This should be interesting:
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
Mayday, a super PAC that ultimately aims to "end all super PACs," announced on Tuesday the first two candidates it will officially support in the midterm elections.
In the New Hampshire Republican Senate primary, the group is supporting state Sen. Jim Rubens over against former Sen. Scott Brown. Brown is most likely to win the primary and challenge Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, but Mayday said in a press release that it opposes Brown because he "has embraced special interest funding and was the deciding vote against in the DISCLOSE act, which would have increased donor transparency."
Mayday is also supporting a Democratic candidate, Iowa state Sen. Staci Appel, who is running to replace retiring Republican Rep. Tom Latham in Iowa's 3rd district. Appel is running against Republican David Young.
Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, one of the founders of Mayday, said in a statement the group chose a Democrat and a Republican to support to send a message.
"We started with these two races to be crystal clear - it doesn't matter who you are, what your party is, or what powerful friends you have," he said. "If you are standing in the way of fundamental reform, if you are supporting what has become a fully corrupt system of money in politics, then you should watch your back." - CBS News, 7/29/14
The Iowa race make sense but why back another Republican in New Hampshire?
http://www.vox.com/...
In contrast, the Mayday PAC's choice in New Hampshire, Jim Rubens, is a long shot. He's a Republican candidate for US Senate. The most recent poll shows him running third in the Republican primary against former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown — by a margin of 61 percent to 10 percent. No poll has shown him with more than 12 percent of the vote, or doing better than third.
That's a big gap. And it's not obvious that buying a bunch of ads touting Rubens's support for publicly-financed campaigns can close it. Republicans in New Hampshire are more liberal than Republicans in some other states, but it's likely that many of them share the conventional conservative skepticism about public financing of campaigns.
Of course, Lessig doesn't have much choice. His campaign needs broad bipartisan support if it's going to overcome the entrenched interests opposing publicly-financed elections. And Rubens may have been the most promising Republican candidate the Mayday PAC could find.
Also, beating Brown would have symbolic importance for campaign finance reformers. When he was a Senator from Massachusetts in 2010, they lobbied him aggressively to support the DISCLOSE Act. The legislation failed to clear a filibuster by one vote, after Brown decided to vote no along with his Republican colleagues.
On the other hand, the fact that Rubens is such a long shot means that an upset victory would be a huge boost to the Mayday PAC's cause. And New Hampshire allows independent voters to vote in primaries. That could allow Rubens to win even if he can't win over hard-core conservatives. But picking him as the Mayday PAC's first Republican is a big gamble. - Vox, 7/29/14
We shall see. Meanwhile, Brown's comeback bid is looking more and more like a bust:
http://thehill.com/...
The former Massachusetts senator is still the most competitive Republican in the New Hampshire race. But polling has shown Shaheen holding a consistent single-digit lead and posting strong approval ratings from voters in the state even as races in similar blue-leaning battleground states have tightened in the GOP’s favor.
Perhaps most problematic for Brown is not Shaheen’s lead but his persistently middling to low popularity in the state.
In nearly every poll, New Hampshire voters are at best split on how they feel about him, and in some cases view him more negatively than positively. A WMUR-UNH poll out in early July showed him underwater by about nine points; an NBC-Marist poll out last week showed voters split, with about 40 percent each viewing him positively and negatively.
It’s a situation, said one New Hampshire GOP strategist who has worked on federal and national races there, that should have the Brown campaign worried.
“I would be concerned if I was them,” the strategist said, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “You don’t ever want to be underwater at this point in a race.”
Brown’s talent for retail campaigning and personal popularity helped drive him to an unexpected Massachusetts special election win in 2010, and then helped him outrun the top of the Republican ticket in 2012 and bring his contest with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) down to single digits. Even though he lost, Brown was actually more popular than Warren in a number of late surveys.
The strategist said that his everyman appeal is a main part of what “makes him a contender here” in New Hampshire, and that he’ll need to work to regain it.
“He needs to rekindle some of what made people like him so much, that common man theme that made him so popular when he ran the first time. And I think some of the magic is lost,” the strategist said.
Democrats haven’t made the carpetbagger label their primary attack, but they never miss a chance to reference Brown’s tenure in Massachusetts. And that perception hasn’t been helped by times when Brown’s misspoken and appeared to forget he’s no longer in the Bay State.
Jamie Burnett, who was campaign manager for then-Sen. John E. Sununu’s failed 2008 reelection fight with Shaheen, said the early Democratic offense that did highlight his Massachusetts ties seems to have taken a toll on Brown. - The Hill, 7/27/14
And Brown's supporters aren't helping:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/...
A man once touted by Scott Brown’s team as a supporter of his Senate campaign sent a profanity-laced letter to the New Hampshire Democratic office last week, in response to a fundraising email from sent to him by the party.
Charles C. Benzing, a bus driver who had been cited as a Brown supporter in a July 9 press release, addressed the letter to a New Hampshire Democratic Party official who sent the fundraising email. The letter is dated July 16.
In the letter, Benzing uses extremely misogynistic and racist language when referring to Democratic Party leaders Jeanne Shaheen, Gov. Maggie W. Hassan, and Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Ann McLane Kuster:
When contacted by BuzzFeed by phone to confirm that he was the author of the letter, Benzing replied, “The one about them being a bunch of fascists? Yeah, that’s me.” - BuzzFeed, 7/27/14
So Brown's resorting to this:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/...
In the 30-second spot, Brown, who is vying to unseat Democratic US Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, says Americans have to go through security to get on a plane, enter a government building or go to a ball game.
But, “folks who come here illegally,” Brown says over video of a camera making its way through high grass, “they just walk across the border. That’s wrong.”
He says because of the “the pro-amnesty policies of President Obama and Senator Shaheen, we have an immigration crisis on our hands.”
The ad does not specify what those policies are, but in an e-mail to supporters today, Brown campaign manager Colin Reed wrote Shaheen had “...voted for amnesty ...”
Shaheen voted last year for a sweeping immigration reform bill, which would provide a path to citizenship for a large swath of the people in the United States illegally. New Hampshire’s other US senator, Republican Kelly Ayotte, who has endorsed Brown, also voted for that bill, which has subsequently languished in the House of Representatives. - Boston Globe, 7/28/14
And this idiot's lending a hand:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/...
In a move with both 2014 and 2016 implications, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will weigh in Tuesday on the U.S. Senate battle in New Hampshire.
The longtime Republican governor from Texas will team up NHGOP Chair Jennifer Horn on a media conference call to criticize both Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and President Barack Obama over the current border crisis.
The 2012 Republican presidential candidate is seriously considering another bid for the GOP nomination in 2016, and New Hampshire plays a crucial role in presidential politics, as it holds the first primary on the road to the White House.
Last week Perry announced that Texas would send 1,000 National Guard troops to help secure the southern border, where tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America have crossed into the United States this year, a surge that's been described as a humanitarian crisis. Perry made his news just a few days after he met with the President in Texas to discuss the situation at the border. - CNN, 7/29/14
Lets make sure Brown loses to Shaheen in November by donating and getting involved with her campaign:
http://jeanneshaheen.org/