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• MA-Sen: This strikes me as a major unforced error by Scott Brown:
"Let Scott Brown tell me to my face that I am nothing but a paid actor, and I'll set him straight on what it was like to watch my father suffocate to death," English said.
What's this all about? Well, this:
U.S. Sen. Scott Brown suggested Wednesday that his Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren used actors in her advertisements defending the legal work she did on asbestos-related lawsuits.
But three of the people in the advertisements have said that's not the case.
That first quote comes from one of the people Brown slurred, and that's really, really not the kind of thing you want hounding you as you trail in the polls with less than three weeks before election day. That's why Brown issued a hasty apology on Wednesday night, but really, who put this bug in his ear in the first place? Was it an incompetent staff who didn't realize they were playing with fire? Or did Brown drink his own kool-aid and conclude that everything Warren does is somehow phony? And I have to wonder how much damage Brown just did to himself. I mean, this stuff is heart-breaking:
"Sam and I were childhood sweethearts and we had been together since I was 15 years old," Jackson said. "I came forward in this campaign because Massachusetts voters need to know the truth about what Elizabeth Warren did to help families like mine who were affected by asbestos poisoning, rather than Sen. Brown's misleading attacks."
You can view the ads
here and
here. I'm dumbfounded that anyone watching these could conclude the people in the ads were actors. But given how devastating these spots are, I can certainly see why Scott Brown wished they were.
Senate:
• AZ-Sen: The NRSC is diving even deeper into Arizona with another $570K to help Jeff Flake stave off Democrat Rich Carmona. I really hope they keep using this voiceover artists for other ads, because he sounds over-the-top to the point of insincerity. And the topic... well, conservatives love to obsess over earmarks, but does the GOP really have polling telling them this is a winning issue with normal voters? Or are they just forced to go with this issue because Flake's made it a signature of his? (Though even he's been proven a phony on earmarks, too.)
• CT-Sen (UConn): Chris Murphy (D): 44 (37), Linda McMahon (R): 38 (33); Obama 51-37 (53-32). UConn's last poll a month ago was really weird—as you can see from the trendlines, it had far too many undecideds in the Senate race. On the flipside, Obama's margin back then was the highest seen all cycle in Connecticut. Now he's fallen back down to earth. On the Senate front, though, the good news is that McMahon is trying to "unskew" the results, claiming: "Clearly, this poll oversampled Democrats and severely undersampled Independents." Mmhmm.
There's also PPP (for LCV): Murphy 48 (48), McMahon 44 (42); Obama 53-44 (54-41).
• HI-Sen: Republican Linda Lingle has put out the thinnest of polling memos, but even she acknowledges she's behind. Voter/Consumer Research supposedly has her back "just" 47-43 from Democrat Mazie Hirono, who derided the release as "just an incomplete paragraph that raises more questions than it answers."
• MO-Sen: Buttressing a Claire McCaskill internal from the other day that had her up 14, the DSCC's pushing an internal from Harstad Research that also has her beating Republican Todd Akin, 47-35. In this case, Harstad included Libertarian candidate Jonathan Dine, who takes a high—but perhaps plausible—8 percent. (As Jeff Smith argued, Dine seems like a plausible outlet for right-leaning voters who can't stomach the thought of casting a ballot for Akin.) In a two-way contest, the incumbent still leads big, 50-40. No presidential numbers are included.
On a separate note, it's not the first time we've seen a talking political mailer (one popped up in the MO-01 Democratic primary, of all places), but this one is pretty awesome because it features clips of Todd Akin's greatest hits—including, of course, his legendary "legitimate rape" remark. You can actually watch (and hear) the mailer being opened at the link. American Bridge is behind it, spending $37K on distribution.
Lastly, Akin finally released his third quarter fundraising numbers: $1.6 mil raised, $553K cash-on-hand. That's well behind McCaskill's $5.8 mil / $2.1 mil numbers.
• NE-Sen: Hmm. Democrat Bob Kerrey is out with one of those "not dead yet" internal polls, showing Republican Deb Fischer beating him by "only" a 50-45, according to Hickman Analytics. There's been very little polling of Nebraska in general—indeed, the only recent survey came a month ago from Wiese Research for the Omaha World-Herald, finding Fischer ahead 56-40. The one thing that makes Kerrey's poll believable is that he says Romney is up 14 points (no exact toplines provided), which is the same presidential margin Wiese saw as well (53-39). I'm still finding it hard to imagine that Kerrey has a path to victory—after all, Fischer's at 50 and he's down five in his own poll. But I'll be extremely curious to see how the GOP responds.
