It's been a bit since the Massachusetts election, in which unknown Republican Scott Brown emerged to upset the favored Democrat Martha Coakley in one of union's deepest-blue states. Since then, Democrats have been recalibrating their strategy.
In a previous post, I outlined the results of how a tied election might look like. Let's take a look at the prediction:
• AZ-Sen: This has to be a bit of disappointment for J.D. Hayworth, as he mounts a right-wing primary challenge to John McCain: South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who's been active in endorsing insurgent candidates in GOP primaries and whose stamp of approval has become the gold standard for aspiring wingnuts, has declined to get involved in the Arizona primary.
• CA-Sen: Bringing to the table the business acumen and keen understanding of the law that made her such a smashing success at Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina put forth a worst-case scenario solution for the cash-strapped state of California: declaring bankruptcy. One slight problem here: while municipalities may, states can't declare bankruptcy.
• IN-Sen: Former Sen. Dan Coats made his official announcement during a radio interview today, saying he's "answering the call" to challenge Evan Bayh. Coats said he's "off and running," and by running, that means his staffers are running madly around the state trying to round up at least 500 signatures in each congressional district before the Feb. 16 filing deadline; so far, he has turned in no signatures at all (and his efforts may be greatly hampered by this week's spell of inclement weather). At a more general level, Politico has a story today titled "The Nuking of Dan Coats," a retrospective of all the damage Coats has sustained last week as the Dems (gunshy about a repeat of their asleep-at-the-wheel Massachusetts election) pounced quickly and rolled out pushback-free hit after hit on Coats's lobbying past and residency.
• CA-Gov: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown is sitting on more than $12 million, which would be enough to annihilate everyone and everything in sight in most states. But in freakishly-expensive California and facing billionaire Meg Whitman, who can cut herself a $20 million check the way most of us reach into the change jar on the way to the store, he needs a little outside help. He's getting that from "Level the Playing Field 2010," a coalition of unions and wealthy donors who are launching a $20 million independent expenditure effort of their own, to keep Whitman from dominating the airwaves here in the slow season.
• MI-Gov: This is kind of surprising, considering that she'd been getting a disproportionate share of the gubernatorial buzz, some not-so-subtle encouragement from inside the Beltway, and a primary lead in recent polling. Denise Ilitch, UM regent and one-time pro sports magnate & pizza baroness, decided today against a run for the Democratic nod. She pointed to the late date, saying there was too much catching-up to do at this point, although she said she'd be interested in running for something in the future. This means the Democratic field is likely to be centrist state House speaker Andy Dillon and populist Lansing mayor Virg Bernero going mano-a-mano.
• NY-Gov: You can tell it's not shaping up to be a good week when it starts out with having to point out that, no, you're not resigning. David Paterson batted down rumors about forthcoming resignation in the face of an allegedly-emerging sex scandal (which so far has yet to emerge), but something even more ominous is looming on the horizon: federal prosecutors are starting to look into alleged misdeeds related to awarding gambling contracts at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens. The angle may be that the recipient, Aqueduct Entertainment Group, includes ex-Rep. Floyd Flake, still a prominent black leader in Queens and one who'd been pondering endorsing Andrew Cuomo instead in a primary, and that the contract may have been intended to curry Flake's favor.
• PA-Gov: Scranton mayor Chris Doherty may be looking for an exit, although he maintains he's staying in the Democratic primary field. Rumors have abounded that he's looking to downshift to the Lt. Governor position, and the decision by two locally prominent pols (Wilkes-Barre mayor Tom Leighton and Luzerne Co. Commissioner Maryanne Petrilla) to back rival Dan Onorato instead may hasten his decision. Doherty is also getting urged to drop down to the state Senate, in order to hold the Scranton-area seat being vacated this year by Senate minority leader Robert Mellow (who just announced his retirement) after decades in the Senate. (However, SD-22 is Democratic-leaning and probably doesn't need someone of Doherty's stature to hold it.)
• RI-Gov: I'm not exactly sure where the rumors that Democratic state treasurer Frank Caprio was considering a switch to an independent or even Republican run for governor (presumably in order to avoid an irritating primary with more liberal AG Patrick Lynch, although polls have given Caprio the edge in that primary) were coming from, but Caprio tamped them down, confirming he's staying on board as a Democrat. At any rate, regardless of how things sort out, it looks like Rhode Island will have a governor next year who's in favor of gay marriage: Caprio, Lynch, and independent candidate Lincoln Chafee have all pledged to sign it into law. (Republican candidate John Robitaille won't, although even he's in favor of civil unions; polls have shown him to be an electoral non-factor though.)
• AL-05: Suddenly the floodgates are open in the 5th for Democratic challengers to former Dem Parker Griffith. Taze Shepard and Mitchell Howie both confirmed they'll run yesterday, and now a third person has stepped forward: Steve Raby, a political consultant whose biggest claim to fame is a long stint as the chief of staff to Sen. Howell Heflin. A fourth possible candidate, former Huntsville school board president David Blair, however, said that he won't get involved in the race. The filing deadline isn't until April 2.
• CA-11: The establishment seems to be coming together behind attorney David Harmer as their pick in the GOP primary in the 11th, where there's a wide assortment of Republicans, some of whom can self-fund, but none with an electoral background. Harmer, you'll recall, ran in the special election in the much-bluer 10th last year and overperformed the district's lean against then-Lt. Gov. John Garamendi. Harmer just got the endorsement of Reps. Wally Herger and Buck McKeon, as well as CA-11's 2008 loser, former Assemblyman Dean Andal.
• CT-04: Ex-Rep. Chris Shays is starting to seem like he wants to run for something this year, seeing as how Republican fortunes are improving. He'd previously been linked with a gubernatorial run, but today's rumor has him interested in a rematch against Rep. Jim Himes, who knocked him out in 2008. Shays would be a more imposing foe than the state Senators currently in the GOP field, but would still have an uphill run against the district's D+5 lean.
• MA-AG: If politicians had to have professional licenses in order to practice, Martha Coakley's would have been revoked for gross political malpractice. Instead, though, she's free to run for re-election... and that's just what she's announced that she's doing.
• OH-AG: A Republican internal poll from Newhouse gives ex-Sen. Mike DeWine a sizable edge over incumbent Democratic Richard Cordary in the Ohio AG's race, 50-32. That's actually plausible, as DeWine, who spent two terms as Senator, has much greater name recognition than Cordray, who filled in mid-term in the wake of Marc Dann's resignation.
• NY-St. Sen.: The state Senate actually sacked up and did it: they expelled Hiram Monserrate, several months after his assault conviction. The vote was 53-8. A special election has been called for March 16 (in which Monserrate plans to run anyway); the compressed timetable is largely because Monserrate's absence means the Dems are down to only a 31-30 edge in the Senate, making it impossible for the Dems to move legislation on party lines (as bills need 32 votes to pass).
• NY-St. Ass.: Bad news for suburban New York Democrats, who lost two separate Assembly seats in special elections last night (although one, in Suffolk County, is close enough that it could be salvaged through absentee ballots). The victory of Republican Robert Castelli in AD-89, centered on White Plains in affluent Westchester County, may be particularly alarming for Democrats, especially when coupled with the surprise loss of Westchester Co. Exec Andy Spano in November. It's a bellwether-ish but generally Dem-leaning part of suburbia, and if it's turning right, that could endanger state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (complicating Dem plans to expand the Senate majority) and possibly even NY-19 Rep. John Hall (who represents a further north, but more conservative, part of Westchester as part of his district). Assembly control, however, is hardly hanging in the balance: Dems now control the chamber 105-42-3.
• AR-Sen: Talk Business Net has occasionally polled Arkansas for approvals of its local political figures, and they see Blanche Lincoln sinking further into oblivion: she's currently at a 38/56 approval, down from 42/46 in October. One Arkansas Dem who isn't suffering is Governor Mike Beebe, who's at an inhuman 82/9. Beebe obviously plans for re-election and isn't in a position to relieve us of Lincoln in a primary, but Accountability Now is looking a little further down the totem pole and launching drafthalter.com to try and get Lt. Gov. Bill Halter into the race (although he's been sounding more interested in the open seat in AR-02).
