Tag: Bob Schaffer

• CT-Sen: Rob Simmons may not be as revved up about jumping back into the GOP Senate primary as was reported last night (i.e. “I’m thinking about it.”). His former campaign manager told The Fix today that there’s no secret comeback bid and that “he has no plans to re-engage.” It’s probably wiser for Simmons to take that approach, to lay low and wait for the off chance that Linda McMahon implodes pre-primary, rather than drain himself in an uphill fight against her.

• KS-Sen: I don’t know what spooked Jerry Moran into coughing up another internal poll (I can’t imagine it was the backstabbing by Tom Tancredo, but who knows?), but at any rate, he released a new internal from POS giving him a 56-24 lead over Todd Tiahrt in the GOP Senate primary. Moran also continues to win the fundraising race, raising $538K last quarter with $2.3 million CoH. Tiahrt raised $451K last quarter and has $1.3 million CoH, although he has a big fundraising dinner scheduled soon hosted by former Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis.

• NV-Sen: This news has to be, on the balance, good news for Harry Reid. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while certainly not considering endorsing Reid, is moving toward sitting out the Nevada Senate race. It may be tempting to pin this down with increasing Chamber discontent with the teabagger wing of the party (as seen with their moves in SC-Gov and ID-01), but a lot of it may be that they’re less unhappy with Reid as Majority Leader than the alternatives (Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin). Reid‘s also reporting, unsurprisingly, tons of money: he raised $2.4 million, although, after spending a lot on ads, he’s at $9 million CoH.

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov (pdf): Siena released polls everyone and everything in the Empire State today, although there’s little suspense in any of these races anymore. In the gubernatorial race, Andrew Cuomo beats Rick Lazio 60-28, beats Carl Paladino 64-23, and beats Lazio and Paladino (with Paladino on a 3rd party line) 54-23-10. Lazio beats Paladino in the GOP primary 40-20. In the Senate special election, Kirsten Gillibrand leads Bruce Blakeman 51-28, beats Joe DioGuardi 51-29, and beats David Malpass 50-27. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary at 24, with 7 for Blakeman and 5 for Malpass. And in the other Senate race, Chuck Schumer beats both Gary Berntsen and Jay Townsend by an identical 63-26. Townsend tops Berntsen in the GOP primary 24-13. They even throw in the Comptroller’s race, where Dem incumbent Tom DiNapoli beats self-funded GOPer Harry Wilson 48-24.

• SC-Sen: The Charleston minor league baseball team has answered Alvin Greene’s call for economic stimulus in the form of Alvin Greene action figures: they’ll be giving out Greene figurines as a promotion at their Saturday game. (Although it sounds a little half-assed, as they’re just sticking Alvin Greene heads on unused Statues of Liberty.) Also, with the primary out of the way, local and Beltway Democrats alike are uniting behind Greene, filling his coffers with… um… $1,000? (At least that puts him ahead of Roland Burris.) That number was apparently volunteered by Greene; he won’t have to file with the FEC until he hits the $5,000 mark.

• WV-Sen: Plans are already afoot in Washington to swear in West Virginia’s new Senator by Tuesday so that the unemployment benefits extension can be voted on that same day. Who, though, is still an open question. Other Senator Jay Rockefeller says there’s some White House pressure and he thinks he knows who it’ll be, but he isn’t saying who. Ex-Gov. and current College Board President Gaston Caperton has suddenly reversed course and is now saying that he is interested, which certainly seems like a tea leaf to me. There are also reports that Bob Wise and Larry Puccio have removed themselves from consideration, and Nick Casey (awaiting a federal judgeship) is very unlikely.

The NRSC is already running anti-Joe Manchin ads (in print media only), but that may not provide that much encouragement to Shelly Moore Capito (the only Republican who can make this competitive) to get in: one little-noted fact is that one item that rather pointedly got left off the agenda for today’s legislative special session is whether or not an officeholder could run for two seats at the same time in the special election and the regularly-scheduled election (like in, oh let’s just say, WV-Sen and WV-02).  

