SSP Daily Digest: 11/12

AK-Sen: All signs are pointing to Lisa Murkowski winning this race, and joining Strom Thurmond in the won-a-Senate-write-in-race club. At the end of yesterday’s counting, which took us up to nearly half of all the write-in votes analyzed, the state Division of Elections is reporting that nearly 98% of all write-ins are being successfully counted for Murkowski. Even the rate of challenges, even if they were all successful (and few of them are), is inadequate for Joe Miller to make up all the needed ground (he’d need to shave off 12%, and isn’t even challenging at quite that rate). 45,132 write-ins have been analyzed so far, and only 1.52% have been successfully challenged by the Miller camp. Seemingly realizing the gap can’t be made up, the Miller camp, while still harping on the spelling issue and keeping that line of argument alive, is now turning to nebulous claims of voter fraud as their next line of attack, threatening a second potential lawsuit. His team is setting up a voter fraud hotline for people to report fraud, voter intimidation, and voter bullying. (Kind of a strange angle to explore, when you’re the campaign that has its own paramilitary goon force.)

HI-Sen: The Republican bench in Hawaii basically begins and ends with outgoing Gov. Linda Lingle. As far as her running against octogenarian Dan Akaka in 2012, she says she’s going to take six months off from thinking about politics, and then give the race some “serious consideration” at that point.

IN-Sen: Baron Hill is also looking for work in a few months, and he’s one of the biggest names on the Dems’ bench in Indiana. However, even with his potential choice of running for the Senate, for Governor, or his old seat in 2012, it sounds like he doesn’t plan on any of those.

MO-Sen: Could we see a 2006 rematch in the 2012 Senate election in Missouri? Ex-Sen. Jim Talent seems to be prepping toward that, with GOP operatives saying he’s “furthest along” of all potential challengers to Claire McCaskill, who beat him in 2006. Other potential GOP names include ex-Treasurer Sarah Steelman, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (who’s probably likelier to run for Governor in 2012), and Ann Wagner, wealthy person (former RNC vice-chair and Ambassador to Luxembourg, the kind of goodies doled out to itinerant rich donors) and former campaign manager to Roy Blunt.

ND-Sen: Jeremy Jacobs lists a few possible challengers for Kent Conrad, who looks vulnerable after Republicans ran up the score in North Dakota this year. Mentioned are Jack Dalrymple (the Lt. Governor, who’s about to become Governor once John Hoeven resigns, although he may be likelier to run for a full term as Gov. in 2012), AG Wayne Stenehjem, and Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk.

Chicago mayor: And here I thought I was done with having to laboriously type out “Alexi Giannoulias” every day, like I have for the last few years. The recently vanquished Senate candidate is now at least considering the idea of pivoting over to the Chicago mayoral race, presumably under the principle of striking while the iron is hot in terms of his name recognition and donor base. He’s getting urging from several anti-Rahm Emanuel aldermen. (UPDATE: OK, scratch that. A Giannoulias spokesperson now says no, he’s not running for mayor.)

DSCC: I think we’ve gotten closer to getting someone willing to hold the burning bag of dog doo than we have so far: Harry Reid personally asked Michael Bennet to lead the DSCC next cycle, and Bennet “didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no.”

DCCC: Dan Boren is moving the anti-Nancy Pelosi push to a new front: demanding that the position of DCCC chair be up for a true vote by the whole caucus, not a de facto appointment by leadership. He’s being seconded in the effort by Larry Kissell, of all people (the same guy who got $1.7 million in DCCC aid this cycle after stinking it up on the fundraising front, and may be worried that another Pelosi ally might cut bait with him next time and make him catch his own fish). It’s not clear who they’d rather see than likely chair Steve Israel, especially since they both had praise for departing chair Chris Van Hollen.

Redistricting: Guess who’s leading the push for Utah to switch to a independent redistricting commission, instead of it being done by the heavily Republican legislator? Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson, who may figure he’ll be given an even worse version of UT-02 in 2012 than he currently has. (Interestingly, there’s the possibility that a commission might give him a worse district, though; it’s also possible that a GOP gerrymander might decide to concede a swing seat to him (probably the best Matheson could hope for) and go for three safe GOP seats, instead of risking a push for a 4-0 map.) Also on the redistricting front, here’s a good overview from Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende, who goes state-by-state with possible outcomes.

WATN?: Ashwin Madia (whom you probably remember for losing the MN-03 race in 2008) is taking over the helm for VoteVets for the time being while its current head, Jon Soltz, is deployed to Iraq. Also in the news is Andy Dillon, who lost the 2010 Dem gubernatorial primary after being termed-out as state House speaker. Turns out the centrist Dillon is crossing the aisle one last time: he just signed on as state Treasurer at Rick Snyder’s request (it’s an appointed position in Michigan).

Money: When they write the tale of the 2010 election, the role of the Chamber of Commerce (and other third-party GOP backers, but especially the Chamber) will probably loom a lot larger in retrospect than it does right now. The Chamber spent $32 million, almost entirely on GOP candidates. The Fix also takes a look at self-funders, and calculates how much they spent per vote. The biggest fail was probably Linda McMahon, spending $97 per vote in a losing effort, outpacing Meg Whitman who spent only $57 per vote to lose by a similar margin (albeit for a much bigger price tag overall). Rick Scott spent “only” $29 per vote to win; the biggest bargain may have been Ron Johnson, who won spending only $7 per vote (although he did a lot of conventional fundraising too). In House races, Tom Ganley spent $29 per vote to lose ignominiously; the biggest spender was the victorious Scott Rigell in VA-02, at $30 per vote.

