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This new ad by Joe Lieberman about Ned Lamont may be the least substantive political ad we've ever seen. As some light and slightly goofy music -- the sort of thing you might hear in an airport in the 1960s -- plays in the background, the screen shows nothing but a lightbulb against a blue backdrop. Full script: "Still waiting to hear a new idea out of Ned Lamont? Here's an idea for you -- experience matters." View it here.
The frontrunner right now to be the GOP's candidate for the seat of Rep. Mark Foley -- who resigned yesterday amid revelations of his sexually-charged emails to House pages -- is Florida State Rep. Joe Negron, a 45-year-old lawyer and aggressive fundraiser. Florida GOPers are telling the St. Petersburg Times that Negron is a strong contender, and Negron himself told the paper, "I'm making calls as quickly as I can." Who is Negron? Well, here's one indicator: Negron full-throatedly supported Gov. Jeb Bush's efforts to intervene and prevent doctors from allowing the death of Terry Schiavo, the Florida brain-dead woman who was allowed to die after a national battle over her fate. Negron's take on Schiavo? It was wrong, Negron said in June, "for a judge to say you can't put water on the lips of a citizen of Florida."
The frontrunner right now in the race to be the replacement candidate for GOP Rep. Mark Foley -- who resigned yesterday amid revelations of his sexually-charged emails to House pages -- is Florida State Rep. Joe Negron, a 45-year-old lawyer and aggressive fundraiser. Florida GOPers are telling the St. Petersburg Times that Negron is a strong contender, and Negron himself told the paper, "I'm making calls as quickly as I can." Who is Negron? Well, here's one indicator: Negron full-throatedly supported government intervention in the case of Terry Schiavo, the Florida brain dead woman who was allowed to die after a national political battle over her fate. Negron's take? It was wrong, Negron said in June, "for a judge to say you can't put water on the lips of a citizen of Florida."
GOP Senator George Allen -- under fire for allegations of racism -- has just released a new TV ad up which tries to paint Dem opponent Jim Webb as a misogynist. The ad, which bashes Webb for his 1979 essay opposing women in the Naval Academy, features one female Academy grad after another hammering Webb. One says, "It was demoralizing from a perspective that only a woman could understand." Another rejoins, "I really have to make it very clear to the women of Virginia who may be considering voting for this man, that he is no advocate for women." Allen's also rolling out a companion site, Webb Against Women.
Dem House candidate and veteran Tammy Duckworth -- who lost both her legs in the Iraq war -- will slam President Bush for painting Dems as the "cut and run" party in the Dem response to tomorrow's Presidential radio address, according to an audio excerpt of the speech obtained by Election Central. "I didn’t cut and run, Mr. President," Duckworth will say. "Like so many others, I proudly fought and sacrificed. My helicopter was shot down long after you proclaimed `Mission Accomplished.'" Exclusive audio excerpt after the jump.
As we reported earlier today, this race is key to the Democrats' chances of taking back the Senate. Polls show the race as tight, with challenger Sherrod Brown holding on to a small lead. Today, the Brown campaign began airing a new ad featuring the mother of a soldier in Iraq concerned that the troops didn't have body armor:
I wrote everyone I could think of. My Senator Mike DeWine sent me back a form letter than didn't even mention body armor. Sherrod Brown wasn't my congressman, but he met with me and other military families, then went to bat for our troops and helped them get the equipment they needed.
View the ad here.
He's getting thrashed over his alleged affection for racial epithets, but GOP Senator George Allen is showing magnanimity towards one minority consistuency: Black farmers. Yesterday Allen introduced a bill that would give some 72,000 black farmers nationwide a second chance at collecting funds under a Federal civil-rights lawsuit settlement. But suspicions about the timing were raised yesterday when the president of the National Black Farmers Association revealed that the group had been trying to get Allen to do this "since he's been in [the Senate]." Worse, the Association president admitted past frustration over not getting a meeting with Allen's staff -- and that he'd finally just gotten one on Friday.
Dem Jill Derby unleashed a solid new ad Thursday slamming Republican Dean Heller as a GOP lickspittle by tying him to the national party's efforts to privatize Social Security. Full of folksy charm, Derby nicely sums up the icompetance theme, saying "if they fix Social Security like they fixed Iraq and immigration, we're in a lot of trouble." Trailing Heller by only 3 points in this traditionally Republican district, Derby has made this a race to watch, but for now, you can just watch the ad here.
