It’s starting to look like the DCCC’s power-play of recruiting former Lt. Gov John Carney to run against Mike Castle for Delaware’s at-large House seat may be successful in pushing the aging incumbent out of the House — and possibly into the state’s open seat Senate race instead. From Roll Call:
Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) said Thursday that he’s leaning more toward running for Senate rather than another term in the House, if he decides to run for Congress again in 2010.
In an interview on Capitol Hill, Castle also acknowledged that several GOP Senators, including John McCain (Ariz.), have been pushing him in recent weeks to make the move to the other side of Capitol Hill. He said a final decision on his 2010 plans would likely have to come by early summer “at the latest.”
It seems that since Castle figures he’s going to get the race of his lifetime, he’s decided that if he’s going to run again in 2010 at all, he might as well go out with a bang by trying his hand at the Senate:
Castle said that he met last month with Carney, whom he considers a friend, and knew at that point that the former lieutenant governor was planning on jumping into the House race.
At that meeting Castle told Carney “there’s probably a better chance I’ll run for the Senate than the House. [But] I said there’s a chance I won’t run at all.”
While Castle believes he can beat Carney – a recent poll showed Castle winning a head-to-head contest – the Delaware Congressman said the race would represent his toughest challenge since his first election in 1992 against another former lieutenant governor, S.B. Woo (D).
While this news would seem to push DE-AL just shy of Joe Cao’s seat in Louisiana on the flip index, Castle’s entry in the Senate race would create an instantly competitive contest. A recent PPP poll had Castle leading Democrat Beau Biden by 44-36 for the open seat.
In other words, the DCCC’s gain could end up being the DSCC’s headache.
When I (James) went on MSNBC two weeks ago to talk about immigration reform, I didn’t think that I had anything that outlandish to say. Contessa Brewer, the daytime host, asked Republican strategist Ben Porrit and me if we thought we were going to get immigration reform passed and I said frankly that we won’t, because there is a segment of the Republican party that is racist and will stand in the way of real reform. Simple enough, right?
Well, after my turn at the 1:25 mark, when I said that within the Republican Party there is a segment of that group that is very anti-immigration, and essentially racist, Contessa and Ben reacted as though I had insulted one of their mothers (or both). When I finished, I immediately called Max Bernstein, who co-chairs dotPAC with me, to ask if I had said something really out of line because I got cut off and everyone had their mouths agape with shock that I could say such a thing. He certainly didn’t think so, and with good reason.
Yes, total shock at the idea that there is a racist segment of the Republican Party. The distribution of the Barack the Magic Negro song by a candidate for the RNC Chairmanship and former leader of the Tennessee Republican Party? The SoCal mayor who made and sent a postcard of the White House lawn with watermelons sprouted all over it? Macaca? The 24 hour news cycle makes for unbelievably short memories, clearly.
Those examples aside, there is a segment of the GOP that brings that attitude to the immigration debate, and it’s made up of House members, not the aforementioned marginal figures in the Party. To start, here’s Dana Rohrabacher, the Congressman from the pristine beach communities in Southern Los Angeles and Northern Orange County on Real Time with Bill Maher:
“ROHRABACHER: It’s bad for the American people to have so many people coming in from overseas, bidding down the wages of our average person, taking – and at the same time, a lot of employers aren’t giving the same kind of benefits. So we end up with less tax revenue. We end up with our education system under – collapsing under this pressure. Our health care system collapsing under the pressure.
MAHER: You’re blaming all that on the Mexicans?
ROHRABACHER: Yes, I am. Yes, I am.”
Next up, we have Houston congressman John Culberson. Culberson is known for being on the cutting edge of his use of technology and social networking, but when it comes to the viewpoint behind the tweeting and Qik-videoing, he falls somewhere between the age of internment camps and the McCarthy era. Observe:
“A concern that I continue to see is that a lot of those scientists from communist China, my impression is, and correct me if I am wrong, come here and learn as much as they can, and then leave. And I’m not really all that much into helping the communists figure out how to better target their intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States. They basically steal our technology for military applications. And they are red China, let’s not forget.”
