Posts Tagged ‘
Alex Sink ’
Friday, October 29th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
Hats off to the Obama administration. The $2.4 billion in high-speed-rail grants announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Transportation not only helps fix deficiencies in the original round of rail awards back in January, but shows welcome political moxie.
By allocating the bulk of its FY 2010 investment to California and Florida, the administration has thrown its support behind true “bullet train” service, or trains running on dedicated rights of way at more than 150 mph. It now appears possible that high-speed segments could be open in California’s Central Valley and between Tampa and Orlando, Fla., by 2016.
That’s a big change from the first round of grants last January, which we argued was flawed by a scattershot approach of approving projects that only marginally increased passenger train speeds on upgraded freight track. What was needed, we believed, was funding focused on “do-able” 150-mph-plus links that would serve as templates for an emerging state-of-the-art passenger train initiative.
For the most part, the administration has done just that. To be sure, it has not come up with a way to finance HSR over the long haul and it still faces multiple challenges in Congress, especially if Republicans take over one or both chambers. But what’s striking about yesterday’s awards is the administration’s firmer grasp of how to get HSR segments up and running in the face of local obstacles.
Consider California, which received the biggest grant yesterday, $902 million. The DOT award requires the state to primarily focus on rail development in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield, where land acquisition costs are low and trains could reach their full speed, rather than build costly urban segments through greater Los Angeles and between San Francisco and San Jose that have stoked Nimby opposition.
That’s a shrewd way to get a workable segment built and in revenue service to make the case that HSR is an attractive choice of transportation for Californians. Kicking off construction in the Central Valley also gives a political boost to Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), a strong HSR backer who is in a tough race with Andy Vidak, a Republican with Tea Party backing.
Likewise, the administration took a decisive step toward fully funding the Tampa-Orlando HSR line (which we’ve repeatedly supported) by awarding $800 million to the project yesterday. Florida now has $2.05 billion in the kitty to complete the $2.6 billion project, including the $1.25 billion it received in January.
The new grant has already softened criticism by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rick Scott. In the last few days Scott has dialed down his rhetoric against the rail line as an example of federal overreach. With groundbreaking scheduled for early 2011 and the Obama administration hinting at more money from discretionary funds, it appears unlikely that Scott would sacrifice thousands of construction jobs by scrapping the project outright. The Democratic candidate, Alex Sink, is a strong supporter.
Two other projects awarded grants yesterday, while not strictly high speed, will improve rail service in critical corridors. DOT gave Connecticut $121 million to help double track the Amtrak line between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., and upgrade service to 110 mph.
As part of the agreement, Connecticut agreed to release $260 million in state funds to rebuild other infrastructure, which will eventually increase train service from six daily roundtrips to 25 or more. This would make the Springfield segment an integral part of the Northeast Corridor and eventual route of a proposed “inland” corridor between New York and Boston.
A flaw of past federal policy was its failure to flag rail lines abandoned by freight carriers as potential passenger routes. As a result, thousands of miles of secondary lines between major cities, considered duplicative by freight railroads, were torn up between 1970 and today.
A similar fate now threatens 135 miles of rail line between Kalamazoo and Dearborn, Mich., owned by Norfolk Southern (NS). The track, used for Amtrak’s Chicago-Detroit trains, was downgraded this summer, a preliminary step toward a petition for abandonment by NS.
Yesterday, DOT stepped in with a $150 million grant to fund Michigan’s purchase of the line. Since Amtrak already owns 97 miles adjacent to this section, the proposed purchase would result in public ownership of nearly 80 percent of the Chicago-Detroit corridor, laying the foundation for a high-speed passenger route.
Yesterday’s awards include the remaining funds in the $8 billion stimulus package as well as money allocated for FY 2010 by the Democratic Congress. Funding for HSR has yet to be agreed upon by Congress for FY 2011. Outside of discretionary funds within DOT, yesterday’s announcement represents the last definite federal distribution for high-speed rail.
For a full list of DOT grants, see http://www.fra.dot.gov/rpd/passenger/2243.shtml
Tags: 110 mph, 150 mph, Alex Sink, Amtrak, Andy Vidak, Bakersfield, Boston, bullet train, California, California’s Central Valley, Chicago-Detroit, Connecticut, Dearborn, DOT, federal policy, Florida, freight track, FY, high-speed rail, HSR, Jim Costa, Kalamazoo, Los Angeles, Merced, Michigan, New Haven, New York, Nimby, Norfolk Southern, Obama, Obama Administration, Orlando, Rick Scott, San Francisco, San Jose, Springfield, Tampa, Tampa-Orlando, Tea Party, Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation
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Friday, October 1st, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Just a month out now from Election Day, national political crosswinds are beginning to yield in importance to the sometimes idiosyncratic dynamics of key individual campaigns. In the second of our series of regional takes on statewide and congressional races, we´ll take a quick look today at the South (using the Old Confederacy definition of the region).
This was, by any measurement, Barack Obama´s worst region in 2008, despite important victories in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. He trailed John Kerry´s performance in Arkansas and Tennessee, and his percentage of the white vote was abysmal in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana as well. Negative attitudes towards him have clearly deepened throughout the region during 2009 and 2010.
The South also has the nation´s richest lode of Democratic House members in districts carried by John McCain in 2008—23 out of 49. Considering the pro-Republican shape of the midterm electorate, and the erosion of Obama support, all these Democrats, plus many others in districts narrowly carried by Obama, entered 2010 in some serious danger.
There is only one Senate Democrat from the South up for re-election this year, Arkansas´ Blanche Lincoln, whose campaign appears to have fallen hopelessly behind Republican John Boozman even before her close primary runoff victory over Bill Halter.
The two Republican Senate seats thought to be within reach of Democrats are in North Carolina, where Elaine Marshall has run a credible race against Sen. Richard Burr, but is running out of time and money needed to score an upset; and in Florida, where the steady decline of Charlie Crist´s vote seems to be giving Marco Rubio an insurmountable lead.
Gubernatorial races are a relative bright spot for southern Democrats. Tennessee looks very likely to flip from D to R, and Alabama´s a very long shot for Democrat Ronnie Sparks, but in FL, Alex Sink is in a dead heat with Republican Rick Scott; in Georgia, the ethical and financial problems of GOP nominee Nathan Deal are keeping Roy Barnes in close contention; and in Texas, Bill White is running a very competitive race against Rick Perry. In Arkansas, Democratic incumbent Mike Beebe so far looks immune to the tsunami that has engulfed Blance Lincoln.
