Swing State Project

MSNBC’s First Read Reported this morning that Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak is considering not running for re-election in 2010.

With just a few days to go before the end of this recess, House Democrats are cautiously optimistic that they could get through it without a single retirement announcement. That said, there is still a concern that some important incumbents in districts that they are uniquely suited could call it quits. At the top of the concern list this week: Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak. The Democrat best known this year as the Democrat who delivered the winning margin of votes for the president’s health-care reform bill is said to be simply exhausted. The criticism he received — first from the left, and then from the right — has worn him and his family out. And if he had to make the decision now, he’d probably NOT run. As of this writing, a bunch of senior Democrats (many of the same ones who twisted his arm on the health care vote) are trying to talk him into running. The filing deadline in Michigan is still a month away, but veterans of that state’s politics are skeptical anyone other than Stupak can hold that district in this political climate.

First, let me start by saying I called Stupak’s office today, but got no answer; I plan to keep calling until I can speak to a real person.  I intend to tell Stupak (well, his staffers) that as a constituent, I would hope that he would not give into the national pressures that are being put on him, and to stand strong and run for re-election.  I plan to let him know that I am a liberal, who supports Single Payer, and that I am not angry with him over the recent healthcare scuffle.  I would vote for Bart Stupak (if I could) one hundred more times, and on a personal, not political level, I would hate to see him retire.

If these rumors are true (let’s hope they aren’t), is First Read correct in saying that Stupak is the only Democrat who can hold the 1st District? No. As astute as Mark Murray is, he does not know the Upper Peninsula of Michigan like I do. It’s true that Bart Stupak is/was extremely popular, but it’s not an Ike Skelton-like situation, where the politician’s personal popularity is the only thing that keeps him or her from being defeated.  In fact, the first district has been consistently more Democratic than the state as a whole in almost every election other than in Presidential elections.  The district easily supported Senators Levin and Stabenow, Governor Granholm, and various other Statewide elected officials.  It also voted for Obama in 2008, albeit by a less-than overwhelming margin.  By my count, there are roughly 6 Democrats who represent a significant portion of the 1st District in the State House of Representatives, compared to only 2 Republicans (only one actually lives in the district).  It appears also that the one and only State Senator who lives in the 1st District is a Democrat (although it does overlap two Republican districts). So, in short, as I’ve said before, the 1st District is not lost without Stupak running, but it will be a tough fight.  

I’ll now go into some potential candidates on both sides

Mike Prusi (D-Ishpeming) – Mike Prusi is my State Senator.  I believe that he could easily win the 1st District seat if he ran.  He is perhaps the most popular politician in the Upper Peninsula, having been re-elected with over 70% of the vote in 2006.  Whether or not he would run is another story. Certainly there would be pressure from national leaders, but a relative of his who I’m friendly with has told me that he wishes to retire from politics in 2010 as he is termed out of the legislature (this was pre-Stupak retirement rumors; retiring would make sense for Prusi otherwise, he really can’t move up any farther).  Politically, despite his popularity with Conservative Democrats and many Republicans, Prusi would be a step up from Stupak. He voted against banning partial birth abortion in all cases (can you imagine Stupak doing that?) and in favor of criminalizing discrimination based on sexual orientation.  And the Unions LOVE Prusi.  He is a former Iron miner and would get tremendous Union Support if he ran.  He is also from Marquette County, the districts largest County, and received 78% of the vote here in 2006.  A Marquette County candidate could really get the vote out here in what is also the district’s most Democratic County.  If Stupak does retire, I think in the end Prusi would win. At 60, however, the hard part would be convincing him to run.

Steve Lindberg (D-Marquette) – Steve Lindberg (AKA Stevie L) is my State Rep. as well as my favorite local politician.  He represents a fairly large district in the central Upper Peninsula that includes the extremely important Marquette County. Again, it would be beneficial to have a candidate from Marquette County, and Lindberg is very popular here. On the other hand, Lindberg will be 66 on election day, and therefore may not be inclined to start a congressional career so late in life. Lindberg would be a tremendous step up over Stupak politically. He hails from the very liberal City of Marquette and is pro-choice, pro-stem cell research, pro-Medical Marijuana, and very pro-environment.  Again, like Prusi, Lindberg would get tremendous Union support as well.  One the other hand, being so liberal may hurt him in the rest of the district, which is much more Conservative than Marquette County.  Lindberg is also not the best Public Speaker, which could hurt him.  I like Lindberg, but he would not be our best candidate for holding the 1st District.

