IL-Sen: Pity the Poor Illinois Voter?

by: James L.

Fri Sep 03, 2010 at 3:19 PM EDT

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 34
Mark Kirk (R): 34
LeAlan Jones (G): 6
Mike Labno (L): 3
Undecided: 22
(MoE: ±4%)

One area where Giannoulias can gain some ground is among African American voters, who favor him over Kirk by 58-3 margin. This one is shaping up to be a battle of inches, though:

SSP Daily Digest: 9/1 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Wed Sep 01, 2010 at 3:00 PM EDT

• IL-Sen: The Constitution Party is still trying to get back on the ballot in Illinois, maybe most notably in the close Senate race where Randy Stufflebeam would be their candidate. They're going to court to get back on the ballot after the state Board of Elections kicked them off for not having enough valid signatures.

• NV-Sen: School's out for the summer/ school's out... forever! The latest daily nugget of crazy from Sharron Angle is her recounting last week of her struggles back in the state legislature in 2003 against a supplemental budget bill that would have paid for emergency funding to make sure that the state's public schools could actually open at the start of the school year. Meanwhile, Harry Reid is continuing his apparently successful advertising strategy of letting Angle say the usual things she says, and just turning them straight into his own ads against her, as with his newest ad launched this week.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Despite the utter lack of drama in the big races in the Empire State, Quinnipiac just keeps polling it. (I guess that's OK; we'll take good news where we can get it.) In the governor's race, Andrew Cuomo beats Rick Lazio 57-25 and Carl Paladino 60-23. (Unfortunately, there aren't GOP primary numbers, as it'd be interesting to see, as other pollsters have seen, whether Paladino might actually be able to overtake the insufficiently-crazy Lazio for the nomination.) In the Senate race, Kirsten Gillibrand beats Bruce Blakeman 44-26, David Malpass 45-24, and Joe DioGuardi 43-28.

• CO-Gov: If either Dan Maes or Tom Tancredo is going to drop out and stop their tragic pas de deux, it'd better be soon. Friday, it turns out, is the last day before the November ballot printing is finalized. Meanwhile, here's the kind of headline you don't want to see when you're already fighting public perception that you're a bit of a paranoid wackjob who thinks that bicycles are a United Nations plot:

GOP gubernatorial candidate Maes backs off claims of undercover police work

• KY-Gov: The establishment slate for Kentucky Republicans for the off-year gubernatorial race (only a year from now!) seems like it's officially coalesced. David Williams, the state Senate president, will run for Governor, and Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer (who'd been a rumored governor candidate himself) will run for Lt. Governor. They'll still have to get past businessman Phil Moffet, running under the teabagger banner, in the GOP primary before facing Steve Beshear, who'll be seeking re-election. A recent poll had Farmer and Beshear neck-and-neck, but there hasn't been any Beshear/Williams polling yet.

• MA-09: Mac d'Allesandro's against Stephen Lynch in the Dem primary in the 9th is raising some decent cash in the late innings. Since July 1st, the SEIU, MoveOn, and Act Blue have raised $178K for d'Allesandro.

• PA-06: DNC DGA head Tim Kaine heads to Philly to fundraise on Manan Trivedi's behalf, as part of a tour on behalf of Asian-American Dem candidates. Trivedi's also had help on the stump this week from Bob Casey and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

• RGA: Good thing the RGA already has an unprecedented amount of money squirreled away... because they're going to have to give a decent chunk of it to Chris Bell, the ex-Rep. who was the 2006 Dem gubernatorial candidate in Texas. A Travis County judge ordered the RGA to pay Chris Bell a cosmic $2 million because of campaign finance violations in the '06 election (where the RGA gave an undisclosed $1 million to Texans for Rick Perry).

• WATN?: This isn't really FL-Sen anymore, but Jeff Greene is insisting on staying in the limelight even as his vomit-covered yacht sails into the sunset. In fact, the phrase "vomit-covered yacht" is really what's at stake here; he says he's following through with a libel suit against the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald over their reporting of his many foibles. Good luck proving actual malice!

• Maps: They're rapidly scrolling their way down the front page, so if you haven't had a chance to check out jeffmd's maps of Alaskan elections past, do it now. Begich/Stevens, Murkowski/Miller, and Young/Parnell all played out in similar ways, geographically, so if you're wondering what Scott McAdam's path to a win might look like, check it out.

• Ads:
• NH-Sen: We told you a few days ago that Ovide Lamontagne was finally going on the air; his first ad is a talk-to-the-camera introductory spot.
• PA-Sen: The DSCC is out with another ad, attacking Pat Toomey on the derivatives trading issue.
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold's new ad is testimonials from a variety of (as C. Montgomery Burns would say) Joe Lunchpails and Sally Housecoats.
• IN-02: Jackie Walorski is out with an introductory bio spot.
• NE-02: Tom White is also out with an introductory bio spot, carefully steering clear of anything Democratic-sounding.
• NJ-03: John Adler may actually win the advertising day today, with a negative spot that slams Jon Runyan for his tax break for his "farm" (a.k.a. McMansion plus one donkey).
• NV-03: Dina Titus hits Joe Heck for comments that "it's not Congress's role to create jobs." (This comes on top of the AFSCME's huge buy of anti-Heck ads.)

• Rasmussen:
• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon (D) 33%, David Vitter (R-inc) 54%
• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 39%, John Kasich (R) 47%
• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 37%, Tom Corbett (R) 50%  

SSP Daily Digest: 8/27 (Evening Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 8:19 PM EDT

• IL-Sen: Bad news for Alexi Giannoulias: the Constitution Party slate just got struck from the ballot, so Randy Stufflebeam won't be there to siphon right-wing votes from Mark Kirk. Libertarian candidate Mark Labno will be on the ballot, though, as a Kirk alternative (as will Green LeAlan Jones).

• IN-Sen: This is sort of pushing the outer limit of when it's a good idea to release an internal, but it looks like the Brad Ellsworth camp needed to let people know that he's still in this race. His own poll, via Garin Hart Yang, finds him trailing Dan Coats 49-38. The race is closer among those who actually know Ellsworth, but his six-week-long ad buy is about to end, so his name rec problems may persist.

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway is joining Elaine Marshall on the Alan Simpson-pile-on, seconding calls for the firing of Simpson from the Social Security commission in the wake of his "milk cow" comments. Meanwhile, Rand Paul has apparently brushed up on his elementary math skills recently, as he's now backtracking on previous pledges to erase the nation's federal budget deficit in one year.

• MO-Sen, MO-04: Although this poll from Missouri State University (on behalf of TV station KY3) looks good for Robin Carnahan, it's got some methodological issues that we just aren't comfortable with. It was taken over the period of Aug. 7-22, is of registered (not likely) voters, and it also wound up with a sample that was 63% female, although they say they weighted for various demographic factors. At any rate, it shows the race a dead heat, with Roy Blunt leading Robin Carnahan 49-48. It also took looks at three House races in the Show Me State, although with MoEs in the 7% ballpark. In the 4th, Ike Skelton has a 47-35 lead over Vicki Hartzler. Two GOP-held seats look to be pretty uneventful: in the open 7th, Billy Long leads Scott Eckersley 51-23, and in the 8th, Jo Ann Emerson leads fundraising maven Tommy Sowers 64-17.

• WI-Sen: Seems like it was just this morning we were discussing the second instance of Ron Johnson's flagrant hypocrisy when it comes to railing against government involvement in the market, except when it comes to government aid for his own business... and now we're up to a third instance before the day's even out. On Wednesday it came out that in 1985 he'd gotten $2.5 million in government loans to expand his plastics business, and now it's come out that in 1983, two years earlier, he'd gotten a separate $1.5 million loan for a $4 mil total.

• NM-Gov: The DGA is out with a new ad against Susana Martinez in the gubernatorial race, hitting her for $350K in bonuses handed out in her prosecutor's office. NWOTSOTB, but we're told it's a statewide saturation buy.

• VT-Gov: The final count from the SoS office in the Dem gubernatorial primary seemed to get finished ahead of schedule, as numbers today gave Peter Shumlin a 197-vote win over Doug Racine. Racine said that he would go ahead and request a recount; state law provides for a taxpayer-funded recount for a candidate trailing by less than 2% (seems like a pretty generous recount policy compared with most states). In keeping with the primary's very civil tone, both candidates continued to praise each other and say they understood the recount choices.

• CO-07: Republican pollster Magellan (which put out an internal for Scott Tipton in CO-03 last week) is out with a poll in the 7th as well now, although this appears to be on their own, not as an internal for Ryan Frazier. At any rate, their poll gives a 40-39 lead to Republican Frazier, over incumbent Dem Ed Perlmutter. (10% opt for "some other candidate.")