House races, as always, are harder to assess. Louisiana features a rare Republican-held district that Democrats are favored to flip, though accidental congressman Joseph Cao can´t be counted out. Overall, Democratic retirements have created major problems: the Cook Political Report rates five open southern House seats as “likely Republican,” and another as “lean Republican.” And among incumbents, twelve southern House Democrats are in races rated as tossups by Cook, with another seven in the competitive “lean Democratic” category.
All in all, that means 24 Democratic House seats in the South—2 in AL, 3 in AR, 5 in FL, 2 in GA, 1 in LA, 1 in MS, 2 in NC, 3 in TN, 2 in TX, and 3 in VA—are vulnerable in November 2. One big question involves African-American turnout, which is sometimes relatively robust in midterm election. Another is whether Republicans can count on a late surge in a region where anti-Obama and anti-Democratic leanings have been solidified for quite some time.
Photo credit: cfarivar
Tags: African-American, AL, Alabama, Alex Sink, anti-Democratic, anti-Obama, AR, Arkansas, Barack Obama, Bill Halter, Bill White, Blance Lincoln, Blanche Lincoln, Campaigns and elections, Charlie Crist, Democratic House members, Democratic Party, Elaine Marshall, Election Day, FL, Florida, GA, Georgia, GOP, Gubernatorial races, John Boozman, John Kerry, John McCain, Joseph Cao, LA, lean Democratic, lean Republican, likely Republican, Louisiana, Marco Rubio, midterm electorate, Mike Beebe, Mississippi, MS, Nathan Deal, NC, North Carolina, November 2, Old Confederacy, political crosswinds, Richard Burr, Rick Perry, Rick Scott, ronnie sparks, Roy Barnes, Senate Democrat, South, Tennessee, Texas, TN, TX, VA, Virginia
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Friday, September 24th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
As the battle for November continued to unfold this week, House Republicans unveiled their long-awaited, long-debated version of the 1994 classic Contract With America. This one was called the Pledge to America.
In figuring out where to fall between cautious national GOP figures who basically would like to overturn the 2006 and 2008 elections and bring back the splendors of the Bush administration, and the elements of the conservative base, radicalized into the Tea Party Movement, who would like to turn back the clock quite a few decades further, the authors of the Pledge struck an interesting balance. The Preamble and Forward of the document are full of fiery Tea Party rhetoric suggesting the illegitimacy of the Obama administration and the need for a radical restructuring of the federal government and the immediate abolition of deficits and debt.
But when the Pledge gets into is specifics, it immediately retreats into limited demands for total repeal of the Obama administration’s initiatives, along with a return to Bush tax and economic policies, and notably abandons the fiscal radicalism that so many Republican candidates this year are campaigning on. There’s no balanced budget promise; no endorsement, even, of a constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment (now, as once before, boilerplate for GOP candidates); and certainly no mention of plans to take on major structural reforms, much less phase-outs, of Social Security and Medicare.
Indeed, the Pledge gives the impression that if the clock could be turned back to August of 2008, before the enactment of TARP, everything would be fine. It will be most interesting to see how that approach squares with candidates and activists who think a return to 1933 is the only possible solution.
The Pledge does create a sort of whack-a-mole problem for Democrats seeking to exploit it. Do they focus on the radical rhetoric that suggests a willingness to go after the basic New Deal/Great Society safety net? Or do they focus on the details that suggest a more modest but equally vulnerable determination to bring back the policies that voters repudiated in 2006 and 2008?
In any event, the very existence of the Pledge offers some hope for Democrats struggling to make the midterm elections something other than a straight-up referendum on the status quo. Under Republican governance, they will be able to argue, things could get worse, unless you really do pine for the salad days of 2006 or 1933.
The other big political development this week, which is still unfolding, is the decision by Senate Democrats against taking the lead on extending middle-class tax cuts and forcing Republicans to champion the extension of upper-class tax cuts, at least until after November. There is still a chance the House will move first, but it’s unlikely given vocal Blue Dog opposition, and the decision is being widely derided as evidence of Democratic over-cautiousness, if not surrender, going into the midterms. It’s an issue that will likely come up, however, in a lame duck congressional session after the elections, though with Republicans, who want to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, holding a stronger hand.
There’s been some craziness in the polls this week, most notably a Quinnipiac survey showing the very off-the-wall Republican nominee for governor of New York, Carl Paladino, suddenly closing to double-digits against prohibitive Democratic front-runner Andrew Cuomo. The Q-poll did not exactly reinforce its credibility by then releasing a survey showing another lowly-regarded Republican, Joe DioGuardi, trailing Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, by just six percent (Siena, meanwhile, had Cuomo up by 33percent and Gillibrand up by 26percent).
Most survey results this week were more conventional. Mason-Dixon showed Democrat Alex Sink with a 47-40 lead over Republican Rick Scott among likely voters in Florida. The respected Field Poll, also moving to a likely voter model, showed a dead heat between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman in the California gubernatorial race. And a new national Pew poll showed an unusually large 10-point swing in the GOP’s favor between registered voters and likely voters—though interpretations of such results as reflecting an “enthusiasm gap” often ignore the structural reasons for a Republican advantage in midterm elections.
Finally, Google has come up with a very useful series of maps comparing some of the most credible handicappers’ projections of Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections.
Tags: Alex Sink, Andrew Cuomo, Balanced Budget Amendment, Campaigns and elections, Carl Paladino, Contract with America, enthusiasm gap, Jerry Brown, Joe DioGuardi, Kirsten Gillibrand, Meg Whitman, Pledge to America, Republican Party, TARP, Tea Party
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Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
With the traditional general election bell-ringer of Labor Day on tap Monday, for the most part it’s now past time for observers to speak in some sort of future tense about what the two parties might do to position themselves for November. Yes, eight states do still have pending primaries, along with one that still has a runoff; these contests will significantly affect at least two Senate and three gubernatorial races. Yes, national decisions still have to be made about the precise deployment of financial resources in particular races, and there are a scattering of individual candidate decisions that could fundamentally change the landscape in particular races (most notably in Colorado, where doomed-looking Republican gubernatorial nominee Don Maes is under increasing pressure to drop out). And there are, of course, mistakes that can be made on the campaign trail or in debates that could move lots of voters. In most cases, however, campaigns will focus on getting out their vote, and on appealing to a very narrow range of swing voters. This is likely to revolve around negative attacks on opponents, since that is one of the few devices that can serve as both a motivator and a persuader.
