Tag: KY-Sen

Christmas seems to be coming a few days early for Kentucky Democrats: Jim Bunning, who barely won re-election in the Republican year of 2004 against a little-known state senator (after several campaign trail incidents that called into question his mental faculties), plans to run for a third term. The Louisville Courier-Journal is reporting today that Bunning has formed a steering committee to begin fundraising for 2010. (H/t RandySF.)

Given how red Kentucky is, at least at the presidential level, this has to be one race where we’d do better running against a crazy incumbent rather than against a generic R (especially in an off-year election where there won’t be presidential coattails to help Bunning over the finish line). As we discussed in our Kentucky recruitment thread a few weeks ago, Rep. Ben Chandler would probably be the best bet on the Dem side (although he’d leave behind a pretty red district to fill). Other names include Auditor Crit Luallen (who, perhaps unwisely, turned down the opportunity to go after Mitch McConnell this year) and Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo (who lost to Bunning in 2004 while still a state senator).

Jim Bunning swears he’ll run again. After his nearly disastrous re-election campaign in 2004, when Democrat Dan Mongiardo (allegedly one of “Saddam Hussein’s sons“) nearly toppled him, even as Bush won the state by almost 20 points.

Who would you like to see run against Bunning in 2010? Luckily, we are blessed with a fairly deep Dem bench in Kentucky, including many statewide officeholders who won by impressive margins in 2007.

This is it.  It’s time for my final look at all the 2008 Senate races.  There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively.  Obviously, quite a few of the races are considered “safe” for the incumbent.  So what are the competitive races?

Again, just to be clear, I don’t do predictions.  Every time I do, horrible things happen.  So I won’t even make an actual prediction on the Virginia Senate race, because doing so would effectively jinx Mark Warner.  And with the election tomorrow, tiers no longer matter, so I’ll simply rank the competitive races where party control of the seat may switch.  All others are deemed safe seats, which now include all of the Tier II and III seats from last time.

See my previous mid-October diary to see what things have changed since my last update.  Previous rankings are in parentheses.

Tier I

1. Virginia (1): Former popular Governor Mark Warner (D) is still cruising.  Former unpopular former Governor Jim Gilmore (R) hasn’t even gotten above 35% in any poll taken since early September, and Warner cannot get below 55%.  Only God or the Devil can stop this one now, but still, no official predictions from me.

2. New Mexico (2): Rep. Tom Udall (D) is running against Rep. Steve Pearce (R).  Since October, Udall’s re-opened his massive lead after getting hit by attacks from conservative independent groups.  Pearce has not gotten above 42% since early September, while Udall has been consistently over the 50% mark at the same time.  The NRSC has basically conceded defeat in this race.

3. Colorado (3): Rep. Mark Udall (D) is Mo Udall’s son, and Tom Udall’s cousin.  He’s facing off against former Congressman Bob Schaffer (R).  All the late October polling shows Udall ahead by double digits.  The NRSC finally pulled out of Colorado last week after doing a head fake.

4. New Hampshire (4): Former Governor Jeanne Shaheen (D), who John Sununu (R) beat in 2002, is back for a rematch.  She has led Sununu in almost every single poll taken in 2008, and without some illegal phone-jamming on Election Day to help Sununu out this time around, Shaheen looks to be in good shape.  Though Sununu still has a significant cash on hand advantage, it hasn’t helped him.

5. Alaska (8): Conviction!  84-year-old Ted Stevens (R) was convicted on all 7 felony counts for not disclosing the gifts (over $250,000 worth) he got from oil company Veco Corp. last Monday.  Anchorage mayor Mark Begich (D), who had been in a very close race with Stevens, has now opened up a decent lead in the polls, turning what seemed to be a nailbiter into a more comfortable lead.  Something about voting for a convicted felon, I guess.  Still, Rasmussen’s poll has it as a single-digit race, so don’t count out Alaska’s unique brand of crazy just yet.