Mike Lahti (D-Hancock) – Mike Lahti is another State Representative from the Upper Peninsula.  Unlike the previous two, Lahti is from the more conservative Western U.P. (Houghton County, to be specific).  Like his district, Lahti is very conservative.  As a result of his conservatism, however, Lahti is very popular in the 110th District.  This area is normally a swing area, having gone very narrowly for Obama but comfortably for Bush twice.  If Lahti ran, he would certainly run the table in his district, and probably perform well in Marquette County; His conservativism may also resonate well in the Lower Peninsula, which is politically similar to his district. As a liberal and a progressive, however, I really don’t want to see someone who is more conservative than Stupak replace him. I would support Lahti in the general election, but only reluctantly.  One indication that Lahti may not run, however, is that he has already filed to replace Mike Prusi in the 38th Senate District (Prusi is term limited, remember). Lahti is not opposed by any Democrat as of yet, and would likely move easily up to the Senate, whereas a Congressional Campaign would be more of an up-hill battle.  If he did run, however, I suspect Lahti could potentially hold Stupak’s seat for the Democrats (or in his case, ConservaDems).

Judy Nerat (D-Wallace) – Judy Nerat is Bart Stupak’s State Represenative.  She is also a close Stupak ally, and her 2008 win had a lot to do with Congressman Stupak’s strong support of her campaign.  The 108th District is very heavily Catholic, and like Stupak, Nerat’s political views have a lot to do with her Catholicism; She is quite Conservative, and again, like Stupak, she is Pro-Life.  Stupak may like to see her move up to Congress, but she’s only in her first term in the State House, and has little other political experience. She was also recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of cancer.  For these reasons I think a Nerat run for Congress is not very likely in the case of an open seat.  

There are many other Democrats who may decide to run here, should the above decline.  Former Senator Don Koivisto (D-Gogebic) who served from 1990-2002 and who is now the Director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Koivisto might be a candidate worth looking at, and he is only 60.  Other candidates include former State Rep. and current State House Clerk Rich Brown (D-Bessemer), State Rep. Gary McDowell (D-Rudyard), though McDowell is already running for the State Senate in the 37th District, Former Rep. Matthew Gillard (D-Alpena), Current Rep. Andy Neumann (D-Alpena), former Rep. Steven Adamini (D-Marquette), though Adamini has had some Drunk-driving arrests that wouldn’t play well, and Marquette County Commission Chair Gerald Corkin (D-Negaunee).

You may notice that I did not mention already announced candidate Connie Saltonstall.  This was intentional.  Saltonstall, from my perspective, is far to liberal for the 1st District.  Not only that, but she has little political experience.  She also hails from the Lower Peninsula, which makes it nearly impossible for her to win (a candiate must have a UP base to win here).  I’ll do what I can to ensure that Saltonstall is not the nominee, should Stupak retire.

and now for the Republicans:

Tom Casperson (R-Gladstone) – Casperson, who you may remember ran against Stupak in 2008 and epicly failed, is now running for Mike Prusi’s State Senate seat.  He is a distinct underdog against Mike Lahti, and likely knows this.  If Stupak does retire, Casperson may decide to try for Congress again instead.  In an open seat he could make a race of it, especially against a lackluster Democrat.

Other potential Republican candidates include State Rep. Kevin Elsenheimer, and….well that’s about it for elected officials.  There are a few Republicans who’ve already filed, but they fall into the category of “Some Guy.”

So yes, if Stupak does retire, it will be a close race. Probably a tossup. But the seat is not “gone” without Stupak; far from it.  There is a deep bench of Democrats who have the potential to retain this seat, as well as a very very shallow bench of Republicans.  In any other year, I’d say this race was Leans Democrat, but unfortunately 2010 is shaping up to be a bad year for Dems, so I’m calling it a tossup.

AZ-Sen: From the Good News for John McCain Dept.: Fresh off the news that he won’t face a primary challenge from fellow Dem Nan Stockholm Walden, Tucson City Councilman Rodney Glassman resigned his seat in order to officially launch his run against Johnny Mac… or J.D. Hayworth, if we’re lucky.

DE-Sen: Mike Castle has hit the un-sweet spot: His repeal-curious approach to healthcare reform has “irritated” some teabaggers (their word), but of course it also risks turning off some of the moderate voters he’ll need to win over in order to prevail. Of course, if Chris Coons has any chops, he should be able to work up the Dem base over Castle’s “no” vote on the bill itself.

WA-Sen: The DSCC launched some attack site against Dino Rossi last week – does anyone ever visit those? – and now Rossi is complaining about the site’s contents. The Hotline says it makes him “sound like a candidate.” To me, he sounds more like a whiner. Like I say, I doubt anyone actually reads those sites.

CA-Gov: Peter Schurman, a founder of MoveOn.org, says he plans to challenge Jerry Brown in the Democratic primary.

CT-04: Easton First Selectman and Republican congressional hopeful Tom Herrmann says he raised $383K in his first 23 days in the race, and also has $365K on hand. But here’s what I’m not getting: In his intro press release, he said he started the race with $300K in the bank. The only way that’s possible, it would seem, is with a self-donation or loan. So there may be less here than meets the eye, in terms of fundraising prowess.

FL-13: Air Force veteran and Dem Rick Eaton says he’ll challenge GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan. He joins James Golden in the primary field.