To a considerable extent, much of the “political news” you are going to hear between now and November will have as much to do with the measurement of public opinion as with efforts to influence it. This is when most pollsters switch from surveying registered to “likely” voters (though some, notably Rasmussen and Survey USA, have long been deploying “likely voter” screens, which helps account for the relative strong Republican performance in their polls). And this is when various ambitious models for predicting the results will be announced and refined.
So what should the discriminating political junkie watch for during the next two months?
With respect to the fight for control of the House, the most important objective data point will probably be the final Gallup poll generic ballot results in October. Back in 2002, political scientist Alan Abramowitz developed a very reliable model for predicting the overall results from the final Gallup generic. Just yesterday Pollster.com’s Harry Enten released a refinement of the Abramowitz model, which suggests, for example, that a five-percent GOP advantage among likely voters in the final Gallup generic ballot poll would translate into 225 Republican seats.
Senate races are a much tougher nut to crack, since they are less susceptible to national “waves.” The most influential model, by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, currently shows Democrats likely to sustain a net loss of six to seven seats, but with a 20 percent chance of losing ten or more, which would give Republican control of the upper chamber. Nate’s system also supplies a probability rating for any given Senate seat “flipping” from one party to the other; right now the range is from a 100 percent probability in North Dakota and Arkansas to zero percent probability in eleven states.
And governor’s races are even more complex, since non-national issues (including specific economic and fiscal conditions) can be a major factor, and responsibility for an unpopular status quo doesn’t always reside with Democrats. So given the national dynamics and the slow but steady trend towards partisan polarization in state as well as federal politics, it makes sense to watch closely those “red state” gubernatorial contests where Democratic candidates have managed to remain competitive so far—particularly Texas (Bill White), Florida (Alex Sink) and Georgia (Roy Barnes), three states where a Democratic win could have a major impact on congressional redistricting.
Speaking of redistricting, there are also vicious battles being fought for control of state legislative chambers. I won’t go into this in detail today (it will be the subject of a future Political Memo), but the basic situation is that Republicans have significant advantages in the political landscape while Democrats appear to be a bit better focused and financed.
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that the results of any given election cycle are usually over-emphasized. Obviously the Democratic “wave” elections of 2006 and 2008 have not, at least in the short-term, led to any sort of realignment of our political system. It works both ways, though: after the last redistricting cycle, it was generally thought that Republicans had won a “lock” on control of the House until 2012; it didn’t turn out to be much of a lock. But Democrats do need to relearn the basic problem that our constitutional system builds a conservative bias into the composition of the U.S. Senate, and the balance of control among governorships and state legislatures. But by the same token, Republicans need to understand that the gains they make this year need to be contextualized by their terrible performance in 2006 and 2008, and that the shape of the electorate in the presidential cycle of 2012 will be very different, and much less friendly to the GOP cause.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo Credit: OZinOH’s Photostream
Tags: Alan Abramowitz, Alex Sink, Bill White, Colorado, Democrats, Don Maes, Gallup, general election, Harry Enten, Labor Day, Nate Silver, Pollster.com, Rasmussen, Roy Barnes, Senate, U.S. House of Representatives
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Friday, August 27th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Tuesday’s five-state primary/runoff extravaganza produced plenty of drama, several close races, and a few surprises — especially in Alaska’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, where former judge Joe Miller, endorsed by Sarah Palin and fueled by the Tea Party Express, ran slightly ahead of incumbent Lisa Murkowski despite being heavily outspent.
With absentee and provisional ballots still pending, Miller leads by 1668 votes. His campaign appears to have benefitted a great deal from turnout patterns affected by an anti-abortion ballot initiative. If she ultimately loses the GOP nomination, Murkowski could possibly run as the candidate of the Libertarian Party, giving Democrat Scott McAdams a chance.
In a less dramatic outcome, in Arizona, John McCain easily brushed off J.D. Hayworth’s once-fearsome challenge, and Gov. Jan Brewer (R) won with little trouble. GOP House primaries in AZ were a bit more turbulent. In AZ-3, Ben Quayle, son of yes-that-Quayle, overcame involvement in an off-color internet site to win an open seat nomination over a crowded field. In AZ-8, represented by Democrat Gabby Giffords, the GOP primary was won by Tea Party favorite Jesse Kelly over front-runner Jonathan Paton in a mild upset.
In Oklahoma, two Republican congressional runoffs were held. In OK-2, veterinarian Charles Thompson won a low-profile primary to face Blue Dog Democrat Dan Boren. The national GOP will now decide whether to give Thompson a lift by making this a targeted race. In OK-5, church camp director James Lankford won a surprisingly large win over Club for Growth candidate Kevin Calvey (who appears to have gone too negative) for an open Republican seat.
In Vermont, the Democratic gubernatorial contest seems to be ending as it began: close and civil. Final but unofficial returns showed state senate president pro tem Peter Shumlin edging former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine and Secretary of State Deb Markowitz for the right to take on Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie (R). There’s a chance of a recount, but the candidates have already had a unity rally.
There wasn’t much civility down in Florida, however, where the Republican gubernatorial primary was won by wealthy “conservative outsider” Rick Scott, who will carry his extensive baggage into a three-way general election battle with Democrat Alex Sink and independent Bud Chiles.
Scott’s bitterly disappointed opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum, has suggested he might endorse Sink. Meanwhile, Scott’s Democratic doppelganger, billionaire investor Jeff Greene, did not do so well in the Senate primary; congressman Kendrick Meek beat him easily. (Over at pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal has a good analysis of the challenges Meek will face in the general election).
In highly competitive FL House primaries, 2nd district Blue Dog Alan Boyd narrowly turned back a surprisingly strong challenge from state senate minority leader Al Lawson. 8th district Democrat Alan Grayson, who’s painted a bullseye on his own back with chronic conservative-baiting comments, will face former state senator majority leader Daniel Webster (R). And another vulnerable Democrat, 24th district congresswoman Susan Kosmas, will face state legislator Sandy Adams, who won a fractious primary dominated by fights between Karen Diebel and Craig Miller.
