East Chicago City Councilman Robert Battle “took the oath of office from behind bars at the Porter County Jail last week,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
“Battle was re-elected to his council seat in November, one month after murder and drug charges were filed by the federal government.”
“Tennessee Republican leaders were told of a potential sexual harassment complaint about House Majority Whip Jeremy Durham’s (R) behavior about a week before an unprecedented House GOP caucus meeting to decide the fate of his leadership role, but the specific concerns were never disclosed to his fellow legislators,” the Tennessean reports.
“The news comes amid a Tennessean investigation into inappropriate text messages from Durham to three women who worked at the statehouse. Durham said Friday he does not remember sending the messages.”
WATE-TV says Durham resigned from his leadership position late yesterday.
Ben Jenkins: “Donald Trump’s six-month stay atop the Republican presidential field has confounded political pros. Rather than follow the playbook that has long guided campaigns through the arduous primary calendar, the bombastic billionaire is charting his own path, filled with insults and vainglorious preening that theoretically shouldn’t attract voters. But Mr. Trump laid out how he would run his campaign 30 years ago in his best seller The Art of the Deal. Perhaps if more strategists had read the book, this race would be tighter.”
A few choice quotes from the book:
A new American Research Group poll in Iowa finds Donald Trump leads Ted Cruz, 33% to 26%.
Key finding: “Among those most likely to vote in the Republican caucus, Trump leads Cruz 32% to 27%. Among those less certain to vote, Trump leads Cruz 40% to 16%.”
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton, 48% to 45%.
Mitt Romney admitted on Twitter that he waited too long four years ago to release his tax filings because it “became an issue.”
He added: “2016 candidates should release taxes before first contests.”
Lexington Herald-Leader: “They have only eight weeks to campaign, but the outcome of their political races will greatly affect how Kentucky is governed. The field of candidates has been set for the four special state House elections that Gov. Matt Bevin (R) has scheduled for March 8.”
“Democrats have to win at least one of the elections to keep the majority they have enjoyed since 1921.”
“What seemed impossible now seems more than plausible: Donald J. Trump, the self-referential deal maker, could pull off a hostile takeover of the Grand Old Party.”
— David Axelrod, writing for the New York Times.
Sen. Rand Paul says he thinks he will be on the main stage of Thursday’s Republican debate, Politico reports.
Said Paul: “We’ll make that decision as it comes, but we think the polling data as it shows — look, yesterday, one of Fox’s own polls, we were ahead of two of the three people that were on the stage the last time.”
Donald Trump stepped up his attack on Ted Cruz, saying that the Texas senator needs to “either settle his problem” of having been born in Canada or leave the race, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “It’s time for Ted Cruz to either settle his problem with the FACT that he was born in Canada and was a citizen of Canada, or get out of race.”
“I think Bernie Sanders is an excellent candidate for president… of Sweden.”
— Marco Rubio, quoted by the Cedar Rapids Gazettte.
“On Friday afternoon, the Clinton campaign made two arguments to First Read why Bernie Sanders isn’t Barack Obama 2.0 — 1) he doesn’t have the same ability to galvanize African-American voters, and 2) they’re not going to let him dominate the caucus contests.”
“But there’s a bigger takeaway here: The Clinton campaign is acknowledging that it’s preparing for a long race where it will have to grind out a win against Sanders. Even under a best-case scenario for Clinton (winning the delegates proportionally by, say, a 60%-40% margin), that means we won’t see a true Dem winner until April or May.”
Jeff Greenfield: “Iowa survives and flourishes as a political ritual for the same reason that bad people remain in power and bad policies remain in place: those who benefit from it can make the cost of challenging it too high. If there is no hope of unseating the caucuses from their privileged perch, it’s at least worth understanding how we got here—and at what cost.”
A new Morning Consult poll finds that 50% of Americans “say they would support reducing Iowa and New Hampshire’s influence in the presidential nominating process.”
“Without a photographic memory, you can’t speak without notes … My memory is one of the greats.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Ryan Lizza: “Trump, though, has effectively ignored the conventional wisdom about Republican lanes. He’s like a snowplow barrelling across the highway. State and national polls consistently show that he draws strongly from all four ideological segments of the party. His strongest supporters are less educated and less well off; his fiercest opponents are Republicans with advanced degrees and high incomes. Trump has turned what is traditionally an ideological fight into a class war.”
“Throughout his campaign, Trump has made much of the dangers posed by immigration and political correctness. But central to his platform is his insistence that Americans are being cheated. To protect themselves, he says, they need to hire someone who will cut them a better deal.”
“It’s a complete waste of money, and I think people are starting to figure that out.”
— GOP strategist Barry Bennett, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, on the money spent by outside groups on television advertising.
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.