Tag: NV-03

• PA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Pat Toomey says that he raised $1 million in 60 days toward his Senate run, with more than 11,000 donors. It’s still a drop in the bucket compared with the bankrolls of Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak, but it ought to help dissuade anyone else from jumping into the GOP primary. Another tidbit that ought to discourage any Republican line-crashers: $5,000 of that money came from John Cornyn‘s PAC, suggesting that he’s done looking for another candidate and is bringing establishment power to bear behind Toomey.

• FL-Sen: It’s not much of a surprise, considering they’re close neighbors, but Rep. Kendrick Meek nailed down the endorsements of two key members of Florida’s House delegation — Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Ron Klein — which will come in handy if he does wind up facing off against Corrine Brown in the primary.

• LA-Sen: Democratic New Orleans city councilor Arnie Fielkow decided, after some speculation, not to wade into the Louisiana Senate race. More plausible would be a challenge to Rep. Anh Cao in LA-02, as Fielkow is well-known in NoLa but has no statewide presence, but Fielkow also declined that, leading to speculation he may be eyeing the next mayor’s race instead.

• GA-Gov:  With an eye on Roy Barnes, Ed Kilgore takes aim at the claim that Georgia governors have a long track record of failure when it comes to comebacks. It turns out that past probably isn’t prologue. (D)

• TX-Gov: We’re reluctant to ascribe a whole lotta meaning to the phrasing of this particular letter, but Kay Bailey Hutchison seems to be moving pretty explicitly toward making official her run for Governor. Glenn Thrush points to a letter sent to potential donors saying “I am running for Governor.”

• AZ-05: Is Congress ready for its first gamer (or at least its first out-of-the-closet gamer)? Jim Ward, the former president of video game maker LucasArts, announced that he’ll be running for the GOP nomination to go up against Rep. Harry Mitchell. Ward brings a lot of wealth to the table, but he’ll have an uphill fight against former Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert, who lost the 2008 election to Mitchell by 9 points and is looking for a rematch.

• TX-32: Dems have landed a good candidate in TX-32 to go up against Rep. Pete Sessions: Grieg Raggio, an attorney and husband to Judge Lorraine Raggio. The 32nd, in north Dallas, is still a red district but has seen rapidly declining GOP numbers, both for Sessions and at the presidential level, and is down to R+8.

• NY-AG: Nassau Co. Exec Tom Suozzi published an editorial in the New York Times where he publicly discusses having changed his mind on the gay marriage issue (he’s now for it). With New York one of the few states where gay marriage has become an issue with majority support, Suozzi looks to be repositioning himself for, well, something (probably, as often rumored, Attorney General, but maybe Governor if Andrew Cuomo continues to dither).

• Redistricting: The Hill has an interesting piece about redistricting; while it doesn’t delve into too many specifics, it does shed some light on what districts the GOP is rushing to try to take back before they get strengthened for the Dems (like Bobby Bright’s AL-02), and what districts are unlikely to draw top tier challengers because everyone is willing to sit back and wait for new open districts to pop up in 2012 (like Dina Titus’s NV-03).

• Race Tracker: Benawu is already back doing what he does best: chronicling the Dems’ efforts to field candidates in all 435 districts. Right now, we’re still looking in 124 GOP-held districts (although, of course, it’s still early in the cycle). Check out the RaceTracker 2010 wiki for more.

• CT-Sen: I guess I wasn’t dreaming when I thought I heard economist and talking head Peter Schiff say he was still looking into the GOP primary for the Connecticut Senate race Tuesday night on the Daily Show… apparently he’s making a full-court press all week gauging his support for a run. Schiff is a favorite of the Paulist wing of the party, and true to anarcho-libertarian form, he shrugs off the fact that he can’t remember the last time he voted.

• FL-Sen: The Club for Growth doesn’t get involved in Senate primaries very often (RI in 2006 and NM in 2008 being the exceptions), but the fact that Marco Rubio met this week with the CfG and they admitted to being “impressed” suggests that they might get involved here. The CfG may still be reluctant to get involved, though, simply given the unlikely return on their investment with the long odds Rubio faces against Charlie Crist.

