Monthly Archive for August, 2009

In forgoing Senate run, Peter King denies Dems a shot at conquering Long Island

Published
by
Taniel
on August 31, 2009
in NY-03 and NY-Sen
. 0 Comments

Yet another of Kirsten Gillibrand’s potential 2010 rivals announced he would not jump in the race. This time, however, we’re talking about a Republican: Rep. Peter King, who had long declared his interest in a Senate run, ruled out a statewide bid today, saying he will seek a 9th term in the House instead.

Back in January 2009, King declared that he would be a sure candidate if appointed Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton’s seat. Citing her lack of qualifications, he also touted the contrast between their upbringings and prepared to play the white ethnic card. But Gillibrand’s selection made all of this more difficult. The campaign narrative King was already preparing would not have fit against her, and the Republican acknowledged today that this also would lead to fundraising problems:

[Kennedy's] candidacy would have generated the media coverage and financial contributions necessary for me to run a competitive race. That’s all I would have hoped for. Once the race became competitive, it would have been up to me to win it by contrasting my blue collar conservatism with her Manhattan liberalism. That race was not to be. Senator Gillibrand generates neither strong support nor opposition. This makes it virtually impossible for me to raise the campaign funds I would need

It’s hard for me to decide whether Democrats should be disappointed or relieved by King’s decision. On the one hand, King would have been a credible enough candidate to at least put New York on the map; in the event of as significant a red wave as some Republicans are hoping for, might that not be enough to result in an upset - especially if Gillibrand has to share the top of the ballot  with the unpopular David Paterson? With King one of only two Republicans who can legitimately claim to have any hope of winning this race, the odds of the DSCC having to worry about New York just plummeted.

Remains George Pataki. The former Governor would be a good catch for the NRSC, and his proven ability to win statewide makes him a stronger prospect than King ever could have been - not to mention that some polls have shown Pataki with a narrow lead against Gillibrand. That said, there is no indication that Pataki is even seriously considering a run while we knew that King was thinking about his options.

So why would King’s decision be disappointing to Democrats? King is far from being threatening enough for them to have been fearing his entry in the race. Sure, he would have allowed Republicans to dream of an upset, but it would truly have required wave-like conditions that for now seem unlikely. In fact, what would be far more certain than King’s ability to turn the Senate competitive would be Democrats’ ability to contest the House race he would leave open!

Only 3 New York districts are still in GOP hands, as state Republicans’ slow agony and laughable incompetence (see NY-13 in the 2008 cycle) have made the party increasingly unelectable. That is especially the case downstate: Long Island might have once been a Republican stronghold, but King is now the only Republican left representing any part of it. While NY-3 took a rightward swing after 9/11 (it gave Al Gore an 8% victory but George W. Bush and John McCain both prevailed by 5%), an open seat here would have immediately become one of the Democrats’ top priorities nationwide.

Beyond the prospect of picking-up a Republican seat, Democrats would surely have been delighted to get rid of King. While the congressman has some moderate streaks on issues like labor law (he was one of 13 Republicans to vote for EFCA in 2007) he is generally a staunch and outspoken conservative. He became a YouTube sensation last month when he released a video statement blasting coverage of Michael Jackson’s death in an effort to “knock out the psychobabble.” In September 2007, he declared “There are too many mosques in this country… There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them.”

And just last week, he went after Attorney General Holder’s decision to investigate of CIA interrogators by wondering “which side they’re on.” “You will have thousands of lives that will be lost, and the blood will be on Eric Holder’s hands,” he warned, lamenting that “they’ve declared war on the CIA. We should resist and fight back as hard as we can. It should be a scorched earth policy.” He also offered defended interrogation practices:

When Holder was talking about being ’shocked’ [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys’ fingers off or something — or that they actually used the power drill.

Of course, some of King’s politics would have been hard to translate statewide. But King has managed to easily hold on to his still red-leaning district for every cycle since his first victory in 1992, so don’t expect to see Democrats trying much against him in 2010. The consolation could come in the next round of redistricting: The need to significantly redraw congressional maps could help state Democrats make NY-3 much less favorable to King - if it even exists at all.

Speeding tickets, an undisclosed loan, “fornicators:” Christie, McDonnell weighed down by their past

Published
by
Taniel
on August 31, 2009
in NJ-Gov and VA-Gov
. 10 Comments

I want to preface any discussion of potential trouble for Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell by reasserting that they have been leading in the polls for months - often substantially, that Jon Corzine remains highly unpopular, that Virginia’s Democratic base still looks depressed and that Republicans remain favored to win both of November’s gubernatorial races.

Yet, it’s just as undeniable that New Jersey Democrats have had most of the momentum over the past few weeks. Polls are showing signs of tightening, Christie has been hit by an avalanche of unwelcome revelation and Daggett is inching upward - all of it giving Corzine far more reason to hope today than he did a month ago. And after this week-end it looks like Creigh Deeds can hope for some traction as well.

Christie facing an avalanche of controversies

Last week, I wrote about a poll released by a conservative group that showed Corzine springing upward to seize his first lead since January. While that survey looked (and still looks) like an outlier, I pointed out that a Democracy Corps poll had Corzine trailing by only 5% - the smallest deficit he had faced in months. Since then, we have received two new surveys:

  • Democracy Corps went back in the field and found Christie’s lead down to only 2% - 43% to 41% - with Chris Daggett at 7%. While Corzine’s favorability rating remains disastrous (37-48), Christie’s is getting mediocre (35-34).
  • Rasmussen has Christie leading by a far wider margin - 50% to 42% - with Corzine’s approval rating at a disastrous 35-65. That’s down from his 13% lead in early August. Before you all flame Rasmussen: his New Jersey numbers have been perfectly in line with other pollsters. But Rasmussen does not include Daggett.

An 8% deficit is still a healthy lead for Christie to hang unto but it should still be taken as good news for Corzine because it’s the smallest deficit he has faced in a Rasmussen since January. That’s the same thing we said about last week’s polls, which means that Corzine does look to have escaped the double-digit deficits he faced in June-July. After all, there’s every reason to take this tightening seriously as the past month has not been kind for Christie.

