Swing State Project

Representative Leonard Boswell (D, IA-03) has introduced a constitutional amendment in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. (Read the ruling and many reactions and commentaries at the SCOTUS blog.)

Boswell is looking for co-sponsors and explained the case for amending the constitution:

“I have introduced this important legislation because the Supreme Court’s ruling strikes at the very core of democracy in the United States by inflating the speech rights of large, faceless corporations to the same level of hard-working, every day Americans,” Boswell said in a statement. “The court’s elevation of corporate speech inevitably overpowers the speech and interests of human citizens who do not have the coffers to speak as loudly.”

Boswell said House Joint Resolution 68 would disallow a corporation or labor organization from using any operating funds or any other funds from its general treasury to pay for an advertisement in connection with a federal election campaign, regardless of whether or not the advertisement expressly advocates the election or defeat of a specified candidate.

“Corporations already have an active role in American political discourse through million-dollar political action committees and personal donations to campaigns,” Boswell said. “The legislation I introduced will prevent the Wall Street corporations that received billions in taxpayer bailout dollars from turning around and pouring that same money into candidates that will prevent financial regulation on their industry. No American should have to turn on the TV and see AIG telling them how to vote.”

Five Republicans are running against seven-term incumbent Boswell in this D+1 district. Most Iowa observers consider Brad Zaun and Jim Gibbons the front-runners. Dave Funk has the backing of the Tea Party crowd, and I love his tweets that begin, “Congress needs Funk.” Mark Rees is staking out a moderate position, and I have no idea what Pat Bertroche is doing in this race.

• AR-Sen: Talk Business Net has occasionally polled Arkansas for approvals of its local political figures, and they see Blanche Lincoln sinking further into oblivion: she’s currently at a 38/56 approval, down from 42/46 in October. One Arkansas Dem who isn’t suffering is Governor Mike Beebe, who’s at an inhuman 82/9. Beebe obviously plans for re-election and isn’t in a position to relieve us of Lincoln in a primary, but Accountability Now is looking a little further down the totem pole and launching drafthalter.com to try and get Lt. Gov. Bill Halter into the race (although he’s been sounding more interested in the open seat in AR-02).

• AZ-Sen: This is good news! For John McCain! However, it has to be bad news for the hordes of teabaggers who had about one day of thinking they’d elected one of their own to the Senate before finding out they’d gotten just got another New England RINO. Newly-elected Scott Brown’s first act was to record a robocall in favor of the insufficiently zealous McCain, who may or may not field a challenge from the raving right from J.D. Hayworth. Believe it or not, this wasn’t even Brown’s first endorsement (the guy’s doling out the political capital without having even been sworn in yet). The Hill had a piece this morning titled “Brown’s First Endorsement May Backfire,” which I assumed was about McCain – but it turns out his first endorsement was of William Hudak, a nobody running in MA-06 against John Tierney. Hudak is a loud-and-proud birther, and now Brown’s camp is already trying to figure out how to walk that one back (and getting blasted by Hudak for doing so).

• IN-Sen: With rumors flying about Rep. Mike Pence checking out a possible Senate race against Evan Bayh, key Pence ally Tony Perkins (head of the Family Research Council) said that he doubts there’ll be a Pence run for the Senate, and he alluded vaguely to the “possibility” of a 2012 presidential run instead. The Club for Growth, seeing a kindred spirit in Pence, though, has been joining in the chorus pushing him to run.

• NC-Sen (pdf): Not much change in the North Carolina Senate race since PPP’s last visit, although there’s some fluctuation upward in Richard Burr’s head-to-head numbers. The faceless Burr’s approvals are still very ho-hum, at 36-33 (with 31 still not sure), but he’s still holding his own against Generic D (45-36, up quite a bit from a one-digit gap last month, which was probably too optimistic). Encouragingly, though, SoS Elaine Marshall is starting to overperform Generic D; she trails 44-37. Ex-state Sen. Cal Cunningham trails 45-36, and attorney Kenneth Lewis (who was recently endorsed by Rep. G.K. Butterfield) trails 46-34.

• NY-Sen-B: Harold Ford Jr.’s Senate campaign-type-thing seems ill-timed to coincide with the Democrats’ belated and tentative moves to try and tap into anti-bankster anger. Sensing some trouble on that front, he’s been refusing to say exactly what kind of work he’s been doing for Merrill Lynch. Politico previously described his role (“senior policy adviser”) as sort of a nothing-and-everything job: “rainmaker and image buffer, there to impress clients, make connections and put a politic foot forward in public settings.”