FL-22: Some creepy comments from GOPer Allen West about his opponent Rep. Ron Klein, telling a gang of teabaggers:

Make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention. You’ve got to put pressure on them and make them understand that you’ve got to come back and live the laws that you establish. Don’t let them be a ruling class elite. You’ve got to let them know that the clock’s ticking.

GA-07: Winger talk radio host Jody Hice plans to join the GOP field to replace retiring Rep. John Linder.

HI-01: So the DCCC is in fact getting into the race… at least, with an ad hitting Republican Charles Djou. P’co says the buy is about $34,000 –  just a toe-dip.

IL-10: Whoa mama joe: Dan Seals says he raised $663K in Q1 and has $460K on hand. (The low-ish CoH figures are undoubtedly due to the February primary election.) GOPer Bob Dold! did well, too, taking in $505K ($378K on hand), but Seals sure wins bragging rights for this quarter.

NY-15: Charlie Rangel is getting another primary challenger: Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the guy Charlie Rangel ousted in a primary in 1970. The younger Powell challenged Rangel once before, in 1994, losing 58-33.

VA-11: Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity is touting an internal poll from the Tarrance Group of 400 likely Republican voters showing him with a 42-21 primary lead over businessman Keith Fimian. There don’t appear to be any general election numbers showing matchups against Rep. Gerry Connolly.

RNC: So the RNC had a gangbusters fundraising month in March, raking in $11.4 mil. Bully for them. But what’s odd is that they’re released this information yesterday – a full two weeks before monthly FEC reports are due. This is not the normal practice of the RNC (or any party committee), which typically only puts out nums much closer to the 20th of each month. Undoubtedly, the embattled Michael Steele had his green eyeshade guys working around the clock in the hopes that a good financial press release would take some heat off of him. Not working.

The last item on 4/6 Afternoon Daily Digest about the relative popularity of “socialism” and Teabaggers got me thinking. If the GOP (or at least right-wing activists and opinion makers) is willing and eager to embrace the tea-party movement, why is it that Democrats continue to treat “socialism” as toxic? Certainly, its a losing proposition nationally (no Democratic candidate for president should EVER call themselves ‘socialist’). In some parts of the country though, my hunch is that progressives/liberals/Democrats/the left ought to revisit their assumption that ‘socialism’ is to American politics as oil is to water.

The question I’m exploring here is:

Where might ‘socialism’ have either 50+ favorablity, or at least net postitive favorability?

The Gallop poll referenced here (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125645/socialism-viewed-positively-americans.aspx) was taken in January 2010. It found socialism at 36-58 overall, but at 53-41 among Democrats, and and 61-34 among liberals. Using Gallop’s own data on party affiliation and ideology by state (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125066/State-States.aspx), we can extrapolate views of socialism state by state:

DC (adjusted by ideology): 41/48

DC (adjusted by party affiliation): 47/47

MA (by ideology): 38/53

MA (by party): 40/54

VT-ideology: 39/53

VT-party: 39/54

NY-ideology: 37/53

NY-party: 39/55

OR-ideology: 37/54

OR-party: 37/56

CT-ideology: 37/54

CT-party: 38/55

RI-ideology: 37/54

RI-party: 40/53

HI-ideology: 38/52

HI-party: 39/54

MD-ideology: 37/54

MD-party: 39/54

I’ll stop here. The states (and district) that I tested here are a few of the most left-leaning out there, yet only in DC under one method did I find socialism not to be a net negative, and only in DC did I not find it to be over 50% unfavorable. So unfortunately, the numbers don’t support my hypothesis. A few concluding thoughts on this:

– My calculations assume that opinions of socialism are uniform nationwide among parties and ideological groups. This may not necessarily be true, but without state-by-state data on this question, I think this was the best I could do.

– My guess is that views of socialism correlate more strongly to ideology than to party affiliation. In practice though, the numbers are similar regardless of which method you use.

– The party and ideology data are from 2009. I think this may be a good thing though, since 2009 was in between a good year for Democrats and a bad one, so 2009 may be the year with data that best reflects the “starting point.”

– A major problem that socialism has is that, in political terms, it has been defined by its opponents. No one (except perhaps for Bernie Sanders) in mainstream American political discourse ever sticks up for socialism. On the other hand, Republicans bash it constantly. Additionally, many Americans probably associate it with communism and the Eastern Bloc. Perhaps if the left made an investment in trying to “sell” socialism to the public, these numbers would improve.

– A fundamental assumption that I have made, that a socialist would only be electable if socialism has a net positive favorability rating, is probably wrong on its face. Vermont, for example, elected a Socialist Senator despite socialism having a net rating of minus 14 or 15 there. Many self described Liberals hold statewide office in America, despite liberals being only 20-30% of the electorate in any given state, and nationally.

– Related to the point above, Socialism actually seems to be viewed favorably by a larger percentage of the electorate than the percentage identifying themselves as Liberal. This holds true both nationally and in every state I tested.