The first bump occurred with the release of Karl Rove’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee: Bush’s former adviser declared having discussed the possibility of a gubernatorial run with Christie while the latter was U.S. Attorney. “He asked me questions about who — who were good people that knew about running for Governor that he could talk to,” Rove said. He reiterated on August 11th that such conversations had occurred.

This story connects Christie to the Bush White House at a time he is trying to distance himself from national Republicans: This is a blue state we’re talking about. Second, it poses ethical questions, as U.S. Attorneys are bound by law not to be engaged in partisan activities. Third, it contradicts Christie’s statements that he was not preparing to run for Governor when he was still U.S. Attorney.

Then came a second controversy: While U.S. Attorney, Christie gave top aide Michele Brown a $46,000 loan without declaring it on his federal or state disclosure forms. Beyond the disclosure issues, what have raised eyebrows are possible conflicts of interests.

With the U.S. Attorney’s office conducting a massive corruption probe that has already led to the arrest of dozens of state politicians, Brown finds herself in a position to prosecute allies of Corzine and thus helping the man to whom she owns a fair amount of money. Also, Democrats have charged that Brown has been keeping Christie informed about the investigation.

Christie quickly admitted a mistake but his campaign remained on the defensive - so much so that, a full week after the story broke, Brown announced that she would resign from her position as the number 2 official in the state’s U.S. Attorney office. Of course, this did nothing to quell Democrats’ determination to pursue this story - if anything, it only confirmed to them that the story was worth pursuing. With Corzine’s campaign now pressing for evidence that might connect Brown to Christie, expect this story to figure prominently in the fall campaign.

As if all of this was not enough, a New Jersey radio station broke yet another story last week. In 2007, Christie was ticketed for 3 traffic violations - including driving an unregistered and uninsured car. Yet, he was allowed to drive away after reportedly using his position as U.S. Attorney to get himself out of trouble. Said the Lambertville police director:

He was a little loud at the prospect of being towed and then calmed down. He identified himself as a U.S. Attorney but I don’t think the officer on duty knew what that was.

I’m not sure how that last detail is supposed to make it any better that Christie invoked his title in the first place, but what I do know is that this story led the press to open the can of worm that is Christie’s driving record and find that he has been issued a total of 13 tickets over the past 25 years.

By themselves, none of these stories would do much to knock Christie down. They might not even be enough put together given how much voters distrust Corzine. But Republicans need to run a flawless campaign to have a shot at winning New Jersey, and their August has been anything but flawless. By contrast, Democrats desperately need this election not to be a referendum on Corzine and they finally have something to show for their efforts to put the spotlight on Christie.

McDonnell’s Master’s thesis

It might have been hard to envision this a few months ago, but Creigh Deeds’s position is now arguably more compromised than Corzine’s. Not only is Virginia less friendly to Democrats, but Bob McDonnell has generally avoided running into bumps. That’s why it will be fascinating to see how a story published on the front page of yesterday’s Washington Post will affect the race:

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples…

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

The full story is truly worth a read. I am particularly struck by his advocacy for covenant marriage, which makes it more difficult to obtain a divorce. As a state legislator, he repeatedly tried to establish them in Virginia, which gets to the bottom of why this story is problematic. As Politico’s Charles Mahtesian points out, this is not a thesis written by a student in his early 20s: Already 34, McDonnell was about to get elected state Delegate and the staunchly socially conversationally precepts he outlines became priorities of his legislative career.

With Deeds facing the prospect of depressed Democratic turnout, this story gaining steam could be all he needs to get Northern Virginia to finally break out of its total lethargy. Many independent Virginians chose Democrats over the past few years, and the GOP’s social extremism played a big part of that - especially in NoVa. (Remember that Allen lost the 2006 race after reports that he was fond of using the n-word followed the macaca incident.)

McDonnell has been portraying himself as enough of a moderate not to alarm those voters who kicked out Allen before choosing Obama and convince them to come back to the GOP. We will be watching to see how long this article is discussed and whether it does impact the election’s dynamics.

Two years!

Published
by
Taniel
on August 30, 2009
in Meta
. 2 Comments

This week-end marked Campaign Diaries’s 2nd anniversary! Thanks to all of you that make it possible for it to continue by reading or commenting - especially those who have been around for a long time.

It’s been one hell of a ride, with a presidential election, hundreds of congressional races, the interminable Obama-Hillary slugfest, the frontrunner-less GOP primaries, thousands of polls and campaign ads, the Coleman-Franken recount, unexpectedly competitive special elections, debate nights, convention speeches, dumbfounding scandals, mouthwatering retirements, puzzling resignations, very very very very long Election Nights (all but that last one entertaining, what was up with Gary, IN?), Sarah Palin and Tina Fey, Democrats attaining 60 Senate seats, conservative Democrats’ determination to block liberals, and now the midterm preparations and the innumerable questions surrounding 2010.

Campaign Diaries is obviously a very time-consuming endeavor but I have derived little income to account for the countless hours I have put into this blog since August 2007. Back in February, the last time I had to make my biannual payment for domain name and hosting service, I set up a “Donate” account via PayPal. Thanks to some of you readers, I was able to raise enough to cover those expenses.

Now that six more months have passed - and with it another payment - I am appealing to you again. I would be tremendously grateful if anyone who has been enjoying the blog wants to contribute a little encouragement in order to help me cover the website’s maintenance costs. Access to PayPal is available on the right sidebar and here.

Weekly 2010 update: MA, VT, LA and CO find themselves in flux

Published
by
Taniel
on August 30, 2009
in IL-Sen, recruitment and retirement
. 2 Comments

A busy week on the midterm front leaves a number of races shuffled up. Massachusetts suddenly has a special election on the horizon; Vermont unexpectedly ended up with an open Governor’s race that is sparking the interest of three different parties; two Iowa congressmen announced they would not seek statewide office; Louisiana’s Senate race got interesting with Charlie Melancon’s entrance in the race; and Colorado’s took several turns with Bob Beauprez’s exit and still-to-be-confirmed Denver Post reports that Ken Buck will pull the plug on his campaign while Andrew Romanoff will challenge Senator Bennet in the Democratic primary.