We can’t forget this one either:
“A large number of Islamic individuals have moved into homes in Nuevo Laredo and are being taught Spanish to assimilate with the local culture.”
The context here is how, to quote the Twittering idiot, “Al Qaeda terrorists and Chinese nationals are infiltrating our country virtually anywhere they choose from Brownsville to San Diego.” Yes John, those brown people just learn Spanish and all of a sudden no one can tell them apart, as they assimilate with the rest of the local brown culture.
Then we have James Sensenbrenner, who authored a piece of paranoid legislation that had it become law would have subjected all Hispanics in America to ritualistic profiling and relentless eligibility and citizenship tests in all aspects of their everyday lives. If you have 15 minutes and feel like losing your appetite, go read the bill.
And we can’t forget Michele Bachmann of Minnesota:
“One amendment [to a MN legislature budget] was offered that said that drivers license tests should be in English only, and that amendment failed. It’s an outrage, it’s unthinkable…”
Nevermind that this was in response to a tragic and fatal car accident where the perpetrator was an undocumented immigrant with a phony license, and having an English requirement for a drivers license would send the fake ID business through the roof. Bachmann’s unmatched abilities to match bigotry with mere poor logic were also on display last September when she plamed the entire subprime mortgage crisis on the fact that banks didn’t just stick to lending money to white folks.
So yes, Ben and Contessa. There is a segment of the Republican party that is clearly racist and will block real immigration reform by appealing to the xenophobic wing of their constituency that keeps them edging past their opponents every two years.
That’s why dotPAC is raising money for each of these bigots’ eventual Democratic challengers on ActBlue, and running ads in each of their districts on Facebook highlighting their indecency. Give a few bucks to the eventual Democratic nominees and show these bigots that they have no place in mainstream politics, let alone the halls of Congress.
Both pollsters also test Corzine against a variety of lesser GOP candidates, and the numbers are pretty dispiriting – mostly a series of small leads for Corzine, but that’s due to name rec.
It’s the GOP primary where things get funkadelic. Strategic Vision gives Christie a 40-15 lead over his nearest competitor, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. But Q-pac has Christie up 39-24 among RVs and just 46-37 among LVs. I suppose we’d rather face the more conservative Lonegan, but does he have time to pull it out? The primary is on June 2nd. I’m not even sure how big a difference it would make – Q has them tied at 41, even though Lonegan is unknown by 72% of the state.
One interesting side-note: The same Q-Poll (different press release) finds that New Jersey voters approve of gay marriage by a 49-43 margin, a twelve-point shift in favor from two years ago. These numbers aren’t quite like the 14-point margin in favor in neighboring New York, but perhaps Corzine will start pushing this issue nonetheless.
NJ has civil unions, but a state panel found in December that they don’t provide full equality and recommended passage of a gay marriage bill. Corzine said he’d sign such legislation, but he hasn’t made it a signature issue like David Paterson has – yet. Even though only a small plurality supports gay marriage, it might nonetheless make political sense to push it. If Corzine does win, it’ll almost certainly be by a very narrow margin, and Karl Rove showed you can win elections like that by playing hard to issues which sharply divide the electorate, as long as slightly more voters are on your side.
New Jersey is intimately familiar with bitter, partisan races, and if Corzine wants to survive, he might have to wage some serious trench warfare.
• NY-20 (pdf): The BoE’s official tally bumps Scott Murphy’s lead up to 365, as 250 more ballots, mostly from Murphy stronghold Warren County, were added. Counting will continue for the forseeable future, unfortunately, and on Monday a judge will set a counting schedule for the ballots contested on the basis of second home residency.
The drip-drip of GOPers publicly throwing in the towel on NY-20 continues: today star strategist Mike Murphy cried uncle, as did former NRCC chair Tom Reynolds yesterday. Campaign Diaries has a thought-provoking piece on why the GOP continues to drag this out in the courts, even though they’re in too deep a hole for “case by case” examination of the ballots to salvage the count for them: it may be to set precedent for future recounts, where picking off individual ballots may be targeted to their advantage.
