Tag: FL-20

Senate:

• CT-Sen: Connecticut’s open seat Senate race was always destined to be a high-dollar affair, and the money chase is well underway. Former SoS Susie Bysiewicz released a first quarter total of a respectable $500K, but Rep. Chris Murphy, her main rival in the Dem primary, just more than doubled up on that, with $1.1 million raised over the course of his first 10 weeks. (Of course, they’ve both picked their low hanging fruit on their first trip to the orchard, so the challenge will be to keep up that rate.)

• FL-Sen: PPP, who put out general election numbers on the Senate race last week, have the GOP primary numbers… and they find GOP voters saying “Uh, who?” (Y’know, like that guy who used to be the Senator… who somehow is known by only 26% of the sample?) Unfortunately, Connie Mack IV dropped out while the poll was in the field, so, better-known than the other options (perhaps courtesy of his dad, the former Sen. Connie Mack III, who the state’s older and more confused voters might think is back) he leads the way at 28, with the actual candidates, ex-Sen. George LeMieux and state Sen. majority leader Mike Haridopolos at 14 and 13, respectively. Additional likely candidate Adam Hasner is back at 5. Don’t look for any help on choosing from Marco Rubio: he’s just announced that he won’t endorse in the primary.

• HI-Sen: There still seem to be fans out there for losing ’06 IL-06 candidate and Obama admin member Tammy Duckworth, eager to get her into elected office somewhere someday, and the place du jour seems to be Hawaii, where a Draft Duckworth page has popped up for the open Senate seat.

• MA-Sen: Salem mayor Kim Driscoll has been the occasional subject of Senate speculation for the Dem primary, along with the mayor of pretty much every other mid-sized city in the state. Nevertheless, she pulled her name out of contention yesterday (all part of the Democratic master plan of not having a candidate to deceptively lull the GOP into complacency, I’m sure). Meanwhile, Republican incumbent Scott Brown (last seen praising the Paul Ryan Abolition of Medicare Plan, rolled out his first quarter fundraising numbers: he raised $1.7 million in Q1, leaving him with $8.1 million cash on hand. That’s, of course, huge, but the silver lining on that is that it doesn’t leave him on track to hit his previously-announced super-gigantic $25 mil fundraising goal for the cycle.

Gubernatorial:

• FL-Gov: With various newly-elected Republican governors in polling freefall, Rick Scott (who can’t even get along with his GOP legislature, let alone his constituents) really seems to be leading the way down. Quinnipiac finds his approvals deep in the hole, currently 35/48, down from 35/22 in February (meaning he picked up no new fans in that period, but managed to piss off an additional quarter of the state). Voters says by a 53-37 margin that his budget proposals are unfair to people like them. Voters are also opposed to the legislature’s proposal to stop collecting union dues from state workers’ paychecks.

• MO-Gov: After spending Monday dragging out his fight with those who buy ink by the barrel (aka the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who broke the story on his fancy-pants hotel habit), Missouri Lt. Gov. and Republican gubernatorial candidate Peter Kinder seemed to dial things down a notch yesterday: he says he’ll ‘voluntarily’ reimburse the state $30K for those expenditures, and while not exactly apologizing, says he seeks “to move this nimbus off the horizon.” Um, whatever that means.

House:

• AZ-06: After getting mentioned a lot when Jeff Flake announced his Senate run, opening up the Mesa-based 6th, state Senate president Russell Pearce is now sounding unlikely to run according to insiders. (Blowback over his links to the Fiesta Bowl controversy may be the last straw, though, rather than his status as xenophobia’s poster child.) A couple other GOP names have risen to the forefront: state House speaker Kirk Adams, who’s considering, and former state Sen. majority leader Chuck Gray, who is already in.

• CA-36: One more big union endorsement for Janice Hahn in the primary fight against Debra Bowen to succeed Jane Harman: this one comes from the SEIU.

• CT-05: The open seat vacated by Chris Murphy is likely to draw a crowd, and here’s a new Republican contender in this swingy, suburban district: Farmington town council chair and former FBI agent Mike Clark. Clark has a notable profile for helping to take down a fellow Republican while at the FBI: corrupt ex-Gov. John Rowland. He’ll face Justin Bernier in the GOP primary, who lost the primary in 2010.

• FL-20: In case Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s work load couldn’t get any heavier, she just got a new heap of responsibility dumped in her lap: she’ll become the new head of the DNC, to replace newly-minted Senate candidate Tim Kaine. She’ll, of course, keep her day job as Representative.