• AZ-Sen: This is good news! For John McCain! However, it has to be bad news for the hordes of teabaggers who had about one day of thinking they'd elected one of their own to the Senate before finding out they'd gotten just got another New England RINO. Newly-elected Scott Brown's first act was to record a robocall in favor of the insufficiently zealous McCain, who may or may not field a challenge from the raving right from J.D. Hayworth. Believe it or not, this wasn't even Brown's first endorsement (the guy's doling out the political capital without having even been sworn in yet). The Hill had a piece this morning titled "Brown's First Endorsement May Backfire," which I assumed was about McCain - but it turns out his first endorsement was of William Hudak, a nobody running in MA-06 against John Tierney. Hudak is a loud-and-proud birther, and now Brown's camp is already trying to figure out how to walk that one back (and getting blasted by Hudak for doing so).
• IN-Sen: With rumors flying about Rep. Mike Pence checking out a possible Senate race against Evan Bayh, key Pence ally Tony Perkins (head of the Family Research Council) said that he doubts there'll be a Pence run for the Senate, and he alluded vaguely to the "possibility" of a 2012 presidential run instead. The Club for Growth, seeing a kindred spirit in Pence, though, has been joining in the chorus pushing him to run.
• NC-Sen (pdf): Not much change in the North Carolina Senate race since PPP's last visit, although there's some fluctuation upward in Richard Burr's head-to-head numbers. The faceless Burr's approvals are still very ho-hum, at 36-33 (with 31 still not sure), but he's still holding his own against Generic D (45-36, up quite a bit from a one-digit gap last month, which was probably too optimistic). Encouragingly, though, SoS Elaine Marshall is starting to overperform Generic D; she trails 44-37. Ex-state Sen. Cal Cunningham trails 45-36, and attorney Kenneth Lewis (who was recently endorsed by Rep. G.K. Butterfield) trails 46-34.
• NY-Sen-B: Harold Ford Jr.'s Senate campaign-type-thing seems ill-timed to coincide with the Democrats' belated and tentative moves to try and tap into anti-bankster anger. Sensing some trouble on that front, he's been refusing to say exactly what kind of work he's been doing for Merrill Lynch. Politico previously described his role ("senior policy adviser") as sort of a nothing-and-everything job: "rainmaker and image buffer, there to impress clients, make connections and put a politic foot forward in public settings."
• AL-Gov: More general douchery from Rep. Artur Davis as he tries to run to the right of Ag Comm. Ron Sparks in the Democratic primary, saying of health care reformer supporter Sparks: "Ron Sparks, who supports the flawed health care legislation in Washington, should realize that he is not only out of touch with the state he wants to lead, Ron Sparks would even be out of touch in Massachusetts."
• CO-Gov: Here's one sign that the John Hickenlooper camp was caught flat-footed by Gov. Bill Ritter's retirement announcement: they don't own johnhickenlooper.com. Wanna buy it? It'll only cost you $995, and the Hickenlooper camp doesn't seem to have plans to try to buy it.
• IL-Gov: Dan Hynes, who's been running some hard-hitting (some might say "Willie Horton-esque") ads against incumbent Pat Quinn in the Democratic primary, is now touting an internal poll that has him quickly closing the gap to within 7, down 44-37. (Quinn is also getting hit from the right by anti-tax ads from GOPer Andy McKenna.) Hynes's poll also claims that Quinn's approval is down to 36/60 among primary voters - if that doesn't turn around for Quinn after the primary once he isn't getting squeezed from both sides (if he even survives, as his trendline is pointing down), that would certainly bode ill for the general. One other plus for Hynes: he has a cash advantage of more than $1 million against the incumbent.
• NY-Gov: The NYT reports on mounting impatience among New York Democratic leaders for AG Andrew Cuomo to get over it and declare his gubernatorial bid already. Insiders say he's already made up his mind to run and is waiting possibly as late as April to announce, though - and already holding a $16 million to $3 million funds edge over David Paterson, he doesn't have to hustle. Still, Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, is publicly endorsing Cuomo today, as a subtle nudge to get him off his butt.
• PA-Gov: Businessman Tom Knox got a lot of early attention in the Democratic governor's primary, but hasn't made much an impression in the polls since then. Rumors have been abounding that Knox was about to drop out of the race and endorse rival Dan Onorato instead, after meeting with Onorato this week. Knox's campaign manager has been tamping those rumors down, today, though.
• TX-Gov: With Dick Cheney already offering his endorsement (of questionable value), another Bush administration veteran is about to endorse Kay Bailey Hutchison too in the Texas gubernatorial primary: George Bush himself. Now before you start sputtering, that's Bush the Elder (aka 41, aka Poppy, aka H.W.).
• AR-01: In a piece on Rep. Marion Berry sounding pessimistic about passing health care reform, there's also an even more unsettling tidbit buried, saying Berry sounds "a little unsure" about whether he'll even bother running for re-election this year, even though he's not facing much in the way of a GOP challenge (yet). The quickly reddening 1st is not somewhere we want to be defending another open seat.
• NY-19: Conservative Republicans who've been looking for an alternative to the country-clubbish Nan Hayworth as a challenger to Democratic Rep. John Hall may have found someone to fit that bill. Thomas DeChiaro, owner of a local winery, says he'll run. As an indication of where he's coming from, he said he's already met with Conservative Party leader Michael Long and "plans to" meet with Republican party leaders soon.
• PA-06: It's official; Scott Welch is staying in the GOP primary in the 6th, despite Rep. Jim Gerlach pulling his gubernatorial ripcord and plummeting back into his old seat. Welch may be motivated by nothing more than sunk costs at this point, but he claims he's bolstered by a decent 40% showing at a recent insider straw poll. Looking for an angle in a moderate-vs.-moderate duel, he's also been reaching out to the local teabaggers, but they may be very suspicious of his past support of Democrats.
• PA-08: Ex-Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick had sounded kind of coy about a rematch with 2006 victor Rep. Pat Murphy, but all signs are now pointing toward a 2010 run. He's scheduled a Saturday press conference in the district to talk about his plans.
• MA-AG: Martha Coakley, now that she has some time on her hands, is planning to run for re-election as Massachusetts Attorney General. It remains to be seen whether she'll draw any primary challengers, now that it's been exposed that she has a glass jaw and turned off a lot of former supporters; some of the county DAs who'd been planning to run to succeed her may be interested in forging ahead anyway.
• Governors: Josh Goodman looks at the link between what happened in gubernatorial races in midterm elections where there was a wave at the congressional level. As you'd expect, the party gaining in Congress gains state houses too, although seemingly mostly through open seats.
• Filing deadlines: Don't forget to check out our handy SSP calendar, which covers filing deadlines and primary election dates. Kentucky and West Virginia have filing deadlines next week - and then Illinois has its freakishly-early primary in just two more weeks.
When it comes to writing about elections after the fact, I'm not a big post-mortem guy -- I feel it can sometimes be a little disingenuous to diagnose a race with absolute certainty a day or two after, in many cases, you were hedging your bets as to the final outcome. That said, though, there are an endless supply of post-mortems out there on Martha Coakley's mind-numbingly bad result last night, and some of them actually have some worthwhile observations to offer. Let's round up a few of these pundit attempts to leave their mark on the CW:
DemFromCT also has a pundit roundup. If data, rather than chatter, is your drug, the WVWV exit poll is now available, as is Rasmussen's not-surprisingly dead-on election night poll.
While we're talking about lessons to learn from the debacle in Massachusetts, two tough questions that need to be asked, discussed, and reflected on a great deal are:
1. How to get better at picking good candidates in primaries, and
2. What are the danger signs to look out for in a primary that might warn us a candidate that looks good in a primary will bomb in the general election?
