Posts Tagged ‘ Paul Hodes ’

The Voters Aint as Stupid’s as Yous Thinks: Why Democrats Will Hold the House

Sunday, October 31st, 2010
Lindsay Mark Lewis


Lindsay Mark Lewis is Executive Director of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lindsay Mark Lewis

All the screaming (and some stomping) is coming to an end. Pundit upon pundit has beaten the drum of defeat for the Democratic Party.  John Boehner can measure the drapes, the Tea Party’s here to stay, blah blah blah.

Don’t go sulking just yet, and you heard it here first: Democrats will hold the House.  Let’s take a step back and look at the facts and races that tell the hidden story of this election.

1. Ideas Matter

To state the obvious, the Republicans haven’t offered a single concrete idea, asking voters to forget years of ill-gotten tax cuts and an ill-advised war.  Do they really believe voters are ready to turn over trust to them again so quickly? They have played it safe and will take the anger vote and hope it gives them a majority. The public isn’t buying it—the Republican brand stands at just 23 percent approval

Many swing voters focus on the election over the weekend and realize that Democrats told the country what they would do two years ago and then did it—healthcare, stimulus, and financial regulation reform.

Some of these ideas might be more long-ball (e.g., healthcare) but Democrats will get more credit than you’d think for ideas and leadership.  That’s why I’m betting that late-deciding voters will either break slightly to the Democrats or just stay home.

2. Campaigns matter

It might seem like every Democrat in the country is down 50 percent in the polls. The truth is that most all of these races will come down to one-to-four percent and that in the end, the actual hard work of grassroots fighting for the last vote is very much in favor of Democrats.

When I was at the DCCC in 1994, I was all too aware that Democrats lost 52 House seats by a grand total of 18,000 votes (not the overall vote but the difference in seats lost).  Those votes are turned by a campaign ground game, and the Republicans don’t have a good one, thanks to the incredibly poor leadership of Michael Steele at the RNC.  The DNC is pouring its all into GOTV efforts of this final stretch.  When you look at the latest polls and see 10-to-12 percent undecided vote, it is most likely those voters will never show up at this point.

3. Seat by Seat

The “Pundit Consensus” is a 55-seat gain by Republicans, which would give them a 16-seat majority in the House.  But if we examine those races on a case-by-case basis, the details indicate Republicans only stand to gain 35 seats, or four shy of a majority.

The top list of Democratic holds that all show up as losses currently.

Let’s start with 55 seats and work our way backwards:

New York

Three candidates on top of the ticket running 20-30 percent ahead of flawed Republican Senate candidates.  Are we going to see vote splitting at the 25 percent level? That just doesn’t add up.  The Republican Party in New York is in complete disarray and that will affect turnout in the closing days.

Take away at least the following pickups:

Owens  -3rd party candidate getting between 5-15 percent of the vote

Murphy

Hall

Pickup now stands at 52.

Pennsylvania

Democratic well-oiled turnout machine will be prepared to do battle and hold:

Murphy

Kanjorski

Carney

Pickups now stand at 49.

New Hampshire

It’s doubtful that voters will return Charlie Bass to Congress, and marginal plus to have Paul Hodes on top of the ticket in this seat, who will bring that 1-to-2 percent extra vote out for Annie Kuster.

Pickups now stand at 48.

Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina

Marshall –  he has been written off before, likely to hold with the tightening of the Governors race doing nothing but help.

Kissel won his seat by imploring serious grassroots organizing, and that still holds true for him this year. He ticked off many with his no votes on health care, but they are coming home to help him.

Nye is a strong candidate that votes his district and attracts strong crossover support.

Perriello  – a strong case for getting credit for doing what’s right and standing up for your votes.  Obama is coming to rally for him tonight.

Pickups now stand at 44.

Texas

Rodriguez—the demographics strongly favor a win by Ciro.

Pickups now stand at 43.

The Dakotas

Pomerory—unemployment is only at 4 percent in North Dakota, and Pomerory has a strong record of constituent service—the independent minded democrat holds on again.

Hurseth-Sandlin has voted her state and is running against a republican with flaws.

Pickups now stand at 41.

Idaho

Minnick – the Democrat-endorsed by the Tea Party, voted his district…he will hold on.

Pickups now stand at 40.

