Doug Owens is a little tall for a Stormtrooper
:
• UT-04: Democrat Doug Owens ran one of the most unexpected races of 2014. When Rep. Jim Matheson declined to seek re-election last cycle, many Democrats concluded he felt the winds of change a-blowin' against him and didn't want to tarnish his remarkable career with a loss, lest he decide to run for statewide office some day. That made sense, given his incredibly narrow escape in 2012 against Republican Mia Love, who was seeking a rematch. And with an open seat last year, just about everyone expected Love to cruise, even though she'd run a poor campaign her first time out and underperformed expectations (which were that she'd win easily).
But Owens, the son of former Rep. Wayne Owens, decided to run anyway, and he shocked quite a few people when he lost by just a 5-point margin, despite the huge GOP wave and despite the extremely Republican tilt of Utah's 4th District (it went for Mitt Romney by a 67-30 margin). What could have accounted for such a close result? It's very possible Love didn't learn any lessons from her previous race—indeed, she continued to rely on scammy direct-mail fundraising, which costs almost as much money as it brings in, and is generally only used by naïve candidates. There's also the possibility that unspoken racism (Love is black) held her back.
Whatever the reason, Owens very nearly pulled off an impossible upset in an impossible year, so perhaps it's not so surprising that he just announced that he'll try once again. But does he have a prayer?
Well, there's presidential turnout, of course, but will that actually help him? On the one hand, the electorate will be more Democratic. But on the other, it may also be less racist than it was last year—that is to say, of the folks who stayed home in 2014, proportionally more Republicans who are unconcerned with Love's race may turn out at the polls this time than Democrats. If this theory about Love's weak support is correct, then she may be one of very few Republicans to actually benefit from more voters showing up at the polls.
One other thing to consider is that Romney, as a Mormon and favorite son, did far better than John McCain in Utah. Under the current district lines, McCain would have only prevailed by 56-41 margin in the 4th: still very red, but not insurmountably so given the right conditions. Moreover, Barack Obama's 2008 performance in Utah (he lost 62-34) was the best take there by a Democrat in some time. Was it one-time excitement over hope-and-change, or is there any chance that Utah has trended just a bit bluer—a trend temporarily obscured by Romney's special status? Doug Owens is about to find out.
Senate:
• AZ-Sen: If you've never read this extraordinary 2008 profile of John McCain by Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson, you owe it to yourself. It's a long but fascinating article that charts McCain's life from his early days at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis through his campaign for president, and it paints a truly disturbing picture. Despite McCain's attempt to reinvent himself as a supposedly straight-talking "maverick," he's always been a loutish playboy with an ugly temper who's never been shy about using nepotism to advance his career.
In particular, it exposes a hard truth about McCain's wartime service that has been all too readily swept aside: He never should have been flying combat missions in Vietnam in the first place. McCain was a terrible pilot who graduated 894th out of 899 in his class, and he'd already crashed not one but two Navy planes before shipping out. He'd also sparked an international incident when, by his own admission, his "daredevil clowning" just "feet off the ground" caused his aircraft to slice through power lines in Spain and led to a blackout. One McCain classmate, Phil Butler, told Dickinson, "In the Navy, if you crashed one airplane, nine times out of 10 you would lose your wings." But McCain, whose father and grandfather were both famous admirals, was untouchable—"He was directly related to the CEO," said Butler.
Throughout, McCain comes off as a raving asshole who was lucky to escape greater scrutiny in the Keating Five scandal yet has never hesitated to use the power of his office to benefit influential donors. Dickinson's piece is too rich in detail to summarize, but it's a brutal, far-ranging indictment of the man, and it's must-read for anyone who wants to know the real John McCain as he gears up to run for a sixth term in the Senate.
• FL-Sen: Former state Attorney General Bill McCollum keeps toying with a Senate bid, and now he says he won't decide until September. It doesn't sound like he's laying much groundwork (Adam Smith says he's been "too busy lately with his legal work") but rather would consider a late entry if no one in the GOP field catches fire. He's led in several hypothetical polls of the Republican primary, but you can chalk that up to residual name recognition from his previous statewide campaigns.
House:
• CA-17: Blargh. Democratic Rep. Mike Honda, who faces a second consecutive challenge from right-of-center Democrat Ro Khanna, may also wind up facing an ethics investigation. The independent Office of Congressional Ethics has referred a case to the House Ethics Committee alleging that Honda's congressional staff improperly performed campaign duties. The House committee will decide whether to launch a formal inquiry by Sept. 3, but regardless of what happens, this is definitely not the kind of headache Honda needs.
• CT-04: Republican state Rep. John Shaban has filed to run for Congress again, though he hasn't yet made any kind of announcement. Shaban briefly ran in the GOP primary last year but dropped out after concluding he wasn't going to beat former state Sen. Dan Debicella, who in turn lost a rematch to Democratic Rep. Jim Himes. Seeing as Himes beat Debicella in both the 2010 and 2014 Republican waves, it's hard to imagine Shaban having any better luck this time. (Hat-tip: Politics1)
• FL-13: Manuel Sykes, a local pastor who was bullied out of the Democratic primary last year by a racially obnoxious local party chair, says he's considering another bid for Florida's 13th Congressional District, which of course may change a fair bit thanks to some court-ordered redistricting. However, after last year's ugliness, Sykes switched to the GOP, though he says he realizes that running as a Republican or independent would be very difficult, especially after the district gets revamped. So it's possible he could return to the Democratic fold, but that might harm his image with voters—and in any event, he'd face a very difficult battle against ex-Gov. Charlie Crist, who sounds all but certain to run here.
