• AK-Sen: Sarah Palin, fresh off her triumphant endorsements of Vaughn Ward and “Angela McGowen,” is now weighing in with an endorsement in her home state: she’s backing Joe Miller, the Christian-right GOP primary challenger to incumbent Lisa Murkowski. What’s surprising is that people are surprised today — there’s long-term bad blood between Palin and the Murkowskis (Palin, of course, beat incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the 2006 GOP primary, and was briefly considering a 2010 run against Lisa Murkowski in the primary), and Todd Palin (who presumably doesn’t do anything without running it by the Palin family head office) had already endorsed Miller and headlined fundraisers for him.
• AR-Sen: The League of Conservation Voters is taking advantage of the oil spill in the Gulf being top-of-mind for most people today, to run a pre-runoff TV spot hitting Blanche Lincoln for her support for offshore drilling and her big campaign contributions from Big Oil.
• CA-Sen: Darkness descends over Team Campbell, with the primary one week away. Short on money and financially outgunned by Carly Fiorina, Tom Campbell has pulled the plug on TV advertising (at least for now; they say they’re evaluating day-to-day what to spend on) and is relying on robocalls to drive turnout for the GOP primary. On the other hand, quixotic Democratic primary candidate Mickey Kaus is actually hitting the airwaves, and he’s running an ad that very closely mirrors a now-famous 1990 ad from Paul Wellstone… which is pretty much the only thing that Kaus has in common with Wellstone (well, that and a weird hairline).
• FL-Sen: Jim Greer, the former state party chair of the aptly-acronymed RPOF, was just arrested on six felony charges: money laundering, grand theft, fraud… you know, the basic day-to-day aspects of running a political party. It’ll be interesting to watch, as this case plays out, if there’s any blowback to either Senate candidate: Charlie Crist, who helped put former key ally Greer into place as state party chair, or Marco Rubio, who had a taste for charging things to the state party’s credit cards.
• IL-Sen: All of a sudden it seems like every time Mark Kirk plugs a leak concerning misrepresentations of his military record, another two spring up. Today, Kirk had to admit to the WaPo’s Greg Sargent that his website incorrectly identifies him as “the only member of Congress to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Kirk actually served stateside as a Naval Reservist during the Iraq War, and he says that he’s corrected the website, as what he really meant was “to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Kirk also failed to correct Joe Scarborough when he said in 2003 that Kirk had “served Americans overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Hmmm, that whole scenario sounds vaguely familiar… I wonder where the front page NYT story about this is?
• NV-Sen: There’s that old saying about when your opponent pulls out a knife, you pull out a gun… I guess the same thing’s happening in Nevada, where when Sharron Angle pulls out allegations of wrongdoing involving a campaign bus, Sue Lowden pulls out allegations of wrongdoing involving a campaign plane. Angle hitched a ride to the “Showdown in Searchlight” rally on a supporter’s private plane, and while she did reimburse the owner $67 for her share of the fuel, it turns out she needs to pay more like $7,000, for the going charter rate. Meanwhile, Lowden seems to be doing some hasty but serious-sounding damage control over the issue of the “veterans tax;” this is still in the sketchy stages, but we’ll follow it as it develops.
• PA-Sen: The Clinton job offer scandal continues to roil the Joe Sestak campaign, threatening to torpedo the Democratic candidate as he struggles to gain momentum after winning an upset in the primary!!! Oh, wait a second, I was confused… for a moment there, I thought I was actually a Beltway pundit. In reality, nobody gives a shit, and Sestak continues to consolidate post-primary support, as seen in a new DSCC-sponsored poll by Garin Hart Yang, which gives Sestak a 47-40 lead over GOPer Pat Toomey. Both candidates are similarly liked yet ill-defined: Sestak’s favorables are 34/18, while Toomey is at 30/19.