Illinois

Phil Hare, conservative district that continues to vote 55-60 percent for the democrat candidate for the House, spending is even and outside groups are almost spending more to badger the Republican.

Pickups now stand at 39.

Nevada

Dina Titus, another Dem who will get credit for standing up for her votes and showing leadership—and she does not have the negatives of Harry Reid. In the end she will hold this swing seat.

Pickups now stand at 38.

Colorado

John Salazar is strong candidate against weak Republican who received 37 percent of the vote last time he ran.

Pickups now stand at 37.

Those are the seats that the Democrats won’t lose. Now for the few they’ll actually flip:

Minnesota

Michele Bachman—she has the money and the media attention, but her actions and personality don’t fit the Midwest common sense approach of Minnesota…first upset of the night.   Tarryl Clark with the big upset.

Pickups now stand at 36.

Florida

Joe Garcia has run a strong campaign against a very weak flawed-almost off the ballot- republican.  Second somewhat surprise of Tuesday.

Pickups now stand at 35.

I could include other possible upsets (WA-8, CA, FL etc)

From leading on ideas, being prepared for the fight and the other side not offering any new ideas, lacking a true grassroots campaign and the voter being a lot smarter then pundits and the chatting inside the beltway give them credit for, the Democrats hold the House with a five-to-nine seat majority. You heard it here first.

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The Northeast: Democratic Stronghold?

Tuesday, October 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

As spin wars continue over polling assessments of the two parties´ prospects nationally and in individual contests, the overall situation remains relatively stable, with a lot of the fireworks in the national news coming from California, where a controversy regarding Meg Whitman´s employment of an illegal immigrant is not exactly helping her gubernatorial campaign.

The most ominous news for Democrats came yesterday, when Gallup’s weekly tracking poll offered a likely voter sample for the first time this year.  It showed Republicans with a 13 percent margin among likely voters, much larger than the three percent margin among registered voters.

At 538.com, Nate Silver offers a useful analysis Likely Voter/Registered Voter numbers from all pollsters, showing the Gallup “gap” to be unusually high.  But it bears close watching, since likely voter estimates tend to become more accurate the closer you get to election day.

Our regional roundups continue today with the Northeast, the most pro-Democratic region in 2008, and a source of considerable residual Democratic strength today.  According to Gallup´s tracking polls, the northeast region gives President Obama his only majority job approval numbers, currently at 51 percent.

There are eight Senate seats currently at stake in the Northeast, seven currently held by Democrats.  Two of them—held by Vermont´s Pat Leahy and New York´s Chuck Schumer—are completely safe.  Among the other five Democratic seats, Democrats have a robust if not invulnerable lead in three (Gillibrand of New York, Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Coons of Delaware); Republicans have held a steady lead in one (Toomey over Sestak in Pennsylvania); and one is dead even (Manchin versus Raese in West Virginia).  Republicans have a strong but not insurmountable lead to hold on to the one (open) Republican seat, in New Hampshire, where Kelly Ayotte leads Paul Hodes.

The best-case scenario for Republicans, which would include Linda McMahon`s dollars making Connecticut truly competitive, is a gain of three seats.  Democrats would be happy with a net loss of one.

In the gubernatorial races, Democrats currently hold six governorships that are up this year (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland) and Republicans three (Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut).  According to the Cook Political Report, all but two of these nine gubernatorial races are currently tossups, with Democrats heavily favored to hold onto New York and Pennsylvania being rated “lean Republican.”  Polling shows Republicans leading in Maine as well as Pennsylvania, and Democrats leading in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland; Vermont appears to be very close.  The range of possible outcomes is very broad, but in gubernatorial races, the northeast appears to rival the West as the most promising Democratic region, in no small part because Dems are likely to pick up some Republican seats.

In House races, New York and Pennsylvania seats make the northeast a potential source of major Republican gains.  Two New York and four Pennsylvania Democrats are in races considered toss-ups by Cook; four more New York districts and another in Pennsylvania are rated “lean Democratic,” vulnerable to a last-minute pro-GOP wave.   Both New Hampshire seats, now held by Democrats, are also tossups, along with an open seat in West Virginia and Frank Kratovil`s seat in Maryland.  The region does include a rare probable Democratic House pickup, in Delaware.  In general, the Northeast is the region where the size and scope of Republican House gains will most be determined.