• AL-Gov: More general douchery from Rep. Artur Davis as he tries to run to the right of Ag Comm. Ron Sparks in the Democratic primary, saying of health care reformer supporter Sparks: “Ron Sparks, who supports the flawed health care legislation in Washington, should realize that he is not only out of touch with the state he wants to lead, Ron Sparks would even be out of touch in Massachusetts.”

• CO-Gov: Here’s one sign that the John Hickenlooper camp was caught flat-footed by Gov. Bill Ritter’s retirement announcement: they don’t own johnhickenlooper.com. Wanna buy it? It’ll only cost you $995, and the Hickenlooper camp doesn’t seem to have plans to try to buy it.

• IL-Gov: Dan Hynes, who’s been running some hard-hitting (some might say “Willie Horton-esque”) ads against incumbent Pat Quinn in the Democratic primary, is now touting an internal poll that has him quickly closing the gap to within 7, down 44-37. (Quinn is also getting hit from the right by anti-tax ads from GOPer Andy McKenna.) Hynes’s poll also claims that Quinn’s approval is down to 36/60 among primary voters – if that doesn’t turn around for Quinn after the primary once he isn’t getting squeezed from both sides (if he even survives, as his trendline is pointing down), that would certainly bode ill for the general. One other plus for Hynes: he has a cash advantage of more than $1 million against the incumbent.

• NY-Gov: The NYT reports on mounting impatience among New York Democratic leaders for AG Andrew Cuomo to get over it and declare his gubernatorial bid already. Insiders say he’s already made up his mind to run and is waiting possibly as late as April to announce, though – and already holding a $16 million to $3 million funds edge over David Paterson, he doesn’t have to hustle. Still, Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, is publicly endorsing Cuomo today, as a subtle nudge to get him off his butt.

• PA-Gov: Businessman Tom Knox got a lot of early attention in the Democratic governor’s primary, but hasn’t made much an impression in the polls since then. Rumors have been abounding that Knox was about to drop out of the race and endorse rival Dan Onorato instead, after meeting with Onorato this week. Knox’s campaign manager has been tamping those rumors down, today, though.

• TX-Gov: With Dick Cheney already offering his endorsement (of questionable value), another Bush administration veteran is about to endorse Kay Bailey Hutchison too in the Texas gubernatorial primary: George Bush himself. Now before you start sputtering, that’s Bush the Elder (aka 41, aka Poppy, aka H.W.).

• AR-01: In a piece on Rep. Marion Berry sounding pessimistic about passing health care reform, there’s also an even more unsettling tidbit buried, saying Berry sounds “a little unsure” about whether he’ll even bother running for re-election this year, even though he’s not facing much in the way of a GOP challenge (yet). The quickly reddening 1st is not somewhere we want to be defending another open seat.

• NY-19: Conservative Republicans who’ve been looking for an alternative to the country-clubbish Nan Hayworth as a challenger to Democratic Rep. John Hall may have found someone to fit that bill. Thomas DeChiaro, owner of a local winery, says he’ll run. As an indication of where he’s coming from, he said he’s already met with Conservative Party leader Michael Long and “plans to” meet with Republican party leaders soon.

• PA-06: It’s official: Steven Welch is staying in the GOP primary in the 6th, despite Rep. Jim Gerlach pulling his gubernatorial ripcord and plummeting back into his old seat. Welch may be motivated by nothing more than sunk costs at this point, but he claims he’s bolstered by a decent 40% showing at a recent insider straw poll. Looking for an angle in a moderate-vs.-moderate duel, he’s also been reaching out to the local teabaggers, but they may be very suspicious of his past support of Democrats.

• PA-08: Ex-Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick had sounded kind of coy about a rematch with 2006 victor Rep. Pat Murphy, but all signs are now pointing toward a 2010 run. He’s scheduled a Saturday press conference in the district to talk about his plans.

• MA-AG: Martha Coakley, now that she has some time on her hands, is planning to run for re-election as Massachusetts Attorney General. It remains to be seen whether she’ll draw any primary challengers, now that it’s been exposed that she has a glass jaw and turned off a lot of former supporters; some of the county DAs who’d been planning to run to succeed her may be interested in forging ahead anyway.

