Here are some new polls from Harper Polling (R) on key U.S. Senate races:
Arkansas: Sen. Mark Pryor (D) 39%, Tom Cotton (R) 39%
Colorado: Sen. Mark Udall (D) 45%, Cory Gardner (R) 43%
Louisiana: Bill Cassidy (R) 47%, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) 43%
Michigan: Terri Lynn Land (R) 43%, Gary Peters (D) 40%
Montana: Steve Daines (R) 42%, Sen. John Walsh (D) 35%
President Obama announced that “eight million people have signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and that 35 percent are under the age of 35, countering the criticism that it would attract mainly older and sicker people,” the New York Times reports.
“Obama also said that millions of the enrollees had purchased private insurance for the first time, strengthening the administration’s case that the new health law was expanding coverage, not simply moving people from one insurance plan to another.”
Said Obama: “This thing is working.”
Wonk Wire has more on the surprise announcement.
“Since 1983, Larry Flynt has sent the monthly magazine he founded, Hustler, to each and every member of Congress,” National Journal reports.
“The dirty mag comes in a plain manila envelope, fairly undetectable to the poor intern or staffer tasked with opening the mail. And every month, there it is: Hustler, featuring dozens of naked or scantly dressed women, vulgar comics, and articles, some satirical, on politics, society, and sex.”
“It’s not like members of Congress haven’t tried to stop the magazines from coming. They just can’t stop it legally.”
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Vice President Joe Biden “says he hasn’t decided whether to seek the presidency in 2016 — and when he does he’ll tell the incumbent about it first,” USA Today reports.
Said Biden: “If I decide to run, believe me, this’ll be the first guy I talk to. But that decision hasn’t been made for real, and there’s plenty of time.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Ohio finds Gov. John Kasich (R) in a dead heat with challenger Ed Fitzgerald (D), 44% to 44%.
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (D) will not run for re-election to a third term this year, instead setting his sights on the governor’s office in 2016, The Week reports.
Said Biden: “What started as a thought — a very persistent thought — has now become a course of action that I wish to pursue.”
The Glasgow Daily Times reports that a constituent asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) why he came out in support of the re-election of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
“Paul declined to answer the question publicly, saying he would speak with her in private and explain his reason for supporting the senior senator.”
A new Rasmussen poll in South Carolina finds Gov. Nikki Haley (R) way ahead of Vincent Sheheen (D) in her re-election race, 52% to 37%.
“I don’t have sizzle.”
— Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, quoted by ABC News, when asked if he’d consider running for president again.
A Smart Politics analysis finds that if Kathleen Sebelius (D) ran for and won Kansas’ U.S. Senate seat in 2014, she would become the first woman ever to serve as governor, cabinet head, and U.S. Senator and just the ninth person to serve in all three offices during the last 100+ years.
Wall Street Journal: “Republican leaders are telling the party’s House members that persistent criticism of the federal health-care law is the best path to victory this fall regardless of how the law’s implementation evolves ahead of the November elections.”
Wonk Wire: Where’s the Obamacare death spiral?
Vice President Biden “really did get ahead of” President Obama “on accepting gay marriage in 2012 — and the White House really wasn’t happy about it, despite the two leaders’ many attempts to claim otherwise. That’s the story laid out in Jo Becker’s new book, Forcing the Spring, which documents the past few years of successful efforts to expand the legalization of gay marriage,” Politico reports.
However, Andrew Sullivan is not impressed with the book saying the it “descends into more jaw-dropping distortion.”
A new University of Massachusetts at Amherst poll in Massachusetts finds Martha Coakley (D) leading the Democratic race for governor with 39%, followed by Steve Grossman at 9%, Don Berwick at 3% and Juliette Kayyern at 3%.
A new Pan Atlantic SMS poll in Maine shows Gov. Paul LePage (R) leading his re-election race with 39%, followed by Michael Michaud (D) at 37% and Eliot Cutler (I) at 20%.
A new Survey USA poll in Florida finds Charlie Crist (D) leading Gov. Rick Scott (R) in the race for governor, 46% to 41%.
Former CIA Director Leon Panetta told the New York Times that President Obama had a “mixed record” on making difficult national security decisions and suggested that Hillary Clinton would be better.
Said Panetta: “The president has made some tough decisions. But it’s been a mixed record, and the concern is, the president defining what America’s role in the world is in the 21st century hasn’t happened. Hopefully, he’ll do it and certainly, she would.”
Geoffrey Skelley: “So far, 50 members of the 113th Congress have either left office or signaled their intentions to leave at the end of this cycle… Despite all that, the degree of turnover in the House this cycle is not unusually high. Over the last 40 years, an average of 70.4 members has exited the House for one reason or another each two-year cycle. That’s about one-sixth of the total House membership every cycle. At 50 exits so far, this Congress still has a ways to go in order to produce even an average level of turnover.”
Former Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-CO) “has made the GOP ballot for governor, but thousands of signatures he turned in were declared invalid by the secretary of state’s office,” the Denver Post reports.
“Considering the amount of money Beauprez spent collecting the signatures, failure to make the ballot likely would have resulted in plenty of embarrassment and a court challenge.”
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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