• NV-Sen: There were three, count 'em, three polls in Nevada on Thursday, so let's work our way from bad news to good news. The worst news comes from Rasmussen, who find appointed GOP incumbent Dean Heller leading Dem Shelley Berkley 50-43, a bit wider than his 48-45 spread a couple weeks ago. Not much better is the poll from SurveyUSA on behalf of what Jon Ralston likes to call a "newspaper," complete with scare-quotes (aka the Las Vegas Review-Journal); they see a 46-40 lead for Heller. On the other hand, that's improved from their poll two weeks ago (which was 47-39), and the crosstabs should also give you some hope, because Heller's six-point lead is predicated on him pulling a 48-40 lead among Hispanics (and that ain't gonna happen).
Finally, there's a poll from the Mellman Group on behalf of the Berkley campaign; they give Berkley a 41-38 lead (with 5 for the Independent American Party candidate, who, as with the Libertarian in the MT-Sen race, seems to be the difference-maker here). That's barely changed from last week's poll, which had it at 42-39 for Berkley. I always cast a jaundiced eye toward internals, but, as Ralston is fond of pointing out, Mellman nailed 2010's race in their work for Harry Reid, while Rasmussen and SurveyUSA don't have strong Nevada track records. (David Jarman)
• OH-Sen (SurveyUSA): Sherrod Brown (D-inc): 43 (42), Josh Mandel (R): 38 (38); Obama 45-42 (45-44)
• VA-Sen (PPP for LCV): Tim Kaine (D): 50 (51), George Allen (R): 45 (44); Obama 49-48 (50-47). I think Sam Stein summed it up best:
PPP has Obama 49-48 in VA. this was pre-debate and pre rumors that obama is conceding the state, which will, of course, have to happen now
— @samsteinhp via TweetDeck
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• NH-Gov (Rasmussen): Maggie Hassan (D): 46 (48), Ovide Lamontagne (R): 48 (46).
• WA-Gov: "Unprecedented" gets thrown around a lot in the world of political hyperbole, but this may, in fact, be genuinely unprecedented: a major newspaper running its own ads in its own pages backing a political candidate. It's the Seattle Times, and they're calling their support (which started with a full-page ad on page B6 of the Wednesday edition) of Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna an "independent expenditure" worth $75K.
On one level, the paper's involvement on McKenna's behalf should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the Times, owned by the estate-tax-obsessed Blethen family. The Times has already endorsed McKenna on its editorial page (after previously endorsing Dino Rossi in the last two elections, and generally fetishizing all things moderate Republican for many decades) and has run subtly slanted news stories on the gubernatorial race as well. (Nor should it be surprising that the socially liberal Times is also running $75K worth of ads supporting the state's same-sex marriage referendum to try to balance the scales, although they're calling that ad blitz an "in-kind contribution" rather than an IE.)
What is surprising is that they would make their support of McKenna so transparent within the local news hole, in a way that seems to threaten whatever credibility the paper's newsroom has. The Times is referring to this as an experiment, however, designed to show the value of political advertising in newspapers—although there doesn't seem to be any sort of control group or anything that would seek to measure the effectiveness of such advertising:
"There is absolutely no interface between our news coverage and this effort: We realize some people may question the approach, but we hope they will give us the benefit of the doubt as we try an innovative approach to new revenue and, at the same time, raise awareness of the credibility and effectiveness of newspaper advertising for political campaigns," Jill Mackie, the Times' vice president for public affairs, said in an e-mail.
It certainly seems like any added revenue from more political ads in the future would be more than offset by the damage this will do to their corporate brand... but maybe they decided their brand is already so inextricably linked with Northwest-style Republicanism that they figured that outing themselves wouldn't have any measurable bad consequences.
In other news from the Washington gubernatorial race, there's one more poll out giving Democrat Jay Inslee a solid lead; it's from Public Policy Polling, on behalf of Washington Conservation Voters. They find Inslee leading McKenna 48-42. The unusual number that's part of this poll is that Barack Obama is leading by only 5 in this poll, the closest any poll has seen the presidential race this cycle. The good news is that the gubernatorial race doesn't seem to be experiencing any downdraft; even half a year ago, when the gubernatorial race was looking very rough, who would have thought that at one point Inslee would be overperforming Obama?
A second poll of the contest—from the University of Washington on behalf of KCTS, who were the pollsters who came the closest on 2010's WA-Sen race—shows a slightly smaller margin (although a more normal-looking presidential topline). They find Inslee leading McKenna 48-45. (McKenna led their previous poll 44-38, but that poll was a full year ago.) They also find Barack Obama leading 52-41 and Maria Cantwell crushing the Senate race over Michael Baumgartner 58-35. In addition, the state's pro-same-sex marriage referendum is winning 56-36, while marijuana legalization is also on track to win 51-40. (David Jarman)
House:
• CA-44: I'm a little curious as to why Janice Hahn decided to release this late September internal from FM3. I mean, I thought it was over after she won June's top-two primary 60-40 over fellow Dem Rep. Laura Richardson. And I thought it was really over when we learned the other day that Richardson had raised just $7,000 (no missing zeroes) in the entire third quarter. But Hahn's "only" up 43-27, with a sizable 30 percent undecided, which strikes me as less dominant than I'd have expected. Still, Richardson's clearly given up, so I don't think it matters much.
