SSP TV:
SSP IE Tracker:
Longtime fans of SSP will remember the House Independent Expenditure tracker that we updated on a regular basis two years ago. As much as I’d like to resurrect that project this year, the time constraints of law school prevent me from investing that kind of time. However, we’ll still try to keep you in the loop on noteworthy independent expenditure reports here in the Daily Digest.
• AK-Sen: Once again, the Swing State Project is proud to issue one of its once-in-a-blue-moon endorsements, and to do it for Scott McAdams, the Democratic nominee in Alaska. We’re two-thirds of the way to our $2,400 goal, and we’ve just hit 50 contributors, so please join in!
• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: This is a real head-scratcher: Ken Buck’s camp is out with an internal poll by POS… showing him losing (despite what a number of public polls have said)?!? The poll gives a 43-40 edge to Michael Bennet, with 5 going to the Libertarian candidate. Either this is an odd attempt to mess with Dems’ heads, or, more likely, a message to his supporters to stop taking the race for granted and to keep the contributions flowing. UPDATE: OK, this isn’t a Buck internal; it’s a joint POS/Fairbank Maslin collaboration, and it’s not said on whose behalf this poll was performed. One other bit of news from the poll: it also includes gubernatorial numbers, and John Hickenlooper is closing in on the 50% mark. He’s at 48, to 25 for Dan Maes and 15 for Tom Tancredo.
• DE-Sen: Tax liens and penalties are sort of the common cold of political scandals, but this isn’t timed well for Mike Castle, who’s trying to stave off a last-minute zone-flooding from Tea Party Express on behalf of Christine O’Donnell. Castle had to make interest and penalty payments three times on his Capitol Hill pad in 2005 and 2006, although of course that pales in comparison to O’Donnell’s long track record of ducking her bills. Meanwhile, we have a sense of what the Tea Party Express‘s fully operational battle station looks like: they’ve spent only $60K on O’Donnell’s behalf so far, but plan to have spent $250K by the primary (including more airing of their TV spot and radio ad, as well as direct mail and out-of-state phone banking).
• KY-Sen: The moneybomb shoe’s on the other foot: Jack Conway’s doing an online one-day fundraising scramble today. As of 1 pm ET, the day’s total was up to $130K. Meanwhile, against that moneybomb backdrop, is an instance of a paid Rand Paul staffer having gotten caught sockpuppeting over at Daily Kos, concern-trolling against Conway from the left.
• NH-Sen: A lot of money ($10K from various officers and employees) has flowed into Kelly Ayotte’s campaign from a decidedly sketchy company in Texas: Tax Masters, one of those companies that relies heavily on late-night advertising to generate business for helping resolve debts owed to the IRS. The company and its CEO were charged with multiple violations of Texas’s consumer protection laws, in the wake of hundreds of consumer complaints.
• OH-Sen, OH-Gov: The Columbus Dispatch offers up some truly bad numbers for the Democratic candidates in Ohio, finding Rob Portman leading Lee Fisher 50-37 in the Senate race and John Kasich leading Ted Strickland 49-37 in the governor’s race (and the GOP winning all lower statewide races too), among registered voters. One important caveat, though: the Dispatch’s poll are notoriously an all-mail-in survey (why not just poll subscribers to Literary Digest?!?), and have consistently ranked dead last in most of 538’s pollster ratings (until the most recent installment, when they managed to leap ahead of a few other members of the rogues’ gallery, including Research 2000, ARG, and Zogby Interactive).
• WA-Sen: Patty Murray leaked an internal poll today to Politico, showing that the needle has barely budged in this race between two ubiquitously-known, well-defined candidates. The Fairbank Maslin poll gives Murray a 50-45 lead, and 53/42 approval. An April internal by the same pollster, back when Dino Rossi was only considering entering the race, gave Murray an 8-point lead.
• MA-Gov: A poll from local wire service State House News Service gives a decent lead to Deval Patrick, thanks to an assist from Tim Cahill. Their first poll of the gubernatorial race has Patrick leading Republican Charlie Baker, independent Cahill, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein 34-28-18-4, among registered voters.
• MD-Gov: For every Joe Miller, there’s, well, a Brian Murphy. The Washington Post takes a quick look at the upstart GOP gubernatorial candidate, whose Sarah Palin endorsement hasn’t turned into much of anything (other than a way for Bob Ehrlich to burnish his moderate credentials). In the pre-primary reporting period (all of which covers the post-Palin period), he’s raised only $35K, including $14K from himself, leaving him with $31K CoH. Ehrlich raised $725K over the 18-day period, taking him to $2.5 million CoH, while Dem Martin O’Malley raised $267K and has $6.5 million CoH.
• MI-Gov: While organized labor is the biggest force propelling Dem Virg Bernero in Michigan, there’s one union that isn’t falling in line. The state’s largest construction union, the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights, is backing Rick Snyder instead. More alarmingly for Bernero, the much-larger Teamsters haven’t endorsed yet and could conceivably go for Snyder too.
• MS-Gov: The 2011 election is only fourteen months away, and things are taking shape in Mississippi. Phil Bryant, the first-term Republican Lt. Governor, is taking steps to prepare for a bid. Businessman Dave Dennis also seems likely to run, while the state’s great-named SoS, Delbert Hosemann, also sounds like he’s interested.
• TX-Gov: We have two wildly divergent polls in Texas, both from GOP pollsters. Hill Research, on behalf of the Texas Watch Foundation (in a poll that seems primarily about homeowners’ insurance reform, but where the gube race seems to have gotten thrown-in as an attention-getter), finds Rick Perry leading Bill White by only a 42-41 margin. On the other hand, GOPAC (perhaps having gotten an advance heads-up about the Texas Watch numbers) rolled out numbers showing Perry in better shape. Their poll, via Wilson Research Strategies, gives Perry a 50-38 lead over White.
