Tag: OR-05

• NH-Sen: ARG, mateys! The New Hampshire-based pollsters find that Republican AG Kelly Ayotte is keelhauling Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes in the Senate race, although with lots of undecideds: 41-34. This is their first look at the Ayotte/Hodes matchup. (UPDATE: Oh, come on… I just noticed that ARG also has Barack Obama’s NH approval at 34/57 and even Gov. John Lynch at 37/40. So take this poll with a mighty hunk o’ pirate salt.) Also today, Ayotte’s primary opposition is lining up. Businessman Jim Bender says he’s forming an exploratory committee, and Ovide Lamontagne is setting up a testing-the-waters 527 to raise funds.

• NV-Sen: Former state GOP chair, former one-term state Senator, former co-owner of the Sahara casino, and former Miss New Jersey 1973 Sue Lowden (and former Reid donor, back in the 1980s) is officially in the race against Harry Reid. Democrats are pointing to her close ties to John Ensign, while even tradmed pundits like Chris Cillizza are left wondering if her resume is “somewhat thin” for the task of going against Reid.

• VT-Gov: Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie announced today that he will run for the Republican nomination for the open gubernatorial race in Vermont. His previous silence on the issue since Jim Douglas’s retirement announcement had suggested he wasn’t going to run, but now apparently he’s all in. Dubie is socially conservative (at least by Vermont standards), so if he’s the standard bearer (and this probably means that recent party-switching Auditor Tom Salmon, who said he wouldn’t run if Dubie ran, won’t run now) that may improve Dem odds at picking up the seat. Of course, Dem odds mostly turn on what the Progressive Party does.

• GA-12: Two developments in the 12th, where Rep. John Barrow is already facing two Republicans (doctor and self-proclaimed top recruit Wayne Mosely, and Thunderbolt Fire Chief Carl Smith). A third GOPer, Savannah party activist Jeanne Seaver, is also getting into the field. And on Barrow’s left, former state Sen. Regina Thomas is considering another primary run. Although Blue Dog Barrow should theoretically be vulnerable to a challenge from an African-American Democrat in this almost half-black district, Thomas pulled in only 24% of the primary vote in a seemingly underfunded and underplanned challenge last year. (H/t TheUnknown285.)

• NC-11: This might be a slightly more imposing challenge to Rep. Heath Shuler than the guy who promised to serve only one term: Jeff Miller, a Hendersonville businessman who received a Presidential Citizens Medal for his work taking WWII veterans to Washington DC to see the WWII war memorial. Miller is “contemplating” the race.

• OR-05: Sad to say, it looks like we won’t have Mike Erickson to make fun of again next year; the GOP found a somewhat more viable challenger to freshman Rep. Kurt Schrader. State Rep. Scott Bruun says he’ll run; he says he has a “moderate middle sensibility” (which plays well in his wealthy corner of the Clackamas County suburbs, but may subject him to a primary challenge from elsewhere). Bruun ran in 1996 against Earl Blumenauer in the dark-blue 3rd and lost by a wide margin. Getting down into the weeds, his departure also opens up HD 37, the kind of suburban district that Democrats in the state legislature have been vacuuming up in the last few cycles.

• PA-04: Disregard what I said yesterday; don’t quite count out state House minority whip Mike Turzai yet. Despite the entry of lawyer Keith Rothfus to the GOP field yesterday, Turzai notified the media that he’s still considering a run against Rep. Jason Altmire, but is currently preoccupied by the budget stalemate in Harrisburg and will decide later.

The NRCC made a splash earlier today by releasing a target list of 70 Dem-held House districts that they hope to put into play next year. Let’s take a closer look at all 70 — including their PVIs, the closeness of each race in 2008, and whether or not the GOP has recruited a “legitimate” challenger this time (this is a bit of a subjective assessment, but we’ll get to that later):

That’s a big fat, honkin’ list of incumbents, including several that haven’t seen a competitive race in years — or ever (Boren, Skelton, the Arkansas delegation, Matheson, Pomeroy, Kind, and Boucher, to name just a few). Many of these races probably won’t produce competitive contests, but there’s absolutely no downside for the NRCC to be putting these incumbents on notice — not only will the targets being painted on these members’ backs have the potential to affect legislative votes, it helps to promote the idea that the NRCC is preparing for a big wave in their favor in 2010. (One thing’s for sure, if we have to worry about David Effin’ Wu next year, we’ll be preparing for life in the minority again.)