– In the long run, running away from labels isn’t a viable strategy. The American Left has been running away from the word “Liberal” ever since the 80s. People have thought its cute to call themselves “Progressives” instead, and Glenn Beck’s recent paranoid tirades against Progressivism are a consequence of that. What’s the next word we’re all going to flee to now that conservatives are saying bad things about “Progressivism”?

– I really don’t like the term “Liberal”. Not because it doesn’t poll well, but because its actually really inaccurate. At least on economic policy, Conservatives are far more “liberal” than “Liberals” are. “Progressive” is probably better, because it implies a belief in using government as an instrument of social progress, but again, I don’t like the way that term is used by people who are afraid being called “Liberal”.

– I consider myself a Socialist, or more specifically, a Social Democrat. This doesn’t mean I believe in Marx, revolution, the abolishment of capitalism, or anything else crazy like that. It means I believe in government as a means to establish a better, fairer society. I believe Big Government is not inherently good or bad, its what you make of it. I believe the free market is generally good, but never perfect, and that the job of Government is to fill the gaps of capitalism that too many people would otherwise fall through. My views are most in line with the Canadian NDP, or the UK Labour Party (pre-Blair and “New Labour”). I support single-payer health insurance, strong bank regulation, and cap-and-trade, but I believe in compromise. I’m a proud Democrat, I don’t do anything stupid like voting Green, I support Obama, and think “liberal No” votes are counterproductive. Were I in Congress, I would have proudly voted yes on the health care bill. I don’t think I have radical views (by international standards I’m center-left), yet the word that describes them best is politically taboo in America.

– As a “bonus”, I ran the numbers two more times, first on New York according to the 2008 exit polls, which I thought have somewhat better results (41-53 by ideology, 38-54 by party). Secondly, I tried my hometown of New York City, using numbers from this (http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=c4719d83-23d9-4e1d-95a6-975f4e2562e4) poll from last year’s mayoral election. Here I found 37/46 by ideology, and 43/50 by party. I think its worth noting that opposition to socialism is at or under 50% here.

Final Conclusion: Socialism probably doesn’t poll as well as I would have liked to see. Nonetheless, it seems to outperform Liberalism, and the stigma attached to it thus seems highly disproportionate. A candidate would almost certainly prefer to call himself a Liberal than a Socialist, yet this suggest that the “S” word is probably less of a liability than the “L” word. Certainly, a “Socialist” candidate should not have a hard time winning a Democratic Primary in areas where the Democratic nomination is tantamount to election.

Which dude? This Dude:

Multiple Democratic sources now confirm that party chairs decided Monday night that Matthew Zeller is their candidate should a special election to replace Rep. Eric Massa take place. […]

Zeller, 28, is a Rochester area native with family throughout the 29th Congressional District and roots in the Southern Tier.  Zeller is an ’04 alum of Hamilton College and also earned master’s degrees in public administration and international relations from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in ’06 according to a recent news release from Hamilton College.

Also according to that release Zeller worked as an embedded combat mentor to the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police while on deployment in 2008.  Zeller, a friend tells me, got the urge to enlist in the Army following the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.  While attending college he was a member of the ROTC program.

Assuming David Paterson calls a special election (which seems to be an unlikely turn of events at this point, but you never know), Zeller will be the guy. However, if there’s no special, Zeller will still have to compete for the Democratic nomination in the September primary. At this point, it’s unclear if he’ll get any competition, but Monroe County Democratic Party spokesman Sean Hart is telling the Politico that the local parties are discouraging anyone from challenging Zeller.

I’m not sure what in particular gave Zeller the edge, but I’m looking forward to hearing more about him.

(Hat-tip: tietack)

• AZ-Sen: Maybe she was scared off by that R2K poll that had her down more than 20-odd points? Nan Stockholm Walden, a wealthy attorney and businesswoman who had been the subject of DSCC interest as a candidate in Arizona, decided not to run. That gives Tucson city councilor Rodney Glassman a pretty clear path to the nomination (assuming he runs; he’s still in exploratory mode).

• CT-Sen: Did you know that Linda McMahon actually held (until now) a political position, in addition to, of course, all the important work she does at WWE? She was on Connecticut’s Board of Education (an appointed position, courtesy of Jodi Rell), but just resigned from that role. She says that there are too many restrictions on political activities by board members for her to be able to remain in that position, as she tries to get the GOP Senate nomination.

• SD-Sen: John Thune may have dodged having to run against a Democrat in November, but he won’t be running purely unopposed. He’s still facing off against an independent, perennial candidate Kurt Evans.

