Swing State Project

Everybody’s favorite group of Republican purity trolls, the Club for Growth, has weighed in in the primary for the Alaska at-large house race, and they’re supporting the challenger, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

Club President Pat Rooney made the case in a Wall Street Journal commentary today entitled simply “Don Young Embodies What’s Wrong With the GOP:”

Mr. Parnell is a solid conservative who led the fight for lower taxes and spending in the state legislature, and joined Gov. Sarah Palin in pushing for reform in the state. The man he is hoping to replace isn’t economically conservative in the least. Mr. Young is actually a poster child for what has gone wrong with the Republican Party in Washington.

Toomey’s commentary, interestingly, steers clear of the fact that Young is under Justice Dept. investigation for ties to Veco, and is armpit-deep in legal fees. Instead, it just focuses on the great right-wing walkback of 2008: that the GOP brand has failed because Republicans haven’t been conservative enough. They’re addicted to earmarks and subsidies (like the “Bridge to Nowhere” and the Coconut Road interchange in Young’s case), and if we just remove those, the clouds will lift and St. Reagan will return to walk the earth again.

But instead of using his power to steer Republicans down a principled, conservative track, he helped derail the GOP train in 2006. Mr. Young spends taxpayer money so wastefully he could make a liberal Democrat blush.

It’s worth noting this is a convenient way for Club for Growth to claim the scalp of one of the less conservative GOP representatives (for all his bluster and corruption, Young was in fact a vote for minimum wage increase, for SCHIP, and for stem cell research)… even though Young’s impending loss has little to do with bedrock conservatism and more to do with Alaska finally being ready to turn the page on its tradition of corruption.

Unfortunately, a Parnell victory in the primary might make our pickup of AK-AL more difficult in the fall, as Parnell is perceived as ‘clean,’ and an ally of popular GOP governor Sarah Palin. Here’s hoping Don Young can survive CfG intervention in the Aug. 26 primary and forestall his demise until November!

SSP currently rates this race as a Tossup.

What the heck happened in Montana?

http://www.billingsgazette.net…

U.S. House, District 1 (At-Large)

Democratic Primary

Driscoll , John Dem 70,205 49%

Hunt , Jim Dem 59,425 42%

Candee , Robert Dem 12,476 9%

U.S. Senate

Republican Primary

Kelleher , Bob GOP 26,765 36%

Lange , Michael GOP 16,959 23%

Bushman , Kirk GOP 15,393 21%

Lovaas , Patty GOP 7,604 10%

Pearson , Anton GOP 4,215 6%

Garnett , Shay GOP 2,774 4%

We already know about Bob Kelleher, but isn’t John Driscoll also a perennial candidate?

John Driscoll AND Bob Kelleher?  What’s going on here?  Some sort of love affair with perennial candidates or something?  Or did Montana voters just not really care?

It must be a bad time to be a Colorado Republican. Barack Obama is in good shape to carry the state’s electoral votes, Mark Udall is looking more and more likely to pick up the vacant Senate seat, and now, everyone is becoming bearish about Marilynne Musgave’s chances of re-election.

The bad news comes from two sources. First, the website Coloradopols.com that Republicans at the recently held State Convention have already given up on her.

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was a dead woman walking on Saturday. Supporters of Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, as well as Rep. Cory Gardner, were telling delegates that should Musgrave lose to Democrat Betsy Markey this November, they will both immediately announce their candidacies. Both were privately telling delegates that Musgrave is a lost cause.

Secondly come details of why the Cook Political Report has shifted their classification from “Lean Republican” to “Tossup”, as reported by PolitickerCO.

House editor David Wasserman explained in the Cook Political Report that Democratic candidate Betsy Markey “has finally gotten her campaign operation into shape” against incumbent U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Fort Morgan).

Democratic strategists, Wasserman added, “also say she carries less baggage than 2006 nominee Angie Paccione, who came within three points of defeating Musgrave.”

Another factor, Wasserman noted, is that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama stands to do very well among CO-4 voters.

Meanwhile, private polls show Musgrave is “badly struggling,” Wasserman said in his explanation.

It’s worth noting that Musgove’s campaign would not return any calls. Short of Obama getting elected, nothing would please me more than knocking Musgrove off. Go, Betsy, go.

