SSP-TV (written by James L.):
Tag: WI-08
SSP Daily Digest: 9/3
100% Chance of Pain For House Democrats: GOP Pollster
The American Action Forum is back with a new batch of House polls. (They released their first dozen last week.) One major caveat, though: as pointed out in the comments section (!) of Hotline on Call, the ballot head-to-head questions in each poll were buried under several thermometer-style questions on Obama, Pelosi, and healthcare reform:
Those American Action Forum polls are designed to prime respondents into selecting Republican candidates. Instead of starting off with the ballot-test question, they start by asking if people think the country is on the right or wrong track, do they support/oppose health care reform, and their fav/unfav opinion of Obama & Pelosi (not Boehner and Bush, of course). Look, the Democrats are going to lose a lot of seats, and they will lose some of these seats in this poll, but the most credible way to conduct a general election poll is to start by asking who the respondent is voting for, because that is the one question that will actually be on a ballot. At least I give credit to these Republicans for showing the questions they asked.
That’s absolutely right. For any poll to maintain its credibility, the toplines need to be asked at the start (or at least, no later than right after the favorables, as PPP does it).
That said, we can still take a look at the toplines with a grain of salt.
Ayres, McHenry & Associates (R) for the American Action Forum (8/16-21, likely voters, MoE: ±4.9%):
IA-03:
Leonard Boswell (D-inc): 41
Brad Zaun (R): 51
IN-02:
Joe Donnelly (D-inc): 46
Jackie Walorski (R): 44
MI-07:
Mark Schauer (D-inc): 40
Tim Walberg (R): 50
MO-03:
Russ Carnahan (D-inc): 54
Ed Martin (R): 38
OH-01:
Steve Driehaus (D-inc): 45
Steve Chabot (R): 47
OH-13:
Betty Sutton (D-inc): 43
Tom Ganley (R): 41
OH-15:
Mary Jo Kilroy (D-inc): 44
Steve Stivers (R): 49
OH-16:
John Boccieri (D-inc): 35
Jim Renacci (R): 49
Note: Check out the downright geriatric sample for the OH-16 poll — 4% of the voters are between the ages of 18 and 34, 22% are between 35 and 49, and 74% are 50 and up. SUSA’s crosstabs from 2008 had a sample breakdown among those age brackets of 20-28-52. Other polls in this batch have similar shifts, but this one is the most glaring.
WI-08:
Steve Kagen (D-inc): 39
Reid Ribble (R): 49
SSP Daily Digest: 8/3 (Morning Edition)
Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is up with a quarter million dollar ad buy on behalf of Jane Norton, touting an endorsement from Jan Brewer (whose instant celebrity strikes me as something on the level of a reality TV star).
Meanwhile, Tom Jensen confirms empirically something I’ve felt intuitively for a while (and mentioned on our panel at Netroots Nation): Charlie Crist is better off with Jeff Greene winning the Democratic primary rather than Kendrick Meek. In particular, black voters support Meek 39-33 over Crist, while they support Crist 61-17 over Greene.
The Republican running to replace outgoing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) in the coal-mining hub of Kentucky said recently that Washington has no business formulating mine safety rules.
“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia, according to a profile in Details magazine. “You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”
“I know that doesn’t sound… I want to be compassionate, and I’m sorry for what happened, but I wonder: Was it just an accident?”
Meanwhile, a more chronologically closer reporter informs us that Jerry Brown has $23 million on hand.
SSP Daily Digest: 6/16
• FL-Sen: Politico has a new FL-Sen piece provocatively titled “Democrats flirt with backing Charlie Crist,” but it points to some definitely solidifying conventional wisdom: that Crist, who has been steadily moving to the left in his independent bid, is becoming more appealing to local Dem power brokers as something of a de facto Dem candidate. This is especially the case if Jeff Greene, who has no base and a truckload of vulnerabilities, somehow spends his way into snatching the Dem nomination from Kendrick Meek. Along those lines, Crist‘s latest repositioning is on the issue of travel to Cuba, where he’d previously backed restrictions on travel and remittances but is now moving more in line with freer Democratic positions.
• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall got an endorsement from MoveOn with less than a week to go until the Senate runoff against Cal Cunningham. It’s kind of late in the game, but MoveOn money may fund some last-minute ground-pounding.
• NV-Sen: Why do I have the feeling that Sharron Angle is going to get her own bullet every morning filled with the latest crazy revelations about her? I don’t even know where to begin: hot on the heels of revelations that she used to be a member of the right-wing Independent American Party in the 1990s (which she left because of political expedience to run for state Assembly) comes today’s revelations that in the 1980s she left the Republican Party at the height of the Reagan era to become a… Democrat? (She says she did so to help a conservative Dem with his state Senate campaign.) Well, now she can claim she’s tripartisan. Also from yesterday were, of course, revelations that in January of this year she floated the possibility of armed insurrection if Congress “keeps going the way it is.”