• Governors: Josh Goodman looks at the link between what happened in gubernatorial races in midterm elections where there was a wave at the congressional level. As you’d expect, the party gaining in Congress gains state houses too, although seemingly mostly through open seats.

• Filing deadlines: Don’t forget to check out our handy SSP calendar, which covers filing deadlines and primary election dates. Kentucky and West Virginia have filing deadlines next week – and then Illinois has its freakishly-early primary in just two more weeks.

This is the second part of two posts analyzing Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial election. The previous part can be found here.

When Democrats nominated State Senator Creigh Deeds, they nominated a rural, moderate Democrat designed to win the small towns and rural regions of western Virginia. In an ideal situation, Mr. Deeds would have carved out a coalition similar to former Governor Mark Warner’s.

In 2001, Mr. Warner won a 5.13% victory over Attorney General Mark Earley, based largely upon rural support in western Virginia.

Mr. Warner is famous among Democrats for this achievement (remember, this was just two months after 9/11). He went on to become a successful and very popular governor; in 2008, Mr. Warner ran for Senate and won double his opponent’s vote. Since Mr. Warner, no other Democratic candidate has ever built a coalition similar to his.

More below.

Below is Virginia’s political lean during the 2001 gubernatorial election:

These maps indicate the results of a hypothetically tied election, which is useful to determine the political lean of each county (i.e. whether a certain place voted more Democratic or Republican than the state as a whole). For example, last year Indiana voted for President Barack Obama – but relative to the country as a whole, it leaned Republican.

For comparison, here is the correlating map for Creigh Deeds (if Mr. Deeds had tied Mr. McDonnell), which I mapped in my last post:

As the maps indicate, Creigh Deeds failed miserably at recreating the rural Warner coalition. Despite being a rural candidate, Mr. Deeds did far worse in rural western Virginia.

Instead, Mr. Deeds appears to have done best in urban Virginia: Northern Virginia, Richmond, and the Norfolk-Virginia Beach metropolitan area. Rather than repeating Mark Warner’s coalition, the performance of Creigh Deeds appears far closer to that of President Barack Obama’s:

Mr. Obama won through a urban-suburban alliance, compared to the urban-rural alliance of Mr. Warner.

Here is Mr. Obama’s performance without the lean:

To be fair, I would prefer the Obama coalition to the Warner coalition: suburban strength is more lasting than votes built upon dying small towns.

Nevertheless, it is discomfiting to note the extent to which a candidate like Creigh Deeds – a rural, moderate Democrat who distanced himself from Mr. Obama – replicated the president’s performance. For better or for worse, it seems, Democratic candidates will from now on be attached hip-to-hip with Mr. Obama.

(Note: All statistics are derived from http://www.uselectionatlas.org/ ).

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Field Poll (pdf) (1/5-17, likely voters, 9/18-10/6 in parentheses):

Tom Campbell (R): 30 (NA)

Carly Fiorina (R): 25 (21)

Chuck DeVore (R): 6 (20)

Undecided: 39 (59)

(MoE: ±7.1%)

Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 48 (NA)

Tom Campbell (R): 38 (NA)

Undecided: 14 (NA)

Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 50 (49)

Carly Fiorina (R): 35 (35)

Undecided: 15 (16)

Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 51 (50)

Chuck DeVore (R): 34 (33)

Undecided: 15 (17)

(MoE: ±3.3%)

The Field Poll (it’s become kind of cliched to refer to them as the “gold standard” for California pollsters, but their reputation precedes them) checks in on the California Senate race for the first time since September, with one big change: the switchover of ex-Rep. Tom Campbell from the Governor’s race to the Senate race. It looks like Campbell knew what he was doing, getting out of the GOP governor’s field where he was financially outgunned (as seen today, where it’s barely newsworthy that Meg Whitman just fronted herself another $20 million), and immediately moving into the lead in the GOP field.

Campbell had released an internal poll last week that showed him leading Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore 31-15-12, suggesting that he was eating equally into Fiorina and DeVore supporters. But the Field poll suggests that this is almost coming entirely out of DeVore’s share — initially strange since there’s a sharp contrast between Campbell’s Silicon Valley moderatism and DeVore’s O.C. conservatism. But it makes sense when you think that much of DeVore’s support was coming from the seemingly ascendant libertarian side of the party (and that social conservatives have been unusually quiet lately), and many of them are likely to embrace the socially liberal but fiscally hawkish Campbell.

