• CA-Sen: Hell hath no fury like a teabagger scorned, and now the swarm is turning its anger on the queen bee. Even Sarah Palin’s popularity apparently has limits, as she’s getting all sorts of blowback (at her Facebook page, mostly) from California’s right-wingers upset over her endorsement of corporate GOPer Carly Fiorina instead of true believer Chuck DeVore.
• KY-Sen: Research 2000, on behalf of various local news outlets, polled the primaries in Kentucky, finding, in the Democratic field, Dan Mongiardo leading Jack Conway 39-32 (with 12 opting for one of the three minor candidates). On the GOP side, Rand Paul leads Trey Grayson 44-32. The same poll has perilously low approvals for Majority leader Mitch McConnell, down to 41/49. And guess who’s taking notice? Democratic state Auditor Crit Luallen — one of our commenters, nrimmer, reports that she’s sending out fundraising e-mails raising the possibility of a 2014 challenge.
Dan Mongiardo is also out with an internal poll, in the wake of the Conway camp releasing one with Conway in the lead. Mongo’s poll, taken by Garin Hart Yang, has him up 46-34 (although he can’t be psyched about the trendlines; his internal poll from February had him up 43-25). One other note from this race: an Iowa-based group, American Future Fund, is running an anti-Paul ad on TV. AFF claims to be about “free market views,” so I’m not sure what their beef with Paul is (you don’t get much more free market than that), but at any rate, their ad features a chiming cuckoo clock in it, which nicely underscores Paul’s, um, cuckoo-ness.
• NC-Sen: Third-place finisher Kenneth Lewis finds himself in something of the kingmaker’s seat, after preventing Elaine Marshall or Cal Cunningham from avoiding a runoff in the Democratic primary. Lewis says he’s not sure who he’ll endorse or even if he will endorse, but both camps are, naturally, reaching out to him and his supporters (including Mel Watt and Harvey Gantt).
• PA-Sen/PA-Gov (pdf): There’s clearly a lot of day-to-day volatility in the Muhlenberg/Morning Call daily tracker of the Dem primaries, but you can’t deny this is a blockbuster result: Joe Sestak has drawn even with Arlen Specter for the first time, as they tie at 43-all today. Maybe that ad with all those purdy pictures of him with George Bush and Sarah Palin is having the desired effect? On the gubernatorial side, Dan Onorato is at 35, Joe Hoeffel at 11, Anthony Williams at 10, and Jack Wagner at 8.
• UT-Sen: Tomorrow may well be the end of the line for Bob Bennett, the three-term Senator from Utah. He’s poised to get kicked to the curb at tomorrow’s nominating convention by his state’s far-right activist base for the crime of actually trying to legislate. Bennett’s getting some last-minute hits from robocalls from the Gun Owners of America, but that’s pretty tame compared with some of the other over-the-top attacks being leveled at other candidates (like Mike Lee as Hitler?). Michael Steele, wary of treading on the base’s toes in a no-win situation, has announced his staying neutral in the nominating process.
• MA-Gov: Looks like you don’t want to get on Tim Cahill’s bad side (or maybe more accurately, on the bad side of media consultant John Weaver, who’s also working on the oddball campaigns of Rick Snyder in Michigan and Steve Levy in New York). After a hard hit from the RGA, the Cahill camp retaliated with a web video pegging RGA chair Haley Barbour as a Confederate sympathizer and corrupt lobbyist. The RGA fired back saying the Cahill camp had responded like “scalded apes” (strange metaphor, but it has a certain evocative charm).
• OR-Gov: That SurveyUSA poll that had Republican primary results that was leaked a few days ago is fully available now, and it also contains Democratic primary results. John Kitzhaber seems poised to roll over Bill Bradbury; he leads 54-16. (As reported earlier, Chris Dudley led on the GOP side, although only at 28%.)
• RI-Gov: The DGA is going on the offensive against independent Lincoln Chafee, seeing him (and certainly not Republican John Robitaille) as their main impediment to picking up the governor’s office. They’ve launched an anti-Chafee site… and here’s an indication of the candidates’ positioning in this scrambled race: they’re actually attacking Chafee from the right, focusing on Chafee’s love of taxes.
