Tuesday marks the debut of a feature that hopefully will become a regular feature on the Wrap. Since there is more than enough campaign fun to go around, today the Wrap debuts contributions from other members of the DK front page team.
DE-Sen: Is Castle Really The Front-Runner?
In the wake of GOP Congressman Mike Castle's decision to run for the US Senate in Delaware, the general consensus is that Castle is no worse than 50/50 to seize the seat for Republicans. In an interesting analysis of their own data, PPP's Tom Jensen offers a counterargument. He thinks Castle's early lead has been, primarily, a function of superior name recognition emanating from his four decades in public office in the state.
VA-Gov: Prominent McDonnell Backer Apologizes For Cruel Deeds Attack
It was a pretty brutal shot, even by campaign standards, and now one of the most high-profile endorsers of Virginia GOP nominee Bob McDonnell has apologized for it. Sheila Johnson, BET's co-founder, had made a remark at a McDonnell campaign event where she extolled McDonnell's communication skills and then contrasted those skills with those of his "o-o-o-o-opponent." Deeds has some speech difficulties (whether they are a clinical issue is a little unclear), thus making the remark intensely personal. The issue was a touch thorny for Team Deeds, though, because while they wanted to make hay of Johnson's brutal lack of class (and McDonnell's reticence on the matter), they also stood to lose a yard or two by reminding voters that Johnson (a fairly prominent Democrat who has donated over "00,000 to Democratic candidates, according to Newsmeat) had endorsed the Republican in this race.
VT-Sen: Dem Incumbent Gets Primaried From The Left...But It's Leahy?
This is a fascinating one: of all the Democrats facing the voters in the 2010, it'd be pretty easy to argue that the least likely one to get primaried from the left would be Vermont's Patrick Leahy. Yet that is exactly what is apparently about to happen. Daniel Freilich is a military doctor, and told TPMDC today that he intends to challenge Leahy from his left on issues like health care (Freilich favors a single payer system). Freilich is probably a longshot against Leahy, who has been elected consistently out of the state of Vermont for decades.
THE MONEY CHASE: More Fundraising Figures Come Forward
As we creep towards the October 15th deadline to submit fundraising reports to the FEC, we are starting to get more indications from campaign on where they stand financially heading into the Fall and Winter months. In Florida, Democratic dreams of a closely contested GOP Senate primary were resurrected by the news that insurgent GOP candidate Marco Rubio raised close to a million dollars in the third quarter. This was a more-than-threefold increase over his numbers in the 2nd quarter, which had been viewed as somewhat of a disappointment. Meanwhile, in Illinois, one day after Mark Kirk revealed that he had raised href=".6 million in Q3, his likely Democratic opponent, Alexi Giannoulias, announced that he had hauled in $1.1 million during the 3rd quarter. The good news for the Democrats is that Giannoulias finished the 3rd quarter with a slightly higher cash-on-hand figure than did Kirk.
NH-Sen: Laura Clawson Analyzes Recent Polling In Ayotte-Hodes Race
Various polling puts Kelly Ayotte up on Paul Hodes, with the significant problems that none of the pollsters are particularly trustworthy and that in at least a few cases there are major contradictions lurking below the toplines. Take the case of women: ARG gives Ayotte an eight-point lead among women, while the marginally more trustworthy UNH gives Hodes a three-point lead among women (well within the margin of error on such a small subset, I'm sure). Whichever result is correct -- or if neither is -- it's nonetheless clear that the GOP chose Ayotte to appeal to women voters, which makes it significant that NARAL has elected to get involved early with a strong endorsement for Hodes. (--Laura Clawson)
IN OTHER NEWS...
- Not a surprise, but the NRCC got their man in Nevada's 3rd district, as former state Senator Joe Heck has decided to drop a primary challenge to embattled Governor Jim Gibbons and take on freshman Democratic Rep. Dina Titus instead
- Amid growing (and fairly obvious) charges of conflict-of-interest, GOP Congressman (and 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Nathan Deal opted out of a business contract with the state of Georgia that had paid his company roughly $300,000 a year. Deal had already been nabbed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for personally intervening to ensure that the government program (which deals with salvaged autos) was preserved.
- Interesting numbers out of Kansas: a new SurveyUSA poll on the Republican Senate primary breaks the longstanding deadlock and gives Jerry Moran a sizeable lead over fellow GOP Congressman Todd Tiahrt (43-27). In other Kansas polling news, US Senator (and likely GOP gubernatorial nominee) Sam Brownback has seen weakening polls of his approval, with SUSA finding him down to just a 48% job approval. Good news for his Democratic opponent...if one ever surfaces.
- Despite the news that Charlie Bass is attempting a political comeback in NH-02, there is word today that 2008 GOP nominee Jennifer Horn is also planning a bid.
- He has shown little interest, but the University of Wisconsin polls a hypothetical race between former Governor Tommy Thompson and Senator Russ Feingold, and finds Thompson with a slight edge (43-39).