Last night's victory by Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in the Bay State was certainly one of the biggest political shockers in my lifetime. The fact that in happened on the eve of the first anniversary of the Obama presidency also leaves a sour taste in everyone but Republican's mouths.
My view is the Democrats got complacent with "safe" seats, and Republicans can get that way also as we've seen in the last 4 years when they just kept losing. The Democrats were so used to Ted Kennedy holding onto his seat, they thought it would be a lock for them and they could run just about anybody, no matter how terrible a candidate he or she was. Brown managed to develop what I thought was a great one-liner in response to David Gergen: "It's not the Kennedy seat, it's the People's seat!"
All the telltale signs that this was not a safe Democrat haven since at least 1990 were there. William Weld, Paul Cellucci, and Mitt Romney weren't accidents. If they could win the governorship with that much success, it was only a matter of time before they managed to ascend to higher office. Hell, Brown even made Coakley look like an elistist with his driving around in his GMC Truck. Can you say "Fred Thompson 1994"?
For a party that emphasized reaching out to Indpendents in 2008, how in the world did they not realize that Independents now outnumber either party affliation is staggering. Either people out there honestly did not approve of HRC, or they didn't understand it because Democrats on the ground weren't campaigning hard enough up to this vote to gain ground with Independents. I would argue that the latter point is more accurate. Democrats like Coakley and Obama pretty much failed to actually campaign until the last minute, allowing Brown to capitalize. How else do you explain a 30 point lead for Coakley evaporating virtually overnight?
Where I come from, I know of a party that had been in office for a long time. They thought the other guys could never beat them and they got complacent. Guess what? The Liberal Party of Canada is in opposition today, and the best leader we could come up with was a guy who spent 30 years away from Canada and was recently a professor at, coincidentially, Harvard. While Democrats haven't been in control in the amount of time Liberals had been, the same situation seems to be present. They need to pick up their game and campaign hard, or else they can start to lose safe seats like they did last night.
Q: Where are the other potential Dem collapse areas this Nov? A: Almost precisely the places Hillary carried in the 08 prez primary
He's definitely on to something. Below is a map of the 2008 presidential primary results in Massachusetts between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Red is Clinton, blue is Obama:
The results between tonight's race and the presidential primary correlate at a rate of 0.56, which is quite high.
Polls close in Massachusetts tonight at 8PM Eastern. As usual, we'll be liveblogging the race until the bitter end. By the time we're done, you'll be left with stems and seeds.
Let's use this thread to take care of the pre-game chatter.
Benchmarks: If you haven't yet seen Crisitunity's town-by-town benchmarks for the absolute bare minimum that Martha Coakley needs in order to win, get your fine self over to that thread. It'll definitely be something worth keeping in your pocket as you follow the returns tonight. Blue Mass Group has a list of key benchmarks to watch for, and David Wasserman has an expansive spreadsheet available.
Jeff's take: SSP data guru jeffmd offers his projection model for the race.
Turnout: The Boston Globe has a list of poll-watcher reports by town. Greg Sargent (my former boss at Talking Points Memo), has some hard turnout numbers from Boston indicating that the city appears to be juiced-up about the race.
1994, redux?: A former Ted Kennedy aide sees parallels between the race between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley, and the '94 Senate race between Kennedy and Mitt Romney. The aide's math suggests that Coakley will win.
Fingerpointing: However, you know things are tense when Democrats are already getting a head start on the blame game. Oy.
Polling: Rasmussen will be out with a new poll as soon as the results start to trickle in. And if you're looking for exit polls, there are none to report. However, the cumbersomely-named Women's Voices. Women Vote has commissioned an exit poll by Lake Partners Research and American Viewpoint. Those results won't be available for dissection until tomorrow morning, though.
I'm as freaked out over Massachusetts as anyone - and I might be plenty angry/despondent/confused/hungover tomorrow morning.
But in the meantime, I've been working on a crude projection model using, in part, the "baseline" idea that Crisitunity and DavidNYC have made a part of SSP Election Night Tradition.
The model, as inputs, takes partial results from towns that have reported, and outputs a whole slew of numbers comparing the current situation to the "baseline" numbers.
The county baselines post has become a game day staple at Swing State Project for advanced elections-returns-watchers, and today's no different. The basic idea here: find the bare minimum percentage in each major county that's necessary to get the Democratic candidate over the hump at 50%. (That, of course, is predicated on all the counties moving the same direction as the presidential election the benchmarks are based on, which doesn't actually happen in real life, but it's a rough estimate.) As election returns come in, compare the benchmarks to the actual returns to see if we're on track to win.
There's one small problem here, which most of you are probably already familiar with: Massachusetts, and the other New England states, don't report election results by county, but rather by town. With hundreds and hundreds of little towns, that's a lot of ground to cover, so we'll just look at the biggest, plus some towns in what seem to be the key areas to watch in this race.
In fact, let's take a look at the state's town-by-town map, created by our own DavidNYC (you can click on the map to see a full-size version):
This map is based on the relatively close 1996 Senate election between John Kerry and William Weld (a better choice here, because a map of the 2008 Presidential race would be almost entirely blue, and the 2002 gubernatorial race would be almost entirely red, with Romney winning the vast majority of towns). But it gives the general lay of the land in the state: the Democratic votes are heavily concentrated in Boston and its immediately surrounding cities. (There's also a lot of low-density blue out in the college towns and arty enclaves of the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley in the west.) The red on the map is mostly rural and low-density too, so the real areas that we're focused on today are the purplish and pinkish suburban turf to the north, west, and south of Boston.
Rather than just one model, I'm using two different models: one based on the high-turnout, high-Democratic-intensity 2008 presidential election (won by Barack Obama, 62-36), and the low-turnout, low-intensity 2002 gubernatorial election (won by Republican Mitt Romney, 50-45) -- more generally, a best-case scenario for Dems and a worst-case scenario for Dems. With turnout projections high but not as high as yesterday (SoS William Galvin is predicting 40%), and weather mediocre, we're probably looking at something somewhere in between, so consider these the bookends. Nevertheless, after making the necessary adjustments, both models, in most towns, point to very similar benchmarks.
Let's start with the largest cities in Massachusetts (the ones that provide more than 1% of the state's votes each). These aren't really the places to watch, as they're heavily Democratic (with the sort-of exception of Quincy) and the real question with them is whether turnout is keeping pace proportionately with the rest of the state.
Town
% of state vote in 2008
2008 %
What's needed in 2010
2002 %
What's needed in 2010
STATEWIDE
100.0
62/36
50/48
45/50
48/47
Boston
7.7
79/20
67/32
61/33
64/30
Worcester
2.0
68/30
56/42
52/42
55/39
Springfield
1.7
77/22
65/34
59/37
62/34
Cambridge
1.5
88/10
76/22
69/22
72/19
Newton
1.4
75/23
63/35
54/40
57/37
Quincy
1.3
58/40
46/52
48/47
51/44
New Bedford
1.1
74/25
62/37
70/26
73/23
Brockton
1.1
70/29
58/41
49/47
52/44
Somerville
1.1
82/16
70/28
61/29
64/26
Lowell
1.0
65/33
53/45
47/47
50/44
Fall River
1.0
73/26
61/38
67/29
70/26
Democratic performance in most of the state, as you can see above, stayed fairly consistent with the rise in the tide from 2002 to 2008. Statewide, Democratic performance went from 45% to 62% (a 17% gain), and, for example, Boston followed that closely, going from 61% to 79% (an 18% gain). Many other towns tracked that, too; for instance, the most conservative parts of the state (like Falmouth and Sandwich on Cape Cod, or the suburbs around Lowell) also moved about 16 to 18% in the Dems' direction.