With the NRSC playing whack-a-mole with daily Angle bombshells, John Cornyn says he’ll be rolling her out verrrrrrry slowly… it’ll be “a few weeks” before she’s ready to take questions from the press. This comes on top of several stories about Cornyn’s more centrist colleagues cautiously distancing themselves from Angle, with Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe saying they aren’t getting involved, and Dick Lugar taking exception to most of her key action items. At least Jim DeMint is coming to her rescue, paying for some IEs on her behalf out of his PAC money.
• MI-Gov (pdf): Magellan’s out with another public poll of a Republican primary, this time in Michigan. They find Peter Hoekstra narrowly in the lead at 26, with Rick Snyder at 20, Mike Cox at 16, Mike Bouchard at 11, and Tom George at 2. Meanwhile, Cox seems to at least be winning the endorsement game; he got two more nods today, both from two of Hoekstra’s slightly more moderate House colleagues: Dave Camp and Thad McCotter. (Candice Miller, on the other hand, backed Hoekstra last week.)
• OR-Gov: Here’s quick about-face from John DiLorenzo, a Portland attorney who’d fronted himself six figures to launch an independent gubernatorial candidacy. Today he decided not to run after all; he had an interesting explanation, in that he felt that both Dem John Kitzhaber and GOPer Chris Dudley were moderate enough that there really wasn’t any room for him to carve out some space in the middle.
• NC-11: GOP nominee Jeff Miller is out with an internal poll from POS conducted several weeks ago that show him in somewhat competitive territory against Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler. The poll gives Shuler a 46-34 edge over Miller. Miller is on the wrong end of 10:1 cash advantage for Shuler, but just got a FreedomWorks endorsement which may help him gain some ground.
• NJ-06: It looks like the GOP primary in the 6th, the last race from Super Duper Tuesday not to be called, is finally over. Diane Gooch, the pre-primary favorite, at least based on her NRCC backing, conceded and said she won’t seek a recount. Anna Little finished 84 votes ahead of Gooch, who endorsed Little for the run against long-time Dem Rep. Frank Pallone.
• NY-24: Here’s one more big problem for endangered Rep. Mike Arcuri: GOP opponent Richard Hanna got the endorsement of the statewide Independence Party. There’s one catch, though; the Cayuga County Independence Party isn’t on board, and say they’d prefer to endorse Arcuri (and take great issue with the selection process, or lack thereof). It’s unclear for now how the state and county parties will resolve the dispute. Hanna got the 2008 IP line, which probably helped him keep things surprisingly close that year.
• OH-12: GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi was yesterday declared one of only nine GOPers who need continued financial support, largely because he’s facing a top-tier challenge from Franklin Co. Commissioner Paula Brooks. Brooks got a big fundraising boost today with an endorsement from EMILY’s List, which should help send some money in the direction of one of the few places where Dems are playing offense.
• TN-04: One more internal poll to report on, although it’s incredibly stale (from late March… however it was just brought to our attention, thanks to a tipster in the comments). A poll by Republican pollster OnMessage finds Rep. Lincoln Davis — a Dem in a terrible district but facing small-fry opposition — leads his two possible opponents, Scott DesJarlais and Jack Bailey, by identical 44-33 margins.
• UT-02: It sounds like the GOP is still maintaining hopes of monkeying around with the Dem primary in the 2nd, as there are subtle rumblings of efforts to get teabaggers to cross over and vote for very liberal (and probably unelectable in the general) Claudia Wright instead of Rep. Jim Matheson in the Dem primary. Somehow that doesn’t seem likely, though, considering that those same voters would probably like to have a say in the hard-fought and likely close Republican Senate primary between Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater on the same day (June 22).
• WI-08: The crowd in the GOP field in the 8th is a little smaller; retired physician Marc Trager dropped out of the race, citing health reasons. He gave his backing to state Rep. Roger Roth, who still faces ex-state Rep. Terri McCormick, contractor Reid Ribble, and county supervisors Marc Savard and Andy Williams.
• VA-St. House: The GOP held seats in the state House of Delegates in two special elections last night, meaning they still control that chamber 59-39 (with 2 GOP-leaning indies). Both were in fairly red territory, but the Dems had felt they had a potentially strong candidate in HD-15 in Harrisonburg mayor Kai Degner. Degner lost to Tony Wilt, 66-34. In Chesterfield County in Richmond’s suburbs, Roxanne Robinson beat William Brown with 72%.