• WI-Sen, WI-Gov: I had no idea that St. Norbert was the patron saint of fucked-up polls. A poll from Wisconsin Public Radio/St. Norbert College is tilted even further in the Republican direction than recent offerings from Rasmussen and the decidedly conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. They find Russ Feingold losing to Tommy Thompson 45-33 (with 14% for an independent/third party, whoever that might be), and beating Generic R by only 40-37. Their gubernatorial numbers find Tom Barrett losing to Scott Walker 44-28 and to Mark Neumann 43-29. Even the GOP primary numbers seem screwy, with underdog Neumann almost even with Walker, who leads 24-23.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman rummaged around in her purse and found another $20 million to throw on the table, bringing her personal contributions to the race up to a whopping $59 million. Despite her big lead over Steve Poizner in the primary, she may need to prepare to shore things up, as Poizner has been telegraphing that he’s going to start going hard at her on the hot-button issue of immigration, in a last-ditch effort to get the state’s right-wingers to pay some attention to him.

• GA-12: There were some poorly sourced rumors yesterday that Rep. John Barrow — a conservadem in a swing district facing a primary challenge and the ire of a large swath of his African-American constituency after his HCR “no” vote — was going to switch parties. Barrow now says he was never even contemplating that, though.

• KS-03: After the Kansas City Star reported last week that Stephene Moore was going to run to replace her husband, Dennis, in the 3rd, she started acting coy about it (despite insider assurances that it was a done deal). As expected, though, today she made it official, filing a glaring hole in this R+3 open seat.

• LA-03: It looks like the NRCC is finally getting a top-tier participant in the open seat race in the 3rd (despite that winning it won’t be much of a prize, as the 3rd is poised to vaporize in 2012 redistricting). Former state House speaker Hunt Downer says he’ll announce his candidacy very soon. Probably the surest indication that Downer is serious is that state Rep. Nickie Monica, who may have been the strongest GOPer in the field to date, now says he’s getting out of the race to make way for Downer. With attorney Ravi Sangisetty the only Dem willing to stick his neck out for this one, this one’s pretty thoroughly in the GOP column.

• MN-06: State Sen. Tarryl Clark has been putting up some monster fundraising numbers against Michele Bachmann this cycle; I guess that’s what happens when you run against one of the nation’s top lightning rods for teh crazy. She pulled in $505K last quarter, bringing her to $1.1 million in total receipts this cycle. Unfortunately, Clark (or her primary opponent Maureen Reed, who’s also raised well but hasn’t released Q1 numbers yet) will likely have to contend with the presence of spoiler Independence Party candidate Bob Anderson. Anderson pulled in 10% of the vote in 2008 (while Elwyn Tinklenberg lost by only 3%), and he’s seeking the IP’s endorsement again.

• NH-01: RNC committee member Sean Mahoney made a big show out of resigning his post, ostensibly out of disgust with the Michael Steele administration and its free-spending, strip-clubbing ways. Speculation, though, is that Mahoney is planning to run in the GOP primary in the 1st (where Manchester mayor Frank Guinta is considered frontrunner, although so-so fundraising has diminished his luster a bit), which would require him to resign anyway. Mahoney isn’t promising anything on that front yet, though.

• NY-29: The Democrats have literally chosen Some Dude as their standard bearer in the 29th. The party chairs in the eight counties in the district issued a statement where they said they’ve chosen a consensus nominee to replace Eric Massa in the special election that may or may not happen. However, they neglected to actually say who that candidate might be. We’ll know the masked man’s identity next week.

• TN-03: A Huck divided against itself cannot stand? In a prime example of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, HuckPAC (Mike Huckabee’s national financial arm) and Team Huck Tennessee (the local grassroots operation) are endorsing different candidates in the GOP primary in the 3rd. Team Huck is endorsing former state GOP chair Robin Smith, while HuckPAC (and presumably, Huckabee himself) is going with attorney Chuck Fleischmann.

• TN-08: State Sen. Roy Herron had another fine fundraising quarter as he tries to keep this open seat in Democratic hands; he pulled in $490K last quarter, leaving him with more than $1 million cash on hand. It’s not an expensive district, media-wise, but he has some strong fundraising competition from humble gospel-singing farmer agribusiness mogul Stephen Fincher, who pulled in over $300K himself and is sitting on $820K CoH.

• PA-St. Sen.: As if the Pennsylvania legislature couldn’t be held in any lower esteem, here’s another fresh scandal. Luckily, this one seems to be falling on the Republican side of the aisle: state Sen. Jane Orie, the body’s third-ranking GOPer, was just accused by a grand jury of repeatedly using her staff for political campaigns on the state’s dime (include the campaign of her sister, state Supreme Court justice Joan Orie Melvin). Charges are expected, but Orie is shrugging it off, saying it’s a politically motivated smear by Democratic Allegheny Co. DA Stephen Zappala.

• Filings: The filing deadline in Missouri has passed, on March 30. Rep. Roy Blunt wound up with (count ’em) 10 Republican primary opponents in the Senate race, although state Sen. Chuck Purgason seems the only one worth paying attention to. The number of GOPers vying to take on Ike Skelton in MO-04 also reached the double digits. Probably the biggest surprise and disappointment was in MO-09: not that the DCCC would likely have strongly contested this district that they barely lost in 2008 when it was open, but not a single Democrat showed up to run in this race.