The interesting areas are the ones where the movement was much greater -- these tend to be the wealthier areas in the state, fancy Middlesex Co. suburbs like Wellesley or North Shore towns in Essex Co., consistent with Obama's overperformance nationwide among high-income voters -- and where the movement was much less -- mostly in blue-collar towns of the South Shore, as well as other blue-collar outposts in the state's west. To me, these seem to be the swingy areas, and the ones most worth watching, especially since the trends may (or may not) continue to accelerate today -- upper-middle-class voters may be attracted to Coakley's technocratic image (especially those in Middlesex Co., where she was DA) or they may revert to liking the fiscal conservatism that they saw in Romney, while blue-collar voters seem likely to respond to Brown's regular-guy shtick but may also be motivated by their ancestral Democratic loyalties and union or local machine GOTVing.
Let's start with some well-to-do suburbs west of Boston:
Town
% of state vote in 2008
2008 %
What's needed in 2010
2002 %
What's needed in 2010
Acton
0.4
68/30
56/42
41/52
44/49
Belmont
0.4
69/29
57/41
42/53
45/50
Concord
0.3
71/28
59/40
45/48
48/45
Needham
0.6
66/33
54/45
41/54
44/51
Wellesley
0.5
65/34
53/46
37/58
40/55
Winchester
0.4
60/39
48/51
37/58
40/55
And here are North Shore suburbs. (Lawrence is a little out of place here, as it's working-class with a large Hispanic population, but it had the same large 02 to 08 shift that its wealthier neighbors did.)
Town
% of state vote in 2008
2008 %
What's needed in 2010
2002 %
What's needed in 2010
Andover
0.6
56/43
44/55
32/63
35/60
Danvers
0.5
55/44
43/56
35/61
38/58
Lawrence
0.6
80/19
68/31
57/37
60/34
Marblehead
0.4
61/38
49/50
36/60
39/57
Newburyport
0.4
66/32
54/44
43/52
46/49
Peabody
0.9
57/42
45/56
43/53
46/50
Now turning to the more blue-collar locales where the trend seemed less favorable to Democrats, starting with the South Shore towns. (Looking up to the biggest towns list above, you can see that same trend happened not only in Quincy, but especially in Fall River and New Bedford, which are strongly Democratic but barely moved at all from O'Brien to Obama. In their cases, I'm not sure if that's indifference to Obama, or particularly strong local machines good at keep turnout consistent.)
Town
% of state vote in 2008
2008 %
What's needed in 2010
2002 %
What's needed in 2010
Braintree
0.6
50/48
38/60
42/55
45/52
Bridgewater
0.4
49/49
37/51
37/59
40/56
Middleborough
0.4
46/52
34/64
35/59
38/56
Taunton
0.7
59/39
47/51
51/45
54/42
Weymouth
0.9
54/45
42/57
43/53
46/50
And finally, a mix of western mill towns and blue-collar suburbs around Springfield:
Town
% of state vote in 2008
2008 %
What's needed in 2010
2002 %
What's needed in 2010
Agawam
0.5
53/45
41/57
40/56
43/53
Chicopee
0.7
61/36
49/48
51/45
54/42
Fitchburg
0.5
60/38
48/50
46/49
49/46
Pittsfield
0.7
76/22
64/34
64/32
67/29
Westfield
0.6
53/45
41/57
42/54
45/51
Now for the bad news... Suffolk polled several bellwether towns over the weekend, and found that Coakley is polling well below the level she needs to meet the benchmarks, in fact slightly below even Shannon O'Brien levels from 2002. They found a 41/55 race in Fitchburg (see the western mill towns chart), and a 40/57 race in Peabody (see the North Shore chart). I have no idea about the sample size or any of the other innards, but this suggests that for Coakley to pull this out -- as has been more broadly evident for several days -- the only way is for the pollsters to have been missing large swaths of heretofore unactivated voters who just got transformed into Democratic likely voters in the last few days.
Blue Mass Group has an interesting post that lists some other bellwether towns that you might want to keep an eye on. UPDATE: (And Cook's Dave Wasserman has made available a Google spreadsheet doing more or less the same thing for every single freakin' town in the state, albeit only for the 2008 model. Check it out.)
Martha Coakley (D): 43
Scott Brown (R): 52
Joe Kennedy (I) 2
(MoE: ±4%)
You know, we've picked these polls apart enough already, so how about we all take a page from trowaman and ask: If Scott Brown takes this race tomorrow, who should Democrats run against him in 2012? Not that we're predicting that he'll win, but it's never too early to think through the hypotheticals. Tell us who you think should run in the comments.
Martha Coakley (D): 48 (49)
Scott Brown (R): 48 (41)
Joe Kennedy (L) 3 (5)
Undecided: 1 (6)
(MoE: ±2.8%)
First the bad news: R2K gives us a trendline pointed steeply down... an R2K poll conducted earlier in the week (paid for by Blue Mass Group rather than Daily Kos, but seeing as how that shouldn't change the numbers, we'll accept that as a trend) gave an eight-point lead to Democratic AG Martha Coakley, and this one sees a tie. On the other hand, that's the best result that rolled in over the last few days: not only are there the Suffolk (-4) and PPP (-5) numbers, but also ARG (which sees a 48-45 Scott Brown lead)... and the Merriman River Group, whoever they are, who found a 51-41 lead for Brown in a poll that was apparently taken over the space of four hours and found no undecideds, so take that for what it's worth.
So, should we be pleased or not? Does this mean that Coakley's bungee-jump downward over the last week got arrested right before she hit the bottom of the canyon? There are a few other positive indications; the constantly-leaked Coakley internals, for what they're worth, seem to have stabilized over the weekend (which saw Barack Obama and Bill Clinton appearances, and maybe some backlash over the "curling iron" incident), to the extent that they reportedly show Coakley up 2, according to the Boston Herald. (Nate Silver has a helpful graph of all poll trendlines that includes leaked Coakley internals, which brings a lot more datapoints to bear.)
One other indication is that state officials are suddenly looking at extremely high turnout, at near-presidential levels, with everyone suddenly focused on the election -- with estimates of up to 70% turnout, based on absentee ballot requests. Turnout, as you know, most likely helps the Democrats here -- and the pollsters that have been giving pro-Brown results may be basing their likely voter models on now-obsolete projections based on low-turnout, high-intensity-voters-only projections. One other good Nate Silver observation is that Obama's approval is polling under 50% in most polls, which is lagging his national averages... in Massachusetts, one of the bluest of all states... suggesting their LV models are predicated on conservatives disproportionately showing up. (Of course, he also points out the possibility of what Rasmussen alone seems to be seeing: people approving of Obama, but still voting for Brown.) But if the state's turnout predictions are to be believed, maybe some of those unlikely-voter Dems who were planning to sit this one out or weren't aware of it have finally realized there's a real race here and have gotten converted into LVs over the last few days, and pollsters are still playing catchup.
I recognize that there is an intense level of anger and frustration among we of the Democratic base right now, faced as we are with a scenario most of us could not have conceived in our worst nightmares, however I think the rabid anti-Coakleyism spreading around the internets these days is getting just a wee bit unfair. In this respect I largely agree with Nate Silver - yes, she is a boring candidate, and yes, she did run a dull, almost absentee campaign... but when you're in Massachusetts, and you're a high-profile statewide elected official, and you're running as a Democrat against a fairly obscure state senator to succeed Ted Kennedy, none of those things should be unforgivable offenses. Let's face it: there is a LOT of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here. To be sure, there were plenty of people (myself included) who had reservations about her in the primary, but clearly none of those concerns translated into anything near the blind, existential panic we are now facing as we creep up upon January 19th. If anyone can point to a post he/she left, here or anywhere else, indicating his/her grave uneasiness about the threat posed by Scott Brown in a general election, I'd love to see it - I'm genuinely curious.
