luetkemeyer has amassed 1.7 million when self-funding is counted), but Luetkemeyer has had a much faster burn rate with his barrage of negative ads.
Luetkemeyer just dropped in another 200K to fund his campaign this weekend and has now self-funded 1.12 million.
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzo…
Please donate to Judy Baker here to give her the chance to respond to Blaine Luetkemeyer’s latest negative ad buy:
Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/20-22, likely voters, 9/17-18 in parens):
Judy Baker (D): 42 (40)
Blaine Luetkemeyer (R): 47 (49)
Other: 8 (6)
Undecided: 3 (5)
(MoE: ±5%)
The open seat race in Missouri’s rural R+7 (but historically Democratic) Ninth District is one of those races that probably would have gotten written off most years, but between the size of the Democratic wave this year, a money influx, and good candidate recruitment, we’re in a credible position to pull off the upset here. Internal polls have, in fact, shown Judy Baker up by as much as 4.
Research 2000 finds that Baker is down 5, but the trendlines have improved nicely from last month. The battle here seems mostly over the independents (who make up 30% of the sample); Luetkemeyer leads 44-42 among them. At the presidential level, McCain leads Obama 54-40, a much better showing than 2004 when Bush won 59-41.
The Women’s Campaign Forum is running a pretty cool contest. They’re allowing members and supporters to decide the recipient of PAC contributions. The first place candidate will receive a $3,000 PAC contribution and the second place candidate will receive a $1,500 PAC contribution.
Currently it’s pretty close, with Sam Bennett (PA-15)leading Vic Wulsin (OH-2).
Bennett: $10,451
Wulsin: $7,814
The contest runs until October 7th. We’ll see who can energize their online supporters more.
You can vote at the following site:
The Wall Street Journal has an article on Democratic candidates whose faith is potentially an asset in winning over voters in conservative-leaning districts. The article features Judy Baker (MO-09) and Larry Kissell (NC-08).
http://online.wsj.com/article/…
During the primaries Judy Baker was dubbed as “too liberal” to win in the MO-09 and yet I have always felt that her biography and her Baptist faith allow her to connect with voters in the district and taht as many voters vote their identity rather than issues, she is an ideal liberal Democratic candidate for a deep red Bush +18 district like ours.
If you donate to Judy Baker at my webpage below, I’ll match you up to $300.
http://www.actblue.com/page/wa…
General Wesley Clark also has an ActBlue webpage for her:
http://www.actblue.com/page/3f…
Larry Kissell’s donation page is here:
Jame’s L. noted that Luetkemeyer’s camp had a deranged explosion response to Judy Baker having a small lead in the first general election poll of the MO-09 race.
The Luetkemeyer response is here:
“Judy Baker’s poll is like a NASCAR driver bragging about being ahead after the first lap of this weekend’s Sharpie 500, which in case Judy didn’t know is a car race enjoyed by ‘those people’ often derided by liberal Democrats like herself,” said Luetkemeyer spokesman Paul Sloca in a statement.
Of course the Luetkemeyer camp had egg on their face after swing state project pointed out that Baker cosponsored a bill that would name a stretch of road after local NASCAR racer Carl Edwards:
State Sen. Chuck Graham and state Rep. Judy Baker announced the plans to designate Route WW from Highway 63 to Olivet Road as “Carl Edwards Drive.”
Now to put the final topping on this funny story…the very driver that Judy Baker honored, won the Sharpie 500 that the Luetkemeyer camp was referring too 🙂
Baker has a 30% favorability to 8% unfavorabilty rating and has higher favorability than unfavorability even among Republican voters (especially Republican women).
Luetkemeyer’s favorability is 33% to 16% unfaovarbility.
This is a District that was Bush +19 in 2004 and that the Republican Hulshof won 61% to 36% in 2006.
The poll was a Baker internal poll conducted by Momentum Analysis. In the primaries Momentum analysis gave Baker a 6 point lead over Gaw in their only internal poll of the primary (she won by 13 in that race).
Full poll story here:
http://blogs.columbiatribune.c…
Donate to Baker at My ActBlue and I’ll match you (the first $400).
In the primaries Judy Baker raised over 400K mostly from individual donations, while Blaine Luetkemeyer self-funded over 325K and raised 140K from donations.
http://www.opensecrets.org/rac…
It appears that Luetkemeyer having secured a primary victory where both he and Onder self-funded over 325K and then rapidly spent that money in a negative ad blitz, is unable to continue pouring hundreds of thousands of his own money into the campaign.
He is now hoping that outside groups and the NRCC can help bankroll his campaign.
In the interview below he says that he is unlikely to continue self-funding.
