Tag: MI-09

Lt. Governor John Cherry had been considered to be a shoo-in for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination until a week ago, when he abruptly ended his bid, citing poor fundraising (and also no doubt motivated by poor general election polling). However, unlike the other dropouts in CO-Gov and CT-Sen, where we had top-tier replacements eagerly waiting in the wings, in Michigan we seem to have a whole bunch of lesser Democrats milling around, bumping into each other and sizing each other up. Let’s take a look at the field:

Who’s in:

• Andy Dillon is almost certainly in; he’s formed an exploratory committee in the wake of Cherry’s exit. The termed-out state House speaker may be as close to a front-runner as we have now, although he’d never escaped single-digits when polled in the Democratic primary earlier. It’s unlikely that the centrist Dillon, however, will get much of a warm reception from the state’s liberal base (he’s pro-life) or from organized labor (he’s been the bane of their existence lately), so he’d still likely face serious primary opposition.

• Hansen Clarke is definitely in. He’s a termed-out state Senator from Detroit who previously lost a Detroit mayoral race. He seems to fall more toward the “some dude” end of the spectrum.

• Alma Wheeler Smith, an African-American state Representative from Ypsilanti, is probably the best-positioned challenger who was in the race since before Cherry’s exit. Which isn’t to say that she’s in a good position at all, as she’s made no headway at fundraising, although apparently that’s changing a little with Cherry out and liberals getting alarmed about a Dillon candidacy. Other candidates predating Cherry’s exit who are still in, but not likely to get anywhere, include MSU trustee (and former MSU football coach) George Perles, who has lots of name rec but is in his mid-70s, and Flint mayor Don Williamson.

Who’s a maybe:

• Bart Stupak, the Rep. from the Upper Peninsula, is probably the best-known “maybe,” and today he’s sounding likelier, saying he’s “strongly considering” the race. Stupak is probably best-known these days for his anti-abortion amendment stinking up the House HCR bill, which again could hurt his standing among liberals in the gube primary (although he’s not on the outs with labor as much as Dillon). There’s a sense, though, this may just be a power play to get more ego-stroking within the House (as he also comments that “A divisive primary would not be good…” for him?). He’s been rather loudly underscoring that DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen has been urging him not to run, and saying “It’s a gone district, if I’m not in there.” (Well, maybe not, as it’s R+3 and dominated by the UP, which has a historically pro-labor bent.)

• Virg Bernero, the populist-sounding mayor of Lansing and a former state Senator, was expected to jump into the race soon after Cherry’s demise, but hasn’t made any sort of official statement yet. Interestingly, Bernero had been floating his name and had opened an exploratory committee several weeks before Cherry’s exit, so it’s a puzzle whether Cherry getting out made him less, rather than more, likely to run… or if he’s just making final arrangements before announcing.

• Denise Ilitch has a famous family name (the Ilitch family owns the Tigers and the Red Wings), and is a University of Michigan regent. She was reportedly meeting with the White House yesterday about a potential bid, indicating she’s pretty serious.

• Dan Kildee, the former Genesee County treasurer, has said he’s interested. He has some name rec from being the nephew of long-time MI-05 Rep. Dale Kildee, but may be biting off more than he can chew here.

• John Bowman, the state’s former Treasurer (and current CEO of mlb.com, baseball’s interactive arm), is suddenly saying today that he’s interested, too. I have no idea if anyone remembers who he is.

Who’s out:

• Debbie Stabenow, the state’s junior Senator, won’t run. Although if she did, she’d been in a good position to hold the seat (if polling from early last year is to be believed).

• David Bonior, the former House Whip, won’t run. The very pro-labor Bonior (who lost the 2002 Dem gubernatorial primary to Jennifer Granholm) could have appealed to both social conservatives and economic liberals.

• Dennis Archer, who managed to retain a lot of popularity despite having had the unenviable job of Detroit mayor, has confirmed that he won’t run.

• Robert Ficano, the Wayne County Executive and former sheriff, has said he won’t run.

• Gary Peters, current MI-09 Rep. and former Lottery Commissioner, will run for another term in the House.

