A new Quinnipiac poll in New York City finds Bill de Blasio (D) surges ahead of the Democratic pack for mayor with 36% of likely voters, followed by Christine Quinn at 21 percent, Bill Thompson at 20%, Anthony Weiner at 8% and John Liu at 6%.
De Blasio is very close to the 40% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Adds pollster Maurice Carroll: “If there is a runoff, he clobbers Christine Quinn or William Thompson.”
Congressional and possible mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio (R) told NBC San Diego that a news report accusing him of masturbating in a San Diego City Hall restroom as “disgusting, humiliating and nothing more than a character assassination attempt.”
He even offered up results of a polygraph taken August 26.
Anthony Weiner is “having such a hard time generating support for his limp campaign that he has resorted to paying a rent-a-crowd firm to provide ‘supporters’ for his events,” the New York Post reports.
“Some of the gung-ho Weiner crowds, including at the Aug. 11 Dominican Day Parade in Manhattan, were really actors who were paid $15 an hour by the California firm Crowds on Demand… The campaign asked the company to have actors seem ‘like either supporters or people who met him and became supporters as a result of that encounter.'”
Weiner tweets the story is a hoax.
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“Fall’s fiscal fights have lined up in a way that could delay immigration reform until 2014, multiple senior House Republican leadership aides tell Politico, imperiling the effort’s prospects before the midterm elections.”
“Immigration reform isn’t certain to die if it slips into 2014, some in GOP leadership say. But major progress must be made in 2013 as it would be too difficult for the House to chart a course in 2014, an election year.”
Wonk Wire has an important preview of an upcoming Supreme Court case.
McKay Coppins: “The rapidly-approaching conflict in Syria has begun to draw a deep rift between two sides of a Republican party that have long been drifting apart over foreign policy, pitting the hawkish holdovers of Bush-era neoconservatism against an ascendant libertarian wing that opposes humanitarian intervention.”
“As the Obama administration beats the war drum — calling the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens a ‘moral obscenity,’ and insisting intervention is the only acceptable response — Republicans are scattered all over the philosophical spectrum, without a clear set of talking points, let alone a unified worldview…”
National Review runs a must-read profile of Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX):
“Attendees there went wild for him, loving his punchy, often politically incorrect rhetoric. They leapt to their feet as he closed his remarks and a soaring rock track began to play. A minute later, Senator Cruz emerged from backstage and strolled toward the dais with his arms open. Father and son embraced as fists pumped. Another episode of Cruz-apalooza had begun.”
“Beyond his oratory, though, it’s Rafael Cruz’s sway in his son’s inner circle that makes him a power broker. His son trusts his father’s political instincts, and instead of hiring a big-name Republican strategist to shepherd his ascent, he uses his father for the kind of guidance you’d expect from a consultant.”
A North Star Opinion Research (R) poll in Tennessee finds Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) with a huge lead over primary challenger Joe Carr (R), 64% to 22%.
“It’s a sin not to help people who need help. But it’s also a sin to help people who need to learn how to help themselves.”
— Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), in an interview on KTVN.
A new Kaiser poll finds that 57% of Americans disapprove of cutting off funding for Obamacare as many conservative Republicans in Congress propose while just 36% say they would approve such a move.
Noam Scheiber: “The administration itself appears to be confused on this question. While the White House insists it won’t negotiate over raising the debt ceiling, negotiation appears to be precisely what it’s up to. Politico reports that White House officials are meeting with Republican senators on Thursday to explore a deal that would simultaneously fund the government past the September 30th end of the fiscal year, replace the sequester with a more sane combination of spending cuts and revenue, and raise the debt ceiling before it crushes us in mid-to-late October.”
“This, to employ a clinical term, is nuts. Whether or not the White House maintains its no-debt-ceiling negotiation stance within these talks, the whole construct throws the GOP a lifeline where none would otherwise exist.”
BBC: “Police in Russia have confiscated a painting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in women’s underwear from an art gallery in the city of St Petersburg. The artwork depicts President Putin combing the hair of the prime minister.”
First Read reports that former President Bill Clinton will deliver a speech on the health-care law in Little Rock on September 4 defending — and making the case for — President Obama’s landmark health care law.
“Remember, it was almost a year when Obama tapped Clinton to be his ‘secretary of explaining stuff’ at the Democratic convention as it related to the state of the U.S. economy. Now it appears the president is doing the same when it comes to the implementation of the health-care law.”
This comes as a new Kaiser poll finds 44% of Americans either think the health-care law has been repealed,
overturned by the Supreme Court, or are unsure whether it’s the law of
the land.
First Read: “Regarding the likelihood that the Obama administration will use force — and perhaps soon — against the Syrian regime for its reported chemical-weapons attack, what we’re watching is to see how clear President Obama makes this goal to the American people. There’s no doubt the White House has been trying to lower expectations by not calling for regime change. But isn’t it the administration’s policy for regime change? After all, Obama has called for Assad to step down.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is headed to Missouri this week in an attempt to lure businesses back to the Lone Star State, the Kansas City Star reports.
“This year, the former GOP presidential hopeful has swaggered into a handful of blue states around the country to court companies with a sales pitch of low taxes and less government regulation. But this trip is different. When Perry arrives in St. Louis this week, he’ll be doing so with the blessing of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“Missouri Republicans and business leaders are preparing to lay out the
welcome mat this week for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And Missouri Gov. Jay
Nixon on Tuesday came pretty close to calling them economic traitors for
it.”
President Obama previewed his speech today marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “March on Washington” with Tom Joyner:
“All I can do on an occasion like this is just to celebrate the accomplishments of all of those folks whose shoulders we stand on and then remind people that the work is still out there for us to do, and that we honor his speech but also, more importantly in many ways, the organization of the ordinary people who came out for that speech. We honor them not by giving another speech ourselves — because it won’t be as good — but instead by just doing the day-to-day work to make sure this is a more equal and more just society.”
The speech at 2:45 pm ET from the Lincoln Memorial, the same place where King delivered his famous address.
Chicago Tribune:
“Pat Brady, who was forced out as chairman of the state Republican
Party after backing gay marriage legislation, said Tuesday he has been
retained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to lobby GOP
state legislators to back the bill.”
“You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there, they want to get people, so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger… It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder.”
— Pat Robertson, quoted by The Atlantic, asserting that gay men in San Francisco use special rings to spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
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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.