llinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford (R) “ordered a taxpayer-funded investigation, vowing it would clear him of sexual harassment charges. Now, in a monumental about-face, Rutherford won’t release the results,” the Chicago Sun Times reports.
“The office’s decision could mean the issue will continue to dog Rutherford for the remainder of his bid for the GOP gubernatorial primary nod.”
“Now that President Barack Obama has run his last race, veterans of all levels of his political team have found new green pastures in Texas, working as strategists, fund-raisers, pollsters and data wizards for Wendy Davis and the long-term effort to make the state competitive,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
“The Davis campaign for governor and Battleground Texas, a group of former Obama political organizers assisting her, have spent more than $1.5 million on operatives and vendors who were part of Obama’s national re-election effort… More than half the expenditures listed on the Wendy Davis for Governor report alone have gone to members of the president’s 2012 political team. The services include such areas as fundraising, Web advertising, legal services and campaign buttons.”
“Six Senate Republicans switched from ‘nay’ to ‘aye’ on the critical vote allowing the nation’s debt limit to be extended, a copy of the official Senate vote tally sheet provided to Roll Call suggests.
“The tally sheet is the only record of which senators may have switched their votes because the Senate clerk — in a break with tradition — didn’t name names during the nearly hourlong vote. Capitol Hill reporters are protesting that change, still within the rules, as lacking transparency.”
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“India’s normally disruptive parliament was widely derided on Friday as having hit a new low after lawmakers fought, broke equipment and pepper-sprayed the chamber over a bill to create a new state,” AFP reports.
“India’s media condemned the lawmakers’ behaviour as ‘revolting’ and a ‘disgrace to democracy’ after mayhem erupted on Thursday over the bill to carve a new state out of existing Andhra Pradesh.”
“I think he’s a real good retail politician and I think he handles town hall meetings really well. Wouldn’t hurt to be a little more humble. Iowans really like their leaders to be hard-working and humble.”
— Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R), quoted by the Los Angeles Times, about Gov. Chris Christie (R).
“A traffic jam deliberately orchestrated by members of Gov. Chris Christie’s staff that caused days of gridlock in northern New Jersey appeared not to lead to anyone’s death or seriously compromise their medical care,” according to a comprehensive review by the Associated Press.
“A growing group of Ted Cruz’s Republican Senate colleagues are infuriated with his tactics,” Bloomberg reports.
“So frustrated was Arizona Senator John McCain with the latest, forcing fellow Republicans to take a politically risky vote on lifting the debt ceiling, that yesterday he tweeted a Wall Street Journal editorial accusing the Texas lawmaker of instigating ‘needless drama that helps to explain why Republicans remain a minority.'”
“Yet there’s not much McCain, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or other Republicans can do to change Cruz’s behavior… In decades past, leaders could rein in such behavior by threatening to take away coveted committee assignments, withdrawing financial support, or shunning lawmakers. None of those tactics are effective in a political era in which campaign cash flows freely from outside the party machinery and cable outlets offer many ways to grab attention and influence.”
Two years ago, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “took to the Senate floor to deride President Obama for a speech that called for developing biofuel from algae — dismissing it as nothing more than a pipe dream,” the Louisville Courier-Journal reports.
Said McConnell: “I think the American people realize that a president who’s out there talking about algae when they’re having to choose between whether to buy groceries or to fill up the tank is the one who’s out of touch.”
“But a few years earlier, McConnell himself worked to obtain a $30 million grant for a company that wanted to build a plant in Springfield, Ky., to turn algae, switchgrass, corn cobs and other such materials into ethanol — a plant that ultimately was never built and a grant that was never spent.”
Wonk Wire looks at the fascinating trend in the states over the last two decades.
Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, announced that he won’t seek reelection in 2014, the Washington Post reports.
“Hastings joined Congress after winning in the GOP wave election in 1994… His seat is considered likely to remain in GOP hands. It went 60-38 for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.”
Hastings is the 18th member of Congress to announce retirement this term, according to Roll Call.
Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report joins us on the Political Wire podcast to discuss the national political landscape and look at the all-important battle for control of the U.S. Senate.
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Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (R) took the stand in his own defense “against allegations that he illegally coordinated with an outside group to attack his opponent in ads during his 2010 campaign for office, repeatedly saying he ‘absolutely’ did not break the law,” the Arizona Republic reports.
“Horne and Kathleen Winn, who ran Business Leaders for Arizona, are accused of illegally coordinating on funding and creating negative ads targeting Democratic challenger Felecia Rotellini.”
“You may want to just wear logos if you’re running for president: ‘sponsored by so-and-so.’ I mean it’s going to get to be like NASCAR where everybody should put logos on your suit.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by National Journal, on the impact of super PACs on elections.
Jon Stewart looks at President Obama’s recent nominations for ambassadorships.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) “may have scuttled a compromise on immigration reform with just one sound bite,” the San Antonio Express-News reports.
“House Republicans who supported ‘principles’ of immigration reform floated by Speaker John Boehner late last month grumbled Tuesday that the plan was dead on arrival because Cruz blasted it as ‘amnesty,’ spurring a blizzard of negative phone calls to House Republicans.”
Said one GOP lawmaker: “After that it was ‘We’ll get back to you on immigration reform'”
Elizabeth Drew: “During the 1973 Watergate hearings, Howard Baker, the Republican Senate leader and a close ally of the Nixon White House, asked repeatedly, ‘What did the president know and when did he know it?’ This was and continues to be widely seen as the definitive way to establish a political leader’s innocence or guilt of misdeeds within his administration. And so the question is now being echoed in the case of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, in particular on television–it has even led a national network news broadcast. This is a big break for Christie.”
“Christie himself has helped set up this question–leading reporters on a merry chase to pin down precisely what he knew when about the infamous closing of two of the three traffic lanes leading into the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, New Jersey for four days last September… But this isn’t really the issue. The issue is whether the governor can be held accountable for what happened at very high levels in his administration.”
The New Republic: “Has there ever been a political reversal of fortune as rapid and as absolute as the one just experienced by Chris Christie? At warp speed, the governor of New Jersey has gone from the most popular politician in the country to the most embattled; from the Republicans’ brightest hope for 2016 to a man with an FBI target on his back. One minute, he was releasing jokey vanity videos starring Alec Baldwin and assorted celebrity pals; the next, he was being ridiculed by his lifelong idol, Bruce Springsteen. Mere weeks ago, Christie was a straight-talking, corruption-busting everyman. Now, he is a liar, a bully, a buffoon.”
“What is remarkable about this meltdown is that it isn’t the result of some deep secret that has been exposed to the world, revealing a previously unimagined side to the candidate. Many of the scandals and mini-scandals and scandals-within-scandals that the national media is salivating over have been in full view for years.”
The Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), has launched the harshest attack yet on its top target, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Washington Examiner reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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