• Teabaggers: Here’s a nice catch from Ruy Teixeira: teabagging is about as popular as socialism. In slightly-differently-worded questions from two different 2010 polls, Gallup found that 37% had a favorable opinion of “the Tea Party movement” (including 14% of Democrats), while 36% had a positive image of “socialism” (including 17% of Republicans?!?).

Public Policy Polling (4/1-5, Illinois voters, 1/22-25 in parens):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 33 (42)

Mark Kirk (R): 37 (34)

Undecided: 30 (24)

(MoE: ±4%)

It remains to be seen whether or not this mark represents something of a low ebb for Giannoulias in the wake of a recent flare-up of the cloud of bad press related to his family’s bank that continues to dog him — or whether we can take this as a warning sign of an extremely difficult campaign to come. At the very least, the biggest chunk of undecideds are Democrats:

The main reason Giannoulias is behind is that he’s getting only 54% of the Democratic vote while Kirk is winning 77% of the Republican vote. It’s not that a lot of Democrats are planning to cross over and vote for Kirk, but 36% of them are undecided right now compared to just 16% of Republicans. That suggests Democratic voters don’t really know what to make of Giannoulias’ problems right now so they’re just taking a wait and see approach to the race.

However, Jensen also adds: “There may not be a state in the country where Democrats have a weaker top of the ticket at this point than Quinn and Giannoulas.”

That doesn’t bode well for the gubernatorial portion of this poll, which will be released later this week.

This is shaping up to get very, very ugly:

More important, two Democratic sources told POLITICO that the DCCC is working feverishly to prevent a very real scenario in which the two top Democrats split the party vote and enable Republican Charles Djou to capture the heavily Democratic seat in Hawaii’s May 22 all-party special election. […]

Determined to avert that result, the two sources said the DCCC is providing under-the-radar organizational support to former Rep. Ed Case against Democratic state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, including assistance from DCCC Western Regional Political Director Adam Sullivan.

Those efforts have coincided with the circulation of opposition research within Washington advancing the notion that Hanabusa is a longtime insider who received significant legislative pay raises at a time when the state has suffered through economic hard times – an emerging storyline that led Hanabusa to pull down her first campaign ad touting a vote to cut state legislative salaries and concede that the spot was misleading.

Here’s the problem: While the DCCC seems to want to throw all their resources to the odious Ed Case, the local party establishment — including veteran Democratic Sens. Inouye and Akaka — is firmly behind Colleen Hanabusa. The Politico cites two unnamed sources who inform them that the DCCC is letting Inouye and Akaka know that they’re preparing to back Case, and that “senior Democratic officials” have met with the top brass at AFSCME to convince the union to drop their opposition to Case and ditch Hanabusa.

Worse, the official word from the DCCC isn’t doing anything to dispel these reports:

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen said Tuesday he wouldn’t rule out making an endorsement in the May special election in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District.

As two Democrats – former Rep. Ed Case and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa – compete against a single GOP candidate in the three-way election, Van Hollen didn’t reject reports that the DCCC may swing behind Case’s campaign.

“Our biggest focus is trying to expose [Republican Honolulu City Councilman Charles] Djou’s Republican record,” Van Hollen said after an event hosted by the Washington think tank Third Way. “I’m not saying we won’t [endorse], but our focus is on exposing the Republican’s record.”

For his part, Inouye is holding firm that the DCCC won’t pick a favorite in the race, and that he’ll fight to make sure they don’t make that mistake:

“They’re not working for case or for Hanabusa. They’re working against Djou,” Inouye said. […]

Inouye told KITV4 that he talked to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by phone, to ensure the committee is not leaning toward supporting Case. “I said, you better look at the facts and she said she will. So I’m going to talk to her when I get back to Washington,” Inouye promised.

However, local ABC affiliate KITV has their own sources suggesting that the DCCC will ditch its neutral approach and formally back a candidate in the “next couple of weeks”.

With the local party establishment so thoroughly revolted by the prospect of an Ed Case return to the House, I think the DCCC is on the verge of making a potentially disastrous decision here that will bitterly divide the party with only weeks to go until the special election. If the DCCC really wanted to get involved, they should have done so earlier by convincing Abercrombie not to resign his seat and let this battle instead play out in the Democratic primary. As it is right now, we’re looking at the prospect of a very real — and very fierce — backlash to ham-fisted efforts from the mainland to anoint a favorite here.

The ghost of 1994 has kept hanging over the House Democrats’ heads almost this entire Congress. That’s more the product of conventional wisdom feeding upon itself and turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else, but there are legitimate warning signs on the road ahead: not just the natural pendulum-swinging that occurs during almost every midterm against the party that controls all levels of power, but also clues like the Republicans moving into the lead in many generic congressional ballots and polls showing Republicans competitive in individual House races (although many of those polls are either internals or from dubious pollsters).

