Swing State Project

Because everyone loves to read about direct mail, here’s a round-up of the DCCC’s most recent expenditures in the past 24 hours:

• IL-11: $39,000 on a media buy, $21,000 on direct mail, and $2000 on phonebanking in support of Debbie Halvorson
• TX-22: $44,000 on a media buy in support of Nick Lampson (Update: Video here.)
• NJ-07: $13,000 on direct mail in support of Linda Stender

To tally all that up for you, the DCCC has so far spent $149K in IL-11, $39K in NJ-07, and $97K in TX-22.

On the Senate side of things, the SEIU has ponied up some serious dough in New Hampshire ($600K) and Oregon ($500K) for a pair of ads hitting John Sununu and Gordon Smith:

This may sting a little:

After softening up scandal-encrusted GOP Rep. Don Young (FL-AL AK-AL) with a $100,000 ad buy in July, the Club For Growth is going in for what it hopes is the killing stroke: a massive $350,000 negative ad campaign for the last two weeks of his primary campaign against Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell and state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux.

A buy of this size is gargantuan for Alaska’s dirt cheap media market, and the ads will likely saturate broadcast and cable to an extreme degree. I’d love to see the point size of this buy, because I bet it’s eye-popping.

Apparently Bill Sali’s bad case of “brain fade” impairs his ability to read a map, because he has opened his campaign headquarters for his race to win a second term in ID-01… in ID-02. [Link is behind paid firewall; sorry!]

Idaho congressman Bill Sali has opened a new campaign office just upstairs from his congressional office in Boise – both of them in the 2nd Congressional District. Sali represents the 1st District.

“It’s a convenient location, and it’s a centralized location where people can interact easier with the congressional office,” said Sali spokesman Wayne Hoffman. “It’s in downtown Boise. A lot of people come downtown to see the offices of their elected officials.”

So there’s not only the matter of being in the wrong district, but this also raises the question of building the proper separation between campaign and congressional offices. Oh, well… based on Sali’s skill at filing his FEC notices, it’s not like he’s let a few “rules” ever get in his way.

Democratic opponent Walt Minnick has an office located in the western part of Boise, in ID-01. (He also has almost twice as much cash on hand as Sali.)

UPDATE: Wow, Sali’s not the only one. Turns out John Shadegg’s campaign HQ is in AZ-04 instead of AZ-03, too!

Here’s Dave Reichert’s conundrum. On the one hand, he needs money. Cycle after cycle, he’s being constantly outraised by Darcy Burner. But there’s lots of free money out there available from Republican-leaning lobbyists, including from the mysterious Club 218, who organized a fundraiser for Reichert right before the August recess. Some of Club 218’s members are involved in defense industry lobbying, including:

Roll Call recently listed some of Club 218’s members, including Mike Chappell, a lobbyist for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. at Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock and Christopher Cox, a D.C. Navigators lobbyist for Alabama Aircraft Industries….

On the other hand, Reichert has 19,000 Boeing employees in his district. You might consider Boeing to be a major parochial interest for anyone who represents WA-08, and thus not expect someone who barely won last time to do anything that would piss off any of those Boeing workers. Like, say, hobnob with EADS, the parent company of French Freedom airplane maker Airbus and Boeing’s competition in the ginormous air tanker contract dispute:

EADS is teamed with Northrop Grumman in the tanker competition, to assemble the tanker in Mobile, Ala.

Today the Seattle Times is reporting that while EADS lobbyist Chappell didn’t give Reichert a check at the fundraiser, yesterday he gave Reichert $500. (Sensing a loser on his hands in the wake of the Politico story, Reichert has refused to accept the money.)

I’ve been trying to think of an analogy that might help contextualize this for non-Seattle-area residents, but am not having much luck, simply because there aren’t too many industries that are controlled by a duopoly, where the two competing companies each have a strong regional identity. Maybe if an Atlanta-area representative took a check from Pepsi… but there’s still no multi-billion-dollar contract decision pending on whether the federal government will stock only Coke or Pepsi in all its vending machines. So think of it this way: what would the reaction in WI-08 be if Steve Kagen was kissing up to a lobbyist from the Minnesota Vikings?

Today has been proof that election news need not stop when the Olympics happen.  Instead, there have been several fairly important stories to come out today, four of which will be covered here.

Cross-Posted from Loaded Orygun: http://www.loadedorygun.net/sh…

Nader tries to sneak in the back door:

Link: http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/08/nader_trying_to_slip_onto_the.html#more

I had been saying for a while that I didn’t see how Nader was going to make the ballot in Oregon this fall given that I had not seen any apparent effort by his supporters to mount a signature campaign.  That maybe changing as last week a new political party (the “Peace” party) emerged from the shadows and submitted 25,000 signatures to qualify their party for the ballot.  Assuming they have sufficient signatures (they need between 20-21,000 valid ones, which is far from certain), this would grant them automatic ballot access.  According to Jeff Mapes of the Oregonian, they are then likely to nominate Nader.  I don’t think it’ll have much of an impact because people love Obama, it’s not likely to be that close and Nader has lost a lot of power here, but it’s worth watching.

Whither fusion voting?:

Link: http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/08/independent_party_goes_to_cour.html

The Independent Party of Oregon, now the third-largest party in the state, filed a lawsuit Wednesday to force the state to allow fusion-voting.  For those of you not from the Northeast, fusion voting is where multiple parties are allowed to nominate the same candidate.   The votes for that candidate are combined among all the parties they are nominated by.