• WA-Sen: The University of Washington pollsters who released the poll several weeks ago giving Patty Murray a 44-40 edge over Dino Rossi did something unusual. They started asking Washington residents about their feelings about the Tea Party (worth a read, on its own), but they also kept asking them about Murray/Rossi and adding those voters to the previous poll’s pool. I’m not sure if that’s methodologically sound or not; on the one hand, it pushes the MoE down to a very robust 2.3%, but also pads out the sample period to a terribly long 25 days. At any rate, it doesn’t affect the toplines one bit: Murray still leads 44-40.
• AZ-Gov: Is there just a weird outbreak of Lying-itis breaking out among our nation’s politicians (or did everyone always do this, and now thanks to the Internet you can’t get away with it anymore)? Now, it’s Jan Brewer’s turn: during the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, she somehow tried to weave in her father’s death “fighting the Nazi regime in Germany” in discussing the personal attacks against her. There’s one small problem: her father was a civilian supervisor of a munitions depot during the war, and died of lung disease in 1955. Meanwhile, back in reality, one of Brewer’s GOP primary rivals, former state party chair John Munger, has decided to drop out after getting little traction in the primary. He cited fundraising issues in his decision.
• FL-Gov: Did Rick Scott think that people were just not going to notice that whole Medicare fraud thing? Having gotten stung by outside advertising hitting him on the Columbia/HCA fraud and the $1.7 billion in fines associated with it, he’s launching a defensive TV spot and website dedicated to telling his side of the story. Meanwhile, Dems might be sailing into a clusterf@ck of their very own: Bud Chiles (the son of popular Democratic ex-Gov. Lawton Chiles) is still looking into a gubernatorial run… and now seemingly considering doing it as an independent. An independent who soaks up mostly Democratic votes would pretty much be curtains for Alex Sink’s chances at winning.
• GA-Gov: Ex-Gov. Roy Barnes got a couple endorsements that should help him with the African-American vote, as he faces African-American AG Thurbert Baker in the Dem primary. Two prominent former Atlanta mayors, Andrew Young and Shirley Franklin, backed Barnes.
• ME-Gov: The most overlooked gubernatorial race in the country has its primaries next week, and it seems like even Mainers have no idea what’s going on. Pan Atlantic SMS polled the primary, but found 62% of Dems and 47% of GOPers undecided. On the Dem side, state Sen. president Libby Mitchell is at 13, with ex-AG Steve Rowe at 12, Rosa Scarcelli at 7, and Patrick McGowan at 6. On the Republican side, Les Otten is at 17, Paul LePage at 10, Peter Mills at 8, Steve Abbott at 8, Bill Beardsley at 4, Bruce Poliquin at 3, and Matt Jacobson at 2. Given the poll’s MoE of 5.7%, all we know is that pretty much any of these candidates could be the nominees. Otten just got an endorsement from one of the few Republicans who isn’t running: from state Sen. majority leader Kevin Raye.
• AR-01: In northeast Arkansas, I don’t think endorsements come any bigger than this. Bill Clinton weighed in on Chad Causey’s behalf, in the Democratic primary runoff against the more conservative Tim Wooldridge.
• CA-42: How about I just start reporting on the politicians who haven’t fudged their war records? Now it’s the turn for Rep. Gary Miller (who faces a potentially competitive teabagger primary next week). A number of bios, including his California Assembly bio, have said he served in the Army in 1967 and 1968. A news story linked from Miller’s current official website said that he “served his country during the Vietnam War.” Turns out he spent seven weeks in boot camp in 1967, at which point he was discharged for medical reasons.
• MS-01: Newly crowned GOP nominee in the 1st Alan Nunnelee gets today’s hyperbole-in-action award. On Saturday, he told a local Rotary Club gathering that what’s going on in Washington is worse than 9/11, because “What I see in Washington over the last 16 months is a more dangerous attack because it’s an attack on our freedom that’s coming from the inside.”