This is obviously not to say Coakley's camp is blameless. Going dark for a month was malpractice of the highest order, and her campaign manager should never be allowed to work in American politics ever again. But the over-the-top vitriol being directed at the candidate herself is starting to become unseemly, and frankly sort of classless. I doubt any of us can imagine what its like to be in her shoes at this very moment, being pegged by pundits and partisan activists nationwide as the pariah who single-handedly flushed the Democratic supermajority - and by extension, Ted Kennedy's dream of universal healthcare - down the drain. By all accounts, Martha Coakley is a capable public servant, a fairly committed progressive, and by almost any measure a more qualified candidate for the United States Senate than Scott Brown. Yes, her probable defeat on Tuesday will almost certainly mark the end of her political career, and that can be argued as being perfectly appropriate, but I hardly think it cause for open celebration.
Just as determinate as any particular fault of the Coakley campaign is, I think, the basic issue highlighted by PPP in the poll that touched off this horrific week: a profound disparity in enthusiasm between D's and R's, the very same one reflected in the outcomes of the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. The electorate turning out for special/off-year downballot elections is simply a different universe of individuals than those who came to the polls in 2008. Beyond the predictable backlash from the right, who knows how many people voted for Obama having never voted in their lives, and may never vote again? I think we can anticipate the relative drop-off from here out to be comparable to what we have seen thus far, and that alone augurs poorly for our near-term electoral prospects - whether or not we have Coakleys or Capuanos on the ballot.
• MA-Sen: With last night's Suffolk poll, there really can't be any doubt any more that the Massachusetts Senate race qualifies as a "Toss Up," so we're changing our rating to reflect that. There's still room for skepticism on whether Scott Brown can in fact pull it out, given not only the difficulty of pinning down a likely voter universe in a rapidly-fluctuating special election, but also the Democrats' structural advantages on the ground in the Bay State. (The Democrats have the advantage of labor and local machines long-skilled at rousting out voters and getting them to the polls, while it's questionable whether the Republicans have, given their long neglect of the state, any ground troops to deploy here, or even up-to-date, refined voter databases.) Nevertheless, given what can actually be quantified, right now the polls balance out to more or less a tie, and that's how we have to treat the race.
The breaking news du jour is that Barack Obama has finally agreed to head up to Massachusetts and stump for Martha Coakley on Sunday. Also, the Coakley campaign is rolling out a second ad for the weekend, to go with their ad showcasing the Vicki Kennedy endorsement; they're also running a populist-themed ad on Wall Street regulation (specifically, the rather narrow issue of the proposed bonus tax on banks). The ad deluge is being bolstered a League of Conservation Voters ad buy for $350K; on the third-party front, that's being countered by a pro-Brown ad buy for $500K from Americans for Job Security.
• CA-Sen: Yesterday I was musing about whether ex-Rep. Tom Campbell's entry into the GOP Senate primary hurt Carly Fiorina or Chuck DeVore more, and we already seem to have an answer. The Campbell camp is touting an internal poll showing them with a sizable lead over both Fiorina and DeVore in the primary: Campbell is at 31, with Fiorina at 15 and DeVore at 12. The few polls of the primary so far have shown Fiorina and DeVore deadlocked in the 20s, so maybe it's safe to say that Campbell hurts them each equally.
• FL-Sen: Which of these is not like the other? There's a new multi-candidate GOP fundraising PAC called the U.S. Senate Victory Committee, which benefits seven different Republicans: Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, Jane Norton, Rob Portman, Rob Simmons, Pat Toomey... and Marco Rubio? Six establishment candidates, and one insurgent. Or is Rubio the new establishment?
• PPP (pdf): PPP looks all the way to 2012 as part of their wide-ranging Nevada survey, and finds that John Ensign may weather his whole giving-a-patronage-job-to-the-cuckolded-husband-of-his-mistress thing, if he runs again. Ensign trails Las Vegas mayor (but probable 2010 gubernatorial candidate) only Oscar Goodman 43-41, but leads Rep. Shelly Berkley 49-40 and SoS Ross Miller 47-36. Of course, Berkley and Miller aren't that well-known yet and would presumably gain ground in an active 2012 race, but again, more food for thought on the idea that Republicans really don't get the vapors over sex scandals after all, so long as they're perpetrated by Republicans.
• MN-Gov: The St. Paul Pioneer Press is out with a poll of Minnesota voters (by a pollster I've never heard of, Decision Resources Ltd.). The poll seemed most focused on the question of whether there should be public funding of the new Vikings stadium, but it did throw in (almost as an afterthought) something we haven't seen before: general election head-to-heads in the Governor's race. The numbers are pretty encouraging for the Democrats: ex-Sen. Mark Dayton leads ex-Sen. Norm Coleman 41-31, and state Rep. Marty Seifert (who, assuming Coleman doesn't get in, is the likeliest GOP nominee) 41-25. State House speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher beats Coleman 33-31, and Pat Anderson (who dropped out of the race this week) 33-23. There weren't any numbers for Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak, another strong contender for the Dem nod. And yes, if you're wondering, this does take into account the potential spoiler role of Minnesota's Independence Party; IP candidates account for 11 to 13 percent of the vote in each of these trial heats. (H/t alphaaqua.)
• NH-Gov: One other gubernatorial poll has good news for Democrats, and it even comes from Rasmussen. They find incumbent Gov. John Lynch in safe position with 58/38 approvals and, against his no-name opponents, leading social conservative activist Karen Testerman 53-30 and businessman Jack Kimball 51-32.
• OH-Gov: Who knew that John Kasich had the power to transcend the boundaries of space and time? In an effort to court the GOP's restive base, Kasich said "I think I was in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party."
• WY-Gov: One more big-name Republican (by Wyoming's small standards) is getting into the gubernatorial race, banking on the assumption that incumbent Dem Dave Freudenthal won't jump through the legal hoops necessary to run for a third term. Auditor Rita Meyer is getting into the race, where potential GOP primary rivals include former US Attorney Matt Mead and state House speaker Colin Simpson.
• AL-05: Rep. Parker Griffith is showing his true colors. The party-switcher has been turning away requests for refunds of contributions that don't meet the requirements buried in the fine print: he says he can't refund donations for the 2008 cycle, only the 2010 cycle, because the 2008 contributions were spent long ago.
• AR-02: Rep. Vic Snyder is in pretty dire shape, if a new poll from SurveyUSA is to be believed: he trails Republican candidate and former US Attorney Tim Griffin by a 56-39 margin. You may want to take this poll with a grain of salt, as it was paid for by Firedoglake, who seem to have an axe to grind in the health care reform debate, and the Snyder numbers seem to be less the main point than engaging in strangely-right-wing-sounding message-testing. The good news is that, even after a variety of anti-HCR arguments have been offered (and Nate Silver does a fine job of picking apart the survey), Snyder doesn't fare much worse (at 58-35); the bad news, though, is that the 56-39 topline question was asked before any of the litany of anti-HCR talking points, suggesting that, HCR or no, we have a major problem in Arkansas.
• AZ-03: Despite Jon Hulburd's surprising cash haul, he may have bigger company in the Democratic primary to replace recently-retired Republican Rep. John Shadegg. Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon is the subject of speculation; he had briefly considered a 2008 run against Shadegg before ruling it out, saying his post-mayoral future would be in the private sector, but all eyes are on what he does now. (Gordon lives slightly outside the district's boundaries.) On the GOP side, there's no clear frontrunner at all. State Rep. Sam Crump has already said he's running. Possible other candidates include state Treasurer Dean Martin (who would have to drop down from the gubernatorial bid he just launched this week), state Sens. Pamela Gorman and Jim Waring, Phoenix city councilor Peggy Neely, former ASU football star Andrew Walter, and, in a shocker, the co-founder of Taser International Inc., Tom Smith. Former state House speaker Jim Weiers has taken himself out of the running.
• NC-11: Businessman Jeff Miller has reversed course and will run against Democratic Blue Dog Rep. Heath Shuler in the 11th. Miller had been recruited to run, but decided against it; he'll have to face a primary against Hendersonville mayor Greg Newman, who got in after Miller initially declined.
• OH-15: The Ohio GOP is still searching for an Auditor candidate after Mary Taylor decided to run for Lt. Governor instead of re-election. Former state Sen. Steve Stivers has been asked to run for Auditor, but made clear he'll be staying in the race in the 15th (where he might actually have better odds, considering how close he came to Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy last time).
