Swing State Project

First they’re in, then they’re out, and now… they’re back in:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has reversed an earlier decision to cancel its last two weeks of advertising in Louisiana. Instead, it has purchased TV time next week and will wait to decide whether to buy the final week before Election Day. The decision comes on the heels of GOP polling showing that Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) has only a mid-single digit lead over challenger John Kennedy (R). Democrats dispute those numbers, arguing that Landrieu holds a substantial lead.

If the NRSC wishes to waste their money on Kennedy instead of Chambliss or McConnell, well, that’s fine by me.

UPDATE: Roll Call says the committee is placing a $500K buy for the next week, with no commitment yet for a second and final week of ads.

LATER UPDATE: Aside from the initial bad press that the NRSC gave Kennedy by pulling out in the first place, a late play like this one reminds me of the boneheaded move by the NRSC in 2006 to spend a million bucks against Debbie Stabenow in a last-minute ad buy when that money could have been funneled into Montana or Virginia instead.

Ladies and gentleman we have another Congressional District now breaking wide open. Accordig to Capitol Weekly, Republicans are sounding alarms that Dana Rohrabacher is in the fight of his life against our own Debbie Cook.

The third contest is in the 46th Congressional District in Orange County, where incumbent Republican Dana Rohrabacher faces Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook.

According to GOP sources, internal polling shows the difference between Rohrabacher and Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, to be within the margin of error, although Rohrabacher has heavily outspent Cook. Hoffenblum believes Rohrabacher faces “possibly the strongest Democrat to run against him since the current district lines were drawn in 2001.”

I am not aware of any DCCC efforts to help her out and don’t expect the California Democratic Party to get off its ass anytime soon. Debbie Cook is our girl. She is a progressive mayor of Huntington Beach and an environmental attorney (on our side) by trade. I don’t need to remind of what Rohrabacher is. I know we are all nearly tapped out, I dread adding up all the money I gave for this cycle. But she is so close to knocking him off, so close. And wouldn’t it be the sweetest cherry on top to see him go? If you want to know a little more about her, go to her web site and, if you can drop just $5, $10, $25, please do so. It IS an expensive district, but every door hanger and every piece of literature counts. Just imagine how it would feel on November 5 to see Dana gone.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/14-15, likely voters, 5/5-7 in parens):

Rick Noriega (D): 44 (44)

John Cornyn (R-inc): 50 (48)

Yvonne Adams (L): 2 (n/a)

(MoE: ±4%)

The Texas Senate race just keeps hanging around the cusp of viability, with Rick Noriega staying in striking distance of Big John Cornyn. This race started to slip away from Noriega over the summer, but this result is in line with the most recent Rasmussen poll (50-43 two weeks ago) showing a somewhat tighter race. (In the same sample, McCain leads Obama in Texas by a rather encouraging 52-40.)

As Markos points out in his write-up of this poll, the big obstacle in making a big end-of-the-game push in this race is the astronomical cost of playing in Texas. The cost of blanketing Texas is in the same ballpark as blanketing Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky together, any of which also has the possibility of being Senate Seat #60. Economic realities, unfortunately, may dictate this race taking a back seat to those other three.

Boom:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, seeing an irresistible opportunity to make big gains on Election Day, has secured a $15 million loan that it will use to splurge on tight races during the last three weeks of the campaign season.

The $15 million loan is nearly twice the $8 million that the National Republican Congressional Committee was able to borrow recently and adds to the huge financial advantage that Democrats already hold over the GOP.

When combined with the cash-on-hand advantage that the DCCC has over the National Republican Congressional Committee – $54 million to $14.4 million as of Aug. 31 – the loan leaves House Democratic leaders with $47 million more than their GOP counterparts to pour into contested districts.

In 2006, the DCCC took out an $11.5 million loan in the home stretch to help pay for the IE operations. At $15 million, this cash injection is nearly twice the size of the cash-strapped NRCC’s $8 million loan, ensuring that the NRCC won’t be able to outspend the DCCC anywhere.