SSP Daily Digest: 4/13 (Morning Edition)
Shelia Smoot (D): 33
Earl Hilliard Jr. (D): 28
Terry Sewell (D): 12
Martha Bozeman (D): 6
Undecided/other: 20
(MoE: 4%)
NEW GOAL: We’ve Got Your Backs
INITIAL GOAL OF 200 CONTRIBUTORS: DECIMATED. We’re now going for $25,000 total raised today.
We did quite a lot of good in November — almost 400 Kossacks made 5,545 individual contributions to the twenty most vulnerable Democrats who voted both for health care reform and against the anti-choice Stupak-Pitts amendment, raising over $30,000 to help these candidates secure reelection in 2010.
What we demonstrated then to Democrats in vulnerable districts that when they stand with our party and for progressive causes, the netroots will have their backs. And they noticed. Several of them called or emailed me personally to thank all of you for your efforts, including Members who have never had anything to do with the netroots before then. And last night, almost all of them went back and voted for health care again.
And we need to have their backs.
Listed below are the twenty Democrats (plus one) who have cast the toughest votes for health care reform — for HCR last night, and against the Stupak Amendment in November. A few of them voted “no” the first time around (Boyd, Markey, Kosmas, Murphy), but we should welcome them into the fold and thank them for supporting health care reform now.
These are the Democrats whose districts are most likely to oppose them for what they have done to make health care affordable for all. It’s up to us to demonstrate to these often-moderate candidates that when they stand up for progressive causes, progressives will stand behind them.
I believe it’s especially important for those of us who’ve decided to turn the spigot off when it comes to Democratic party institutions based on their multitude of failures to take this opportunity to demonstrate what we’re capable of doing for specific candidates who are taking risks to make progress happen.
My initial goal is 200 contributors. Then we’ll take it as high as you’re willing to go.
Here’s who you should be supporting — these Democrats (listed by District, Name, PVI), elected in Republican and swing districts (and mostly in the past three years), for whom every close vote for reproductive freedom and health care reform can become the next opposition campaign ad:
AZ-01 Kirkpatrick, Ann R+6
FL-02 Boyd, Allen R+6
CO-04 Markey, Betsy R+6
AZ-05 Mitchell, Harry R+5
AZ-08 Giffords, Gabrielle R+4FL-24 Kosmas, Suzanne R+4
NY-19 Hall, John R+3
FL-08 Grayson, Alan R+2
MI-07 Schauer, Mark R+2
NY-20 Murphy, Scott R+2WI-08 Kagen, Steve R+2
CA-11 McNerney, Jerry R+1
IL-08 Bean, Melissa R+1
IL-11 Halvorson, Debbie R+1
IL-14 Foster, Bill R+1MN-01 Walz, Tim R+1
NY-23 Owens, Bill R+1
NH-01 Shea-Porter, Carol R+0
NY-01 Bishop, Timothy R+0
OH-15 Kilroy, Mary Jo D+1VA-05 Perriello, Tom R+5**
** Technically, Tom Perriello shouldn’t be here: he voted for the Stupak Amendment the first time. But he has also voted for ACES and the stimulus bill despite being a freshman member elected by less than 1000 votes in an R+5 district — McCain and Bush both carried it — so if you’re willing to make one exception, Perriello is the exception you should make.
The overwhelming majority of these twenty Members were elected in 2006, 2008 or, in the case of Scott Murphy and Bill Owens, 2009. As the most recent additions to Congress, almost every one of them is on the NRCC’s primary target list for 2010.
We need to protect them for having done the right thing. We need to show that when Democrats act courageously in the interests of our country, progressives will have their backs and support them.
So please, visit the WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK v2.0 ActBlue page and spread some sugar around today — $3 each? $5? $10, $20 or more? That’s up to you. And then promote it on your Facebook page, your Twitter feed and your own diaries.
If politicians in tough districts see that national support exists when they do the right thing on a big vote — and there may be no bigger one than the one they cast last night — they will feel more comfortable doing it again the next time. They won’t have to worry about losing some donors over these pro-choice and pro-health care votes if they’ve gained our loyal support instead. And when the NRCC targets them this fall, they will be able to fight back.
Give now. If you have given to some of these candidates in the past, give to the rest today. Show them, right now: WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK.
SSP Daily Digest: 11/18
• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon has picked up a major critic in her Senate run: one of her former employees, in the form of 66-year-old former pro wrestler Superstar Billy Graham. Graham is a physical wreck from his days in the WWF, thanks to steroid abuse and a number of hip replacements, with no pension or health care from WWE. He plans to keep dogging the McMahon campaign as McMahon keeps trying to sanitize her previous career.
• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is dropping the smiley above-the-fray approach; he’s promising to step up direct engagements with Marco Rubio, now that it looks like we’ve got a real race on our hands. Crist will go after Rubio for failure to move important pieces of conservative legislation during his time as state House speaker.
• KS-Sen, KS-04: This seems to exist mostly as whispers and rumors, but there’s word that Rep. Todd Tiahrt, not getting much traction in polls or fundraising or endorsements, may drop out of the GOP Senate primary against Rep. Jerry Moran. (Tiahrt’s people pushed back against the idea, saying they’re relying on movement grassroots forces that things like “polls” don’t pick up on. They actually also tried redbaiting Moran over his sponsorship of legislation to allow American travel to Cuba, indicating they won’t go quietly.) The question of Tiahrt running for House instead also presents a conundrum for state Rep. Raj Goyle in KS-04, who’s turning into one of the Dems’ best 2010 challengers — would Goyle be better off running in an open seat, or against the 16-year vet Tiahrt in what’s shaping up to be an anti-incumbent year?
• KY-Sen: There had been some talk about Cathy Bailey (a wealthy Bush Pioneer and W’s ambassador to Latvia), back when the GOP was still casting about for an alternative to Jim Bunning. All of a sudden, she’s back, saying she’s considering the race and sounding none too pleased with Trey Grayson (too “moderate” for her tastes) and Rand Paul (too “extreme”). I can’t see her winning the primary, but with her money, she could conceivably peel away enough mainstream GOP votes from Grayson to flip the primary to Paul.
• MT-Sen: It looks like Max Baucus may have suffered some residual damage from his high-profile role in health care reform; he’s down to 44% approval, from 67% approval at this point two years ago, according to an MSU-Billings poll. He’s lagging all other statewide officials, including Jon Tester (56/25) and Brian Schweitzer (62/20). The problem seems to be that Baucus gets only 67% approval among Dems, compared with 81% for Tester and 82% for Schweitzer; a plurality of Montanans, including 73% of Dems, support a public option, so Baucus’s decline among Dems doesn’t seem hard to diagnose.
• NC-Sen: Former Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker said he won’t be running for Senate, although he’d strongly considered it. With Rep. Bob Etheridge’s recent “no” also, it’s looking more and more like SoS Elaine Marshall will have a lightly contested path to the Dem nomination (her main opponent is attorney Kenneth Lewis).
• NH-Sen: One other important “no” in a Senate race: RNC member and one-time House candidate Sean Mahoney, who had been making lots of candidate-like noises, said he won’t run in the GOP field. If you look a few moves ahead in the chess game, that’s good news for us, as having Mahoney out of the race means fewer votes split on the field’s right flank, giving right-winger Ovide Lamontagne a stronger shot at taking out establishment fave Kelly Ayotte, which would give Dems a much weaker opponent in the general.
• WI-Sen: Former Gov. (and brief presidential candidate) Tommy Thompson isn’t ruling out a Senate bid, although it seems unlikely; he’ll make a decision “next year.” Thompson’s rather strange statement is that he’s “looking at governor, looking at senator, and looking at mayor of Elroy. One of the three.” Seeing as how this is similar to the NY-Sen-B or ND-Sen races (an unlikely challenge to materialize, but one that would be a hot race if it did), SSP is moving the Wisconsin race back on to the big board, as a Race to Watch.
• WV-Sen: Congratulations to Robert Byrd, who hit an astonishing milestone today: the longest-serving Congressperson of all time. Byrd (a Representative from 1952-1958 and a Senator since 1958) has been in Congress for more than 25% of Congress’s existence.
• KS-Gov: Kansas Dems have finally nailed down a solid candidate to take on retiring Sen. Sam Brownback in the gubernatorial race. Retired pharmaceutical company executive Tom Wiggans will carry the flag for the Democrats in this uphill fight. (H/t Mike Nellis.)
• NY-19: I was tempted to put this story on the FP just so I could run the headline “Ball busted!” Roll Call is sounding pretty pissed off at having gotten initially snookered by Greg Ball and his sketchy poll from yesterday. His internal poll only sampled two-thirds of the district (Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess Counties), oversampling Republican Putnam County and leaving out Orange and Rockland Counties altogether, counties where Hall won last year. Ball’s backers say they’ll do a more traditional poll soon and are still pleased with their findings.