• MS-04: Thanks to Haley Barbour, the previously low-dollar campaign of state Rep. Steven Palazzo just kicked into higher gear (or into gear, period). Barbour held a fundraiser for Palazzo that raised $177K, which will help his uphill campaign against Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor.

• SC-05: Another POS poll in the 5th on behalf of GOP state Sen. Mick Mulvaney has him making up ground on Rep. John Spratt; the two are now tied at 46-46. Spratt led by 2 in a previous POS poll in May. Spratt retorted to CQ that in his own polling he was ahead with "breathing room," but declined to provide specific numbers.

• Ads: Other ads for your consideration today include not one but two new ads from Roy Barnes, going negative against Nathan Deal (on the ethics issue, but also general Washington-bashing). In OH-Gov, Ted Strickland is also out with a double-shot of ads, hitting John Kasich for his free-trading past. Chet Edwards is out with an anti-Bill Flores ad in TX-17 accusing Flores of lying about having voted for GOPer Rob Curnock in 2008 (he didn't vote at all that day), while the Club for Growth is out with a PA-Sen ad that calls Joe Sestak "liberal" several hundred times in the space of 30 seconds.

• Rasmussen:
• AZ-Sen: Rodney Glassman (D) 31%, John McCain (R-inc) 53%
• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 36%, Rick Scott (R) 41%, Bud Chiles (I) 8%
• NM-Gov: Diane Denish (D) 43%, Susana Martinez (R) 48%
• SC-Gov: Vincent Sheheen (D) 36%, Nikki Haley (R) 52%
• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Scott Walker (R) 47%
• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Mark Neumann (R) 48%

SSP Daily Digest: 8/25 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Wed Aug 25, 2010 at 4:34 PM EDT

• NV-Sen: Is Sharron Angle following Michele Bachmann down that dark and winding path to... well, she's already in Crazy Town, so whatever's around the next bend beyond that. In an interview with a right-wing talk show host Bill Manders last year, Angle agreed with Manders that there were "domestic enemies" "in the walls of the Senate and the Congress."

• WI-Sen: Here's one more installment in the ongoing story of teabaggers adopting the "government money for me, not for thee" line of argumentation (a la Clint Didier and Stephen Fincher's long history of happily accepting farm subsidies), disregarding the jaw-dropping hypocrisy that goes with it. It's been revealed that Ron Johnson's company, Paccur, got a $2.5 million government loan to pay for a 40,000 square foot expansion to its facilities. The revelation comes about a week after he said in an interview: "I have never lobbied for some special treatment or for a government payment... When you subsidize things...it doesn't work through the free market system very well."

• MD-Gov: Here's a poll showing better-than-usual results for incumbent Dem governor Martin O'Malley, locked in a rematch battle with ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich. The OpinionWorks poll, on behalf of a non-profit called Center Maryland, gives O'Malley a 47-41 lead over Ehrlich, and also gives O'Malley a respectable 49/39 approval.

• MI-Gov: Tough nerd and GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick Snyder picked a running mate: state Rep. Brian Calley, a 33-year-old who helps Snyder fill his political-inexperience and social-conservative gaps. One wrinkle: Calley was already the GOP nominee for a state Senate seat, so it's unclear how filling that vacancy will now play out. Dem nominee Virg Bernero will also need to pick a running mate ahead of this weekend's nominating convention.

• NY-St. Sen.: Campaign ads in local newspapers in state Senate races are usually a little too down in the weeds for even SSP, but take a look at this amazingly thorough anti-Greg Ball demolition derby run by a group called "Republicans for Truth" as we approach the GOP primary in open SD-40 in New York. Remember, Ball is the wacko we could have been running against in NY-19 if Nan Hayworth hadn't priced him out.

• Ads: We're awash in new ads today (as I'm sure we will be every day until November), with the biggest-ticket one seeming to be a new anti-Joe Sestak ad in PA-Sen from Rove front-group American Crossroads. The even more mysterious Americans for Job Security are also wading into MO-Sen, launching an anti-Robin Carnahan radio ad. TV spots are also up in various House races: in FL-22 for Allen West, in KY-06 for Andy Barr, in TX-17 for Bill Flores, and in AZ-08 for Gabby Giffords. NWOTSOTB, in all cases.

• Blogosphere: Congratulations to friend-of-the-site Nate Silver, whose little blog called 538.com has completed its ascendancy, getting relaunched today as part of the New York Times' online operations.

• History: New Orleans has a particularly fascinating and byzantine political history; with the LA-02 primary fast approaching, here's an interesting long article on the rise (and potential decline) of African-American political power in the Big Easy.

• Rasmussen:
• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 44%, Carly Fiorina (R) 43%
• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 42%, Mark Kirk (R) 40%
• OR-Sen: Ron Wyden (D-inc) 56%, Jim Huffman (R) 36%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 46%, Ron Johnson (R) 47%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 47%, David Westlake (R) 40%

SSP Daily Digest: 8/23 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Mon Aug 23, 2010 at 3:27 PM EDT

• PA-Sen: Two pieces of good news in Pennsylvania: first, Joe Sestak is rolling out an endorsement from Chuck Hagel, the former GOP Senator from Nebraska who was on the short list for an Obama cabinet position. Not that Hagel is probably a household name in the Keystone State, but it certainly burnishes Sestak's bipartisan (and military) cred. Also, the DSCC is planning to spend even more on this race, letting Sestak, presumably, keep marshaling his resources for a big late push (the kind that helped him shoot past Arlen Specter in the closing weeks in the primary). They're spending $546K on broadcast media this week, on top of $494K last week; the DSCC's total spending and reservations so far in this race amount to $4.4 million.

• WI-Sen: Hmmm, maybe all that sunspot and Greenland stuff actually started to stick. Republican wingnut candidate Ron Johnson is trying to undo the crazy on his various climate change comments, offering the usual last refuge of the pathetic walkback, that his remarks were "taken out context." Johnson is also trying to walk back his previous support for elimination of the home mortgage interest deduction, about as popular a provision of the tax code as there is. If you wanted to simultaneously set back both the entire real estate business and the middle class by several decades, eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction would be a good way to do it.  

• IL-Gov: The exodus from the field of broken dreams that is the Pat Quinn camp just continues. Today, the departee is CoS Jerry Stermer, and while it isn't a rancorous departure (as was the case with Quinn breaking it off with David Axelrod's media firm last week), he is resigning to avoid being a distraction with an ethics investigation (over whether he sent political e-mails from his government account) hanging overhead. With Quinn seemingly circling the drain, that ain't gonna help.

• AZ-05: In the "ooops, spoke too soon" department, presumed Republican primary frontrunner David Schweikert opted for a last-minute ad buy for $14K on cable, apparently worried that he was losing momentum going into tomorrow's primary. Last week, his camp had said he was so far ahead they were just going to go dark and start saving money for the general. Meanwhile, next door in AZ-03, Steve Moak, the only candidate who rivals Ben Quayle on the money front, is out with a new ad hitting Quayle over his pseudonymous tenure writing for the website that was the precursor to TheDirty.com.

• FL-24: Wow, Craig Miller actually went there: he sent out a last-minute mailer going after the widely-known, but not yet broached in the campaign context, issue of GOP primary opponent Karen Diebel's mental stability. Maybe he'd been planning to do a last-minute boom-lowering all along, but it seems kind of strange, as Miller's millions have seemed to have the race locked down, not requiring him to get his hands dirty. Was there a last minute Diebel surge (she's been attacking him on being too soft on immigration)?

• TX-23: Republican challenger Quico Canseco is out with an internal poll, via OnMessage, giving him a small lead over incumbent Dem Rep. Ciro Rodriguez. The poll gives Canseco a 43-37 lead, a turnaround from Rodriguez's lead of 48-45 in a Canseco poll from June.

• Ads: Bobby Bright's out with his first ad, in AL-02. SSP southern correspondent Trent Thompson's description of the ad says it all, so I'll just quote him: ""Bobby" voted against everything Obama. Also, he kisses a baby." Ben Chandler is also out with an ad in KY-06, touting his saving the local VA Hospital. Finally, Rick Boucher's GOP opponent, Morgan Griffith, is also out with a new TV spot, reminding you that he's a conservative. (As an interesting ethno-linguistic observation, one clear indicator that VA-09 is an Appalachian district, not a Southern district, is that Griffith cites "Warshington" as being the source of all our problems.) NWOTSOTB, in all three cases.