• John Freeman, a former state Rep. (and current Michigan director for HCAN) who has close relations with organized labor, was running even when Cherry was in the race. He just dropped out, though, despite the potential opening for a firebrand to slip through a Dillon/Stupak battle. He, too, cited weak fundraising.

RaceTracker Wiki: MI-Gov

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):

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.

• AL-02: Noted sartorialist Bobby Bright was photographed (proudly?) holding up a t-shirt with the logo “Fire Congress” on the front. Also be sure to check out the shirt Bright himself is actually wearing.

• IL-Gov: GOP state Sen. Kirk Dillard formally announced his entrance into the race today.

• MI-09: Former GOP state Rep. Andrew Raczkowski has filed paperwork to run against Dem Rep. Gary Peters in this D+2 district. “Rocky,” as he is known, got hammered by Carl Levin in the 2002 Senate race, 61-38.

• MN-06: Dem state Sen. Tarryl Clark, generally considered a possible MN-Gov candidate, may turn her attention instead to Michele Bachmann. Of course, she’d face a contested primary against El Tinklenberg (who was last seen giving $250,000 from his unexpected 2008 surplus to the DCCC).

• NC-Sen: Civitas has Sen. Richard Burr’s favorables at 31-19, which is the weakest they’ve been all year. I don’t quite understand why 50% are either undecided or haven’t heard enough, though. Meanwhile, Burr’s pollster Paul Shumaker, who did a garbagey poll for Burr and then pretended it was an independent survey, will now pay for the poll out of his own pocket and call it an in-kind contribution to the campaign. Nice try, bucko.

• NJ-Gov: Rasmussen has Chris Christie up 46-39. Believe it or not, that’s good news – last month, it was 51-38. Don’t get too excited, though. With leaners, it’s 53-41. Obama can’t show up here soon enough.

• NV-Sen: Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn advised John Ensign to pay off his mistress’s million-dollar mortgage and move her & her husband out-of-state. Seriously.

• NYC-Mayor: Another poll – this time from Marist – shows Bloombo under 50, and his re-elects are an uninspiring 44-51, despite the fact that he’s blanketed the airwaves with zillions of ads for months. The problem is that Comptroller Bill Thompson (who clocks in at 35) doesn’t seem to be running much of a campaign.

• New York: Ken Rudin makes an interesting point – if you count “new LG” Richard Ravitch, four of NY’s six statewide elected officials… weren’t elected to the positions they now hold. Comptroller Tom DiNapoli was appointed when Alan Hevesi resigned; Gov. David Paterson was elevated when Eliot Spitzer resigned; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed when Hillary Clinton resigned; and now Paterson is attempting to appoint Ravitch. Only Sen. Chuck Schumer and AG Andy Cuomo faced voters for their current jobs.

• OH-Sen: A good get for Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher – he just received the endorsement of the 134,000-strong Ohio branch of the United Auto Workers union.

• UT-Sen: Just when you thought the Utah GOP Senate primary couldn’t get any zanier and more chock-full of wingnuts, along comes news that new Rep. Jason Chaffetz — rising star of the movement conservatives, who just vaulted into power by out-conservativing Chris Cannon in a 2008 primary — is now thinking about a challenge to the establishment’s Bob Bennett. It’d be a pretty brash move by Chaffetz, especially since AG Mark Shurtleff is already mounting a strong primary challenge from the far right. (C)

• VA-02: Scott Rigell, who owns car dealerships “throughout the Virginia beach area,” has filed paperwork to run against Dem Rep. Glenn Nye in this R+5 district. Rigell, like the vast majority of auto dealers, is of course a Republican, but he did donate $1,000 to Obama last year.

• WA-Sen: Not that you were probably sitting up at night worrying about Patty Murray’s re-election prospects, but a poll by local pollster Elway finds her looking pretty good with 53-34 job approval. 44% say they would re-elect her and 33% say they wouldn’t, with the rest taking a wait-and-see attitude to see what sort of opposition the Washington GOP can scrape up. (C)

• Census: Looks like we may finally get a floor vote on Census Director Robert Graves’ confirmation, who is currently subject to holds by both David Vitter and Richard Shelby (over use of sampling techniques and ACORN’s involvement in the census); Harry Reid is planning a cloture vote now that we’re eight months away from the April 1 count. (C)

From The Hill:

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has cancelled its last planned week of ad buys in Michigan’s 9th congressional district, according to the Associated Press.