More on Colorado’s latest developments, which would seriously alter the state’s political landscape if they came to pass, once we know a bit more about Romanoff and Buck’s plans; if the latter does exit the race, it would seem to confirm other reports that indicate former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton is preparing to run for the Republican nomination.

One other important storyline I did not get to cover this week is Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman’s entry in the Illinois Senate race. This unexpected development makes the primary a 3-way race - just as it was expected to be before Schakowsky, Kennedy and Daley all pulled out. While Giannoulias remains the front-runner, Hoffman’s corruption-fighting and anti-machine credentials could play well in the state’s post-Blagojevich context - and we might hear much more about Blago in 2010 depending on whether a trial takes place. Also, Hoffman’s entry improves Cheryle Jackson’s prospects: As the contest’s only female and non-white candidate, she can hope for an opening - especially if Hoffman concentrates his attacks on Giannoulias.

In South Carolina, meanwhile, Attorney General Henry McMaster became the fourth Republican to announce he will run for Governor. With Lieutenant Governor André Bauer all but certain to enter the race, the primary could be a 5-way affair with 2 statewide officials (McMaster and Bauer), one congressman (Greshman Barrett) and two state legislators (Larry Grooms and Sanford ally Nikki Haley). In the backdrop, of course, are the various Sanford scandals that are unfolding. How will candidates manage that? in a crowded race, can Haley power herself to victory on the basis of Sanford loyalists? will Bauer’s attempts to take a harsher stance against Sanford hurt him or help him in the primary?

As always, I list all the changes I have logged in during the week to the “retirement watch” and recruitment pages. Written in red are those politicians who announced their definite plans rather than simply expressed interest or stroke speculation. First, updates to Retirement Watch:

Will retire Governor Jim Douglas (VT)
Rep. Charlie Melancon (LA-03)
Will not retire Rep. Bruce Braley (IA-01)
Rep. Steve King (IA-05)
Will not resign Rep. Bill Young (FL-10)

Second, updates to the Senate recruitment page: General Russell Honore

AR-Sen, Dem state Senator Bob Johnson added to list
CO-Sen, GOP former Rep. Bob Beauprez will not run
IL-Sen, Dem Rep. Bruce Braley will not run
IL-Sen, Dem Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman announced run
IL-Sen, GOP retired judge Don Lowery is running
LA-Sen, Dem GOP
 General Russell Honore added to list
LA-Sen, Dem state Sen. Erik LaFleur will not run
Rep. Charlie Melancon announced run
MA-Sen, Dem Rep. Michael Capuano added
Attorney General Martha Coakley added
Rep. William Delahunt added
Rep. Barney Frank added
Vicky Kennedy added
former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II
Rep. Stephen Lynch added
Rep. Edward Markey added
Rep. James McGovern added
University Chancellor and former Rep. Martin Meehan added
MA-Sen, GOP businessman Jeff Beatty added
former Ambassador Chris Egan
former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey
former Governor Mitt Romney will not run
former U.S. Attorney Mark Sullivan added
VA-Sen, GOP Governor Jim Douglas will not run

Third, updates to gubernatorial recruitment:

IA-Gov, GOP Rep. Steve King will not run
SC-Sen, GOP Attorney General Henry McMaster confirmed run
professor Brent Nelsen dropped out (back in July)
TX-Gov, GOP rancher Hank Gilbert announced run
VT-Gov, GOP Governor Jim Douglas announces retirement
Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie added to list

It would have made little sense for Romney to run for Senate

Published
by
Taniel
on August 29, 2009
in GOP 2012, MA-Sen and Romney
. 8 Comments

In the days following Ted Kennedy’s death, I was surprised to see commentary as to why Mitt Romney would be well-served by running for Senate. This would have been a flagrantly bad idea for the GOP’s special election prospects and for the future of Romney’s career, and Romney himself wasted little time taking himself out of consideration.

Romney might have been the last Republican to enjoy statewide success in Massachusetts, but his gubernatorial victory occurred well before his presidential campaign. Since then, he has become one of the country’s most mainstream Republican voice. He has taken painstaking care to mimic conservatives on most issues - including abortion, leaving him nowhere to go in Massachusetts.

While this would hold in a gubernatorial race, it’s all the more true in a federal contest, when national issues and voters’ desire not to rebuke Obama are bound to come in play. As such, Republicans would be far better served nominating a candidate who can credibly distance himself from the national party and position himself as a moderate the way Romney did in 1994 (when he defended gay rights and criticized Reagan) and 2002. We can argue as to whether the GOP can find any such candidate - and there are at least some names mentioned, but it’s hardly debatable that the post-2008 Romney stands no chance of succeeding.

Nor can I even imagine a scenario under which he would want to try. What would be the best case scenario for Romney? He runs, manages to convince Massachusetts voters that he is moderate enough to represent them, gets elected to the Senate and possibly even serves a long career. That would be ideal for dozens of politicians, but not for Romney.

Ever since he became governor in 2002, Romney has been thinking of little else than the White House. The son of a politician whose presidential aspirations came crashing down because of his opposition to Vietnam, Mitt Romney is not going to let anything get on the way of his own ambitions. To win the presidency, he needed some type of political springboard - businessmen can run for Senators, but it is a stretch for them to run for the White House without having ever held elected office.

Hence his decision to run for Senate in 1994 and governor in 2002. Hence the relatively moderate profile he had to craft himself to succeed in as blue a state as Massachusetts.

But the fact that he started drifting to the right during his first (and only) term left no doubt as to where his mind was turned, and no one was surprised when he announced he would not seek re-election in 2006. His maneuvers were almost successful and got him closer to the Republican nomination than anyone not named McCain. (I am aware that Mike Huckabee lasted longer than Romney, but it would have been tough to imagine the latter losing had he prevailed in either Iowa or New Hampshire.)

Ever since his presidential loss, Romney has been positioning himself for a repeat run. In 2008, he emerged as one of McCain’s most loyal surrogates - so much so that he went from one of the Arizona Senator’s most despite enemies to one of the front-runners to be McCain’s running mate. Since then, he has perfectly balanced the need to keep his name in the public spotlight and the need to remain far away not to be burned by day-to-day vicissitudes; he has made high-profile donations to Republican congressmen and he has written newspaper op-eds, but not enough as to become part of the chattering class.