• PA-10: Good news for the GOP: they’ve found an elected official who’s interested in going up against Blue Dog Dem Chris Carney in the sprawling, red-leaning 10th, where they’ve been struggling with recruitment. The bad news is: Snyder Co. Commissioner Malcolm Derk is 27 (and is hard-pressed to look 17 — check out the photo at the link), and Snyder County, deep in the hills, has a population of 38K and is at the wrong end of the district from the population centers.
• WI-08: A line is forming among GOP challengers to Rep. Steve Kagen, and now there’s a former state legislator among them. Ex-state Rep. Terry McCormick served three terms and then lost the 2006 primary in WI-08 against then-state Rep. John Gard when it was an open seat, and now she’s back for another try. There are a couple county supervisors in the race, but the NRCC seems to like Reid Ribble, a businessman who can bring his own money to the race.
• CA-St. Ass.: Republican Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby finished first in the special election (to replace “Hot Mike” Duvall) in AD-72 last night. His 37% wasn’t enough to avoid a second round. He’ll face Democrat John MacMurray (who finished second at 27%) and a Green Party candidate; two other Republicans, Linda Ackerman and Richard Faher, pulled in 20% and 13% respectively, so if Norby consolidates the GOP votes in this red-leaning seat (which falls within CA-40 in the US House) he’s on track to holding the seat.
• NRCC: Pete Sessions, emulating the Dems’ spread-the-field strategy of recent cycles, says he wants to have 435 districts that Republicans are playing in. He may have missed an important piece of information: the Illinois filing deadline is past, and the Republicans are already guaranteed not to be playing in IL-01 and IL-04. Well, 433 is close.
• Mayors: There are dueling internal polls of the upcoming Houston mayoral runoff, one of the two big mayoral races left on the table (Atlanta being the other one). City controller Annise Parker leads former city attorney Gene Locke, 47-34 in her own poll, while in Locke’s poll, Parker has a narrower 43-39 lead.
• Demographics: NDN, a liberal think tank that spends a lot of time on Latino issues, has done some projecting of 2010 re-apportionment, and likes what it sees. They see Texas gaining four seats, and possibly three of those could be drawn as Hispanic-influence seats in Dallas, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley. They also see Florida gaining a seat, and recommend creation of a Hispanic-influence seat in central Florida (where much of the state’s growth, both overall and among Hispanics, has been).
• Parties: CNN has a poll that points to the current disparity between the parties: Democrats are a lot more tolerant of the big tent. 58% of Dems prefer to see nomination of candidates who can beat the Republicans, even if they don’t agree on all the issues, while 51% of Republicans prefer to see candidates who agree with them even if they have a poor chance of beating the Democrat.
• Votes: Donkeylicious has an interesting project reminiscent of SSP’s own PVI/Vote Index, looking at Dems and seeing how they match up with their districts’ leans. A lot of the same names show up among bad Dems as we found, but they do some interesting breaking things down by region and by freshman or sophomore status.
SSP Daily Digest: 11/6
• House: Congratulations to Rep. John Garamendi, who was sworn in yesterday, and Rep. Bill Owens, who was sworn in today. Garamendi and Owens are joining the Democratic caucus as quickly as possible so that they can be eligible to vote on healthcare reform this weekend. (D)
• AR-Sen: Remember how yesterday NRSC chair John Cornyn caved to the party’s right flank, and said that he wouldn’t spend money in primaries or endorse in the future? Well, that lasted about a day: turns out that state Sen. Gilbert Baker, the GOP’s best shot in Arkansas, will be having a fundraiser in Washington DC on the 19th… at the NRSC. (The NRSC did announce that it still didn’t amount to endorsement, and that other Arkansas candidates were still welcome to have fundraisers at the NRSC. Uh, call me when there’s actually a fundraiser for head teabagger Tom Cox at the NRSC building.) More generally, CQ has a nice overview of the tightrope Cornyn is walking as he tries to make some inroads in swing states in 2010.
• CA-Sen: Perhaps in an attempt to give some cover to Cornyn (whose hand-picked candidate, Carly Fiorina, is raising the ire of the Chuck DeVore-supporting right wing), eight GOP Senators all endorsed Fiorina yesterday: a couple from leadership (McConnell, Kyl), the moderate women (Snowe, Collins, and Murkowski), some chit-cashing from last year (McCain and Graham), and one from total right field (Coburn). Tom Coburn’s endorsement is especially surprising in view of fellow wackadoodle Jim DeMint’s endorsement of DeVore. DeMint, for his part, is still attacking John Cornyn’s recruitment efforts today, perfectly encapsulating the right-wing mentality while saying “He’s trying to find candidates who can win. I’m trying to find people who can help me change the Senate.”
