A new Magellan Strategies poll in Louisiana finds Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney by 13 points in Saturday’s GOP primary, 37% to 24%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 24% and Ron Paul at 3%.
If Gingrich were not in the race, 61% of his support would go to Santorum, and only 22% to Romney. In a one-on-one contest, Santorum would defeat Romney by 21 points, 55% to 34%.
“I think he has not done as well as we had hoped. None of us ever do in campaigns.”
— Sen. John McCain, in an interview with Don Imus, on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
When Bob Kerrey (D) registered to vote last month and “listed his sister’s address as his home — swearing under oath that it was his residence — he fully intended to live there for some time,” the Omaha World Herald reports.
A day later, Kerrey said, he “lucked out” in finding his own place when a real estate developer offered to let him live in his guest home.
The AP reports Nebraska Republicans are going to court to challenge Kerrey’s voter registration to keep him off the U.S. Senate ballot but the U.S. Constitution requires only that senators be a resident of the state they serve by the time they’re elected.
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A new FEC report will shows Newt Gingrich has more debt than cash on hand, Politico reports.
Gingrich’s campaign will report $1.54 million in the bank but also continues to carry $1.55 million in debt and his contributions have apparently slowed significantly.
Jeff Greenfield: “If Romney has not secured the nomination by the time the delegates convene in Tampa, Fla., at the end of August, the prospects for a genuine floor fight are greater than you might imagine. The reason is that delegates who are bound or pledged to a candidate are only obligated to follow his wishes when it comes to voting for a nominee. And in most contentious conventions, it is a fight over the rules that has effectively determined the nominee.”
Roll Call notes that as hard as some publishers try, most former members of Congress aren’t interested in writing salacious memoirs.
Said former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN): “I was approached, as I guess other Members are when they’re retired, by various agents and others who wanted me to write a book about the Congress. What they really wanted was a tell-all about the nefarious activities of Members of Congress. And that really kind of turned me off. I was not interested in that at all.”
Instead, Hamilton took a much more academic approach and authored, How Congress Works and Why You Should Care.
Despite some recent polls that found Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) leading in his re-election bid, a new Public Policy Polling survey shows challenger Elizabeth Warren (D) ahead, 46% to 41%.
Key findings: “Voters are more comfortable with Warren ideologically than they are with
Brown. 51% say that her views are ‘about right,’ compared to 44% for
the incumbent. She’s probably also benefiting from the fact that 54% of
Massachusetts voters think the Republican Party is too conservative,
compared to only 41% who think the Democratic Party is too liberal.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that 68% of registered voters polled said they think that in general, it is inhumane to put the family dog on top of the car, compared with 14% who said it’s humane and 18% who weren’t sure.
That said, when told by pollsters that Mitt Romney had done so, 55% said it didn’t affect which candidate they would support, while 35% said it made them less likely to support Romney and 7% said it made them more likely to support him.
Former Rep. Mark Neumann (R), running for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, used a pig at a news conference to symbolize how he would cut “pork” from the federal budget.
But as the video shows, that probably wasn’t such a good idea.
A new video features Mitt Romney as Eminem. Just brilliant.
Months of speculation finally ended with Maggie Brooks (R) announcing that she will challenge Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) in the newly configured 25th congressional district, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports.
“Because both women are immensely popular locally, their race is presumed to be among the most competitive nationwide in the fall general election. Slaughter has handily defeated opponents since first winning election to the seat in 1986. Brooks, a former local TV news anchor who entered politics in the 1990s, has turned back every opponent in her meteoric rise through the local GOP political ranks from county legislator to county clerk, then to county executive.”
A new release of The War Room, the 1993 classic documentary on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, is out today with added bonus features.
Dave Weigel: “We get a new, full movie, Return to the War Room, which re-interviews the first movie’s subjects (not Bill Clinton). It’s interesting to see the spoils of victory — these people have put together comfortable Washington/New York axis-of-power lives — but apart from some good new anecdotes, it’s not overly involving. The better stuff comes when Hegedus and Pennebaker talk at length about the film and reveal how they made it. The two big takeaways: They got lucky, and probably no one will ever get this lucky again.”
“You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.”
— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by National Review, on the raid President Obama ordered to kill Osama bin Laden.
Rick Santorum’s campaign and affiliated super PAC have been outspent by Mitt Romney’s forces by a margin of 7 to 1 in the Illinois, Politico reports.
And in the “crucial, expensive Chicago media market,” the spending disparity is 21 to 1 in Romney’s favor.
First Read: “The earliest Mitt Romney could win the 1,144 delegates needed to capture
the GOP nomination, per our count is May 29, and that’s assuming he
wins every single delegate after today. If you assume that he wins a
60%-40% split of the remaining the delegates, Romney won’t get to 1,144
until June 26, when Utah holds its primary. And if Romney and Rick
Santorum continue to trade victories as they’ve been doing over the past
month — with Santorum winning his demographic strongholds and Romney
winning his — Romney would fall about 50 delegates short of the magic
number, according to our math.”
The national debt has now increased more during President Obama’s three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency, CBS News reports.
“If Mr. Obama wins re-election, and his budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. That would mean the Debt increased by 87 percent, or $9.34 trillion, during his two terms.”
Chris Cillizza
kicks off the presidential speculation game for 2016 with a “The
Sweet 2016” bracket assuming that both parties have an open presidential
contest.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) get the #1 seed in their respective parties.
The New York Times notes Newt Gingrich is quoting from Ballots and Bandwagons by Ralph Martin, a 1964 book that focuses on five historic brokered conventions.
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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