Research 2000 for Blue Mass Group (1/12-13, likely voters, no trendlines):
Martha Coakley (D): 49
Scott Brown (R): 41
Joe Kennedy (L): 5
Undecided: 5
(MoE: ±4%)
Research 2000 checks in with its first poll of the Massachusetts Senate race (although the poll was commissioned by local blog Blue Mass Group, rather than the big orange mothership, not that that should affect the numbers). This is also the first poll taken after Monday's televised debate. They find an eight-point lead for Coakley, obviously much better than the most recent Rasmussen and PPP polls, though still hardly a slam dunk (rather concerning, for instance, is that the Libertarian candidate, Joe Kennedy [no relation to the dynasty], is polling at 5% -- as we saw in New Jersey, third party candidates like that tend to fall off a bit in the final equation, and Libertarian votes seem likelier to gravitate toward Brown).
In the crosstabs, Brown leads 49-36 among independents, which is a much smaller edge than PPP saw. Coakley is leading only 46-45 among whites and is trailing Brown 50-41 in the state's southeast; her lead seems based primarily on non-whites (including an 86-4 lead among blacks) and the Boston area (where she leads 53-37). (Discussion also underway in conspiracy's diary.)
Brown is trying to walk a tightrope here, as he's trying to attract enough support from nationwide tea-party types to attract their dollars, while still keeping them at arms' length enough to keep the votes of local moderates. For instance, he's been avoiding asking the potentially polarizing endorsement of Sarah Palin (and she's been smart enough to not offer it without having been asked). However, he's been saying he's not familiar with the Tea Party movement... a petard on which he's currently being hoisted, as video and photos of him addressing local Tea Party gathering have surfaced (including from his own Flickr account).
Meanwhile, Coakley received the Boston Globe's endorsement (although that shouldn't be any more of a surprise than Brown getting the Herald's endorsement). One other story getting play today is the possibility that it may take weeks to certify the winner of the election, especially if it's close (but even if it's not, as town clerks need to wait at least 10 days for absentee ballots to arrive before certifying their town-level results). Naturally, the right is assuming this is a ploy to give the Democrats enough time to wrap up health care reform before Brown arrives on his white horse to kill it.
UPDATE: I know I've seen lots of talk in the comments that the deal-sealer should be Vicki Kennedy cutting a TV ad on Martha Coakley's behalf, and having that be the campaign's closing argument over the weekend. Via Chuck Todd, it sounds like that's exactly what they're doing. Leaving nothing to chance, the DNC is also reportedly sinking another $150K, but more importantly, a lot more manpower on the ground, into the race.
And breathe. Hopefully this means the ads are sinking in and making Democrats get off their behinds for next Tuesday. President Clinton is up there tomorrow and First Read reports a Vicki Kennedy ad is in the can and ready to go up before the weekend.
Rasmussen (1/11, likely voters, 1/4 in parentheses):
Martha Coakley (D): 49 (50)
Scott Brown (R): 47 (41)
Joe Kennedy (L): 3 (NA)
Not sure: 2 (7)
(MoE: ±3%)
Rasmussen finds a tightening Senate race, with a two-point lead for Democratic AG Martha Coakley over Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, as undecideds seem to have broken in his favor over the last week (where Coakley had a nine-point lead). Barack Obama still has a 57% approval in this poll, so Coakley's continuing to have trouble sealing the deal with Democrats and D-leaning indies.
Taegan Goddard is also teasing news of the latest DSCC internal poll; the one from last week had a 14-point edge, but allegedly the most recent one taken this week has a 5-point lead for Coakley instead. So, the increased DSCC and DNC involvement that we discussed earlier in the digest isn't being done out of an abundance of caution, but out of real concern over a narrowing gap.
• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: There have been rumors about this before that didn't pan out, but based on the amount of chatter out there, it's seeming very likely all of a sudden: ex-Rep. Tom Campbell sounds poised to drop his gubernatorial bid (where he's been polling well, but is way financially outgunned) and move over to the Senate race. He sounds likely to announce this on Thursday, seeing as how he has said he will be appearing at a Los Angeles County GOP event then, but "not as a candidate for Governor." Weirdly, this could wind up helping Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the Senate primary, as Campbell was one of three ostensible moderates (with no right-winger) in the Governor's race, but now Campbell and Carly Fiorina will be splitting the moderate vote in the Senate primary, potentially letting ultra-conservative DeVore crash the gate.
• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio has been winning his fair share of county GOP straw polls lately, but this one was more eagerly awaited than most, because it's Charlie Crist's home county. Rubio continues his winning streak, winning the straw poll in moderate-leaning Pinellas County (home of St. Petersburg) by a 106-54 margin.
• IL-Sen: This seems like a good get for David Hoffman, as he seeks to make up some ground on Alexi Giannoulias in the Senate primary: he got the Dem primary endorsements of both Chicago's major papers, the Tribune and Sun-Times (although getting the endorsement of the more conservative and anti-machine Tribune doesn't seem odd for Hoffman, given his reformist message). On the GOP side, Rep. Mark Kirk got an endorsement from one of his fellow moderates from the state delegation, downstate Rep. Timothy Johnson.
• MA-Sen: If you were thinking, in the wake of a couple good polls in Massachusetts, that it was safe to unbuckle your seatbelt and resume walking around the cabin, guess again. Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, taking a page from the Paulists, used the one-day "moneybomb" technique to good effect, raking in $1.1 million and basically ensuring he'll be able to stay on the air up until Election Day. Brown has yet another TV spot up on the air, in response to Coakley's first negative ad; Brown's firing back with the ol' "tsk, tsk on you for going negative" approach. Between the contradictory polls, Brown's fundraising, and other signs of life (like a Boston Herald endorsement for Brown - although that's not a surprise from the conservative Herald), the Beltway Dems have decided to leave nothing to chance, and are getting more involved, as the DNC is sending in some ground troops, and the DSCC is ponying up for $567K for more ad time for Coakley - meaning, in its own way, that the GOP already won a moral victory here by getting the DSCC to pry open its checkbook.
• NH-Sen: I don't know if anyone really cares one lick about what former Vice-President Dan Quayle is up to these days, but he popped up long enough to endorse Ovide Lamontagne in the GOP Senate primary in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, wealthy businessman Bill Binnie is tapping his own personal money to get a head start on the ad wars in the NH primary, with an introductory bio spot.
• NV-Sen: For a while there, it was looking like Harry Reid was even starting to have some trouble within his caucus, as Russ Feingold publicly criticized Reid yesterday over his insensitive language regarding Barack Obama, wondering out loud if he should continue as Majority Leader. Feingold dialed it back a little today, though, saying that he supports Reid staying on it that role. With Chris Cillizza today joining many other pundits in wondering if the fork is ready to be stuck in Reid, there comes word (buried in a longer Politico story), via anonymous sources, of a "a whisper campaign in Nevada that it would be possible for him to step aside and find someone else who could win."
• NY-Sen-B: Ex-Rep. Harold Ford Jr. is beating the Senate drum a little louder today, saying in a New York Post (interesting choice of venue) that he's "strongly considering" the race. In an interview with Chris Mathews, he also had his version of the "Ich bin ein Berliner" moment, enunciating that "I am a New Yorker, I am a New Yorker." (Although I believe, in the local dialect, that's pronounced "Hey! I'm a fuggin' New Yorker here already, now step off!")