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis may be the last to know to know that he’s dropping out of the gubernatorial race. Tom Tancredo has been telling people that McInnis is going to drop out, although the McInnis camp is denying that, saying “we’re moving forward.” Tancredo is also the first state GOPer to publicly call for McInnis to get out, although I wonder if Tancredo is hoping he may get the chance to take his place (remember Tancredo had flirted with the race early last year). Tancredo doesn’t seem to be on the list of replacements that’s being bandied about by the local press, though: they include Josh Penry (whom Tancredo had backed, and who ran for a while before dropping out), former state Sen. Mark Hillman, and… get this… ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer, who badly lost the 2008 Senate race.

There’s also some speculation about the legalities of replacing McInnis: it doesn’t seem like the GOP could insert a hand-picked filler before the primary, unless both McInnis and Dan Maes dropped out (not out of the question, I suppose, considering that Maes’ campaign is currently belly-up). This may help McInnis’s decision along: the RGA is now saying that they’re abandoning him, pulling out of fundraisers they’d previously scheduled.

• GA-Gov: Mason-Dixon takes a look at the Georgia gubernatorial primaries. On the Republican side, they find John Oxendine at 31, Karen Handel at 23, Nathan Deal at 18, and Eric Johnson at 6. Compare that with Rasmussen (see below) and Magellan’s recent polls, which see possible Handel/Deal runoffs. Ed Kilgore also takes a look at the proxy war being fought in Georgia by Sarah Palin (backing Handel) and Newt Gingrich (backing Deal), which may be boosting those two’s fortunes at Oxendine’s expense. Mason-Dixon’s look at the Dem primary has comparatively less drama: Roy Barnes is out of runoff territory at 54, with Thurbert Baker at 20, David Poythress at 7, and Dubose Porter at 3.

• AZ-08: The Fix seems to be the leaking place of choice for the GOP for its internal polls, and they have word of another one with a GOPer with a (slight) lead. It’s in the 8th, where a Tarrance Group poll gives Jonathan Paton a 45-44 lead over Gabrielle Giffords. Paton, of course, still has to survive a primary against the more tea-flavored Jesse Kelly.

• KS-04: SurveyUSA’s new poll of the KS-04 primaries shows some interesting movement on the GOP side: both Mike Pompeo and Wink Hartman have declined by similar amounts (they’re currently at 32 and 31, respectively), with state Sen. Jean Schodorf making a late move up to 16, based on strength among women and moderates. Jim Anderson’s also at 9. There’s also a surprise on the Dem side: the DCCC-touted Raj Goyle is actually in danger of losing his primary to Some Dude, Robert Tillman. Tillman now leads, 40-36. Looks like we may have been right about Goyle’s reasons behind launching a TV buy now.

• House: We don’t usually like to link to this sort of meta about the state of the House, but it’s interesting to see the various blind men who are veterans of the DCCC and the NRCC in relatively close agreement about the size and shape of the elephant this year.

• Fundraising: AR-Sen | CA-Sen| CA-Sen | CT-Sen | DE-Sen | FL-Sen | IL-Sen | IN-Sen | MO-Sen | NH-Sen | OR-Sen | WI-Sen | IL-Gov | TX-Gov | CT-04 | DE-AL | FL-08 | GA-02 | NH-01 | OH-13 | PA-03 | PA-10 | RI-01 | WA-03

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 46%, Meg Whitman (R) 47%

• GA-Gov (R): Nathan Deal (R) 25%, Karen Handel (R) 25%, John Oxendine (R) 20%, Eric Johnson (R) 13%

• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 41%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 50%

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 46%, Ron Johnson (R) 47%

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 51%, Dave Westlake (R) 37%

The NRSC has pulled out. The DSCC has pulled out. The Dem has had an unassailable and growing lead in the polls. Recriminations have already begun on the GOP side. And Barack Obama is running away with the state.

In short, Mark Udall is in a commanding position to win this race. An upset by Bob Schaffer at this late date is a remote possibility at best. Therefore, we’re changing our rating on this race from Lean Democrat to Likely Democrat.

For your enjoyment, we will also once again present the leaked internal Republican strategy video for the state of Colorado:

With the news that the NRSC is pulling out of Colorado, a reader of SSP — who clearly gets what we’re about — sends in the following detailed timeline of Bob Schaffer’s epic collapse.

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January 15, 2007: Wayne Allard announces his retirement, opening up the Colorado Senate seat. Former Congressman Scott McInnis “all but confirmed that he will run for the open seat.” Other Republicans who said they would look at the seat include former congressmen Bob Schaffer, Attorney General John Suthers and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Bentley Rayburn.