Photo credit: Peter Miller

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Christine O’Donnell Upsets Republican Plans for the Senate, and Other Tales from This Week’s Primaries

Friday, September 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

What looked to be a reasonably predictable final Tuesday of the 2010 primary season was taken over by the shock of the chattering classes at the victory of Christine O’Donnell over Mike Castle in the Delaware GOP senatorial contest.  Indeed, the interpretation of Christine O’Donnell’s win has become as interesting as the win itself.

It’s not as though there were not abundant warnings: PPP released a poll the Sunday before the primary showing O’Donnell ahead.  But I suspect that what’s shocked Republican observers in particular was the failure of a last-minute effort by the Delaware GOP and the state’s leading newspaper to destroy O’Donnell by exposing her history of financial malfeasance.

As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, the buzz around Washington was that Castle would be just fine.  The probable assumption was that Tea Party supporters would subordinate their ideological concerns about Castle to horror at O’Donnell’s “irresponsibility,” so like the “deadbeats” that many conservatives think brought on the housing and financial crises.  It didn’t happen.

In any event, as even more stories of O’Donnell’s personal and ideological wackiness spread, and as national GOP figures began publicly to write her off (Democrat Chris Coons has assumed a big lead in post-primary polls), the Senate landscape has shifted, with more pressure than ever on Republicans to win close races in Wisconsin, Washington, Colorado and California, and perhaps put Connecticut or West Virginia into play.

The dog that didn’t quite bark on Tuesday was in New Hampshire, where Ovide Lamontagne, who was receiving some of the same (minus Sarah Palin) last-minute national right-wing support enjoyed by O’Donnell,  missed upsetting Kelly Ayotte in that state’s Senate primary by less than one percent.  My guess is that the collapse in support for a third candidate, rich businessman (and “proudly pro-choice”) Bill Binnie, saved Ayotte, which is ironic since Binnie made this race competitive in the first place by running heavy attack ads on Ayotte throughout the summer.  Lamontagne would not have been in as hopeless position as O’Donnell in a general election, in part because NH is a lot more amenable to Republicans than DE, but Ayotte’s a better bet for Republicans, though Democrat Paul Hodes was relatively close in the first post-primary poll.

In Wisconsin, longtime front-runner Scott Walker put away Mark Neumann by a surprisingly large 20% margin in the Republican gubernatorial primary.  He will now be in a competitive general election contest against Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett.

Meanwhile, in New York, where no one really expects the Republican gubernatorial or senate nominees to have much of a prayer against Andrew Cuomo, Kirsten Gillibrand, or Chuck Shumer, the GOP suffered an embarrassment when party stalwart Rick Lazio got trounced for the gubernatorial nomination by the rather eccentric self-funder and Tea Party favorite Carl Paladino.  As the New York Times put it:

It put at the top of the party’s ticket a volatile newcomer who has forwarded e-mails to friends containing racist jokes and pornographic images, espoused turning prisons into dormitories where welfare recipients could be given classes on hygiene, and defended an ally’s comparison of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who is Jewish, to “an Antichrist or a Hitler.”

In House races, Delaware was again the state that supplied the major upset, as another Tea Partier, Glenn Urquhart, defeated the NRCC-recruited candidate, Michelle Roberts, for the state’s at-large House seat.  Former Lt. Gov. John Carney, the Democratic nominee, has now become one of a very select group favored to win Republican-controlled House seats.

In NH-2, in one of a smattering of competitive Democratic House primaries, Ann Kuster crushed former Lieberman for President chairman Katrina Swett by more than a two-to-one margin, and will face former Rep. Charlie Bass for the seat Bass lost to Paul Hodes in 2006.  In NH-1, ethically challenged former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta turned back a challenge from self-funder Sean Mahoney for the chance to take on Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter.  National GOP forces got the candidate they wanted in another vulnerable Democratic district, MA-10, where Jeff Perry won a shot at Democrat Bill Keating in the district vacated by Bill Delahunt.

And of course, in DC, mayor Adrian Fenty lost pretty badly to DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray in a contest where support was highly correlated to race.  Much of the local political discussion in Washington since Tuesday has focused on the question of whether Gray will continue or reverse the education reforms initiated by Fenty and his school chief, Michelle Rhee.