• KS-04: With polling now pretty consistently showing Mike Pompeo leading Raj Goyle by single digits in the open seat race in the 4th, the last thing the Republicans can afford here is a high-profile third-party challenge on the right. That’s what they might get, though, if businessman (and former Tic-Tac-Dough host) Wink Hartman follows through on threats to pick up the just-abandoned Libertarian ballot line. The state party has started scrambling to lean on Hartman to get him to stand down.
• NY-various: There’s a bonanza of pre-primary fundraising reports in New York (where the primary is next week). The biggest raiser among the various Republican House challengers was Chris Cox in the 1st, who raised $103K to Randy Altschuler’s $59K (although Altschuler still has a big CoH advantage). In the 23rd, the numbers were much smaller: Matt Doheny raised $41K and Doug Hoffman raised $37K, although Doheny has about three times Hoffman’s CoH.
• WV-01: On the back of the DCCC’s wave of internal polls today, here’s one more poll that probably has to go in the “good news” file: an internal poll, from POS, has Republican David McKinley trailing Dem Mike Oliverio in the open seat race in the 1st. Oliverio leads McKinley 41-36. The only other poll of this race was an Oliverio internal last month that gave him a seemingly too-good-to-be-true 52-36 lead over McKinley, but at the very least, it seems like everyone’s in agreement that Oliverio’s in pole position for now.
• Ads:
• CO-Sen: The DSCC is out with an ad in Colorado, letting Ken Buck go after himself with his own words on Social Security and the 17th Amendment
• DE-Sen: Mike Castle’s new ad is out; predictably, it goes after Christine O’Donnell for her crazy finances
• FL-Sen: First TV ad from Charlie Crist, stressing his (what else?) independence; also Kendrick Meek’s first TV ad, which is him on a swamp boat and stressing his (what else?) Dem credentials
• MO-Sen: Roy Blunt ad about how much he loves small business
• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher’s first TV ad out of the gate is negative, going after Rob Portman for being George Bush’s job-exporting trade representative
• CA-Gov: Strangely sepia-toned ad is Jerry Brown’s first, seemingly to remind older Californians about how much things sucked less when he was Governor the first time (SOTB: $1.2 million for one week… that’s California for you)
• FL-Gov: Rick Scott’s first post-primary TV ad is an attack ad against… Barack Obama? (and Alex Sink, too, I guess)
• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes goes negative against Nathan Deal on the issues of his recently-released tax returns, calling him “too corrupt even for Congress”
• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley’s first TV spot, outsider-themed with a jab at Mark Sanford
• FL-22: The new Ron Klein spot is another anti-Allen West spot, but still hammering on the tax liens instead of, well, West’s non-stop stream-of-consciousness crazy
• ID-01: Walt Minnick’s first TV spot: please disregard the “D” next to his name, because he’s independent
• IN-02: The NRCC’s first television IE of the cycle, hitting Joe Donnelly for, well, being a Democrat
• IN-08: Trent van Haaften’s first TV ad is a basic introductory spot
• PA-03: Kathy Dahlkemper’s second ad tries to cram “jobs” in there as many times as possible
• PA-06: Manan Trivedi’s first TV ad also works the outsider angle
• PA-11: Paul Kanjorski’s second ad works the Social Security privatization angle, smart in such an aged district
• PA-15: Interestingly, Charlie Dent’s first ad is a negative shot against John Callahan (on local property taxes), indicating he may be feeling some heat here
• WI-07: Julie Lassa’s second ad goes after Sean Duffy for saying that he can’t do anything to create jobs
• AFSCME: Here’s the big buy of the day: the AFSCME is shelling out $1.5 million in four states (Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) for an ad attacking Republicans for voting against the state aid package in August)
• Rasmussen:
• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 37%, Mike Castle (R) 48%
• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 47%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 36%
• ID-Gov: Keith Allred (D) 36%, Butch Otter (R-inc) 52%
• ID-Sen: Tom Sullivan (D) 24%, Mike Crapo (R-inc) 63%
• MA-Gov: Deval Patrick (D-inc) 39%, Charlie Baker (R) 34%, Tim Cahill (I) 18%
• NE-Gov: Mike Meister (D) 28%, Dave Heineman (R-inc) 61%
• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 33%, Brian Sandoval (R) 58%
• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 45%, Sharron Angle (R) 45%
• DE-Sen: Christine O’Donnell’s radio interview on a local station yesterday should answer any doubts about whether or not the new Tea Party fave is ready for prime time (the answer: she isn’t). Mostly it’s notable for how testy it got, but also for O’Donnell pushing back on rumors that Mike Castle is gay – rumors that apparently no one has ever heard until O’Donnell brought them up in the first place. At any rate, Castle isn’t content to just stand back and let her dig her own hole: not wanting to fall into the Lisa Murkowski trap, his camp confirms that his last-minute pre-primary ad buy will be negative against O’Donnell. He also said he won’t be debating with (or otherwise even talking to) O’Donnell… ordinarily a safe decision for a quasi-incumbent, but who knows, maybe a mid-debate implosion by O’Donnell would be all Castle needs to put this one away.
• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist’s out with an internal today from Fredrick Polls, and while it gives him the lead, it’s a small enough edge compared with his rather robust leads pre-Dem primary that it shouldn’t fill anybody with much confidence about where his trendlines are headed. He leads Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meek 35-34-17. That comes against the backdrop of getting squeezed in both directions, with the NRSC “pledging” (I don’t know what that means, but it’s not actual reservations) $2.5 million for the race, and Meek airing a new radio ad going after Crist’s GOP past, airing Crist’s own words, including calling himself “pro-life” and a “Jeb Bush Republican.” At least Crist is getting some backing from one rather unusual corner: state Sen. Al Lawson, who just lost the FL-02 primary to Allen Boyd, just endorsed Crist.
• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Maybe I should’ve been patient yesterday instead of complaining about Quinnipiac’s lack of New York primary numbers, because they rolled them out today. At any rate, they find, as I’d suspected, things tightening in the GOP gubernatorial primary: Rick Lazio leads Carl Paladino 47-35. (“Tightening” may not be the right word, as this is their first look at the NY-Gov primary, but it’s what other pollsters have seen.) In the Senate special election, Joe DioGuardi leads David Malpass and Bruce Blakeman, 28-12-10. And in another sign that Democratic voters are only dimly aware that there’s an election this year, fully 77% of Dem voters have no idea who they’ll vote for in the Attorney General’s race. Kathleen Rice leads Eric Schneiderman by a margin of 4-3. (That’s not a typo.)
• WI-Sen: Ron Johnson has been outspending Russ Feingold 3-to-1 on the TV airwaves, which goes a long way to explaining why this is a tied race, but that may not matter much if he keeps stepping on his own free-market-fundamentalist message. Johnson found himself, in a recent radio interview, tying himself into knots by praising Communist China for having a more favorable investment climate for business than America, in part because of its “certainty.” So, let’s see… to stop America’s descent into socialism, we need to become more like the Communists, because the path to freedom is actually through the kind of “certainty” that comes from a command economy? Finally, this is probably too little too late, but Terence Wall, the guy who dropped out in a huff from the GOP field after the state convention, is now publicly touting the idea of a write-in campaign in the upcoming primary. I don’t know if he actually thinks he has a shot against a stumbling Johnson or is just engaged in some last-minute sour grapes.
• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin continues to rake in the bucks in the West Virginia Senate special election. (Facing self-funding John Raese, the money issue is the main threat to Manchin… well, that, and the perilously low approvals for national Dems here.) He reported raising $393K last week, bringing his total to $1.5 million. Raese reported $717K, but $520K of that was self-funded, with only $22K from donors.
• AZ-Gov: This may not get much press in the wake of her amazing debate performance, but Jan Brewer is also engaged in an interesting strategy of retaliation, pulling her campaign ads off the local CBS affiliate, whose news department dared to question Brewer’s relationship with a key advisor who’s also connected to private prison company Corrections Corporation of America, which stands to make significant money incarcerating illegal immigrants rounded up under Arizona’s SB 1070. That’s not the same station whose reporter aggressively questioned Brewer post-debate last night… my advice to Brewer would be to go ahead and stop advertising on all local network affiliates as punishment. That’ll show ’em!
• CO-Gov: This may be kind of repetitive, but Dan Maes again turned down calls to drop out of the race today, after former state Senate president John Andrews withdrew his endorsement and told him to get out. Andrews wasn’t alone in the endorsement rescinding department: it looks like the whole ooops-no-I-actually-wasn’t-an-undercover-cop-in-Kansas thing was the fridge too far for former GOP Senator Hank Brown, who is now saying he’s “looking around” for a new candidate. Meanwhile, on the touchy subject of water law, maybe Maes should take a page from Scott McInnis and just plagiarize all his work on the subject, as at least that way he wouldn’t appear completely ignorant of the law. He just introduced an entirely new water law doctrine with his proclamation that “If it starts in Colorado, it’s our water” – ignoring the 7-state compact on use of Colorado River water and the whole concept of prior appropriation. As much as I’d like to see Jan Brewer using the Arizona National Guard to invade Colorado and reclaim its water, I don’t think the courts would let it get to that point.
• FL-Gov: Alex Sink is expanding her current TV advertising buy, throwing another $600K into keeping her introductory spot on the air in a number of non-Miami markets. Oddly, Rick Scott has been taking the week off since the primary, at least from advertising.
• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber has finally decided to go negative on Chris Dudley… it might be too little too late, but at least he’s recognizing what he needs to do (as recently as last week, he negged a DGA ad that went negative on Dudley… and this is the first time he’s aired a negative ad since 1994). The ad attacks Dudley for having “never managed anything” and never “shown much interest in Oregon” before (as seen in his decision to live in income-tax-free Washington while playing for the Trail Blazers).
• CT-04: Republican state Sen. Dan Debicella offers up a recent internal poll, via National Research. It has him within 4 points of Rep. Jim Himes, trailing 42-38 (the same 4-point margin seen in the recent round of AAF polling).
• FL-25: Here’s an offensive opportunity for House Dems that nobody should be writing off. Joe Garcia posted a lead in a recent internal poll (taken in wake of the primary, and revelations about various unsavory moments from Republican opponent David Rivera’s past) for his campaign. Garcia leads by 4 points in the poll from Benenson, 40-36 (with 5 for the Tea Party candidate and 1 for the Whig).
• MO-03: Republican challenger Ed Martin got the endorsement of the Missouri Farm Bureau, a change from their backing of Russ Carnahan in previous cycles. Carnahan didn’t show up for his meeting with the Farm Bureau, although it’s unclear whether that’s why he didn’t get endorsed or if he felt the endorsement was already lost.
• NH-02: EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood, and NARAL are all coordinating their efforts in favor of Ann McLane Kuster ahead of the Dem primary in the 2nd, where’s she’s running against Katrina Swett, who has supported parental notification laws. In addition to a joint rally, they’re sending out a joint mailer together.
• PA-12: The NRCC is out with a poll, via POS, of the 12th, giving Tim Burns a small lead in his rematch against special election victor Mark Critz. Burns leads 48-43, quite the reversal from Critz’s 53-45 win in May. (Bear in mind that POS’s final released poll before that election gave Burns a 2-point lead.)
