Campaign Diaries

The ad wars are heating up in the Minnesota and Oregon Senate races. Both races feature a Republican incumbent running into a blue-leaning state in a year with a dismal environment for Republicans. Democrats want to tie Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman to their party label. Today, the DSCC unleashed a new ad to run in Oregon tying Smith to President Bush on a number of issues including taxes and support for Big Oil. [Update: Marc Ambinder points out that one of the votes the ad criticizes Smith for is the 2005 energy bill that Obama supported and McCain opposed...] The ad visually highlights the proximity between the two men, the sort of images we will see in a lot of ads in the coming months (including against McCain):

The responses of the Minnesota and Oregon incumbents’ have been different. In Oregon, Smith would not get anywhere if he were to try to make the relatively-bland Jeff Merkley into an unacceptable candidate; as a result he is trying to moderate his own image and attach himself to Barack Obama. Norm Coleman, on the other hand, is imitating Bush’s 2004 strategy: transform the election from a referendum on the GOP to one on Al Franken by making the latter into a controversial, polarizing figure.

Today, Norm Coleman unleashed one of the first memorable ads of the cycle, attacking his opponent Al Franken with the laundry list of controversies Franken has faced over the past few months. Speaking directly to the camera, three men presented as “ordinary” Minnesotans accuse Franken of not having paid his taxes, “foul-mouthed” attacks, “tasteless, sexist jokes,” and “writing all that juicy porn.” The ad concludes with the speaker announcing he will run for Senate because he is as qualified as the former comedian:

That the Coleman campaign does not even think it worthy to detail the allegations to which it is referring is bad news for Franken, as it suggests Republicans are confident that the stories over the 1995 rape joke and the 2000 Playboy story have become well-known by voters. The GOP is unearthing enough dirt on Franken to hit him with all they’ve got - and the Democrats have long feared that the Republican Party’s oppo research files contain even more incidents from Franken’s past.

Meanwhile, three polls were released from House races, pointing at some potential vulnerabilities:

• The University of New Hampshire’s reputable Granite State poll matched up Rep. Shea-Porter against her competitors in NH-01 and finds her trailing 46% to 40% against former Rep. Jeb Bradley, whom she defeated in 2006. Against John Stephen, Shea-Porter is narrowly ahead 42% to 36%.

• UNH also tested match-ups in NH-02 and found Rep. Hordes ahead 43% to 23% and 44% to 25% against his two Republican challengers.

• In MD-01, finally, the campaign of Republican candidate Andy Harris released an internal poll that finds him leading Democrat Frank Kratovil 44% to 28%. Harris defeated Rep. Gilchrest in the GOP primary back in February in what is a very conservative district (Bush prevailed here with 62%).

While all three of these districts are listed in my latest House ratings, there is no doubt that NH-01 is the most competitive. Depending on the outcome of the September Republican primary, Carol Shea-Porter could find herself the underdog. Her victory against Bradley was possibly the biggest Election Night shocker in 2006, and the former representative has vowed to take his seat back.

MD-01 also presents an interesting situation: While Democrats are contesting the seat, it is somewhat surprising that Harris has taken the step of releasing a poll in which he is as low as 44% in a district that voted for Bush with 62% of the vote. Not to mention that there is reason to be skeptical of this internal poll, whose sample is only 300 voters. This is not to say that Kratovil (whose own internal poll showed him trailing by 9% back in May) has a strong shot at pulling an upset, but it says something about the GOP’s anxieties over its open seats that this survey is considered good news by the Republican candidate.