• NY-Sen, NY-14: Rep. Carolyn Maloney has hired a statewide finance director, Lewis Cohen. Cohen denied that Maloney (who has been rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand) will be running for Senate, but his title of “statewide” is pretty telling, considering that Maloney currently represents a few square miles in Manhattan and Queens.
• PA-Sen: Only eight weeks before jumping into the Senate primary, Pat Toomey told Pennsylvania GOP chair Rob Gleason that he “didn’t want to be a Senator” and “be number 100 and vote no on everything.” Now this wouldn’t exactly be the first time a politician has promised one thing and done another, but the Specter camp has begun beating Toomey over the head with his flip-flop.
• MO-Sen: Ex-treasurer Sarah Steelman is “moving in [the] direction” of entering the GOP senate primary, but is in no hurry to make a formal announcement as she gets her campaign’s financial house in order first. (She’s still paying off debts from her unsuccessful gubernatorial run last year.) This comes against a backdrop of increasing public discomfort by the party concerning Roy Blunt’s candidacy, caused not only by his humdrum $542K fundraising quarter and his high burn rate, but also his lobbyist ties and long ‘establishment’ track record.
• GA-Gov, GA-03: With top candidates like Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Cobb Co. Commissioner Sam Olens bailing on the race, there’s an opening for a top-tier candidate to leap into the GOP field for the Georgia governor’s race. (SoS Karen Handel and Insurance Comm. John Oxendine are still in.) Could Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, who has occasionally expressed interest in this race, be the man? Westmoreland (perhaps best known for not being able to name the 10 commandments on the Colbert Report) is “seriously considering” it. Don’t look for a pickup of his R+19 seat if it’s open, though.
• AL-Gov: Republican treasurer Kay Ivey will be running for governor after all, according to party insiders. The perception was that her role in Alabama’s floundering prepaid tuition plan may have wounded her too much to run for governor, but she’s still going for it.
• CA-32: More endorsements as we approach the May 19 special election. Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu got the endorsement of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. (The district doesn’t include any of LA, but obviously he’s a big figure in the media market.) The United Farm Workers and the locals of the Southern California District Council of Laborers went for state senator Gil Cedillo.
• FL-08: Republican Orlando mayor Rich Crotty was looking like a major threat to just-elected Rep. Alan Grayson, but he’s getting tarnished with some legal troubles that may preclude him from running. A grand jury accused him of pressuring vendors to contribute to his re-election campaign. There’s still a deep Republican bench eyeing the race in this R+2 district, including state senate majority whip Andy Gardiner, ex-state senator Daniel Webster, and state rep. Steve Precourt. Grayson raised only $144K in the first quarter, but he may plan to self-finance, as he partially did in 2008.
• Demographics: Here’s some interesting data from the Census Bureau: fewer people moved in 2007 (35.2 million) than any year since 1962 (when the nation had 120 million fewer people). This has its roots in the housing bubble pop, as people underwater in their houses are unlikelier to relocate for work. This may show up in a big way in 2012 reapportionment, though, as more people staying in place may save a few seats in the northeast or midwest and limit growth in the south or west.
State Sen. Michael Bond (D) is gearing up to run for Rep. Mark Kirk’s (R) seat, according to sources familiar with the situation. Kirk is pondering a bid for Senate in 2010, and his departure would make his north Chicagoland seat a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats.
Bond has tapped John Lapp to do his media campaign, Bennett, Petts & Normington to his polling and Ed Peavy to do direct mail for the race, according to one source familiar with the arrangement. The source also said a former aide to Rep. Melissa Bean (D), Brian Herman, will manage his campaign.
Kirk himself has set a pretty definite timeline for deciding his 2010 plans (“by the end of the month”), but the fact that Bond is already putting a campaign team together may indicate a willingness to run regardless of Kirk’s intentions. In any case, Bond may have company in an open seat race — fellow state Sen. Susan Garrett says that she’s considering a bid, and ’06/’08 nominee Dan Seals is known to be interested to run again if Kirk bails on the seat.
