A new Landmark Communications poll in Georgia finds Michelle Nunn (D) leading David Perdue (R) in the U.S. Senate race by seven points, 47% to 40%. Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford received 3% while 10% are undecided.
Most other recent polls have found Perdue with a growing lead.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) new political action committee unveiled a T-shirt featuring Perry’s mug shot, Business Insider reports.
The caption under Perry’s mug shot says he’s “wanted” for “securing the border and defeating Democrats.”
FiveThirtyEight: “According to Gallup, Americans think that political corruption has become more widespread over the past several years. And yet the best data we have on political corruption doesn’t bear that out. The Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department reports statistics on corruption cases to Congress every year, and although it might be a stretch to say that the country has gotten less corrupt over time, the problem certainly hasn’t grown.”
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David Axelrod told the New York Daily News that he wishes Democrats didn’t criticize former President Bush when he went on vacation because presidents are “never off-duty.”
Said Axelrod: “We used to pillory George Bush for going to his ranch and we were wrong.”
He added: “The demands and pressures of the presidency are relentless, and we ought to want our presidents to get small breaks to relax, even in-and maybe especially in — the midst of crisis.”
“Well, I am flattered because she is a strong leader. I am a strong independent leader. I am a strong female independent leader. And I do believe they use that as a distraction. Rather than focus on me, they’re focusing on someone else. She is the kind of politician I admire because she speaks what’s on her mind.”
— Iowa U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst (R), quoted by the New York Times, on being compared to Sarah Palin.
“The presidency of Barack Obama has catapulted a network of former advisers into lucrative positions,” The Hill reports.
“Members of the president’s brain trust have steadily moved outside the administration in recent years, capitalizing on their association with the Obama brand to launch careers as advisers, consultants and hired guns.”
“The Obama administration signaled Thursday that the United States has begun a new war against the so-called Islamic State, and that group’s operatives will not be safe from America’s wrath in Iraq, in Syria, or wherever they can be tracked down,” Eli Lake reports.
“The most notable rhetorical tell came from Obama himself. In the aftermath of the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Obama vowed to bring the attackers to justice. This week Obama struck a different tone, saying: ‘When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.'”
“The difference between bringing suspects to justice and seeing that justice is done is roughly the same as the difference between treating terrorism as a crime and as an act of war.”
Daily Beast: “With fewer than 75 days left until Election Day, Democrats across the country are feverishly moving from planning to implementing a vast, multilayered turnout operation that they hope will make the 2014 mid-term elections look more like a victorious Obama presidential year and less like the sort of mid-term wipeout that cost them the House majority in 2010.”
South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland (D) says it was a “light moment” when he called opponent and former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) “senator” during a public forum, the AP reports.
Weiland quickly corrected his remark to “soon-to-want-to-be senator.”
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) “laid bare his troubled marriage during a remarkable day of testimony that revealed he and his wife are living separately for the trial and he is staying in his parish priest’s rectory,” the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
“Anchoring McDonnell’s account of his marital drama was an emotional email the former governor sent his wife, Maureen, in September 2011. It conveys his love but deep heartache over a shattered marriage that worsened over time.”
Daily Beast: The five weirdest revelations of the McDonnell trial
“He realized I wasn’t as irrational or as crazy as people thought.”
— Rev. Al Sharpton, in an interview with Politico, on how he became President Obama’s confidant on race.
New York Times: “Presidents learn to wall off their feelings and compartmentalize their lives. They deal in death one moment and seek mental and physical relief the next. To make coldhearted decisions in the best interest of the country and manage the burdens of perhaps the most stressful job on the planet, current and former White House officials said, a president must guard against becoming consumed by the emotions of the situations they confront. And few presidents have been known more for cool, emotional detachment than Mr. Obama.”
“Yet the juxtaposition of his indignant denunciation of terrorists and his outing on the greens this week underscored the unintended consequences of such a remove. If Mr. Obama hoped to show America’s enemies that they cannot hijack his schedule, he also showed many of his friends in America that he disdains the politics of appearance. He long ago stopped worrying about what critics say, according to aides, and after the outcry over Wednesday’s game, he defied the critics by golfing again on Thursday, his eighth outing in 11 days on the island.”
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) “dodged questions about his 2016 plans Wednesday but said he would be a big backer of Mitt Romney if he were to make another run for the White House,” The Hill reports.
Said Ryan: “I’d drive his bus if he asked me to.”
A new New York Times/CBS News poll shows “most whites reserving judgment on whether the fatal shooting of the teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., was justified. Most blacks say it was not.”
“The poll also shows significant differences in how blacks and whites view the unrest that has gripped Ferguson since Mr. Brown’s killing. Most whites say they think the actions of the protesters have gone too far, while blacks are more evenly divided.”
Gawker: “Congressional IP addresses just got blocked from Wikipedia for the third time in two months, all because somebody working in our government couldn’t stop editing Laverne Cox’s page on their work computer.”
A new Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds Martha Coakley (D) leading Charlie Baker (R) in the race for governor by seven points, 41% to 34%.
Coakley has a big lead in the Democratic primary, topping Steve Grossman (D), 45% to 24%.
A new Rasmussen survey in Connecticut shows Tom Foley (R) leading Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) in the race for governor, 45% to 38%.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) left for “a three-day jaunt to Washington and the presidential testing ground of New Hampshire, vowing to beat his abuse-of-power charges,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
“For Perry, a stop at a friendly think tank where he’s pitched books, policies and his candidacy wasn’t so much about trying to change the subject as to make the most of a legal predicament that — in the worst case — could leave him behind bars for decades.”
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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