That sound you hear is Tom Cole weeping into his Appletini.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (10/14-15, likely voters, 9/8-10 in parens):

Ronnie Musgrove (D): 46 (43)

Roger Wicker (R-inc): 47 (48)

(MoE: ±4%)

Well, the tightening of this race (also evident in the most recent Rasmussen poll of Mississippi) is great news, but Musgrove has also inched up to 24% of the white vote — that could well be very close to what he needs in order to squeak out a win here, assuming he can take 90% or more of the black vote (he currently beats Wicker among African-Americans by 83-5, with 12% undecided).

Bonus finding: McCain leads Obama by 50-40 in the same poll.

After days of rumors, Ambinder confirms it — the NRSC is retreating from Colorado:

Republican sources in Colorado and Washington say that the National Republican Senatorial Committee plans to pull out of the state by next week, an acknowledgment that its independent expenditure resources would be better spent on defense elsewhere. […]

The NRSC is still helping Roger Wicker in Mississippi and incumbents Norm Coleman in Minnesota, John Sununu in New Hampshire.

AN NRSC spokesperson said that advertising decisions are made on a week-to-week basis and declined to comment further.

How do you like them apples, Dick Wadhams?

This decision comes on the heels of the party’s move to cut the cord on dud candidate John Kennedy in Louisiana in order to play more defense. Will it be too little, too late to prevent catastrophic damage?

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for the DCCC (10/14-15, likely voters):

Suzanne Kosmas (D): 58

Tom Feeney (R-inc): 35

(MoE: ±4.9%)

You got that? These numbers are almost too good to be true. Feeney’s personal favorable rating is nearly at Tim Mahoney-like levels: 28-51. Kosmas is still far less well-known, with only a 37-11 rating.

If this poll is anywhere close to accurate, Feeney is screwed. The ball is now in his court (and the NRCC’s) to give us numbers that say otherwise.

The Tarrance Group for the NRCC (10/15-16, likely voters, 10/9 in parens):

Tim Mahoney (D-inc): 29 (56)

Tom Rooney (R): 55 (31)

(MoE: ±5.8%)

With numbers that bad, no wonder you’re hearing rumors about Mahoney dropping out of the race. And I don’t think would be a bad call for him — this guy has some serious personal problems that he has to deal with.

Bonus finding: Mahoney’s personal favorable rating has nosedived to 28-53.

What’s especially interesting is that Rooney was getting completely pasted even in the NRCC’s own numbers, pre-scandal. This wasn’t much of a pickup opportunity until Mahoney self-destructed.

As her Republican opponent files the biggest single quarter fundraising report from a Kansas congressional candidate in the state’s history, Congresswoman Nancy Boyda (D-KS) actually finds herself increasingly more secure in her first re-election bid.

Even with a $681,000 quarter and running in a district that went to George W. Bush by double digits, Republican Kansas State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins woke up today to not only still find herself behind in cash-on-hand, but she also had to read that The Cook Political Report had moved the race in the Kansas 2nd out of the “Toss Up” column and into “Leans Democratic.”  

The question is: Why?

For those of us on the ground, it’s easy to see the answer to that question.

Over the course of the last 2 years, Boyda has been an able representative- never quite liberal enough for the liberals, and never quite conservative enough for the conservatives.  Instead she has been a very traditional Kansas Democrat, bucking the party when it doesn’t represent her district’s interests.  While that hasn’t always made her popular with lots different interest groups, it has left her quite popular and well-regarded back at home.

Also, the simple fact the folk back at home have seen so much of Boyda has made a massive difference in the way she’s perceived in district.  Boyda has held hundreds of public meetings, has been home nearly every single weekend (save the few she spent in Iraq and Afghanistan- including Christmas 2007), and her constituent services office has been open and accessible, potentially the very best in Kansas.

While those things certainly have insulated Boyda, in at least some regard, to the ceaseless partisan attacks she’s been bludgeoned with for two years, simply coming home a lot and being available only goes so far for a Democrat in an R+7 district.  Why, then, is a Republican like Jenkins having such a hard time gaining traction in this previously reliably Republican district- and why has The Cook Political Report moved this race out of the toss up category this late in the game?