• We Ask America: The quirky little Republican-linked pollster that could, We Ask America, is out with an array of polls in Illinois (the state where they're based). They find Mark Kirk leading Alexi Giannoulias 39-33, but they also look at three House races. In fact, they looked at these races back in March, so we now have trendlines. In IL-11, they find Adam Kinzinger leading Debbie Halvorson 52-32 (down from an already bad 42-30); in IL-14, they have Randy Hultgren leading Bill Foster 44-37 (also down, from 38-36). The good news: they have Dan Seals leading Bob Dold! in IL-10, 43-40 (Seals led 40-37 in March, so he's holding his own). We've also discovered a few recent WAA odds and ends that we didn't cover earlier: they also see Roy Blunt leading Robin Carnahan 47-43 in MO-Sen, and see Sean Duffy leading 42-33 over Julie Lassa in WI-07.

• Rasmussen:
• AL-Sen: William Barnes (D) 28%, Richard Shelby (R-inc) 60%
• AR-Gov: Mike Beebe (D-inc) 53%, Jim Keet (R) 33%
• MD-Sen: Barbara Mikulski (D-inc) 55%, Eric Wargotz (R) 39%
• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 41%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 49%

IL-Sen: PPP's Switch to LV Model Still Yields a Slim Giannoulias Lead

by: James L.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 at 6:50 PM EDT

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 37 (31)
Mark Kirk (R): 35 (30)
LeAlan Jones (G): 9 (14)
Undecided: 19 (24)
(MoE: ±4.1%)

As you know, PPP has made the Great Schlep to a likely voter model from their earlier voter model, which was lightly-screened and tastefully seasoned with a patented formula of herbs and spices. (God, I'm hungry.) In terms of sample composition, the results have, predictably, been pretty ugly for Democrats. In this poll, for instance, the likely voter universe favored Obama over McCain by only 9% in the 2008 election -- a big jump from the 19% Obama margin that PPP found in their poll from June, and from the actual election day margin of 26%.

However, unlike their Pennsylvania Senate poll, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias is still holding onto a very slim lead. Some more color, from Tom:

Kirk does have a big lead with independents, 36-20. But you can't win as a Republican in Illinois without winning over a fair number of Democratic voters and Kirk just isn't doing that right now. He's getting only 5%. Kirk's getting 74% of the Republican vote while Giannoulias is getting 72% of the Democratic vote and it's going to be very hard for Kirk to win unless the party unity gap ends up being bigger than that.

Both candidates continue to be very unpopular. Giannoulias' favorability is 26/42 and Kirk's is 26/34. Independents have a negative opinion of both of them, and each of them is viewed more unfavorably by voters of the opposite party than they are favorably by their own party base. Only 51% of Democrats have a favorable opinion of Giannoulias and just 49% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Kirk so neither contender is doing much to fire up even their partisans.

Battle of the weak, indeed.

SSP Daily Digest: 8/11 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 4:34 PM EDT

• KY-Sen: Is this really the kind of headlines that Rand Paul (or any candidate, for any office) would want to be seeing today? "Woman Says Paul Did Not Kidnap Her," and "Paul Apologizes for Fancy Farm Beer Flub." The former story isn't that surprising, in that Paul's college acquaintance clarifies that the whole let's-tie-her-up-make-her-smoke-pot-and-pray-to-a-graven-idol thing was more of a consensual hazing than an out-and-out kidnapping (of course, other than the "kidnapping" semantics, all that Bong Hits for Aqua Buddha stuff still seems to stand). The latter story has its roots in Paul's worries that the audience at the Fancy Farm church picnic (the same ones who got the vapors last year when Jack Conway used the words "son of a bitch") were going to start throwing beer at him - even though the event was dry. Having realized that you don't go around dissing politically-legendary church picnics unless you have the political instincts of a brick, Paul later apologized.

• LA-Sen: Southern Media & Opinion Research finds that David Vitter leads Charlie Melancon 46-28, not much changed since their last poll from spring, where Vitter led 49-31. They also take a look at the Republican Senate primary, finding (as did POS a few weeks ago) that Chet Traylor is really turning into something of a paper tiger: Vitter leads Traylor 78-4! They also do a quick look at the jungle-style Lt. Governor special election, giving the lead to current Republican SoS Jay Dardenne at 26.

• OR-Gov: Well, it seems like the John Kitzhaber campaign has finally acknowledged what the blogosphere realized a while ago, that it's time to shake things up and bring in a more feisty and uptempo approach. That's hopefully what they're doing with a new campaign manager, Patricia McCaig. Interestingly, McCaig is a former right-hand woman to ex-Gov. Barbara Roberts, who Kitzhaber shoved over in 1994 and whose relations with Kitz have been rocky since then.

• AZ-03: Will today's double-whammy be enough to knock Ben Quayle out of his seeming frontrunner position in the GOP primary in the 3rd? Rocked by controversy over having denied and then having gotten outed as having written pseudonymously for sleazy local website DirtyScottsdale.com (a forerunner to today's TheDirty.com), he's out with a TV spot that he hopes will take some of the heat off. Unfortunately for him, the ad seems to have gotten an almost universally derisive reaction, based on his odd combination of hyperbolic claims ("Barack Obama is the worst president in history"), slow, droning delivery, and strange robotic motions.

• IA-03: When we moved Leonard Boswell in the 3rd to Tossup a few weeks ago, we weren't fooling around. A second Republican poll was released today giving his GOP challenger, state Sen. Brad Zaun, a decent-sized lead: Victory Enterprises, on behalf of the Polk County GOP and not the Zaun camp, finds a 45-38 lead for Zaun. (There was also a June poll giving Zaun a 41-32 lead. It was also by Victory Enterprises, and shared the same Republican-friendly party ID composition, but that one was for the Zaun campaign.)

• OR-05: He's Scott Bruun, and he drives a truck. He also supports privatizing Social Security. Or doesn't he? Bruun has reversed himself several times on how he frames the issue, depending on who his audience is, but either way, he seems to be relying on the Paul Ryan roadmap for his ideas.

• Passages: Here's a sad bookend to yesterday's death of Ted Stevens: today's death of another legendary, long-time Congressman who was a master at horse-trading and pork-wrangling, this one from the other side of the aisle. Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, one of the biggest Democratic names to fall in 1994, died at age 82.

• Rasmussen:
• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 38%, Charlie Crist (I) 33%
• FL-Sen: Jeff Greene (D) 20%, Marco Rubio (R) 36%, Charlie Crist (I) 37%
• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 40%, Mark Kirk (R) 40%
• TN-Gov: Mike McWherter (D) 31%, Bill Haslam (R) 56%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 46%, Ron Johnson (R) 47%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 48%, Dave Westlake (R) 39%

SSP Daily Digest: 8/11 (Morning Edition)

by: DavidNYC

Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 8:02 AM EDT

SSP Daily Digest: 8/10 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 4:45 PM EDT

• CO-Sen: Jane Norton's closing argument wasn't about how great she was, but rather about her "concerns" with Ken Buck. Her interview with Politico this morning alluded to his "issues with spending and ethics."

• IL-Sen: If all else fails, try tying your opponent to Saddam Hussein. That's what Mark Kirk's attempting, with an ad that accuses Broadway Bank of having made a 2006 loan to an Iraqi businessman with some sort of Hussein connections. Alexi Giannoulias pointed out that was after he'd already left the bank, but I think a better argument would be that Saddam Hussein was played in South Park Bigger Longer & Uncut by Matt Stone, who was in Baseketball with Greg Grunberg, who was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.

• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon is out with his very first TV ad, as he and GOP candidate Chet Traylor try to put the squeeze on David Vitter from both directions. The ad (NWOTSOTB for $115K) launches a direct hit on how Vitter "hasn't been honest."

• PA-Sen: Pat Toomey is out with yet another TV ad, a negative ad against opponent Joe Sestak. Their only word on the size of the buy is "significant." The Toomey campaign has been on the air with at least five different ads for a month now, without seeming to budge the poll numbers at all. Sestak hasn't hit the TV airwaves yet, and seems to, as was the case with his successful primary bid, marshalling his resources for a large salvo closer to the election.

• KS-Gov: Wow, check out the opponent Sam Brownback dispatched in the GOP gubernatorial primary, if you're in the mood for serious nutjobbery. Joan Heffington alleges "CIA infiltration of western Kansas" and has faced sanctions for practicing law without a license. At any rate, having garnered 15% in the GOP primary, she's now saying she's a GDI (God-driven independent) and shouldn't have gotten suckered into that whole Republican racket in the first place, and as such is launching a write-in candidacy for November.

• MI-Gov: You may remember state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, who pulled the plug on her gubernatorial candidacy on the day of the filing deadline, saying she didn't want to split the progressive vote (and thus giving a big boost to Lansing mayor and eventual primary winner Virg Bernero). Probably figuring that Bernero owes her big-time and also that he'd like some diversity on the ticket, Smith is now floating her own name for the Lt. Governor slot.

