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Leading Off:
• OH-Sen: If you have five minutes on your hands (and no coworkers who will get ticked off at you), just have a look at this video of Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel getting testy and absolutely flailing in an interview with the editorial board of the Youngstown Vindicator. The Vindy recently endorsed Brown, in part because of Mandel's "tortured evasions" when the board tried to ask him about the auto bailout. The whole thing is pretty amazing, but this exchange at about 1:47 might be the highlight:
Mandel: Please, sir, don't put words in my mouth.
Editor: Somebody's gotta put words in your mouth because all you do is talk in circles.
• 3Q Fundraising:
• OH-Sen: Josh Mandel (R): $4.5 mil raised
• IL-10: Brad Schneider (D): $780K raised
• IL-11: Bill Foster (D): $640K raised
Senate:
• CT-Sen: Looks like Linda McMahon is back on her heels over abortion, thanks to a key supporter cracking out of turn:
Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, posted an online comment on Monday that said his endorsement of McMahon is "no longer accurate" in light of McMahon saying at a debate on Sunday that she would vote to repeal the federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman. But Wolfgang said he is still voting for the former wrestling executive "because her victory could mean the end of Roe v. Wade."
Democrat Chris Murphy's campaign pounced immediately, asking why Wolfgang would feel confident in making that kind of statement and wondering what kind of assurances McMahon gave him. That led to a heated and evasive response from McMahon's camp:
Todd Abrajano, McMahon's campaign spokesman, called Murphy's accusations "absolutely ridiculous."
"Linda McMahon has said all along that she is a pro-choice, independent woman," he said. "So why on earth would she vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade?"
I also like the fact that McMahon seems to think she gets a "vote" on
Roe v. Wade, which enshrines a constitutional right into law. Does she think the First Amendment might also come up for a vote?
Meanwhile, Rasmussen is out with a fresh poll here: Chris Murphy (D): 51 (46), Linda McMahon (R): 46 (49).
• IN-Sen: The first GOP poll we've seen in a while out of Indiana, taken by McLaughlin & Associates for Richard Mourdock, shows him up 45-42 over Democrat Joe Donnelly. That contrasts with a recent independent poll commissioned by local tipsheet Howey Politics that had Donnelly up 40-38, as well as earlier Democratic polling that has tended to show small Donnelly leads. The presidential toplines look a little optimistic for Romney compared to that Howey poll as well: Romney apparently has a lead of 16 points (exact spread not provided), versus 12 according to Howey.
And now we have a copy of the memo for Mourdock's poll. This has actual presidential numbers (Romney 55-39), as well as toplines for the gubernatorial race (Republican Mike Pence leads Democrat John Gregg 53-39). And very rare for an internal poll, the demographic breakdown is provided. It looks like the sample's both a bit white and a bit old, something very common to a lot of polling.
• MA-Sen (PDF): Hrm. MassINC's latest poll (on behalf of their usual client, WBUR) now has GOP Sen. Scott Brown up 48-45 over Elizabeth Warren. But just a week earlier, they had Warren up 49-45, and scarcely two weeks before that, they found Warren leading 47-42. So I'm having a hard time with the notion that the race swung seven points in a single week, especially when the prior two polls were consistent. But if you want to subscribe to the "Obama's debate performance screwed everything up" theory, you definitely have some evidence to support your case: The newest survey was in the field shortly after the debate, and the president went from 60-32 to 52-36, a 12-point drop. Ugly.
• MI-Sen: Here's one race, though, where the presidential and Senate numbers have gone in exact opposite directions following the debate (so go figure). Dem Sen. Debbie Stabenow now has a punishing 55-35 lead over Pete Hoekstra in EPIC-MRA's latest, a somewhat hard-to-believe extension of her 49-38 advantage a month ago. (The only other time Stabenow had a margin this big was in a Marist poll taken right after Hoekstra's legendary Super Bowl ad debacle.) But Barack Obama, who held a 47-37 edge in September, now stands at just 48-45 over Mitt Romney. (And yeah, the poll went into the field the day after the debate.)
As an aside, I gotta say: I honestly never thought I'd ever devote this much ink at Daily Kos Elections to something like a presidential debate. But something serious happened last week. Whether it stays or goes, who knows—but that's why we need to keep watching.
• ND-Sen, -AL: Some great news for Democrat Heidi Heitkamp out of infrequently-polled North Dakota: A new Mason-Dixon survey for local media outlet Valley News Live has her tied with GOP Rep. Rick Berg at 47 apiece. That's little different from a June poll that had Heitkamp up 47-46—pretty remarkable, given the volume of GOP attack ads that have flooded the landscape here. I'm not sure how you can say "tossup" better than this. What's more, the headwinds Heitkamp is tacking against are quite something: Romney leads Obama 54-40.