• FL-Sen: After Charlie Crist’s bizarre denials that he ever supported the Obama stimulus package, the White House left Crist out to dry yesterday, saying that, yes, in fact, he did support the stimulus.
• KS-Sen: This may fall under the “endorsement you don’t want to tout too loudly” category, although with most of the big-name endorsements so far going to Rep. Jerry Moran in the Kansas Senate race, Rep. Todd Tiahrt will probaly take what he can get. Former AG and Senator John Ashcroft endorsed Tiahrt.
• MT-Sen: Here’s what has the potential to be one of 2012’s hottest Senate races, already shaping up. Rep. Denny Rehberg, the state’s lone at-large Congressperson, met with the NRSC concerning a possible run at Jon Tester.
• CA-Gov: With ex-Gov. Jerry Brown suddenly finding himself with the gubernatorial primary field to himself for now, a familiar face has popped up yet again. Dianne Feinstein, who all year has alternately expressed interest and dismissed rumors of her interest, is now back to saying that she still hasn’t ruled out a gubernatorial run. She’ll wait to see what proposals for fixing the badly-broken state the various candidates put out before deciding whether or not to get in herself.
• IL-Gov: Somehow this got lost in all the shuffle surrounding Election Day, but it’s kind of important: after a short period of being the subject of speculation, Jim Ryan made it official that he’s running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Illinois. He probably becomes the frontrunner in the GOP field, by virtue of name rec: he was the state’s Attorney General from 1994-2002, and lost the 2002 governor’s race to Rod Blagojevich. The rest of the GOP field is a hodge-podge of state Senators and county-level officials, with state GOP chair Andy McKenna maybe the best known of the rest. Ryan’s biggest problem may be hoping people don’t confuse him with imprisoned ex-Gov. George Ryan or weird-sex-fan and 2004 Senate candidate Jack Ryan.
• MN-Gov: Another gubernatorial entry that seemed to fly below the radar this week is also a big one: Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak filed to run for governor yesterday. The well-liked Rybak seems like one of the likeliest candidates to prevail in the very crowded Democratic field.
• NJ-Gov: There are going to be a lot of coulda-shoulda-wouldas in the next few weeks in New Jersey, and here’s a big one already. State Senate leader (and former acting Governor) Richard Codey says that the White House contacted him repeatedly over the summer about taking over for Corzine on the ticket, and that Corzine and Codey even discussed it. Codey deferred to Corzine’s decision to stay in — although Corzine nearly decided to pack it in. Reportedly, internal polls over the summer showed Codey beating Chris Christie by double digits.
• NY-Gov: David Paterson is going on the air with two different TV spots (including one where he admits to “lots of mistakes”), apparently trying to bring up his approvals before deciding whether or not to run again in 2010. Paterson is still looking to move forward on the contentious issue of gay marriage, though, planning to put it on the agenda for next week’s special session. It may not have the votes to clear the Senate, but it hasn’t really been put to the test yet. (The worry is that moderate Republicans in the Senate who might have been on board earlier may be leerier now, afraid of getting Scozzafavaed by the right.)
• NY-23: A rare bit of history was made on Tuesday, in that a seat flipping to the president’s party in a House special election (as opposed to a tough retention, as in NY-20) is highly unusual. The most recent case was in VA-04 in 2001, when Republican Randy Forbes picked up a swing district left open by the death of Dem Norman Sisisky. (Subsequent gerrymandering turned the 4th into a safe GOP seat.) The previous instances before that were in 1989, 1988, and 1983.
• TX-32: Pete Sessions Deathwatch, Vol. 3? One more article piles on the “loser” meme regarding Sessions’ series of NY-23 screwups — and it comes from his hometown paper in Dallas. Meanwhile at home, Sessions is now facing a primary challenge from the right, from financial analyst David Smith. Smith is upset about the Scozzafava thing, but mostly focusing on Sessions’ TARP vote. Still, a primary challenge from the right against one of the House’s most conservative members? Seems like that’d be like going after Tammy Baldwin from the left.
• WI-02: Oh, wait. But that’s exactly what some guy is doing. And he’s not just a rube who fell off the biodiesel-fueled organic turnip truck while reaching for his bong: it’s an actual member of the Board of Supervisors of Dane County (where Madison is). David de Felice is upset that Baldwin hasn’t pushed harder for single-payer health care.
• WI-08: Two different new entries in the Green Bay-based 8th. Physician and Air Force vet Marc Trager got into the Republican field to go against Democratic sophomore Rep. Steve Kagen, where businessman Reid Ribble seems to have the inside track based on fundraising and NRCC-touting so far. And yet another random right-winger is imagining his own head superimposed on Doug Hoffman’s body: former Niagara mayor Joe Stern will run as a grassroots conservative independent in 2010.