Post-mortem: If you’re still feeling down about last week’s losses in the House and need some rationalization about it, here are a couple pieces that don’t really try to put a happy face on the results but still show how very predictable the whole thing was. Alan Abramowitz, certainly no mindless cheerleader for the Dems, points out some of the ways in which it was something of a mile-wide, inch-deep victory for the GOP. And while the teeth-gnashing that accompanies the graph is worth a read too, here’s a piece built around an amazing scatterplot from John Sides that shows how Democratic House candidate performances tracked presidential preferences district by district.

Maps: If you’re tired of looking at glitzy, state-of-the-art political maps, here’s an amusing look back at the New York Times’ earliest attempts at mapping the nation’s political geography, going back as far as 1896. (As you might expect, their graphics capacity has evolved considerably.)

168 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 11/12”

  1. Sure, this cycle was rough… But it could have been far worse. If Nevada, Colorado, Washington, West Virginia, and Delaware hadn’t gone our way, we’d be looking at a tea-nut run Senate right now.

  2. Tommy Sowers spent $1,231,956 through mid-October for at least 56362 votes. $21.86 per vote

    Although John Dennis (challenger to Nancy Pelosi) spent $1,833,264 through mid-October and got at least 29446 votes. $62.26 per vote.

    Not sure how much money Sowers burned on direct mail fundraising, but that’s where a lot of Dennis’ money went.

    Also, West Virginia official results coming within the hour.

    And the official precinct results for my part of MO confirm that turnout plummeted here, to the tune of 54,000 voters who turned out in 2008 who didn’t return in 2010. A drop from 171K to 117K. Including drops from 976 to 493 in one precinct, 599 to 368 in my precinct, 997 to 539 in a third, 643 to 359 in a fourth. Obama won 1898-1239 in those 4 precincts, Roy Blunt won 838-786 in those same 4 precincts. Weirdly enough, the strategy of constantly sending people to precincts which swung against us instead of the precincts that supported us did not lead to many votes getting out. Stunning!

  3. We need an updated CA AG projection diary! Please!

    People have been posting update comments, but scattered through various digests all week.

    The overall picture is really confusing, since the counting and reporting (or non-reporting) is all by the individual counties with their individual websites.

    FWIW, here is what the CA SoS has at the moment:

    Harris (Dem) 3,955,738 45.7%

    Cooley (Rep) 3,975,095 45.9%

    http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns

  4. If Daniel Akaka is stubborn enough to run for reelection in 2012, when he’ll be 88, we’ll need to give “serious consideration” to primarying his ass.

  5. Whoever ends up getting the DCCC job is going to have a big fun task in recruiting challengers. This cycle several GOP challengers came back and won back their old seats like Fitzpatrick, Bass, Wahlberg, Pearce and Chabot while several 08 challengers came back to win their 10 challenge like West, Hanna, Harris, etc. Assuming that redistricting doesn’t significantly alter their seat who would be a good potential “comeback” candidates either defeated incumbents or defeated challengers? My quick thoughts with a 2 strikes and you’re out rule (Dan Seals and Joe Garcia this means you) in no particular order would be:

    1. Patrick Murphy

    2. Manon Trivedi

    3. Ami Bera

    4. Ron Klein

    5. Frank Kravotil – this one I am quite confident redistricting would help him out a lot

  6. Redistricting isn’t gonna be pretty in alot of these states and who knows if Florida amendments 5&6 survive a VRC lawsuits. So alot of these rematches will have to wait until the new maps are done..

  7. think Bennet would be an excellent choice. Glad to see he is being considered. I understand why no one wants it this cycle. Even if they do a good job they will still get blamed as we very well may (slightly better than even odds) lose the Senate. It will be a very rough job. I think he can do well though. I talked about the Hill 2012 news in yesterdays open thread. I speculated that Obama may appoint him to something as he indicated it.  

  8. I know, a few years back, Time rated him among the ten worst U.S. Senators, but that may have even been before his successful ’06 re-election bid. The dude is up there in age, and I don’t sense the adoration toward him that seems shared toward Inouye. I think Lingle would win Independents going away, but it’d still be tough running as a GOP-er with Obama leading the Dem ticket. Keep in mind, all of Lingle’s electoral victories were in midterm cycles, with no presidential nominee atop the Dem line-up.

  9. Name the states which will have the same governor, senators, and congresscritter(s) next year that they currently have. (Bonus: name the state which may fall into this category…)

  10. I really wonder what he’s going to do.  Say that the GOP totally screws him over with an R+20 or worse district in redistricting.  Is it possible that he says “screw it” and runs for the Senate instead.  With Orrin Hatch likely to be taken out at the state convention by a random teabagger a la Bob Bennett, if the year turns out to be a democratic one nationally (particularly if Mitt Romney’s mormonism contributes to him losing the GOP presidential nod), I could see him having a shot to win the Senate race there.  His district as it is isn’t much more liberal than the state as a whole.

Comments are closed.