The situation in the state's other open-seat federal race, for House, is very different, though. There, Kevin Cramer (the guy hoping to keep the seat red) is beating Democrat Pam Gulleson 49-37—again, little changed from the 49-35 spread we saw last time. Numbers like these probably explain why the DCCC dropped its planned TV ad buys for ND-AL. I should add, though, that the survey was taked Oct. 3-5, a field period that's yielding lots of ugly numbers for Democrats, thanks to the president's debate performance.
• NM-Sen: It seems like we've had more than enough polling data to nail Heather Wilson's political coffin shut, but I suppose Dem Rep. Martin Heinrich figures some extra Krazy Glue can't hurt. His new internal, from GBA Strategies, has him beating Wilson by a dominant 55-42, or 51-39 if American Party candidate Jon Barrie is included (he takes 8 percent). That's up from 52-44 at the end of last month in a two-way matchup.
• PA-Sen (pdf): Pennsylvania keeps hanging around on the cusp of being competitive, though more so at the presidential level than the Senate level. Siena polled over the period Oct. 1-5, and found the presidential race looking closer than usual, with Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 43-40, but also finding the Senate race -- which other pollsters had seen tightening -- with a pretty comfortable margin, with Bob Casey Jr. leading Tom Smith 44-35. However, we don't have trendlines from this particular pollster (in fact, I'm not sure Siena has polled Pennsylvania before, ever), so there's no basis for conclusions about which direction these two races are headed. (David Jarman)
House:
• AAN: I'm not exactly sure how American Action Network (Norm Coleman's dark money outfit) and the Congressional Leadership Fund (John Boehner's PAC) got joined at the hip, but they're teaming up to pour cash into a handful of competitive House races. Their newly announced reservations don't cover a lot of races, but there's a whole lot of money going into most of them: AAN is putting $1 mil into IL-13, $1.8 mil into CA-10 (a crap-ton of money in the reasonably-priced Sacramento market), $600K into NY-27, $1.3 mil for NH-01, and a comparative pittance of $90K in MN-08, for a total of $7.5 mil. CLF is also $1.4 mil into OH-16, $750K into TX-23, and $500K in NC-07. (David Jarman)
• (David Jarman) CA-26: The House Majority PAC and SEIU had to spent a pile of money ($700K, to be exact) here in the spring in order to make sure Dem Julia Brownley made it into the top two of a weird three-way primary... and now they're back, trying to help her through the general too. They've spent $200K on direct mail already, but now they're running a TV spot tying GOPer Tony Strickland to the tea party as well.
• IL-08, IL-10, IL-11: Media markets don't get much more expensive than Chicago, but that's also ground zero for competitive House races, so the House Majority PAC and the SEIU are pouring $2.4 million into a new three-ad blitz. Two of the ads target Judy Biggert and Bob Dold individually; the third one, though, targets Biggert, Dold, and Joe Walsh all together. (It's titled "Loud;" guess which one of the three they're referring to.) The ad tries to tie Biggert and Dold to their more controversial colleague, but it also seems to be a bit of an insurance policy where Walsh's race is concerned, as GOP groups have put more than a million into propping him up and a Tammy Duckworth victory isn't looking as slam dunk-ish as it once was. (David Jarman)
• MN-08: I think there may be a typo in this apparently new polling memo from the Global Strategy Group for the DCCC: It says the survey was taken Aug. 21-23, but those just so happen to be the field dates for their last poll. Therefore, I suspect this one's more recent (it's only now getting shopped around) and someone just errantly copied-and-pasted. In any event, GSG's latest numbers have GOP Rep. Chip Cravaack tied with Democrat Rick Nolan at 42 apiece, suggesting both candidates have had their numbers driven down since that August poll, when Nolan led 45-44. There are no presidential toplines, but Dems lead on the generic congressional ballot, 43-40, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar is destroying Republican Kurt Bills, 58-31. (That's actually up a touch from 56-33 last time.)
• NH-02: I'm finding this pretty disturbing:
A few weeks after 2nd District congressional candidate Annie Kuster grabbed a camera from a staffer for Charlie Bass, refused to return it and said "f- him," she tried to grab an item from the congressman himself.
At the annual Southern New Hampshire Jewish Men's Club forum in Nashua on Sunday, Kuster grabbed the microphone Bass was holding as he delivered his closing statement.
"You can't just lie to people," Kuster said as she tried to wrangle the microphone from Bass, who said "wait a minute" and held on.
