“Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid,” the New York Times reports.
“At least 15 of Mr. Obama’s ‘bundlers’ — supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others — are involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies. They have raised more than $5 million so far for the campaign.”
A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows the health care reform law’s popularity hit an all-time low this month.
Just 34% of those surveyed said they have a favorable view while 51% said they have an unfavorable view.
Politico: “That’s more lopsided than most of the Kaiser tracking polls have found since President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law. In most cases, the public has been about evenly split in its views of the law. The big difference this time is that Democrats seem to be souring on the reform law.”
Mother Jones
has a photo of the massive crowd that turned out at a recent volunteer
meeting in Massachusetts for U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D),
noting that it “looks more like the kind of crowd you’d see at
presidential volunteer meeting late in the campaign than a rally for a
Senate candidate 13 months before the general election.”
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The AP profiles Mark Block, Herman Cain’s unorthodox campaign manager made famous in the viral ad that shows him smoking a cigarette. He’s “left a trail of questionable campaign work behind him.”
“Block has been accused of voter suppression and was banned from running Wisconsin political campaigns for three years to settle accusations he coordinated a judge’s re-election campaign with a special interest group. Records show Block has faced foreclosure on his home, a tax warrant by the Internal Revenue Service and a lawsuit for an unpaid bill. He also acknowledges he was arrested twice for drunken driving.”
If you want to see next month’s “modified Lincoln-Douglas debate” between Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich — not carried on television — it will cost you, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Bleacher seating at the Gingrich/Cain debate, hosted by the Texas Tea Party Patriots at the Woodlands Resort in Houston, costs a cool $200. The next step up, the $500 ticket, gets you ‘prime seating’ and a ticket to the ‘Nite Cap party after the Debate,’ … And for the really high rollers, $1,000 will get you ‘the best seating in the house for the debate’ and ‘a professional picture taken with the candidates.'”
There’s no word if the candidates are getting paid for their appearance, but Dave Weigel, who first broke the story, reports proceeds will go to the Tea Party Patriots group.
The Daily Beast reports Newsweek‘s Michele Bachmann cover has become a Halloween costume.
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Florida finds Charlie Crist remains a popular figure in the state with a 51% to 34% favorability rating and if he were to run as a Democrat to reclaim his old office against Gov. Rick Scott (R) he would lead by 13 points at 51% to 38%.
In a hypothetical rematch of last year’s race, Alex Sink (D) would lead Scott 52% to 41%.
This is the first in a guest series from Inkwell Strategies analyzing the 2012 campaign ad war.
In the coming weeks and months, the Republican primary campaign will shift from debating and handshaking to the far more expensive – and often uglier – realm of paid media.
While we haven’t yet seen many candidates go up on the airwaves, we are seeing an uptick in the number of web ads – commercials designed not for a television audience, but for online viewers.
Web ads are a great way to tinker with the candidate’s message while earning free (or very inexpensive) coverage. Think of them as spring training for media consultants.
Last week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a powerful ad that almost surely previews his traditional television advertising campaign to come. Politics aside, the ad is not only a master stroke by his campaign team, but required viewing for anyone interested in the art of candidate marketing.
The FBI alleges a Florida man “attempted an extortion plot that threatened to smear acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) in West Virginia’s upcoming special election for governor,” the AP reports.
The threat involved a video allegedly showing inhumane practices at an Oklahoma greyhound kennel. In the emails, the man says the campaign of Bill Maloney (R), wanted the video. Maloney has attacked Tomblin over his mother’s greyhound breeding business.
The special election is on Tuesday.
Mike Huckabee “has been approached by Republican and conservative activists unhappy with the current crop of presidential hopefuls and he is considering entering the fray,” Reuters reports.
Update: A source close to Huckabee tells CBS News that “there are
certainly people that have asked him to reconsider his decision, even
more so lately, but at this point that is not something he is doing.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Connecticut finds President Obama barely leading Mitt Romney in a general election match up, 47% to 45%.
Key findings: “Obama’s poor showing in Connecticut is mostly a function of his own unpopularity. Despite having won it by 23 points in 2008 his approval numbers are now under water at 48/49. That represents a 17 point net shift in the wrong direction since PPP last polled the state in March.”
However, Obama leads the rest of the Republican field by double digits.
CNN: “Could it be that the reason our government is broken is because of which generation is running things?”
“Authors Morley Winograd and Michael Hais think so, insisting that the problem is that power is now firmly in the hands of self-righteous baby boomers who have spent their entire lives convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is morally inferior. Boomers won’t negotiate anything, Winograd and Hais say, because they think every position they hold is rooted in something no less sacred than their values, and they’re understandably reluctant to negotiate their values.”
Jack Shafer reviews The Rogue by Joe McGinniss:
“To call a book a hatchet job is not necessarily to disparage it. Some subjects can’t be accurately rendered in a fair and balanced sketch, demanding instead the defacement that Lucian Freud brought to portraiture. That said, a smartly swung sharp blade makes for better literary blood sport than the butt-end bludgeonry McGinniss visits upon Palin and her husband, Todd…”
“By book’s end, I felt a little like the Palins — eager for McGinniss to
move out of my neighborhood. He establishes that Sarah Palin’s
ambitions dwarf her talents, that she’s the world’s oldest mean girl and
that she has a tendency to become a liability to even her closest
allies. But no hatchet job was needed to convince an average reader of
that. The only fresh meat McGinniss cuts in The Rogue is connected to
his knuckles.”
“I believe that marriage is between a man and woman. It has been for all of recorded history and I think this is a temporary aberration that will dissipate.”
— Newt Gingrich, quoted by the Des Moines Register, on gay marriage.
Sarah Palin told Fox News she would be making any decisions on a presidential run by her own self-imposed deadline by the end of September.
Said Palin: “I hold my political cards close to my chest. I’ve certainly learned lessons along those lines, and I’m going to continue to do that until I’m ready to make an announcement. This is a serious decision, and I’m engaged in serious deliberations and within the next 24 hours, don’t look for me to make a decision.”
Just in case, Red State is giving hourly updates.
The Florida Republican presidential primary will now be on January 31, instead of March 6, the St. Petersburg Times reports.
The action will almost certainly set off a chain reaction as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada move their contests to the front of the line.
“The scale of change I am suggesting is so enormous that I couldn’t possibly show you as a single leader all I am going to do. This is a beginning of a conversation.”
— Newt Gingrich, quoted by the Des Moines Register, unveiling his latest “Contract with America.”
Helped once again by his money bomb strategy, Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) presidential campaign raised at least $5 million during the past three months, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The third quarter total is up from $4.5 million in the second quarter.
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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