• NC-08: Another day, another freakout from Tim d’Annunzio. His latest antics involve dropping out of a scheduled debate against GOP runoff opponent Harold Johnson, because of, as per d’Annunzio’s usual modus operandi, “the collaboration between the Harold Johnson campaign and the news media to use partial truth, innuendo and accusations to unfairly smear me.”
• PA-10: Best wishes for a quick recovery to the GOP candidate in the 10th, Tom Marino. He’s in stable condition after being involved in a late-night head-on collision while driving back from a county GOP meeting last night.
• NY-St. Sen.: One state legislature where it’s going to be tough for the GOP to make up much ground is the New York Senate, where they’re now having to defend their fourth open seat (out of 30 total) this cycle. George Winner, who’s been in the Senate since 2004 (making him a veritable youngster by NYS Senate GOP standards), is calling it quits. His Southern Tier district centered on Elmira has a 74K to 60K GOP registration advantage, but Obama won SD-53 by a 51-47 margin.
Murkowski was one of the first (the other being McCain) people Sarah PAC donated to after she started it. She also held a fundraiser for Murkowski last year. Wonder what she did since then? Or maybe Palin’s dad was right, she doesn’t make the decisions.
What an asshole.
Claims Wills’s argument that he is more electable is dog whistle racism. Because candidates NEVER make electability arguments against people of their same race. Time to fuck off and let the best candidate win, NAACP, unless and until Wills actually does say something racist, which will never happen because he’s … not racist.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmsp…
I know we don’t really highlight Rasmussen since they get rather spammy with their polls and some of their results are not defensible, but I just wanted to note their latest had Rand Paul’s lead down to eight points, which is only a couple points more than other pollsters have had it.
http://www.rasmussenreports.co…
If you want to view it this way, that’s a 17 point collapse from Rasumussen’s last poll for Rand Paul.
Or you could just view their last poll on the race as ill-timed and illegitimate, as I did.
http://politicalwire.com/archi…
Carly Fiorina is in Denial over Climate Change – I can’t imagine that’s gonna play well in California.
Maybe next she will come out in favor of the Arizona immigation bill and get endorsed by Rand Paul, just to seal her fate in November.
on why he lost: I was the victim of a Democrat hit job
And on Obama’s speech that he plagiarized he comes up with this bull defense:
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/s…
Im thinking Lincoln gets the 2nd place award for worst politician of the year. 1st goes to Griffith for switching parties. Lincoln gets second for putting herself into this position by rallying against a piece of legislation she ended up voting for anyway.
Chiles joining a primary against Sink leads to at worst a winning candidate having less money but more exposure.
Chiles running as an independant means a Republican Governor.
Primaries are always great in contrast to the alternative.
For the most part, if Sarah Palin is against you, you’re doing something right.
And not the kind of fracking problem that Eric Massa had. “Fracking” is a big issue here in the Northeast: it’s a technique involving high-pressure injections of water and “fracking fluid” into rock formations to extract natural gas. There is estimated to be about $2 to $3 trillion worth of gas in a formation called the Marcellus Shale, which lies under western New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Fracking is controversial because of the large amount of wastewater generated and the fact that the composition of fracking fluid is a trade secret. And according to a DCBureau.org article (http://www.dcbureau.org/20100601496/Natural-Resources-News-Service/conflicts-of-interest-new-york-style-senator-george-winners-shale-play.html), Winner failed to disclose he was representing a natural gas producer while endorsing changes to gas drilling laws. A whole lot of people are very anti-fracking in Winner’s district, especially in Ithaca, and if he tried to run on this record, he would have a big fracking problem…
like Darrell Issa will have another witch hunt to conduct. The White House offered Andrew Romanoff a job in the administration if he would drop his challenge to Bennett.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a diary about Texas redistricting and have gathered most of the demographic and political data I need. However, I still need the 1992 presidential election results for several Texas congressional districts that were redrawn following federal court challeneges in 1996. I have the 1992 results for these districts in their 1992 forms, but not in their 1996 forms. Could someone who either owns “The Almanac of American Politics, 1998 edition (105th Congress)” or with ready access to a college library please look up the results in that book and retrieve the for me? The districts involved are the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 18th, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 28th, and 30th districts. Thanks and I really appreciate it!