• IL-12: Democrats would very much like to reclaim downstate Illinois' 12th District from freshman GOP Rep. Mike Bost, but the DCCC apparently isn't quite satisfied with the main option running so far, labor lawyer C.J. Baricevic. We say this because St. Clair County Sheriff Rick Watson is openly considering a bid, and he's headed to Washington to discuss his plans with the D-Trip. But he sounds like a tough recruit to land. Says Watson: "I love what I'm doing. I don't know how they're going to drag me away from here."
There are still some other potential candidates out there, including state Reps. Jerry Costello II and Jay Hoffman, as well as St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly, but we haven't heard any public expressions of interest from any of them in the many months since the Great Mentioner first put forth their names.
• NH-01: After his feeble $114,000 second-quarter fundraising haul, is GOP Rep. Frank Guinta shying away from a re-election bid? Here, we'll let you decide:
"For me, nothing has changed," he said. "I remain focused on my job. Any announcement on that would come next year, but nothing has changed."
Since Guinta's own chief of staff said his boss "will run for re-election"
back in May, right after Guinta's
fundraising scandal exploded like a chest-burster from
Alien, this sure does sound like a climb-down. Let's see if he has the guts to stick this one out.
Other Races:
• VA State Senate: This fall, both parties will be working hard to take control of the Virginia state Senate. The GOP holds a bare 21-19 majority and Team Blue only needs to net one seat to take control because Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam would break ties for the Democrats. Both sides have plenty of targets, and Jeff Singer takes a look at how the key races are shaping up in a new post.
Grab Bag:
• FL Redistricting:
The GOP legislature will hold a special session next month to draw new congressional districts, and the Florida Supreme Court must approve them by mid-September. In a new post, Stephen Wolf creates interactive maps visualizing what the new boundaries might look like, complete with Obama and Romney's performance in each hypothetical seat.
We've included a closeup of some possible Central Florida seats above. Right now, African Americans are packed into FL-05 to help strengthen Republicans John Mica and Daniel Webster. But the court called the legislature out on this and we're likely to see either Mica or Webster become a lot more vulnerable soon. See Wolf's post for a whole lot more.
P.S. The state legislature is accepting submissions for new maps from the public. Click here to find out how to submit your own ideas.
• Netroots: With the ninth Netroots Nation conference having come and gone this past weekend, ThinkProgress's Josh Israel has a good piece taking stock of how the netroots at large has evolved over the past decade and where it stands now. While the vibrant, state-level blogosphere many of us once knew and loved is a shadow of its former self, the netroots—both the people who pioneered it and its very ethos—has penetrated the Democratic Party in some very real ways.
My own take is that the idea behind the netroots was never to create some kind of power base for its own sake. Rather, our goal—long before anyone ever even coined the term "netroots," and before the term "progressive" was widely used—was to pull the Democratic Party in a more progressive direction, even if that wasn't the phrasing we used at the time. Online tools, starting with blogs, simply gave us an ability to be heard and to influence people and events that we'd previously been lacking.
So if the "netroots" seems less distinct than it once was, I think that's because of two parallel trends: First off, the Democratic Party has become a lot more progressive, and secondly, now everyone uses the online tools that we once pioneered. I'm not saying the netroots can or should take sole credit for these developments (that would be silly), but let me put it this way: If you went back a decade, you'd describe the netroots as a collection of digitally savvy progressives using those digital tools to make a difference, particularly by electing, as Israel reminds us, "more and better Democrats."
Nowadays, the idea of a "collection of digitally savvy progressives" basically applies to the Democratic Party as a whole: Data analytics and online organizing have both become cornerstones of how we operate, and on a national level, Hillary Clinton is running an avowedly progressive campaign. So I'd say the Democrats have become the netroots. We were just proverbial early adopters. (David Nir)
• WATN?: Well, this is certainly surprising. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who went to prison on corruption charges after the state legislature successfully impeached him and removed him from office in 2009, just succeeded in getting five of his 18 convictions overturned by a federal appellate court. The judges ordered a retrial on those specific counts, related to Blago's attempts to "sell" an appointment to the Senate seat Barack Obama vacated after winning the presidency, and if he's found not guilty or if prosecutors elect not to retry him, he could see his 14-year sentence reduced.
The appeals court concluded that the judge who presided over the original trial erred in its instructions to jurors, for very specific reason. Had Blago merely sought a position in Obama's cabinet in exchange for the Senate appointment, rather than some sort of private emolument (like a private-sector job), that would have been kosher. Said the judges: "[A] proposal to trade one public act for another, a form of logrolling, is fundamentally unlike the swap of an official act for a private payment."
And so, the panel decided, because the instructions were such that they couldn't be sure whether "the jury found that Blagojevich offered to trade the appointment for a private salary" as opposed to a public act, they vacated those five charges related to this issue. Put this way, it sounds almost harmless—normal, even: "I'll trade you this appointment for that appointment." But there are plenty of supposedly public-for-public transactions that would appall any judge. In any event, this isn't much of a victory for Blago, who contested every single count he was convicted of, and he may not even wind up with a shorter sentence in the end.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, and Daniel Donner.