All you need to do is open a district newspaper to find out.

Over the course of the last two weeks, Lynn Jenkins has been hit by two revelations that went straight to the core of her candidacy (the fact that, as a CPA and a competent state treasurer, she could better manage the fiscal house of the United States than Boyda) and have totally derailed her bid.

First: While campaigning against former Congressman Jim Ryun in the Republican primary, Jenkins skipped every single monthly meeting of the Kansas Public Employee Retirement System Board of Trustees- while that fund, which provides for the pensions of every state employee and school teacher in Kansas, lost more than $1 billion.

Missing board meetings certainly isn’t a sexy scandal, but it resonated in the district, if only because Jenkins had been hitting Boyda hard for months for Boyda’s infamous 10-minute “walkout” on Ret. Gen. Jack Keane from a 2007 Armed Services Committee meeting, with Jenkins saying Boyda wasn’t doing her job because she left the room.  Unfortunately for Jenkins, when the voters compared the two it was all too obvious who actually wasn’t doing their job and who’s lax attention to their duties had actually harmed the people of Kansas.

Jenkins dug herself deeper when she wouldn’t explain where she had been instead of at the meetings, only to state she was “busy” and that she has “a lot of balls in the air” at the current time.  Oh, also, Jenkins said she was never actually out of contact with the board, and that she communicated with everyone via email.  But, in the very same newspaper piece she was quoted saying that, the Executive Director of KPERS said:

(KPERS executive director Glenn Deck) said he hadn’t received any e-mails or phone calls from Jenkins recently and said he wasn’t aware of others receiving contact either.

“I don’t think so because I think I would be copied,” Deck said.

He also said he wasn’t aware of feedback Jenkins has provided to the board while she was away.

Ouch.

It got worse for Jenkins October 16 when the Topeka Capital-Journal ran a story revealing that, during her terms as state treasurer, the state of Kansas misallocated upwards of $15 million in motor fuel taxes in the way payments were made out to Kansas counties.  The accounting error that led to the mismanagement of funds wasn’t the fault of the Jenkins administration, and her staff did indeed find the flaw after using the wrong formula for six years.

But our story gets better.  So, for six years Lynn Jenkins either overpaid or shortchanged Kansas counties- millions of dollars potentially mismanaged.  After her staff discovered the error, she dashed off a letter to the governor’s office alerting her and then Lynn…did nothing…for two months.  Not a single word to any counties to let them know they might be asked to repay thousands back to the state in their next fiscal year- nor notification that they may be receiving extra cash, either.  By the time she got around to telling the counties what had happened, 2009 fiscal year budgets were already set and we can promise you not one county in Kansas budgeted an extra $150,000 just in case Lynn Jenkins screwed up.  If Jenkins had moved appropriately, counties might have been able to adjust to repay the state (or, of course, absorb new funds), but she didn’t.  

One last bit: Still to this day the treasurer’s office has not produced a spreadsheet showing where overpayments and underpayments have occured, so Kansas counties still have no idea what they might owe.  

Eventually someone’s going to have to pay for Lynn Jenkins’ mismanagement, and, sadly, it’s going to be the taxpayers of Kansas.

Lynn Jenkins’ star was near particularly bright- generally, the people of the Kansas 2nd seem happy with Congresswoman Nancy Boyda.  But, over the course of the last two weeks, Jenkins’ task ahead became much, much more difficult- all because she’s really not good at the job she already has.  When you’re running a campaign based solely on the fact you’re really competent and that you’ll be able to “clean up Washington,” nothing is more damaging that it being revealed that you’re really, really just not competent.

Boyda’s reelection certainly won’t be a blow out, and Jenkins has already tried her best to distort Boyda’s record in an effort to make her own record problems go away, but, for those of you wondering why The Cook Political Report had decided this race was a little less close than it was a couple of weeks ago, we hope this provides a little local perspective.