New York Conservatives met tonight in Staten Island to endorse a candidate to replace disgraced and retiring Rep. Vito Fossella, but they couldn’t agree on a pick, according to the Staten Island Advance.

Brooklyn Conservatives and state party chair Michael Long want to support Republican Frank Powers, but Staten Island Conservatives want to see their line given to Democrat Mike McMahon:

Borough President James P. Molinaro, who did not attend the convention because he is out of town, minced no words about his choice, calling McMahon “the better man for the job.”

“He knows the problems of Staten Island better than anyone,” Molinaro said. “He’s shown he can get things done.” […]

But Long and Brooklyn Conservative leaders are vetoing McMahon because he voted in favor of property-tax hikes and congestion pricing, and because he favors abortion rights.

“He has not put together a Conservative record,” Long, a Brooklynite, told the Advance tonight. “He voted for every tax that came down the pike in the Council.”

Long said, “I don’t want to give [Democratic House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi another vote.”

The disagreement leaves the coveted endorsement up in the air for now:

Island and Brooklyn Conservatives will continue to debate the endorsement. If the two sides can’t agree, the question will go before the state Conservative executive committee in July, where Long will hold great sway.

In the meantime, it is believed that Island Conservatives will gather petition signatures for McMahon. Kassar said he will gather signatures for Powers on the Brooklyn side.

“I think we will have success getting Frank Powers on the ballot,” he said.

In other news, Libertarian hopeful Fran Powers (son of Frank) is dismayed that his father has begun questioning his “lifestyle” in the press.

Republicans talked a good game at the start of the cycle about the wealth of pick-up opportunities they had in 2008. SSP favorite Tom Cole, boasted of his party’s chances in the Almanac of American Politics that “2008 will be a year to hunt with a shotgun, not a rifle.” Sure, but look who’s holding the gun now.

One such district that the GOP hoped to put in play was North Carolina’s 11th CD, an R+7 district that supported Bush by a 14-point margin in 2004. But things haven’t gone exactly as planned.

First, ex-Rep. Charles Taylor, whom Shuler beat by a healthy margin in ’06, dithered on whether he’d seek a rematch for most of 2007, putting a serious damper on candidate recruitment. When all was said and done, the GOP was left with two recruits: Asheville City Councilor Carl Mumpower and Henderson Co. GOP Chair Spence Campbell. While Campbell had more fundraising potential (he had raised and self-funded a total of $217K through April 16), Mumpower won the May 6th primary.

A Mumpower candidacy brings a number of problems for Republicans. First, he’s not exactly well-funded. As of April 16, he’s only raised $27,000 and has $2000 on-hand. And it sure doesn’t sound like the situation is going to improve any time soon:

Republican candidate for Congress in the 11th Congressional District Carl Mumpower sees a new path to Capital Hill, and it is paved with $5 bills. Mumpower launched a new campaign strategy to fund his run for Congress with $5 donations. Called the “Lincoln Campaign,” the effort seeks to distance Mumpower from political action committees and large-dollar donors.

“I am committed to not accepting any PAC, union, party, or other special interest monies to help me buy a seat in,” Mumpower said in a released statement.

Yup, that’s right — his fundraising will come in $5 increments. He even told the NRCC to shove it:

“I got a call from the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) earlier today,” Mumpower said Wednesday afternoon. “And I told them we were not interested in their money. I believe that organization has passively supported our leadership in abandoning their principles, and I have no interest in aligning myself with a self-serving organization.”

Mumpower said he got quite a reaction for that stance.

“I think they were a little stunned,” Mumpower said. “Maybe there’s a better word for that. I think they were a little surprised. But I’m not interested in the tail wagging the dog. I’m going to run an authentic maverick campaign.”

In this case, I definitely think we can all agree that Mumpower actually is running an “authentic maverick campaign.” Take his recent comments arguing that President Bush should be impeached for his failure to adequately protect the border. That might be one way to “distance yourself” from an unpopular president, but it’s not going to help you raise the funds and profile needed to defeat an incumbent who hasn’t made any fireable offenses in his first term in office.

Due to Mumpower’s sheer flakiness, SSP is changing its rating of this race from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic.

SSP’s full House race ratings are available here.