• NY-Sen-B: Writer Jonathan Tasini, who got 17% in a challenge from the left to Hillary Clinton in the 2006 Senate primary, announced that he’s going to run against Kirsten Gillibrand in the 2010 primary. It’s still as unclear as ever if Rep. Carolyn Maloney will officially join Tasini in the hunt (and Tasini getting in may make it more difficult for her, seeing as how Tasini would eat into her share of the purer-than-thou vote), but Maloney seems to be testing out various attack lines against Gillibrand in a prerecorded interview with NY1 that will air tonight. Meanwhile, Gillibrand got another prominent endorsement today, although this one may help her more in the general than with the liberal base: former NYC mayor Ed Koch.

• UT-Sen: Somehow Bob Bennett has become flypaper for wingnuts lately. He’s pulled down his fourth primary challenger, businessman and conservative activist James Williams.

• NJ-Gov: The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at a new conundrum for both Jon Corzine and Chris Christie: picking running mates. (This is the first New Jersey gubernatorial election since the creation of the Lt. Gov. position, a need made apparent by the resignations of both Christie Todd Whitman and Jim McGreevey.) This looks like an exercise in ticket-balancing, both in terms of gender and geography. State Senator Diane Allen from the Philly burbs in Burlington Co. (who declined the chance to run in NJ-03) may have the inside track for the GOP nod, although (paging open seat fans) one other name that gets a mention is NJ-02’s Rep. Frank LoBiondo.

• OK-Gov: No surprise here, but AG Drew Edmondson today officially launched his exploratory campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor. Edmondson faces Lt. Gov. Jari Askins in the primary, giving the Dems two strong candidates facing a steep climb uphill against Oklahoma’s ever-darker shade of red.

• DE-AL: Rep. Mike Castle said today that he won’t seek the newly-open position of ranking member on the Education and Labor Committee, saying he wanted GOP stability on the panel. While this doesn’t help us know whether he’s planning to run for the Senate or retire, it does send a pretty clear signal the 69-year-old Castle isn’t staying in the House.

• FL-24: This race is barely a couple days old, and already it’s one of the most heated in the nation. Once Winter Park City Commissioner Karen Diebel announced her run, some local Democrats (although not the Kosmas camp) began pointing to a 2007 Orlando Sentinel article discussing some of her odd actions and outbursts. That brought on a counterattack from state GOP chair Jim Greer, who attacked freshman Rep. Suzanne Kosmas directly for gutter politicking.

• NV-03: The NRCC hasn’t had much luck on the recruiting front in this D+2 district in the Las Vegas suburbs to take on freshman Rep. Dina Titus. Local banking executive John Guedry looks willing to step up to the plate, though, saying he’s “seriously considering” it. Other possible GOPers include former Clark County GOP chair Brian Scroggins and former state Controller Steve Martin.

• SC-01: With Linda Ketner turning down the rematch against Rep. Henry Brown, all eyes have turned to state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis as a potential Dem nominee. He said he’ll make a decision “sometime in July.”

• TN-09: Rep. Steve Cohen is getting fundraising help from an interesting source, and still one of the most powerful forces in Memphis politics: former Rep. Harold Ford Sr. At first this seems odd, since Ford campaigned against Cohen and in support of his son, Jake Ford, in the 2006 general election (where Ford was running as an independent). However, Ford Sr. is a long-time foe of Cohen’s 2010 primary opponent, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, so that would tend to explain it all.

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O)

This week has been nothing short of amazing! Barack Obama will be our next President. More and better Democrats will be going to Congress. The electoral map has undergone a major blue shift.

So why has this whole experience been bittersweet at best for me? Well, all is not well in my own home state. So what can we celebrate and what must we fix? Let me share with you the story of this election from behind the scenes.

First off, let’s start with the bad news. We lost in California. But wait, you ask, didn’t Obama win by about 24%? Isn’t that good? Of course it is, and that isn’t the problem.

The problem in California is that Barack Obama had hardly any coattails here. Look at how Prop 8, the marriage ban, may end up having to be stopped at the courts (again, hopefully). Look at how, barring the results in CA-44 & CA-04 changing in the provisional vote count, we have not gained any new Congressional seats. Look at how we’re still short of a 2/3 supermajority in both houses of the state legislature.