• MN-08: The Dem-leaning 8th is as good a place as any to pick up a seat in 2012, but there’s the wee problem of trying to find somebody to run there. The latest Dem possibility that drew everyone’s interest, Yvonne Prettner Solon, the former Duluth-area state Sen. and newly-elected Lt. Governor, won’t run here either.  

Other Races:

• NH-St. House: I realize that with 400 members you’re going to have a lot of bad apples, but still we’re up to 3 GOP frosh having resigned already from the New Hampshire state House. Hot on the heels of a 91-year-old member resigning after advocating (literally) sending ‘defectives’ to Siberia to starve, Gary Wheaton just resigned for driving with a suspended license after a previous DUI (and then publicly suspected the arresting officer for targeting him because of his vote against collective bargaining). And somewhat less dramatically, Robert Huxley eventually got around to resigning after not getting around to showing up for any votes so far in the session.

Remainders:

• EMILY’s List: EMILY’s List is out with its first five fundraising targets for the 2012 cycle. Some of them are to be expected, with high-profile GOP freshmen and already-announced female opponents: Allen West (who may face West Palm Beach mayor Lois Frankel in FL-22), Paul Gosar (who faces a rematch with ex-Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in AZ-01), and Charlie Bass (rematched with Ann McLane Kuster in NH-02). They also targeted Joe Heck in NV-03 and Chip Cravaack in MN-08, who don’t have opponents yet but conceivably could match up with Dina Titus and Tarryl Clark, respectively.

• WATN?: Thirtysomething Carte Goodwin seemed to make a good impression during his half-a-year as a fill-in in the Senate (in between Robert Byrd and Joe Manchin), moving him to prime position on the Dems’ West Virginia bench, but he says he’s not running for anything else anytime soon. Or more accurately, he says the only the only thing he’s running for “is the county line.” (Uh, with the revenuers in pursuit?)

• CO-Sen: Here’s an amateur-level mistake from the Bennet campaign: electioneering in the Denver public schools (where Michael Bennet used to be Supernintendo before being appointed Senator). The campaign sent mailings to a school asking for the principal’s support and fliers were given to principals at a district workshop.

• FL-Sen: The Kendrick Meek campaign is touting its own fishy poll that says that Meek leads Charlie Crist… among voters who know both of them. The lead is 45-43 for Meek among those 25% of the sample who know who the heck Meek is. In the larger sample, Crist is up 47-31.

• KS-Sen: Kansas Senate news three digests in a row? I’m as surprised as you are. Anyway, retired advertising executive and journalist Charles Schollenberger confirmed that he will run for the Senate. With seemingly no Dems higher up the totem pole interested in the race, Schollenberger may wind up carrying the flag.

• NC-Sen: It’s not quite confirmed, but the rumor mill is churning up stories that youthful former state Senator and Iraq vet Cal Cunningham is moving to formally jump into the North Carolina Senate race. SoS Elaine Marshall is already in the Democratic primary field.

• PA-Sen: There’s an unexpected fourth Democratic participant in the Senate primary all of a sudden: Doris Smith-Ribner, a recently retired Commonwealth Court (which apparently is one of two intermediate appellate courts in Pennsylvania; don’t ask me why there are two) judge for two decades. Her presence could prove nettlesome to Rep. Joe Sestak, by eating a bit into his share of liberal anti-Arlen Specter votes in what’s likely to be a close primary. (“Fourth,” you say? State Rep. Bill Kortz is running too, and has been for many months.)

• AZ-Gov: He was probably seeing the same terrible polls that everyone else was, and ex-Governor Fife Symington decided to put the kibbosh on a gubernatorial comeback. Instead, Symington endorsed not the current Governor, Jan Brewer, but one of her minor opponents, former state GOP chair John Munger.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman scored a victory of sorts with the publication of a story titled “Meg Whitman’s voting record not as bad as originally portrayed.” It turns out she was registered at several points in California in the 1980s and 1990s, but there’s still no indication that she actually voted during this period.

Meanwhile, Whitman’s primary rival ex-Rep. Tom Campbell may get a big leg up: rumors persist that he may get picked as California’s new Lt. Governor (once John Garamendi gets elected to CA-10). I’d initially thought that was a way of scraping him out of the gubernatorial primary and giving him a door prize, but it could give him a higher profile and bully pulpit to compensate for his vast financial disadvantage as he stays in the race. Campbell was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Finance Director for a while, and they operate in the same centrist space, so maybe Ahnold would do him the favor? (Of course, he’d still have to survive confirmation by the Dem-controlled legislature, who might be reluctant to promote Campbell, who they rightly see as the most dangerous general election opponent.)