• Rasmussen:
• AK-Sen: Scott McAdams (D) 44%, Joe Miller (R) 50%
• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 44%, Rick Scott (R) 45%
• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 46%, Dino Rossi (R) 48%
SurveyUSA for KING-TV (8/18-19, likely voters, 4/19-22 in parens):
Patty Murray (D-inc): 45 (42)
Dino Rossi (R): 52 (52)
Undecided: 3 (7)
(MoE: ±4%)
Let’s see… we could believe this SurveyUSA poll, which seems to be one of a growing string of west coast outliers for them (leaving them fully 11 points to the right of Rasmussen), or we could believe the poll taken on Tuesday, that had 0% undecideds, 0% leaners, a MoE of 0%, and an n of probably 1.6 million (1 million so far, with only two-third counted). I’m talking, of course, about Washington’s Top Two primary, which, because of its unusual all-parties-in-one-pool nature, functions as essentially the most accurate poll you’re going to see taken all cycle.
The usual rule of thumb in the Top 2 primary is to project the total Dem and total GOP percentages out toward November. The current individual totals (with only 2/3ds of votes counted, though) are still Patty Murray 46, Dino Rossi 34, Clint Didier 12, but the real story is that the total Dem and GOP votes are essentially 50-49 right now, with a lead of 10,000 for all GOP candidates (Rossi, Didier, Paul Akers, and a whole bunch of anonymous weirdos) over all Dem candidates, out of more than a million votes. So for this SurveyUSA poll to be right:
a) Dino Rossi would have to consolidate every GOP vote behind him — every Didier vote, every Akers vote, every Norma Gruber vote, and so on — pick up every vote from every third-party or no-party candidate, pick up every vote for all the other hapless Dems who ran in the primary (including every Goodspaceguy vote and Mike the Mover vote), and then somehow turn around 1% of the electorate who voted for Patty Murray in the primary to vote for him instead,
a1) and that’s all presuming that the 46-34-12 percentages don’t change, although they most likely will, in a Murray-favorable direction by another percent or two, as the majority (1200 out of 2000) of outstanding precincts still to report are in traditionally slow-to-report King, Pierce, or Snohomish Counties… or
b) the number of Dems participating in November would have to be smaller, rather than bigger, than the number particpating in the primary… despite the fact that Dems had no major incentive to participate in Tuesday’s primary, seeing as how there weren’t any noteworthy Dem-on-Dem primary battles above the state legislative level, compared with the intensely fought Republican Senate contest in the primary and several others in House races. (In other words, the Democratic share in November is likely to go up from the primary, not down, when it’s actually for all the marbles instead of an academic exercise.)
Unlike a lot of SurveyUSA crosstabs, there isn’t the frequently-present quirk of young people loving the Republicans (here, the 18-34 set goes for Murray 50-49). Instead, the strangest number is that Murry and Rossi are tied in “metro Seattle” 48-48. That would be approximately true if “metro Seattle” were limited to suburban Pierce and Snohomish Counties (where current counts from Tuesday are 50 all GOP/48 all Dems in Pierce, and 50 all Dems/49 all GOP in Snohomish), but King County (which has a population greater than Pierce + Snohomish combined) is at 60 all Dems/37 all GOP. So, no, they aren’t tied in metro Seattle.
Also worth noting: SurveyUSA seemed to misunderestimate Murray’s vote share in their pre-primary polls (their last one saw a 41-33-11 primary), despite being close enough to the election to include a number of “actual voters,” i.e. those who’d already mailed in ballots. PPP, by contrast, came closer to nailing the primary from several weeks further out (predicting 47-33-10). SurveyUSA’s pre-primary sample didn’t also include general election matchups (their last general election trendlines are from April), but that same PPP sample that was quite close on the primary also projected a 49-46 race in favor of Murray in November (closely matching Rasmussen’s 50-46 win for Murray, with leaners pushed, from this week).
Also, PPP, in their sample several weeks ago, found that Rossi isn’t on track to consolidate all Didier and Akers voters; they were planning to go for Rossi by an 82-11 margin. That’s even more complicated by what seems to be an increase in tensions between the Rossi and Didier camps in the last few days, rather than any moves toward unity, after Didier gave a list of demands on Friday before he’d endorse Rossi. After Rossi shrugged that off, the Didier camp started dropping f-bombs in response to questions from local politics website Publicola:
Didier’s spokeswoman, Kathryn Serkes was more candid with us:
“So is Dino saying, ‘Fuck you’ to those people [who supported Didier]? ‘Fuck you, I don’t need your votes? I can win with 33 percent.'”
UPDATE: In my more cynical moments, I think that it could be that this whole conflict was scripted ahead of time, professional wrestling-style, in order to help Rossi burnish his moderate credentials by refusing to be held hostage by the teabagger, as he now has to sprint back to the middle. Somehow, though, it feels like it has that spark of autheniticity.
• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist has to be feeling good about having limited this damage: few major Republican donors have switched over from Crist to Marco Rubio, after his switch to an independent campaign. Only five of Crist’s donors who gave more than $200 pre-switch have given similar amounts to Rubio since then, totalling only $6,340.
• LA-Sen: Clarus Research, on behalf of local TV station WWL, finds a somewhat closer Senate race in Louisiana than other pollster have; they see David Vitter leading Charlie Melancon 48-36 (with Vitter sporting a 51/37 approval). Vitter’s also in solid shape in his primary (suggesting that Chet Traylor internal was pretty thoroughly ginned-up with “informed ballot” questions); Vitter leads Traylor 74-5, with 3 for Nick Accardo.
• MO-Sen: The Missouri Senate race, not the recipient of much national attention until just recently, is now at the epicenter of ad spending. The DSCC is plowing $4 million into ads here (along with $1.3 million in KY-Sen), while Karl Rove-linked American Crossroads is also launching a new ad in Missouri, as well as one in NV-Sen. The combined buy is for $2 million (no word on how it breaks down between the states); maybe not coincidentally, Crossroads raised $2 million in July, almost all of which came from exactly two donors (prominent conservative donors Harold Simmons and Jerry Perenchio).