As a result, Romney is now in a position few people could have foreseen in February 2008 - one of the GOP’s only obvious leaders at a time Sarah Palin, Mike Sanford, Bobby Jindal or John Ensign have all seen their fortunes fall. (A side note: Today marks the one year anniversary of Palin’s introduction to the national stage!) And that makes him an obvious frontrunner for the GOP’s 2012 nomination.

So why would Romney possibly want to run for Senate? If he did so without moving back towards the center, he would most likely suffer a disastrous loss that would make him look like an unviable repeat loser. Nixon might have come managed a comeback after back-to-back losses, but few other such dramatic comebacks come to mind - and Nixon had served as vice-president.

If he ran as a moderate, he would burn all the bridges he has spent years building at a time conservatives are finally to warm to him - not to mention that he would look like even more of an opportunist than he did during his 2008 campaign. A loss would him no where to go: His electability would be discredited, his conservative credentials would be in ruin and he would have vindicated every caricature his critics made of him.

If he somehow convinced Massachusetts voters that his re-conversion was genuine, it would still mean forgoing presidential aspirations - not only for the primary-related ideological reasons I listed above but also because the Senate is the worst springboard for the presidency: 2008 was the first time in 48 years a Senator entered the White House but it’s hard not to notice that both his major opponents were also Senators. Romney would find himself a perennially vulnerable Senator stuck in a job he does not want with no obvious way to gain a promotion to the job from which his father was also barred. And that’s the best case scenario in which a Romney run is successful.

This means that the only people who have to lament Romney’s decision not to run for Senate are his potential Republican presidential rivals, Massachusetts Democrats who want to hold on to Kennedy’s seat and arguably the White House - depending on whether you think Romney would be Obama’s strongest 2012 rival, which is a whole other discussion.

House members stay put, Iowa edition

Published
by
Taniel
on August 28, 2009
in IA-01, IA-05, IA-Gov and IA-Sen
. 0 Comments

Iowa’s Democratic Governor Chet Culver and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley could be vulnerable next year, but they have yet to draw top-tier opposition. And over the past few days, two congressmen who had been mentioned as potential candidates announced they would run for re-election rather than seek statewide office.

This double refusal is arguably worse news for Democrats: While Republicans have many politicians other than Rep. Steve King to field, Rep. Bruce Braley’s decision not to challenge Grassley could very well be the final nail in the DSCC’s hopes of contesting his Senate seat.

Senate: Braley leaves Grassley alone

Yet, that is no reason for Democrats to start lamenting Braley’s announcement because the sophomore representative was never deemed likely to run. The only reason we heard so much about him in recent weeks was a report the Des Moines Register published last month, hinting that a “well-known mystery candidate [is] about 75 percent ready to join the race.” Braley’s subsequent health care-related war of words with Grassley only increased the speculation, but it was hard to take all of this seriously.

Braley revealed the depth of his political ambition within weeks of being elected to the House, as he quickly started climbing the leadership ladder: He was appointed at-large whip and chairman of the DCCC’s “Red to Blue Program” and he became first freshman to chair a House subcommittee since the start of congressional record-keeping in 1959. Since then, Braley’s profile has only grown: He now sits on the House and Energy Committee (not all sophomores get such prestigious appointments) and he recently founded the Populist Caucus, teaming up with far more senior members like Peter DeFazio and Louise Slaughter.

Why would Braley endanger his so-promising House career when he can afford to wait? At only 51, Braley can afford to wait for Grassley or Tom Harkin to retire in 2014 or 2016. And it’s not like he has that much to fear while he sticks around in the House: His district voted for Al Gore and John Kerry by 7% and for Barack Obama by 17%. With the prospect of easy re-election races keeping him up all the way to an open Senate seat, why would Braley wage his political career on  difficult Senate run against a 5-term incumbent?

Indeed, a Braley challenge would not suddenly catapult the seat at the top of the Democrats’ pick-up list. Iowa might lean blue and Braley might be a strong contender, but any five-term senator makes a formidable opponent. The only Democrat who was sure of forcing Grassley into a toss-up race was former Governor Tom Vilsack, but Obama took care of that possibility by appointing him Secretary of Agriculture. With Vilsack and Braley’s departures, Democrats are left with second-to-third tier contenders.

Governor: King would rather oppose Obama than Culver

One of the most conservative House Republicans, King had been going back and forth when asked about his interest in the Governor’s race. After initially declaring his interest, he hinted that he was leaning against it; he later declared that he was taking the possibility more seriously out of anger at Governor Chet Culver’s refusal to take action against the state Supreme Court’s legalizing gay marriage. In the final act of King’s decision-making process, he announced this week that he would not run for Governor.

“If America takes this leftward lurch, it won’t matter what we do in Iowa if we don’t get it right in Washington,” he said, thus explaining his decision by the higher importance of fighting Obama’s agenda than of opposing Culver’s.

As a reminder, this is the same man who declared in March 2008: “I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror… They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name.” In July 2009, King was the only House member to vote against a resolution acknowledging the use of slave labor in the Capitol’s construction.

While any challenger can be competitive when all voters are thinking about is the incumbent’s record (like any Midwestern Governor, Culver’s numbers have been going down and he should be in trouble if the economy does not rebound noticeably), it’s hard to see how King’s firebrand conservatism would have been successful at the statewide level: IA-05 is the state’s reddest district, and it is 20% more Republican than the state at large (it gave Bush 60% of the vote in 2004, for instance). King is not used to winning over left-tilting and independent voters, and there’s no evidence he’d be able to do so as a gubernatorial candiate - nor that voters would respond well if he focused his campaign on social issues like gay marriage.

As such, King’s exit gives the GOP a chance to find a stronger challenger to Culver. State House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, Bob Vander Plaats and businessman Mike Whalen are all mentioned by the Republicans’ strongest potential contender is undoubtedly former Governor Terry Branstad, who now serves as president of the University of Des Moines. A recent poll conducted by a Republican 527 found Branstad running strong, though we’ll wait for him to make up his mind and for public polls to come up before assessing his strength.