• MA-Gov (pdf): Hot on the heels of the MA-Gov poll from the Boston Globe comes another one from PPP, part of its MA-Sen sample. Their sample finds incumbent Dem Deval Patrick in slightly worse position than the Globe (with an awful 22/59 approval), although he's still in the lead. Interestingly, this poll also sees the Republicans in much better shape than the Globe did, as independent candidate Tim Cahill slouches into third place here. Patrick leads GOPer Charlie Baker and Cahill 29-27-21, while in a Patrick/Cahill/Christy Mihos three-way, Cahill moves into second with a 28-25-21 outcome. (This certainly points to the composition difference between the PPP sample, which may have overweighted Republicans, and the Globe/UNH sample, which may have overweighted Democrats. The Senate special election results may give us a clue which of these MA-Gov polls is closer.) PPP also tested Democratic SoS William Galvin as a replacement for Patrick, finding little difference, with a 26-26-18 race among Galvin, Baker, and Cahill, and a 26-22-20 race among Galvin, Cahill, and Mihos.
• MN-Gov: The Republican field in the Minnesota governor's race may actually be dwindling down into the single digits, as things sort themselves out. Former Auditor Pat Anderson is dropping her gubernatorial bid, and instead is looking at a return to her old job. She'll be running against Democratic incumbent Rebecca Otto, who unseated Anderson in 2006.
• RI-Gov: Things are getting pretty dire for the Reupblicans in Rhode Island, where former Cranston mayor (and 2006 Senate primary candidate) Stephen Laffey decided for the second time that he isn't going to run for Governor. With businessman Rory Smith's dropout, the GOP still has nobody here, although salvation may be coming in the form of current Gov. Don Carcieri's communications director, John Robitaille, who is filling the gap by filing as a candidate. (Robitaille's only political experience is losing a state Rep. race in 2006.) Meanwhile, Josh Goodman has been wondering if independent candidate Lincoln Chafee, while a former Republican, might actually run to the left of the Democrat in this race (telegraphed by his statements on possible tax hikes). A local consultant tells Goodman that Chafee may in fact get labor backing on the race, perhaps depending on which Dem Chafee faces. (Chafee might get labor support if he's against Treasurer Frank Caprio, although the more liberal AG Patrick Lynch would probably have a lock on labor support if he survives the Dem primary.)
• LA-02: The prospect is lessening for a free-for-all Democratic primary in New Orleans for what's likely to be an easy race to defeat GOP incumbent Rep. Joe Cao. State Rep. Cedric Richmond seems to be locking down establishment support as a consensus candidate here, and that was underscored by an endorsement from former Sen. John Breaux. Fellow state Rep. Juan LaFonta is still in the primary, but state Rep. Karen Carter Peterson (who took Bill Jefferson to a runoff in 2006) is running for state Senate instead of LA-02, and none of Richmond's 2008 primary opponents seem to be getting in the race.
• PA-06: After earlier vows that he wouldn't get out the GOP primary in the 6th despite the re-entry of incumbent Rep. Jim Gerlach, yesterday state Rep. Curt Schroder saw the fundraising-related handwriting on the wall and got out of the race. With former Revenue Secretary Howard Cohen and Lower Merion Twp. Commissioner Scott Zelov already having stood down, that leaves only self-funder Steven Welch and several some-dudes in Gerlach's way.
• RI-01: Maybe he's been comparing notes with Jim Traficant on how to restart your political career after spending several years in prison. Republican former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci, fresh off of four and a half years in jail over criminal acts while mayor, is now considering a challenge to Rep. Patrick Kennedy.
• VA-09: Despite having dodged a bullet with state Del. Terry Kilgore deciding against a run, Rep. Rick Boucher may still have to avoid some incoming fire in November. The state House's majority leader, Morgan Griffith, said he's "considering" the race and may get in if someone stronger doesn't. (Since the only other person who's probably stronger is state Sen. William Wampler Jr., and it doesn't sound like he'll run in the 9th, as he's probably banking on a Republican takeover of the state Senate soon, in which case he'd become Finance chair, it may in fact fall to Griffith.) Griffith does have one slight problem: he doesn't live in the 9th, although he's apparently within walking distance of the district lines.
• FL-CFO: Florida Democrats finally found a CFO candidate to help round out their slate of candidates: former state Rep. Loranne Ausley, who decided on a CFO run and ended her state Senate bid. The bigger implication is that state Sen. Al Lawson - who's flirted off and on with a CFO bid - is probably staying for good in the FL-02 primary now. (Interestingly, Ausley, like Lawson, hails from the Tallahassee area.)
• OH-Auditor: Buzz in Ohio is that incumbent Mary Taylor (the only statewide Republican right now) is going to drop a bid for another term as Auditor and run as John Kasich's running mate for Lt. Governor instead. This probably strengthens Kasich's bid against incumbent Dem Ted Strickland... but an open Auditor seat is also good news for the Dems, as Hamilton Co. Commissioner David Pepper was already running a strong race against Taylor. Remember that the Auditor is one of the seats on Ohio's state legislative redistricting board, so an Auditor pickup would compensate there for a loss at Governor or SoS (but not both).
• MT-St. Sen.: The Missoulian has a very early look at prospects in the state legislature in Montana. Because of the open seat situation in the Senate, Democrats might have a shot at retaking that body (the GOP controls 27-23). Of the 25 seats up this year, 16 are held by Republicans and 9 by Democrats, with a total of 15 of the 25 being open seats.
• VA-St. Sen.: Two special elections are on tap for tonight, one of which is very interesting. The 37th, a swingy area in suburban Fairfax County, was left vacant by new Republican AG Ken Cuccinelli; it's being contested by Democratic Del. Dave Marsden and Republican former Fairfax Co. School Board member Steve Hunt. There are echoes of the gubernatorial race here, as Marsden is running a moderate-enough campaign that he may be at risk of losing the base's interest, while Hunt is trying to downplay controversial social conservative remarks from his past. Hunt has an internal poll showing him up, and Dem enthusiasm may still be down thanks to the post-Creigh Deeds hangover, so the GOP seems poised to eke this one out, helping them to keep holding the Dems to a narrow 21-19 edge in the Senate. The other race is in the solid-red 8th in Virginia Beach, where GOP businessman Jeff McWaters should have little problem beating Democratic Bill Fleming to replace Republican Ken Stolle, who just became Virginia Beach Sheriff.
• NRCC: The NRCC bumped up four more challengers in their "Young Guns" framework today, most prominently a move to "Contender" (the 2nd of three tiers) for Jim Renacci, challenging Rep. John Boccieri in OH-16. Also entering at the lowest level ("On the Radar") are former FBI agent Mike Grimm, running in NY-13, state Sen. Dan Debicella, running in CT-04, and state Rep. John Loughlin, running in RI-01 against Rep. Patrick Kennedy. That last entry may seem like the longest of long shots; it may in fact be more of a deterrent by the NRCC to keep Buddy Cianci (see above) from running here, and the accompanying bad PR that would go with that.
• Redistricting: Martin Frost's former CoS, Matt Angle, is the center of Democratic efforts to un-gerrymander Texas's House map after the 2010 census. Roll Call looks in depth at how he's built a complex fundraising network that's primarily aimed at Democratic gains in the state House (where they are down only 77-73), so Dems can get a better share of the four seats Texas is expected to add.
• Grant money: People with a professional interest in studying Congress might want to apply for research grants available from the Dirksen Congressional Center. It sounds particularly oriented toward graduate students and fellows, but I'm sure some of SSP's readership fits that bill.
• Redistricting Contest: A reminder - if you haven't sent in your .DRF.XML file to Jeff, please do so ASAP - jeffmd [at] swingstateproject [dot] com. Please be sure to include your SSP username and a link to your diary. Thanks! (D)
• AR-Sen: Alleged United States Senator Blanche Lincoln is whinging that actually doing her job in December cost her $300,000 in fundraising receipts. This is probably her way of saying her numbers will be lighter than expected this quarter. Why on earth would you go public with this, though? This is not exactly the kind of message you want to communicate to the public - or your opponents. (D)
• CA-Sen: A lot of Republicans seemed dismayed by Carla Fiorina's suggestions a few months ago that she wasn't going to be dipping into her personal money in order to fund her Senate bid - I mean, that was the whole point of her running, wasn't it? At any rate, she's just reversed course, with her latest finance report, which reveals that she loaned her campaign $2.5 million. Having burned through most of her outside donations, that leaves her with $2.7 million on hand.