6. North Carolina (5): The polls have shown a complete reversal of fortune starting in August.  Kay Hagan (D) has been climbing steadily in the polls, while incumbent Elizabeth Dole (R) has been steadily falling.  So what do you do if you’re Dole?  Run an incredibly horrible attack ad calling your opponent, a Sunday school teacher, “godless”.  That’s the sign of a desperate and losing campaign, as four different polls taken in late October now show Hagan at or above the 50% mark.

7. Oregon (6): Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley (D) is challenging incumbent Gordon Smith (R), and has been steadily gaining ground in the polls over the past month.  Every non-partisan poll taken in late October showed Merkley with some kind of lead.  Still, none of them showed him at 50% or above, so this one’s not a done deal yet.

8. Minnesota (7): Norm Coleman (R) won this seat in 2002 only after Paul Wellstone (D) died just a few weeks before the election.  Comedian Al Franken got the DFL (basically the Democratic Party for Minnesota) nod.  The recent polling now shows a pure tossup, with some polls showing Franken in teh lead, and some polls showing Coleman leading.  But late-breaking news has a new lawsuit filed against Coleman alledging $75,000 being funneled to Coleman’s wife from a big GOP donor.

9. Georgia (9): Former state representative Jim Martin (D) is going up against Saxby Chambliss (R), who ousted Vietnam veteran and triple amputee Max Cleland (D) in 2002 by running a despicable ad blending the images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein into Cleland’s face, earning him the nickname “Shameless Saxby”.  Starting with the economic collapse, poll after poll showed a completely different race, with Martin only behind by a statistically insignificant margin.  However, they all still show Martin trailing.  Now, Georgia has a rule that the winner must get over 50% of the vote, and the Libertarian candidate may take enough away that nobody can get 50%, in which case it will go to a runoff in December.

10. Kentucky (10): Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) is now a top target of the Democrats.  Wealthy businessman Bruce Lunsford (D) can afford to self-fund, and he’ll need to, with McConnell’s HUGE warchest of over $9 million.  In just the last month, the polls suddenly showed Lunsford gaining significant ground on McConnell, but the latest two polls show McConnell gaining ground again, getting over the 50% mark.

11. Mississippi-B (11): Roger Wicker (R), appointed by governor Haley Barbour (R) on New Year’s Eve after Trent Lott (R) resigned to become a lobbyist, was previously the Congressman from MS-01.  Former Governor Ronnie Musgrove (D) has kept it close in the polls until recently.  As with Kentucky, the latest two polls now show Wicker above 50%.

Democratic safe seats

Arkansas (Mark Pryor)

Delaware (Joe Biden)

Illinois (Dick Durbin)

Iowa (Tom Harkin)

Louisiana (Mary Landrieu)

Massachusetts (John Kerry)

Michigan (Carl Levin)

Montana (Max Baucus)

New Jersey (Frank Lautenberg)

Rhode Island (Jack Reed)

South Dakota (Tim Johnson)

West Virginia (Jay Rockefeller)

Republican safe seats

Alabama (Jeff Sessions)

Idaho (Jim Risch)

Kansas (Pat Roberts)

Maine (Susan Collins)

Mississippi (Thad Cochran)

Nebraska (Mike Johanns)

Oklahoma (James Inhofe)

South Carolina (Lindsey Graham)

Tennessee (Lamar Alexander)

Texas (John Cornyn)

Wyoming (Michael Enzi)

Wyoming (John Barrasso)

So there you have it, my final rankings for the 2008 Senate races, as they stand with less than 24 hours to go.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

SurveyUSA (10/29-11/01, likely voters, 10/18-20 in parens):

Lunsford (D): 45 (48)

McConnell (R-inc): 53 (48)

Undecided: 4

(MoE: 4%)

Very discouraging trendlines for Lunsford at this late date. The earlier SUSA poll which showed the race tied matched Lunsford’s best performance all cycle (apart from a Rasmussen outlier back in May). But the drift in just a couple of weeks has been pretty stark. Whites were +3 for McConnell in the last poll; they are now +13. Independents were +6 for Lunsford; now they are +6 for Mitch.

