• KY-Sen: The Louisville Courier-Journal has something of a compendium of Rand Paul's Greatest Hits, selecting the dodgiest bits from his public appearances from the last decade. While the whole thing's worth a look, the highlight most likely to attract the most attention is his criticisms of the current health care system and how it "keeps patients from negotiating lower prices with their doctors." Bwack bwack bwack bwack bwack bwack...
• LA-Sen: A key David Vitter aide has resigned after his long rap sheet was revealed, perhaps most significantly that he pled guilty in 2008 to charges associated with a "knife-wielding altercation" with an ex-girlfriend, as well as that he's still wanted on an open warrant in Baton Rouge on DWI charges. Perhaps most disturbingly, this was an aide that Vitter had been assigned to "oversee women's issues."
• MO-Sen: I'll bet you'd forgotten that Roy Blunt had a teabagging primary challenger, in the form of state Sen. Roy Purgason (I had). Well, Purgason wants you to know that, despite complete silence from the DeMint/RedState/CfG/FreedomWorks axis, he's still hanging in there; he just rolled out an endorsement from one of his Senate colleagues, Matt Bartle.
• NV-Sen: Well, this doesn't look good for John Ensign. Staffers, in depositions, have told the Senate Ethics Committee that, yes, they knew that the one-year lobbying ban was being broken when they helped set up former Ensign staffer and cuckolded husband Doug Hampton with a cushy lobbying gig.
• NY-Sen-B: After Quinnipiac didn't even bother polling him this week, Joe DioGuardi (who holds the Conservative ballot line and its trying to petition into the GOP primary) wants you to know he's still in this thing. He released an internal poll from the ubiquitous POS showing that he's within 11 points of Kirsten Gillibrand (49-38), and, more plausibly, that he has a big edge in the GOP primary, at 21 against Bruce Blakeman's 7 and David Malpass at 3.
• OR-Sen: Rasmussen has been working hard to convince people that there just might be a competitive race in Oregon for Ron Wyden, against little-known law professor Jim Huffman. Looking to head that off at the pass, Wyden rolled out an internal poll today from Grove Insight that should be a bucket of cold water for the Huffman camp: Wyden leads 53-23.
• CA-Gov: I'm not sure how much of this is Politico just, as is its wont, looking for drama where there isn't much, and how much of this is genuine discontent. But they have an article today about an increasing sense among Dem insiders of wondering when Jerry Brown is going to drop the Zen approach and, if not attack Meg Whitman, at least work on some of the infrastructural aspects of the campaign.
• CT-Gov: Ned Lamont got a key labor endorsement, from the state's largest teachers' union, the Connecticut Education Association. Lamont and Dan Malloy have split the endorsements from the various trade unions. Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Tom Foley got an endorsement that may help him with that all-important demographic bloc of Massachusetts expatriates; ex-Gov. William Weld gave Foley his backing.
• MI-Gov: Peter Hoekstra got an endorsement from his next-door neighbor in the House, outgoing (and considerably more moderate) Rep. Vern Ehlers, who had earlier said he wouldn't endorse but qualified that by saying "If there is an exceptional candidate that appears to be lagging" he'd endorse. Hoekstra in fact does seem to be lagging, facing a seeming surge from AG Mike Cox in the GOP gubernatorial primary.
• MN-Gov: This seems odd; when she pulled the plug on her campaign after the DFL convention, Ramsey Co. DA Susan Gaertner said she didn't want to get in the way of the historic prospect of a female governor and didn't want to be a spoiler for Margaret Anderson Kelliher. So what did she do today? She endorsed Matt Entenza in the DFL primary instead.
• NM-Gov (pdf): Magellan (a Republican pollster, but one who've started releasing a lot of polls where they don't have a candidate) is out with a poll of the New Mexico governor's race, and like several other pollsters are finding the Diane Denish/Susana Martinez race to be in tossup territory. They find the Republican Martinez leading Denish 44-43. There's a huge gender gap here: women support Denish 48-36, while men support Martinez 53-36. One other item from the crosstabs, which either casts some doubt on the findings or else is the key to why Martinez may win this: while Martinez is losing in Albuquerque-based NM-01, she's actually winning in NM-03 (45-41), the most liberal of the state's three districts but also the most-heavily Latino.