Vermont’s Jim Douglas retires, sets up yet another competitive Governor’s race

Published
by
Taniel
on August 27, 2009
in VT-Gov and VT-Sen
. 6 Comments

Today, the number of open gubernatorial races rose to an outstanding 20. That’s right, 40% of the states will have a new chief executive in January 2011 just by virtue of term-limits and retirements - before we even get into defeated incumbents! The latest to call it quits is Vermont’s Republican Governor Jim Douglas. His retirement gives Democrats a golden opportunity to reclaim a position that has escaped them ever since Howard Dean left the Governor’s Mansion in 2002.

Douglas was narrowly elected to an open seat that year, and he has had to face voters every two years ever since. Despite Vermont’s staunchly Democratic status, he faced no trouble winning re-election; never was his closest competitor closer than 15%. One of the highest profile acts of Douglas’s tenure will undoubtedly be his decision to veto legislation legalizing gay marriage; the state legislature successful override was the first time in Douglas’s entire governorship that his veto had been overridden.

With Democrats defending a large number of tough open seats - Wyoming, Tennessee, Kansas - it’s undoubtedly good for their morale to have some governorships they’re likely to reclaim. Just like Rhode Island and Hawaii, other states whose Republican Governors are departing, Vermont is liberal enough that Democrats have to be considered the slight early favorites to win this race. Yet, to pick-up this governorship they’ll have to negotiate a meaningful alliance with the state’s powerful Progressive Party.

A three-party state: Democrats, Republicans and Progressives

Candidates who were already positioning themselves to run against Douglas include: Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, former Lieutenant Governor, former gubernatorial candidate and current state Senator Doug Racine and state Senator Susan Bartless. Another potential contender is State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding. All in all, Democrats have a deep enough bench that they’ll have no trouble fielding a strong candidate - and their primary will more likely than not be crowded. (Note that this could have an impact on the general election since Vermont’s primary will be held late, in September 2010.)

That said, local races often run counter to a state’s federal loyalties and Republicans have a clear shot at holding on to this seat. They have a strong potential candidate in Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie, who has been elected every two years since 2002 - and done so on his own name rather than on a ticket with Douglas. This means that voters are accustomed to voting for Dubie. If he runs, he should be able to keep the race highly competitive. If he does not, the GOP’s situation becomes more unclear as the party has no other heir apparent ready to take up Douglas’s mantle.

Complicating the picture is the possibility of a three-way race with the Progressive Party’s nominee. In 2008, Anthony Pollina ran a strong campaign, received the endorsements of Vermont’s three largest unions and came out narrowly ahead of the Democratic nominee - and it’s not like Gaye Symington was a nobody since she was the state Speaker at the time of her run. (Pollina also received 10% of the vote in the 2000 gubernatorial vote and 25% in the 2002 Lieutenant Governor race, which was Dubie’s first statewide victory.)

Democrats are now trying to convince Progressives to sit out the next cycle, but how do you convince a party they should be the one to exit the race when they beat you in the preceding cycle? Pollina just set out conditions for the Progressive Party not to participate in the upcoming election. For the Democratic nominee to benefit from the party’s endorsement rather than have to face a 3-way race, he or she will have to (1) support a single-payer health care system to be implemented at the state level, (2) oppose the closing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and (3) champion labor demands regarding the state’s pension and unemployment plans.

In a staunchly blue state like Vermont, expecting a liberal Democratic nominee should not be that controversial and progressives have a big enough political capital that they shouldn’t be expected to just roll over. With Pollina himself potentially running again in 2010, it’s tough to imagine how Democrats can conquer Montpelier if they do not seriously respond to the Progressives’ efforts to push the state leftward.

Leahy is safe

Douglas’s press conference also has repercussions in another Vermont race: In indicating that he would not run for any office whatsoever next year, Douglas effectively ruled out challenging Senator Pat Leahy. This was not a race he was expected to make, nor would he have had much of a chance against the veteran senator (a January poll found Leahy easily crushing Douglas). Yet, Douglas was the only Republican in any position to endanger Leahy and the NRSC could have at least hoped to make the race worth watching, tie down Leahy to his home state force the DSCC to divert resources. And if the GOP did benefit from as big a wave as some conservatives are predicting, could the tide not submerge Vermont?

Not that we thought Leahy was in danger, then, but Douglas was enough of a question mark for him not to join the invulnerable category. With Douglas’s exit, Leahy becomes one of the safest incumbents in the country. Wave or no wave, he’ll be in the Senate in January 2011.

Louisiana gets itself a race: Melancon challenges Vitter

Published
by
Taniel
on August 27, 2009
in LA-03 and LA-Sen
. 9 Comments

In a move with huge consequences both at the Senate and at the House level, Rep. Charlie Melancon announced today that he will challenge Louisiana Senator David Vitter.

Senate: A surprisingly strong get for the DSCC but Vitter remains favored

This should ensure that Louisiana hosts a Senate race well worth watching. Vitter has been on everyone’s list of vulnerable senators ever since he was involved in the D.C. Madam scandal, but Democrats had little bench left. Melancon was one of the only high-profiles names considering this race, and his entry is as good a get as the DSCC could have hoped for. A March Research 2000 poll found Vitter leading Melancon 48% to 41% while a July PPP survey had him up 44% to 32%. Comfortable leads, but certainly not overwhelming ones - and Vitter is noticeably under the 50% mark.

That said, Vitter has to be considered the clear favorite. His poll numbers bear little trace of the 2007 scandal and Louisiana has been rapidly drifting rightward, especially given the demographic changes brought about by Katrina. In 2008, Mary Landrieu survived with just 52% of the vote despite a national environment that was golden for Democrats, so how high could Melancon hope to get in a cycle that is bound to be less favorable for his party?

I have repeatedly argued that Democrats do not for now have to fear the prospect of a red wave, but that doesn’t mean it would be as easy for them to challenge Republican incumbents  - especially those who are sitting in states Democrats have no more business contesting. Melancon might have had a 50:50 shot to win in 2006 or in 2008, but 2010 is another story. The burden is now on the DSCC to prove that Vitter should worry.