January 25, 2007: Roll Call reports that Schaffer “indicated that he is inclined to sit it out absent being drafted as his party’s consensus nominee.”

January 30, 2007: Drafting begins? Schaffer flies to DC to have dinner with senators and meet with “political folks.”



March 21, 2007: Scott McInnis ends his Senate bid.

April 28, 2007: Schaffer announces to the Teller County Republicans that he’s running for Senate.



May 4, 2007: Schaffer denies that he announced a run for Senate.

May 12, 2007: Schaffer announces he’s running for Senate. This time he doesn’t deny it.

There’s more — much more — below the fold.

May 15, 2007: Schaffer clears the field: Suthers and Rayburn remove their names from consideration but the Denver Post writes, “Schaffer is hardly a consensus favorite of Colorado Republicans.”

Summer 2007: Cricket….cricket…

October 18, 2007: The Denver Post notes that Schaffer has completely avoided discussing issues on the campaign trail, but has instead “remained quietly on the sidelines.”

April 7, 2008: The comment that started it all: Bob Schaffer describes the Northern Mariana Islands as a “model” for a guest-worker program in the US.

April 10, 2008: The Denver Post breaks the first story on Schaffer’s ties to jailed-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It includes this now infamous picture of Schaffer parasailing while on his “fact finding” mission to the Northern Mariana Islands:

Following Days: Front page after front page, the Abramoff-Schaffer scandal unfolds.

April 11, 2008: The Associated Press reports that a 1999 memo from Schaffer’s staff alerted Schaffer that Abramoff’s lobbying firm arranged the Northern Mariana Islands trip.

April 11, 2008: The Denver Post reports that Schaffer supported Benigno Fitial, a candidate for Speaker of the House of the North Mariana Islands and an ally of Abramoff.  Schaffer endorsed Fitial in ads in the island newspaper, and his endorsement “was part of a concerted and public campaign by Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources to boost Fitial’s public career when he became key to extending a multimillion-dollar lobbying contract for Abramoff from the island’s government.”  After Fitial was elected speaker he pressured the Governor of the Marianas Islands to renew Abramoff’s lobbying contract.

April 12, 2008: The Denver Post reports on its front page that after returning from a Jack Abramoff-sponsored trip to the Northern Mariana Islands, Schaffer aggressively sought to discredit critics of human rights abuses on the islands, carrying out “a strategy that had been literally mapped out by Abramoff a year and a half earlier in the memo addressed to Willie Tan, who is one of the islands’ biggest textile manufacturers and had input on the lobbying contract between the islands and Abramoff’s firm.”

April 21, 2008: Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, blasts Schaffer for defending human rights conditions in the Northern Mariana Islands, where factory workers were made to undergo forced abortions.

April 28, 2008: Schaffer and his campaign manager Dick Wadhams have a combative interview with a Colorado reporter when asked about the Abramoff scandal. The transcript circulates widely.

May 14, 2008: Whoops! In his very first ad, Schaffer tries to tout his ties to Colorado, noting that he proposed to his wife on Pike’s Peak. The problem? The mountain he shows in Mt. McKinley…in Alaska. Schaffer pulls the ads.

May 30, 2008:  Dick Wadhams flatly denies that Schaffer was paid for his service on the board of the non-profit group whose founder, Bill Orr, has been convicted of illegally using funds from a congressional earmark.

June 23, 2008: Whoops! Schaffer “estimated he was paid $1,500 for his service on the board.” But confusing matters more, Schaffer’s financial disclosure form filed with the Senate Ethics Committee notes his work on the board but doesn’t show any income.

July 10, 2008: The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel breaks the news that while working as an oil executive in Denver, Bob Schaffer violated official U.S. policy by negotiating an oil exploration deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government at a time when the State Department was warning American oil firms not to sign such deals because they would lead to destabilization in Iraq.

July 11, 2008: The Huffington Post debunks Schaffer’s claims that he was unaware of U.S. objections to pursuing Kurdish oil deals, and reveals that he worked on the oil deal while officially a candidate for Senate.

July 12, 2008: Foreign policy experts rip Schaffer, “saying an oil deal his company negotiated in a region of Iraq jeopardized the safety of American troops”

July 17, 2008: Schaffer admits that he was aware that U.S. government officials opposed oil deals like the one he arranged with the Kurdistan Regional Government, contradicting his previous statement that he had no such knowledge at the time.