Simply put, we failed our mission in The Golden State. There were hundreds of thousands of “undervotes” here, meaning that people voted Obama for President but did NOT continue downballot to vote on Congress, the initiatives, and local races. This is nothing short of tragic, and there’s no excuse for the nation’s biggest Blue State to still show so much red! Because of the inept and disastrous “leadership” of the state party, the refusal of the DCCC to invest in real races like CA-44 & CA-46, and the horribly gawd-awful “leadership” by The Task Force & Equality California on the No on 8 campaign & their failure to have a real ground game, we missed the opportunity to turn the Obama victory into a progressive victory in California.

Now contrast what happened in California on Tuesday to what happened in Nevada on the same day. While one state didn’t change much, the other state next door underwent a massive transformation! Like Mountain West neighbors New Mexico & Colorado, Nevada is now officially a Blue State! And not just that, but Democrats now have a broad and clear mandate for progressive change.

Progressive Democrat Dina Titus was elected to Congress in a “swing district” that Bush won in 2004. Democrats now control both houses in the state legislature for the first time since 1991, including a 2/3 supermajority in the Assembly. Voters approved a good initiative that will actually help Nevada fully fund its schools. And of course, Barack Obama won the ex-Red State by a whopping 12%, including an 18% win in Clark County (Las Vegas Metro) and wins in the formerly Republican Carson City & Washoe (Reno) Counties!

So why were the results in Nevada so dramatically different? Let’s see, Harry Reid and the state party leaders actually began early in registering more Democrats and building an aggressive field operation while the GOP was power drunk and asleep at the wheel. The Obama campaign and the state party were effective in coordinating with the Dina Titus campaign, the Jill Derby campaign up north, and the local campaigns. All the candidates up and down the ballot had a clear and consistent message for change more. economy, energy & environment, education, health care, and so much more. Basically, Democrats worked together on the ground and that’s why we won!

So what lessons can we learn from this tale of two states? First off, there’s no real substitute for a grassroots door-to-door, face-to-face campaign. Despite the good last-minute ads, they may have been too little & too late to make up for the lack of a ground game for No on 8 in California. Meanwhile in Nevada, no amount of negative attack ads from the Republicans against Dina Titus & Barack Obama could make up for their complete lack of a ground game while we Democrats truly rocked the vote!

OSecondly, Nevada Democrats succeeded in translating an Obama victory into a progressive victory while California Democrats were simply lost in translation. Why couldn’t we win the 45th & 48th Congressional Districts when Obama carried them? Why couldn’t Debbie Cook win in the 46th when Obama carried it? Why were there so many undervotes statewide? Whatever the Nevada Democratic Party did right, the California Democratic Party needs to learn how to do it.

And finally, we should all be of good cheer! The West is ours if we want it! The results across the region prove that where Democrats work, Democrats win. But in places like California where state party leaders grew complacent, we lost out on real opportunities.

So what do we do next? After we’re done celebrating, we will go back to work! We have more work to do to keep progress going, so let’s do it! 😀

Mason-Dixon (10/28-29, likely voters, 10/8-9 in parens):

Jill Derby (D): 37 (38)

Dean Heller (R-inc): 50 (51)

(MoE: ±5%)

Mason-Dixon (10/28-29, likely voters, 10/8-9 in parens):

Dina Titus (D): 44 (40)

Jon Porter (R-inc): 44 (43)

Other: 3 (4)

(MoE: ±5%)

Recent polling by Research 2000 points to a much closer race in the 2nd District (although its sample seems a bit suspect), and the DCCC is up on the air with a new ad in support of Derby in the closing days. This one will be tough, but it’s possible that we could see an upset special here.

On the other hand, the 3rd District polling is much more in line with R2K’s work (they had Titus up by two). I’ve heard some general grumbling about Porter having a superior ad campaign in this race, but the changing nature of this district (namely, there are nearly 37,000 more registered Dems living there today than there were in 2006) may doom Porter, anyway. Any incumbent running in the mid-40s in a year like this is not in great shape.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/20-22, likely voters):

Dina Titus (D): 47

Jon Porter (R-inc): 45

(MoE: ±5%)

The numbers have bounced around quite a bit in this race in this swing district in the Las Vegas suburbs, ranging from a recent Mason-Dixon poll giving a 3-point edge to Porter to a Titus internal giving her a 9-point lead. Research 2000’s first poll of this race kind of splits the difference, finding Titus edging Porter by 2.