After the first incident, I facepalmed and prayed that the damage could be contained—maybe Kuster would be forgiven for having a bad day. Of course, though, the video made it into an NRCC ad, and I'm sure I wasn't the only political observer who had flashbacks to the
Bob Etheridge disaster. But now, a second similar occurrence? That seems pretty awful to me. Fortunately for Kuster, there's no video of the event (something her campaign insisted on), but there is audio. Oy vey.
• NV-03: Democrat John Oceguera's out with one of those "but look at the trendlines!" internals, courtesy Benenson. His new survey shows him trailing GOP Rep. Joe Heck 45-40 (with American Party candidate Tom Jones crooning at 8). That's a big improvement from Heck's 49-29 lead in April, numbers which Oceguera's camp obviously didn't share at the time. The margin is very similar to the four-point spread the DCCC recently saw, though another survey mentioned the other day by Jon Ralston had Heck up 11. In any event, Obama's really struggling, leading Romney by just 49-47. This seat went 54-45 for the POTUS in 2008, making it look like an attractive pickup target, but the president simply hasn't done well in Nevada this time around. That's probably a big factor helping Heck stay on top.
• NY-18: Alright, here's some happier news: two polls in two adjacent districts along the mid-Hudson Valley showing Democratic challengers competitive against Republican incumbents. The first is in NY-18, where Sean Maloney's internal (from GSG) shows him trailing GOP Rep. Nan Hayworth by just a 44-42 margin. The sample is definitely sober: Obama's trailing Romney 48-46, in a seat the president won 52-47 four years ago. On the generic congressional ballot, Dems lead 43-41. The Maloney-Hayworth numbers are similar to a PPP poll from last month that had the race tied at 43.
• NY-19: The second such poll (see NY-18 just above) is from Grove Insight for the DCCC, finding GOP Rep. Chris Gibson with just a 43-41 lead over Democrat Julian Schreibman. When the D-Trip started advertising her a few weeks back, we were a bit surprised, but evidently they had polling which showed promise—and now we have confirmation. Exact presidential toplines aren't provided, but the memo says that Obama is winning by seven points (he won in 2008 by eight).
Meanwhile, in more good news, Schriebman caught a break, and the NRCC is left backtracking: two local affiliates (including the Fox affiliate) refused to run the NRCC's new ad, which misrepresented a case from Schriebman's previous work as a defense attorney. The NRCC wound up pulling the ad, and running an older, more-general ad about the stimulus package instead. (David Nir & David Jarman)
• PA-12: We've still got a competitive race in Pennsylvania's 12th, where the conventional wisdom is that Dem incumbent Mark Critz has a bit of an upper hand, but GOP challenger Keith Rothfus and his friends can come up with polls showing a deadlock. Now Rothfus can point to the first poll of the race giving him a lead, which is a POS poll on behalf of Eric Cantor's YG Action Network; Rothfus leads 42-40 over the Sep. 30-Oct. 1 period, up from a 46-39 deficit in an obviously unreleased August poll. (David Jarman)
We'll have to wait and see if Critz can whip out a contrasting internal, but he does have one other new prize to point to: an endorsement from the National Rifle Association. NRA-PVF backing for a conservaDem isn't that unusual, but it's critical in the hills of SW Pennsylvania, where deer season is a big part of the local fabric of life.
Other Races:
• MN Ballot, MN-Sen: Some good news from PPP out of Minnesota, where their latest poll shows the state's anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment now failing 49-46, as opposed to last month, when it was passing 48-47. Interesting, Tom Jensen also sees improvement for opponents of the state's voter ID ballot measure, which is now passing by just 51-43—in June, it was up by a much bigger 58-34 spread. This poll in general seems to be hugely positive for Democrats, who have suddenly stretched out to a monster 52-40 lead on the generic legislative ballot, up from 47-43 a month ago.
And speaking of, Obama's actually improved his standing here, from +7 to +10—not the kind of movement we're seeing a lot of for the POTUS this week. Meanwhile, Dem Sen. Amy Klobuchar continues to crush Kurt Bills, 57-31.
Grab Bag:
• Blue Dogs: Toward the end of a Roll Call piece about the dwindling ranks of the Blue Dog Coalition is this appalling tidbit:
The losses hit close to home for former Rep. Billy Tauzin (La.). He co-founded the group and hosted its meetings in his office after the Republican wave election of 1994. The coalition owes its name to a painting of a blue dog he had in his office. Though he is now a Republican — he switched parties in 1995 — he still counsels members of the group.
The Blue Dogs are what they are, but seriously—to be advised by a turncoat scumbag like Tauzin? After he freaking
left the Democratic Party? That's just grotesque.