• NY Comptroller: A piece on New York 1 speculates that NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson, fresh off a much narrower-than-expected loss to Mayor Mike Bloomberg, could challenge New York State Comptroller Bill DiNapoli in the Democratic primary next year. DiNapoli, you may recall, was appointed to the seat after Alan Hevesi resigned. Thompson said he’s not currently looking at the race, but says that nothing is off the table. (D)
• WA-Init: Referendum 71 was finally called by the press (for the side of equality). Although more votes remain to be counted in the currently 52-48 race, it would require a bizarre turnaround in King County (where it’s currently at 70% approval) to change the result. Meanwhile, Seattle‘s mayoral race is still up in the air; Mike McGinn leads by a 515-vote margin (out of 130,000 counted so far).
• Census: As expected, the Vitter amendment requiring the Census to include a question on citizenship was blocked by Democrats. Conservatives don’t want undocumented immigrants to count for apportionment, and there’s an added incentive for David Vitter, as Louisiana might be able to salvage its 7th seat if such legislation were passed.
• Primaries: MoveOn and DFA are allocating millions of dollars to potential primary challenges against any Democrats who join a Republican filibuster on health care. (The only one who’s on the fence about that and actually up in 2010 is Blanche Lincoln, and nobody of consequence has stepped up to primary her from the left yet, although Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has alluded to the idea.)
• Polling: Mark Blumenthal has a good wrapup of how the various pollsters did on Tuesday. As others have pointed out, IVR polls outperformed live pollsters, at least in the two gubernatorial races (even though they still got weird results in the crosstabs, especially on race). Blumenthal also analyzes what went wrong in NY-23 polling. Also on the polling front, it looks like Nate Silver may have succeeded in scaring off Strategic Vision LLC. As he reports today, not only did they never get around to suing him, but they haven’t released any polls since the imbroglio began, despite that this week’s election would be the prime time to do so.
• WATN?: Finally, we have sad news to report: the Mumpower has finally been contained. Republican Carl Mumpower, the out-of-the-box thinker who lost spectacularly to Rep. Heath Shuler in 2008, got bounced out of his position as Asheville City Councilor on Tuesday.
NRCC Puts 70 Dems on Notice
The NRCC made a splash earlier today by releasing a target list of 70 Dem-held House districts that they hope to put into play next year. Let’s take a closer look at all 70 — including their PVIs, the closeness of each race in 2008, and whether or not the GOP has recruited a “legitimate” challenger this time (this is a bit of a subjective assessment, but we’ll get to that later):
District | Incumbent | PVI | 2008 Margin | Legit Challenger? | District | Incumbent | PVI | 2008 Margin | Legit Challenger? | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AL-02 | Bright | R+16 | 1% | Y | NM-01 | Heinrich | D+5 | 12% | Y | |
AL-05 | Griffith | R+12 | 4% | Y | NM-02 | Teague | R+6 | 12% | Y | |
AR-01 | Berry | R+8 | 100% | N | NV-03 | Titus | D+2 | 5% | N | |
AR-02 | Snyder | R+5 | 53% | N | NY-01 | Bishop | R+0 | 16% | N | |
AR-04 | Ross | R+7 | 72% | N | NY-13 | McMahon | R+4 | 28% | N | |
AZ-01 | Kirkpatrick | R+6 | 17% | N | NY-19 | Hall | R+3 | 18% | Y | |
AZ-05 | Mitchell | R+5 | 9% | Y | NY-20 | Murphy | R+2 | 24% | N | |
CA-11 | McNerney | R+1 | 10% | Y | NY-24 | Arcuri | R+2 | 4% | N | |
CA-47 | Sanchez | D+4 | 44% | Y | NY-25 | Maffei | D+3 | 13% | N | |
CO-04 | Markey | R+6 | 12% | Y | NY-29 | Massa | R+5 | 2% | Y | |
CT-04 | Himes | D+5 | 4% | N | OH-01 | Driehaus | D+1 | 5% | Y | |
FL-08 | Grayson | R+2 | 4% | N | OH-15 | Kilroy | D+1 | 1% | Y | |
FL-22 | Klein | D+1 | 10% | Y | OH-16 | Boccieri | R+4 | 10% | N | |
FL-24 | Kosmas | R+4 | 16% | Y | OH-18 | Space | R+7 | 20% | N | |
GA-12 | Barrow | D+1 | 32% | Y | OK-02 | Boren | R+14 | 41% | N | |
HI-01 | (Open) | D+11 | 58% | Y | OR-01 | Wu | D+8 | 54% | N | |