We’re now down to just two primaries: an October 2 runoff in Louisiana, and tomorrow’s primary in Hawaii.   The marquee contest in the Aloha State is the Democratic gubernatorial primary matching former congressman Neil Abercrombie, who upset a lot of Democrats in Washington by resigning his House seat just before the vote on health reform, with a Republican winning the special election to replace him, and former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann, who is a bit conservative by Hawaii Democratic standards.  Hannemann has a financial advantage, but Abercrombie has maintained a small but steady lead in the available polls.  The winner of the primary will be favored in November to defeat Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona, and flip the state from R to D governance.

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Will Conservative Activists Win in Delaware and New Hampshire Primaries?

Tuesday, September 14th, 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 marks the last big primary day of the midterm cycle.  Following these eight contests, only Hawaii, this Saturday, and a runoff in Louisiana on October 2, remain on the calendar.

Most of the national attention during the week prior to these primaries has been focused on the two states with competitive Republican Senate primaries, Delaware and New Hampshire.  In both states, late surges by conservative candidates threaten not only to upset establishment-backed front-runners, but also to make these seats far more difficult for Republicans to win in November.

Delaware

The Delaware race has been particularly characterized by late dramatics.  From the day he announced for this contest, congressman Mike Castle has been the prohibitive front-runner, not only for the nomination but for the general election as well.  Castle has won a remarkable twelve statewide elections in Delaware and has never lost.  He has the solid support of both the state and national GOP.  His challenger, religious conservative activist Christine O’Donnell, is a relative newcomer to the state (though she did win the sacrificial-lamb Senate nomination against Joe Biden two years ago) and is mainly known for extremist positions on sexual ethics.  She also has a history of serious personal financial problems, and in fact, has no visible means of support at present.  On top of everything else, she’s run a campaign against Castle heavily laden with homophobic innuendoes about her opponent’s masculinity.

Yet according to the one recent poll, released by PPP late Sunday night, O’Donnell is actually leading Castle 47-44.  She’s received late endorsements from the NRA, Sarah Palin, and Jim DeMint, but only one endorsement, from the Tea Party Express, arrived early enough to give her any kind of material assistance.  She’s benefitting, it appears, from long-simmering conservative resentment of Castle’s voting record: he’s pro-choice; he’s regularly bucked the gun lobby; he voted for TARP; and he was one of a handful of Republican House members who voted for climate change legislation in 2009.  There may be a geographical factor as well; O’Donnell seems to be doing especially well in the southern portions of the state said to be fed up with the domination of Delaware politics by populous New Castle County (Wilmington).

O’Donnell’s late endorsements and particularly the PPP poll seem to have lit a fire underneath the Castle campaign, and his supporters have been pounding O’Donnell very aggressively as voters prepared to make their choice.  One piece of raw material they’ve used is a Weekly Standard article about O’Donnell’s gender discrimination lawsuit against a Delaware-based conservative campus organization.  “O’Donnell’s finances, honesty, and stability have been called into question in light of her false and strange claims,” the article suggests.

If she survives, O’Donnell will be the instant underdog against Democrat Chris Coons, the New Castle County Executive, who’s been running a stronger race than expected against Castle.  But even if Castle pulls it out, the bad feelings from the primary could help Coons make the race competitive.

New Hampshire

Meanwhile, a more conventional if equally close Senate primary is unfolding in New Hampshire, where another originally prohibitive front-runner, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, is now hanging onto a small lead over “true conservative” activist Ovide Lamontagne, who was the GOP gubernatorial nominee back in 1996.  Ayotte does not have Castle’s kind of voting record to defend, and she’s been endorsed by Sarah Palin and some anti-abortion groups.  But she’s been caught in sort of a pincers movement. During the summer months, a self-funding businessman, Bill Binnie, spent millions attacking Ayotte’s competence and integrity, and lured her into a back-and-forth that boosted both candidates’ negatives.  Just as Binnie (who took the unconventional route of boasting about his pro-choice convictions) began to fade, Lamontagne took flight, particularly at the end of August when he secured the aggressive backing of that hardy conservative monolith, the New Hampshire Union-Leader.  The paper has focused particularly on undermining Ayotte’s conservative support, pounding her daily for agreeing to a financial settlement with Planned Parenthood over a lawsuit against the state’s parental notification law.