• AL-07: Local African-American organizations (the same ones who threw their backing to Ron Sparks in the gubernatorial primary) seem split on what do to in the runoff in the 7th. The Alabama New South Coalition (who'd backed Earl Hilliard Jr. in the primary) has now endorsed Terri Sewell, while the Alabama Democratic Conference is backing Shelia Smoot.
• OH-05: Rep. Bob Latta languishes as one of the GOP's most obscure back-benchers, but he's in the news because of two different things that happened at a town hall meeting. First, he went birther-agnostic at the meeting in response to a participant's questions, only to try to walk that back later when talking to a reporter. And second, he didn't immediately respond to another participant's suggestion that the President be "shot in the head."
• OK-02: State Sen. Jim Wilson is challenging Rep. Dan Boren in the Democratic primary in the 2nd; he's out with an internal poll from Lake Research with a dismal topline (Boren leads 62-17) but with better numbers on the "informed ballot." The topline numbers aren't that different from Boren's own internal poll released last week. Still, between Boren releasing an internal, airing an anti-Wilson ad, and rolling out an endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it's clear Boren is taking the threat seriously.
• Census: The Census Bureau is out this week with its 2009 population estimates of the nation's cities, the last estimate it'll provide before releasing the numbers from the actual 2010 count. Perhaps most notably, they found the population of New York City is up another 45,000 over the last year. NYC's growth over the last decade accounts for two-thirds of the state's population growth over the last decade; as we've discussed before, this means that in the next round of redistricting (Congressional, but especially legislative) the city is going to continue to gain strength at the expense of dwindling Upstate.
Following the break is a complete roundup and ranking of Ohio races for the U.S. House of Representatives. I have separated them into Republican-held and Democratic-held seats and divided each into tiers. Within each tier they are ranked in order of likelihood of changing parties.
Democrats were very successful in 2006 in winning a U.S. Senate seat, four out of five statewide offices, and a net gain of seven seats in the Ohio House of Representatives, but the U.S. House races were a relative disappointment. The party gained only one seat and watched two promising races end in narrow losses after recounts. In this cycle Ohio has three open GOP seats and perhaps four or five races altogether that already look very promising, with another two or three that could be added to that list. The DCCC has already added three races to their "Red to Blue" program and is likely to take an interest in at least two more. In other words, Ohio is once again a critical congressional battleground.
HUGE h/t to Ron at Politics1.com. Crossposted to OhioDailyBlog -EB
In Ohio, we don't have "registered" Democrats or Republicans (or socialists or communists or anything else.) Rather, when voters go to the polls for a partisan primary, they request a ballot from the GOP or the Democrats or any other party that is on the ballot and having a primary. Other states do things differently but that's the way we roll in the Buckeye state.
In 2006, George Mays of Norwalk, OH tried to run for the U.S. Senate. He did not run as a Democrat. Rather he tried to qualify for the ballot as an independent and claimed to be "Endorsed by the Reform Party of Ohio, The New Frontier Coalition, and the Libertarians of the Northeast Region."
"I will unveil a simple plan to ensure the financial security of America and eliminate all Federal taxes..."
His effort to qualify for the ballot failed. Again, from his website:
"We simply did not get enough petition signatures. ... Most of my disappointment is in the lack of help from Reform Party and Libertarian members. I truely wish that you had given me a chance. ... So, I will run for my Congressional Seat in 2008. ..."
If you look in the upper left hand corner, you can see a poster for Mr. Mays.
It would appear that Mr. Mays has never requested a Democratic ballot in a partisan primary, until he decided to run against Robin Weirauch in the primary for the special election here in OH-05 following the death of Rep. Gillmor.