See story and interview here:
http://blogs.columbiatribune.c…
The DCCC and NRCC have both entered the race, but Baker seems more prepared to continue to raise money from individual donors than Luetkemeyer whose primary funding was below expectations. If you take out self-funding, Luetkemeyer was actually outraised by non-serious primary candidate Danie Moore (as well as Bob Onder) in the last fundraising quarter and was outraised by Baker nearly 3 to 1 in the last quarter.
If Luetkemeyer is unable to self-fund he will need to pick up his fundraising pace considerably to keep pace with Baker.
This is a Lean Republican district but Judy Baker should be able to outraise Luetkemeyer and make it very competitive.
Please feel free to donate to Judy Baker at my ActBlue page below if you’d like to help her continue to outraise Luetkemeyer.
http://www.actblue.com/page/wa…
To double the effectiveness of any swing state donations, I’ll match all small donations on my page and all total donations this week on my page up to $400.
The TV market split for the MO-9 primaries
Democratic Primary
Columbia (25K): 54/26 Baker
Hannibal (11.8K): Bode 39, Gaw 32, Baker 26
St. Louis (11K): 44/37 Baker
Kirksville (3133): 49/36 Gaw
Overall, Columbia carried the day for Baker while the strong showing in St. Louis helped increase her margin to 44/31. Bode’s showing in his home market was his only highlight. 4583 of his 6565 votes came from the Hannibal market.
Now, to the Republican primary, under the fold
Columbia (26K): Luetkemeyer 47, Moore 29, Onder 14
St. Louis (21.58K): Onder 46, Luetkemeyer 30
Kirksville (3330): Luetkemeyer 38, Onder 35
Hannibal (3303): Luetkemeyer 46, Onder 32
Basically Luetkemeyer pulled in the Columbia market, and pulled in enough of the rest of the district to hold back Bob Onder’s giant burlap bags of money.
The Hulshof/Steelman primary helped to lead to a 52/48 split. A reverse of 2006 when more voters voted for Duane Burghard than Kenny Hulshof in the uncontested primaries.
The total votes for primary candidates by market
Columbia (51K): 51/49 Republican
St. Louis (32.7K): 66/34 Republican
Hannibal (15K): 78/22 Democratic
Kirksville (6478): 51/48 Republican
Total: 51/48 Republican
(A big thanks to the Hannibal market for keeping it close)
Back in 2006, Hannibal and STL had the exact same percentages. Kirksville voted 65/35 Democratic, and Columbia voted 55/45 Democratic. The shifts is due to people voting for Hulshof in the Republican primary.
So basically the two nominees (Baker and Luetkemeyer) have some things they need to do to win in November.
Baker needs to
a) win a convincing majority in Boone County (which makes up at least half the votes in the Columbia media market). Luetkemeyer would be a favorite for the Columbia market south of the Missouri.
b) make a strong showing in the Hannibal area (which she did well in back in August)
c) Do pretty well in a market that Luetkemeyer did not win: St. Louis. STL gave Burghard 37% in 2006, so Baker can concievably build on her August showing to deal with an opponent who didn’t win the STL market in the primary
Luetkemeyer needs to
a) Hold on to as much of Boone County and Northeast Missouri as possible. He will probably not come close to the 57% that Hulshof won in Boone back in 2006. But he’s from the South End of the district (Miller County)
b) Do well in the traditionally Republican areas of the STL market in MO-9 (Warren, The St. Charles sliver in the district).
The impact of television markets is a bit more obvious in primaries. But this race should be one to watch and it should be interesting to see if we start off even, or if one candidate has a slight lead in the first polls.
Remember Brock Olivo the football jock turned Republican pol who said he was qualified because “he had a social studies class.”
Well at last night’s Republican primary debate we found out what he learned in social studies class.
Asked by the debate moderator which founding father he most admired and why, he chose…drumrolll please……
Abraham Lincoln!
See video on this Kos diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
And if that wasn’t all, another leading Republican contender picked Ronald Reagan as their favorite founding father.
Meanwhile Judy Baker on the Democratic side of the MO-09 congressional race lead all House candidates in the nation in ActBlue fundraising last week and Steve Gaw finished in the top ten.
Fun times in the MO-09.
In yet another sign that Democrats are enthusiastic about taking over a long held Republican seat in the MO-09 house race, Judy Baker lead all US House candidates in the nation and was 3rd among all candidates (behind senate race candidates Noriega and Hagan) for ActBlue donations last week! (Also interestingly Steve Gaw another Democratic candidate from the 9th district squeaked into the top 10).
http://campaignnewswire.blogsp…
In a race where Republican frontrunner Bob Onder has already mistakenly released his Q2 fundraising numbers and raised only 89K, Judy Baker and Steve Gaw are posting strong numbers on ActBlue. Given that Judy Baker has raised approximately 100K on ActBlue alone she is almost certain to come in ahead of Onder’s numbers for the second quarter.