On Saturday, Louisiana will hold its congressional primary, with three Republicans battling for the 3rd district nomination, an open seat being vacated by Democrat Charlie Melancon, who is running for the Senate. In the 2nd district, four Democrats are fighting for the chance to take on one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the House, Joseph Cao.
Meanwhile, also on Saturday, West Virginia is holding its special Senate primary, with Gov. Joe Manchin sure to win the Democratic nod in this sleepy contest, and the late Robert Byrd’s 2008 opponent, John Raese, likely to win the Republican nomination.
We’ll then have a brief break in the primary calendar until September 14, when no less than seven states, plus the District of Columbia, hold their nominating contests.
Photo Credit: hlkljgk‘s Photostream
Tags: Al Lawson, Alan Boyd, Alan Grayson, Alex Sink, Ben Quayle, Bill McCollum, Brian Dubie, Bud Chiles, Charles Thompson, Charlie Melancon, Craig Miller, Dan Boren, Daniel Webster, Deb Markowitz, Doug Racine, Gabby Giffords, J.D. Hayworth, James Lankford, Jan Brewer, Jeff Greene, Jesse Kelly, Joe Manchin, John McCain, John Raese, Joseph Cao, Karen Diebel, Kendrick Meek, Kevin Calvey, Lisa Murkowski, Mark Blumenthal, Peter Shumlin, Rick Scott, Sandy Adams, Sarah Palin, Scott McAdams, Susan Kosmas
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Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Today’s primaries range from dogs that didn’t bark—AZ GOP Senate and gubernatorial primaries that turned into snoozers—to noisy kennels of nastiness in Florida.
Florida
Florida’s Democratic Senate and Republican gubernatorial primaries were originally supposed to be snoozers, with Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) expected to win the former and Attorney General (and former congressman) Bill McCollum (R) expected to win the latter without a whole lot of trouble. Then, near the end of the qualifying period, billionaire investor Jeff Greene jumped into the Democratic Senate primary while multi-millionaire (his net worth is estimated at $218 million) former hospital exec and anti-health-reform lobbyist Rick Scott (R) jumped into the gubernatorial primary. Nothing’s been the same since then.
In a remarkably short period of time, Scott has shattered every Florida political spending record, pouring $39 million of personal money and another $11 million of his wife’s money (channeled through an “independent” 527 group that’s been attacking McCollum) into the race. From the get-go, he identified himself as a Tea Party-friendly “outsider” taking on the corrupt status quo in Tallahassee, as symbolized by McCollum, who spent twenty years in Congress and lost two Senate races before becoming AG.
For a while, it looked like McCollum was toast, but he fought back with his own nasty-grams calling attention to the $1.7 billion fines for Medicare fraud paid out by the HCA-Columbia hospital chain for billings during Scott’s tenure as CEO. The party stalwart has been helped by endorsements from Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, not to mention a 527 group of his own that collected about $9 million from every conservative interest group in the state.
Several late polls have shown McCollum pulling ahead of Scott, even as both candidates’ rising negatives have enabled Democrat Alex Sink to pull ahead of both of them in a hypothetical three-way November race with independent Bud Chiles.
Meanwhile, a similar but even more dramatic dynamic has occurred in the Democratic Senate race. Greene (whose original strategist was none other than Joe Trippi, who left the campaign just a few weeks ago, to be replaced by another famous name, Tad Devine) sprinted into a quick lead over Meek after heavy advertising identifying himself as a can-do businessman “outsider.” But then details about how Greene got rich betting on a housing market collapse, and more luridly, about Greene’s alleged playboy antics, sometimes in the company of BFF Mike Tyson, started to come out, and Meek has retaken the lead rather decisively.
Greene fought back with attacks on Meek and his mother, former congresswoman Carrie Meek, for alleged corruption, and on Meek for supposedly not being sufficiently supportive of Israel, but other than contributing to the already low tone of the primary season, they haven’t had a major impact. Buttressed by endorsements from both President Obama and former president Bill Clinton, Meek has opened up sizable leads in all the late polls, and if this holds, he can move on to worrying about how to keep Democrats from supporting independent candidate Charlie Crist.
Vermont
There’s a different political atmosphere up in Vermont, where Democrats are holding a highly competitive but very civil five-way primary to choose a candidate for governor. The two early favorites were Secretary of State Deb Markowitz (a long-time self-identified New Democrat) and former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine (a favorite of unions and liberal activists), but once incumbent Republican governor Jim Douglas announced his retirement, other strong candidacies appeared, including state senator Peter Shulman, credited with a key role in passage of Vermont’s gay marriage statute; former state senator Matt Dunne, who’s run the national VISTA program and also served as a Google exec; and state senator Susan Bartlett, who’s challenging Markowitz for the votes of centrists.
Though there’s been no public polling in the race, it looks like a dead heat among Markowitz, Shulman, Racine and Dunne, with turnout (expected to be quite low thanks to the vacation season timing) a crucial factor. The winner will face Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie (R), who has no primary opposition, and who has positioned himself somewhat to the right of the incumbent Douglas. Vermont represents a prime “takeback” state for Democrats, though Dubie led all the Democrats in a June Rasmussen poll.
Arizona
Over in Arizona, John McCain’s pulled far in front of once-feared challenger J.D. Hayworth, thanks to a combination of heavy spending, shifts to the right on policy issues, and Hayworth gaffes. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, once considered a caretaker sure to lose a primary, has been turned into a national conservative celebrity by her signature on the state’s new immigration law, and will win easily.
Alaska
Up in Alaska, Sarah Palin’s risked her home-state reputation with a late effort on behalf of former judge Joe Miller, who is challenging Sen. Lisa Murkowski. There’s no love lost between Palin and Murkowski, whose father Palin defeated in a primary to become governor in 2006. But Murkowski has a huge financial advantage, and despite occasional ideological heresies, should win.
Oklahoma
And down in Oklahoma, a low-turnout runoff will decide two Republican congressional nominations, including the challenge to Blue Dog Democrat Dan Boren, who has tons of money but is theoretically vulnerable in a conservative district.
Tags: Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, Brian Dubie, Carrie Meek, Charlie Crist, Dan Boren, Deb Markowitz, Doug Racine, J.D. Hayworth, Jan Brewer, Jeff Greene, Jim Douglas, Joe Miller, John McCain, Kendrick Meek, Lisa Murkowski, Matt Dunne, Peter Shulman, Rick Scott, Susan Bartlett
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Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
It’s a relatively quiet Tuesday on the electoral front, with just two states, Washington and Wyoming, holding primaries today, and no one expecting any dramatic results of national import.