• FL-09: Okay, so the extremely well-finance Alan Grayson has a 56-41 lead over his penniless Republican opponent, Todd Long, in his new internal poll. Fine. But he really paid sketchball "pollster" Gravis Marketing to conduct it? On their website, Gravis tries hard to pretend like they aren't partisan, with vague client "testimonials" that avoid naming any actual campaigns or citing any political parties. But if you check out who they've worked for this cycle, you'll see that they are, in fact, a telemarketing firm, not a polling outfit, and that they've almost entirely served Republicans—including Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum!
That really tells you all you need to know, but there's still one more thing worth pointing out. Prior to 2012, "Gravis Marketing" comes up only once on Political MoneyLine's payee search. Who was their client? The oddly named "JTK for Congress"—or, if you Google a bit, Joseph Krysztoforski, a bizarre Some Dude conservative perennial candidate with a website to match. It really says a lot about Grayson that he'd hire a firm like this—and given how dodgy Gravis's polls have been this cycle, I can't say I trust the numbers one bit.
• FL-10: One advantage "non-partisan" analysts have over folks like us is that they get to see all kinds of private internal polling no one ever wants to share with a bunch of dirty hippies. Sometimes they adjust race ratings based on this data, which in turn make us strivers scratch our heads because, well, why? But on other occasions, they share some scraps from the table. Of course, that means relying on someone else's interpretation of something you'll never get to look at yourself, so skepticism is always in order.
But anyhow, I say all this as a preface to a line in Stuart Rothenberg's latest column, in which he says of Florida's 10th Congressional District that "there are now so many GOP surveys showing Rep. Daniel Webster in pretty good shape" that he doesn't really think an upset by Democrat Val Demings is possible. I'd like to know why none of these polls have seen the light of day, though, since they'd probably quash Dem hopes if the numbers are as Rothenberg describes. Be that as it may, though, this certainly isn't very optimistic news for Team Blue.
• FL-22: One poll that came out on Wednesday of Florida's 22nd Congressional District had Democrat Lois Frankel up 10, another just 3. On Thursday, a third poll, for Sunshine State News from Voter Survey Service—aka Republican-affiliated pollster Susquehanna—managed to find the race tied at 47 apiece between Frankel and Adam Hasner. But the badly-formatted crosstabs are more revealing: They put Obama up just 51-48 over Mitt Romney, an almost impossible-to-believe figure in a district that went 57-43 in 2008.
• IL-08: A million here, a million there... and now I'm getting concerned. At first, I thought it was possible to laugh off Now or Never PAC's expenditures targeting Democrat Tammy Duckworth as a useless waste of money. But even in a heavily Dem district, and with an opponent like loudmouth GOP Rep. Joe Walsh, $2 million is a lot—and now the group says they plan to pour in another $2.5 million. Sheesh. They probably chose their words poorly, though, when they said they plan to "bury Duckworth." She fired back: "I wasn't buried in Iraq, and I won't be buried by Joe Walsh's Out-Of-State Right Wing Super PAC."
• MT-AL: Writing in the Missoula Independent, reporter Matthew Frank has an in-depth profile of a candidate a lot of folks don't know much about, running in a race that's largely flown under the radar: Democratic state Sen. Kim Gillan, who is seeking Montana's open at-large House seat. Political history fans probably know that the first woman elected to Congress was Jeannette Rankin—in Montana—all the way back in 1916. Since Rankin, no other woman has served Montana in D.C., but Gillan is hoping to be the next.
• NY-01: I'd have a much easier time believing Randy Altschuler's poll numbers if his presidential toplines weren't so whack. So yeah, he's leading Dem Rep. Tim Bishop in this poll from McLaughlin & Associates by a 48-43 spread, but Mitt Romney's beating Barack Obama 54-42? How is that even possible? Sure, Obama's fortunes have headed south lately, but do you really think a district he won by 3 points in 2008 has now sailed 12 points against him? That would be an epic collapse. The House head-to-heads also wildly contradict Siena's independent poll from a month ago, which were right in line with Bishop's own numbers (52-39 for the Democrat).
Now, there was a sketchy poll for a pro-Altschuler super PAC the other day that also had him ahead (49-46), so I'd like to see some fresh polling from a more reliable source. But I'm not going to get worked up about this one.
