The son of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) was arrested over the weekend and charged with public intoxication, NBC Washington reports.
Richmond Times-Dispatch: “The arrest is the latest trouble for Virginia’s first family, beset by inquiries into its acceptance of personal gifts from the governor’s political donors and its use of mansion resources over the last three-and-a-half years.”
“A same-sex couple applying for a marriage license in Indiana, where gay marriage is expressly prohibited by law, could face up to three years in prison for submitting the application to their county clerk — even if it’s denied,” the Northwest Indiana Times reports.
“A 1997 state law declares it a Class D felony to submit false information on a marriage license application or lie about the physical condition, including gender, of a marriage license applicant. Two men or two women seeking to marry inevitably would trigger the law, as the state’s electronic marriage license application specifically designates “male applicant” and “female applicant” sections for gathering required background data.”
Ruby Cramer: “In the past 48 hours, Eliot Spitzer has appeared on just about every local television and radio show to promote his eleventh-hour bid for New York City comptroller, but the comeback candidate may have a problem that publicity alone can’t fix: getting on the ballot.”
“After Spitzer appeared Monday afternoon at his petition drive with no staffers in tow — and few volunteers canvassing the area — questions remain about whether his hurried campaign will be able to collect the 3,750 signatures from registered Democrats required to qualify for the ballot by the midnight deadline this Thursday.”
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Maryland Lt. Gov Anthony Brown’s (D) campaign announced it raised $1 million since early April — narrowing a fundraising disadvantage — and it hired President Obama’s campaign manager to help Brown try to win the governor’s mansion, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Jim Messina “will join the campaign as a senior adviser, helping the campaign use technology to build grassroots support and increase fundraising.”
House Republican leaders “have decided to drop food stamps from the farm bill and are whipping the farm-only portion of the bill for a vote that will likely come this week,” Roll Call reports.
“The nutrition portion of the bill would be dealt with later.”
“The ‘new’ farm bill would be the bill as it finished on the floor before the break, with the addition of a repeal of the 1949 law that requires the passage or extension of a farm bill.”
National Journal profiles Michael Deutsch, a little-known Florida resident who “has made it something of a hobby to snatch away desirable digital destinations from unwitting politicians.”
“Deutsch isn’t in it for the money. He’s just a self-diagnosed ‘C-SPAN junkie’ who says he wants ‘a chance to look behind the curtain.’ And he learned more than a decade ago that, as a man without the wealth to buy his way into intimate fundraisers, his best shot at getting close to the political stars that so fascinate him was to buy up political domain names early and leverage them later for some face time.”
A must-read released online for the first time: Vital Statistics on Congress by Norm Ornstein, Thomas Mann and Michael Malbin.
“A Russian lawmaker caused a diplomatic stir Tuesday by briefly tweeting — then deleting — news that NSA leaker Edward Snowden had accepted Venezuela’s offer of asylum,” USA Today reports.
Charlie Cook
is tired of speculation about the 2016 presidential race.
“Far more immediately important (and less
hypothetical) is what will happen in next year’s midterm elections. Even
though those elections are just over 16 months away, we still don’t
know whether Republicans will be playing defense as they were last year,
when they had profound problems with minority, young, women, and
self-described moderate voters. And, conversely, we don’t know if
Democrats, as the party in the White House, will be on defense, as is
usually the case during second terms and in so-called six-year-itch
elections, halfway through a party’s second term in office. The
potential for the Affordable Care Act to become radioactive again, as it
was in 2009 and 2010, makes this scenario sound less theoretical and
more plausible.”
Frank Bruni: “Eliot Spitzer doesn’t have a quarter of the gall that Anthony Weiner does. He doesn’t have an eighth of it. Out of office for more than five years, he isn’t asking for a restoration of his prior glory. He isn’t even asking for a particularly sexy job. Comptroller of New York City? Most voters don’t know what that is or even if it’s spelled correctly. It doesn’t come with a mansion. It’s not a ticket to parades. It’s drudgery and decimal points. Audit till you drop.”
“Weiner, meantime, hadn’t been gone from Congress for even two years when he announced his candidacy for mayor of the city, a job exponentially more influential than the one that he’d never done especially well in the first place. He’s angling for a gigantic promotion. In the narrative he’s constructed, his mortification has made him a new man, so we’re supposed to give him an extra measure of our trust and hand him the reins of the most important and most complicated city in the country. I know we like our mayors brash, but we needn’t accept delusional in the bargain.”