• FL-Gov: It had seemed like state Sen. Paula Dockery, who threatened repeatedly during the spring to run in the GOP gubernatorial primary, had faded back into the woodwork. However, she’s front and center again today, saying that she’s “leaning toward” running and giving herself a three-week timeline (she put off the decision because of her husband’s surgery this summer). Another minor embarrassment for her primary opponent, AG Bill McCollum: the co-chair of his campaign, former state GOP chair Alex Cardenas, had to explain that, no, he didn’t actually host a fundraiser for Democratic rival Alex Sink. (It was hosted by Democratic partners in Cardenas’s lobbying firm.)

• NJ-Gov: Jon Corzine and Chris Christie have sufficiently reduced each other’s statures that the state’s largest newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger, took what may be an unprecedented step, and endorsed the independent candidate in the race: Chris Daggett. I still can’t see this giving Daggett the momentum to break 20%, but more Daggett votes are good, as they seem to come mostly out of the Christie column. Meanwhile, Chris Christie got an endorsement he may not especially want in the blue state of New Jersey — from the Family Research Council (who also just endorsed Conservative Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 special election). Also, Christie is living large after getting an endorsement that may carry more weight, from the New Jersey Restaurant Association.

• VA-Gov (pdf): There’s one new poll of VA-Gov to report today: Mason-Dixon, and they come in with a 48-40 edge for Bob McDonnell over Creigh Deeds, closely tracking today’s Pollster.com average of 51-43. The poll finds Deeds getting only 81% of the African-American vote (with 9% to McD), far too little, especially in combination with what PPP‘s Tom Jensen is seeing, as he teases that he’s projecting abysmal black turnout of 12% in the coming election. At any rate, Deeds is now touting his underdog status in fundraising e-mails, and is alluding to more possible visits from Barack Obama in the stretch run.

• FL-20: Here’s an understatement: Republican candidate Robert Lowry, hoping to defeat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in this D+13 district, conceded it was a “mistake” to shoot at a target labeled “DWS” while at a Southeast Republican Club gathering at a gun range.

• MN-06: As state Sen. Tarryl Clark seems to be building a fundraising and labor endorsement edge, her primary opponent for the Democratic nomination, Maureen Reed, says she won’t follow traditional decorum and abide by the DFL endorsement. Reed (a former member of the Independence Party) says she’ll keep open the option of taking the fight all the way to the primary, a reversal of her position from months earlier (although from before Clark got into the race and Elwyn Tinklenberg left). (UPDATE: The Reed campaign writes in to say that the Minnesota Public Radio story that underpins this story is incorrect and that Reed never stated whether or not she would abide by the DFL endorsement.)

• NC-11: One reddish southern district where the Republicans are still at square one on recruitment is the 11th. Businessman Jeff Miller said that he won’t challenge sophomore Dem Heath Shuler.

• NY-15: As ethics allegations take a toll against long-time Rep. Charlie Rangel, he’s getting a primary challenge… from his former campaign director. Vince Morgan, now a banker, says “it’s time for a change.”

• OH-17: Republicans may have found someone to run in the 17th against Rep. Tim Ryan: businessman and Air Force vet Bill Johnson, who’s now exploring the race and will decide in December. Ryan probably isn’t too worried, as he’s won most of his races with over 75%, in this D+12 district.

• PA-04: Pennsylvania Western District US Attorney Mary Buchanan is reportedly considering running as a Republican against Dem sophomore Jason Altmire. (Hopefully she isn’t violating the Hatch Act too much while she considers it.) Buchanan was one of the USAs who weren’t fired in the Bush-era purge (in fact, she allegedly helped consult on the list of those who were fired). State House minority whip Mike Turzai has been reputed to be the GOP’s desired recruit here, but Buchanan’s flack says that Turzai is focused on winning back GOP control of the state House in 2010 instead.

• PA-11: Attorney and hedge fund manager Chris Paige is the first Republican to take on Paul Kanjorski (or Corey O’Brien, if Kanjorski goes down in the Dem primary). Still no word on whether Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta is interested in yet another whack at the race.

• Supreme Courts (pdf): News from two different state supreme court races? Sure, why not. In Pennyslvania, there’s another Dane & Associates poll out, of a hotly contested 2010 race for a state supreme court seat; Democrat Jack Panella leads Republican Joan Orie Melvin 38-35. Also, in Texas, Democrat Bill Moody, who came close to winning a seat in 2006 (better than any other Dem statewide candidate that year), will try again in 2010, and he has an interesting new campaign gimmick: he’s going to tour the state in a big orange blimp.