Last October, Representative Michele “Crazy as Steve King” Bachmann (MN-06) disgraced herself on “Hardball” and sparked a ridiculously successful fundraising drive for her Democratic opponent, El Tinklenberg. I was impressed by the enthusiasm and kicked in a few bucks for Tinklenberg myself, but I was dismayed to see bloggers continue to help him raise money even after he’d raised more than $750,000 and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had promised to spend an additional $1 million in his district. Within a few days of Bachmann’s notorious comments, Tinklenberg had more money than he needed to run a solid media and GOTV campaign during the final two weeks before the election.
Instead, the fundraising frenzy for Tinklenberg continued.
Yesterday Markos linked to this piece from CQ Politics about how Tinklenberg’s campaign committee was the largest donor to the DCCC in March, giving a total of $250,000:
You may recall that his Republican opponent was Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose mid-October comment that Obama “may have anti-American views” angered Democrats nationwide and spawned an avalanche of contributions to Tinklenberg in the waning days of a campaign that Bachmann won by 46 percent to 43 percent, with a third-party candidate taking 10 percent.
Apparently the money was coming in too fast for Tinklenberg to spend completely: he raised $3 million for his campaign, of which $1.9 million came in after October 15, and had $453,000 in leftover campaign funds at the end of 2008 and $184,000 at the end of March.
I’m not saying it wasn’t worth getting behind Tinklenberg. Bachmann is among the worst Republicans in Congress, and this district rightly seemed winnable. However, the netroots clearly funneled way more money to Tinklenberg than he could spend effectively. We got carried away by emotions and were not thinking strategically.
What if a million of the dollars we sent to the MN-06 race had been spread around 10 or 20 other districts? A bunch of the candidates I wanted to support as part of an expanded field got blown out by large margins, but an extra $50,000 could have made the difference for Josh Segall in AL-03, or for several candidates who weren’t on my radar, such as Bill Hedrick in CA-44.
The netroots rally for Tinklenberg started out as a good cause but took on a momentum of its own. It didn’t help that Tinklenberg sent fundraising e-mails to his new donors every day or two during the home stretch, even after he had more than enough money to close out the campaign.
Maybe the majority of blog readers who gave $10 or $20 or $50 to Tinklenberg wouldn’t have given to some other longshot Congressional challenger. Maybe people need an emotional trigger before they are willing to open their wallets. But in future election cycles, we need to be smarter about how we focus our energy and our fundraising efforts during the final weeks of a campaign. There’s no shortage of wingnuts worth targeting. Also, a fair number of good incumbent Democrats will probably need our help in 2010, depending on how the economy looks 18 months from now.
Any ideas or suggestions on how to raise money effectively during the next cycle would be welcome in this thread.