The NRCC had previously cancelled almost $320,000 in spending on behalf of Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.) between October 14-27, while still preserving a planned $314,000 in spending for the last week before the election.

The NRCC has now cancelled that last buy, spokeswoman Karen Hanretty confirmed to the AP, amidst redirections of independent expenditures in districts nationwide.

If you were looking for further evidence of just how disastrous Tom Cole’s reign at the NRCC has been, look no further. If the NRCC had done a better job of keeping pace with the DCCC’s fundraising, they would never have been forced to make the tough choice of cutting loose a veteran incumbent like Knollenberg.

Grove Insight for DCCC (10/21, likely voters, 10/4-5):

Gary Peters (D): 46 (46)

Joe Knollenberg (R-inc): 36 (37)

Jack Kevorkian (I): 2 (n/a)

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for DCCC (10/19-20, likely voters, 9/30-10/1):

Mary Jo Kilroy (D): 44 (44)

Steve Stivers (R): 36 (36)

Don Eckhart (I): 11 (7)

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Two new polls from the DCCC show Democratic candidates in midwestern swing district races maintaining their sizable leads from last time. In the open seat in the Columbus-based 15th, the head-to-head numbers stay exactly the same; the only movement, unfortunately for Stivers, seems to be to pro-life independent Don Eckhart. (At the presidential level, Obama leads McCain 51-39 in OH-15.)

MI-09 continues to be a big surprise, as Gary Peters puts up a bigger margin against incumbent Joe Knollenberg than in the open seat in OH-15. This one just seems like a perfect storm: the Detroit area was already suffering economically more than any other part of the country, it’s suffering even more with the financial crisis and subsequent free fall in the auto industry, and we have an old incumbent who hasn’t faced a top-tier challenge before.

From The Hill:

The National Republican Congressional Committe (NRCC) has canceled nearly $320,000 in planned ad buys in favor of Rep. Joe Knollenberg’s (R) reelection efforts in Michigan’s 9th congressional district.

According to numbers obtained by The Hill, the NRCC has canceled its buys in the next two weeks, while preserving an expenditure in the last week of the campaign.

The NRCC canceled one buy from October 14-20 for $150,000, and another October 21-27 for almost $170,000. The preserved expenditure, to run from October 28-November 4, amounts to almost $314,000-just slightly less than the sum the NRCC had planned to spend in the race in the preceding weeks.

By my count, that makes eight ten confirmed districts (including OH-16 and NM-01) where the NRCC has scaled back their ad time (although, in FL-16’s case, it doesn’t look like they’ll need to spend much money to topple Mahoney there).

They must be bracing themselves for something big over at the NRCC’s headquarters.

If Stuart Rothenberg is right, House Democrats are in for another big year like 2006. He now estimates a Democratic gain of 25-30 seats. Here are his newest ratings:

Here are our latest House ratings. Our latest estimate is a Democratic gain of 25-30 seats.

Any seats not listed are currently considered to be at limited risk for the incumbent party. For our race-by-race analysis, you must subscribe to the print edition of the Report.

# = Moved benefiting Democrats

* = Moved benefiting Republicans

^ = Newly added

PURE TOSS-UP (7 R, 5 D)

AL 5 (Open; Cramer, D)

CT 4 (Shays, R) #

FL 16 (Mahoney, D) *

FL 21 (L. Diaz-Balart, R)

LA 6 (Cazayoux, D) #

MI 7 (Walberg, R) #

NH 1 (Shea-Porter, D)

NM 2 (Open; Pearce, R) #

NJ 7 (Open; Ferguson, R)

OH 1 (Chabot, R) #

OH 15 (Open; Pryce, R)

PA 11 (Kanjorski, D) *

TOSS-UP/TILT REPUBLICAN (10 R, 0 D)

AL 2 (Open; Everett, R) #

FL 25 (M. Diaz-Balart, R) #

IL 10 (Kirk, R) #

KY 2 (Open; Lewis, R) #

LA 4 (Open; McCrery, R)

MD 1 (Open; Gilchrest, R) #

MO 9 (Open; Hulshof, R) #

NY 26 (Open; Reynolds, R)

