Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) revealed that “several of her adult children are living at the Governor’s mansion,” KFOR-TV reports.
“In the case of the governor’s 28-year-old daughter, she’s actually driven a travel trailer onto the property for a place to stay.”
The Guardian “has learned that Trump has joined the tier of Republican White House hopefuls to whom the DNC assigns a full-time staff member, devoted to responding to statements and pushing back against his campaign.”
“Previously, the staffer in question only had New Jersey governor Chris Christie to monitor. But as Trump’s fortunes have risen in the polls and Christie’s have fallen, the DNC has changed its focus.”
A new Gravis Marketing national poll finds Donald Trump crushing the GOP presidential field with 31%, followed by Jeb Bush at 13%, Scott Walker at 13%, Ben Carson at 6%, Mike Huckabee at 6%, Ted Cruz at 6%, Marco Rubio at 5% and John Kasich at 5%.
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
The New York Times looks amount of money raised by the presidential campaigns, super PACs and other PACs and nonprofits supporting each candidate.
Maureen Dowd reports that the death of Joe Biden’s son has prompted the vice president to consider a run for the White House.
“Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”
Weekly Standard: “Ask this question: Who gave Maureen Down the details of the conversations between Joe Biden and his sons? The details are, after all, pretty … detailed: There are direct quotations from Beau, Hunter, and Joe; a sentence capturing the thought process of Joe; a brief description of Beau’s physical state. It’s great reporting, and it’s a story well-told; but we can ask, how did Maureen Dowd know this? Who was willing and able to give her this level of detail?”
William Saletan: “If Republicans win the White House next year, they’ll almost certainly control the entire federal government. Many of them, running for president or aspiring to leadership roles in Congress, are trying to block the nuclear deal with Iran. This would be a good time for these leaders to show that they’re ready for the responsibilities of national security and foreign policy. Instead, they’re showing the opposite. Over the past several days, congressional hearings on the deal have become a spectacle of dishonesty, incomprehension, and inability to cope with the challenges of a multilateral world.”
Hillary Clinton “released a flurry of documents Friday that included a physician’s declaration of her personal health and a batch of financial information, in a bid to rebut accusations of secrecy surrounding her presidential campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The financial documents showed Mrs. Clinton and her husband earned $139 million in adjusted gross income over the past seven years, including $28 million last year, when they paid an effective tax rate of more than 35%. The release coincided with a voluminous release of Clinton emails from her time as secretary of state.”
Politico: “In a statement accompanying the returns released Friday, Clinton seemed to try to play down the multi-million-dollar figures by stressing her humble roots and her intention to overhaul the tax code.”
Donald Trump is staking his run for president in part on a vow to protect American jobs but his companies “have sought to import at least 1,100 foreign workers on temporary visas since 2000,” Reuters reports.
A new Gravis Marketing survey in Iowa finds Donald Trump way ahead of the GOP pack with 31%, followed by Scott Walker at 15%, Jeb Bush at 10%, Bobby Jindal at 7%, Mike Huckabee at 6%, Ted Cruz at 6%, Ben Carson at 5% and John Kasich at 5%.
“Billionaires are bankrolling the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign to an unprecedented degree, with at least 40 of the wealthiest Americans plowing $60 million into super PACs aligned with the top tier of candidates,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The torrent of super PAC money is revolutionizing presidential politics in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals into these outside groups.”
“In a biting surprise attack, delivered as Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, waited backstage here at the annual convention of the National Urban League, Mrs. Clinton portrayed him as a hypocrite who had set back the cause of black Americans,” the New York Times reports.
“It was an unexpected moment of political theater that seemed to presage what could be a bitter general-election rivalry between two of the biggest names in American politics.”
Politico: “When Bush finally took the stage to address issues of race and repairing American cities, he didn’t hit back.”
“Trade negotiators from the United States and 11 other Pacific nations were headed toward failure Friday, with difficult talks on the largest regional trade agreement ever breaking down over protections for pharmaceutical companies and access to agriculture markets on both sides of the Pacific,” the New York Times reports.
“Negotiators will return to their home countries to obtain high-level signoffs for a small number of final sticking points on the agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with bilateral talks reconvening soon. But the breakdown is a setback for the Obama administration, which had promoted the talks here as the final round ahead of an accord that would bind 40 percent of the world’s economy under a new set of rules for commerce.”
A new Marist Poll finds Hillary Clinton edges Jeb Bush in a potential general election match up, 49% to 43%.
But in a three-way race with Donald Trump as an independent, Clinton crushes Bush, 44% to 29%, with Trump getting 20% support.
“The single largest donor to Right to Rise, Mike Fernandez, didn’t hand over a check for a sum that seems obtainable only though some form of global dominion. Fernandez wrote a check for $3 million. Fernandez, a Miami-area businessman who runs a health-care industry-focused private equity firm, doesn’t agree with Bush on at least two issues that have already come up in the 2016 campaign,” the Washington Post reports.
“Many health-care executives across the country — including in deeply red states — have been generally if not vocally supportive of the Affordable Care Act. That support includes the Medicaid expansion that has been rejected by some Republican-controlled state governments. Bush opposes the Medicaid expansion.”
“Fernandez, a Cuban American who fled Cuba with his family following Castro’s takeover, is also a vocal and on-the-record supporter of Obama’s move toward normalizing relations with Cuba. Bush is not. Softening sanctions against Cuba strengthens the Castro regime, Bush said this month.”
“Two individuals right now that have sort of caught the attention. One of them is way over on this side — I don’t know where to put him, but he’s not on the libertarian side. He’s making a lot of noise. That’s a guy named Trump. The other is named Bernie Sanders.”
— Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), quoted by the Washington Post, on presidential race.
First Read notes “it’s the filing deadline for super PACs to report their hauls to the FEC. Once again, it’s a document dump Friday – and smack-dab in the middle of summer vacation time, too. What else gets dumped today on this very busy last Friday of July?”
“The Clinton Foundation saw a significant increase in donations this year from fundraisers who also have volunteered to steer at least $100,000 each to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“At least 14 of the fundraisers, called Hillblazers, donated to the foundation in the first half of 2015 and have cumulatively given between $22 million and $55 million since the organization started in 1999, according to a comparison of the foundation and campaign disclosures. At the end of 2014, those 14 fundraisers had given between $16 million and $38 million. Eight of these donors stepped up their foundation donations enough to be pushed into a higher bracket in the first six months.”
First Read: “No matter how much Team Clinton says that there is absolutely no relationship between donations to the Foundation and influence with a Clinton campaign/possible administration, these correlations just highlight that, if there was even a whiff of possibility for gaining additional influence through donations, donors certainly didn’t want to risk missing out on it.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.