I just had to do a diary on this story.  It’s simply too incredible to believe.  We all knew that republicans had no serious challenger for Montana’s Democratic Senator Max Baucus, but they did have a state Representative Michael Lange was was supposed to win their primary with little trouble.  Well, that didn’t happen.  In fact the guy who won the republican primary this week by a 13% margin could more accurately be called a socialist or Green party member than a republican.  

Meet 85 year old Bob Kelleher.  Until this week when he won the primary Kelleher didn’t even have his own domain website.  He had what amounted to an AOL personal webpage and essentially didn’t even campaign for the nomination.  Basically everything on his new website is “under construction” with dead-end links.

Here is Kelleher’s prior electoral history:

http://www.ourcampaigns.com/Ca…

1968 – Ran for MT-02 congressional district as a Democrat.  Lost the general by a 68-32% margin

1980, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996: – Ran for Montana Governor as a Democrat.  Lost every primary with less than 26% of the vote.

2002 – Ran for U.S. Senate as a Green and received 2% of the vote.

2004 – Ran for MT Governor as a Green and received 1.9% of the vote.

2006 – Ran for MT Senate as a Republican and received 4% of the vote.

That’s right- he’s run for office as a Democrat, Republican AND Green.

http://www.bobkelleher2008.com/

Some of his stances I pulled off of his old website before it was taken down:

http://www.votesmart.org/speec…

– In one of the republican debates Kelleher blasted his rivals for not pushing for serious gun control legislation.  Uhh… ya.  I’m sure pro-gun control candidates are wildly popular in Montana.

– Supports legalization of marijuana and other drugs.

– Anti Social Security Privatization

– Pro healthcare reform, apparently supports universal healthcare.

– In favor or eliminating the Bush Tax Cuts.

– Staunchly protectionist and anti free-trade.

– Wants the U.S. to change it’s government to European style Parlimentary form.  Yes… I’m dead serious.

– Wants immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Needless to say this should be one of the most entertaining races of the cycle.  We have a republican candidate who is running on a more liberal platform than his democratic opponent Max Baucus, in a republican leaning state.

And one last thing, Kelleher has some kickass eyebrows.  I’d probably vote for him over Max Baucus, that’s for sure.

Roll Call (subscription required) is reporting that Vern Buchanan has been hit with a lawsuit alleging consumer fraud at the auto dealerships that he owns. In and of itself, this might not be huge news; this isn’t a criminal indictment, so when you’re in the same party as the Doolittles, Renzis, and Fossellas of the world, a little civil action isn’t even going to get you noticed, right? (The Sarasota Herald Tribune has a story here about the basics of the case.)

There are some eye-raising details to the case that Roll Call raises, though, suggesting that campaign finance violations in his 2006 run for Congress may be intertwined with the fraud allegations. FLA Politics has some excerpts:

Joseph Kezer, a former finance director at Buchanan’s Sarasota Ford dealership … Kezer also alleged in an interview with Roll Call that he observed campaign finance violations ahead of Buchanan’s narrow 2006 victory against bank executive Christine Jennings (D)…

Some of the Buchanan campaign’s record $8 million outlay in the 2006 campaign, according to Kezer, likely was laundered corporate cash funneled through higher-ups at Buchanan’s numerous dealerships.

Buchanan faces a rematch against 2006 opponent Christine Jennings, against whom he won by 369 votes against a backdrop of malfunctioning electronic voting machines… well, assuming he’s still a free man in November.

You might remember that in the summer of 2006, Democracy Corps (Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and friends) released a poll that was a real “holy crap” moment for the blogosphere, the first time many of us realized “Wow, we could actually win 20 or 30 seats in the fall!” It wasn’t a poll of one seat, but rather, a poll with a huge sample size drawn from dozens of potentially competitive House districts… and it indicated that we had a good shot at winning many of those districts, which, lo and behold, we did.

Democracy Corps is back with a sequel, and it predicts similarly big results in 2008. It’s particularly impressive compared with just how far we’ve come since they did a similar poll in January 2008 (of 40 of the 45 Republican-held districts surveyed in the most recent poll; they added five more because of the expanding battleground). (Not coincidentally, January 2008 was the start of the hotly contested presidential primary… y’know, the one that was supposed to have torn us apart into a bunch of warring factions and killed our chances in November.)

We’ll start with the most basic component: the congressional named vote (where the name of the incumbent Republican is used, while a generic Democrat was referenced), for all 45 districts taken together.