• WA-Sen: Maybe that usual calculus of adding Dino Rossi and Clint Didier votes in the primary to see if they add up to the Patty Murray votes shouldn’t apply… Didier just held a press conference today to announce that he’s not endorsing Rossi (at least not yet). He said he’d back Rossi if he promised to pledge to support no new taxes, sponsor an anti-abortion bill, and… get this… never vote for anything that would “increase the federal budget.” We’ll have to see if Rossi even bothers dignifying that with a response.
• WV-Sen, WV-Gov: A new “MindField Poll” (yes, that’s what they call it) by local pollster R.L. Repass finds an unsurprisingly large lead for Gov. Joe Manchin in the Senate special election; he leads GOPer John Raese 54-32, and is sitting on a 65% approval. They also look at the gubernatorial election in 2012 in the post-Manchin world, and find GOP Rep. Shelly Capito in the best shape. She beats all Democrats mentioned: Senate President (and Governor, if Manchin quits) Earl Ray Tomblin (43-29), state House Speaker Rick Thompson (44-29), Treasurer John Perdue (44-32), and SoS Natalie Tennant (40-37). Former Republican SoS Betty Ireland was also polled, but loses to all the Democrats (by margins as large as 44-24 to Tennant).
• CO-Gov: On what seems like a quest to be the first ever major party candidate to get 0% in a gubernatorial race, Dan Maes is busy pissing off his one remaining clutch of supporters, the teabaggers, with his choice of the somewhat centrist Tambor Williams as his running mate. She was a supporter of anti-TABOR Referenda C and D, but more aggravating to Maes backers is that although she says she’s anti-abortion, she’s taken some notably pro-choice votes in the leigslature. Maes hasn’t lost any major endorsers over it, but is running damage control on the right.
• IL-Gov: It seems like Pat Quinn may be racing Maes to the bottom, in terms of campaign woes. He and his media team — David Axelrod’s former firm, AKPD — parted ways, seemingly at Quinn’s decision. AKPD doesn’t seem to sad to be heading out the door; their terse statement about the parting of ways was, “We and the Quinn campaign agreed that our divergent approaches to disciplined, professional communications are incompatible. We wish Pat well.”
• FL-08: Daniel Webster is getting some last minute help on the stump in the closing days of the Florida primary campaign. Mike Huckabee (who endorsed Webster a long whiel ago) will appear with him this weekend.
• FL-22: Here’s a hilarious little piece on Allen West’s attempts to surround and conquer his district, rather than actually do anything in it: he just opened his new campaign office in West Palm Beach… in FL-23. He recently also held a town hall in FL-19, and perhaps most significantly, lives in Plantation, in FL-20. (It is worth noting the 22nd is one convoluted-looking district.)
• Mayors: That vaunted “anti-incumbent” year hasn’t panned out much in the primaries, but there is one other race coming up soon that looks like it’s on track for a loss by an incumbent. A new Clarus poll of the Washington, DC mayoral race finds Vincent Gray leading incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty, 39-36, in the Democratic primary.
• Rasmussen:
• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks (D) 34%, Robert Bentley (R) 58%
• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 27%, John Boozman (R) 65%
• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 38%, John Robitaille (R) 20%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 32%
• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 40%, Victor Moffitt (R) 17%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 33%
• WY-Gov: Leslie Petersen (D) 24%, Matt Mead (R) 58%
• LA-Sen: That ginned-up internal poll that Chet Traylor released a few days ago (showing him within 12 of David Vitter) seems to have served its intended purpose, for what its worth: the contributions have started coming in at a much greater pace over the last few days. He pulled in $30K in three days, almost doubling up on the $42K he raised over the previous duration of his campaign (and most of which he blew on his new anti-Vitter radio ad). And this can’t please Vitter, either: a local paper is reporting to Vitter’s troublesome ex-aide, Brent Furer, traveled back from DC to Louisiana several times on the public’s dime, at points that just happened to coincide with his various trials on charges of drunk driving.
• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle seems to be wandering all over the map in search of a position on Social Security privatization, one that’s extreme enough to satisfy her teabagging core supporters but not so extreme that it scares off, y’know, old people. She’s removed the words “transitioned out” from her website (regarding Social Security) but, when pushed yesterday, said that she hasn’t changed her view that that’s how she feels about it (despite running ads claiming that she wants to “save” Social Security).
• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak, meet Raul Labrador? As you probably know, there’s a common-sense rule of thumb that you don’t release your internal polls unless they show you, y’know, ahead of your opponent. Nevertheless, somebody (unclear whether it was the DSCC or the Sestak camp) leaked NBC a Peter Yang internal of the race giving Pat Toomey a 2-point lead over Sestak, 46-44. Obviously, that’s not designed to create a sense of Sestak’s inevitable victory as most internals are designed to do, but it’s pushback against this week’s PPP poll, where the switch to LVs hurt Sestak’s numbers, probably oriented toward letting contributors know that this race is still in play. The DSCC has also been nailing Toomey on the rather arcane issue of derivatives, which had a key role in inflating the asset bubble that popped and left all our faces covered in pink sticky goo in 2008. Somehow I doubt more than 1% of the nation can offer a cogent explanation of what derivatives (especially credit default swaps) do, but at any rate, they’ve tracked down three separate times when Toomey as Congressman, on the House floor, praised the use of derivatives, something he’s lately tried to distance himself from.
• WA-Sen: We’re up to 67% reporting in Washington, with the numbers not really having budged from Tuesday night (still 46 Patty Murray, 34 Dino Rossi, 12 Clint Didier), but more than three-quarters of the remaining precincts are in the Dem-friendly King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties, so look for some future budging. Meanwhile, here’s a comparison that only true politics junkies will get… remember Fred Heineman? (The one-term Republican House member from NC-04 swept in in 1994, who then said that his $183,000 salary made him “lower-middle-class” and that the middle class extended up to $750K, and promptly got swept out in 1996.) Dino Rossi has apparently decided that he should be Washington’s answer to Heineman, as he essentially said that one-third of Washingtonians make over $200K per year. More specifically, he said 2.5 million Washingtonians would benefit from keeping the Bush-era tax cuts for those making more than $200K/yr. (In reality, 105K households, or 1.6% of the state’s population, fit that profile.)