August 2, 2008: The stress of losing begins to wear on Schaffer’s campaign: Dick Wadhams has an outburst with Lynn Bartles of the Rocky Mountain News saying, “We’re going to shove a bunch of 30-second ads up his a** on this issue over the course of the campaign.”

August 15, 2008: Big Oil Bob earns the title with this astonishing quote: “But because prices are soaring, the reality is the federal government is raking in a bunch of cash right now on the backs of energy producers.”

September 28, 2008: In their Meet the Press debate, Schaffer – who appeared fidgety and angry – defended oil company profits as “not too bad.”

September 30, 2008: Schaffer’s connections to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff resurface with a former labor official and a human rights activist holding a press conference in front of his office in Denver to describe him “as ‘a leader’ in carrying out a plan hatched by jailed former lobbyist Jack Abramoff to shield sweatshops from U.S. immigration and labor laws.”

October 15, 2008: The Denver Post reports, “After together spending nearly $2 million in Colorado Senate ads in the last two weeks of September, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Freedom’s Watch – two of Schaffer’s biggest backers – suddenly pulled out.”

October 21, 2008: The NRSC says they’ll stay in Colorado “until the end.”

October 24, 2008: “The end” comes early… NRSC pulls out of Colorado, conceding defeat.

Ciruli Associates for Economic Development Council of Colorado (9/19-23, registered voters, 9/12-15/2007):

Mark Udall (D): 45 (36)

Bob Schaffer (R): 38 (35)

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Recently a lot of the polls of the Colorado Senate race have seemed either suspiciously close or suspiciously far apart, but here’s one that’s close to the mark if you average them all out. The same sample shows a closer presidential race, with Obama leading only 44-43.

The sponsor’s name might sound like this is a Republican internal poll, but this is apparently a nonpartisan poll conducted once a year by local pollsters Ciruli Associates.

Harstad Strategic Research for Mark Udall (9/7-9, likely voters):

Mark Udall (D): 45

Bob Schaffer (R): 34

Bob Kinsey (G): 2

Doug Campbell (C): 3

(MoE: ±3.6%)

In response to the NRSC’s internal from last week showing a one-point race for the open Senate seat in Colorado, the Udall camp releases their own internal showing an 11-point gap at the height of the GOP post-convention bounce. This poll is of mild interest in that it’s the first poll I can think of that has polled the effect of third-party candidates on the race (the Green and the Constitution Party guy seem to cancel each other out).

Rasmussen (9/9, likely voters):

Larry LaRocco (D): 30

Jim Risch (R): 58

(MoE: ±4.0%)

In other news from the Mountain West, Jim Risch has a big lead on Larry LaRocco in Rasmussen’s first poll of the open Senate seat race in Idaho. This poll is missing one key element, though: self-funding independent Rex Rammell, who’s charging hard at Risch’s right flank. If this is really where the race is, though, it doesn’t look like the Rammell effect will have much impact on the bottom line.

It may be worth noting that the uncharismatic and campaigning-averse Risch inspires a large degree of “meh” among the sample: he has a 62% favorable rating, but 41% of that is only “somewhat favorable.”

Rasmussen (likely voters, 6/17, 5/19 in parentheses):

Mark Udall (D): 49 (47)

Bob Schaffer (R): 40 (41)

(MoE: ±4%)

It’s a small bump, but Udall’s lead has moved outside the margin of error. His favorability numbers also are way ahead of Schaffer’s (56% very or somewhat favorable for Udall vs. 47% very or somewhat favorable for Schaffer, 35% very or somewhat unfavorable for Udall vs. 45% very or somewhat unfavorable for Schaffer).

I guess that’s what happens when you don’t know which mountains are located in your own state. Or what happens when you’re pals with Jack Abramoff and David Safavian…

Bonus finding (James): Obama leads by 43-41 in the state, down from 48-42 in May.

A few years ago, when Republicans mentioned the name of Dick Wadhams, a Coloradan protege of Karl Rove, they did so with hushed, awe-struck tones.  It was Wadhams, after all, who guided South Dakota Sen. John Thune to his stinging defeat of Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.  He was considered to be Rove's heir-apparent, and thus, in 2006, positioned himself as the top strategist for what was presumed to be an easy re-election race for the GOP's likely 2008 presidential candidate, Virginia Sen. George Allen.  Unlike the tough battle to unseat an incumbent in South Dakota, the Virginia race was supposed to be a cakewalk.  We all know how that turned out– Allen's campaign completely imploded in the wake of his careless use of the word “macaca,” leading to a victory for our candidate, now-Sen. Jim Webb.