• NY-Gov: GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has gone ahead and pulled the trigger on creating his own ballot line, the Taxpayers Party. It still remains a completely open question as to whether he plans to run on it if he loses the GOP primary, though. (He originally said he wouldn't be a spoiler in the race against Andrew Cuomo, but then changed to an "options open" position.)

• IL-10: Dan Seals got apparently re-endorsed by the Illinois Federation of Teachers today. (He also had their backing in the Dem primary against Julie Hamos.)

• IL-11: Rep. Debbie Halvorson didn't start out near the top of anyone's list of vulnerable Democrats, but she's starting to earn her position there. Republican opponent Adam Kinzinger has issued a second internal poll (the first one was in March) giving him a lead over Halvorson. The poll from POS gives him a 51-40 edge. (The article, however, helpfully points out that POS saw Halvorson with only a 2-point lead over the hapless Marty Ozinga six weeks before the election in 2008, a race which she went on to win by 24. Update: In 2008, we wrote about that POS poll here.)

• IN-02: Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, no stranger to occasional use of conservative framing, goes an extra step in his new TV ad hating on those immigrants, using a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama when saying how he stands apart from "the Washington crowd." John Boehner's lurking in the photo's background, too, so at least it's bipartisan.

• KS-01: Wow, SurveyUSA sure likes polling KS-01, probably one of the likeliest races in the country to stay red. (Or at least KWCH-TV sure likes paying them to poll it.) They find Republican state Sen. Tim Huelskamp, who just won the primary, leading Dem Alan Jilka 65-23. (Jilka is a former mayor of Salina, which may actually make him a pretty big 'get' as far as this hopeless district goes.)

• NH-02: When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist? It turns out that Katrina Swett, who has denied (gasp) lobbying, in fact filled out the required federal paperwork in 1997 to register as a lobbyist, although now her defense is that she never actually got around to lobbying once she registered. Swett has previously been attacking Dem primary foe Ann McLane Kuster for her own previous lobbying work.

• TX-17: Rep. Chet Edwards got a key endorsement in this dark-red, largely rural Texas district: he got the backing of the NRA. It may seem odd to see so many conservaDems getting NRA backing, but the NRA's policy is where there are two equally pro-gun candidates, the incumbent gets the nod.

• WV-01: Alan Mollohan 2.0? The man is actually talking like he's eyeing a 2012 comeback, having filed FEC paperwork setting up a 2012 candidacy (although it's unclear whether that was just to have a fundraising receptacle for donors' funds to repay a personal loan to his committee). He also just issued a long memo to supporters, bashing, well, everyone, ranging from Republican House members who pursued ethics complaints against him while they were in charge, to Mike Oliverio, who he says defeated him in this year's Dem primary using those discredited charges.

• Census: Next time a Republican complains to you about the ineffective, bloated government, point him in the direction of the Census, which just came in $1.6 billion under budget (out of a total $14.7 billion appropriated) as it wraps up its main phase. A solid 72% initial response rate helped save money on the inevitable follow-up process.

• Passages: Sadly, today we bid farewell to Ted Stevens, the long-serving Republican Senator from Alaska and chronicler of the inner workings of the series of tubes. Stevens died last night in a plane crash near the town of Dillingham, at the age of 86. Stevens was the survivor of a previous 1978 plane crash, which killed his first wife. We offer our best wishes to his friends and family.

• Rasmussen:
• IA-Sen: Roxanne Conlin (D) 35%, Chuck Grassley (R-inc) 55%
• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth (D) 29%, Dan Coats (R) 50%
• NH-Gov: John Lynch (D-inc) 50%, John Stephen (R) 39%

I'm Shocked, Shocked to Find a Dishonest Karl Rove Memo!

by: Crisitunity

Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 3:06 PM EDT

Um, yeah. Except that's not 13 Democratic-held seats. The poll is of five GOP-held seats and eight Dem-held seats, but without topline numbers for any seat. It's a poll of smaller-than-useful samples in a bunch of different competitive races, globbed together into bigger numbers. The numbers still seem outlandish at first, with a 45-37 advantage for the GOP in the GOP-held seats, and a 47-40 advantage for the GOP in Dem-held seats. But then, looking a little deeper, you notice that those Dem-held seats include Arkansas, Delaware, and Indiana, where the GOP currently has large leads, tipping the scales' balance against the Dems in those other Dem-held seats.

To unpack this, I looked at today's Pollster.com rolling averages of each of these races, and averaged those out within each category to see what it looks like. For instance, for their five GOP-held seats, you have FL-Sen (using Meek vs. Rubio) at 15-32, KY-Sen at 43-45, MO-Sen at 44-48, NH-Sen (using Hodes vs. Ayotte) at 39-48, and OH-Sen at 41-43. That averages out to a 36-43 deficit for the Dems in those races altogether, not much different from POS's 37-45 figure. And in the eight Dem-held seats, there's AR-Sen at 34-57, CO-Sen (using Bennet vs. Buck) at 43-45, DE-Sen at 36-50, IL-Sen at 42-41, IN-Sen at 31-50, NV-Sen at 45-43, PA-Sen at 41-45, and WA-Sen at 49-47. That averages out to a 40-47 GOP advantage... remarkably, the exact same number that POS comes up with.

So my response to all this is: so what? If you go by the Pollster.com averages (and I wouldn't necessarily, as these are heavily determined by Rasmussen numbers and rely heavily on the large disparity between Rasmussen and other pollsters in OH, PA, and CO), they show Dems poised to lose six seats (throwing in ND-Sen, so far gone that they didn't bother polling it)... and gain one, assuming Charlie Crist dances with them that brung him and caucuses with the Dems... which would be a Rasmussen-style-worst-case-scenario net loss of five. Which is simply no different from what any other prognosticator, including us, would expect. So Karl Rove's The Math (TM) looks like it may actually be correct for the moment... but is it telling us anything that we don't already know?

SSP Daily Digest: 8/5 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Thu Aug 05, 2010 at 3:41 PM EDT

• NH-Sen: Here's an indication that Bill Binnie still has to be taken seriously in the GOP Senate primary in New Hampshire: a conservative group called Cornerstone Action (affiliated with the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family) has launched a $125K ad buy attacking Binnie on his socially moderate stances (he's pro-choice and apparently pro-gay marriage). While Cornerstone hasn't specifically backed Kelly Ayotte, Binnie's camp is trying to link them together.

• CO-Gov: Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper announced his pick for a running mate today: the president of CSU-Pueblo and former Director of the state Dept. of Regulatory Agencies, Joe Garcia (no, not the FL-25 one). Meanwhile, Dan Maes -- who was a Some Dude until Scott McInnis imploded -- is starting to rival Sharron Angle in terms of his ability to get into the digest every single day for having said something dumb or having some terrible detail from his past revealed. Today, the Denver Post is out with a comprehensive list of his delinquent filings over the years, ranging from annual reports to the state's SoS office for his credit reporting business for the years 2007-2010, to a lien against his house for not paying his homeowners' association dues for seven months.

• FL-Gov: Ex-Gov. Jeb Bush is throwing a lifeline to Bill McCollum. He'll join McCollum on the stump for appearances around the state on Monday. Meanwhile, the spotlight is starting to swing over from Columbia/HCA, Rick Scott's old healthcare company, to his new one, Solantic. The Miami Herald looks at various lawsuits that Solantic has racked up, ranging from filing false medical information with the state to discrimination lawsuits.

• GA-Gov: Breaking with Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney (who've endorsed suburban Karen Handel), Mike Huckabee announced his support today for the more southern-fried Nathan Deal in the GOP gubernatorial runoff.

• MI-Gov: Looks like Rep. Peter Hoekstra, douchebag to the bitter end, may need some time to pout/mourn after his sizable loss in the GOP gubernatorial primary to Rick Snyder. He sent an e-mail to supporters yesterday thanking them but making no mention of support for Snyder. A Hoekstra endorsement, of course, would go a long way toward helping consolidate conservatives behind Snyder, whose moderation may leave them cold.

• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley has liked to emphasize her accounting background on the campaign trail, but she filed her federal income taxes more than a year late in both 2005 and 2006, and has accrued more than $4,000 in late-payment penalties since then.

• CT-05: Justin Bernier has filed a complaint with the state's SoS against GOP primary rival state Sen. Sam Caligiuri. Caligiuri sent out a mailer calling himself the "Republican nominee," not the "Republican-endorsed candidate" (which he is, thanks to the convention). Of course, the mailer then asks for the recipients' votes in the Republican primary, which according to elementary logic would mean that he is not yet the Republican nominee, but, then again, Republican usually =/= logic.