John Avlon: “It must be said that Spitzer is smarter than Weiner, at least in terms of his target selection. Weiner could not help himself–he had to run for the highest office in his land, City Hall. As I’ve argued before, a far smarter if uncharacteristically modest move for Weiner would have been to run for a secondary citywide office, such as public advocate or comptroller. Pay your penance while demonstrating a commitment to public service. Work hard, keep your head down, and four to eight years later, electoral redemption would have been well earned. That is now Spitzer’s game plan.”
Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry on the immigration reform bill that passed the Senate: “The bill’s first fatal deficiency is that it doesn’t solve the illegal-immigration problem. The enforcement provisions are riddled with exceptions, loopholes, and waivers.”
“According to the CBO analysis of the bill, it will reduce illegal immigration by as little as a third or by half at most. By one estimate, this means there will be about 7.5 million illegal immigrants here in ten years. And this is under the implausible assumption that the Obama administration would administer the law as written.”
First Read: “While it’s important never to overestimate the opinions from the conservative or liberal intelligentsia, this could have some sway with House Republicans sitting on the fence. Bottom line: They provide some establishment cover.”
Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) appeared on Morning Joe for a fascinating interview about his political comeback attempt.
But as Dylan Byers notes, there’s been some controversy over whether he actually teared up when discussing the pain he’s experienced since a prostitution scandal forced him from office.
A close aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) who co-wrote the senator’s 2011 book “spent years working as a pro-secessionist radio pundit and neo-Confederate activist, raising questions about whether Paul will be able to transcend the same fringe-figure associations that dogged his father’s political career,” the Washington Free Beacon reports.
First Read: “But if we learned one thing after the Bork judicial fight in the 1980s, it’s that political parties copycat each other. And if Republicans are trying to stop Democratic laws from being implemented or preventing executive-branch appointees from being confirmed, then you can bet that Democrats will return the favor the next time there’s a GOP president. This is a slippery slope fraught with unintended consequences. In fact, we already saw Democrats in the minority on the state level trying to thwart laws that were being passed and signed into law by Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures. This “any means necessary” style of politicizing legislating and governing is only helping to add to the public’s distrust and cynicism toward government — on all levels.”
“Let the Texas-size political shake-up begin. With Rick Perry stepping
aside after more than a decade as governor, a host of statewide
candidates can finally try to move up. And the governor freed himself to
focus on another possible run for president.” the Dallas Morning-News reports.
Tom DeFrank:
“Rick Perry is stepping down as the longest-serving governor in Texas
history to clear the decks for a 2016 presidential campaign, according
to several well-placed Republican sources. They said Perry is stepping
down to make sure his declining popularity among Texas Republicans won’t
complicate his Oval Office ambitions.
Mark Barabak:
“Although leaving office in January 2015 could diminish his fundraising
capacity, it would also allow Perry more preparation time than he took
in the lead-up to his gaffe-filled 2012 campaign, the only election loss
of his more than three-decade-long political career.”
“Why are you late? Were you with a hooker?”
— An unidentified man, quoted by the New York Daily News, at Eliot Spitzer’s (D) first campaign appearance for New York City Comptroller.
National Journal reports the White House has known for months that it will not be able to implement the massive health care reform law as designed.
“The struggles with technology and administrative complexity have not come as a recent surprise to administration officials; they’ve been negotiating them for months already. By eliminating non-essential tasks, they may be violating the letter of the health reform law, with its rigorous timetables and multiple requirements, but they may be more likely to get the core functions right. And whatever the bad politics of the recent announcements, a failure of crucial systems next year would be much worse for the president and Democrats running in 2014.”
Wonk Wire: Is Obamacare unraveling?
Politico: “Another week and there goes another fallen officeholder trying to claw his way back from tabloid purgatory–another chance for some people to marvel about the power of forgiveness and redemption, and other people to marvel about the power of egomania and pure chutzpah.”
“It is one more occasion, in other words, for the vast majority of people who would stay crouched in a hole for years if they ever endured humiliation and disgrace of the sort Eliot Spitzer brought down on himself to wonder: What makes these guys tick?”
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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