A better strategist might have been able to pick up the pieces after “macaca-gate” and get the Allen campaign back on track.  Rove himself was able to do as much with the 2000 Bush campaign, pushing it upright every time its feckless candidate capsized (the incident in which Bush referred to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a “major-league asshole” while a microphone was still on, jumps to mind).  Nevertheless, even with this defeat on his resume, Dick Wadhams returned to his native Colorado, to become the state GOP chairman, and to run the campaign for 2008 senate candidate Bob Schaffer, a former congressman.

Because of Wadhams' Colorado roots, the establishment expected him to do much better there than in Virginia.  So far, it's not exactly working; fresh off a scandal involving a Jack Abramoff-funded junket to the Mariana Islands, things were looking bad enough for the Republican candidate.  Now, Team Schaffer has unleashed a new blunder, one that points to ineptitude in the strategy department.

Unlike Wadhams, Bob Schaffer was not born and raised in Colorado; he came to the mountanous state as a young adult, after growing up in Ohio.  As such, Wadhams advised Schaffer to run an ad emphasizing the latter's connetion to the state.  So, the candidate unveiled an ad set against the breathtaking backdrop of a snow-capped mountain, and, in the text of the ad, refers to having proposed to his wife on Pike's Peak, implying that that, the most well-known mountain in Colorado, is the mountain in the background.

The trouble is, it's not Pike's Peak. The stock photo used in the ad turned out to be a picture of Mt. McKinley in Alaska.  While not in the same league as “macaca-gate,” it is certainly a blunder– one that I'm sure is giving Wadhams a headache, as he heads for what may be another major loss on his resume as a strategist.

Frankly, the whole thing comes as a pleasant surprise to me; the conventional wisdom holds that the GOP is the party of message discipline, whose marketing strategies come straight from the world of big business and are, consequently, successful, while the Democrats fumble around and make gaffes all over the place.  The other side has always had its ruthless, amoral Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves, slyly slithering their way to electoral victory while our inept, mealy-mouthed, overly-apologetic strategists like Bob Shrum kept getting re-hired to run the same losing campaign many times over. I'm sure I'm not the only Democrat who gets a satisfying sense of schadenfreude as the GOP runs itself into the ground.

It looks like Bob Schaffer just handed Democrat Mark Udall and the DSCC an explosive issue to clobber him with in the Colorado Senate race this year.  Reflecting on the issue of immigration, Schaffer told the Denver Post that he’s got a solution for the hot-button issue:

He pointed to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate that imports tens of thousands of foreign textile workers, as a successful model for a guest-worker program that could be adapted nationally.  

“The concept of prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private- sector management is a system that works very well in one place in America,” he said of the islands’ program. “I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program.”

If the workplace conditions of Northern Marianas are Bob Schaffer’s ideal model for a foreign worker program in the United States, we should all be very, very afraid.  TPM Muckraker has a good backgrounder on the Northern Marianas (who retained the infamous Jack Abramoff as their chief lobbyist) here:

During the 1990s, Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) were frequent critics of the sweatshop conditions used in factories in the Marianas that made clothes with the “Made in the USA” label for companies like Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gap, Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborne. In 1992, the Department of Labor sued five garment factories owned by Willie Tan and eventually fined the Tan companies $9 million — the largest fine they had ever imposed.

American officials and human rights advocates testified before congress that workers, 91 percent of whom were immigrants from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, were working below the CMNI minimum wage ($3.05), often seven days a week and up to 12 hours a day, and living in shacks behind barbed wire and without plumbing. Many workers also paid $5,000 to $7,000 in “recruitment fees” to gain employment, often with money borrowed from loan sharks who took all of their wages until the fees were paid back.

Are those the kinds of conditions that Schaffer wants to replicate on a “nationwide” level?  How about the forced abortions and sex slavery that many of the Islands’ immigrant workers are subject to?

The political stupidity of Bob Schaffer is mind-boggling.  Beyond mind-boggling.

(Big hat-tip to ColoradoPols for the scoop.)