PPP’s last poll showed Lamontagne within seven points of Ayotte over the weekend, while another late poll, by Magellan Strategies, pegged her lead at only four points.  Jim DeMint offered Lamontagne a last-minute endorsement, and Sarah Palin’s done some robocalls for Ayotte, but the battle is pretty much between Ayotte and the Union-Leader.  As in Delaware, national party figures are unhappy with the prospects of an upset; Lamotagne is the one Republican candidate who’s trailed Democratic congressman Paul Hodes in general election polls.

Wisconsin

The other statewide contest of note is in Wisconsin, where Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is in a heated battle with former congressman (and heavy self-funder) Mark Neumann for the Republican gubernatorial nomination to face Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D).  This race has mainly revolved around each candidate’s efforts to challenge the conservative credentials of the other, with Walker running last-minute ads attacking Neumann for voting for a large transportation bill in Congress back in 1998.  Walker’s been the front-runner all along, but Neumann’s money has made it competitive.

Washington, DC

DC Democratic voters will determine the fate of Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, who’s gotten high marks from wonks for his efforts to deal with DC’s dreadful public schools, but has actually been trailing DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray in recent polls.  This contest has exposed long-standing racial rifts; while both candidates are African-American, Fenty’s strongest base of support is among the white gentrifiers whom some African-American voters blame for pricing black folks out of traditional neighborhoods; Gray has also unsurprisingly won backing from those who oppose Fenty’s controversial school reforms.  The outcome will probably depend on turnout patterns in DC’s very diverse electorate.

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

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No surprises in West Virginia, Louisiana

Tuesday, August 31st, 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 another Tuesday, and believe it or not, there are no primaries today!  In fact, the next batch is not until September 14, when seven states plus the District of Columbia hold elections. This last weekend, however, voters in Louisiana and West Virginia went to the polls, with the latter limited to a special primary election for the late Robert Byrd’s Senate seat.

West Virginia

The results there were absolutely predictable, with Gov. Joe Manchin easily defeating Ken Hechler for the Democratic nod, and 2008 Senate nominee Jon Raese winning the Republican bid without breaking a sweat. Given the refusal of better-known Republicans to take on Manchin, this contest will provide a pretty good test of generic Republican strength in a red-leaning state where Democrats have often dominated in non-presidential elections.

Louisiana

Down in Louisiana, Senate candidates David Vitter (R) and Charlie Melancon (D) had no trouble winning their parties’ nominations.  The more interesting contests were in two House districts.  In LA-02, where Republican Joseph Cao pulled off a flukey win in 2008 over the ethically challenged Bill Jefferson, state legislator Cedric Richmond (D), the well-financed consensus choice of both New Orleans and DC Democrats, easily won the nomination without a runoff.  This is perhaps the ripest Democratic House pickup opportunity in the nation.  But in Melancon’s LA-03, a ripe Republican pickup opportunity, front-runner Jeff Landry, the beneficiary of Tea Party and Christian Right support, just missed avoiding a October 2 runoff against former state House Speaker Hunt Downer.   The runoff will boost the uphill candidacy of Democrat Ravi Sangisetty, who has raised an impressive amount of money.

Alaska

A major bit of unfinished business from last Tuesday’s primaries continued to play out today, as Alaska election officials began to count an estimated 25,000 absentee and provisional ballots.  Former judge Joe Miller leads incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski by 1,668 votes, and things are getting nasty already with Miller’s campaign alleging vote-tampering by the Murkowski camp.  On another front, the Alaska Libertarian Party decided against offering Murkowski its ballot line should she lose the GOP nomination. That means her options would be limited to a write-in campaign.  The Libertarian action was bad news for Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, though the hatefulness surrounding the Republican contest could still give him an opening.

Delaware

Meanwhile, in Delaware (another Senate contest where Republicans were assumed to have a virtual lock, in Delaware) the Tea Party Express has decided to weigh in on behalf of insurgent conservative candidate Christine O’Donnell, who is challenging Republican party establishment favorite Mike Castle.

New Hampshire

Similarly, in NH, longtime front-running Republican Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte may be getting nervous following the endorsement of hard-core conservative Ovide Lamontagne by the New Hampshire (nee Manchester) Union-Leader.  Democrat Paul Hodes has been leading Lamontagne in general election test heats.

