As summer finally arrives in Southern California (here close to the coastal part of the LA Basin, we were socked in with low clouds for seven consecutive weeks), things are heating up on the campaign trail, as well.
With the obligatory horrible journalistic pun out of the way, let's dive right into the weekend edition of the Wrap...
THE U.S. SENATE
AZ-Sen: GOP primary heats up with high-profile opening debate
The start of the debating season for the trio of Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate popped off in a brutal fashion on Friday night in their first debate. Incumbent John McCain ripped J.D. Hayworth as a profligate spender, which he cited as one of the reasons why Hayworth was shown the door by voters in the 5th district back in 2006. Hayworth, for his part, blasted McCain as a conservative of convenience, even wryly suggesting that McCain should be outfitted with two podiums so that "both sides of him" could participate in the gathering. The beneficiary in the debate may well have been little-known teabagger Jim Deakin, who said both were cut from the same Washington cloth, and was largely spared the McCain-Hayworth barbs. Hayworth, in particular, was relentlessly aggressive as he tried to resurrect his flailing campaign, even going so far as to mock McCain for his unsuccessful 2008 run for the Presidency.
CT-Sen: Blumenthal still rolling in Senate race, says Q Poll
As was briefly alluded to in an update to my story yesterday morning about the vacillating candidacy/non-candidacy of former Congressman Rob Simmons, a new Quinnipiac poll might well explain why he is staying on the sidelines. Not only does Simmons get beat fairly badly in a prospective GOP primary (Linda McMahon takes 52% to Simmons' 25%), but he also gets hammered by Democratic nominee Richard Blumenthal in a prospective November matchup. Blumenthal handles the entire GOP field with relative ease, however. He locks down Linda McMahon by seventeen points (54-37), Simmons by twenty points (55-35), and also puts a hurt on unlikely GOP contender Peter Schiff (58-31). The GOP primary, which may or may not contain an active Simmons candidacy, will take place next month.
WI-Sen: Feingold leads in rather strange Wisconsin Poll
Certainly, some pollsters press leaners and undecideds more than others, but there are some polls that get released that almost make you wonder if casting an undecided vote was somehow encouraged (PDF). Such is the case with a new poll out at the close of the week by the UW Badger poll, which had only slightly more than half of the electorate unwilling to declare their favored candidate. Of those willing to get off the fence and pick a side, incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold had a five-point lead over Republican frontrunner Ron Johnson (33-28). The poll surveyed only 500 adults (and 297 likely voters), so the margin of error on this one is a lofty 5.7%. The other GOP candidate in the field, Dave Westlake, was not surveyed.
THE U.S. HOUSE
ID-01: Labrador down double digits in his own internal polling
Crisitunity over at SSP catches a really interesting campaign tactic, which both of us would like to see explained. The campaign of GOP nominee Raul Labrador has released an internal poll, from northwest GOP pollsters Moore Insight, which shows him trailing Democratic incumbent Walt Minnick by ten points (37-27). Perhaps the holding the incumbent under 50% thing is the big deal here, but with so many GOPers releasing internals showing them ahead of incumbents, or tied, I don't see the mileage in letting people know that a Democratic incumbent in a heavily GOP district is still up by ten points.
NH-01: Republican stimulus hypocrisy! (Episode #9492)
This might be my favorite story of the week, and it comes with a tip of that hat to DavidNYC over at the always excellent Swing State Project, who ran this in his Friday morning "daily digest" over at SSP. It seems like GOP Congressional frontrunner Frank Guinta probably needs to give a stern lecture to former Manchester Mayor...Frank Guinta. As a candidate, Guinta has ripped Democratic proposals like the stimulus package and the cap-and-trade bill. As mayor, however, Guinta complained that the Granite State wasn't getting its stimulus cash fast enough, and he signed onto municipal petitions endorsing such green-friendly stuff as the Kyoto protocols.
Better still: in his bluster over the stimulus funds, he raised such a stink that he was mocked by the woman who may very well be the GOP standard-bearer in his state this year. New Hampshire Attorney General (and U.S. Senate frontrunner) Kelly Ayotte dubbed Guinta a "grandstander" in a year-old email released last week.
THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES
AZ-Gov: Has immigration tussle moved Brewer towards safe November?
It'll be interesting to see if another pollster confirms these numbers, but the same Behavior Research Center poll that showed John McCain boat-racing J.D. Hayworth in the GOP Senate primary also had GOP Governor Jan Brewer up twenty points on her likely November challenger, Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard. The one saving grace for Goddard in the poll is the relatively high undecideds: Brewer leads Goddard by a 45-25 margin, with nearly a third of the electorate still unsure of their choice.
