A new Human Events/Gravis poll in Texas finds Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) leading primary challenger Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), 43% to 28%, with 29% undecided.
Said pollster Doug Kaplan: “These are dangerous numbers for Cornyn, because they show that despite his power in the Senate and his familiarity with the voters, he has not yet made the sale.”
“A billionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers,” the New York Times reports.
“The donor, Tom Steyer, a Democrat who founded one of the world’s most successful hedge funds, burst onto the national political scene during last year’s elections, when he spent $11 million to help elect Terry McAuliffe governor of Virginia and millions more intervening in a Democratic congressional primary in Massachusetts. Now he is rallying other deep-pocketed donors, seeking to build a war chest that would make his political organization, NextGen Climate Action, among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch.”
“I came here to hopefully shape the debate for 2016 — not join it, but shape it.”
— Rep. Darrell Issa (R-A), quoted by the New Hampshire Union Leader, on a visit to New Hampshire.
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Former Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-IL) was arrested in Zimbabwe for “allegedly possessing pornographic material and violating immigration laws,” the AP reports.
Reynolds “resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted of 12 counts of statutory rape, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography.”
“A group of major GOP donors, led by New York billionaire Paul Singer, is quietly expanding its political footprint ahead of the midterm elections in an increasingly assertive effort to shape the direction of the Republican Party,” Politico reports.
“The operation was launched discreetly last year, with the previously unreported formation of a club called the American Opportunity Alliance to bring together some of the richest pro-business GOP donors in the country, several of whom share Singer’s support for gay rights, immigration reform and the state of Israel. Around the same time, Singer and his allies also formed a federal fundraising committee called Friends for an American Majority that raised big checks for a select list of the GOP’s most highly touted 2014 Senate hopefuls.”
Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) says he is “distressed by the innuendo” that there is a conflict between his personal financial interests and his official actions in Washington so he took the unusual step of asking the House Ethics Committee to investigate him, USA Today reports.
Said Petri: “To end any questions, I am requesting that the committee formally review the matter and report back.”
“A record seven African-American candidates are running for statewide office in 2014. Some could be eliminated in June’s primary elections, but it appears at least three black candidates will make it to November’s general election,” The State reports.
“South Carolina also is assured to elect its first African-American candidate in a statewide race since Reconstruction in one U.S. Senate race, where all three of the announced candidates are black.”
Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck (R) “is fighting back against the ‘war on women’ narrative that helped doom his Senate campaign in 2010. And the opening salvo in the battle to reclaim his name is coming in the form of a two-minute video entitled, Stephanie’s Story,” the Daily Caller reports.
“Aside from displaying a kinder, gentler Ken Buck, the video speaks to his interest in making policy… Buck promises this video is merely be the first in a series of maybe ten, or so, he will release.”
Politico: “Historians who try to rank the 44th president in our national pantheon are surely going to ask why he has not made better use of his ‘bully pulpit.’ It’s become common to ask where Barack Obama the electrifying speechmaker has gone. But if we compare him with other presidents who managed economic crises or the aftermath of major wars, the mystery starts to clear up. Neither Eisenhower nor Nixon was, to say the very least, considered a great communicator. Add Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush to the group, and the pattern is hard to miss. When America’s national fortunes turn downward, our presidents usually seem pretty inarticulate.”
Politico: “State party officials across the country say the explosion of money into super PACs, nonprofit groups and presidential campaigns has made fundraising more difficult. And some of those outside groups are starting to take over the traditional local roles state parties play, spending big on voter contact and outreach operations.”
“The effect is that candidates can be more beholden to national organizations or single-issue groups rather than state party leaders. That’s leading to a change in candidates and their beliefs and the issues that come up in elections and statehouses.”
“The legal campaign for marriage equality is picking up speed, moving at a pace that has surprised even longtime advocates and increasing the likelihood of a definitive Supreme Court test as early as next year,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Efforts by some lawyers to plan a careful strategy for which cases to push forward to the high court have largely been put aside amid a rush of lower-court rulings striking down bans on same-sex marriage… Increasingly, the judges are saying they can see no legitimate justification for denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. With the Supreme Court having said that states cannot validly base marriage laws on traditional religious disapproval of homosexuality, the remaining justifications offered to defend the laws fail to pass muster.”
New York Times: “As Democrats approach the 2014 midterm elections, they are grappling with an awkward reality: Their president’s health care law — passed almost entirely by Democrats — remains a political liability in many states, threatening their ability to hold on to seats in the Senate and the House.”
“As a result, party leaders have decided on an aggressive new strategy to address the widespread unease with the health care law, urging Democratic candidates to talk openly about the law’s problems while also offering their own prescriptions to fix them.”
“Dozens of House Republicans have recently backed legislation that calls for legal action against President Obama,” The Hill reports.
“Forty-three Republicans have cosponsored the resolution since Obama’s State of the Union address, where he threatened to enact policies if Congress didn’t act.”
Pandora Media “plans to roll out a new advertising service next week that would enable candidates and political organizations to target the majority of its 73 million active monthly Pandora listeners based on its sense of their political leanings,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“How can it do this? The company matches election results with subscribers’ musical preferences by ZIP Code. Then, it labels individual users based on their musical tastes and whether those artists are more frequently listened to in Democratic or Republican areas. Users don’t divulge their political affiliations when they sign up for Pandora.”
Willie Brown: “The real news in the San Diego mayoral race isn’t that a Republican won, but that the candidate backed by public-employee unions lost.”
“That is a real shift in California politics. And it’s the second time it’s happened in a big-city mayoral race in less than a year.”
A new Hawaii poll finds Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D) has pulled ahead of Sen. Brian Schatz (D) in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, 48% to 40%, with 11% undecided.
A new Baltimore Sun poll in Maryland finds Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown (D) has staked out a sizable lead in the Democratic contest for governor over Douglas Gansler (D), 35% to 14%, with Heather Mizeur (D) at 10%.
Hopwever, the primary race is far from decided as 40% of likely Democratic voters have yet to pick a candidate.
In the Republican primary, Larry Hogan (R) leads a crowded field with 13%.
MSNBC: “A Port Authority police officer with personal ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was at the George Washington Bridge when access lanes were closed last September and personally drove David Wildstein, the Christie appointee who supervised the closings, on a tour of the area as traffic brought it to a standstill.”
“Documents submitted to a New Jersey legislative committee by Wildstein also show that the officer, Lieutenant Thomas ‘Chip’ Michaels, appears to have sent periodic text messages to Wildstein updating him on the effects of the lane closures and their crippling impact on the town of Fort Lee. In one message, on the first day of the lane closures, Michaels told Wildstein he might have an idea to ‘make this better.’ It is not clear what he meant.”
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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