• CA-Gov: Here’s an iceberg in the way for the serene cruise of the Queen Meg: activists at a convention of state conservatives this weekend plan a rude welcome for her. They plan to lambaste her on her non-extreme positions on an Arizona-style immigration law in California, and her support for greenhouse gas-limiting Proposition 19 23. Also, here’s some quantitative evidence for something that I’ve long suspected: Whitman has so oversaturated the airwaves with advertising that it went well past the point of having its desired effect and is now just getting people pissed off at her. A Jerry Brown staffer leaked that nugget from internal polling, finding that her own advertising has helped Whitman with 8% of voters and hurt her with 27% of voters.
• IA-03: Hot on the heels of the David Rivera story in FL-25, here’s another uncomfortable blast from the past for another Republican House candidate: records reveal that Brad Zaun, the GOP’s nominee against Leonard Boswell, had to be told by West Des Moines police to stay away from his ex-girlfriend after a late night visit to her house to pound on her windows and call her names.
• MO-03, MO-04: Odd little pollster We Ask America seems to be entering another period of being prolific, as now they’re out with a couple House polls from the underserved state of Missouri. They find Russ Carnahan fairly comfortable against Republican challenger Ed Martin in the 3rd, leading 48-39, but find veteran Dem Ike Skelton in a tighter race in the 4th, leading Vicky Hartzler 45-42. Skelton still draws the support of 27% of Republicans and 37% of indies, crucial to surviving this dark-red district.
• CfG: The Club for Growth is starting to switch gears from primaries (where they seem to have had a more productive run this year than in previous cyles) to the general. They’ve endorsed four Republican challengers who all cleared the primary bar: Stephen Fincher in TN-08, Todd Young in IN-09, Mick Mulvaney in SC-05, and Tim Griffin in AR-02.
• Ads: The most attention-grabbing ad today seems to be from Indiana Dem Joe Donnelly, who already tried to distanced himself from “the Washington crowd” in his previous ad. Now he’s basically thrown in the towel on trying to fight the messaging war and just start running with Republican memes, touting his opposition in his newest ad to “Nancy Pelosi’s energy tax.” Other ads worth checking out today include an RGA ad for Duke Aiona in HI-Gov, a Joyce Elliott ad in AR-02, a Michelle Rollins spot in DE-AL, and a Mike McIntyre ad in NC-07.
• Rasmussen:
• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D) 45%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 44%
• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 36%, Brian Sandoval (R) 52%
• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D) 48%, Dino Rossi (R) 44%
The Washington Senate primary was the main event last night, even though it the results were entirely predictable (as seen by PPP’s pre-primary poll, which got it almost exactly right). Patty Murray is currently at 46, with Dino Rossi at 34; Clint Didier doesn’t advance, at 12. Both sides, naturally, are foreseeing doom for their opposition based on the results. It’s a little premature to foresee anything, though, since, as if often the case in Washington, only about half of all precincts have reported, and the ones that haven’t reported are disproportionately in Seattle. (50% of King County is in, while 67% of precincts outside of King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties are in.) For what it’s worth, right now there are a few thousand more total GOP votes than there are total Dem votes in the Senate race (taking into account all 15 participants), though that will change once Seattle reports more. And there’s also the problem of getting teabagger votes to switch over from Didier to Rossi; Didier is currently withholding his endorsement, wanting to see “more conviction” and patronizingly insisting on giving Rossi “some coaching” first on how to reach his supporters.
One place where the results don’t bode well for Dems is WA-03, where Denny Heck is currently in first but with only 32%, against a fractured GOP field. He’ll face state Rep. Jaime Herrera, who hit 27%, followed by teabaggers David Hedrick and David Castillo at 13 and 12 (repeating the oft-seen pattern where the Tea Party could have been relevant if only they’d galvanized behind one candidate), and by Dem activist Cheryl Crist, who pulled in a surprisingly large 12, all of it seeming to come from Heck’s left flank. The total GOP vote topped 50%, and as Greg Giroux demonstrates with a terrific spreadsheet comparing the ’08 primaries and generals, there’s not much variation from the Dem and GOP totals in the primary to the November numbers. Americans for Prosperity isn’t wasting any time; they’re already jumping into the district with a $180K ad buy with a negative ad against Heck.
Real Clear Politics sees trouble ahead for Rick Larsen in WA-02, who’s currently ahead of GOPer John Koster 43-41; however, if you do the Giroux-style math, you’ll notice that two other random Dems vacuumed up 10% of the vote, which would project out to a 53-47 advantage for Larsen in a head-to-head. (The good part of the RCP article is about how Washington’s top 2 primary has taken the bellwether position once occupied by Maine’s weird early general election, from which we get the saying “As goes Maine, so goes the nation.”) They also took notice of Rep. Adam Smith finishing in the mid-50s in WA-09; he’ll probably face Pierce Co. Commissioner Dick Muri, although that primary hasn’t been called yet. And in the one seat where Dems are on offense, in WA-08, it’s Dave Reichert vs. Suzan DelBene, who got 48 and 26 respectively (with totals of 59 GOP-41 Dems).
Wyoming’s gubernatorial race came down to the wire on the Republican side. Former US Attorney Matt Mead is the victor, beating state Auditor Rita Meyer 29-28, with Ron Micheli at 26 and Colin Simpson at 16. Mead’s 714 vote lead was within the margin for a recount, but Meyer conceded and won’t seek a recount. Mead will face Democratic former state party chair Leslie Petersen, who won her own primary over Pete Gosar 48-37.