• SD-AL: Hah, man, I love this new ad from Democrat Matt Varilek. His Republican opponent, freshman Rep. Kristi Noem, has been under fire for a long time for her terrible attendance record at meetings of the House ag committee—an assignment she specially sought. It turns out she's had a poor record of showing up for other meetings as well, and there's awesome footage of GOP Rep. Don Young berating her for playing on her smartphone at a session of the Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs. About halfway through the spot:
Chairman Young: Ms. Noem? Hello! Get of that machine, it'll drive you nuts! Abba jabba d'jabba
That last bit was a... challenge to transcribe. But I swear those sounds come out of his mouth! Such scorn, and from a member of her own party, inside the halls of Congress.
• TX-14: One of the more stunning sets of numbers in our quarterly fundraising roundup was GOP state Rep. Randy Weber's cash-on-hand total in Texas's open 14th District. Even though this is a conservative district that Republicans are favored to hold, Weber was outraised by ex-Rep. Nick Lampson $417K to $375K—and more remarkably, Lampson is absolutely killing him in terms of money in the bank, $422K to just $55K. That's a pitiful sum.
On top of that, Weber accepted $20,000 in contributions from seven donors who exceeded the $2,500/person federal donation limit. Weber's "explanation" is that his campaign "sent out reattribution letters so that contributions could be attributed to spouses or returned if necessary" and says he has 60 days to correct the problems. But are you getting that? Weber's copping to taking more money than he's permitted—and says he'll "fix" the problem after the election! And yet even with this chicanery, he's still badly in the hole.
The real question is, though, does Lampson have a chance? Thanks to Weber's incompetence, he just might. We've gotten our hands on a dusty Lampson internal from mid-August, but it's still instructive. In Anzalone Liszt's poll, Weber was leading 46-43. Now, that was down from a 44-40 Lampson edge in May (a poll we had in fact previously seen), but the timing's important: Weber had just won his party's runoff and had been spending heavily on paid media. Lampson had done none, since he already had the Democratic nomination in hand. I'd love to see more recent polling, but a heartening sign (as we recently mentioned) is that the House Majority PAC has started advertising here, so this race could yet surprise.
• Reshuffling Roundup:
•
CA-03: It sounds like the DCCC is close to declaring victory here: They're cancelling a $315K ad reservation that had been made on behalf of Rep. John Garamendi, and it sounds like it's the only airtime they'd booked. A while back, a string of unanswered polls showed Garamendi with comfortable leads over Republican Kim Vann, prompting us to move the race to Likely R. Evidently, the GOP just hasn't been able to get any traction here since.
• PA-12: While last week's DCCC cancellations in the Pittsburgh media market reflected, at the time, a loss of any hope that Larry Maggi might stage an upset in PA-18, the move also left Democrats with less airtime reserved than Republicans in the adjacent (and still hotly competitive) PA-12. PoliticsPA, relying on a Roll Call report we cited in the previous Digest, observes that the D-Trip's new $210K reservation in the district's other major market, Johnstown, has brought Dems back into near-parity.
• RI-01: Was Dem Rep. David Cicilline's decision to apologize months ago for his failure to be forthright about the shape of Providence's finances when he was mayor going to turn out to be the wisest move of the cycle for incumbents dogged by the "embattled" label? It just might. Republican Brendan Doherty has reportedly cut his ad buys for the stretch run from $326K to $202K, not a move made out of strength. Of course, Cicilline's also aided by running a deep blue district that actually got made even bluer in redistricting, and that's an enormously important factor, if not the most important.
• TN-04: Well whaddya know. The DCCC must clearly sense a late-breaking opportunity, because they've gone ahead and added state Sen. Eric Stewart to their Red to Blue list—and I'm not talking "Emerging Races," I'm talking full-blown R2B. Could a television buy targeting GOP Rep. Scott DesJarlais be next? Obviously the ad writes itself.
Other Races:
• MD Ballot, MN Ballot: Two new polls in two states where gay marriage measures are on the ballot next month both bring good news for supporters of marriage equality. In Maryland, a new Washington Post poll finds voters planning to uphold the state's new law allowing same-sex couples to marry by a 52-43 margin. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is declining. Voters now favor it by just a 47-46 margin, down from 50-43 last month, according to SurveyUSA.
Grab Bag:
• Fundraising: Want to know which challengers outraised incumbents in competitive races in the third quarter? And which (a much smaller group) actually has more cash-on-hand? Jeffmd's compiled some charts detailing exactly who falls into this elite club.
• House: In case you missed it, Daily Kos Elections Featured Writer dreaminonempty has put together a model based on the previous 40 House elections that shows that Democrats should increase the number of seats they win by about four for every one-point increase in the popular House vote margin. The model can also predict the number of seats Democrats would win this year if it were a typical year; redistricting gives us a disadvantage that adjusts this prediction downward. Click through for dreamin's complete discussion of this fascinating model.