This is a district that has changed a lot in terms of registration numbers (moving from about even in ’06 to a 39,000 Dem edge now) and demographics, even since 2006 when Porter narrowly beat Harry Reid staffer Tessa Hafen and Titus narrowly won the district in her unsuccessful governor’s race. Also heartening are the early voting numbers: Titus is up 56-45 among early voters… and the presidential numbers, with Obama leading McCain in this D+1 district 48-44.

Back in August, we took a look at the big gains that Democrats were making across Nevada in terms of voter registration. Well, the Nevada Secretary of State has updated its numbers with the final pre-election voter registration tallies for the state, and Democrats have widened their statewide voter registration edge by 39,000 voters since August.

Just like we did in August, let’s tally the Democratic and Republican registration advantages in all three of Nevada’s congressional districts from November 2006, August 2008, and today, with blue indicating a Democratic registration advantage and red indicating a GOP advantage. Here’s what we get:

My friends, that’s change that we can believe in. While Dean Heller may hold on in the 2nd District, he does have a lot of new (Democratic) voters to deal with. And if your name is Jon Porter, well… you’ve gotta be sweating some serious bullets right now.

On the presidential level, the polls may show a tossup in Nevada, but these numbers are telling us something else entirely.

Mason-Dixon for the Las Vegas Review-Journal (10/8-9, likely voters, 6/9-11 in parens):

Dina Titus (D): 40 (42)

Jon Porter (R-inc): 43 (45)

Other: 4

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±6.4%)

The last couple of polls we’ve seen from this district, both of them Anzalone Liszt internals from July and September, have both shown Titus leading by four and nine points, respectively. (Even Porter’s own internal poll showed him leading by only a 41-39 margin.)

The best news for Porter in this poll is Titus’ favorability rating, which clocks in at 37-46 (compared to 40-34). The RGJ speculates that Porter’s hits against Titus are giving him the same kind of traction that Jim Gibbons got in his gubernatorial campaign against Titus in 2006. In the latest Anzalone poll of this race, those numbers were flipped: Titus had a 50-37 favorable score, while Porter was only at 44-41.

In any case, no incumbent is in a good position at 43% in the polls, and Porter will have to slog this one out on his own for a little while before the NRCC kicks in on his behalf.

SSP currently rates this race as a Tossup.

Bonus finding: Obama leads McCain by 47-45 statewide.

We wrote earlier about the NRCC canceling ad buys in NV-03 and NM-01, but a knowledgeable friend of SSP writes in with a few more details on the NRCC’s retreat:

FL-16 – NRCC – TV – cancelled flight 10/14-10/20 in West Palm and Ft. Myers

ID-01 – NRCC – TV – Spokane – cancels weeks of 10/7 and 10/14

KS-02 – NRCC – TV – Cancelled flight 10/21-10/27 in all markets

LA-06 – NRCC-TV- Cancelled flight 10/21-10/27 in Baton Rouge

MN-03 – NRCC- TV – cancelled flight 10/14-10/20 in Minneapolis

NV-03 – NRCC – TV – broadcast and cable flights 10/14-10/20 cancelled

TX-22 – NRCC – TV – Cancelled flight 10/14-10/20 in Houston.

Credit where credit is due: Stu Rothenberg has a pretty sober assessment of the GOP’s downballot chances this year in his latest column. Here’s one nugget, though, that is worth teasing out:

The NRCC has scaled back advertising in Nevada’s 3rd district and New Mexico’s 1st district, and the campaign committee is going to have to make key decisions over the next few weeks about which candidates it will try to save and which it will allow to drown slowly.

The Martin Heinrich campaign has more details on the NRCC’s retreat in NM-01:

Back in August, the NRCC reserved $731,690 in advertising on behalf of Darren White from October 14 to November 4th [NRCC to spend $731k on TV ads in 1st District Race, 8/27/08].  The NRCC has now slashed two weeks out of the three-week buy, cutting an estimated $500,000 in financial support from the White campaign.

You’ll recall that White, the sheriff of Bernalillo County, was one of the NRCC’s most-prized recruits earlier this cycle after Heather Wilson decided to run for Senate. It seems that the NRCC is feeling less and less confident about his abilities to retain this seat, and it also appears that Jon Porter may have to fend for himself. In a normal year with an adequately-funded NRCC, neither of these guys would have been abandoned, and both of them could have held on — but this isn’t a normal year by any means.