Now, what makes a challenger “legitimate”, you ask? That’s a good question. I define legitimacy as something that must be earned — whether it’s through an electoral track record or a demonstrated ability to fundraise (or self-fund), or some combination of both. In other words, just because the NRCC has met with some random businessman and asked him to challenge his local congressman, it doesn’t mean that the challenger has established himself as legitimate until he’s coughed up a quarterly filing with the FEC. Let me put it this way: for every Richard Hanna (the guy who nearly beat Mike Arcuri last year), there are a dozen or more Luke Pucketts or Carl Mumpowers. It’s just a lot harder at this point in the game to separate the wheat from the chaff, so our methodology is not to list a challenger without a record of electoral success as “legitimate” until they have demonstrated their ability to raise the dough. (And no, raising phat loads of cash through BMW Direct, like Bill Russell does in PA-12 does not count as a legitimate means of fundraising in our book.) The NRCC would no doubt disagree pretty strongly with my chart in some places, but I already feel that I’m being overly generous by granting OR-04 candidate Sid Leiken, who has had some pretty severe fundraising difficulties, “legit” status.

So, many of these districts marked with an “N” have challengers that have yet to prove the merit and mettle of their respective candidacies. There’s no doubt that many of these Ns will turn into Ys by the time the year’s over, but the GOP still has a lot of work to do. The GOP also has a stock of credible candidates considering bids in many of these “unchallenged” districts (FL-08, LA-03, and VA-05, in particular), so some of these holes will be easier to fill than others.

Also interesting is who is not listed on such an expansive list as this — guys whom the NRCC spent a lot of time targeting last cycle like Joe Donnelly (IN-02), Jim Marshall (GA-08) and Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) stand out as conspicuous absences, especially considering the number of extreme longshots thrown into the mix.

• NY-20: One day left to go in the special election. The district’s most popular politician, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, is appearing in GOTV robocalls blanketing the district.

The Times-Union finds that there’s been a flood of money into the race in the last few weeks from Republican third party groups. Of the $1.1 in independent expenditures since last Tuesday, $300K were Democratic, while $800K were Republican.

Also, Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall, who got kicked off the ballot last week because of a challenge to his petition signatures originated by Republicans, has endorsed Scott Murphy (seemingly more out of spite than out of agreement on the issues). His dozens of supporters may not make a big impact on the election, but it’s yet another news story that’s a black eye for Jim Tedisco.

• KY-Sen: Lt. Gov Dan Mongiardo picked up an important endorsement in the Kentucky senate primary: from his boss, Gov. Steve Beshear. (Important in the sense that it would be kind of awkward if he didn’t get that endorsment.)

• OH-Sen: Two big endorsements for SoS Jennifer Brunner in the Ohio senate primary: one from a major union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and one from Caroline Kennedy, who hosted a NYC fundraiser for Brunner.

• AK-Sen: With the possibility of a Lisa Murkowski/Sarah Palin primary in the 2010 Alaska senate race looming, here are some numbers that might give Palin some pause. A primary against Murkowski wouldn’t be the cakewalk for Palin that some had supposed. Hayes Research didn’t test a head-to-head, but they found that Palin’s approve/disapprove (among all voters, not just GOPers) is 60/35, while Murkowski is even better at 72/21. Palin’s “very negative” is 21%, while Murkowski’s is only 7%.

• OR-05: In response to the news that two-time loser Mike Erickson is considering another race, Blue Oregon comes up with a helpful list of somewhat more credible candidates as the GOP tries to dislodge Kurt Schrader before he gets entrenched. Former and current state legislators that get a mention include former majority leader Wayne Scott, as well as Bill Kennemer, Kim Thatcher, Vicki Berger, and Vic Gilliam.

• Redistricting: Believe it or not, the state of Ohio is hosting a “redistricting competition” to see who can come up with the best map for the state. Some of the criteria they’re using to judge entrants (like “compactness”) might be anathema to hardcore partisans, but the contest could still be fun nonetheless. The sign-up form is here. (D)

• CT-Sen: Looks like Robbie Simmons is going to have some company in the GOP primary for the nod to take on Chris Dodd; state Sen. Sam Caligiuri, the former mayor of Waterbury, is expected to announce his candidacy tomorrow. (J)

• NY-20: Lots going on in the Empire State today, as we enter the home stretch. Perhaps most significantly, the GOP finally succeeded in getting Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall kicked off the ballot, on the grounds that he didn’t have enough valid petition signatures. Siena found Sundwall polling at only 1% (Benenson gave him 4%), but there have been multiple rumored internal polls floating around within the last few days that have it as a 1 or 2-point race, so Sundwall’s votes (which seem likelier to migrate to Jim Tedisco’s column) may make a big difference. (Siena promises a new public poll to be released tomorrow.)