Yesterday we brought you word that GOP Rep. Mark Foley was in a bit of trouble for writing some overly friendly emails to a 16-year-old former page in the House of Representatives. Now Foley has just resigned. TPMmuckraker's Justin Rood has the details.
Dem candidate Chris Carney has just released what is certainly one of the most hard-hitting ads of this cycle—it directly slams incumbent Don Sherwood over accusations that he not only had an extramarital affair, but also physically abused his mistress. It features a self-identified Republican voter named Joseph Lech holding up a photo of his daughter and saying: "I love my daughter tremendously. How can I tell her I support Don Sherwood and feel good about myself?" Sherwood has admitted to the affair, but hasn't confessed to violence. The once-safe incumbent only got 56% of the vote in his primary and is now a top Dem target. Click here to view the ad.
Politicians often claim to be misrepresented in attack ads, but Rep. Chris Chocola has now managed to get one yanked off the air. The South Bend Tribune reports that Chocola has persuaded two local TV stations to ax a DCCC ad that attacked him for opposing a minimum-wage increase while accepting automatic pay increases. The Chocola camp insisted he had voted for the minimum wage —that is, in that recent bill which tied a minimum-wage hike to proposed cuts in the estate tax. But Dems say the ad was referring to another vote—a roll-call vote urging House-Senate negotiators to include an increase in a job-training bill. Local stations WSBT and WNDU sided with Chocola and killed the ad.
The race in Washington’s 8th district is heating up. In the last month, Republican incumbent Dave Reichert has dropped a 13 point lead and is now running in a dead heat with Democratic challenger Darcy Burner.
Yesterday's New York Times and Wall Street Journal offered up dueling pictures of the state of play in the Senate -- the Times suggested it was within reach of Dems, and the Journal saw it likely staying Republican -- so we thought it was a good time to check in with Jennifer Duffy, Senate expert and editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Duffy's take? Dems -- who need to win six seats to get back the Senate -- are likely to come in just shy of taking control. “There are so many things teetering on the edge,” Duffy told Election Central. “But the ultimate Senate prediction is, I think the Dems fall just short.”
As we told you yesterday, Dem Rep. Harold Ford Jr. has a new ad slamming GOP opponent Bob Corker for "freezing the pay of Chattanooga’s police and firefighters." Calling it "100 percent verifiably false," the Corker campaign was quick to dispute the ad. So, the Nashville City Paper examined the city budget ordinances for Chattanooga during the years Corker was mayor, only to find that the pay of police officers and firefighters had increased each year Corker served. Sorry Mr. Ford, but it seems some smears are just too good to be true.
Guess who the three least popular Senators in American are? According to SurveyUSA's latest ranking of all the Senators' approval ratings, the three who come in dead last are all Republicans up for reelection in November: Ohio's Mike DeWine (42%-50%), Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum (39%-53%), and Montana's Conrad Burns, who won the title for least popular Senator in the country (36%-57%). Virginia's George Allen was 74th, at 49%-41%, though that may not reflect his actual ranking, since the poll was taken mostly before the 'n' word accusations hit. And Lieberman? Eighty-seventh with a rating of 49%-47%.
The campaign of Dem Phil Kellam has just admitted that Kellam was convicted for assault in 1978—and the scandal could potentially derail the promising campaign he's been waging against freshman GOP Rep. Thelma Drake. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports today that Kellam was convicted while in college in North Carolina, in an episode Kellam's campaign claims was a case of road-rage.
At a debate last weekend, Dem Senate candidate Jon Tester flatly declared that he wanted to "repeal" the Patriot Act -- a sign of how much things have shifted in Montana, which Bush carried by a sizeable majority in 2004. Now GOP Senator Conrad Burns has released an attack ad blasting his position. While throbbing and scary music plays in the background, the ad shows images of wanted posters of terrorists alternating with Tester saying "repeal" again and again. We'll see how it plays in a state where the legislature passed a resolution with overwhelming bipartisan support criticizing the act. View the ad here.