But in order to get on the primary ballot last fall for the special election, as a "Democrat" all that he had to do was to pay $85 and submit nominating petitions with the signatures of fifty registered voters, who don't have to be Democrats. Of course, he got stomped in the primary election.
But he's back again this year and has successfully entered the primary as a Democrat. The problem is that no one else has filed to be on the ballot! Which means that he will win the primary election and this fall, his name will be on the ballot as the candidate of the Democratic Party.
This has happened to both parties in Ohio. With our gerrymandered districts, sometimes it is impossible to get candidates to take on kamikaze missions. Instead, wackos game the system and wind up on the ballot.
In the end, it doesn't make much difference, because they always lose. The problem arises when the media offers candidates opportunities such as televised debates or candidate forums. There was such a forum once where the unendorsed GOP standard bearer called a US Representative a "lesbian socialist." The look on the faces of the GOP politcos in attendance was priceless.
Another issue is whether to grant these ersatz candidates access to Party resources such as calling lists. Do you want this guy to have your address and phone number?
“Now the money sucks for two reasons,” Boehner said in a Politico interview. “People are mad at the president; they are mad at the party. And then [there is] this whole immigration fight. People just turned off the spigot.”
Look, I'm probably as bummed out about Weirauch's loss as the rest of you are (even though I never once expected a win here), but there's one key number we need to be taking away from the OH-05 and VA-01 special elections today: $537,038.24.
That's the grand total that the NRCC flushed into both of these races over the past couple of weeks. To put it in another formulation, that's 21% of their available cash-on-hand at the end of October.
I hope Republicans are finding the taste of victory to be sweet tonight, because that's one hell of a high price to pay to win a pair of 60% Bush districts.
9:03 PM ET: About a third of precinct are now reporting and Latta is maintaining a 55%-45% lead. 8:42 PM ET: 11% of precincts are now reporting in Ohio and Latta has a 56%-44% lead over Weirauch. As a side note, it appears that the SOS' RSS feed is updating a bit quicker than the main site as it was displaying these results a few minutes earlier. 8:30 PM ET: I think we can officially put a nail in Forgit. With 93% of precincts reporting, he's still at 35%. 8:21 PM ET: With 2% reporting in Ohio, Latta is up 53-46. 8:07 PM ET: 75% of precincts are reporting in VA-01 and Forgit is still holding steady at 35%. 7:51 PM ET: Results are starting to trickle in for OH-05. With what appears to be a single precinct reporting, Latta is up 75-69. 7:41 PM ET: With just over half of the precincts reporting, Forgit's still sitting at 34%. Even Kerry was able to garner 39% in this district. 7:30 PM ET: Polls just closed in Ohio; we'll know shortly whether Weirauch was able to seal the deal. 7:27 PM ET: With about a quarter of the votes in, Forgit is still down by a 2-1 margin. Looks like it won't be a long night in Virginia. 7:17 PM ET: Early returns (10% reporting) show Republican Rob Wittman up 2722-1330 over Democrat Phil Forgit.
Polls should be closing shortly as voters in Ohio and Virginia choose replacements for Republican Reps. Paul Gillmor (OH-05) and Jo Ann Davis (VA-01). Unfortunately, James is still in transit and unable to join us tonight, but I'll try my best to fill his liveblogging shoes.
Up above, I've posted links to sites that should update with results throughout the night. But if they don't come through for us, I'll update accordingly. If you happen to find a better results page, let me know in the comments.
It'll probably be a while before any votes actually get counted, so treat this as your final chance to lock in predictions.
In 2006, Robin Weirauch earned a respectable 43% of the vote in OH-05, while Paul Gillmor took 57%. As you watch the returns coming in this evening, keep these county-by-county results handy:
Is to win by about 57%-43% in Wood County, which is a swing county and casts about 18% of the vote. Robin got 49% here in 2006, when she won 43% district wide. She then has to run about even in nominally Republican Sandusky county, which casts about 10% of the vote. The other county that she must win by about 53%-47% is Huron county, which casts about 8% of the vote. She got 43% here in 2006. The last is Seneca county, which is leans Republican, but not heavily. She needs to get about 55% here. Finally, she has to do reasonably well in the rest of the district, where she must hold Latta to no more than 54%.