As for the general, Field sees little movement in the last four months in the Boxer/Fiorina and Boxer/DeVore matchups, suggesting that Barbara Boxer hasn’t seemed to sustain much personal damage from the withering of the Democratic brand. As I’d feared, though, the amiable and well-known Campbell polls noticeably better against Boxer than the others — at ten points, not enough to start hitting the panic button, but indicating that this race will need to be carefully monitored. (Rasmussen recently showed this a closer tace than that, but, well, what else is new.) Taking into account Campbell’s apparent likelihood of winning the primary and the overall national environment, that’s enough for us to move this race back onto the board at “Likely Democratic.”

RaceTracker Wiki: CA-Sen

Some are beginning to talk up the possibility of the GOP not only taking the House but also the Senate this November. To do that they would have to win ten Democratic seats. In my view they currently lead in North Dakota, Nevada, Arkansas, Colorado and Delaware. Illinois and Pennsylvania are too close to call. Despite the loss of Massachusetts this week I still don’t think they will win all of these. But say for the sake of argument they did. They would then need three more from somewhere. Unless they can get fresh challengers in Washington, Wisconsin and more likely Indiana then they would have to win Connecticut, New York AND California to get control. To cut a long story short the gold standard of polling in the Golden State suggests the latter is very unlikely to happen.

Field Poll (1/5-17) MoE 3.3%

General Election

Barbara Boxer (D) 48%

Tom Campbell (R) 38%

Boxer (D) 50%

Carly Fiorina (R) 35%

Boxer (D) 51%

Chuck DeVore (R) 34%

The incumbent has a positive favorability rating of 48-39. The Republicans have far less name ID and only Campbell is in positive territory.

GOP Primary

Campbell 30%

Fiorina 25%

DeVore 6%

Undecided 39%

http://www.field.com/fieldpoll…

It’s been over two months since we last took stock of the open seat situation in the House, and a lot has happened since then. So, once again, our crack team of open seat forensic analysts down at SSP Labs have put together a new edition of the 2010 House Open Seat Watch.

As always, we’ve compiled three separate lists: one of confirmed vacancies/retirements, another of potential open seats, and a third – available below the fold – of names that have dropped off the watch list. As always, please note that “age” in our charts reflects the incumbent’s age on election day, 2010. Blue boxes indicate a new entry (or an incumbent who has been shuffled between categories). All tables are sortable – just click on any column header to sort.

We’ve got eight new additions to our big board of House retirements and vacancies, five of them Democratic, and three Republican. We’ve also had one subtraction, from GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach — although since he still technically has a primary challenger, he’s staying on the watch list for now.

What’s notable is that, just two months ago, we had zero “true” retirements (as opposed to attempts to seek higher office), and now we have exactly eight members saying goodbye to elected office in 2011.  Of the twelve Democratic-held open seats, Republicans have a chance of winning all but AL-07, FL-17, and FL-19. On the other hand, I think I count about two and a half legitimate pick-up opportunities for Democrats among the R-held seats up for grabs.

Meanwhile, eight new names are added to our watch list, and 11 have come off:

A list of incumbents whose names we’ve removed from the Open Seat Watch is available below the fold.

Resolved vacancies.

With SSP focusing its guns on Massachussetts earlier in the week, we held this poll in reserve until things got a little less crazy. Let’s have a look.

Rasmussen (1/14, likely voters, 10/15 in parens):

Charlie Melancon (D): 35 (36)

David Vitter (R-inc): 53 (46)

SOther: 4 (5)

Not sure: 8 (13)

Charlie Melancon (D): 31 (33)

Jay Dardenne (R): 53 (46)

Other: 6 (6)

Not sure: 10 (15)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

The second match-up, of course, is now a moot point:

Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne on Tuesday announced that he will not challenge Sen. David Vitter in the GOP primary this fall, ending months of speculation about the possibility of a high-profile intraparty fight in the Bayou State.

“After much consideration, I have decided not to seek the U.S. Senate seat this year,” Dardenne said in a statement. “My family and I thank the many Louisianians who have encouraged me to run, but I believe my role is to serve the people here in Baton Rouge rather than in Washington.” […]

“I have spoken to Sen. Vitter and encouraged him to continue fighting for fiscal responsibility and common sense in our nation’s capital,” Dardenne said.