Is GOP Rep Curt Weldon in trouble? The first nonpartisan poll conducted on the race between Weldon and Dem challenger Joe Sestak finds that the two candidates are in a statistical dead heat, with Sestak leading Weldon 44%-43%. But the Weldon camp dismissed the numbers in the Franklin & Marshall College Keystone Poll, pointing out that a recent poll done by a Republican firm had Weldon up 52%-33%. But a Sestak senior adviser chalks up the new numbers to the fact that "nobody campaigns harder than Joe Sestak."
VA-SEN: And the Telephone Keeps on Screamin!
Telephones are ringing off the hook here at the 2006 George Allen N-Word Telethon. Celebrity operators Richard Karn, Bootsy Collins, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Mark Bavaro, Daryl Hall and John Oates of Hall & Oates, and Sally Field (Dustin Diamond of course was unavailable due to a previous commitment) are scrambling to keep up with the deluge of callers clamoring to impart their own golden memories of George Allen experiences.Yet another witness has just come out and claimed GOP Senator George Allen has uttered racial slurs. Pat Waring, of Chesterton, Md., has just told Hardball that at a sports match, Allen repeatedly used the `n' word to describe African Americans. Waring claims that in 1978, her then-husband was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia and a rugby player, and that she sometimes went to games. Here's what she says happened at one game: "I heard to my left, the ‘n’ word, and I heard it again, and I looked around and heard it again," she said. “And there was this fellow sitting on the ground." She says that when she learned later that he was George Allen, the son of the Washington Redskins coach, she was "crestfallen." View video of her here. MSNBC's story here.
Slime wave alert! The National Republican Senatorial Committee has just dumped another $1,201,364 into the Ohio Senate race on behalf of endangered GOP incumbent Mike DeWine. The amount alloted for attack ads against Dem Sherrod Brown: $1,178,864.
Watch out Minnesota, you’ve got a blog-troversy! GOP activist Michael Brodkorb, who blogs at Minnesota Democrats Exposed, has been forthcoming about his paid consultant role for Rep. Mark Kennedy’s Senate campaign, even including a disclaimer with posts relating to the race. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about his relationship with the campaign of another GOP candidate, Michele Bachmann, who is vying with Dem Patty Wetterling to fill Kennedy’s vacated House seat. The liberal blog MN Publius recently uncovered an FEC statement filed by the Bachmann campaign that includes a $5,500 payment to Brodkorb on Aug. 3, 2006. Brodkorb never previously disclosed his financial relationahsip with the Bachmann campaign on his blog, eventhough he has written about the race on multiple occasions. More after the jump.
In GOP Senator George Allen's latest ad, John McCain delivers what may be the ultimate endorsement: He says that Allen will save the world from evil. Against a split screen showing a female purple-fingered Iraqi next to a finger-wagging Osama, McCain claims he has the "utmost confidence and belief that in this terrible, titanic struggle that's going on now between good and evil in the world that we will amd must prevail. And one of the reasons why we will prevail is because of George Allen's leadership, vision, courage and his ability to stand up for what he believes in." View the ad here.
GOP Rep. Ron Lewis entered Congress with a 1994 special election win that foreshadowed Republican gains in the general election that year. Since then the former Baptist minister has been somewhat of an inevitable electoral force in the largely rural 2nd district, winning his last three elections with nearly 70% of the vote.
However, political observers believe this year that Dem candidate Mike Weaver’s campaign might actually give Lewis a run for his money, forcing the incumbent into a fight to maintain his seat. More after the jump.
Today's New York Times and Wall Street Journal offer dueling pictures of the state of play in the Senate -- the Times says its in play for Dems, and the Journal says the GOP will likely keep it -- so we thought it was a good time to check in with Jennifer Duffy, the Senate expert and editor of the Cook Political Report. Duffy says
This may be the first time that a pol has gotten in trouble for asking someone what he wants for his birthday, but let's face it, politics is a rough business. A sixteen-year-old former page to the House of Representatives is accusing GOP Rep Mark Foley of writing him a bunch of "sick" emails, in which Foley asked the page his age and what he wanted for his birthday, and asked for a picture of him. TPMmuckraker's Justin Rood has all the details.