Finally, in California’s 15th Senate district, Republican Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee defeated Dem John Laird in a near-identical replay of their first (but inconclusive) special election. Blakeslee won by a 49-44 margin, only slightly different from the original 49-42 result. As a pointless aside, there were more votes cast in this election (with the district’s more than 800K residents) than there were in the Wyoming gubernatorial race.
• WA-Sen (Top 2): The billed main event tonight is the Senate primary in Washington, but really, there’s not much to see here, other than for Californians to get a good look at what they just signed themselves up for, with the weirdness that is the Top 2 primary. Polling has indicated that a Patty Murray/Dino Rossi is all but inevitable, with teabaggers Clint Didier and Paul Akers having gotten little traction (although they have successfully forced Rossi to the right, rhetorically). The real question for pollwatchers is what percentage Murray and Rossi get, as some sort of tea leaf for November. Polling would seem to project Murray in the mid-40s and Rossi in the mid-30s, with Didier in the low teens, but there is so much expectations management going on that that any result will be immediately spun as imminent doom/triumph. At any rate, the primary has always been a mediocre predictor of the general (just ask Darcy Burner, who beat Dave Reichert in the 2008 WA-08 primary), and that may be compounded today by mischievous Dems crossing over to try to help the unelectable Didier past Rossi (or else sitting out, as there’s no Dem-on-Dem drama anywhere above the state legislative level).
• WA-03 (Top 2): When a number of solid Dems jumped into this open seat race in the wake of Brian Baird’s retirement announcement, this looked like it had the potential for a true rumble in the jungle (primary). But instead it coalesced into something pretty similar to the Senate race, where we were left with one establishment Democrat left standing, Denny Heck (a former state Rep. from long ago, now a wealthy businessman), and on the other side, one underwhelming establishment Republican (state Rep. Jaime Herrera) and a couple feistier Tea Party types (former Bush-era deputy assistant VA Sec. David Castillo, and David Hedrick, whose main claim to fame is shouting down Baird at a town hall). Which GOPer faces Heck is hard to gauge, without any polling evidence; Herrera has the financial advantage (enough to run ads on cable, unlike Castillo), but Castillo has more local endorsements and seemingly more ground-level enthusiasm. If this turns out close, it may be days before we know which GOPer advances, as Washington results are compiled notoriously slowly — ballots postmarked through today can be counted.
• WY-Gov (D): Dave Freudenthal could have opted to challenge term limits in court but decided not to, leaving the Blue Team struggling to field a candidate here. State Democratic Party chair Leslie Petersen jumped in, as did former University of Wyoming quarterback Pete Gosar. and three Some Dudes. No one’s really paid much attention to this primary, given that whoever wins will be considered quite the long shot against whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. The last (and only?) poll of this race had Petersen leading Gosar 30-22, with undecideds through the roof. Can you really blame the undecided 48% of Wyoming Dems though? (JMD)
• WY-Gov (R): Seven GOPers have jumped into the race, perhaps sensing an opportunity. Four of them exceed the “Some Dude” threshold, namely state Auditor Rita Meyer, former US Attorney Matt Mead, state House speaker (and son of former US Senator Alan) Colin Simpson, and state Agriculture Director Ron Micheli. Sarah Palin’s gotten her grubby Grizzly paws in this race, endorsing Meyer; George H.W. Bush countered with an endorsement of Simpson. The same Mason-Dixon poll had Meyer leading Mead 27-24, with Simpson at 17 and Micheli at 12. No runoffs here, so whoever pulls the plurality tonight will be the nominee. (JMD)
• CA-SD15 (special general): Abel Maldonado vacated this Central Coast state Senate seat months ago after he was confirmed as Lieutenant Governor, but no one got 50% in the special primary, so we’re doing it again! Republican state Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo fell just a tad short of clearing the 50%+1 barrier last time, scoring 49.4% to Democratic teacher John Laird’s 41.8%, with two independents of different parties getting the rest. The frustrating (or humorous) part in all of this is that we get to do this four person dance all over again, since the top finisher of each party moves on from the primary to the general! Given that Blakeslee came so close last time, it’s hard to imagine what’s shifted in the last eight weeks that Laird can pull this out and put the CA Senate Dems one closer to the magic 2/3rds mark. The wildcard, as always in special elections, is low turnout, but given how the enthusiasm gap has been, we can probably get around to anticipating what arcana the special election for Blakeslee’s Assembly seat will bring. (JMD)
Polls close at 9 pm ET (7 pm MT) in Wyoming, and 11 pm ET (8 pm PT) in Washington.
If you have predictions, please feel free to share them in the comments.
After a three month hiatus, my baseline posts are back. This is the 4th one I did with the first three being MD Gov, NV Sen and FL Gov.
The links to the first posts are here:
http://swingstateproject.com/d…
http://swingstateproject.com/d…
http://swingstateproject.com/d…
This post is cross posted on http://frogandturtle.blogspot…. which you should visit for more baseline posts and election analysis.
Until Chris Christie was elected, New Jersey was the state where Republicans were Charlie Brown trying to kick the football from Lucy. The Republicans kept nominating candidates there who kept losing. Finally in 2009, they nominated Christie who beat Corzine. Since Christie was elected, he has run his approval ratings to the ground, especially among teachers and other people who value education. The Christie debacle is another story for another post. This post will focus on the other state where Republicans keep attempting to kick the football. Washington State is that state. Interestingly, Washington and New Jersey voted 53% and 57% for the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2004 and 2008 respectively. Washington State was a big state for Republican gains in 1994 where an 8-1 Democratic delegation turned into a 7-2 Republican delegation. Now the delegation is at 6-3 Democratic. Since 1994 though, Republicans have not been winning too many statewide races. Democrats hold the Governorship and both Senate seats. The holders of these seats are interestingly all woman, the only state with the Governorship and both Senate seats held by women. Republicans could not beat the Senators Patti Murray (D) in 2004 and Maria Cantwell (D) in 2006. Still, Republicans have come dangerously close to winning. In 2004, a certain “moderate” Republican named Dino Rossi almost beat Christine Greigoire (D) for the Governorship but lost after a lengthy recount. He returned for a rematch in 2008 but lost by 6 points. Republicans now believe he is their candidate who can grab Murray’s seat.