North Carolina

And in yet another race often conceded to Republicans, a new PPP survey of NC (which involved a switchover by PPP from registered to likely voters) shows Democrat Elaine Marshall hanging in there against Sen. Richard Burr, trailing him 43-38 with 6% going to a Libertarian candidate.

It would be ironic, to say the least, if Democratic control of the Senate were saved by unlikely wins in Alaska, Delaware or North Carolina (not to mention Nevada, where most observers wrote off Harry Reid as early as last year), but it’s always possible.

Florida

And then there’s Florida, where two recent polls have shown Charlie Crist falling significantly behind Marco Rubio.  Crist is in real danger of losing crucial Democratic support to freshly minted nominee Kendrick Meek, and is dancing around the key question of which party he would caucus with in the Senate.

The game of predicting Republican House gains is intensifying as we get closer to November, and this week GOPers are buzzing over a new Gallup House generic ballot poll that shows them with a ten point lead, the largest in Gallup history.  But as Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal explains, this result looks a lot like a random-noise outlier, particularly when you compare it to the most recent Newsweek generic ballot poll, which shows the two parties tied.  The overall trendlines, though, are hardly comforting for Democrats.

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Another Incumbent Goes Down

Friday, May 14th, 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

There were two House elections of note earlier this week. The one which earned national attention was in West Virginia, where ethics-challenged Rep. Alan Mollohan (D), who had served 14 terms in office, was beaten decisively by Democratic primary opponent state senator Mike Oliverio. The winner styles himself as a conservative Democrat, but given Mollohan’s own relatively conservative record, it’s likely the result had less to do with ideology than with serial investigations of the incumbent for alleged conflicts of interest associated with his chairmanship of an appropriations subcommittee. This seat has been targeted by Republicans, and Oliverio may be harder to beat than a wounded Mollohan.

Down in Georgia, a special election was held to replace Republican Rep. Nathan Deal, who resigned his seat to “concentrate” on his gubernatorial races; Deal was also being investigated and criticized by the Ethics Committee for alleged interference with a state grant program that benefitted his own business. In the heavily Republican mountain district, the big issue was strong Tea Party and Club for Growth backing for former state Rep. Tom Graves, who finished first with 35 percent of the vote, but will face a June 8 runoff with a more conventional Republican, former state senator Lee Hawkins, who gained 23 percent of the vote. Graves will be favored in the runoff, but will have to run for a full term beginning with a primary on July 8.

Next Tuesday primaries will be held in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania. In Arkansas, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) is in a close primary battle with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter; there are competitive primaries in both parties for a Senate seat in Kentucky; Oregon will feature a comeback bid by former Gov. John Kitzhaber; and in Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter is in serious trouble from a challenge by Joe Sestak. I’ll have more about those races on Tuesday morning.

Poll Watch

Polling news includes a very interesting Mason-Dixon survey of the Republican Senate primary race in Nevada. When asked if the “Chickens For Checkups” controversy involving longtime frontrunner Sue Lowden affected their likely vote, Nevada Republicans generally said it would not. But for no other apparent reason, Lowden’s support has dropped significantly since the last Mason-Dixon poll in April, and she’s now locked in a competitive three-way race in which Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle has suddenly leapt into second place. The poll gave Lowden 30 percent, Angle 25 percent, and Danny Tarkanian 22 percent. The primary is on June 8, and the winner will face Harry Reid.

A new Rasmussen survey in New Hampshire shows Republican former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte continuing to hold a solid (50/38) lead over Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes for the seat held by retiring Sen. Judd Gregg. A DKos/R2K poll in Kentucky suggests that Democrats Dan Mongiardo and Jack Conway are in a dead heat, while on the GOP side, Rand Paul holds a 10-point lead over Trey Grayson.

Yet another poll in Pennsylvania, this one from Suffolk, shows Joe Sestak pulling ahead of Arlen Specter (49/40). And a PPP survey of Republicans to measure early support for prospective 2012 presidential candidates places no fewer than four candidates (Mike Huckabee with 25 percent; Mitt Romney with 23 percent; Newt Gingrich with 21 percent, and Sarah Palin with 20 percent) in a virtual dead heat.

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.