• HI-01: One candidate who isn’t running away from Barack Obama is Ed Case, who’s up with a new TV ad throwing his arms around the hometown favorite. “Only one candidate is strong enough to stand with the President: Ed Case!” intones the ad. Despite the White House’s behind-the-scenes finger-on-the-scale, though, Obama hasn’t officially come out in favor of Case.
• ID-01: I wonder what think tank the right-wing’s current fixation with the 17th Amendment recently bubbled up from? I thought it was a weird aberration when Steve Stivers started up about it, but now it’s an issue in the GOP primary in the 1st, where all of a sudden the two contestants, Raul Labrador and Vaughn Ward, are trying to out-Seventeenther each other. Has Frank Luntz actually tried running the idea through one of his focus groups of taking away people’s rights to vote for their Senators? Somehow I doubt it polls well.
• WATN?: Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Former Republican state Senate majority leader Joe Bruno just got sentenced to two years in federal prison for fraud and abuse of office. It’s worth noting, though, that the sentence was stayed until the SCOTUS can rule on the “honest services” issue that’s before it, so it could be a long time, if ever, before Bruno’s wearing stripes.
http://www.dailykos.com/statep…
Scott Lee Cohen is drawing 6% of Dems (and 0% Republicans) away from Quinn, but even in a straight-up Brady/Quinn match-up, the GOP-er is still slightly ahead.
Michael Steele is a complete joke. Bob Bennett has been a rank and file republican in his 3 terms in the US Senate. It ceases to amaze me how Steele can just “stay neutral” when a loyal incumbent is about to fall.
OTOH, most political observers from both sides of the aisle knows that Steele is a joke, so maybe Steele is doing Bennett a favor.
Sestak’s new ad is devestating. Arlen’s going to regret the gift of a quote that he gave to Sestak: “My changing parties is going to allow me to be re-elect…ed.” He sounds like a movie villain wringing his hands as he unveils his new, sinister plot.
Without the 17th amendment what does the constitution say about Senators? Is it, the issue is left up the states or does it say specifically state’s will pick Senators through their state legislatures?
There’s that one little angle on NC-Sen that you didn’t explicitly mention: race. Neither Marshall nor Cunningham did particularly well (or particularly poorly, for that matter) with black voters in the primary. Instead, black voters and community leaders seemed to plump heavily for the African-American Lewis.
With their support now up for grabs, Lewis and other local black political leaders possess an inordinate amount of influence in determining which way the black vote ultimately swings in the run-off between two white candidates. Thus, this is an interesting little quote from Lewis:
On the one hand, this would seem to suggest he’ll opt for the slightly more liberal of the two candidates, Marshall, who isn’t being quietly supported by national officials. On the other hand, it might suggest he’d go for the lesser-known candidate who hasn’t won a bunch of statewide elections before: Cunningham. If I was a betting man, I’d guess he’s leaning toward Marshall.
Honestly, if I were either candidate right now, I’d saturate black radio stations with ads, trot out every endorsement I had from a black elected official or public figure and/or get them to call Lewis et al., spend every Sunday from now til the runoff in black churches…..and maybe photoshop myself into a bunch of pictures with President Obama or discover some black relatives or something. /joke
http://www.nydailynews.com/blo…
Iowa poll; had Conlin down only 49-40 with Grassley. The trend seems pretty steady, I mean its undeniable she’s now on the brink of being within single digits despite the fact she started off around 20-25 points behind. Could this end up being the one major hit Republicans take this year? I’m beginning to feel it can, voters are anti-Washington, and Grassley seems to not only be rusty on the campaign trail, but he seems to have finally shot himself in the foot in this moderate state by showing his hardcore conservatism too prominently during the Healthcare debate.
Which in Philadelphia makes me quite odd I’m guessing. I think it will be pretty close. If Specter loses, I’m not worried about him. He’s screwed over people so many times I get the feeling he’s burned out on doing it more. I think he will try to focus his efforts on court appointments/confirmations and fade into the sunset to be honest.