Washington
Washington has an unusual “Top 2” primary system, in which candidates from all parties compete on a single ballot with the top two finishers advancing to the general election (this is the system recently adopted for future elections in California via a successful initiative). It’s important to note that a majority vote does not (as in Louisiana’s “jungle primary”) obviate the need for a “runoff” in the general election.
The big contest in WA is the Republican challenge to Sen. Patty Murray (D). Almost all of the scenarios for a Republican takeover of the Senate this year require a Republican upset over Murray. And though it took a while, national Republicans were able to recruit the candidate they wanted in real estate developer Dino Rossi, who lost two close gubernatorial races to Christine Gregoire (D) in 2004 and 2008 and thus enjoys near-universal name ID.
But Rossi’s late entry, and his decision to steer clear of Tea Party gatherings, guaranteed him Republican competition in the primary. Former Washington Redskins tight end Clint Didier is the strongest of the True Conservative pack. Didier has drawn an endorsement from Sarah Palin, and should do well in central Washington, but barely reached double digits in a recent PPP poll showing Murray at 47 percent and Rossi at 33 percent. The buzz tonight will likely be about the relative positioning of Murray and Rossi.
The main event in Washington congressional primaries is in the open 3rd district, where Democrat Brian Baird is retiring. Former state legislator Denny Heck has largely cleared the field of other Democrats, and should finish first. The national GOP heart-throb for the race is state representative Jaime Herrera, a 31-year-old Latina who has shown a mild (for this year) moderate streak. Former state legislative staffer and federal appointee David Castillo has run to the right of Herrera, and has won the FreedomWorks endorsement that signifies Tea Party backing. Herrera is favored to make the general election, but an upset is possible.
In the other Washington congressional districts, incumbents are all favored, though in the very competitive 8th district, former Microsoft executive Suzan DelBane (D) is picking up where 2006-2008 Democratic nominee Darcy Burner left off in challenging Republican Dave Riechert. In the 9th district, two relatively viable Republicans, county commissioner Dick Muri and 2008 nominee James Postma, are battling for a spot opposite New Democrat Coalition co-chair Adam Smith, who will be pretty heavily favored in November.
Wyoming
In Wyoming, that rarest of beasts, a very popular Democratic governor in a very red state, David Freudenthal, decided relatively late this year against a legal challenge to term limits that probably would have enabled him to run for a third term. Democrats are holding a low-key gubernatorial primary dominated by former state party chair Leslie Peterson and former University of Wyoming football star Pete Gosar, who are both campaigning as political heirs of Freudenthal (Gosar once piloted the governor’s state plane). Peterson is the modest favorite due to high name ID.
The GOP gubernatorial primary in WY has turned into a four-way brawl involving former U.S. Attorney Matt Mead, considered the “establishment” candidate; State Auditor Rita Meyer, who can boast of an elaborate military background and a late endorsement from Sarah Palin; House Speaker Colin Simpson, son of former Sen. Alan Simpson (whose old friend George H.W. Bush has given Simpson the Younger an endorsement); and hard-core conservative Ron Micheli, who’s won the endorsement of Wyoming anti-abortion activists and is challenging his opponents to take no-new-tax pledges.
A Mason-Dixon poll at the end of July showed Meyer at 27 percent, Mead at 24 percent, Simpson at 17 percent, and Micheli at 12 percent. Simpson’s undertaken a late media blit, and Micheli seems to have the True Conservative mojo going for him, so anything could happen.
Next Week: Florida
Looking ahead a week, the extremely unstable political situation in Florida going into the August 24 primary remains unclear. In the toxic GOP gubernatorial race, three recent polls (Mason-Dixon, Tarrance and McGlaughlin) show Attorney General Bill McCollum retaking the lead from heavy-spending Rick Scott, but an Ipsos survey shows Scott still well ahead. But Mason-Dixon and Ipsos agree in giving Democrat Alex Sink a lead over either Republican in a three-way race involving independent Bud Chiles.
In the Democratic Senate race, Mason-Dixon and Susquehanna show congressman Kendrick Meek taking advantage of bad publicity involving billionaire Jeff Greene to retake a double-digit lead in that contest. But again, Ipsos cuts against the grain with a survey showing Greene still up 40-32.
Since incumbent Gov. and independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist is very dependent on Democratic votes to remain viable, he has a big stake in the outcome of the Democratic primary. But given all the dramatics of the race, it’s unclear which candidate would help Crist, and which candidate could give Crist and Marco Rubio a run for their money.
Tags: Adam Smith, Alan Simpson, Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, Brian Baird, Bud Chiles, Charlie Crist, Christine Gregoire, Clint Didier, Colin Simpson, Darcy Burner, Dave Riechert, David Castillo, David Freudenthal, Denny Heck, Dick Muri, Dino Rossi, FreedomWorks, Jaime Herrera, James Postma, Jeff Greene, Kendrick Meek, Leslie Peterson, Marco Rubio, Matt Mead, Patty Murray, Pete Gosar, Rita Meyer, Ron Micheli, Sarah Palin, Suzan DelBane, Tea Party
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Friday, August 13th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
When you add it all up, Tuesday produced four gubernatorial general election contests—three in states currently controlled by Republicans—in which the Democratic candidate is, at the moment anyway, the front-runner. Quite a tonic for distressed donkeys everywhere.
In Colorado, The Republican gubernatorial primary was a messy affair in which the “winner” – little-known, underfinanced, and rather kooky Tea Party activist Dan Maes – will now come under sustained pressure to fold his campaign and allow the state party to pick a more suitable candidate (possibly Jane Norton), in hopes of also squeezing Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo out of the race. If GOPers don’t pull off this gymnastic series of maneuvers, Democratic nominee John Hickenlooper will be a heavy favorite in November.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic senatorial primary, appointed Senator Michael Bennet survived what was beginning to look like a political death spiral. He dispatched former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff by an eight-point margin, with especially robust performance in the Denver suburbs in what will be perceived as a victory for the White House. He will now face district attorney and Tea Party favorite Ken Buck (R), who has shown a distinct proclivity for self-inflicted verbal wounds. Buck defeated former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in the Republican primary mainly by piling up large margins in his home turf near Ft. Collins.