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The Party of “Hell No” Parties in New Orleans

Monday, April 12th, 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

This marks the first of a series of semi-weekly columns (on Mondays and Fridays, whenever possible) I’ll be doing for ProgressiveFix summarizing and digesting political news from around the country as we head towards the November midterm elections and inch inexorably towards the 2012 presidential cycle.

I will periodically do reports on the various regions, and will also regularly give readers the gist (without a lot of charts, graphs or wonkery) of current polling that is of interest (those interested in charts, graphs or wonkery should visit pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com). I will also make every effort to lift horse-race analysis from isolated snippets on specific campaigns into a general sense of political trends, and give a taste of the strategic debates that are going on in both major parties.

This weekend’s major political event was the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in New Orleans, which rivals February’s CPAC conference in Washington as an unofficial “kickoff” event for the 2012 presidential nomination contest. Naturally, SRLC featured a lot of speakers who are on the 2012 “mentioned” list, along with a couple of underlying stress points.

The stress points were (1) the widespread unhappiness with unhelpful news from Michael Steele’s Republican National Committee, which no one in New Orleans explicitly mentioned, but which was clearly a subtext (Steele’s own speech quickly emptied the room), and (2) the debate on whether Republicans should or should not be satisfied to be thought of as “the party of no,” more interested in obstructing Barack Obama’s agenda than in offering their own.

My take is that you can forget what the various SRLC speakers explicitly said on the “party of no” meme; they generally, for what it’s worth, spoke out of both sides of their mouths, first denying a hardcore negative message and then endorsing it in every rhetorical and policy specific. Newt Gingrich, for example, emphatically said the GOP had to become “the party of yes,” but then called for an appropriations-driven government shutdown to force major concessions from the president if Republicans win control of Congress this November — which is pretty amazing considering how well that strategy worked for Speaker Gingrich back in 1995 (if you are really young or new to politics, take my word for it: it bombed disastrously).

But the real rhetorical champion (and crowd favorite) of the conference was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose speech called for a war not just on Democrats (or “liberals” and “socialists,” as he preferred to call them) but on government itself:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry says Republican congressional candidates must say “no” — no to President Barack Obama, and no to anything that makes Washington relevant to the American people….

He said GOP candidates should tell voters, “Elect me and I’m going to Washington, D.C, and will try to make it as inconsequential on your life as I can make it.”

Now that should give GOPers a good positive agenda!

Meanwhile, Perry’s only real rival as crowd favorite, Sarah Palin, said Republicans should be the party of “hell no” when it came to health reform, and reprised her usual approach of personally baiting the president, particularly on energy and nuclear policy.

GOP: Smaller Tent Needed

The other big repetitive theme at the conference was what might be called a rather unnecessary demand that the GOP rebrand itself as relentlessly conservative. Probable 2012 candidate Rick Santorum, who’s been under attack during recent Iowa appearances for having endorsed Arlen Specter against Pat Toomey in 2004, tried to argue that his step was aimed at ensuring pro-life Supreme Court justices, not at accepting any “big-tent” thinking on issues like abortion:

You questioned my judgment, and you have every right to do so. But please don’t question my intention to do what’s right for those little babies.

There was, of course, a 2012 presidential straw poll in New Orleans, and it was a bit of a surprise that Mitt Romney’s vote-buying exercise beat Ron Paul’s, by exactly one vote. Paul, as you might recall, won the February CPAC straw poll by packing the seats with young, readily mobilized supporters. Romney (who, unlike Paul, didn’t show up in New Orleans) utilized a group called Evangelicals for Romney that bought up a bunch of tickets and offered them for free to all comers, and then pre-spun the media by predicting defeat to Paul’s hordes.

Palin edged Gingrich among the presumably non-stuffed boxes (though Palin’s PAC did offer caribou-on-a-stick to attendees), and everyone else trailed badly (notably, Rick Perry took himself off the ballot). As Tom Schaller noted, however, Romney and Paul had limited “second-choice” support (as the straw poll allowed attendees to indicate), so effectively it was a four-way wash. Invisible Primary monitors Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin of Politico adjudged the straw poll as pretty much a nothing-burger.

Poll Watch

A new poll from Dem-leaning Kos/R2K has Democrat Roy Barnes narrowly leading the three most prominent Republican candidates for governor of Georgia; Republican-leaning Rasmussen has all three major Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire leading Democrat Paul Hodes.

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs on Mondays and Fridays.

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