So far, the NRCC has been picking a limited set of targets: AL-02, MI-07, NJ-03, OH-01, OH-15, PA-03, and WI-08. They will undoubtedly add a few more districts to the heap and circle the wagon, but which ones will they be? The Missouri races? ID-01? WY-AL?

(Proudly cross-posted at C4O)

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to see the state of the race for myself. I traveled to the heart of Battleground Country. Because Nevada’s 5 electoral votes are up for grabs and two Nevada Republicans may lose their House seats this fall, I wanted to do something to help. That’s why I packed my bags, took some spare change for my favorite slot machines (NOT!), and made sure my family in Henderson had an extra bed for me to crash on.

I went to Vegas, baby, and I’m giving you the full report on what’s happening there!

Luckily for me, my cousin’s house is in the eye of the electoral storm. She lives in the 3rd Congressional District, the part of Nevada where Obama needs to win to carry the state… And the district where a Dina Titus win will give Democrats the majority in Nevada’s Congressional Delegation. So when I left my house on Friday, I was thrilled to go to a place where I can double the impact with the same amount of time!

When I arrived in town on Friday night, the Presidential Debate was just ending. I had listened on the radio while my friend Harriet and I were driving up the 15, and I was personally impressed by Obama’s performance. Still, I was anxious to find out what my moderate-conservative Republican cousin in Henderson thought about it. And to my surprise, she was also impressed!

Believe it or not, my Republican cousin will be voting for Democrat Barack Obama this fall. Why? Believe it or not, she may be upper middle-class… But she and her husband are still only a couple paychecks away from losing their home. Their house has now lost about $80,000 of its value while they still have to pay an “interest only mortgage” that’s now after the “interest only” period. They consider themselves blessed that they have a beautiful house in a great neighborhood just down the hill from the most exclusive estates in the Las Vegas Valley, but they still fear what would happen to them and their two kids if one of them were to have a health scare or lose a job. That’s why both my Republican cousin and her Democratic husband are voting for Obama.

And you know what? This isn’t an isolated case. In fact, I would find more of this the following two days when I strapped on my tennies and hit the pavement.

On Saturday morning, I regrouped with Harriet and joined with all the other California Obama volunteers who drove to Nevada for the weekend. Before we were sent off to knock doors, we were given the lay of the land. In just four years, Nevada has turned from a Republican plurality state into a state with 80,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans! In the 3rd District alone, Democrats now have a 29,000 voter registration edge! And now in previously GOP friendly Vegas suburbs like Henderson, voters are afraid of losing their jobs, losing their health care, losing their houses, and losing the middle-class American Dream they thought they had achieved. That’s why it was critical to get volunteers like us on the ground here to explain to voters what Democrats like  

Barack Obama and Dina Titus will do to help working people.

So that’s what we did over the next two days. We knocked doors. We talked to voters who still had doubts about Obama. We urged Obama voters to vote early. We reminded everyone not to forget Dina Titus and the state legislature candidates.

Oh yes, and we also listened. We listened as retirees told us about their health care worries. We listened as young people were telling us about their plans to finish college and get a real career. We listened to parents telling us about how they want to leave to their kids a better nation and a healthier planet. We listened to Democrats thrilled about a chance for us to make history (in a good way!). We also listened to Indpendents and Republicans, who have never voted for a Democrat before in their lifetimes, tell us that Barack Obama is the only candidate who they can trust with our nation’s future.

And believe it or not, I could count the number of McCain supporters we encountered on our walks with one hand. Even though we were mainly walking middle-class and upper middle-class neighborhoods in leafy (for the desert) suburban Henderson, hardly anyone on our lists turned out to be McCain supporters. This just goes to show how Southern Nevada’s changing and how much the people who live here are yearning for real change.

Now I know my experience in Las Vegas last weekend was only a snapshot of what’s really happening in Nevada right now. However, I must admit came back on Sunday feeling more confident of the Democratic operation in Nevada. We have a real chance of winning and winning BIG here… But only if we support our Democrats!

There’s plenty we can all do to help Democrats win this year. We can drive. We can walk. We can call. And yes, we can give. So please join us in helping in any way you can. The stakes are too high, and we can’t afford to lose this time. Let’s win, and let’s take our country back!