Definitely something to make note of as we watch the returns.
Today's the day. Polls are open in the special elections to replace the late Reps. Paul Gillmor (OH-05) and Jo Ann Davis (VA-01).
Unfortunately, I have to catch a plane in a few hours, so posting will be slower today. However, once the polls close, we should be rolling with liveblog coverage.
If you have predictions for the results in OH-05 or VA-01, now's your chance to post them in the comments and claim bragging rights when the returns come in exactly as you called it.
In an amazing report tonight, The Politico quotes a GOP source as saying that a poll taken by the campaign of State Rep. Bob Latta (R-Bowling Green) last week showed him trailing Robin Weirauch (D-Napoleon) by four points.
On the ground in Ohio, we've been hearing that internal polls showed a close race, and there was an exciting rumor last week that Weirauch's pollster said she was only down by three points. This race seemed like it was amazingly close for a R+10 district, but still a long shot. Now, with this leak about Latta's poll, victory looks like a very real possibility tomorrow.
When you're the Republican nominee in a district that Bush carried by 22 points in 2004, and you're squaring off in a special election against a candidate whose only prior political experience was losing the seat twice by wide margins, it seems that you don't make a lot of friends when the debt-addled NRCC is forced to bail out your sagging campaign with $428,000 in independent expenditures.
Although the candidates and party committees weren't releasing any polling late last week, both sides agreed the race could be fairly close - and many Republicans were flabbergasted.
"The [GOP] Members are running around saying, 'What just happened?'" said a Washington Republican with knowledge of the district. "To put it bluntly, they're pissed off. People are angry that Bob Latta hasn't devoted himself better on the campaign trial to connect with northwest Ohio voters and given an opportunity to an opponent who was so far off the radar and actually made it a race." [...]
"It's like the Latta campaign is trying to write a handbook on how to lose a Congressional campaign in 60 days or less," said the Republican. "When Bob Latta lost the first Congressional race back in 1988 to then-Ohio Senate President Paul Gillmor, he was a young kid with no electoral experience. He came close and people always expected he would be back. But if Bob Latta loses this race to Robin Weirauch, a candidate who Gillmor defeated twice with barely a sweat, it will be an enormous embarrassment to Latta personally."
Now, I don't deny that Republicans could be angry with Bob Latta. GOP strategists have every reason to be blowing a fuse over the NRCC's hefty expenditures in an R+10 district. At the same time, though, this kind of grumbling could be equally driven by a desire to game expectations so that a win by Latta will be seen as a greater feat for Republicans.
In reality, despite a bruising primary followed by a weak campaign by Latta, the deck is still stacked against Robin Weirauch here. For one thing, there are only six districts in the nation that are more Republican leaning than OH-05 and are held by Democrats: MO-04 (Ike Skelton), ND-AL (Earl Pomeroy), TX-22 (Nick Lampson), MS-04 (Gene Taylor), UT-02 (Jim Matheson), and TX-17 (Chet Edwards). These are all seats held by very exceptional and very experienced campaigners.
The other factor is money; while Weirauch has benefited from a tidy sum of DCCC expenditures ($243,748.14, to be exact), the NRCC has spent more. Additionally, Latta's coffers have been flooded with big dollar donations in recent days, including over $150,000 on Friday and Saturday, and that's coming off some other similarly large fundraising reports from Latta in recent weeks. From a quick glance at Robin Weirauch's FEC filings, she has collected over $200,000 in large dollar donations since the primary. A very strong showing for a Democrat here, but one that has been outpaced by Latta.
Make no mistake, for Weirauch to even come close on Tuesday would be beating the odds here. But the chance of an upset, even if it's a long shot, is still reason enough for the GOP to be grumbling over Bob Latta.