VA 2 (Drake, R) #

WA 8 (Reichert, R)

TOSS-UP/TILT DEMOCRATIC (10 R, 4 D)

CA 11 (McNerney, D)

CO 4 (Musgrave, R)

FL 8 (Keller, R) #

GA 8 (Marshall, D)

IL 11 (Open; Weller, R)

KS 2 (Boyda, D)

MI 9 (Knollenberg, R) #

MN 3 (Open; Ramstad, R) #

NJ 3 (Open; Saxton, R)

NM1 (Open; Wilson, R) #

NY 29 (Kuhl, R) #

NC 8 (Hayes, R) #

PA 3 (English, R) #

PA 10 (Carney, D) #

LEAN REPUBLICAN (4 R, 1 D)

CA 4 (Open; Doolittle, R) #

ID 1 (Sali, R) #

MO 6 (Graves, R)

OH 2 (Schmidt, R)

TX 22 (Lampson, D)

LEAN DEMOCRATIC (5 R, 2 D)

AZ 1 (Open; Renzi, R) #

FL 24 (Feeney, R) #

NV 3 (Porter, R) #

OH 16 (Open; Regula, R) #

PA 4 (Altmire, D)

VA 11 (Open; Davis, R)

WI 8 (Kagen, D) #

REPUBLICAN FAVORED (9 R, 0 D)

AZ 3 (Shadegg, R) ^

CA 46 (Rohrabacher, R) ^

FL 13 (Buchanan, R)

IL 6 (Roskam, R)

MN 6 (Bachmann, R)

NE 2 (Terry, R) ^

PA 6 (Gerlach, R)

WV 2 (Capito, R)

WY A-L (Open; Cubin, R) ^

DEMOCRAT FAVORED (3 R, 6 D)

AK A-L (Young, R)

AZ 5 (Mitchell, D) #

AZ 8 (Giffords, D) #

IN 9 (Hill, D)

KY 3 (Yarmuth, D) #

MS 1 (Childers, D)

NY 13 (Open; Fossella, R)

NY 25 (Open; Walsh, R)

OR 5 (Open; Hooley, D) #

Dropped :

IL 14 (Foster, D) #,

KS 3 (Moore, D) #,

NY 20 (Gillibrand, D) #

To me, the biggest news is the shifting of MI-09 to “Tilt Democratic” and the  OH-01 to “Pure Toss-up”. I would love to see the internals for that Ohio race. I am surprised that he was so reserved whe he shifted FL-16. I think Mahoney is a goner. Oh well.

Grove Insight for the DCCC (10/4-5, likely voters, 8/17-19 in parens):

Gary Peters (D): 46 (41)

Joe Knollenberg (R-inc): 37 (37)

Jack Kevorkian (I): 2 (8)

Undecided: 15 (14)

(MoE: ±4.9%)

While these numbers may be a bit on the optimistic side (Peters is ahead by three in his own internal polling, and another recent poll has the race tied), the trend lines are the most important take-away.

Faced with ugly poll numbers and an economic crisis in his district, it’s perhaps no surprise that the only thing that Knollenberg can say is: “Sarah, HALP!“

Mitchell Research & Communications (9/30-10/2, likely voters):

Gary Peters (D): 43

Joe Knollenberg (R-inc): 43

(MoE: ±6%)

The sample size is a bit small, but add it to the growing pile of polls showing crumb-bum Joe Knollenberg in a tight spot.

SSP currently rates this race as a Tossup.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Gary Peters (10/6-7, likely voters):

Gary Peters (D): 43

Joe Knollenberg (R-inc): 40

Jack Kevorkian (I): 5

Other: 5

Undecided: 8

(MoE: ±4.9%)

There’s a lot of good news for Gary Peters in this poll. Not only is he leading Knollenberg, the incumbent is sitting at only 40% — a perilous level. What’s more, Peters still has some room to grow — his name recognition is still only 48% in the district (compared to Knollenberg’s 80%, which is actually an unremarkable number for a long-time incumbent). it’s no wonder that Knollenberg has been begging pathetically for Sarah Palin to join him on the campaign trail after McCain pulled his operation from the state.

The full polling memo is available below the fold.

SSP currently rates this race as a Tossup.