In Connecticut, an odd role reversal occurred in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Former netroots idol Ned Lamont ran a campaign focused on imposing fiscal discipline and improving the business climate and lost rather dramatically to former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, who has a “centrist” background but ran as something of a populist. Malloy will face former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, a conventional conservative who held off Lt. Gov. Michele Fedele.
These two contests were also something of a test for Connecticut’s strong system of public financing of campaigns: Malloy and Fedele received public financing, while Lamont and Foley self-funded. Unfortunately for Malloy, the portion of the Connecticut law that provided for “triggering” larger grants for candidates facing self-funders has been invalidated for the general election. But according to the polls, Malloy will be the favorite in November.
In Minnesota, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton continued his political comeback by narrowly winning the gubernatorial nomination against party-endorsed State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. Dayton is the early favorite over Republican nominee Tom Emmer, who is probably too conservative for the state, and will also likely lose votes to Independence Party nominee Tom Horner.
And in Georgia, the vicious GOP gubernatorial runoff, in a mild upset, went to former congressman Nathan Deal, who is both a conservative ideologue and the candidate of the state’s GOP establishment. Deal defeated self-styled “conservative reformer” Karen Handel, by just an eyelash.
This contest featured a lot of national intervention, with Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee campaigning for Deal and Sarah Palin campaigning for Handel (Mitt Romney also did robocalls for the loser). Handel’s quick concession and endorsement of Deal provided some hope among Republicans that the party would unite after the bitter primary and runoff, in the face of a challenge from former Gov. Roy Barnes, who’s been running more or less even with the various Republican candidates in the polls.
Next Tuesday, Washington State (with its unusual system in which the top two primary candidates regardless of party proceed to the general election) and Wyoming are holding primaries. The much-higher-profile Florida and Arizona primaries follow on August 24.
In the Florida, the initial appeal of the two hugely self-funded candidates, Democrat billionaire Bob Greene and Republican billionaire Rick Scott, seems to be fading as the primary approaches.
In the Democratic Senatorial primary, a Feldman poll taken for congressman Kendrick Meek shows him edging ahead of Greene after a week or so of very bad publicity about the billionaire’s personal life.
Meanwhile, in the Republican gubernatorial primary, both Mason-Dixon and the Tarrance Group have new polls showing previously left-for-dead Attorney General Bob McCollum moving ahead of Rick Scott, a former hospital chain executive. Mason-Dixon also shows that the savage competition between the Republicans has lifted Democrat Alex Sink into the lead in the general election.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine
Tags: Alex Sink, Andrew Romanoff, Bob Greene, Bob McCollum, Dan Maes, Dan Malloy, Jane Norton, John Hickenlooper, Karen Handel, Ken Buck, Kendrick Meek, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Mark Dayton, Michael Bennet, Michele Fedele, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Nathan Deal, Ned Lamont, Newt Gingrich, Primaries, Rick Scott, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Tom Emmer, Tom Foley, Tom Horner, Tom Tancredo
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Thursday, August 5th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
So let’s say you’re a Republican politician who’s been working the far right side of the political highway for years, getting little national attention other than the occasional shout-out in Human Events. Or let’s say you’re a sketchy business buccaneer with a few million smackers burning a hole in your pocket, and you’ve decided that you’d like to live in the governor’s mansion for a while, but you can’t get the local GOP to see you as anything more than a walking checkbook who funds other people’s dreams.
What do you do? That’s easy: Get yourself in front of the loudest parade in town by becoming a Tea Party Activist!
There has been incessant discussion over the last year about the size, character, and intentions of the Tea Party rank-and-file. But, by and large, the political discussion has passed over another defining phenomenon: The beatific capacity of Tea Party membership, which enables virtually anyone with ambition to whitewash his hackishness—and transform from a has-been or huckster into an idealist on a crusade.
After all, to become a “Tea Party favorite” or a “Tea Party loyalist,” all a politician has to do is say that he or she is one—and maybe grab an endorsement from one of many hundreds of local groups around the country. It’s even possible to become indentified as the “Tea Party” candidate simply by entering a primary against a Republican who voted for TARP, the Medicare Prescription Drug bill, or No Child Left Behind. It’s not like there’s much upside to distancing oneself from the movement. Most Republican pols are as friendly as can be to the Tea Party; and it’s a rare, self-destructive elephant who would emulate Lindsey Graham’s dismissal of it all as a passing fad (in public at least).
Here, we’ll take a look at two specific types of politicians who have been especially eager to embrace the Tea Party movement: the fringier of conservative ideologues, for one, and also the self-funded ego freaks who can easily pose as “outsiders,” because no “insiders” would take them seriously. Let’s call these, respectively, the windbags and the moneybags.
By “fringier” conservative ideologues, I mean those who have argued, year in and year out, sometimes for decades, that even the conservative Republican Party simply is not conservative enough. Many of these politicians would be considered washed-up and isolated, or at least eccentric, in an era when “Party Wrecking” was still treated as a cardinal GOP sin. But now it’s as if they’ve been granted a license to kill. One classic example of this type is South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who was considered such a crank in the Senate that he was often stuck eating lunch alone as recently as 2008. His views, for example that Social Security and public schools are symbols of the seduction of Americans by socialism, were not long ago considered far outside the GOP mainstream. Now, in no small part because of his identification with the Tea Party Movement, DeMint has become an avenging angel roaming across the country to smite RINOs in Republican primaries, his imprimatur sought by candidates far from the Palmetto State.
Then there’s the new House Tea Party Caucus, chaired by Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, best known for suggesting that House Democrats be investigated for treason. Its members include a rich assortment of long-time conservative cranks, including Steve (“Racial profiling is an important part of law enforcement”) King, Joe (“You lie!”) Wilson, Paul (“We’ve elected a Marxist to be President of the United States”) Broun, Dan (Vince Foster Was Murdered!) Burton, and Phil (National Journal’s Most Conservative House Member in 2007) Gingrey. The key here is that these are not freshly minted “outsiders”: Burton has been in Congress for 28 years, Wilson for ten, King and Gingrey for eight. The oldest member of the House, Ralph Hall of Texas, who has been around for 30 years, is also a member of the caucus.