Just filled out my first Mail in Ballot (Turned 18 Jan 1 2009) and I must say, I have never even heard of some of these races going on in CA. School superintendent had like 10 people running and I eventually just looked at endorsements for a few before I decided on Tom Torlakson. Of course, being registered to vote in Orange county rather than SF where I go to college (I’m trying to change Orange County 1 vote at a time), there were a TON of crappy offices with only uber conservatives running.
I decided to cut my losses and just write in Lizard people a few times.
I know it’s not mentioned in the digest, but I just saw this from a friend’s Facebook status. Apparently, the Democratic candidate challenging Mike Rogers, Kande Ngalamulume, is quitting the race. He had no opponent for the August primary, so Rogers will be unchallenged come November.
http://www.wlns.com/global/sto…
And, since we’re past the withdrawal deadline and Ngalamulume hasn’t died or moved out of the state, the party doesn’t get to replace him. His name will still be on the ballot, but with no active campaigning, Rogers is probably going to score a ridiculously high win percentage.
It also pisses me off a bit because his reasoning is that there isn’t enough grass roots or establishment interest in flipping the seat. Um, hello, Kande? It’s largely YOUR job as the candidate to excite people and convince them you can do it. And if it looked as though you couldn’t, you clearly should’ve withdrawn long before the deadline and encouraged someone else to step up. LAME.
I used to live in MI-08, but am now in MI-09. Still, I was planning to give both him and Peters some time before I headed back to school in the fall, and then some money in the run up to November. So much for that plan…
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol…
I don’t think she realizes that she’s not actually elected to anything if she wins the Republican primary. Does she actually want to win the general? You can’t win a general election in California by doing these things.
She’s got more money than God (but much less than Meg Whitman :-), but she’s an opposition researcher’s dream come true.
I know the polls show this to be somewhat competitive now, but she’s going to get steamrolled in the general election.
http://politicalwire.com/archi…
I think this is going to blow up big time, possibly ending in Obama not running again or being investigated. While yes, I agree it’s a common practice, yes I personally have no problem with it and yes Republican’s are hipocrites for what they are saying, I can’t help but feel this thing is exploding right now.
What I don’t get is why Romanoff is so willing to hurt Obama and fellow Democrats. At least with Sestak he said something, realized he messed up and got the story straight with the administration. Romanoff seems to want to actually hurt the administration.
Sad day.
Rep. Charlie Melancon (on Good Morning America, no less) became the first Congressman to publicly call for the ouster of BP’s chief douchebag officer, Tony Howard.
Between this and him being overcome by sadness for Louisiana in Congress, I can’t help but think he’s well on his way to becoming a lot better-known and a lot better-liked.
I’ve always been of the opinion that Melancon could win, even if I was heavily disagreed with. He’s a good, experienced, credible politician, but more than that, he’s very much OF Louisiana. After all, he’s got a hard-to-pronounce Cajun last name (muh-LAW-saw, according to Wikipedia) and lived most of his life in the hamlet of Napoleonville.
And frankly, if Team Blue can’t win with a conservative Cajun Congressman against Diaper Dave, then Vitter’s gonna be in the Senate ’til he’s 80 or until a video surfaces of him actually wearing Pampers.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
http://www2.wnct.com/news/2010…
PPP polled OK-2 in March and found some interesting things. Obama’s rating was 42-47 among Democrats: while primary voters would presumably be a lot more liberal this does suggest the electorate would still be pretty conservative. Among Democrats Boren has a 55-27 rating; among liberals it’s 43-38.
http://www.publicpolicypolling…
OK, this is sordid stuff, but since it might have a bearing on the SC Gubernatorial campaign…you can read it here.