• MI-02: Jay Riemersma, who finished 2nd in the open seat GOP primary in MI-02 by a margin of about 700 votes to ex-state Rep. Wayne Huizenga, has said he won't seek a recount. Not that a protracted battle would have been any aid to Democrats, who aren't expected to be a factor in November in this dark-red district. (A recount, of course, may still loom in MI-01, where there's either a 1-point or 14-point gap, depending on your source, and both GOPers have claimed victory.)

• Washington: PPP looked at a whole lot of miscellany in their Washington Senate poll, too. They look ahead to both the 2012 Senate and gubernatorial races, finding Maria Cantwell in fine shape for now: she's at 46/38 approval, and she leads Rep. Dave Reichert (not likely to run) 47-41 and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (who's largely unknown statewide) 49-37. The gubernatorial numbers for now favor the likely GOP nominee, AG Rob McKenna, though. He leads Democratic state Sen. majority leader Lisa Brown 47-29 (although her problem is that she's completely unknown, with 81% with no opinion, though she as Generic D is probably also weighed down by Chris Gregoire's approvals, currently at 39/52... I'd have been more interested in seeing how Rep. Jay Inslee matches up, although he may be just as unknown statewide). Finally, they find a 41-41 tie in support for I-1098, which is on the November ballot and would create an income tax for high earners. SurveyUSA, of all people, has given a big lead to "yes" on this initiative, so it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out.

• State legislatures: You may recall Louis Jacobson's piece at Governing Magazine from last month where he handicapped the most competitive state legislative chambers this year. He's out with an expanded version, with every state legislature included and with more detailed writeups. Well worth a read (and maybe even a bookmark). Another similar piece worth checking out today is from Taniel, writing at Open Left, with a comprehensive rundown of who is likely to control the redistricting process in all the states that don't have independent commissions (or only one CD).

• Rasmussen:
• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 45%, Carly Fiorina (R) 40%
• KS-Sen: Lisa Johnston (D) 28%, Jerry Moran (R) 61%
• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 42%, John Kasich (R) 45%

SSP Daily Digest: 8/3 (Morning Edition)

by: DavidNYC

Tue Aug 03, 2010 at 8:04 AM EDT

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is up with a quarter million dollar ad buy on behalf of Jane Norton, touting an endorsement from Jan Brewer (whose instant celebrity strikes me as something on the level of a reality TV star).

Meanwhile, Tom Jensen confirms empirically something I've felt intuitively for a while (and mentioned on our panel at Netroots Nation): Charlie Crist is better off with Jeff Greene winning the Democratic primary rather than Kendrick Meek. In particular, black voters support Meek 39-33 over Crist, while they support Crist 61-17 over Greene.

The Republican running to replace outgoing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) in the coal-mining hub of Kentucky said recently that Washington has no business formulating mine safety rules.

"The bottom line is: I'm not an expert, so don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules," Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April's deadly mining explosion in West Virginia, according to a profile in Details magazine. "You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You'd try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don't, I'm thinking that no one will apply for those jobs."

"I know that doesn't sound... I want to be compassionate, and I'm sorry for what happened, but I wonder: Was it just an accident?"

Meanwhile, a more chronologically closer reporter informs us that Jerry Brown has $23 million on hand.

Senate and Gubernatorial Rankings - August

by: conspiracy

Mon Aug 02, 2010 at 11:04 AM EDT

Rankings are 'Tilt' (less than 5 point race), 'Lean' (5-10 point race) and 'Favored '(10-20 point race). Anything beyond that is 'Solid' for either party.

SENATE
Dem Tilt
IL (Absolute deadheat but since the topic of conversation is all about Kirk I'm giving it Alexi in such a blue state.)
NV (I'm less certain this is has become clear cut as some but Reid has definitely moved ahead at least for now.)
WI (Feingold never wins by whopping margins and races in Wisconsin always seem closer than most.)
WA (No fireable offence from Murray and decent approvals. Rossi has baggage and is only close because of the cycle.)

Rep Tilt
PA (Small lead for Toomey right now but I expect Sestak to improve his position when he gets better known.)
CO (Until the latest SurveyUSA poll both Buck and Norton lead both Dems. Until the primary shakes itself out we aren't going to see movement.)
KY (Paul has the lead because he has kept his mouth shut lately. Hopefully ads and debates will help Conway.)
OH (I fear this is a huge missed opportunity. Portman is ripe for attack but Fisher doesn't have resources to do it.)
MO (Will be close until the end and I still think Robin can do it despite the unsavory environment.)
NH (Ayotte has clearly been hurt recently but I'm skeptical Hodes can get over the top in this one.)

Dem Lean
CA (Small percentage lead for Boxer but much harder for a Republican to close that gap in real votes in California.)
FL*(I'm counting Crist as a Dem pickup though I still think there is a chance he caucuses with the GOP.)

Rep Lean
NC (Don't see Burr losing here. Not this year, not with his CoH advantage.)

Dem Favored
CT (Blumenthal should be fine since he managed to ride out his exaggerations far better than Mark Kirk.)
WV (Without Capito in the race Manchin should be fine so long as he doesn't coast.)

Rep Favored
IN (Ellsworth's problem is name recognition and bad environment. He will close here fast but not sure fast enough.)
LA (Melancon is doing well just to keep this remotely competitive. The electorate wants someone to oppose Obama 100%.)
AR (Blanche shocked everybody once so can she do it again? No. Though I think it will be closer by election day.)
DE (Coons will surprise many and narrow the gap further as we go on but like IN I'm not sure it will be enough.)

We can put ND safely in the GOP column.

GOVERNORS
Dem Tilt
OR (Polls are tied but have to give it to Kitzhaber for his campaigning skills and the lean of the state.)
MN (Emmer is killing himself rather than anything the Dems are doing. I think Dayton will get a clear win in the end.)
RI*(I'm counting Chafee as a Dem since he is arguably more liberal than the actual Dem nominee.)
MD (O'Malley hasn't committed a fireable offense and has decent approvals. Lean of the state should be enough.)
FL (The Republicans have nuked each other and Chiles looks like a non-factor.)
MA (Deval seems to be improving his approvals and Cahill means he has a decent shot at re-election.)
CA (Once Brown starts running ads he should be ok in such a blue state.)

Rep Tilt
GA (Barnes is an underdog in a red state but he is closer than he should be. Both Republicans have skeletons.)
IL (Brady leads but the lean of the state may be enough yet for Quinn if he can paint his opponent as too far right.)
ME (LePage is ahead but like in RI anything could happen here including an indie win.)
OH (Polling is mixed here but my best guess is Kasich has a narrow lead. Strickland can still pull it out though.)
VT (Dubie ahead here but probably more to do with name recognition than anything else. Suspect it will be close.)
TX (Bill White is doing a great job here but I expect the year and state is just too Republican.)
NM (Martinez with a small lead but Denish can win if she is able to seperate herself from Bill Richardson.)
WI (Small leads for both Republicans but Barrett was as good a nominee as Dems could get here. Still possible.)

Dem Lean
CO (What a mess for the GOP! Hick should win easily here unless McInnis drops out post-primary.)
CT (Lamont really should win this one and I think he will.)

Rep Lean
AZ (Great change in fortunes for Brewer. Maybe Goddard can make this close but I have my doubts.)
MI (Post-primary this may get interesting, especially if Hoekstra is the GOP nominee.)
PA (Onorato will close when he gets his name recognition up but PA has a pattern here that likely won't change.)
OK (Not as big a Fallin lead as I expected but the year and state makes it very hard for Askins.)

Dem Favored
HI (Abercrombie has a big lead and should win this going away.)

Rep Favored
IA (Branstad is popular and Culver is not. Only one outcome looks likely here.)
NV (Maybe Harry's improving fortunes helps Rory but Sandoval is no Sharron Angle!)
AL (Sparks is probably as good as it gets for Dems but a fresh face in Bentley in a GOP year makes this very tough.)
ID (Not as big a lead for the GOP as one would expect but it is still Idaho.)
KS (Brownback isn't exactly loved by the entire KS GOP but I can't see anything but a Holland defeat here.)
SC (Sheheen may shock people but again, red state in a terrible year for Dems means Governor Haley.)
SD (Daugaaurd is popular and once again, red state, GOP year.)
TN (McWherter is not his dad and the polls are ugly.)
UT (Herbert has anemic poll leads but it is Utah!)