Even some of the younger Tea Party firebrands didn’t exactly emerge from their living rooms on April 15, 2009, to battle the stimulus legislation and Obamacare. Marco Rubio of Florida, after all, was first elected to the state legislature ten years ago and served as House Speaker under the protective wing of his political godfather, Jeb Bush. Sharron Angle first ran for office 20 years ago, and was elected to the Nevada legislature twelve years back. And of course the Pauls, father and son, are hardly political neophytes—they have just begun to look relevant again because the Tea Party movement has shifted the GOP in their direction.
And, in addition to the hard-right pols who’ve emerged into the sunshine of GOP respectability, the “outsider” meme surrounding the Tea Party movement has also created running room for well-funded opportunists—the “moneybags.”
These are epitomized by Rick Scott of Florida, who probably would not have passed the most rudimentary smell test in a “normal” election year. While there are always self-funding egomaniacs running for office—California’s Meg Whitman comes to mind along with Connecticut’s Linda McMahon—the former hospital executive presents a unique test case for the whitewashing power of Tea Party identification. He has managed to overcome a deeply embarrassing embroilment in the largest Medicare fraud case in history by taking his golden parachute from Columbia-HCA and becoming a right-wing crusader against health care reform, helping to make that a central cause for the Tea Party movement. (Scott was forced out of his position as head of the for-profit hospital chain, which he tried to build into the “McDonald’s of health care,” and the organization was fined $1.7 billion for overcharging the federal government.)
Pushed out of his job after the fraud decision, Scott decided to found the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR) group that exploded onto the national scene early in 2009 with a series of inflammatory TV ads attacking health reform, employing the same firm that crafted the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth spots against John Kerry in 2004. CPR also played a major role in organizing the town hall meeting protests in the summer of 2009, which marked the Tea Party movement’s transition from a focus on TARP and the economic stimulus bill to a broader conservative agenda.
So when Scott (a Missouri native who moved to Florida in 2003) suddenly jumped into the Florda governor’s race early in 2010, the cleansing power of tea had already transformed his image among conservatives, making his improbable campaign possible.
On the wrong side of this dynamic was Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a former congressman and sturdy, if conventional, conservative who had paid his dues by twice running unsuccessfully for the Senate. McCollum had apparently all but locked up the nomination when Scott, in mid-April, leapt into the ring with ads calling himself a “conservative outsider” who would “run our state like a business,” while tarring McCollum as the candidate of “Tallahassee insiders” responsible for “the failed policies of the past.” Then came a torrent of advertising from Scott ($22 million by mid-July, more than anyone’s ever spent in Florida in an entire primary/general-election cycle) blasting McCollum for alleged corruption, for insufficient hostility toward illegal immigration, for being soft on abortion providers. The assault voided a lifetime of McCollum’s toil in the party vineyards, vaulting the previously unknown Scott into the lead in polls by early June. Worse yet, from a Republican point of view, Scott drove up McCollum’s negatives, and increasingly his own, to toxic levels, handing Democrat Alex Sink the lead in a July general election poll. And now McCollum, fighting for his life, is striking back, drawing as much publicity as he can to Scott’s questionable past, especially the Medicare fraud case against Columbia-HCA.
So the question is: Would Rick Scott have been in a position to carry out what is beginning to look like a murder-suicide pact on the GOP’s gubernatorial prospects if he hadn’t been able to identify himself as an “outsider conservative” with close ties to the Tea Party? That’s not likely, but it’s no less likely than the remarkable epiphanies that have made career pols of marginal relevance such as Jim DeMint and Sharron Angle into apostles of an exciting new citizens’ movement. So the next time you hear a candidate posturing on behalf of the Tea Party, squint and try to imagine what they were like in their former lives. Many of them have only found respectability through the healing power of tea.
This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.
Photo Credit: Hatters!’s Photostream
Tags: Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, Campaigns and elections, conservatives, Dan Burton, House Tea Party Caucus, Jeb Bush, Jim DeMint, Joe Wilson, John Kerry, linda McMahon, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Meg Whitman, Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey, Politics and politicians, Ralph Hall, Rand Paul, Republican Party, Rick Scott, Ron Paul, self-financing, self-funding, Sharron Angle, Steve King, Tea Party
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Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
I won’t go through the all the results for Tuesday’s Georgia primary, since an earlier P-Fix post covered the basics. But I will mention a few details that I omitted in the quick piece I did on Wednesday.
In the gubernatorial contest, while Democrat Roy Barnes looks highly competitive for the general election (particularly if the Republican runoff gets as nasty as it looks like it may), it’s worth noting that turnout for the GOP primary was just under 700,000, while turnout for the Democratic side was just under 400,000. While turnout in both parties was terrible, and some of the disparity was attributable to the more competitive nature of the GOP battle (and the attendant television ads), it’s a reminder that this state which didn’t have a Republican governor from the early days of Reconstruction until 2002 now has a decided red tint. To win, Barnes will need to run a very good campaign (he’s certainly reconfirmed his reputation as an outstanding fundraiser), while taking advantage of the opportunities the GOP has created in eight years of lackluster governance of the state, and in the extremism of the primary messages of its candidates this year. If Barnes does win, he would interrupt what would otherwise certainly be a blatant Republican gerrymandering effort, made all the worse by Georgia’s acquisition of an additional congressional district.
A second observation is that this is one GOP primary where geography seemed to matter more than ideology or the association of this or that candidate with the Tea Party or some national conservative figure. I’ve posted a fairly elaborate analysis of this topic at FiveThirtyEight, but suffice it to say that Karen Handel finished first more because she is from vote-rich metro Atlanta than because she was endorsed by Jan Brewer and Sarah Palin. The endorsements definitely helped her overcome a financial deficit by generating free media, but in the end half the primary vote was cast in her base region, and that was the most important difference. And that’s also why she has to be considered a heavy favorite in the runoff, since her opponent, Nathan Deal, did well only in his north Georgia base, which provides a much smaller segment of the GOP vote. It’s a measure of the importance of geography that Handel trounced Deal in the Atlanta suburb of Cobb County, home of Deal’s padrone, Newt Gingrich.