• CA-45: After years of letting California’s 45th district (the most Democratic-leaning district in California still represented by a Republican, where Obama won 52-47) lay fallow, the Democrats actually seem to have a top-tier (or close to it) challenger lined up. Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet just started a campaign committee for a face-off against Mary Bono Mack. The openly gay Pougnet has been mayor of the city of 40,000 since 2007.

• KY-Sen: Dr. Dan may get some company in the primary. 39-year-old Attorney General Jack Conway has announced “there’s a good chance” he’ll run for Senate in 2010. Subtexts in other quotes suggest that he’s been negotiating with Rep. Ben Chandler and Auditor Crit Luallen, who may be stepping aside for him.

• CO-Gov: Now this seems unexpected. Ex-Rep. Scott McInnis, after butting heads with more conservative elements in the state GOP and studiously avoiding the 2008 and 2010 senate races in Colorado, has chosen a much more uphill battle: he’s running for governor against Democratic incumbent Bill Ritter. He may still face a primary battle against up-and-coming state senator Josh Penry (who used to be McInnis’s press secretary).

• PA-Gov, PA-06: Jim Gerlach acknowledged in an interview that people have been soliciting him to run against Arlen Specter in the 2010 senate primary (which would turn it into moderate/moderate/fiscal wingnut/religious wingnut chaos). However, he’s still charging full speed ahead on his gubernatorial bid instead.

• MI-12: Here’s one of the least likely places you could imagine for a heated primary, but it may happen. State senator Mickey Switalski will challenge 14-term incumbent Sander Levin in this reliably Dem (65-33 for Obama) district in the Detroit suburbs. (To give you an idea how long Levin has been around, he’s Carl Levin’s older brother.) This doesn’t seem to be an ideological challenge as much as Switalski is term-limited out of the state senate in 2010 and needs somewhere else to go.

• CA-10: San Francisco city attorney analyst (and former political editor for the San Francisco Examiner) Adriel Hampton has announced his candidacy for the open seat being vacated by Ellen Tauscher. What may be most memorable about this is that his may be the first ever candidacy announcement made by Twitter; he faces long odds against state senator Mark DeSaulnier (who won’t announce until Tauscher’s resignation is official).

• New Dems: One other musical chairs item left in the wake of Tauscher’s resignation is who takes over as the chair of the New Dems. The New Dems have five vice-chairs, but it looks like the hyper-ambitious Joe Crowley has enough support nailed down to take command bloodlessly. The CW is wondering whether this will complicate Crowley’s efforts to join House leadership (he lost a caucus vice-chair bid in 2006), but my question is what the heck is a New Dem doing in NY-07 (which went for Obama 79-20)?

• FL-20: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Miami Herald on Saturday that she successfully battled breast cancer over the past year. We wish her good health as she continues her recovery. (D)

• Maps: For those of you who enjoy seeing maps breaking things down by congressional districts, here’s a new one from real estate site hotpads.com: which CDs have the highest foreclosure rates.

I address this screed to Congressman Kendrick Meek and Congresswoman Deborah Wasserman Schultz.  I know that both of you have been under much scrutiny here in the blogosphere, based upon your recent recusals from campaigning against your neighboring Republican congresspersons.  I suspect that you probably have your eyes on a senate race at some point in the future. In preparation for that, you probably think that you're positioning yourselves to be perceived as moderates who can work well across the aisle. However, I'm here to show you that if you consider such positioning to be part of a winning strategy, you are terribly mistaken.

One need not look further than the results of 2006 to learn that authenticity works.  During that crucial election season, the Democratic party was faced with the outrageously tall order of winning at least six senate seats.  As is the usual tendency of the deck, it was once again stacked against us.  Our GOP opponents appeared to have financial advantages.  At the outset of the year, we didn't even have six, let alone seven, viable seats, and severe party infighting threatened at least one critical race (Ohio).  From that mess, the DSCC scrounged up seven viable challengers in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Montana.  Of these seven, six won.  I will not focus on the Rhode Island race, since it was an unusual scenario in a state whose dynamics do not mirror those of swing states or of the nation at large.  I'll also leave out Pennsylvania, since that was an instance of an incumbent who was so off his rocker, a piece of cardboard could've defeated him.  And the Virginia race has been written about ad nauseum, so I'll skip that one as well.  I will instead focus on Ohio, Missouri, Montana, and Tennessee; three wins and a loss, and why it turned out that way.