Projection
SENATE - GOP +5
GOVERNORS - GOP +5

SSP Daily Digest: 7/28 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Wed Jul 28, 2010 at 3:51 PM EDT

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Quinnipiac offers up polls of the major races in New York state today, and, try as they may, they just can't find anything interesting going on here, any more so than any other pollster. The main point of interest may be the GOP primaries; they find Rick Lazio leading Carl Paladino 39-23 in the gubernatorial primary, and Bruce Blakeman leading David Malpass 19-12 in the Senate primary (although Joe DioGuardi, who has submitted his petitions, really should be polled in that race too). In the general, they find Kirsten Gillibrand beating Blakeman 48-27 and Malpass 49-24. Andrew Cuomo defeats Lazio 56-26 and Paladino 55-25.

• WA-Sen: Having been on the receiving end of one of Fred Davis's abstract-expressionist attack ads, Patty Murray's out with her own first second TV spot of the election cycle, one that's relentlessly job-o-centric and focuses on her close links to the region's largest employer: Boeing. It's a panorama of Boeing workers thanking her for saving their jobs.

• FL-Gov: Bill McCollum's trailing in the polls of the GOP primary, but he got a boost from the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which is endorsing him. The Chamber also gave the cash-starved McCollum a $500K transfusion, although it went to McCollum-supporting 527 Florida First Initiative rather than directly to McCollum.

• GA-Gov: Nathan Deal got two presents, one good, one very bad. He got the endorsement for the runoff from fellow House member Jack Kingston, who had previously endorsed fellow Savannah resident Eric Johnson in the GOP primary. However, he also got news that a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas of Georgia's Revenue Commissioner, in its investigation of whether Deal personally intervened with him to protect a state auto inspection program that was particularly beneficial to the Deal family's auto salvage business. At least Deal isn't lagging on the fundraising front; both he and rival Karen Handel have raised about $500K each in the week since the primary.

• MI-Gov: Rumors keep on resurfacing regarding Republican AG Mike Cox's presence at an out-of-control mayoral mansion party hosted by now-disgraced former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and they're back in the news again, inconveniently timed for him with the primary next week. An eyewitness has just signed an affidavit placing the religious-right Cox at the stripper-laden party. Meanwhile, Rick Snyder, who's actively trying to court Dems and indies to cross over to the GOP primary to vote for him, has rolled out an endorsement from a highly respected but long-ago GOP governor: William Milliken.

• MN-Gov: Alliance for a Better Minnesota is out with a new TV ad that's hitting Republican nominee Tom Emmer on one of his weakest spots (of which it turns out he has many). It criticizes him for voting to weaken drunk driving laws, and oh, just happening to point out that Emmer himself has twice been convicted of drunk driving. (The Alliance name is a little oblique, probably intentionally so, but they're a labor-backed 501(c)(4).)

• CO-04: Could Scott McInnis's implosion and Tom Tancredo's gubernatorial run actually help Democratic fortunes downballot, especially in the hotly-contested 4th? That's what Politico is wondering, with a piece looking at how reduced GOP turnout and/or increased interest in Constitution Party candidate Doug Aden might ultimately benefit Democratic freshman Rep. Betsy Markey.

• NH-02: If there's one competitive Democratic primary left where there's a pretty clear ideological contrast, it's in the 2nd. While Ann McLane Kuster is a netroots fave, Katrina Swett is on record as having supported the Bush-era tax cuts in 2002 (the decision of whether or not to extend said cuts is about to become an issue in Congress). Swett says she's being misrepresented, to the extent that only supported the middle-class parts of the tax cuts, although she didn't clarify whether or not she would have voted for the whole shebang.

• PA-06: Buried in a story about how Rep. Jim Gerlach has actually been giving money to the NRCC (to the tune of $44K just now, for a total of $100K all cycle) is news of an internal poll from a few weeks ago, which suggests he's not in the sort of imminent danger that would require him to horde cash. He's pointing to a Wilson Research poll from mid-July that gives him a 54-29 lead over Dem nominee Manan Trivedi.

• MI-Legislature: One state where we aren't hurting for details on the state of the state legislatures, thanks to Michigan Liberal's pbratt, is Michigan. He's out with pre-primary filing fundraising databases for both the Senate (Republican-controlled, but one of our best offensive opportunities) and the House (reliably Democratic-controlled).

• Meta: I've always wondered, if this is such an anti-incumbent year, where the losing incumbents actually are. The Fix's Aaron Blake is taking notice of the same thing, as we're on track to have not really any more of an anti-incumbent year than 2008. With really only one more House member who seems on track to lose a primary (Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick), that puts us on track for 4 primary losses for both parties in the House... exactly the same number as 2008. Winning a primary, of course, takes loads of money, and the thing that sets the successful challengers (Mike Oliverio or Mo Brooks, or Joe Sestak at the Senate level) apart from the vast array of the rabble attacking from both left and right is $$. It is worth observing, though, that the average incumbent winning percentage seems to be down this year from last cycle, with many incumbents winning ugly, in the 60-70% range. We'd need to investigate how much that average percentage has changed since 2008, though, before declaring a trend to be underway.

• Rasmussen:
• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks (D) 35%, Robert Bentley (R) 55%
• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 43%, Mark Kirk (R) 41%
• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 45%, Sharron Angle (R) 43%
• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber (D) 44%, Chris Dudley (R) 47%

If you'd told me back in, say, January, that in late July Rasmussen would be finding Harry Reid winning and John Kitzhaber losing, I wouldn't have even laughed at you, I would have just picked up the phone and called for assistance from men in white suits with big butterfly nets.

SSP Daily Digest: 7/27 (Morning Edition)

by: DavidNYC

Tue Jul 27, 2010 at 7:51 AM EDT

Meanwhile, here's some new craziness: A federal district court judge just ordered a special election to fill the remaining months of Roland Burris's term, most likely to coincide with the regular election in November. Both Kirk and Dem Alexi Giannoulias have said they want to run in the special, and they probably won't have to face a primary, since the judge seems inclined to allow nominees to be picked by party committees. Politico points out a potentially huge angle to all of this: the FEC says that since the special would constitute a new election, the candidates would be able to raise fresh money for that race - meaning that Kirk and Giannoulias could hit up maxed-out donors once more.

Willie W. Herenton, the former mayor, is accusing Steve Cohen, the white two-term United States representative, of "trying to act black." He tells voters in this majority-black city that they "need to come off that Cohen plantation and get on the Herenton freedom train."

SSP Daily Digest: 7/26 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Mon Jul 26, 2010 at 4:18 PM EDT

• CT-Sen: Despite his blowing through a large chunk of his remaining cash on hand in a baffling ad urging people to vote in the Republican primary (although not specifically for him), Rob Simmons is still maintaining that he's not currently a candidate for the Senate. He considers his $350K ad buy as something like "public service announcements."

• FL-Sen: Must be nice to have Jeff Greene's money! Concerned observers are a bit troubled by the close correlation between his hiring of DNC member Jon Ausman as a consultant, and his next-day endorsement of Greene's campaign. Greene has spent $6 million of his own money on the race so far, which apparently is a drop in the bucket for him, as he's been content to ignore a $1.87 million fine from the government of Belize that's outstanding against him, after he crashed his 145-foot yacht into a sensitive coral reef there.

• IL-Sen: Continuing the boat-crashing theme, in case you've been living under a rock all weekend, the big news in Illinois is that Mark Kirk has gotten caught in yet another series of misrememberments, this time about his sailboat accident and subsequent Coast Guard rescue that supposedly got him devoted to public service. Turns out he at least got the being in a sailboat accident part right, but, unlike his own description of the events, he was rescued long before nightfall, he probably didn't swim for a mile because he was within half a mile of shore, and his core temperature certainly wasn't 82 because he would have lost consciousness long before getting to that point. Sensing a pattern here?

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul is re-affirming that he supports Mitch McConnell. Well, sort of. During his Fancy Farm appearance this weekend, he said he's going to vote for McConnell for leader, but almost immediately afterwards, reduced that to not seeing a reason why he wouldn't vote for him. Observers also noted that, in his earlier sorta-support for McConnell, he was implicitly dissing Sharron Angle as unlikely to win, by way of saying that Jack Conway's first action would be to vote for Harry Reid for majority leader (something that, of course, wouldn't happen if Reid weren't to get re-elected).

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle's media policy can be summed up in one word: RUN! That's what she did when faced with questions from a six-months-pregnant reporter last week, who, in typical lamestream media fashion, insisted on asking some further questions after a three-minute speech of boilerplate on the estate tax. How presumptuous! Harry Reid got further good news, too, with the endorsement of Las Vegas mayor and relentless self-promoter Oscar Goodman, who called Reid "the man we go to get things done in the city." If there's one Nevadan having an even worse time than Angle, though, it's John Ensign; his one-time crony Tom Coburn just hung him out to dry, handing over e-mails from Ensign in the ongoing criminal investigation by the DOJ into l'affaire Hampton.