CQ politics has finally released its ratings for the 2010 Senate and gubernatorial elections. Here they are:
Incumbent in parenthesis, *=retiring
First, the Senate races:
Safe Democrat
California (Boxer)
Hawaii (Inouye)
Indiana (Bayh)
Maryland (Mikulski)
New York (Schumer)
North Dakota (Dorgan)
Oregon (Wyden)
Vermont (Leahy)
Washington (Murray)
Democrat Favored
Arkansas (Lincoln)
Colorado (Bennet)
Delaware (Kaufman*)
Leans Democrat
Nevada (Reid)
New York (Gillibrand)
Wisconsin (Feingold)
No Clear Favorite
Connecticut (Dodd)
Florida (Martinez*)
Illinois (Burris)
Kentucky (Bunning)
Missouri (Bond*)
New Hampshire (Gregg*)
North Carolina (Burr)
Ohio (Voinovich*)
Pennsylvania (Specter)
Leans Republican
Louisiana (Vitter)
South Carolina (DeMint)
Republican Favored
Arizona (McCain)
Georgia (Isakson)
Kansas (Brownback*)
South Dakota (Thune)
Safe Republican
Alabama (Shelby)
Alaska (Murkowski)
Idaho (Crapo)
Iowa (Grassley)
Oklahoma (Coburn)
Utah (Bennett)
Now the governor’s races:
Safe Democrat
Arkansas (Beebe)
Maryland (O’Malley)
New Hampshire (Lynch)
Democrat Favored
Hawaii (Lingle*)
Ohio (Strickland)
New Mexico (Richardson*)
Leans Democrat
California (Schwarzenegger*)
Colorado (Ritter)
Illinois (Quinn)
Iowa (Culver)
Maine (Baldacci*)
Massachusetts (Patrick)
New York (Paterson)
Oregon (Kulongoski*)
Wisconsin (Doyle)
No Clear Favorite
Michigan (Granholm*)
Minnesota (Pawlenty*)
Nevada (Gibbons)
New Jersey (Corzine)
Pennsylvania (Rendell*)
Rhode Island (Carcieri*)
Virginia (Kaine*)
Wyoming (Freudenthal. Apparently he is considering suing to overturn the term-limits law, so CQ is unsure about rating this race until that is resolved)
… but here are the results with 42 votes. [Edited from original version]
The results were actually pretty decisive – in the top 10, most of the races “beat” the next one on the list pretty decisively. Kentucky and Ohio are now close at #4 & #5, but that’s about it. There’s a near-tie at #10 and #11 (Illinois, Louisiana) with Nevada also close at #12. But other than that, the top of the list looks very stable. Here’s what you all said:
1. New Hampshire (OPEN-R)
2. Pennsylvania (Specter-R)
3. Missouri (OPEN-R)
4. Ohio (OPEN-R)
5. Kentucky (Bunning-R)
6. North Carolina (Burr-R)
7. Connecticut (Dodd-D)
8. Florida (OPEN-R)
9. Colorado (Bennet-D)
10. Illinois (Burris-D)
11. Louisiana (Vitter-R)
12. Nevada (Reid-D)
13. Arkansas (Lincoln-D)
14. Delaware (OPEN-D)
15. New York-B (Gillibrand-D)
16. Iowa (Grassley-R)
17. Arizona (McCain-R)
18. Georgia (Isakson-R)
19. Kansas (OPEN-R)
20. Wisconsin (Feingold-D)
21. Oklahoma (Coburn-R)
22. California (Boxer-D)
23. Tied: Alaska (Murkowski-R) & North Dakota (Dorgan-D)
This is the second time PPP has examined the fortunes of Colorado’s appointed senator Michael Bennet. Bennet’s approvals are down in net negative territory, at 34/41 (with a large 25% not sure). PPP also polled Bennet in January, and Bennet isn’t making much headway at winning friends and influencing people: his favorable/unfavorable was 33/21 then, so most people who’ve formed an opinion since then have formed a negative opinion. It’ll be interesting to see whether the charisma-challenged Bennet can improve his standing, and what happens if he doesn’t. The real race to watch (and one I hope PPP polls next time) is a possible Democratic primary: former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff, who wanted the appointment and has weighed a challenge, has to be encouraged by these numbers to start testing the waters.
PPP also tried out some head-to-heads. There aren’t any trendlines from the previous poll, though, as none of the four guys PPP polled in January have taken any steps to run, and a new, lesser set of contenders has taken their place: Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier is officially in, while Weld County DA Ken Buck is likely to enter and ex-Rep. Bob Beauprez has at least made some noises. (State senate minority leader Josh Penry is more associated with the governor’s race, but it’s possible he may jump over to senate if he wants to avoid an awkward primary clash with his former boss, ex-Rep. Scott McInnis.) Beauprez can’t really be seen as lesser, I suppose, considering he’s just as well-known as Bennet, if just as little-liked; his favorability is 33-43. At any rate, Bennet is in a dead heat with the somewhat-well-known Beauprez (who lost the 2006 governor’s race), while the others seem to operate as “generic R” and lose to Bennet by a not-so-comfortable margin. (Discussion underway in conspiracy‘s diary.)