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Leading Off:
• VA-Gov: It's after Labor Day, so that means the ad deluge begins, at least in those few places with big-ticket elections this November. The biggest ticket is probably Virginia, and one of the new salvos in the ad war comes from Republican Ken Cuccinelli's campaign (apparently released on Wednesday), which hits Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe for investing in the fiber-optics company Global Crossing prior to its 2002 bankruptcy. However, Mother Jones's Andy Kroll did some digging into the sleazy backstory behind the ad, which seems about par for the course for Cuccinelli's campaign. The ad features interviews with three former Global Crossing employees, but at least two of the three interviewees had no idea that they were going to appear in a political attack ad and said they would not have participated if they'd known the purpose. Instead, they responded to requests from a filmmaker who said he was making a documentary about the Global Crossing bankruptcy.
Dem zillionaire Tom Steyer and his NextGen Climate Action Committee also released a new ad on Thursday. It's a 30-second spot that reminds voters about Ken Cuccinelli's gifts from Star Scientific (that same scandal that's imperiling outgoing Gov. Bob McDonnell) and then switches over to his cozy relationship with Consol Energy.
There's no word on the size of Steyer's involvement (you might remember that he was one of the big spenders in the MA-Sen special election several months ago), but whatever it is, it's probably still puny compared with what the RGA and DGA have been plowing into the race. Alexander Burns breaks out the calculator and finds that nearly $10 million has flowed into the race from the two committees, with the RGA providing the majority (nearly $7 million, including $3 mil in transfers to Cuccinelli's campaign and $3.6 million in media expenses). That makes sense that they're spending to keep overall parity with Terry McAuliffe on the Dem side, who has more than doubled up on Cuccinelli on the fundraising front. The DGA, by contrast, has given $3.2 directly to T-Mac, along with $150K in other spending.
Finally, the Dem-affiliated super PAC American Bridge is popping up for the first time in the Virginia race, with an ad that tries to link Cuccinelli to the "fathers' rights" movement, which, for starters, has argued against child support. Another keystone in the movement is opposition to no-fault divorce, which was also the subject of an ad from the Terry McAuliffe campaign earlier this week... and the subject of two Cuccinelli-sponsored bills in the state Senate; given the sudden push on this arcane issue, I suspect that recent focus-grouping has found this to be a particularly potent weapon against Cuccinelli among female voters.
Senate:
• KY-Sen: Thursday's news certainly illustrates how Mitch McConnell is getting squeezed. On his left, he's got Alison Lundergan Grimes, whose very presence in the race seems to be getting McConnell's purported ally, NRSC spokesperson Brad Dayspring, further and further off his game. On his right, he's facing open opposition from the Senate Conservatives Fund, Jim DeMint's Frankensteinian fundraising vehicle that continues to lurch around the lab destroying stuff even after its creator departed the Senate. The SCF is now out with a TV ad running statewide (with $340K behind its 11-day run), taking McConnell to task for failing to climb aboard the cliff-bound defunding-Obamacare train.
To beat McConnell in the Republican primary, though, the tea partiers will need a candidate who's temperamentally able and willing to really sell the crazy... but they may not yet have that guy in Matt Bevin. Bevin (the wealthy president of a Connecticut bell manufacturing company) tried to let everyone know on Thursday that he's not really a tea partier even if he's backed by a lot of tea partiers, with a rather convoluted statement that "I never went to any Tea Party meetings, although I am fiscally very much in like mind and grateful for and appreciative of the support of anybody, no matter what group they might be part of." Sounds like a decent strategy for a general election, but not the kind of jeremiad that'll rally the troops in a GOP primary.
• MI-Sen: If this poll was taken to entice Oakland County district court judge Kim Small (who is, inexplicably, a recruiting target for GOP insiders) into the Michigan Senate race, well, mission not accomplished. A Harper Polling poll of the GOP primary, taken for frequent client Conservative Intel, finds Small has faves of 2/4 (with 81% "never heard of her") and finds her slotted in at 2% of the vote in a four-way primary, with ex-SoS Terri Lynn Land at 45, Holland mayor Kurt Dykstra at 16, and rich guy Rob Steele at 4.
• NH-Sen: An unexpected comeback may be in the offing in New Hampshire, where Republicans got thrown for a loop earlier this week with the news that ex-Rep. Jeb Bradley—probably their best hope for a Senate run against Dem incumbent Jeanne Shaheen—wouldn't run in either 2014 statewide race. However, though, they might get his former colleague who, like Bradley, got turned out in the 2006 wave (and again in 2012, for good measure): ex-Rep. Charlie Bass. After some entreaties from party leaders, Bass is now saying that he's "seriously considering," and will scope out the race in coming weeks. Bass isn't as old as I'd thought (he's 61), but he does have that two-time loser cloud hanging over him.