When Sherrod Brown prevailed over Paul Hackett in the primary for the Ohio senate, many Democrats became nervous; Hackett, an Iraq War veteran, seemed like a more viable option to run against incumbent Republican Mike DeWine than the unabashedly liberal Cleveland congressman whose record on the hot-button social issues was completely progressive.  In the fabled state that won the election for Bush in 2004, it seemed like a bad idea to run a candidate whose record was to the left of John Kerry's.  Well, as it turned out, Sherrod Brown proved to be an excellent candidate. Instead of fudging his answers and trying to make himself look like something he wasn't, he proudly stood up for his principles, emphasizing his economically progressive ideals, but without attempting to conceal his stances on the social issues.  His unapologetic championing of the disadvantaged called to mind another progressive who never backed down from his core beliefs: the late, great Paul Wellstone.  

Over in Missouri, then-State Auditor Claire McCaskill waged a tough fight against Jim Talent, the incumbent GOP senator.  The stem cell initiative was on the ballot in that state, a potential risk in a state with such a high number of evangelicals.  It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise when McCaskill put Talent on the defensive on that issue, and on the issue of abortion, in nearly every debate.  In a key appearance on Meet The Press, Talent lobbed Republican talking points at McCaskill, and, rather than attempting to fit her responses into those frames, she effectively twisted them around to leave Talent as the weaker candidate, hemming and hawing and making excuses for his every statement.  McCaskill's margin of victory was small, but in a very conservative state like Missouri, it was enough!

Out on the ranges, where libertarianism runs strong, the Montana senate race saw a battle between two very colorful characters: the doddering embarrassment Republican Conrad Burns, who was often looked upon as something of a senile uncle even by his fellow GOPers, and the plain-spoken, buzz-cut-sporting Jon Tester, who won the senate primary over a less progressive state official.  Burns trotted out the old canard of fearmongering, trying to to use Tester's opposition to the PATRIOT Act as a political bludgeon.  Had Tester been a weaker candidate, he would have attempted a nuanced explanantion, trying to convince people that he could be patriot without supporting the PATRIOT Act, accepting the right wing's frames instead of creating his own.  Luckily, Tester unleashed the no-nonsense directness that is a trademark of the Mountain West; in one key debate, in which Burns accused Tester of wanting to “weaken” the PATRIOT Act (clearly a standard GOP frame, portraying the Democrats as weak on terror and weak in general,) Tester famously responded, “I don't want to weaken the PATRIOT Act, I want to repeal it.”  Had John Kerry been anywhere near this bold in 2004, Bush would not have had a second term.

After looking at the victories of Brown, McCaskill, and Tester, I now turn to the only high-profile loser on our side, Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee.  Yes, I am well aware of the racist tactics that the Republicans used against Ford in the infamous “Call Me” ad (a frame-by-frame analysis is available here,) but I remain convinced that a stronger candidate, one with more backbone and more confidence in his own platform, would have been able to fight back and prevail. Ford embodied the ideals of a DINO at best.  He appeared in a clumsy ad in a church, going too far into the territory of unsubtlety in an attempt to prove his religiosity.  (I had serious flashbacks to John Kerry's 2004 proclamation of himself to be the “candidate of conservative values.”  The minute we accept the GOP frames, we're dead in the water). On the campaign trail in '06, Ford frequently trumpeted his opposition to gay marriage.  He spoke in tones that ranged from cautious to mildly complimentary toward Bush's Iraq policies, all the while distancing himself from the Democratic leadership in the senate.  In short, he ran as a Republican.  And why would anyone vote for a Republican who doesn't have the conviction to actually run within the party that actually represents the conservative values he preaches, when they could vote for an actual Republican whose voting patterns are more sure-footed? 

You see where I'm going with this.  2006 was a Democratic tidal wave, yet Harold Ford lost because of his own spinelessness and willingness to act like a Republican.  The moral of the story here is to stick to your guns, champion your own progressive record, and be who you are.  It's obvious that if you have achieved anything in Congress, you have been able to work with the other side.  Playing “footsie” with Republicans does nothing to further your goals; in fact, it undermines them, since progressive voters might doubt your convictions.  I certainly hope that your aides and advisors read this post, as it is crucial that you absorb its message.  (For all the readers of this blog, I suggest writing to these Florida congresspersons and calling their offices to relay a similar message).  Please, be a Sherrod Brown or a Jon Tester.  Don't be a Harold Ford.  Your political futures will be brighter for it, if recent history is any indicator!