As exciting as this race has been for some time, the problem (as I allude above) is that Lunsford has never had a lead in this race. With the last batch of polls all showing him behind anywhere from two to eight points, Bruce has to pull a serious rabbit out of his hat if we’re going to paint KY blue.

UPDATE: A cause for optimism? ChadinFL points out the final SUSA poll (PDF) of KY-Sen in 2004 (Mongiardo v. Bunning) was 51R-42D. The actual result? A 51-49 Bunning heartbreaker. The big difference, though, is that Mongiardo had moved up five net points in that last poll, where here, Lunsford has dropped eight.

Markos has the Daily Kos polling firehose open at full blast. Here’s a quick roundup of this final set of R2K polls:

KY-Sen:

Lunsford (D): 44 (42)

McConnell (R-inc): 47 (46)

MN-Sen:

Franken (D): 40 (41)

Coleman (R-inc): 43 (39)

Barkley (I): 15 (18)

MS-Sen:

Musgrove (D): 44 (46)

Wicker (R-inc): 51 (47)

OR-Sen:

Merkley (D): 48 (47)

Smith (R-inc): 42 (41)

Bonus MN-Sen poll: An MPR/UMN poll (PDF) shows Franken leading 41-37-17. At the start of October, it was 36F-38C-14B.

Garin Hart Yang for Bruce Lunsford (10/26-27, likely voters, 10/6-7 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 45 (45)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 47 (48)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Here we are, a few days before the election, and the Minority Leader of the United States Senate is ahead by only two points and under the 50% threshold. That’s hardly a position of strength for the mighty McConnell. The polling memo, which is available below the fold, also notes that the sample may be underestimating African-American turnout by a significant margin — enough to perhaps give Lunsford an extra couple of points.

On another note, Lunsford has a pair of new ads out — one featuring excerpts from a stump speech from the Bubba Queen herself, Hillary Clinton (what an extraordinary sign of the times), and the other featuring a famous pack of bloodhounds.

UPDATE: The latest Rasmussen poll has McConnell ahead by 51-44, essentially unchanged from last week, when Mitch led by 50-43. Rasmussen has been a bit friendlier to McConnell than other pollsters have in recent weeks, but we’ll find out which poll is more accurate soon enough.

LATER UPDATE: Mason-Dixon has McConnell up by 47-42, which is an improvement for him over late September, when the race was nearly tied at 45-44.

Research 2000 has been working double-time in Kentucky lately; they ran a poll for Daily Kos last week showing McConnell up by four, and they turned right around and fielded another poll for the Lexington Herald-Leader (10/19-21, likely voters, 10/15-16 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 43 (42)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 47 (46)

(MoE: ±4%)

Virtually unchanged. Once again, Lunsford still faces the same problem: while McConnell’s unfavorables are high, so are his. Which man will they dislike more on election day?

Rasmussen (10/21, likely voters, 9/30 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 43 (42)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 50 (51)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Rasmussen continues to splash a little cold water on the idea that this race is a tossup, but the trend has been good for Lunsford since July. McConnell continues to lose support from Democrats (down to 23% from 28% in the September poll), but made up some ground among unaffiliated voters. If I were McConnell, I’d still be scared of these trend lines, though.

UPDATE: The DSCC is out with a new ad hitting McConnell on trade:

SurveyUSA (10/18-20, likely voters, 9/21-22 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 48 (46)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 48 (49)

(MoE: ±4.3%)

Mmmm, I like this. I like this a lot.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/15-16, likely voters, 9/15-17 in parens):

Bruce Lunsford (D): 42 (37)

Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 46 (50)

(MoE: ±4%)

That’s some nice mo’ for Lunsford in the past month, who has gained some more ground among Democrats and Independents since the previous R2K poll here. Post-bailout, McConnell’s favorable rating has taken a bit of a hit — he currently sits at 47-46, down from 51-43 in September.

Lunsford will need a strong finish in order to pull this off, but this race is looking a lot more doable than it did a couple of months ago.