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons to expect that, while the Democrats may lose seats, there won’t be a 1994-level wipeout. There aren’t as many retirements as in 1994 (where the Dems had 28 open seats), and certainly not as many retirements in unpleasantly red seats (17 of those 1994 retirements were in GOP-leaning seats according to the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index – compared with only 8 facing us in 2010). There are still lots of polls, of the non-Rasmussen variety, giving the Dems an edge in the generic ballot. The DCCC has a sizable financial advantage, and maybe most importantly, the DCCC and its individual members appear acutely aware of the potential danger, unlike in ’94, when they seemed to blithely sail into disaster.

This week we’re going to be doing a multi-part series looking at the House in 1994, trying to draw some parallels and applying those lessons to today. To make this investigation as accessible as possible, we’re going to frame it in terms of a number of myths about 1994, and see how much reality there is to them. For instance, were the members who lost done in by their “yes” votes on tough bills? And was the impact of the post-1992, post-Voting Rights Act redistricting a killer for moderate southern Dems suddenly cast into more difficult districts? Those are problems we’ll look at in the next few days. For today, we’ll start with:

Myth #1: Losses in 1994 were full of surprises: the old and the new, the vulnerable and the safe were swept away together by the tide.

No, not especially true. According to standard diagnostic tools (such as Cook PVI or the 1992 victory margins of individual House members), the vulnerable seats were lost; the not-so-vulnerable seats were retained. The House Vulnerability Index that I’ve applied in several posts to today’s electoral cycle, in fact, does a pretty remarkable job of predicting who would have lost in 1994. If you aren’t familiar with it, it simply combines PVI and previous victory margin into one handy value that rates a particular member’s vulnerability relative to other members of the same party. (For open seats, the HVI uses a victory margin of zero.) It doesn’t predict how likely a person is to lose – that depends heavily on the nature of the year – but it does predict likelihood of losing relative to other members of the party. (Cook hasn’t officially released PVIs for this era as far as I know, but I calculated them based on the 1988 and 1992 presidential election data for each district, according to post-1992 district lines.)

As it turns out, the HVI shows that, of the 25 most vulnerable seats in 1994, 23 were lost to the Republicans. Of seats 26 through 50, another 13 were lost. And of pre-1994 Democratic House members outside the top 100 in terms of vulnerability, there were only seven losses. In other words, the wave in 1994 was high enough that it claimed not only the open seats in red districts, but sloshed upward to claim a herd of freshmen in difficult districts and also veterans who’d had troubles in recent re-elections. (But what it didn’t do was claim more than a handful of those who seemed “invulnerable” either because of district lean or 1992 margin or both.)

{Originally posted at my blog Senate Guru.}

New polling by Research 2000 finds that Republican Chuck Grassley is far more vulnerable than the conventional wisdom gives him (dis)credit for.

When asked if Grassley should be re-elected, only 42% said re-elect, while 31% said it was time for someone new, and 27% were not sure.  (Remember, being unsure about an incumbent of twenty-nine years bodes poorly for the incumbent.)  Among independents, only 39% said re-elect.  Not too hot.

The money question of the poll was:

When Senator Chuck Grassley says President Obama and Democrats would QUOTE “pull the plug on grandma” UNQUOTE do you think that does Iowa proud in Congress or embarrasses Iowa?

By more than a 2-to-1 margin (53% to 26%), Iowans responded that Grassley’s comments embarrassed them rather than made them proud.  Among independents, the embarrass-proud ratio was an overwhelming 61-21.  Research 2000 broke down the responses by Congressional district.  Outside of right-wing radical Steve King’s 5th Congressional district (which saw a 30-51 embarrass-proud ratio), every other district was overwhelmingly embarrassed by Grassley’s remarks.  The other four Congressional districts ranged from 53-64% embarrassed while only 19-24% proud.

Very interestingly, while only 35% of respondents favored the Senate version of the health care reform bill, while 56% opposed it, 62% of respondents favored a public option (a 2-to-1 margin over the 31% of respondents that opposed a public option); and, moreover, by more than a 3-to-1 margin, Iowans want Democratic Senator Tom Harkin to fight harder for a public option and would respect him more if he did.

The message from these numbers is clear: Iowans are open to voting for an alternative to Republican Chuck Grassley, would support a public option (and many who opposed health care reform in Iowa simply feel that it didn’t go far enough), and were embarrassed by Grassley’s dishonest kowtowing to the teabaggers with his “pull the plug on grandma” routine.

The Iowa Independent reminds us:

The “pull the plug on grandma” statement, which was part of the death panel meme Pulitzer Prize winning Web site PolitiFact named its “Lie of the Year,” dogged Grassley throughout the last few months of 2009 and was cited by at least one of the three Democrats vying to unseat him as the reason for entering the race.