IA-03 | Boswell | D+1 | 14% | N | OR-04 | DeFazio | D+2 | 69% | Y | |
ID-01 | Minnick | R+18 | 1% | Y | OR-05 | Schrader | D+1 | 16% | N | |
IL-11 | Halvorson | R+1 | 24% | Y | PA-03 | Dahlkemper | R+3 | 2% | N | |
IL-14 | Foster | R+1 | 15% | Y | PA-04 | Altmire | R+6 | 12% | N | |
IN-08 | Ellsworth | R+8 | 30% | N | PA-07 | (Open) | D+3 | 20% | N | |
IN-09 | Hill | R+6 | 20% | N | PA-10 | Carney | R+8 | 12% | N | |
KS-03 | Moore | R+3 | 16% | N | PA-11 | Kanjorski | D+4 | 3% | N | |
KY-06 | Chandler | R+9 | 30% | N | PA-12 | Murtha | R+1 | 16% | N | |
LA-03 | Melancon | R+12 | 100% | Y | SD-AL | Herseth | R+9 | 35% | N | |
MD-01 | Kratovil | R+13 | 1% | Y | TX-17 | Edwards | R+20 | 7% | N | |
MI-07 | Schauer | R+2 | 2% | Y | UT-02 | Matheson | R+15 | 28% | N | |
MI-09 | Peters | D+2 | 9% | Y | VA-02 | Nye | R+5 | 5% | N | |
MO-04 | Skelton | R+14 | 32% | N | VA-05 | Perriello | R+5 | <1% | N | |
MS-01 | Childers | R+14 | 10% | Y | VA-09 | Boucher | R+11 | 100% | N | |
NC-08 | Kissell | R+2 | 10% | N | VA-11 | Connolly | D+2 | 12% | Y | |
ND-AL | Pomeroy | R+10 | 24% | N | WI-03 | Kind | D+4 | 29% | Y | |
NH-01 | Shea-Porter | R+0 | 6% | Y | WI-07 | Obey | D+3 | 22% | N | |
NH-02 | (Open) | D+3 | 15% | N | WI-08 | Kagen | R+2 | 8% | N | |
NJ-03 | Adler | R+1 | 4% | N | WV-01 | Mollohan | R+9 | 100% | N |
That’s a big fat, honkin’ list of incumbents, including several that haven’t seen a competitive race in years — or ever (Boren, Skelton, the Arkansas delegation, Matheson, Pomeroy, Kind, and Boucher, to name just a few). Many of these races probably won’t produce competitive contests, but there’s absolutely no downside for the NRCC to be putting these incumbents on notice — not only will the targets being painted on these members’ backs have the potential to affect legislative votes, it helps to promote the idea that the NRCC is preparing for a big wave in their favor in 2010. (One thing’s for sure, if we have to worry about David Effin’ Wu next year, we’ll be preparing for life in the minority again.)
Now, what makes a challenger “legitimate”, you ask? That’s a good question. I define legitimacy as something that must be earned — whether it’s through an electoral track record or a demonstrated ability to fundraise (or self-fund), or some combination of both. In other words, just because the NRCC has met with some random businessman and asked him to challenge his local congressman, it doesn’t mean that the challenger has established himself as legitimate until he’s coughed up a quarterly filing with the FEC. Let me put it this way: for every Richard Hanna (the guy who nearly beat Mike Arcuri last year), there are a dozen or more Luke Pucketts or Carl Mumpowers. It’s just a lot harder at this point in the game to separate the wheat from the chaff, so our methodology is not to list a challenger without a record of electoral success as “legitimate” until they have demonstrated their ability to raise the dough. (And no, raising phat loads of cash through BMW Direct, like Bill Russell does in PA-12 does not count as a legitimate means of fundraising in our book.) The NRCC would no doubt disagree pretty strongly with my chart in some places, but I already feel that I’m being overly generous by granting OR-04 candidate Sid Leiken, who has had some pretty severe fundraising difficulties, “legit” status.
So, many of these districts marked with an “N” have challengers that have yet to prove the merit and mettle of their respective candidacies. There’s no doubt that many of these Ns will turn into Ys by the time the year’s over, but the GOP still has a lot of work to do. The GOP also has a stock of credible candidates considering bids in many of these “unchallenged” districts (FL-08, LA-03, and VA-05, in particular), so some of these holes will be easier to fill than others.
Also interesting is who is not listed on such an expansive list as this — guys whom the NRCC spent a lot of time targeting last cycle like Joe Donnelly (IN-02), Jim Marshall (GA-08) and Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) stand out as conspicuous absences, especially considering the number of extreme longshots thrown into the mix.