A Dardenne run always struck me as more wishful thinking than an active possibility, but Vitter has to be pleased, nonetheless — this is probably the best week for him in a long time.

RaceTracker Wiki: LA-Sen

The Las Vegas Sun:

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki is now strongly considering a run for the U.S. Senate this year against Sen. Harry Reid, he told the Sun today.

“There are serious people making compelling arguments to me both in the state and out of the state to reconsider the Harry Reid race, and based on that pressure and those conversations I am indeed looking at it,” Krolicki said.

Republicans in Washington are displeased with the current crop of candidates taking on Reid, which includes former state Sen. Sue Lowden, former UNLV basketball star Danny Tarkanian and former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle.

All are viewed as second-tier.

Krolicki said Sen. John McCain, whose Nevada presidential campaign he chaired, had reached out to him in the past week.

“It’s hard not to consider this when you have people like John McCain asking you to,” Krolicki said.

You may recall that Krolicki was strongly considering challenging Reid, but terminated his plans after going through a drawn-out legal fiasco for much of the year. Krolicki was indicted for his alleged mismanagement of a college savings program, but the charges were thrown out by a Clark County District Court.

If the national GOP is hoping that they can clear the field with a preferred candidate, I don’t think they’ll have much success. But Krolicki should have a leg up in the primary in terms of name recognition, and he may have the sympathy of a primary base who see him as the victim of a partisan witch-hunt by the Democratic state AG’s office. Ultimately, whether he’s facing Krolicki, Lowden, or Tarkanian, Harry Reid is still on pace to lose re-election.

In other Handsome Harry news, Barack Obama is set to make a trip to Nevada next month for Reid. I’m sure that will be time well spent.

RaceTracker Wiki: NV-Sen

When it comes to writing about elections after the fact, I’m not a big post-mortem guy — I feel it can sometimes be a little disingenuous to diagnose a race with absolute certainty a day or two after, in many cases, you were hedging your bets as to the final outcome. That said, though, there are an endless supply of post-mortems out there on Martha Coakley’s mind-numbingly bad result last night, and some of them actually have some worthwhile observations to offer. Let’s round up a few of these pundit attempts to leave their mark on the CW:

• Jeff Zeleny, “Blogging the Massachusetts Senate Race” (The Caucus/NYT).
• Tom Jensen, “Takeaways from Massachusetts (Public Policy Polling).

• Neil Newhousie, “Massachusetts Voters in their Own Words… (Public Opinion Strategies).
  
  Neil Newhousie, “Scott Brown’s Twelve Keys To Victory… (Public Opinion Strategies).

• Chris Cillizza, “First thoughts on Scott Brown’s special election victory (The Fix/WaPo).
• Emily Cadei, “Brown Victory Sends Democrats Big Wake-Up Call” (Roll Call).
• Markos Moulitsas, “One candidate campaigned to win” (DailyKos).
• E.J. Dionne, “How Massachusetts was won (Post Partisan/WaPo).
• Nate Silver, “Let’s Play the Blame Game!” (FiveThirtyEight).
• Ben Smith, “Coakley called ‘machine,’ didn’t use machine (Politico).
• Richard E. Berg-Andersson, “What Was It All About, Then?” (The Green Papers).
• David Weigel, “Conservative Grassroots Strategy Propels Brown to Senate” (Washington Independent).
• Steve Lombardo, “Why Brown Won” (Pollster.com).
• Jazz Shaw, “The GOP Love Affair with Scott Brown Will Be a Short Fling” (The Moderate Voice).

• Reid Wilson, “Menendez Promises Review Of Dem Campaigns” (Hotline OnCall).
  
  Reid Wilson, “Pracitcal Lessons From Brown’s Win (Hotline OnCall).

• Steve Singiser, “MA-Sen: The Turnout Tells A Tale” (DailyKos).
• Andrew Gelman, “Scott Brown is More Liberal Than Olympia Snowe, and Now He’s Pivotal, Too (FiveThirtyEight).

DemFromCT also has a pundit roundup. If data, rather than chatter, is your drug, the WVWV exit poll is now available, as is Rasmussen’s not-surprisingly dead-on election night poll.