• OR-Sen: Like New Hampshire, another glaring hole in the NRSC's dance card has been the Oregon Senate race, where Dem freshman Jeff Merkley won only narrowly in 2008 but where no credible GOPer has popped his head up until now. (So far, the closest they've come to credible is the decidedly tea-flavored former Linn County GOP chair, Jo Rae Perkins.) I'm not sure his entry would change this race much from its current "Likely D" trajectory, but the GOP may score a solid opponent soon: state Rep. Jason Conger says he's "looking very hard" at the race.
Conger is an attorney from the fast-growing central Oregon town of Bend who's been in the state House since 2010; he has a compelling background (homeless to Harvard!) but is on the conservative end of the legislature and doesn't seem the kind of moderate who's likely to get a foothold in Portland's suburbs. As a bonus, a Conger run would open up HD-54, creating a good pickup opportunity in a district that went 56% for Obama in 2012.
Gubernatorial:
• NE-Gov: The Republican primary in the open Nebraska gubernatorial race was, until today, looking poised to be a multi-car pile-up between little-known state Senators (Charlie Janssen, Beau McCoy, and Tom Carlson) after the initial top contenders all dropped out earlier (ex-Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy over scandal, ex-Senate Speaker Mike Flood over family health issues). That got reshuffled Thursday with surprise news that state Auditor Mike Foley will jump into the race.
Usually there's a long period of telegraphing one's interest in a race before jumping in, but we hadn't heard a peep out of Foley until Thursday. Foley became Auditor in 2006, and was a state Senator before that. He'll benefit from being the only candidate with statewide name rec (although his name does bear an unfortunate resemblance to that of former Florida Rep. Mark Foley), though there's one more potential entry that could shake up the GOP field further: rich guy Pete Ricketts, who could buy a lot of attention (though his money didn't help him with the 2006 Senate race, which he lost badly to Ben Nelson).
House:
• AL-01: A third Republican has gotten on the airwaves in the AL-01 special election (a 37% Obama district where all the action is in the GOP primary on Sept. 24). Wells Griffith is up with an introductory spot with a whopping $12,500 behind it. Griffith, previously a highly-placed deputy at the RNC, follows in the wake of ex-state Sen. Bradley Byrne and also Dean Young, who performed credibly in a 2012 primary against now-resigned Jo Bonner.
• CA-07: As expected, 31-year-old Igor Birman, the chief of staff to next-door GOP Rep. Tom McClintock, announced his entry into the race in the 7th on Thursday. He'll take on 2012 Senate race loser Elizabeth Emken and ex-Rep. Doug Ose for the GOP nod to go up against Dem freshman Ami Bera.
Birman has an interesting life story, in that he was born in Moscow and moved to the Sacramento area as a child. That may sound unusual, but it's a potentially very helpful background in this district: Sacramento's suburbs have one of the nation's largest communities of emigres from the former Soviet Union.
After a wave of religious refugees that began coming here in the late 1980s, Sacramento now has one of the largest Russian-speaking populations in North America: an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Slavic immigrants, community members say. They came primarily from the Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus and the other southern Soviet republics, and settled mostly in Sacramento's northern and western suburbs.
Unlike, say, the Russian immigrant communities in Brooklyn, which tend to be Jewish or Orthodox, the Sacramento-area immigrants tend to be strongly evangelical; in the last decade in California (and Washington and Oregon as well), they've often been the loudest remaining voices in those states' anti-gay movements as native-born evangelicals have started to throw in the towel on that front.
• CA-45: One of the few outright retirements we've seen so far in the House was in early July from Republican John Campbell in the 45th in southern Orange County, but there hasn't been much of a stampede by local Republicans to grab this safely-red seat. That's probably because state Sen. Mimi Walters quickly got in and nailed down "frontrunner" status. However, a few others are straggling into the field, including Thursday's entry by businessman Pat Maciariello.
Roll Call's article doesn't shed any light about whether Maciariello can freely self-fund; maybe more notably, it also mentions that Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach slipped into the field at some point in the last couple months without us finding out. That seems like a fairly big deal, since each of the five Orange County Supervisors has more than 600,000 constituents. Moorlach, however, doesn't have a lot of overlap between the OC's 2nd District and the 45th; the key towns in his constituency, like Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, belong to Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48.
• FL-02: Just looking at presidential votes, you probably wouldn't think of Florida's 2nd district as much of a top House target for Democrats for next year; it's a heavily evangelical part of the Panhandle that broke 52-47 in favor of Mitt Romney last year. Those in the know, though, are aware that this is near the top of the list for pickup opportunities in 2014, mostly thanks to candidate recruitment; the likeliest Dem nominee is Gwen Graham, an official in Leon County schools but also the daughter of Bob Graham, the state's former Governor and Senator and one of its most durable political figures. (Contributing factors include the presence of a particularly obnoxious and hard-right GOP incumbent, Steve Southerland, and a constituency that's been supportive of Blue Dog Dems in the past, most recently Allen Boyd until 2010.)