Joe Biden also jumped into the special election, cutting a radio ad touting Murphy and his own sort-of-local ties (he’s a Syracuse Law alum). The NRCC is continuing to work the faux-populist angle, rolling out a new ad criticizing Murphy for being on the board of an Internet company that paid bonuses to workers while losing money. (I assume that company wasn’t receiving hundreds of billions on the government dole, though.)

• CA-10: There’s already an internal poll of the race to replace Ellen Tauscher in the East Bay suburbs, commissioned by assemblywoman Joan Buchanan. In a bit of a surprise, Buchanan leads the pack, slightly edging presumptive frontrunner state senator Mark DeSaulnier. Buchanan is at 21, DeSaulnier at 18, with two Republicans, San Ramon mayor Abram Wilson and former assemblyman Guy Houston, at 14 and 13. (It’s polled that way because in a California special, like in CA-32, all candidates run in a multi-party primary, and if no one breaks 50%, the top person from each primary advances to a general, which according to this poll would be Buchanan and Wilson.) Buchanan and DeSaulnier both are waiting for Tauscher’s resignation to announce; it’s not clear whether either of the GOPers will get involved.

• NH-01: Manchester mayor Frank Guinta looks pretty serious about taking on Carol Shea-Porter in 2010; he met a second time with the NRCC about the race. He’s still likely to face a primary battle against John Stephen, who barely lost to Jeb Bradley in the 2008 primary and seems to be planning to try again.

• OR-05: Buried deep in a CQ article about how the parties are turning more to self-funders is a delightful tidbit about Mike Erickson, last seen getting flattened by Kurt Schrader in the 2008 open seat battle. Despite his last campaign collapsing into a horror show of Cuban junkets and abortion hypocrisy, he’s “actively considering” a third try for the seat in 2010. We could only be so lucky.

• CT-05: It’s been telegraphed for a number of weeks, but today it’s official: Justin Bernier, former Rob Simmons aide and former director of Connecticut’s Office of Military Affairs, will be running against Chris Murphy in the 5th. Murphy had little trouble defeating a state senator, David Cappiello, in 2008.

SurveyUSA (10/27-28, likely voters, 10/13-14 in parens):

Kurt Schrader (D): 55 (51)

Mike Erickson (R): 31 (38)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

When Darlene Hooley retired, this open seat race in a D+1 district with a GOP registration edge was supposed to be a barnburner. It was… if by ‘barnburner,’ you mean Mike Erickson pouring gasoline all over his own barn and setting it on fire.

While the Democrats fielded one of their strongest possible candidates, Erickson has endured one PR disaster after another, all while watching the district’s GOP registration advantage disappear. Now he’s left watching the continually rising Obama and Merkley wave lift Schrader higher along with them, too. Oh well… he’ll always have Havana.

SurveyUSA (10/13-14, likely voters):

Kurt Schrader (D): 51

Mike Erickson (R): 38

Other: 8

(MoE: ±4.1%)

If there was ever an indicator of just how unloved Mike Erickson is, it’s the fact that Erickson could only rustle up $31K in campaign contributions this quarter (he made up for the rest of his expenses with his own checkbook). Of course, this scathing non-endorsement of Erickson from The Oregonian is also a pretty good indicator, too.

A nice pick-up for Kurt Schrader:

State Sen. Frank Morse (R-Albany) crossed party lines and endorsed state Sen. Kurt Schrader (D-Canby) in the race for the 5th Congressional District seat Thursday.

Morse cited his history of having a positive working relationship with Schrader in the Oregon Senate, as well as a sense of trust he has for the Canby lawmaker as his reasons for crossing party lines.

“It’s a pretty easy call for me as a Republican to endorse Kurt Schrader,” Morse said at a press conference in the Oregon State Capitol. “I always like straight shooters, and that’s what I’ve found with Sen. Schrader. I don’t always agree with him, but I do trust him.”

Earlier this summer, Schrader also picked up the endorsement of the Oregon Farm Bureau, a group that normally backs Republicans. It sure seems that “humanitarian” Mike Erickson is unpalatable for a lot of self-respecting Oregon Republicans.

Under intense fire after being nailed for exaggerating his depiction of a 2004 pleasure vacation to Cuba as a “humanitarian trip”, scandal-plagued GOP candidate Mike Erickson is firing back at the media, claiming that the voyage was “one-third” humanitarian:

Erickson maintained on Monday that he brought 20 boxes of medical supplies and delivered them to clinics over two days. He estimated he spent about “one-third” of his time in Cuba doing that.