• FL-Sen, FL-Gov: Charlie Crist's message discipline seems to be gotten completely unglued, as he searches for the just-right pitch that's moderate enough and yet conservative enough. Today, he's acknowledging support for the stimulus package and "being nice" to Barack Obama, and not apologizing for either one. Meanwhile, there's still that persistent rumor out there involving Crist bailing on the Senate race and going back to another term as Governor. That's not happening if GOP AG Bill McCollum has anything to say about it; he says he won't stand down for Crist.
• MA-Sen: Everyone's still milling around waiting for that rumored close Boston Herald poll, but in the meantime, a new Democratic internal poll floated to the surface this morning, and it seems to give some credence to that Boston Globe/UNH poll that gave a solid 15-point margin to Democratic AG Martha Coakley. The internal, conducted by Mark Mellman's firm, gives Coakley a 50-36 lead over Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, with Libertarian candidate Joe Kennedy (no relation to the Kennedy clan) pulling in a surprisingly-high 6 (which may be coming out of Brown's share). If Brown has internals showing the race a dead heat like he claims, now would be the time for him to lay them on the table. Also today comes word that Barack Obama has no plans to campaign for Coakley, although I don't know whether to interpret that as a sign of Democratic confidence, or of Obama not wanting to risk political capital on something that's less than a slam dunk.
• ND-Sen: Gov. John Hoeven had said he needed a few weeks to get some stuff out of the way before saying anything official about the Senate race, but it looks like the stuff was more easily cleared away than anticipated: he's now expected to announce his candidacy at an appearance at a GOP district convention in Bismarck tonight.
• NY-Sen-B: Republican Rep. Peter King announced, for something like the third or fourth time, that he is no longer considering running for the Senate, and instead will run for another term in NY-03. Stay tuned for next month, when King will at some point remember that he hasn't been on cable news for a while and will reveal that he's considering a run for the Senate. Meanwhile, the political establishment is continuing to take seriously the possibility of a Harold Ford Jr. primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand, going all the way up to the White House, which today confirmed that it will back Gillibrand over Ford. Ford, meanwhile, is doing some serious remodeling of his image to better comport with New York codes: he's now done a complete 180 on gay marriage, which he's now for, and on abortion, where he claims that when he said he was pro-life, it was to "take back" the term from its right-wing appropriators. Finally, the Republicans will have to look elsewhere than ex-Rep. Susan Molinari for their nominee; after a brief flirtation, Molinari (who's making big money consulting and probably doesn't want the pay cut) just declined.
• UT-Sen: This should come as no surprise, but the NRSC, tasked with defending incumbents, confirmed that it's supporting Bob Bennett in his re-election bid against several right-wing primary challengers. The Club for Growth has painted a bullseye on Bennett's back, although they haven't settled on which challenger to support.
• CO-Gov: Denver mayor John Hickenlooper hasn't leaped as quickly into the Governor's race (following the withdrawal of Bill Ritter and demurral of Ken Salazar) as many had expected; he's saying he'll make a decision within the next five days, so stay tuned. Former House speaker Andrew Romanoff, currently an invisible presence in the Senate primary, has also been consulting with Democratic officials about getting in, although it sounds like he'd do so only if Hickenlooper didn't. Another rumor getting bandied about: Romanoff joining forces and running as Hickenlooper's Lt. Gov. candidate; at any rate, it sounds like Romanoff is looking for an exit from the Senate race. Hickenlooper's decision may get helped along by a certain Barack Obama, who apparently called Hickenlooper to encourage him to get into the race (Hickenlooper says that doesn't change his decision, though).
• KS-Gov: Kansas Democrats are getting way, way down the totem pole as they look for a gubernatorial candidate, with Tom Wiggans' recent withdrawal. Board of Regents chair Jill Docking, whose name frequently appears as Democrats' Plan B in a variety of races, said she won't run, and now the fickle finger seems to be pointing at Lawrence-area state Sen. Marci Francisco. (H/t Campaign Diaries.)
• MA-Gov: The Boston Globe/UNH poll of the Senate race also asked about 2010's gubernatorial race, and it's more confirmation for the apparent trend that Dem incumbent Deval Patrick seems bolstered by the presence of state Treasurer Tim Cahill's independent bid (despite Patrick's 39/50 favorables and Cahill's 39/15). Rather than Cahill dominating the middle, as he may have expected, instead he just winds up splitting the anti-Patrick vote, leaving the race's GOPers a distant third. A Patrick/Cahill/Charlie Baker ballot plays out 30-23-19, while Patrick/Cahill/Christy Mihos is a similar 32-23-19.
• CA-11: The GOP hasn't quite found a top-tier candidate to take on Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, the only Golden State Dem who's even remotely vulnerable. But they might get something of an upgrade with the newly-announced candidacy of David Harmer, the Republican attorney who acquitted himself fairly well in the special election last year in much bluer CA-10. He can bring residual name rec and fundraising connections to the race, and one of the race's lesser lights, former San Jose city councilor Larry Pegram, is already moving to get out of the race. Still, Harmer doesn't live in the district, and he exposes himself to the same carpetbagging charges he brought to his race against John Garamendi in the 10th.
• CA-19: Kevin McCarthy looks a little flaky after this whole incident: it was reported last Friday that the Bakersfield-area Republican was sticking with his earlier endorsement of state Sen. Jeff Denham in the 19th while admitting a bit of a man-crush on ex-Rep. Richard Pombo. But now the Fresno Bee is reporting that McCarthy has gone all the way, spurned Denham, and is now endorsing Pombo.
• HI-01: The local political establishment weighed in heavily on the side of state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa in the upcoming special election to replace resigning Rep. Neil Abercrombie. The decision of Sen. Daniel Akaka to endorse Hanabusa over his nemesis Ed Case should be no surprise, but this was accompanied by endorsements from the state's other Senator, Daniel Inouye, and a variety of labor leaders as well. Case does have one endorsement which he's touting in ads, though, from ex-Governor Ben Cayetano.
• NY-23: Doug Hoffman won't have the GOP primary field to himself in the 23rd after all. He'll face a fight with a fellow conservative, albeit more of a team player: Assemblyman Will Barclay, who passed on a run in the special election in the 23rd, says he's begun exploring the general election race.
• OK-02: Rep. Dan Boren can always be counted on to say something douchey, and today's no exception. He tells the Tulsa World (in an article titled "Boren: Democrats May Lose Congress") that Dems are likely to lose seats in Congress, and that's good news for Oklahoma and especially for him personally. ""In the 112th (Congress), I probably will have the most influence I have ever had, no matter who has the majority," he says.
• TN-08: It remains to be seen how much of an impact this will have on the race to succeed retiring Dem Rep. John Tanner, but the Republican primary just shrunk by one: computer consultant Donn Janes has announced that he's going to run instead as a Tea Party-aligned independent. (J)
• Mayors: That Rahm Emanuel-running-for-Chicago-mayor thing seemed to last a whole couple days. Emanuel yesterday praised Richard Daley and backed him for another term starting in 2011.
• Florida: For all the general black clouds hanging over the Democrats regarding 2010, there's always a lot of nuts-and-bolts numbers that somehow still look favorable, such as party committee fundraising and registration numbers. In Florida, both are actually advantage Team Blue, as the state Democratic party is sitting on $2.6 million cash on hand, $1 million more than state Republicans. Democrats have also built up their registration advantage over Republicans in Florida, to a margin of more than 800,000.
• Tea Partiers: TPM has an interesting look at the civil war growing within the Tea Party movement, a microcosm of the larger civil war within the Republican party. Front and center today is the big teabaggers' convention in Nashville (with Sarah Palin as keynoter), which is too expensive for many of the teabagging rank and file to attend, leading some to question whether there's a usurpation of the movement by the Republicans' Beltway professional class. Meanwhile, Think Progress has some new additions to its ongoing compendium of teabagger primary challenges to establishment GOPers.