Of course, even if he did make it to the Senate, Melancon would be one of the most conservative Senate Democrats - probably even to the right of Mary Landrieu: A supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment, Melancon voted against health care reform when it came up in the Energy and Commerce Committee last month. Even if Vitter is one of the more conservative senators, can Melancon expect an enthusiastic reception from Democratic activists given that latter vote?

House: A golden opportunity for Republicans

It might still be unclear how competitive the Senate race will get, but we already know for sure that Melancon’s decision creates a huge headache for House Democrats. LA-03 is a staunchly conservative seat - George W. Bush got 58% of the vote in 2004, McCain received 61% in 2008. Melancon won in a tough open race in 2004 but he didn’t face much of a challenge in the subsequent two cycles, entrenching himself enough that he would have been favored to win a fourth term in 2010.

Yet, LA-03 will now feature an open race. In such conservative territory, that undoubtedly makes the district one of the GOP’s top takeover prospects - right up there with AL-02, ID-01 and MS-01. Democrats have a strong bench in the district (Swing State Project broke down the state legislators representing a portion of LA-03 and found that most state Senators are Democrats) so they should be able to remain competitive rather than simply folding. But given that we are talking about a 62% McCain district hosting an open seat in the midterm elections of a Democratic president, it’s hard not to consider Republicans the early favorites.

What this means is that Louisiana is now more likely than not to give us a House wash in 2010. With Democrats highly favored to recapture the New Orleans-based LA-02, Republicans can certainly hope to compensate by picking-up LA-03.

Note that such an exchange of seats might not affect the House’s partisan composition, but it would certainly change its ideological breakdown: Given how left-wing a district he represents, Cao is bound to be one of the most unreliable Republican representatives while Melancon is a staunchly conservative Blue Dog. So if both parties do pick-up a seat, Democrats are likely to exchange Melancon for a left-wing representative while Republicans would replace Cao with a staunch conservative.

[Update: CQ provides more names of potential House candidates, including Scott Angelle, a longtime Democrat who is now serving in Bobby Jindal's Cabinet - making him a potential recruit for both parties, a la Bobby Bright.]

For Democrats, redistricting could assuage sting of House loss

All in all, then, all of this makes it hard to consider Melancon’s decision as that good news for Democrats: They are more likely to lose his House seat than they are to truly endanger Vitter, which also makes Melancon’s move a huge career risk. So why did he do it?

I can think of only one word: Redistricting. Democrats do have (very) tenuous control of both chamber’s of the legislature, so the GOP cannot simply gerrymander Melancon out. But Louisiana is slated to lose a seat in the next round of redistricting, and that will mean an extensive redrawing of the congressional map. It will not necessarily be easy for Democrats to salvage a good district for Melancon, and the prospect that they’ll lose the state legislature in 2011 (allowing the GOP to easily dislodge Melancon) has to be considered.

And this gets us to the one comforting thought for the DCCC: If Republicans do pick-up LA-03 next year (giving them a 6-1 advantage if they also lose Cao), they’ll probably have no choice but to accept to sacrifice one of their own. New Orleans is too predominantly Democratic for the GOP to hope to control all of the state’s districts, so the best configuration it could hope for post-redistricting is 5-1. This considerably lowers the stakes of the LA-03 race.

In the midst of unsurprising polls, outlier-like survey shows Corzine boost

Published
by
Taniel
on August 27, 2009
in NJ-Gov and NYC-Mayor
. 4 Comments

PPP’s survey finding Blanche Lincoln in a tricky spot was not the week’s only good poll for Republicans. With surveys finding David Paterson, Kirsten Gillibrand and William Thompson struggling in New York, Deval Patrick tanking in Massachusetts and Bill McCollum gaining an edge in Florida, the past few day’s sole piece of good news for Democrats came from… New Jersey?!

That’s right, the race that has more than most others defined the GOP’s momentum over the past few months might be tightening - at least if we trust conservative pollster Neighborhood Research, which just released a survey conducted August 12th to August 21st. The poll finds Governor Jon Corzine leading Chris Christie by 2%, 39% to 37% among likely voters; among definite voters, Christie has a 3% edge.

I am more than tempted to just shelve this away in the outlier box for now. This is the first poll since January to find Corzine with any sort of lead, and the closest the Democrat had gotten since then was a 5% deficit - making Neighborhood Research’s poll unlike anything we have seen all year. Add to that the fact that the pollster has little track record, that the sample size is relatively small (319), the margin of error relatively big (5,5%) and the length of time the survey was in the field uncommonly long (9 days), and we’ve got a case for why this poll should not be taken seriously.

Yet, what to make of the fact that Neighborhood Research is a Republican firm? I am at a loss to explain why a conservative group would release a poll like this when it was under no obligation to do so. Furthermore, the poll comes in the heels of other signs of tightening: Christie led by double-digits in 10 out of 13 polls conducted in June and July, but Corzine has cut his deficit to single-digit in all but 1 of 5 August polls, including a Democracy Corps survey that has him behind 5%.

But with 3 of these August polls conducted in the first week of the month, we simply do not have enough polls taken over the past few weeks to draw meaningful conclusions as to whether the race is tightening. Democrats are hopeful that controversies that have dogged Christie over the past few weeks will finally succeed in knocking him off, but they shouldn’t get their hopes too much based on the results of this one poll. As such, we eagerly await the next round of public polls and further analysis of Corzine’s prospects will wait until then.

By contrast, the week’s other polls have by now come to be expected.

NYC-Mayor: Quinnipiac has Mike Bloomberg as popular as ever (his approval rating is 66%) and crushing his Democratic opponent William Thompson 50% to 35%; he is ahead 55% to 28% against Tony Avella. While unsurprising, the survey comes as a disappointment to Thompson since the city comptroller had cut his deficit to just 10% in Quinnipiac’s July poll - a promising progression that has apparently been halted. With Bloomberg continuing to freely spend millions to bankroll his campaign, it’s not difficult to see why Thompson is failing to gain much traction.