Democracy Corps (5/19-26, likely voters):

Democratic candidate: 50 (45)

Republican candidate: 43 (46)

That’s a move from a one-point loss to a seven-point lead over half a year… and bear in mind, this isn’t a national poll that encompasses Democratic-held seats, only the most threatened Republican-held seats. But they then take the additional step of breaking the races down into Tier I and Tier II races (see here for the precise list of districts, but for the most part they pretty closely track SSP’s list of toss-ups and of lean/likely Rs). We’ve moved from a +6 to +9 advantage in Tier I races, and from a -6 to +3 advantage in Tier II races.

Tier I

Democratic candidate: 51 (48)

Republican candidate: 42 (42)

Tier II

Democratic candidate: 48 (43)

Republican candidate: 45 (49)

The poll also asks for job approval of the Republican incumbents, mentioned by name. Their approval rating has appreciably and ominously declined, down into the thirties (even though the gap between ‘approve’ and ‘disapprove’ hasn’t dropped as much; they’re at +5 approval rather than a +6 approval).

Approve: 38 (43)

Disapprove: 33 (37)

Participants were read one of two statements: “In November, I really want to be able to vote for a Democrat for Congress because at least he or she will fight for change,” and “In November I will vote for [incumbent Republican] because the new Democratic congress is just business as usual and getting no more done than the last one.” They were then asked which statement they agreed with, and whether they did so strongly or not so strongly. The results show a large gap in favor of the Democrats, and significant growth since January. (There’s a whiff of push-polliness about this one, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Vote for a Democrat, agree strongly: 44 (36)

Vote for a Democrat, agree not so strongly: 11 (13)

Vote for a Democrat, combined: 55 (49)

Vote to reelect, agree strongly: 28 (26)

Vote to reelect, agree not so strongly: 9 (15)

Vote to reelect, combined: 37 (41)

I don’t want to get too deep into the individual issues on this one (there’s a ton of interesting material here; click on the links for more detail), but there’s one particular highlight for me that I wanted to share, which indicates just how much the dialogue has shifted since 2004, when gay marriage hysteria helped decide the election. (I didn’t see anything about this being asked in January, so no comparison numbers.) If these numbers are coming exclusively from Republican-held battleground districts, basically, gay hysteria is dead as a wedge issue. It’s over and done.

Participants were read paragraphs that contain “But I oppose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage because decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been,” and “We need a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and preserve the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.” Again, they were asked whether they agreed with the Democratic or Republican statement, and whether they did so strongly or not so strongly.

Democratic statement, agree strongly: 35

Democratic statement, agree not so strongly: 17

Democratic statement, combined: 52

Republican statement, agree strongly: 33

Republican statement, agree not so strongly: 10

Republican statement, combined: 43

In general, this can’t be seen as a promise of winning 45 seats. And with a sample of 1,600 divided by 45, that’s only a sample of 36 per seat, so it doesn’t have any particular value for any one particular seat. But this poll has to be seen as suggesting that we have the upper hand in the 21 Tier 1 seats, and are likely to win a number of the 24 Tier 2 seats as well.

(H/t to RandySF and Andy Dufresne.)

A new poll has just been released by the Bob Lord campaign indicating that incumbent John Shadegg is vulnerable. However, a lot of info is missing, according to Roll Call.

Polling memos are only as valuable as the numbers in them. A May 27 Bennett, Petts & Normington memo in Arizona’s 3rd district claims that Rep. John Shadegg (R) is “extremely vulnerable” but provides few and flimsy numbers from the actual survey to support the claim.

The May 18-20 survey, conducted for Shadegg’s Democratic challenger, attorney Bob Lord, showed the Congressman with a 31 percent re-elect number and 75 percent name identification….

It’s the numbers missing from the polling memo that tell the real story. The initial head-to-head ballot between Shadegg and Lord is nowhere to be found. Want Shadegg’s job approval number? Won’t find it here. The favorable/unfavorable numbers for the candidates (including Lord’s name ID) are not included either.

The poll included a bonus on the presidential race that may or may not be accurate.

The survey (and memo) also showed a presidential matchup, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) leading Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) 48 percent to 43 percent in a district President Bush won with 58 percent in 2004. If McCain is underperforming Bush by 10 points in Arizona, Republicans should brace themselves for an electoral massacre that will make 2006 look like a birthday party.