Rielle Hunter told ABC News that she and John Edwards “ended their controversial relationship last week, just days after her new book debuted and she went public about how they met, hid their affair and had a baby girl together.”
Said Hunter: “We are a family, but as of the end of last week John Edwards and I are no longer a couple. Not at all.”
She added that she still loves Edwards.
A Key Research/Brigham Young University poll in Utah finds that 77% of Mormons believe Mitt Romney’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate is a good thing for the LDS church while just 2% told pollsters it was a negative.
Despite their excitement, 68% said that Romney’s nomination will bring bad and good publicity for the LDS church and 68% do not trust the media to cover the church fairly.
“Well, I’ll say this: Romney looks like a president.”
— Former Sen. Bob Dole, in an interview with GQ, on his previously tepid endorsement of Mitt Romney.
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Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), “a once-towering figure in New York politics whose reputation was diminished when he was censured in Washington, is again fighting to keep his seat as a group of Democrats prepare to challenge him in a primary on Tuesday,” Reuters reports.
Nonetheless, “most political watchers still see him being re-elected.”
National Journal: “Rangel has strengths of his own, though. Interestingly, despite the redistricted seat’s new majority-Hispanic status, it also has over 24,500 more African-American residents than the old version of the district. And Rangel’s four-decade career in Congress has engendered abiding loyalty among many blacks and a large swath of Democratic voters in the area. Even though Rangel only won 51 percent in the 2010 primary, he actually won more primary votes (over 26,000) than all but one House candidate in the entire state. That suggests a robust turnout operation at the heart of Rangel’s experienced campaign, and indeed, Rangel significantly overperformed in the 15 precincts with the heaviest turnout in 2010, according to a Hotline analysis.”
A new AP/GfK poll finds that just a third of Americans back President Obama’s health care law on which the Supreme Court is about to pass judgment, but more than three quarters want Congress and the president to begin work on a new bill if the court strikes down the 2-year-old law.
The Wall Street Journal says four states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania — could transform the presidential race if Mitt Romney can win them.
“These are four reliably blue states where Mitt Romney’s campaign thinks it has a chance to pull off an upset. A Republican win in any one of these four would significantly change the calculus of what it takes to win in the electoral college, which is where a presidential race actually is decided.”
“President Barack Obama carried each comfortably four years ago, and they have been colored Democratic blue in every presidential race in the last generation. Minnesota last went Republican in 1972, Wisconsin in 1984 and Michigan and Pennsylvania in 1988, so they represent varying degrees of a long shot for the GOP.”
Democrats are “considering canceling their political convention’s kick-off event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, as party planners grapple with a roughly $27 million fundraising deficit,” Bloomberg reports.
Earlier this year, Democrats announced they were shortening their convention from four days to three, “to make room for a day to organize and celebrate the Carolinas, Virginia and the South and kick off the convention at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Labor Day,” Sept. 3.
President Obama “tried to tweak Bostonians tonight as he thanked the Red Sox for trading Kevin Youkilis to his hometown Chicago White Sox, but instead he triggered a chorus of boos from fans still a bit raw over the deal,” the Boston Globe reports.
Said Obama: “Finally, Boston I just want to say — thank-you for Youkilis.”
As boos swelled up, Obama chuckled adding, “I’m just saying, he had to change the color of his socks… I didn’t anticipate boos out of here.”
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s (D-IL) office announced in a news release that the congressman has been on a medical leave of absence since June 10 and is being treated for exhaustion, the AP reports.
Asked why Jackson’s office waited two weeks to tell his constituents about his absence, a spokesman told the Chicago Tribune that the lack of disclosure was a “family request.”
In the mail: The Gospel According to the Fix: An Insider’s Guide to a Less than Holy World of Politics by Chris Cillizza.
This should be a fun read.
The House is scheduled to vote on recommendations that Attorney General Eric Holder be held in contempt of Congress on Thursday, the Washington Post reports.
“Republican leaders plan to bring the issue to the floor on Thursday, meaning lawmakers likely will vote on contempt charges on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to announce its ruling on the constitutionality of the 2010 health-care reform law. The timing likely deprives advocates for contempt charges of the big headlines they might have received if the vote were held another day this week.”
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life
legislation — abortion facility regulations — in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
— Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R), quoted by Politics PA, citing a voter ID law as an accomplishment which critics claim was never about preventing fraud.
Although Mitt Romney released a statement earlier stressing the right of states to enact immigration policies, he never commented directly on the Supreme Court decision gutting large parts of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.
Politico has a remarkable exchange with traveling spokesman Rick Gorka, in which he did everything he could to avoid answering despite being asked 20 times.
Daily Beast: “Clinton predicted that if the law is declared unconstitutional,
Republicans will suffer a backlash when millions of Americans calculate
what they have lost. Before the Affordable Care Act passed, two thirds
of all the applications for bankruptcy were because of health-care
emergencies, a consequence likely to return if health care inflation
again rises precipitously.”
Cherokee County, GA Sheriff Roger Garrison (R) insisted to WSB-TV that he “has no affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, despite old photos that surfaced showing him wearing a robe and hood.”
He says he wore the costume to a Halloween party “long before he took office.”
Said Garrison: “I don’t deny it wasn’t stupid, looking back now, but there again I say what 21- or 22-year-old in this world hasn’t made some stupid mistakes?”
Former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is the latest prominent Republican to switch parties in California. He changed his voter registration last week from Republican to “no party preference.”
George Skelton: “It’s impossible to assess any grand, overarching meaning in all this — except that in each case the politician felt that the Republican label was an albatross. The candidates’ actions may have been self-serving, but it’s an ugly mark on the GOP that they felt better served not being burdened by the party.”
A new American Research Group poll in New Hampshire shows President Obama with a solid lead over Mitt Romney, 51% to 43%.
Jim Geraghty looks at the Obama campaign spending reports and finds online advertising and other web-related efforts are the largest expenditures to date.
“Ironically, in an era of e-mail, postage was one of the campaign’s largest expenditures, totaling more than $14.7 million.”
Also interesting: “The Obama campaign appears to run on pizza: $2,084.37 went to Domino’s Pizza, $1,774.78 went to Pizzanno’s Pizza, $1,167.45 went to Papa John’s, $834.03 went to Pizza Hut, and $362 went to Little Caesars. (One hopes Michelle Obama won’t find out that some Obama campaign staffer in Winston-Salem, N.C., spent $239.39 at Krispy Kreme.)”
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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