NY-Gov: Siena takes its monthly look at the Empire State and finds little changed in David Paterson’s fortune. Despite an eventful few months in New York politics, Paterson remains strikingly unpopular and is crushed by both Andrew Cuomo (65% to 23%) and Rudy Giuliani (56% to 33%); both margin’s are identical to Siena’s July poll. That Paterson can only manage a 1% lead against Rick Lazio also raises major flags as to whether he can beat any Republican. Cuomo, by contrast, remains a solid general election contender: He crushes Lazio 66% to 16% and leads Giuliani 53% to 40%.

NY-Sen: While she has managed to avoid the decline of the man who appointed her and fight off the threat of a contested primary, Kirsten Gillibrand is not yet out of trouble: Siena’s survey finds her trailing 42% to 39% against former Governor George Pataki, who did not leave office the most popular of incumbents. While the Senator does crush Rep. Peter King 46% to 24%, her favorability rating is an unimpressive 29-20. That’s not as good as where it stood in May (33-21), which once again contradicts the contention that the senator will easily strengthen her position as she has time to introduce herself.

MA-Gov: Rasmussen finds Governor Deval Patrick trailing Christy Mihos 41% to 40% and only managing a 40-39 lead against an even lower-profile businessman, Charles Baker. These numbers, which are in line with a number of other surveys that have been released over the past few weeks, are simply brutal. (It’s a shame the poll did not test a 3-way general election with Tim Cahill.) They also suggest the state environment might be tough enough for Democrats that they can’t be certain of winning the upcoming Senate election, but more on that in the days ahead.

FL-Gov: A few days after a Chamber of Commerce survey found Bill McCollum holding a large lead in Florida’s gubernatorial race, another right-wing group finds the Republican ahead: Public Opinion Strategies has him leading 48% to 37%, a substantial lead that suggests McCollum is making the most of his early edge in name recognition. However, Quinnipia found a much tighter race in a poll released last week.

WI-Gov: Another open Governor’s race, another Republican poll - this one a private survey conducted for a candidate: The Tarrance Group tested Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and found him very strong. In the GOP primary, he leads Mark Neumann 57% to 21%; in the general election, he leads LG Barbara Lawton 48% to 40% Rep. Ron Kind 49% to 39% and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett 44% to 43%. We’ll wait for a public poll to reiterate these findings before drawing any conclusions.

Let’s put Arkansas on the map and leave it there

Published
by
Taniel
on August 26, 2009
in AR-Sen
. 12 Comments

One of the criteria for determining whether Democrats have to fear a red wave is whether Republicans are managing to contest races that have no business being competitive. While I argued Nevada, Illinois and Delaware’s Senate races cannot be said to belong to that category, Connecticut’s does - and it looks like we can now add Arkansas to the list.

Sure, this a conservative state that voted for John McCain by 21% last fall, but it has never been easy for Republicans to be competitive in this longtime Democratic stronghold. Republicans have only won a single Senate race in Arkansas since 1879: Tim Hutchison’s 1996 victory was short-lived, since he lost his first re-election race to Mark Pryor in 2002. Not only one was that one of the GOP’s only tough losses in an otherwise favorable cycle, but Pryor did not even face any opponent when he ran for re-election in 2008.

With that kind of track record, we expected it to take a top-tier GOP opponent to get this state on the map - if not Mike Huckabee, than at least former U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin. This is certainly not a state we should expect any Republican to be competitive just based on his party affiliation.

But that is exactly what is happening according to PPP’s latest poll: Lincoln struggles to break the 40% mark against second-to-third challengers, none of which enjoy significant statewide name recognition: Only 23%, 22% and 16% of voters have an opinion on businessman Curtis Coleman, state Senator Gilbert Baker and former attorney Thomas Cotton, respectively. More surprisingly, those who do have an opinion intensely dislike these Republicans: For each, their unfavorability rating is at least twice as high as their favorability rating.

Yet, Lincoln’s dismal approval rating - 36% to 44% - is too much for her to overcome: She trails Baker 42% to 40% and she trails Coleman 41% to 40%; she can only muster a 40% to 39% lead against Cotton.

Let’s say it again: A two-term Democratic Senator who holds a seat Republicans have not won in 131 years is leading an unknown (yet disliked but those who know him) political novice by only 1% - and she is well under the 50% mark. If that is no sign that Lincoln is facing a very tough cycle, I don’t know what is.

In short, it’s time to put Arkansas on the map of competitive Senate races, and most probably leave it there. Even though Republican prospects will improve if Baker jumps in, Coleman is already running - and probably willing to spend substantial sums of his own money.

To conclude on a perhaps more comforting note for Democrats, the poll does contain some hints that Lincoln’s vulnerability should not solely be attributed to a pro-GOP environment. Just as we knew that Reid was in trouble months before there was any talk of Republican momentum, Lincoln’s unpopularity appears to have as much to do with voters’ long-held opinions as with any sudden change in their view of the Democratic Party. The share of voters who approve of Lincoln (36%) is lower than that of Pryor (47%) and Obama (40%). In fact, Obama’s 40% is higher than the support he received in last year’s election (39%).

This is not to say that Lincoln is not highly endangered; if anything, I am suggesting that Lincoln’s vulnerability might be even greater than the numbers by themselves suggest since it could be harder for her to repair an unpopular image than for Democrats to reclaim some momentum nationally. The fact that Lincoln’s unpopularity isn’t related to her party affiliation also explains why we are hearing talk of a potential primary challenge against her, with Democratic state President Bob Johnson going as far as to publicly express his interest this week.

But these numbers do suggest that it would be too simplistic to argue that Lincoln’s numbers are falling simply because Democrats are trying to pass health care reform or establish a cap-and-trade system, and I want to caution that her declining numbers do not mean that Russ Feingold, Patty Murray and Ron Wyden will suddenly also have to fight for their political life.

Mixed news for NRCC: No special election in FL-10 but top recruit flaming out in OR-04

Published
by
Taniel
on August 26, 2009
in FL-10, IN-09 and OR-04
. 0 Comments

There will be no special election in FL-10

A few days after Charlie Crist’s signaled he was interested in appointing Rep. Bill Young to serve the reminder of Mel Martinez’s Senate term, Young said he was not interested. This comes at a disappointment for Democrats, who were hoping to get their first shot at this seat in decades; the district is very competitive, but Young has been too entrenched. For Crist to finally remove him from his seat would have given Democrats a golden opportunity.