It's a common tactic: find supporters of the opposing party, give them a name, and hold a press conference. "Democrats for Bush" or "Republicans for Kerry." It's a great way to try to show bipartisan credibility and general popularity. You usually don't do it, though, with members of your own party.
The campaign of Joe Lieberman, "independent Democrat" and former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, announced today that some Democrats do, in fact, support their candidate. "Democrats for Joe" is composed of former politicians and members of the Clinton administration advocating Lieberman's Democratic bonafides, but notably, and "emphasized by the Lieberman campaign," not his position on Iraq. A recent Quinnipac poll shows that Democrats in Connecticut support Ned Lamont over Lieberman 57 to 37 percent, although the same poll showed Lieberman up 10 points largely because of his 69 to 15 percent advantage over Lamont with Republicans.
GOP Rep. Marilyn Musgrave -- who recently opined that gay marriage is the most important issue facing the country -- may suddenly be in much a tougher race than anyone expected. CQ Politics has just changed the rating of the race from "Republican Favored" to "Leans Republican." Says CQ: "[C]ontinued debate over...Musgrave’s staunch social-issues conservatism, and the emergence of Democratic state Rep. Angie Paccione as a solid challenger, have prompted CQPolitics.com to change its rating...While the political demographics of the district continue to provide Musgrave with a tangible edge, the ratings change indicates that the race is now considered highly competitive and that an upset by Paccione is a more plausible possibility." Read CQ's full analysis here.
Is upstate New York Rep Tom Reynolds -- who as chief of the NRCC is in charge of keeping the House in GOP hands -- at risk of losing his own seat? A new SurveyUSA poll commissioned by Channel 2 news finds that Reynolds is clinging to a two-point lead over Dem challenger Jack Davis, 45%-43%. The race is a rematch of 2004, when Reynolds beat Davis by 12 points. Interestingly, the Green Party candidate, Christine Murphy, may decide the race: She pulls eight points, substantially more than the spread between Reynolds and Davis.
Update: Davis press secretary Curtis Ellis has just written in to say that the Green candidate was knocked off the ballot Tuesday -- right after the completion of the poll -- making the race even closer.
Okay, this one's really something. GOP Rep Rob Simmons has a supporter named Tom Miseti. He's a senior at the University of Connecticut and has "worked as a volunteer for the Simmons campaign, helping at campaign events," according to the Norwich Bulletin. Only Miseti's done a heck of a lot more than just hand out flyers. He's now been busted posting some gruesome imagery about Dem challenger Joe Courtney on his blog. According to Local News Channel 30, the imagery includes stacks of what appear to be Holocaust corpses meant to denigrate Courtney's ideas on health care, as well as imagery likening Courtney to Josef Stalin. Making the story even juicier, Channel 30 reports that Miseti's resume identifies him as a "field coordinator" in Connecticut's second district for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, reportedly a big bankroller of Simmons. View the newscast -- complete with imagery -- below.
The Simmons campaign claims the kid's an ex-volunteer and disavows his postings. But the problem is that Simmons has an ad now running which by chance pictures him next to Miseti, and Courtney is demanding that Simmons pull the ad to disavow Miseti's "blogging hate." More on this after the jump.
Harold Ford Jr.'s newest add spoofs "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" to highlight Republican Bob Corker's tremendous personal wealth. "Bob Corker lives in a 30 room mansion, is worth over $200 million, and owns six SUVs," says the announcer in an upbeat tone parodying "Lifestyles" host Robin Leach. "As Mayor, he took three pay increases, while freezing the pay of Chattanooga's police and firefighters...As Senator, who do you think he'll look out for?" View the ad here.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann yesterday nominated GOP House candidate Peter Roskam for his "worst person in the world" award for suggesting that his Dem foe Tammy Duckworth wants to "cut and run" from Iraq even though she lost both legs in the war. As Election Central first reported on Monday, Roskam made the comment at a debate a week ago. Speaking of Duckworth, Olbermann said: "She can't run, since she lost both her legs there. Nice touch, Pete." Roskam was bested for the title by Roger Ailes. View Olbermann here.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has just dropped approximately $2 million on a massive ad buy in 19 House districts across the country, new filings with the Federal Election Commission show. The DCCC plunked down all the cash on Sept. 26, for ads in three key districts in Indiana, two in Iowa, two in Pennsylvania, and one in Ohio, New Mexico, Georgia, Florida and a few others.