For example:

Candidate A is nominated only by the Republican Party and gets 45% of the vote.

Candidate B is nominated by the Democratic Party and the Independent Party, they got 40% of the vote as a Democrat and 15% as an Independent Party member for a total of 55% of the vote, meaning candidate B wins.

Except action on this soon as the ballot deadline is August 26.

Gordon Smith ducks the McCain campaign:

Link: http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/08/gordon_smith_wont_be_a_mccain.html

Gordon Smith continued to run away from the State GOP today as he announced that he will not be on John McCain’s Oregon steering committee.  Smith, who would otherwise prefer that no one remember he is really a Bush Republican, had already announced that he will not go to the Republican Convention next month.  Interesting to see what kind of impact this will have with a GOP electorate that was not his biggest fan to begin with.

Craig Robinson, Obama’s brother-in-law and Oregon State Basketball Coach, will speak in Denver:

Link: http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/08/osu_basketball_coach_will_spea.html

In the fun category, it has been announced that Obama’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, will introduce his sister Michelle on the first night of the Democratic Convention in Denver.  Should be fun to watch.

Let me know what you think.

The Associated Press is reporting that “A gunman entered Arkansas Democratic Party headquarters and shot the party chairman, who is hospitalized in critical condition, authorities said.

The gunman asked to speak to the party chairman, Bill Gwatney, and fired three shots.”  

Gwatney’s secretary refused entry but the man just went in to his office according to Gwatney’s secretary.  The gunman was described as a white man in his 40s driving a blue pick up truck.  Police chased the assailant for twenty miles before engaging in a shoot out and killing the alleged shooter outside of Little Rock.

No reason is given for Gwatney’s attempted murder in the article.  It was briefly on the front page of the NY Times but has been dumped off to the inside pages of the paper’s internet edition.  CNN reports no reason but says that the man went to a neighboring building and was muttering about losing his job.  Gwatney is a new car dealer besides holding his party position.

It is worth noting that none of the state’s four House seats nor a US Senate seat up for election this cycle are being contested (leaving four Dems and Rep unopposed).

Get a load of this. At an Association of Commerce and Industry candidate forum for the open seat race in New Mexico’s 2nd CD, Sante Fe Republican Ed Tinsley decided to let loose his inner Limbaugh when criticizing Democrat Harry Teague’s support of withdrawal from Iraq:

“How can I call my two nephews over there right now … and tell them I’m running against a guy that will cut your throat — that will cut the bottom out of your funding,” Tinsley said.

Wow, talk about getting ugly. The crowd, of course, drowned out Tinsley with a rousing chorus of boos.

LP asks: “Did we find Ed Tinsley’s macaca moment?” Maybe so. Check out NM FBIHOP for the video.

SSP currently rates this race as Lean Republican.

Capital Survey Research Center (8/6-7,11, likely voters):

Bobby Bright (D): 47

Jay Love (R): 37

(MoE: ±4.4%)

More great numbers for Bright, and they confirm the spread of a recent Anzalone-Liszt internal (conducted just days before this poll) which had Bright leading Love by 50-40.

Love has countered with his own internal poll showing him leading Bright by 41-39. Those numbers may very well have been accurate snapshot of the race, but Love’s poll was conducted in the immediate afterglow of his run-off victory against Harri Ann Smith, and before Bright’s Montgomery and Dothan ad buys had sunken in.

An excerpt from the polling memo is available below the fold.

Here it is:

That’s just the second ad that the DSCC had aired against Dole. The committee has already spent $800,000 on its first ad targeting Liddy’s effectiveness, and has reserved a whopping $7.3 million in airtime in the state after Labor Day. Despite NRSC Chair John Ensign’s fervent pledge to match the DSCC “dollar for dollar“, we haven’t heard a peep from the Republican committee so far in North Carolina.

This contest is getting hotter by the day.

SSP currently rates this race as Lean Republican.

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

Josh Zeitz is the Democratic nominee in New Jersey’s Fourth Congressional district. He is running against Republican Chris Smith, who has backed George Bush’s economic and foreign policies and who serves as the chair of the anti-choice caucus in the House.

Chris Smith says that he wants to run on his record in Congress. Unfortunately, there are parts of his record that voters may find less than appealing. We are going to tell voters about some things Chris Smith doesn’t want you to know about his record, like his opposition to ethics reform.

In 2006, Chris Smith voted against comprehensive ethics reform. The legislation would have banned travel on corporate jets, prohibit lobbyist gifts, and slow the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. It would also require disclosure of earmarks so that special interest provisions receive public scrutiny. The measure applied to all special interest earmarks including the Alaska Bridge to Nowhere. It would force Members of Congress disclose if they had a financial interest in the earmark. (Vote 4448, 2006. Leadership Document, “Democrats Fight To Clean Up Culture Of Corruption; Republicans Fail To Change Washington,” 9/14/06)

“Voters deserve to know why Chris Smith voted against banning corrupt lobbying practices and hidden earmarks,” said Josh Zeitz campaign manager, Steve D’Amico.

If you’d like to volunteer, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit Josh’s website to learn more about why we need to elect Josh to Congress.