The other two-thirds, he said, included casual conversations with regular Cubans, whether at a restaurant or on the streets.

“I did a lot of that in that two-thirds. Every time I was at dinner, I talked to the waiters and waitresses and, ‘Hey, you’re young, what do you want to do in life?” he said.

“The other two-thirds wasn’t just leisure, or just whatever it was. It was constantly always asking, ‘Hey, what’s going on in your country here?'”

He called The Oregonian’s story inaccurate and denied ever going marlin fishing, dove hunting, shooting any kind of animal or smoking an entire cigar.

Yup, stop the presses: Mike Erickson did not smoke a cigar from tip to tip while in Cuba.

You almost have to give Erickson credit for taking Clintonian parsing to new heights.

PS: What about cock-fighting, Mike?

If the GOP’s chances of winning the open seat of retiring Democratic Rep. Darlene Hooley took a big hit with the nomination of scandal-chased Republican businessman Mike Erickson (who was last seen harassing voters at county fairs), it looks like the dream is continuing to unravel further and further by the day.

In the diaries, skywaker9 picks up the scoop from the Oregonian: In his campaign materials, Erickson has been boasting of a heroic “humanitarian trip” that he took to Cuba in 2004, which he describes in detail:

Four years ago I was given an opportunity to make a humanitarian trip to Cuba, providing medical supplies and equipment to the disabled and Cuba’s impoverished. The Cuban American Alliance Education Fund was looking for donors to help raise money and deliver supplies and equipment to Cuba’s less fortunate. I was able to purchase badly needed medical supplies and equipment from the US and bring them to Cuba’s disabled and poverty stricken communities.

The trip also provided me the opportunity to see firsthand just how horrific Castro’s stronghold on the nation had oppressed and mistreated people. The living conditions and healthcare were horrible.

The only problem? A copy of Erickson’s itinerary, obtained by the Oregonian, suggests that the “humanitarian” aspect of the trip was merely a cover for a lavish vacation that centered on luxury hotels, sunny beaches, mojitos, and something called “Comandante Fidel Castro’s Annual Gala Cigar Dinner and Auction”. A sampling of the activities on his agenda during the seven-day trip included:

A tour of the Partagas cigar factory and a special reception with the company’s president

Rides in “vintage automobiles”

Dinner at the exclusive “Club Havana”

Dove shooting

A classy evening out “at the cock fights”

What’s more, the itinerary also indicates that the company sponsoring the trip (“Safari Clubs International”) was willing to provide travelers who could not obtain a humanitarian license to visit Cuba with forged papers indicating that they spent their time in Mexico instead. There’s no telling if Erickson himself was provided with this special treatment, but perhaps the Oregonian’s forthcoming article will shed more light on his totally excellent Cuban adventure.

Mike Erickson, you’ve just been nailed.

UPDATE: The full, damning exposé is available here. The best part? Erickson sputtering in his defense: “If that’s not a humanitarian trip, I don’t know what is!” Yes, because no humanitarian trip is complete without a wild and crazy night out at “a Ricky Ricardo-style nightclub with showgirls.”

The Associated Press has a story on a recent self-administered post-mortem by House Republicans following the back-breaking special election losses of seats in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The verdict? GOP candidates lost because they could not overcome the “negative perception of the national party.”

Gee, you don’t say?

But the report also included an interesting nugget on some early DCCC expenditure plans for this fall. The DCCC has booked some advertising time in advance for three key races:

The DCCC has reserved $2.1 million for advertising for a seat in New York City in which Republican Rep. Vito Fossella intends to retire. Fossella, who is married with children, recently acknowledged fathering a child out of wedlock.

Democrats also said they will spend $1.2 million in the Portland, Ore., area, hoping to hold the seat of Democratic Rep. Darlene Hooley, who is retiring.

The third target is the seat held by Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado, where Democrats said they had reserved nearly $700,000 in advertising time.

Tom Cole has criticized the DCCC in the past for reserving time this far in advance, saying that such moves tip the committee’s hand. But I like the aggressive buy planned in New York’s 13th. If Staten Island Republicans are having a hard time recruiting a candidate now, how much harder is it going to be when prospective candidates (of which Guy Molinari assures us there are still a couple in existence) see that $2.1 million ad buy coming down the pipe?

I’m not as convinced that Kurt Schrader needs that much help, as Mike Erickson is seriously damaged goods at this point, but I’m sure the DCCC can scale back their ad time at their discretion.