• WV-Sen: With filing closed in West Virginia, there are eleven GOPers fighting in the primary for the right to oppose Joe Manchin in the Senate special election. Most prominent, of course, is businessman John Raese, who lost the 2006 Senate race to Robert Byrd and is also something of an archenemy to the Moore/Capito family. The only other noteworthy GOPer is Mac Warner, who already lost the WV-01 primary this year (and whose brother, Monty Warner, was the 2004 GOP gubernatorial nominee, losing badly to Manchin). Raese punctuated his entry with some ill-advised and outdated ethnic humor, comparing the Italian-American Manchin to Tony Soprano. The NRSC, probably not liking any of its options here (and having gotten burned by some of its earlier interventions), says it isn't getting involved in the primary.

• CO-Gov: The rumor du jour last week was that the RGA was prepared to pull out of Colorado entirely -- and that was before this morning's confirmation that Tom Tancredo was going to jump into the race as an indie candidate in order to either leverage the GOP nomination or crash-land the whole operation. The RGA denied the rumors when they first came out, but the local GOPers working on the race are suddenly leaking e-mails that they're broke. And with Tancredo's bid today, suddenly his allies and core backers among the Tea Partiers are suddenly denouncing him, accusing him of being a likely spoiler, whether intentional or not. Bafflingly, Tancredo pushed back in the way most likely to rub them the wrong way, calling the teabaggers new members of the "establishment." Tancredo's getting some pushback from state party chair Dick Wadhams, too; TPM has audio of the literal screaming match between the two of them.

• FL-Gov: You may remember state Sen. Paula Dockery, who was running a futile campaign against Bill McCollum in the GOP gubernatorial primary until dropping out after getting totally eclipsed by Rick Scott. Well, now she's teaming up with Scott; she's stopping somewhere short of endorsing him, but is joining him on his bus tour, saying she share similar stances on the issues. (She can't be angling for a Lt. Gov. slot, as Florida elects its LG separately, so what her angle is, I don't know. UPDATE: Actually, commenters have corrected me on Florida's LG procedure, wherein the nominees pick running mates, so, yes, it does sound like she's angling for LG.) Also, while it isn't exactly about the horse race, here's a fascinating (at least to me) piece of backstory about Democratic candidate Alex Sink. Her slightly Asian appearance is because she's 1/8th Thai, and her great-grandfather was a well-known celebrity in the early 1800s: circus performer Chang Bunker, one-half of the original so-called "Siamese Twins."

• GA-Gov: Dueling (banjo) endorsements in the Georgia GOP gubernatorial runoff, and they seem to fit the overall media narratives about the two candidates. The suburbanized Karen Handel got Mitt Romney's endorsement, while the more hickory-smoked Nathan Deal got the backing of the NRA.

• OK-Gov (pdf): There's one more poll of the primaries in Oklahoma (to be decided tomorrow night), from the Republican firm of Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates, apparently on their own and not on anyone else's behalf. The results are pretty similar to this weekend's Sooner Poll: they see AG Drew Edmondson beating Lt. Gov. Jari Askins 38-27 on the Dem side, and Rep. Mary Fallin well ahead of state Sen. Randy Brogdon 50-22 on the GOP side. Askins did get one late-breaking endorsement, though, that's good as gold in this football-mad state: she got the backing of former OU and Dallas Cowboys head coach Barry Switzer. Switzer's backing is credited with helping Brad Henry win a come-from-behind victory in the 2002 Dem gubernatorial primary.

• OH-St. House: Here's something you don't see every day: a local article about a competitive state legislative chamber where you don't get just platitudes about the closeness, but actual detail about the most competitive races. Democrats currently control the state House 53-46 after picking it up in 2008, and it could revert back to the GOP this year. The Democratic seats on defense that they list are scattered among Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland suburbs, and Appalachian-flavored rural areas like Portsmouth and Zanesville.

• OR-Init: Oregon stands out as the only west coast state that doesn't have an independent redistricting commission for state legislative seats. It looks like that's going to continue: a proposed initiative to create an independent commission of retired judges for redistricting didn't qualify for the ballot, after too many signatures turned out to be invalid. 2002 GOP governor candidate and bringer-of-the-crazy Kevin Mannix was the leader of the move, although he actually had some big money interests behind him this time (like Nike's Phil Knight).

• Rasmussen:
• AZ-Sen (R): John McCain (R-inc) 54%, J.D. Hayworth (R) 34%
• ND-Sen: Tracy Potter (D) 22%, John Hoeven (R) 69%

SSP Daily Digest: 7/19 (Morning Edition)

by: DavidNYC

Mon Jul 19, 2010 at 8:01 AM EDT

SSP Daily Digest: 7/15 (Afternoon Edition)

by: Crisitunity

Thu Jul 15, 2010 at 3:50 PM EDT

• KS-Sen: I don't know what spooked Jerry Moran into coughing up another internal poll (I can't imagine it was the backstabbing by Tom Tancredo, but who knows?), but at any rate, he released a new internal from POS giving him a 56-24 lead over Todd Tiahrt in the GOP Senate primary. Moran also continues to win the fundraising race, raising $538K last quarter with $2.3 million CoH. Tiahrt raised $451K last quarter and has $1.3 million CoH, although he has a big fundraising dinner scheduled soon hosted by former Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis.

• NV-Sen: This news has to be, on the balance, good news for Harry Reid. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while certainly not considering endorsing Reid, is moving toward sitting out the Nevada Senate race. It may be tempting to pin this down with increasing Chamber discontent with the teabagger wing of the party (as seen with their moves in SC-Gov and ID-01), but a lot of it may be that they're less unhappy with Reid as Majority Leader than the alternatives (Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin). Reid's also reporting, unsurprisingly, tons of money: he raised $2.4 million, although, after spending a lot on ads, he's at $9 million CoH.

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov (pdf): Siena released polls everyone and everything in the Empire State today, although there's little suspense in any of these races anymore. In the gubernatorial race, Andrew Cuomo beats Rick Lazio 60-28, beats Carl Paladino 64-23, and beats Lazio and Paladino (with Paladino on a 3rd party line) 54-23-10. Lazio beats Paladino in the GOP primary 40-20. In the Senate special election, Kirsten Gillibrand leads Bruce Blakeman 51-28, beats Joe DioGuardi 51-29, and beats David Malpass 50-27. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary at 24, with 7 for Blakeman and 5 for Malpass. And in the other Senate race, Chuck Schumer beats both Gary Berntsen and Jay Townsend by an identical 63-26. Townsend tops Berntsen in the GOP primary 24-13. They even throw in the Comptroller's race, where Dem incumbent Tom DiNapoli beats self-funded GOPer Harry Wilson 48-24.

• SC-Sen: The Charleston minor league baseball team has answered Alvin Greene's call for economic stimulus in the form of Alvin Greene action figures: they'll be giving out Greene figurines as a promotion at their Saturday game. (Although it sounds a little half-assed, as they're just sticking Alvin Greene heads on unused Statues of Liberty.) Also, with the primary out of the way, local and Beltway Democrats alike are uniting behind Greene, filling his coffers with... um... $1,000? (At least that puts him ahead of Roland Burris.) That number was apparently volunteered by Greene; he won't have to file with the FEC until he hits the $5,000 mark.

• WV-Sen: Plans are already afoot in Washington to swear in West Virginia's new Senator by Tuesday so that the unemployment benefits extension can be voted on that same day. Who, though, is still an open question. Other Senator Jay Rockefeller says there's some White House pressure and he thinks he knows who it'll be, but he isn't saying who. Ex-Gov. and current College Board President Gaston Caperton has suddenly reversed course and is now saying that he is interested, which certainly seems like a tea leaf to me. There are also reports that Bob Wise and Larry Puccio have removed themselves from consideration, and Nick Casey (awaiting a federal judgeship) is very unlikely.

The NRSC is already running anti-Joe Manchin ads (in print media only), but that may not provide that much encouragement to Shelly Moore Capito (the only Republican who can make this competitive) to get in: one little-noted fact is that one item that rather pointedly got left off the agenda for today's legislative special session is whether or not an officeholder could run for two seats at the same time in the special election and the regularly-scheduled election (like in, oh let's just say, WV-Sen and WV-02).  