With the anti incumbent climate, Murray is facing a close race with Dino Rossi. He did lose one advantage in the general election though. In 2004, he was able to eat into Greigoire’s margin in King County (Seattle) because he was moderate. Now he is more conservative so he can win the teabagger wing of the party. This is important for him because Washington has an interesting way of conducting elections. Instead of holding primaries for each party, the state has a jungle primary. This means that any Republican or Democrat can run in the election. If no one gets 50% or more of the vote, the top two vote getters will face each other in a runoff. If Rossi cannot win the teabaggers’ approval, a teabagger may jump into the race. Most polls show Murray leading Rossi in the jungle primary but she is not winning 50% of the vote yet. Still, other polls show her winning the runoff. This will be a close election so I have here a map of the baselines for the runoff assuming it happens. This map shows how the counties will vote if the candidates tied (actually, my vote count had Rossi winning by 72 votes but a lead that small out of almost 2 million votes is more than close enough.) I found the baseline percentages by adding the percentages by county from the 2008 Presidential, 2004 Senatorial and 2004 Gubernatorial elections. I then divided by three. For the votes, I had turnout be 65% of the 2008 level. I used the 2008 Presidential election for current trends, the 2004 Senatorial election for Murray and the 2004 Gubernatorial election for Rossi. First, you will see a map of the baselines, then a list of the counties and their votes.
There was a problem with the HTML coding I do not want to get into so I could not post the map here. The link for the map is here though.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4…
Dark Red: Rossi 65% +
Red: Rossi 55%-64%
Light Red: Rossi 50%-54%
Light Blue: Murray 50%-54%
Blue: Murray 55%-64%
Dark Blue: Murray 65%+
Here is a better quality map of Washington: http://quickfacts.census.gov/q…
Here is a link for 2008 Presidential results:
http://www.uselectionatlas.org…
For 2004 Senatorial results:
http://www.uselectionatlas.org…
For 2004 Gubernatorial results:
http://www.uselectionatlas.org…
List of counties:
County Names Murray Rossi Percentages
Adams 853 2,305 27%-73%
Asotin 2,416 3,941 38%-62%
Benton 14,301 33,369 30%-70%
Chelan 7,568 13,337 36%-64%
Clallam 11,142 13,896 45%-55%
Clark 53,080 66,470 44%-56%
Columbia 415 1,052 28%-72%
Cowlitz 14,377 15,206 49%-51%
Douglas 3,178 6,754 32%-68%
Ferry 848 1,450 37%-63%
Franklin 4,027 8,839 31%-69%
Garfield 237 655 27%-73%
Grant 5,226 12,735 29%-71%
Grays Harbor 9,580 9,390 51%-49%
Island 12,414 14,990 45%-55%
Jefferson 7,690 5,389 59%-41%
King 366,136 236,061 61%-39%
Kitsap 39,653 41,604 49%-51%
Kittitas 4,545 7,140 39%-61%
Klickitat 2,821 3,785 43%-57%
Lewis 7,251 15,478 32%-68%
Lincoln 1,152 2,753 30%-70%
Mason 8,840 9,692 48%-52%
Okanogan 4,173 6,879 38%-62%
Pacific 3,672 3,513 51%-49%
Pend Oreille 1,640 2,653 38%-62%
Pierce 103,807 111,561 48%-52%
San Juan 4,245 2,635 62%-38%
Skagit 16,819 19,745 46%-54%
Skamina 1,634 1,934 46%-54%
Snohomish 104,923 104,505 50%-50%
Spokane 61,628 82,026 43%-57%
Stevens 4,904 9,780 33%-67%
Thurston 44,051 38,752 53%-47%
Wahkiakum 672 825 45%-55%
Walla Walla 5,805 10,365 36%-64%
Whatcom 33,054 32,530 50%-50%
Whitman 4,984 6,448 44%-56%
Yakima 17,919 31,310 36%-64%
Total 991,680 991,752 50%-50%
Loading ...SurveyUSA for KING-TV (8/6-9, likely and actual voters, 6/25-28 in parentheses):
Patty Murray (D-inc): 41 (37)
Dino Rossi (R): 33 (33)
Clint Didier (R): 11 (5)
Others: 10 (6)
Undecided: 4 (19)
(MoE: ±3.9%)
While Dino Rossi has been, in public, trying to stay above the fray and treat his advancing from Washington’s Top 2 primary as a given, he’s also been trying to consolidate support from various right-wing kingmakers (Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn), which suggests he’s at least somewhat sweating the challenge from various teabaggers on his right flank. SurveyUSA’s new poll (of likely and “actual” voters, the latter being those who’ve already sent in their mail-in ballots) shows that there his efforts may be warranted, as he’s flat while everyone else is gaining: principal Tea Party opposition Clint Didier, Democratic incumbent Patty Murray, and the vast hodgepodge that is “other” (partially fellow teabagger Paul Akers, who’s in the low single digits, but also 12 other assorted dreamers and cranks). Rossi, of course, is in no danger of losing his ticket to the big dance in November, but he probably wants to avoid an embarrassing finish in distant second.
As with the previous SurveyUSA poll, one red flag for Murray is that Rossi + Didier > Murray. PPP‘s recent poll of the primary is an interesting comparison point, because their numbers for the Republicans are pretty similar while finding Murray further along (Murray 47, Rossi 33, Didier 10, Akers 4)… but they don’t include an “Other,” suggesting that SurveyUSA is finding at least a handful of folks who prefer Murray to the GOPers but, given the full panoply of options, plan to waste their primary votes on one of the perennial candidates who are self-described Dems (like the ubiquitous Mike the Mover).