Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told the Las Vegas Review Journal that he refused to see former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) last week, given his admission that he secretly fathered a child during an extramarital affair decades ago.
Said Reid: “I don’t mention Domenici’s name anymore because of what he did to Michelle Laxalt. I wouldn’t let him come and see me. But anyway, that’s another story.”
North Carolina Republicans have proposed a bill that would require parents “to give their teenagers permission before they could receive birth control or be treated for sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse or mental illness,” the Charlotte Observer reports.
A sentencing document for New York State Senator Shirley Huntley (D) details her cooperation with federal authorities in the wake of her arrest in a bribery scheme and shows at least nine officials and staffers were caught in her wiretaps, Politicker reports.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says that “eight of these nine individuals remain the subjects of ongoing criminal investigations.”
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“The House will vote again next week to repeal the 2010 health-care reform law, a decision by top Republican leaders designed in part to appease GOP freshmen lawmakers who have not had an opportunity to take a vote on the issue,” the Washington Post reports.
“Depending on which congressional aides are asked, next week’s vote will be anywhere between the 33rd or 37th attempt to repeal all or part of the law since its passage in 2010.”
Joe Klein: “The Republicans, apparently with nothing better to do, are still chasing their tails over the tragic events in Benghazi on September 11. Actually, no. That’s not true. They’re chasing their tails over what happened after the tragic events of September 11. They’re mostly concerned that the Obama Administration tried to cover up the fact that this was a terrorist attack by a local militia (translation: local street gang) which aspired toward bad-butt Al Qaeda status. This is a pretty hard sell since, the day after the attack, the President called it an ‘act of terror.'”
“I suspect they won’t be a viable political party until they begin to focus on substance rather than emptiness.”
A new Pew Research survey finds President Obama “continues to hold a substantial advantage over congressional Republicans in public regard. Obama’s job approval is back in positive territory at 51%… By comparison, just 22% approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing, among the lowest approval rating for congressional leaders from either party in 20 years.”
“Furthermore, a record-high 80% say Obama and Republican leaders are not working together to address important issues facing the country, and by nearly two-to-one (42%-22%) more blame Republican leaders than Obama for the gridlock.”
Bloomberg: “Since the November elections, at least 22 members of the last Congress took jobs with lobbying firms, running trade associations or handling government relations for organizations. That would increase by 14 percent over 2012 the number of former lawmakers now in the lobbying business… Since 1998, a total of 338 former members of Congress have worked as lobbyists or joined such firms for at least some of the time since leaving office.”
John Avlon: “From the start of this unlikely campaign, Sanford has been easy to underestimate. His well-chronicled scandal, which brought ‘hiking the Appalachian Trail‘ into the lexicon, obscured his ability to connect with low-country voters. There’s a reason Sanford has never lost an election, and during the crowded GOP primaries I was struck by the way local voters called him ‘Mark’ rather than ‘Governor’ — and his evident mastery of policy details helped him stand out from the pack. For all the easy accusations of hypocrisy, Sanford had never been a social conservative Bible-thumper as much as strident fiscal conservative who was railing against the deficit and debt while arguing for entitlement reform back in the 1990s.”
The Week: “South Carolina voters, it seems, are almost French in their willingness to forgive an extramarital affair.”
“If she had gone to Kalamazoo that night, you wouldn’t be reading this today. I would have been aborted.”
— Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), writing in the Washington Times, about how his mother became pregnant as a teenager and was planning to get an abortion one night.
Jon Stewart mocked the media for suggesting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) underwent stomach surgery to lose weight because he wants to run for president in 2016.
A new Franklin & Marshall Poll in finds just 25% of Pennsylvania voters believe Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has performed well enough in office to deserve reelection.
Perhaps even more striking is that just 48% of Corbett’s fellow Republicans believe he deserves reelection.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner was recorded teaching Bloomberg’s Peter Cook how to knot a tie.
Jill Lawrence
says Terry McAuliffe (D) has a potential problem with women voters even though he’s running against anti-abortion candidate Ken Cuccinelli (R) for Virginia governor.
Passages in McAuliffe’s book include him “ditching his wife Dorothy
while she was in labor” but the “more problematic anecdote to me is one that
involves the birth of another baby, in this case a newborn son whom
McAuliffe left in the car with Dorothy on the way home from the hospital
while he spent 15 minutes at a fundraiser. She was in tears, he writes.
How the heck did he think women would react to that?”
BuzzFeed looks at nine passages from McAuliffe’s book that might make voters cringe.
“Delaware became the 11th state Tuesday to legalize same-sex marriage after a lengthy debate in the state Senate that saw one lawmaker disclose her longtime same-sex relationship and the surprise support of two senators who could have tipped the outcome the other way,” the Wilmington News-Journal reports.
“A half-hour after the 12-9 Senate vote, Gov. Jack Markell signed the bill into law on the main stairs in the lobby of Legislative Hall.”
Roll Call:
“Conservatives exiting a private meeting with Sen. Marco Rubio to
discuss immigration reform predicted that legislation pending before
Congress would move significantly to the right as it proceeds toward
President Barack Obama’s desk.”
A new NBC News/Marist poll in Virginia finds Ken Cuccinelli (R) leading Terry McAuliffe (D) in the race for governor among likely voters, 45% to 42%.
Among all voters, McAuliffe holds a small lead, 43% to 41%.
First Read: “The good news for McAuliffe is that he has plenty of room to grow (44%
of voters say they’re unsure/never heard of him, compared with 32% who
say that about Cuccinelli). And the Republican Party is a potential drag
for Cuccinelli: The GOP has a 37%-53% fav/unfav rating in the state,
versus the Democratic Party’s 44%-46% score. Yet so far, before any
negative advertising begins, the poll doesn’t show the party dragging
Cuccinelli down — his fav/unfav is 42%-27%.”
A new NBC News/Marist poll in New Jersey finds Gov. Chris Christie (R) running away in his re-election bid with a 32 point lead over challenger Barbara Buono, 60% to 28%.
First Read: “The poll also explains why Christie is disagreeing with his national
party some of the time. The GOP’s fav/unfav in the survey is 34%-59%,
versus the Democratic Party’s 50%- 43% score.”
Nate Silver: “It would be wrong to conclude that voters did not punish Mr. Sanford at all for his extramarital affair. In fact, a reasonable number of voters did appear to hold it against him. Last November, Mitt Romney won South Carolina’s First District by 18 percentage points. Since Mr. Romney lost the election to Barack Obama by roughly four percentage points nationwide, that means the First District is about 22 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole.”
“Mr. Sanford defeated his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, by nine percentage points instead – so one quick-and-dirty estimate is that Mr. Sanford’s personal history cost him a net of 13 percentage points. It just was not enough to flip the election result in such a conservative district.”
Steve Kornacki: “In hindsight, no one should be surprised.”
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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.