Florida Republicans tie Charlie Crist’s (D) campaign donations to sex trafficking in a tough new attack ad.
Romney Firm Raises $525 Million
Reid Vote Strategy Backfired
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) “decision to avoid tough votes this year has backfired in one respect — it gave his vulnerable incumbents few opportunities to show off any independence from President Obama,” Roll Call reports.
“A new CQ vote study shows vulnerable Senate Democrats almost always voted to support the president in 2014 — a fact that has been instantly seized upon by Republicans, given that Obama’s approval rating is languishing in the low 40s nationally and lower still in several battleground states.”
Mia Love Trails in Utah
A new Brigham Young University poll in Utah’s 4th congressional district shows Doug Owens (D) leading Mia Love (R), 46% to 42%.
It’s All Tied Up in North Carolina
A new High Point University/SurveyUSA poll in North Carolina finds Sen. Kay Hagan (D) locked in a dead heat with challenger Thom Tillis (R), 44% to 44%.
A new Monmouth University survey shows the race has tightened but Hagan still leads 48% to 46%.
Cassidy Likely to Win Louisiana Runoff
A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll in Louisiana finds no candidate reaching the 50% required to avoid a runoff in the crowded November 4 election. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) gets 36%, Bill Cassidy (R) gets 35%, Rob Maness (R) gets 11% and other candidates and undecided split 18%.
However, in a a head-to-head matchup, Cassidy has a solid 48% to 41% lead over Landrieu with 11% undecided.
Said pollster David Paleologos: “Maness supporters are basically a holding place for Cassidy … the unfavorables are 89% for Landrieu among the Maness voters.“
Paper Runs Op-Ed by Dead Politician to Attack Shaheen
Foster’s Daily Democrat published a blistering op-ed piece attacking Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) by former House Speaker Marshall Cobleigh but TPM notes there “was an unusual wrinkle: Cobleigh died in February 2009. The op-ed was actually a reprint of when it was first published in July 3, 2008.”
Many Governor’s Races Could Be Close
Smart Politics examined the more than 1,600 gubernatorial elections conducted during midterm and presidential election cycles since 1900 and found that only three cycles have produced as many as five contests with a victory margin of less than one percentage point; at least eight races are in the mix to do so in 2014.
The eight states to watch: Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia and Maine.
On Wonk Wire
Some great clicks over at Wonk Wire:
- When Politicians Ignore Science and Cave to Public Hysteria
- Boehner’s Empty (Obamacare) Suit
- Republican Roadblocks to Investment in Public Infrastructure
- Cruz Staffer Blames Obamacare for U.S. Ebola Cases
- Climate Change Concerns Fuel South Florida Secession Proposal
A bonus link from Working Capital Review:
Rounds Holds Solid Lead in South Dakota
A new Mason-Dixon poll in South Dakota finds Mike Rounds (R) with a comfortable lead over Rick Weiland (D) in the U.S. Senate race, 42% to 33%, with Larry Pressler (I) far behind at 13%.
Inside the GOP’s Secret Media Training School
Brad Phillips notes the GOP training class “is doing everything right in its effort to improve external communications” and there’s “good advice here for everyone involved in politics, regardless of party or cause.”
Political Scientists Accused of Election Tampering
“Political scientists from two of the nation’s most highly respected universities, usually impartial observers of political firestorms, now find themselves at the center of an electoral drama with tens of thousands of dollars and the election of two state supreme court justices at stake,” TPM reports.
“Their research experiment, which involved sending official-looking flyers to 100,000 Montana voters just weeks before Election Day, is now the subject of an official state inquiry that could lead to substantial fines against them or their schools.”
U.S. Used Nazis as Spies
“In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show,” the New York Times reports.
“At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet ‘assets,’ declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called ‘moral lapses’ in their service to the Third Reich.”
GOP Moves to Pick Up More House Seats
“In a late move to bolster their advantage, Republicans and their allies are investing in additional House races that they now see as in play, a sign that the political climate is tilting toward the GOP ahead of next week’s elections,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Voters Expect Republicans to Win Senate
The latest round of a New York Times/CBS News/YouGov polls find Republicans lead “in more than enough races to win control of the Senate, although the margins are often small. A larger number of likely voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa and South Dakota, among other states, expect the Republican candidate to win. More likely voters expect the Democrat to win in Michigan, New Hampshire and North Carolina.”
“Over all, the expectation question suggests that if Republican leads hold, they are likely to have 52 or 53 seats in the Senate next year.”
Interesting: “The campaign still has more than a week remaining, and the expectation question is obviously not perfect… But the expectation question does have an impressive record. Over the last 60 years, it has been a better guide to the outcome of presidential races than questions on whom people planned to vote for.”
Jeb Bush Nears Decision on White House Bid
As Jeb Bush “nears a decision to become the third member of his storied family to seek the presidency, the extended Bush clan and its attendant network, albeit with one prominent exception, are largely rallying behind the prospect and pulling the old machine out of the closet,” the New York Times reports.
“Just six years ago, at the end of the last tumultuous Bush presidency, this would have been all but unthinkable. But President Obama’s troubles, the internal divisions of the Republican Party, a newfound nostalgia for the first Bush presidency and a modest softening of views about the second have changed the dynamics enough to make plausible another Bush candidacy. And while Jeb Bush wants to run as his own man, invariably this is a family with something to prove.”
McCarthy Says GOP Won’t Win In 2016 If They Don’t Govern
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “bluntly warned that Republicans will blow the presidency in 2016 if they don’t make some radical changes – and quick,” Politico reports.
“McCarthy, speaking without a working microphone, told a group of Long Island donors that their gains in the House will amount to little if they can’t govern over the next two years.”
Democrats Poised to Pick Up Governor’s Seats
“Many of the governor’s races remain exceedingly close, according to the latest round of data from The New York Times/CBS News/YouGov online panel of more than 80,000 respondents. The data shows that there are 11 contests within 4 percentage points; another half-dozen races are with 10 percentage points.”