Vermont is witnessing a mirror image of the national GOP strategy to tie Dem candidates to Nancy Pelosi—with Republican candidate Martha Rainville trying to hedge on voting for Dennis Hastert. The Bennington Banner reports that at last night's debate Rainville wouldn't give a straight answer on who she'd support for Speaker, saying it would be for a Republican but that "I am not sure who that vote will be right now because I am not sure who is running." Welch and Rainville have been running close, so watch for Rainville to do more to dodge identification with her national party in this blue state.
In the hotly contested race for the House seat in Pennsylvania’s 6th district, a recent poll shows Republican incumbent Jim Gerlach maintaining a slight edge over his Democratic challenger Lois Murphy. However, according to G. Terry Madonna, who conducted the poll, the numbers show a distinct trend favoring change, as well as overall dissatisfaction with George W. Bush.
VA-SEN: What Else Did You Expect as a Lead Item?
It’s weird to think that only a month or two ago Joe Lieberman was the overriding story of this election season. Today? It’s Day 5 of Fiasco 3 of George Allen for Senate in ’06. Without further dalliance…The former college roommate of one of the people who allegedly cut the head off a deer and stuffed it into a mailbox with Virginia Senator George Allen many years ago has now confirmed the story to the Washington Post:
On Monday, a college football teammate, Ken Shelton, said Allen used the N-word referring to black people. He also said that he, Allen and Billy Lanahan, another teammate, once cut the head off of a deer and, at Allen's urging, stuffed the head into a black person's mailbox.Lanahan is dead. But his former roommate came forward Wednesday to say that he recalls Lanahan telling him the story without mentioning that the mailbox was a black person's.
"He told me they went hunting," said George Beam, 53, who lives in Charlottesville. "All he said was we cut the deer head off and stuck it in somebody's mailbox."
Beam said the same thing to The New Republic yesterday.
Joe Lieberman enjoys a 10-point lead over Ned Lamont in a new Quinnipiac University poll released today. The poll finds that Lieberman leads Lamont 49%-39% among likely voters. While this is down slightly from Lieberman's 12-point lead in the same poll last month, Lieberman appears to have gained a sizeable lead among independents, 50%-36%. Other recent polls have shown the race to be a dead heat, but Quinnipiac pollster Doug Schwartz doesn't agree: Lamont, he says, is "going to have to do something different in the next six weeks or Sen. Joseph Lieberman stays in for another six years."
In another sign that Dem Harold Ford Jr. has a real shot at beating GOP candidate Bob Corker for Senator Bill Frist's seat, CQ has just changed its rating of the race from "Leans Republican" to "No Clear Favorite":
[C]andidates’ campaigns matter. And the consensus among state and national politics watchers is that Ford, since the primary, has run a much more effective campaign than Corker, who has faced some dissent among staunch GOP conservatives and repeated allegations launched by Ford and other Democrats about his actions as mayor and his personal financial dealings...Nonetheless, the balance in this up-for-grabs race likely will be decided by whether Ford can win enough voters with his self-portrayal as a Democratic moderate — or if Corker’s conservative message has more appeal in a state that just two years ago gave 57 percent of its presidential votes to Bush.
“One of the things [Corker] hasn’t demonstrated yet is that he has the candidate skills that Ford has,” said [political scientist Bruce] Oppenheimer. But Oppenheimer added that charisma isn’t everything. “Is that enough to offset a 10-point Republican lean in the state?” he asked.
CQ's full analysis here.
We don't normally cover down-ballot races here at Election Central, but this one's just too good not to pass along. AG candidate Jeanine Pirro -- whose short-lived campaign against Hillary collapsed sometime back -- has just gotten herself into a situation that a daytime TV script writer couldn't make up. It seems she thought her husband was cheating on her. So she searched out some help from someone she thought might do her the favor of bugging her husband. Who'd she ask? Bungling would-be DHS chief Bernard Kerik. Now she's under investigation by the Feds for plotting illegal spying. TPMmuckraker's Paul Kiel has the details.