And now we have some hard evidence that we've got a live one here: a poll taken on behalf of EMILY's List finds Southerland in real trouble, leading Graham only 44-42, with 14% unsure. EMILY's List shared some of the details with us: in addition to the 2-point spread in the topline, 40% say they'd vote to re-elect Southerland if the election were today, while 40% would vote for someone else. The poll was conducted by Clarity Campaign Labs on Aug. 27-28 with a MoE of 2.85%; 1,152 voters were contacted by IVR with a live oversample for cellphone users.
• ID-02: Cat fud isn't just what's for dinner in Kentucky, but Idaho too: Bryan Smith, the Club for Growth-backed challenger to Rep. Mike Simpson in the GOP primary, is out with a radio ad hitting Simpson as well for the crime of not getting on board with the defunding-Obamacare plan. (It's a "five-figure buy" on conservative talk radio.) The ad also calls Simpson a "liberal" twice. (Firing back, a Simpson spokesperson's statement called Smith a "personal injury lawyer" twice. Ouch!)
• MN-01: A son of a former Representative who's also a former Hill staffer might sound on paper like a good get for House Republicans, but Jim Hagedorn, who announced Wednesday that he'll run against Democratic Rep. Tim Walz in southern Minnesota's swingy 1st district, may be treading close to the dread "Some Dude" line. Few people will remember his father, Tom Hagedorn, who represented MN-02 from 1974 to 1982 until losing a redistricting mashup with Vin Weber, and not that many people will remember his ex-boss, Arlan Stangeland, either (who represented MN-07 from 1976 to 1990 until he lost to then-young-up-and-comer Collin Peterson amidst a particularly lukewarm-sounding sex scandal).
Other races:
• NV-St. Sen.: We may have a contender for the state legislative race to watch in 2014; it's in the perpetually-balanced-on-a-knife's-edge Nevada State Senate, a chamber where the Democrats currently have an 11-10 edge. Five Democratic-held seats are up in 2014, but at 54% Obama, SD-09 in Las Vegas is the only one that qualifies as swingy. And the GOP is now touting a recruit to go against Dem incumbent Justin Jones in the 9th: Becky Harris, although her only claim to fame is losing an Assembly race last year.
• NY-St. Sen.: Don't hang your hat on that Dem primary challenge to state Sen. Jeff Klein, the leader of the Independent Democratic Conference that collaborates with Republicans to control the New York state Senate; it sounds like city councilor Oliver Koppell may be getting cold feet. He says he won't commit to a primary and doesn't "know if I'm the best candidate to run."
• SD mayor: San Diego's local GOP power brokers apparently have a preferred candidate, and it sounds like they got him in to the mayoral race: city councilor Kevin Faulconer announced on Wednesday that he'll get into the special election to replace Bob Filner. He's not the first Republican to get in, though; he joins former city attorney Michael Aguirre, who's apparently on the outs with the local GOP establishment. The Democratic standard-bearer (in this ostensibly nonpartisan race) looks like it'll be ex-state Asm. Nathan Fletcher, who was a Republican while in the legislature.
• Seattle mayor: State Sen. Ed Murray got a key endorsement Thursday in Seattle's mayoral race, from city councilor Bruce Harrell. If you're wondering why that's important, take a look at these two maps of the 2013 primary, and the 2009 general election. Harrell, who tied for third in this year's primary, dominated the non-white neighborhoods of south Seattle. Those neighborhoods were one of the main elements in incumbent mayor Mike McGinn's narrow win in 2009; without them, McGinn's puzzle is missing one of its major pieces.
Grab bag:
• County equivalents: If you're one of those obsessives who keeps a database full of election results, you're probably aware that Virginia is unique among states in that it has dozens of independent cities that aren't a jurisdictional part of any county and that report their election results separately from the counties that surround them. Well, get ready to shrink your election results database by one row for future elections, because in July, the number of county equivalents just shrank by one (down to 3,142 nationwide): Bedford, Virginia (popu. 6k) gave up its independent city status and merged with Bedford County. This isn't the first time a Virginia city has voluntarily devolved: the truly, truly obsessive among you may know that it's following in the wake of Clifton Forge (in 2001) and South Boston (in 1995).
• History: Smart Politics' newest amusing diversion is a chronicle of unusually-named gubernatorial matchups through history, including Brown vs. Brown, Jackson vs. Jackson, and Taylor vs. Taylor (the last of which was actually brother versus brother, in Tennessee in 1886). They also point to some humorous-sounding contests, like Beardsley vs. Gillette, and Power vs. Toole.
• Reapportionment: It seems a little early to start thinking about the next round of reapportionment, considering that we've barely gotten used to the newly-configured CDs as they are. Nevertheless, I guess they've got to find something to talk about at Congressional Research Service, so they re-ran the numbers using 2012 Census estimates. And the results are: very little would change if we reapportioned today. Minnesota (which barely hung on to its 8th seat in 2010) would lose a seat, North Carolina (which, similarly, was right on the cusp of getting a 14th) would gain a seat, and that's it.