CO-Gov: Poll confirms McInnis now circling the drain
The Denver Post, in the wake of the McInnis plagiarism scandal, contracted SurveyUSA to conduct a poll about the electoral health of the GOP gubernatorial frontrunner. The results, as it turned out, were pretty stunning: only 19% of Colorado Republicans believe McInnis would be the "strongest Republican gubernatorial candidate." Not only did a majority of Colorado GOPers pick someone else, McInnis did not come in first place--that honor went to (for the moment) non-candidate Tom Tancredo, who got 29% of the vote. Remember that it was only a month ago that McInnis was the choice of 57% of Colorado Republicans to be their gubernatorial nominee.
GA-Gov: Barnes gets last-minute help from state's best known mayor
While it is a foregone conclusion that Roy Barnes will be leading the Democratic field for Governor during Tuesday's primary election, the big prize for the former Governor would be the avoidance of a runoff election. This could help. Barnes accepted the endorsement of Kasim Reed, who was elected as the Mayor of Atlanta in late 2009.
NV-Gov: Sandoval holds lead, but Reid gains ground, in MD poll
Republican nominee Brian Sandoval still holds a double digit lead over Democratic Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid in the latest Mason-Dixon poll of Nevada, but that lead has slipped ever so slightly. Sandoval holds a 47-36 lead over the Democrat, which is three points closer than a similar M-D poll taken six weeks ago. That Reid is even that close is something of a miracle: his approval ratings are woeful (29/38), while Sandoval's are actually excellent for this deep into a campaign (45/19). This could give Reid a modicum of hope--despite the climate, there is quite clearly a generic Dem lean here if he can keep Sandoval under 50% with a thirty-seven point difference in their net favorabilities.
OH-Gov: Kasich new ad a noisy attempt to rewrite history
This is good stuff for a weekend: the campaign of Republican gubernatorial nominee John Kasich has launched an ad which attempts to put to rest Kasich's past business affairs as a Wall Street executive. Besides some acoustical issues (why, for the love of all things, is he yelling at us?), there is another small problem for Kasich. The Ohio Democratic Party evidently anticipated this shot, because they skewered it in a devastating web ad which they put on YouTube over one month ago:
TX-Gov: Perry resolves 2006 ethical lapse, in midst of 2010 lapse
While the Democratic Party is still considering a civil suit over the curious funding apparatus for the petition drive of the Green Party (which almost certainly included the participation of Republicans close to Governor Rick Perry), the Perry campaign settled a lawsuit from his last gubernatorial campaign. Team Perry settled with 2006 Democratic opponent Chris Bell, paying him nearly half a million dollars to settle a lawsuit in which Bell alleged that Perry's campaign deliberately concealed the identity of a million-dollar contribution. At the time, Perry was gaining political yardage by claiming Bell had accepted a seven-figure contribution from a wealthy donor. Perry, as it turned out, had done the exact same thing via well-known GOP donor Bob Perry (no relation). Democrats argued that Perry had run the donation through the Republican Governors Association to conceal its singular source.
WI-Gov: Badger Gov poll more bizarre than Senate poll--GOP leads (?)
The UW Badger poll didn't just poll the Senate race--they also elected to poll the gubernatorial election. They probably shouldn't have bothered--the results were so bizarre that they are only presented here for informational purposes. The poll had either Republican candidate (Scott Walker or Mark Neumann) leading Democrat Tom Barrett by seventeen points. If the margin strikes you as a bit off, the raw numbers will only magnify that feeling--the UW nums say that the GOPers each draw 32%, to 15% for Barrett. Also, as DavidNYC over at Swing State project notes, the poll was in the field for...wait for it...31 days. From JUNE 9th to July 10th.
THE RAS-A-POLL-OOZA
Even the House of Ras cannot disguise the unmitigated disaster that the McInnis campaign in Colorado has become, apparently. They also see movement in the Washington Senate race and the Wisconsin gubernatorial race. Dems will like the vector that one of those races is heading in, at least.
CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 45%, Scott McInnis (R) 43%
CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 46%, Dan Maes (R) 43%
DE-Sen: Christine O'Donnell (R) 41%, Chris Coons (D) 39%**
PA-Gov: Tom Corbett (R) 48%, Dan Onorato (D) 38%
WA-Sen: Dino Rossi (R) 48%, Sen. Patty Murray (D) 45%
WA-Sen: Clint Didier (R) 48%, Sen. Patty Murray (D) 45%
WA-Sen: Sen. Patty Murray (D) 46%, Paul Akers (R) 41%
WI-Gov: Scott Walker (R) 48%, Tom Barrett (D) 44%
WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 45%, Scott Walker Mark Neumann (R) 43%***
(**)--Inadvertently omitted from the Thursday edition of the Wrap
(***)--Inadvertently mislabelled because I can't read my own handwriting. Why is there no single asterisk (*)? Because, evidently, I can't count, either.