The NRCC may have decided to pull all its advertising bucks out of the campaign of GOP House candidate Randy Graf, but Graf is now getting some much-needed ad funding from another group: the Minutemen. The right-wing group of self-appointed vigilante border cops is funding a new ad blasting away at Graf's Dem opponent Gabrielle Giffords as “a liberal extremist who supports Spanish ballots, amnesty and even citizenship for illegals.” Interestingly, the Minutemen may have helped ensure that this seat goes to the Dem: They dropped $40,000 on Graf in the primary -- and the primary victory for the conservative Graf has made a Giffords victory far more likely.
According to Joe Lieberman's spokesman, Dan Gerstein, the model for the future of politics is the campaign of the very person Gerstein so frequently derides: Ned Lamont. Gerstein, speaking on a panel at Quinnipiac University, had high praise for his opponent's campaign:
It'll certainly be interesting to see if Gerstein's praise mollifies his many blogospheric critics.Gerstein said the Lamont crew "did a brilliant job of using technology to build a support base and organize a campaign"; in the primary. [...]
"Ten years from now it will probably be looked at as a model for how campaigns will be run," Gerstein predicted.
Yesterday the DSCC hit Michael Steele It only took one day, but Steele already has a reply up, dismissing their effort as "nasty ads from the Washington crowd." The ad has Steele promising straight talk and then pouncing on Dem nominee Ben Cardin as "more of the same." Steele might seem like the last person who should run an anti-establishment message—his candidacy is a frontline effort for the national GOP's black outreach, and he's received extensive fundraising thanks to Bush. However, the ad itself could actually be well-aimed at historically Democratic Maryland, and it strangely manages to be both hard-hitting and friendly all at once. Check it out here.
Warning: Unfortunate choice of metaphors ahead! At last night's gubernatorial debate in New York, GOP candidate John Faso attacked Dem Eliot Spitzer for his support of gay marriage as follows:
"It's a testament to Mr. Spitzer's certainty on all of these type of issues that he says on day one he's going to force gay marriage down the throats of many New Yorkers."
When the college-aged audience began to laugh, Spitzer quipped: "Without commenting on his use of metaphors, I would sign that bill."
Another GOPer has turned his guns on President Bush over Iraq. This time it’s congressional candidate Rick O’Donnell, who declared “a failure of leadership, from our president, from our secretary of defense, from our generals,"” during a debate with Dem Ed Perlmutter on Tuesday. Though O’Donnell has previously argued that America needs to change course in Iraq, he had not forcefully criticized Bush about it until Tuesday's debate. O’Donnell’s change of course (is that allowed?) comes on the heels of a Survey USA poll that shows him trailing Perlmutter by 17 points.
Dem Chris Murphy has just released a scorching new ad which points to the just-released National Intelligence Estimate -- its first appearance in an ad, to our knowledge -- to claim that GOP Rep Nancy Johnson's support for President Bush has made us "less secure" at home. Johnson, you may recall, recently hit Murphy for opposing the wiretapping of terrorists (which he doesn't) in an ad that a local paper dubbed the "most evil" ad "ever." Murphy's response slams her ad as "desperate" and a "fraud," concluding: "After 24 years, Nancy Johnson will do anything to stay in Congress." View the ad here.
It seems that running a distant third, almost sixty points behind Democrat Deval Patrick, has inspired Independent Christy Mihos to be creative in his advertising. His new TV ad hilariously attacks the Massachusetts political establishment by colorfully pointing out the inexplicability of the fact that the Big Dig, a massive public works project to move Boston freeways underground, is 12 billion dollars over budget. The ad is a bit ribald, but well worth thirty seconds of your time. Enjoy.
Does Katherine Harris have a secret cyber-admirer in India? That's the question being raised by a bunch of pro-Harris comments that have been popping up to refute anti-Harris messages on several Florida blogs. The Orlando Sentinel reports that the comments have been linked to different email addresses, but all share the same IP address in Western India. Some are speculating that the use of an Indian IP address constitutes a clever effort to conceal the origin of the posts. But the stiff writing style suggests foreign origin, leading a local blogger to crack that Harris is "outsourcing campaign support to India." More on Harris' mysterious cyber-friend after the jump.