Worst still for the DCCC: Young’s decision might also be a signal that he intends to seek re-election next year, once again beating back speculation that he’s about to quit. If he was even just leaning towards retirement, would he not want to his final 16 months in Congress to be spent in the Senate rather in the House? Or would he think that serving as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee gives him more power than he would have as a lame-duck excessively junior senator?

It’s tough to tell, and we might not know for many more months. Democrats are already running a strong candidate of their own: state Senator Charlie Justice. Perhaps Young is waiting for early signs of Justice’s strength to determine whether to retire.

What’s up with Oregon Republicans?

For the second cycle in a row, a highly-touted Oregon Republican is flaming out. In 2008, it was Mike Erickson in OR-05: A series of scandals and controversies made what was supposed to be a competitive open seat into an easy hold for Democrats. This cycle, the action is taking place in the neighboring 4th district, a Democratic seat the NRCC has been curiously sanguine about ever since Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken entered the race.

Leiken’s campaign started to look in trouble in June, when the Democratic Party filed a complaint about a $2,000 payment Leiken made to a company named P&G in exchange for a poll on implementing gas tax. The problem: No one knew much about this company, which was not registered with the state and whose address happened to also be that of his mother’s real estate business… This left Leiken’s own Treasurer casting doubt on whether this was a legitimate payment. “It better be a legitimate company, for crying out loud. I’ll have to believe Sid it is,” he said.

Leiken’s attempted to belie the charges for a few months, but he changed strategies last week: In a tearful press conference, held with his wife by his side (when’s the last time one of those was used to admit to corruption-related charges rather than to confess adultery?), he admitted he did not have the proper documentation to justify the expenditure, apologized to his constituents and to his family and announced he would repay the $2,000 with his own pocket.

This is as disastrous a campaign launch as I can imagine. A politician never apologizes unless he absolutely has to and it generally means it is too late to salvage his reputation - witness Rep. Don Sherwood and Rep. Tom Feeney’s apology ads in the 2006 and 2008 cycles. The press conference led local evening news, voters outside of Springfield were thus introduced to Leiken in a negative light and the controversy will give tons of fodder to the DCCC’s ad-makers next year.

It’s not even like Leiken has put the controversy behind him. He said that he’ll pay his mother directly, but why he was trying to pay her in the first place? His explanation that this was a legitimate transaction for which he cannot find the proper documentation is unconvincing. And before convincing voters, Leiken should worry about placating Oregon secretary of state’s office, which is still investigating the matter. Needless to say, for that investigation to go any further than it already has will sink Leiken’s chances further. Democrats are looking good to keep Oregon’s 4th, whether or not Peter DeFazio runs for re-election.

Could there really be a fifth consecutive Hill-Sodrel match-up?

Republican Mike Sodrel, who lost three of the four previous rounds, is reportedly considering trying yet again in 2010. Perhaps he thinks he’ll have more of a chance now that the environment will no longer be as toxic for his party, but it does seem that voters are through hesitating when presented with these two options: Hill won 58% to 38% in 2008. And let’s not forget that Hill’s one loss came in 2004, a tough cycle for Republicans in which Bush’s coattails boosted Sodrel - and even then the Democrat only lost by 2,000 votes.

On the other hand, it’s not like Republicans have many other options against Hill, who does not look very likely to face a competitive challenge next year. So why not yet again try Sodrel?

Ted Kennedy has died

Published
by
Taniel
on August 26, 2009
in Kennedy
. 8 Comments

One of the most powerful U.S. Senators in the country’s history and one of liberalism’s loudest champions in the latter half of the century, Ted Kennedy passed away tonight.

Ever since being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, Kennedy had retreated from public life; his occasional appearances, for instance at the Democratic Convention in August, attracted wide attention. But his failure to attend his sister Eunice’s funeral last month had alerted us that his condition was deteriorating, but news of his death still comes as a tragic surprise that is sure to plunge the Democratic Party in mourning in the days ahead.

I will leave you to other, more detailed sources for a look at Kennedy’s life and legacy - from his 1980 presidential run to his influential Senate career - and use this space to quickly detail what is this blog’s primary beat - election news, and in this case succession details.

To fill Kennedy’s seat, Massachusetts will host a special election since the governor has no appointment rights since Democrats stripped Mitt Romney’s of that prerogative to ensure he would not replace John Kerry with a Republican in the run-up to the 2004 presidential contest. The law requires a special election to be called within 145 and 16o days of the vacancy. Applied to this case, I believe this puts us in a window that starts on January 18th and ends on February 1st.

Thus, mark your calendars for a Senate race either on Tuesday, January 19th or Tuesday, January 26th.

The state has not had an open seat race since John Kerry’s first election, and countless Massachusetts Democrats have clear ambitions they’ll now be likely to act upon. Since the race will be a special election, no House member will have to give up his or her seat to run for Senate. With nothing to lose, many are not likely to hold back so expect a crowded Democratic primary.

Until late January, then, the seat will remain vacant. Just like week, Kennedy had asked the state legislature to amend state law to allow the governor to appoint a temporary replacement who could serve during those 145-160 days, but the speed with which death struck seems to have come as a surprise even to him - making tonight’s news look that much more tragic. I cannot imagine that Massachusetts Democrats would be willing to change the succession law and apply it to an already existing vacancy - nor am I sure whether such retroactive legislation is even feasible.

Thus, until the end of January, Massachusetts will only have one Senator, the Senate will only have 99 members and Democrats will have at their disposition 59 votes. Since it takes 3/5th of all sitting Senators to break a filibuster, passing cloture votes will still require 60 votes (0.6*99=59.4, so 59 is not enough), which means that Democrats no longer have the supermajority they gained when Arlen Specter switched parties and Al Franken was seated. Since it had been months Kennedy was unable to travel to Washington, this should not substantially change the chamber’s dynamics, but it does require Democrats to dig a bit deeper to pass health care reform, which for decades had been Teddy Kennedy’s priority.