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis may be the last to know to know that he's dropping out of the gubernatorial race. Tom Tancredo has been telling people that McInnis is going to drop out, although the McInnis camp is denying that, saying "we're moving forward." Tancredo is also the first state GOPer to publicly call for McInnis to get out, although I wonder if Tancredo is hoping he may get the chance to take his place (remember Tancredo had flirted with the race early last year). Tancredo doesn't seem to be on the list of replacements that's being bandied about by the local press, though: they include Josh Penry (whom Tancredo had backed, and who ran for a while before dropping out), former state Sen. Mark Hillman, and... get this... ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer, who badly lost the 2008 Senate race.

There's also some speculation about the legalities of replacing McInnis: it doesn't seem like the GOP could insert a hand-picked filler before the primary, unless both McInnis and Dan Maes dropped out (not out of the question, I suppose, considering that Maes' campaign is currently belly-up). This may help McInnis's decision along: the RGA is now saying that they're abandoning him, pulling out of fundraisers they'd previously scheduled.

• GA-Gov: Mason-Dixon takes a look at the Georgia gubernatorial primaries. On the Republican side, they find John Oxendine at 31, Karen Handel at 23, Nathan Deal at 18, and Eric Johnson at 6. Compare that with Rasmussen (see below) and Magellan's recent polls, which see possible Handel/Deal runoffs. Ed Kilgore also takes a look at the proxy war being fought in Georgia by Sarah Palin (backing Handel) and Newt Gingrich (backing Deal), which may be boosting those two's fortunes at Oxendine's expense. Mason-Dixon's look at the Dem primary has comparatively less drama: Roy Barnes is out of runoff territory at 54, with Thurbert Baker at 20, David Poythress at 7, and Dubose Porter at 3.

• AZ-08: The Fix seems to be the leaking place of choice for the GOP for its internal polls, and they have word of another one with a GOPer with a (slight) lead. It's in the 8th, where a Tarrance Group poll gives Jonathan Paton a 45-44 lead over Gabrielle Giffords. Paton, of course, still has to survive a primary against the more tea-flavored Jesse Kelly.

• KS-04: SurveyUSA's new poll of the KS-04 primaries shows some interesting movement on the GOP side: both Mike Pompeo and Wink Hartman have declined by similar amounts (they're currently at 32 and 31, respectively), with state Sen. Jean Schodorf making a late move up to 16, based on strength among women and moderates. Jim Anderson's also at 9. There's also a surprise on the Dem side: the DCCC-touted Raj Goyle is actually in danger of losing his primary to Some Dude, Robert Tillman. Tillman now leads, 40-36. Looks like we may have been right about Goyle's reasons behind launching a TV buy now.

• House: We don't usually like to link to this sort of meta about the state of the House, but it's interesting to see the various blind men who are veterans of the DCCC and the NRCC in relatively close agreement about the size and shape of the elephant this year.

• Fundraising: AR-Sen | CA-Sen| CA-Sen | CT-Sen | DE-Sen | FL-Sen | IL-Sen | IN-Sen | MO-Sen | NH-Sen | OR-Sen | WI-Sen | IL-Gov | TX-Gov | CT-04 | DE-AL | FL-08 | GA-02 | NH-01 | OH-13 | PA-03 | PA-10 | RI-01 | WA-03

• Rasmussen:
• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 46%, Meg Whitman (R) 47%
• GA-Gov (R): Nathan Deal (R) 25%, Karen Handel (R) 25%, John Oxendine (R) 20%, Eric Johnson (R) 13%
• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 41%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 50%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 46%, Ron Johnson (R) 47%
• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 51%, Dave Westlake (R) 37%

SSP Daily Digest: 7/15 (Morning Edition)

by: DavidNYC

Thu Jul 15, 2010 at 8:14 AM EDT

One unrelated note on the Dem side: Sen. Michael Bennett raised $1.26 million in the second quarter. No word on his cash-on-hand, though.

And that's one of the things that's most destructive about the growth of government is this taking away that freedom, the freedom, the ultimate freedom, to find your salvation, to get your salvation, and to find Christ for me and you, and I think that's one of the things we have to be very, very aware of that the Obama Administration and Congressman Carnahan are doing to us.

Paul Kanjorski (D-inc): 37
Lou Barletta (R): 56
(MoE: ±4.9%)

Barletta also has his first ad up, airing on broadcast and cable in the Scranton-Wilkes Barre market, but NWOTSOTB. His campaign says he's raised over $500K to date, which would mean he took in over $200K in the last quarter, based on his last FEC report.

Rasmussen Reports, You Decide, Vol. 22

by: Crisitunity

Thu Jul 08, 2010 at 5:16 PM EDT

On a more serious note, we're sad to say this is our final volume of Rasmussen Reports, You Decide. Nobody here enjoys the mind-numbing, Hercules-cleaning-the-stables task of putting them together (and that only looks to get worse, with the demoralizing news that they plan to further up their output as election season progresses). But rather than jettisoning Rasmussen entirely (tempting as it may be), we're just going to start doing what Steve Singiser at Daily Kos already wisely does with "Ras-A-Poll-Ooza," which is to eat the elephant in bite-sized chunks and keep each day's Rasmussen polls in their own little containment pool at the end of each day's digest. If you're even more obsessive than us, and you absolutely need to know trendlines, sample dates, the breakdown between "Some Other" and "Not Sure," or MoEs, well, you probably already know where Pollster.com is.

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard (D) 35%, Jan Brewer (R-inc) 53%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 15%, Marco Rubio (R) 36%, Charlie Crist (I) 34%
• FL-Sen: Jeff Greene (D) 18%, Marco Rubio (R) 37%, Charlie Crist (I) 33%

• HI-Gov: Neil Abercrombie (D) 58%, Duke Aiona (R) 32%
• HI-Gov: Mufi Hannemann (D) 52%, Duke Aiona (R) 30%
• HI-Gov: Neil Abercrombie (D) 59%, John Carroll (R) 30%

• HI-Sen: Dan Inouye (D-inc) 68%, John Roco (R) 20%

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 40%, Mark Kirk (R) 39%

• KS-Gov: Tom Holland (D) 31%, Sam Brownback (R) 59%

• KS-Sen: David Haley (D) 25%, Jerry Moran (R) 60%
• KS-Sen: Lisa Johnston (D) 25%, Jerry Moran (R) 61%
• KS-Sen: Charles Schollenberger (D) 25%, Jerry Moran (R) 59%
• KS-Sen: Robert Conroy (D) 23%, Jerry Moran (R) 60%
• KS-Sen: David Haley (D) 27%, Todd Tiahrt (R) 58%
• KS-Sen: Lisa Johnston (D) 29%, Todd Tiahrt (R) 57%
• KS-Sen: Charles Schollenberger (D) 30%, Todd Tiahrt (R) 55%
• KS-Sen: Robert Conroy (D) 29%, Todd Tiahrt (R) 53%

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 42%, Rand Paul (R) 49%

• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon (D) 36%, David Vitter (R-inc) 52%

• MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan (D) 43%, Roy Blunt (R) 48%

• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall (D) 37%, Richard Burr (R) 52%

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo (D) 55%, Rick Lazio (R) 28%
• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo (D) 55%, Carl Paladino (R) 25%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 40%, John Kasich 47%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 39%, Rob Portman (R) 43%

• OK-Gov: Drew Edmondson (D) 39%, Mary Fallin (R) 48%
• OK-Gov: Drew Edmondson (D) 44%, Robert Hubbard (R) 31%
• OK-Gov: Drew Edmondson (D) 46%, Randy Brogden (R) 35%
• OK-Gov: Drew Edmondson (D) 45%, Roger Jackson (R) 29%
• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 32%, Mary Fallin (R) 55%
• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 38%, Randy Brogden (R) 47%
• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 38%, Robert Hubbard (R) 43%
• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 40%, Roger Jackson (R) 42%

• OK-Sen: Mark Myles (D) 27%, Tom Coburn (R-inc) 62%
• OK-Sen: Jim Rogers (D) 26%, Tom Coburn (R-inc) 65%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 39%, Tom Corbett (R) 49%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 39%, Pat Toomey (R) 45%

• UT-Gov: Peter Corroon (D) 31%, Gary Herbert (R-inc) 58%

• WY-Gov: Mike Massie (D) 22%, Matt Mead (R) 49%
• WY-Gov: Leslie Peterson (D) 23%, Rita Meyer (R) 51%
• WY-Gov: Leslie Peterson (D) 28%, Colin Simpson (R) 44%
• WY-Gov: Leslie Peterson (D) 27%, Ron Micheli (R) 47%
• WY-Gov: Pete Gosar (D) 23%, Matt Mead (R) 51%
• WY-Gov: Pete Gosar (D) 23%, Rita Meyer (R) 52%
• WY-Gov: Pete Gosar (D) 24%, Colin Simpson (R) 51%
• WY-Gov: Pete Gosar (D) 28%, Ron Micheli (R) 46%