“We micro-analyze everything. We ought to let people be people. I was just being a person yesterday. I’m sorry if folks were offended.”
— Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), quoted by the Los Angeles Times, on using the F-word in televised remarks at an L.A. Kings victory party.
A new Quinnipiac poll in Iowa finds Rep. Bruce Braley (D) leading Joni Ernst (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 44% to 40%, “as an unusual gender gap shows women supporting the man while men support the woman.”
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A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll “finds President Obama’s job approval rating at 41%, matching a previous low. Approval of his handling of foreign policy hit a new low of 37%. Both numbers are driven in part by conflicts largely outside the president’s control, including a new wave of sectarian violence in Iraq.”
“This latest dip in Mr. Obama’s approval runs contrary to signs Americans agree with his policies on climate change and education, and as a divided Republican Party remains far less popular than the president and his party. Despite misgivings toward Mr. Obama, the survey showed the public sides with him and his fellow Democrats on a range of issues, including immigration, education and the environment.”
Rebecca Ballhaus has 5 takeaways from the poll
“The full-page advertisement in Mississippi Link, a weekly newspaper aimed at black residents of Jackson, the state’s capital, urged readers to vote for Senator Thad Cochran in the June 3 Republican primary,” the New York Times reports.
“That might be unremarkable except for one thing: The political action committee that paid for the ad shares an address and leadership with a local church. ‘All Citizens for Mississippi’ did not appear to exist at the time of the ad’s publication. Its registration as a super PAC with the Federal Election Commission was posted online last week and contains one important clue about its origins. All Citizens for Mississippi shares an address with New Horizon Church International in Jackson and also names Jacqueline Vann, the church’s chief financial officer, as its treasurer.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says he had never heard of Rep. Peter King (R-NY) “who has repeatedly and harshly attacked him until recently,” Politico reports.
Said Cruz: “I don’t know Mr. King. I’ve never met him. To be honest, I don’t think I had ever heard of him until he started getting on television attacking me.”
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) “was so eager to launch an academic center in his name at City College that he backed naming a program there for Donald Trump,” the New York Post reports.
“Rangel himself wrote two letters to Trump — including on his congressional stationary in violation of ethics rules — pitching the ‘Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service’… As it turned out, Trump never gave to the Rangel Center, and the congressman was subsequently censured in 2010 for ethics violations that included improper fund-raising for the center with congressional resources.”
Harrison Hickman: “Commentators are wrong in suggesting that the problems that resulted in Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss were new or that they were confined to the Republican primary electorate. In reality, Cantor’s weaknesses were obvious two years ago in our poll of likely general election voters in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District for Democratic candidate Wayne Powell.”
“Every enemy he’s made, every person he’s screwed, is now working with us to decapitate these two.”
— New York gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino (R), quoted by the New York Observer, apparently threatening a political opponent, per a lawsuit that was filed today.
A new Gravis Marketing poll in Georgia finds Jack Kingston (R) has assumed an 11-point lead over David Perdue in next month GOP Senate runoff, 49% to 38%.
A new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina poll finds Sen. Kay Hagan (D) with her largest lead for reelection since September. She’s ahead of Thom Tillis (R) by 5 points, 39% to 34%, with 11% for Libertarian Sean Haugh.
“I’m warm, dammit.”
— Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR), quoted by Politico, on his demeanor.
“The suspected ringleader of the September 2012 raid on a US diplomatic post in the Libyan city of Benghazi, which left four Americans dead, has been captured,” the BBC reports.
“Ahmed Abu Khattala was taken into custody in a secret US military raid in Libya on 15 June. He is now being held in a secure location outside the country, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed.”
“Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it,” Bloomberg reports.
“To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death.”
If Hillary Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination, a new CNN poll finds “just over three in 10 Americans say it’s very likely she’ll win the White House in 2016, with 36% saying it’s somewhat likely, and 31% saying it’s not likely.”
Said pollster Keating Holland: “We’ve gone down this path before. In 2008, 74% said that she would win the White House if she captured the Democratic nomination, but the then-senator from New York never made it that far.”
“In a turn of events that could signal the departure of all irony from the world, Fox News brought on contributor Judith Miller to discuss the media’s coverage of Iraq,” the Huffington Post reports.
“That would be the same Judith Miller whose credulous, false reporting about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction made her perhaps the most infamous example of the press’s failure in the run-up to that war. She criticized the American media for playing the ‘blame game’ in Iraq instead of perceiving, as she said she had, the growing threat of ISIS, the militant group currently sweeping through the country.”
Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) says the House “probably” has the votes to impeach President Obama, Politico reports.
Said Barletta: “He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws and ignoring the checks and balances. The problem is, what do you do? For those that say impeach him for breaking the laws of bypassing the laws — could that pass in the House? It probably could. Is the majority of the American people in favor of impeaching the president? I’m not sure.”
North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis (R) said that the “traditional” voting bloc of his home state wasn’t growing like as minority populations in an interview he did in 2012, TPM reports.
He noted that unlike the Hispanic or black populations, which have been growing, the “traditional population of North Carolina and the United States is more or less stable.”
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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