Grassley’s own numbers must be telling him that his lies could constitute a politically fatal flub given how freaked out he got over the discussion of his comments and how he tripped over himself backpedaling:

By the end of the year, though, Grassley was blaming media reports for his association with the death panels meme. In a letter to a constituent forwarded to The Iowa Independent, Grassley said some “commentators” took his comments and twisted them as saying that health care reform would establish death panels.

“I said no such thing,” Grassley said. “As I said then, putting end-of-life consultations alongside cost containment and government-run health care causes legitimate concern.”

Who was that Democrat who cited Grassley’s comments as a reason for entering the race?  Attorney and Democratic former gubernatorial nominee Roxanne Conlin.  She got into the race in late 2009, so this past quarter’s fundraising report will be the first test of her campaign’s financial viability.  Word is, she’s a fairly prodigious fundraiser.

On top of that, Grassley has handed her the issue and according message frames on which to run.  Notably to me, Conlin has five grandchildren.  In other words, she is a grandma.  I think it would be powerfully resonant for Conlin to put out an ad highlighting Grassley’s “pull the plug on grandma” comments that embarrassed a majority of Iowans and to close the ad (while talking to the camera, surrounded by her five grandchildren) with the line, “I’m Roxanne Conlin, and I approved this message because I’m a grandma and I’m embarrassed that Chuck Grassley is talking about pulling the plug on me.”

Keep a close eye on IA-Sen; I’m expecting a competitive race that will surprise the traditional media.

AR-Sen: The Communications Workers of America, a union supporting Bill Halter, is firing back with an ad on black radio to combat Blanche Lincoln’s bullshit spot claiming she “stood with our president to pass healthcare reform.” CWA’s ad is in heavy rotation around the state, running “50 times a day” around Little Rock. They also have a new TV ad out, but no word on the size of the buy.

AZ-Sen: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has given its first endorsement of the 2010 cycle to Sen. John McCain – but apparently cash ain’t attached. I guess the CoC, the grand doyenne of “cheap labor conservatives,” doesn’t believe Johnny Mac’s nativist turn is for real. Given what a fraud McCain has shown himself to be from top to bottom, I guess this makes sense.

CA-Sen: No, the reason John McCain can’t be found in Arizona isn’t because they took him “to a farm upstate.” He’s out in California, campaigning with Carly Fiorina.

IN-Sen: It’s not just that Dan Coats has an unsavory record as a lobbyist – his voting record seems pretty out-of-step with the crazies who make up the modern GOP base. John Hostettler is hitting Coats (albeit in the form of a web video) for things like his votes in favor of the assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill, and the Clinton crime bill – a set of votes tradmed analysts usually like to ascribe many 1994 Dem losses to.

UT-Sen: While they haven’t picked a specific horse to back yet, the Club for Growth has nonetheless spent $133K against Sen. Bob Bennett.

AZ-Gov: Democrat Terry Goddard has finally made his gubernatorial bid official.

AL-02, AL-05: GOP State Sen. Harri Anne Smith, who endorsed Dem Bobby Bright for re-election, has been kicked off her own re-election ballot by the Alabama Republican Party in retaliation. Smith lost the GOP primary in 2008 to Jay Love and apparently is still smarting over that – but this has to sting quite a bit more. Smith hasn’t decided if she’ll run as an independent instead. (Switch! Switch!) Meanwhile, the AL GOP said that turncoat Parker Griffith could stay on the Republican ballot, despite a challenge thanks to his party-switching ways.

FL-08: I’ve totally lost track of how many Republicans are trying to challenge Rep. Alan Grayson, so what’s one more? Wealthy businessman Ross Beiling, owner of a medical parts supplier, is throwing his shrimp on the barbie.

MI-07: While two Michigan Republicans have endorsed ex-Rep. Tim Walberg in his comeback bid, five others are staying neutral in the primary, which also includes Brian Rooney, younger brother of Rep. Tom Rooney (FL-16).

NY-05: Dan Halloran, a Republican who won a Dem-held seat on the NYC City Council last year, is weighing a challenge to Rep. Gary Ackerman. Halloran, a practicing Theodist, thinks he can make Ackerman pay a price for voting in favor of healthcare reform. Ackerman, for his part, has $1.1 million on hand and the support of the Queens Independence Party. This district also went 63-36 for Obama (but notably, that’s the same percentage that Kerry got, suggesting there was something of a “conservative white ethnic New Yorkers for McCain” effect here).

NY-13: The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500 is backing Rep. Mike McMahon, in spite of his vote against healthcare reform, citing his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Speaking of the CWA again, though, a day ago, its local vice president, Chris Shelton, called McMahon “the Judas from Staten Island.” Personally, I think that phrase is overused, and I’m going to start calling traitors “Brutuses.”

Across the Pond: Our friends in the U.K. have scheduled their elections for May 6th. Imagine if we only had one-month campaigns here!