Perhaps because of this disadvantage, Deal looks likely to spend the three-week runoff attacking Handel for insufficient conservatism, which won’t be easy given her Palin association and her own harsh record on issues ranging from taxes (she wants to abolish the state income taxes and rely instead on regressive consumption taxes to finance state government) to immigration (as Secretary of State, she initiated a harsh voter ID system that ensnared a good many native citizen voters on primary day). So far Deal has mainly pounded Handel for supporting a rape-and-incest exception to an abortion ban, which used to be an acceptable conservative position, and for making a small contribution to the Log Cabin Republicans back when she was running for office in culturally tolerant Fulton County (Atlanta). Since Handel’s main attack line on Deal has involved ethics allegations, this could be a truly nasty culture-war dominated runoff that could drive up both candidates’ negatives.
In terms of the congressional races, there will be four Republican runoffs on August 10, two in safe Republican districts, one in a safe Democratic district, and one to choose an opponent for theoretically vulnerable Democrat John Barrow (D-GA) (though he is likely to have a big financial advantage and Barack Obama carried his district).
Down-ballot, there will be a highly contentious Republican runoff for Attorney General that could boost statewide turnout. And though it’s not directly connected to the primaries, the general election will be complicated by the fact that outgoing GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue is backing an independent candidate for State School Superintendent because the Republican nominee opposes accepting Race to the Top dollars.
The next primary is in Oklahoma on July 27, where there are competitive gubernatorial contests in both parties.
In polling news, PPP has had some interesting assessments of the Florida governor’s race. The late but free-spending entry of controversial former hospital executive and health reform opponent Rick Scott in the GOP contest has upset a lot of apple carts. A primary survey shows Scott beating long-time front-runner and party warhorse Bill McCollum 43-29, mainly by driving McCollum’s approval ratio among Florida Republicans to a dismal 26-40. But a general election poll shows Democrat Alex Sink beating either Republican (along with independent candidate Bud Chiles). And in the general electorate, Scott’s approval ratio is 23-41 and McCollum’s a truly disastrous 16-51. Like Georgia, this is a state where a Democratic gubernatorial victory could have major implications for redistricting.
In non-candidate polling news, Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com has a solid and very thorough critique of the new Politico “Power and the People” surveys by Mark Penn comparing the views of Americans generally with those of “D.C. Elites.”
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo credit: Chuck “Caveman” Coker’s Photostream
Tags: Alex Sink, Atlanta, Barack Obama, Bill McCollum, Bud Chiles, Campaigns and elections, Democratic Party, FiveThirtyEight, Florida, Georgia, GOP, Jan Brewer, John Barrow, Karen Handel, Mark Blumenthal, Mark Penn, Nathan Deal, Newt Gingrich, Oklahoma, Politics and politicians, Republican Party, Rick Scott, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Sonny Perdue
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Monday, April 19th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
With all the obsessive focusing on congressional races that is natural to Washington, it’s not a bad time to take a more comprehensive look at the 37 governors’ races that will be decided in November (if you happen to have a subscription to the Cook Political Report, their wizard on gubernatorial and Senate races, Jennifer Duffy, has a new overview out).
It’s quite an even playing field between the two parties: Democrats are defending 19 governorships and Republicans 18. More importantly, thanks to a combination of term limits and retirements, 22 of the 37 races are “open.” And quite a few of those are in states where the party controlling the governorship has not been the dominant party generally (thus creating a particularly ripe climate for a switch this year), ranging from “red states” with Democratic governors like Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee to “blue states” with Republican governors like Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota, Hawaii and California. Absent a really massive Republican wave, we will probably see both major parties gain and lose more than a few governorships.
The other factor lending instability to governors’ races is, of course, the fact that state governments as a whole have been roiled by recession, revenue losses and automatic counter-cyclical increases in spending even more than the federal government (at least in all but a few fortunate, recession-resistant states), and nearly all have constitutional or statutory balanced budget requirements. It didn’t get much national attention at the time, but states didn’t really receive a lot of help from the 2009 economic stimulus legislation, with the exception of a temporary “super-match” for Medicaid (which is, along with mandates for expanded coverage, being continued by the new health reform legislation).
Most of the states are dealing with chronic budget shortfalls. And it’s all taking a toll on public confidence. A major new Pew survey just out today shows that the drop in the percentage of Americans saying government has a “positive impact” on their lives has dropped even more for the states (from 62 percent to 42 percent) than for the federal government (from 50 percent to 38 percent) since 1997. With voters viewing past state administrations somewhat nostalgically, it’s not surprising that there are no less than five former governors running for their old jobs this year (which, as Duffy points out, is really an unusual number): Democrats Jerry Brown of California, John Kitzhaber of Oregon, and Roy Barnes of Georgia; and Republicans Terry Branstad of Iowa and Bob Ehrlich of Maryland. All but Ehrlich have been out of office for at least eight years (Branstad for 12 years, and Brown for 28 years). Another wild card: there are presently three viable independent candidates for governor, all in New England (Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island), where weak Republican parties make indies a preferred alternative to Democrats for many voters.
Add it all up, and it’s very difficult to discern big national trends in governors’ races, aside from the fact that turnout patterns are likely to boost Republican prospects generally. Duffy currently rates an astonishing 17 races — close to half — as “toss-ups,” including seven governorships held by Democrats and ten by Republicans, with another seven races looking competitive. Some could be real barn-burners, with close, expensive races likely in big states like California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Ohio. Others could produce upsets if the “wrong” candidate wins large, multi-candidate primary fields. This is particularly true on the Republican side, where the conservative/Tea Party upsurge could beat more electable Republican candidates in primaries ranging from Iowa to Alabama.
So buckle up the seat belts for a wild ride in gubernatorial elections this year.
Poll Watch
The most interesting polls to come out in the last few days involve highly competitive governor’s races. A new Quinnipiac survey shows Democrat Alex Sink significantly reducing Republican Bill McCollum’s lead in Florida; the race is now within the margin-of-error in that particular poll. Rasmussen now has incumbent Republican Rick Perry locked in a close race with Democrat Bill White in Texas. And Western New England College shows a close three-way race in Massachusetts among Democratic incumbent Deval Patrick, Republican Charles Baker and independent Tim Cahill.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs on Mondays and Fridays.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jstephenconn/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
Tags: Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, Bill White, Campaigns and elections, Charles Baker, Democratic Party, Deval PAtrick, Jennifer Duffy, Jerry Brown, John Kitzhaber, Medicaid, Politics and politicians, Public opinion, Republican Party, Rick Perry, Robert Ehrlich, Roy Barnes, stimulus, Terry Branstad, Tim Cahill
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