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Sen. Joe Machin (D-WV) told the Wall Street Journal that enough senators could be persuaded to revive and pass the gun background check measure defeated yesterday. He claimed that 70 lawmakers would have supported his amendment with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) if the NRA hadn’t warned lawmakers that it would include their votes in its influential rankings.
Said Machin: “If they hadn’t scored it, we’d have gotten 70 votes. They made a big mistake.”
Roll Call: Where does Obama go from here?
Missouri State Senator Brian Nieves (R) sent an email to his distribution list and received this reply from a constituent: “Take me off your mailing list. Freak.”
Not very friendly, but the Riverfront Times reports Nieves fired off “a series of lengthy, angry, incredibly bizarre” e-mails in response.
An example: “Wow. Your communications are so thought provoking, well written, and intelligent. Perhaps you secretly want to be on my distribution list because every time you send me a message, your email is recaptured and put on my distribution list. I’m tiring of taking you off every time you email me AGAIN so unless you are in love with me or have some other sort of sick obsession with me (sorry, I’m straight as an arrow) you should probably stop emailing me so that you don’t keep getting put back on the list. Should I type these instructions slower? Are you having a hard time understanding? BTW – I archive ALL questionable emails like yours in case there’s ever any doubt about who got ugly first. Go back to the grade school playground where people you can successfully bully and out smart are playing cuz junior… You are way out of your league with me.”
“I will guarantee you that you will see the most vicious education
campaign ads that you’ve ever seen in your life next year, because I am
going to be the next Scott Walker in this country, because I am
challenging the status quo.”
— Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), quoted by the Bangor Daily News, committing to running for re-election.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “continues to seize on the bungled taping of his Louisville campaign headquarters,” Politico
writes.
“The Senate Minority Leader will go on the air Thursday with a
new commercial that links last week’s brouhaha to the Democratic
president’s desire to oust him.”
Though he spent much of the last few years fighting low approval rates, a new Quinnipiac poll in Ohio finds 52% of voters now approve of Gov. John Kasich (R) and he holds solid leads two potential
Democratic challengers.
Kasich tops up Ed Fitzgerald, 46% to 37%, and beats Richard Cordray (D), 45% to 38%.
Despite a very bad day for former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) yesterday — including the NRCC pulling the plug on financial support of his special election campaign — John Avlon says he may still pull off a victory.
“What we have here is a competitive congressional race in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress since the early years of the Reagan era. That itself is invigorating, and Colbert Busch has already proved herself a capable, engaging candidate with a will to win. But even without the NRCC, counting Sanford out is a sucker’s bet. Win or lose, he’ll be due in court to answer the charges May 7–either as the incoming congressman or on the heels of his first electoral defeat.”
The Cook Political Report calls the race a Toss Up.
The Washington Post notes that it wasn’t just expanded background checks that were voted down in the Senate yesterday. Every single new gun control amendment failed to pass.
First Read: “Yesterday, even the most uncontroversial piece of gun legislation — a
trafficking bill with NRA support — went down. Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid wouldn’t get cloture on the final bill, and he may pull the
whole package from the floor as soon as today.”
Michael Tomasky says that, years from now, “we’ll look back on yesterday as the moment when the gun lobby overreached–and laid the groundwork for its own undoing.”
Roll Call: “Not a single House member has announced they will retire in 2014, but first-quarter fundraising reports indicate some may be headed in that direction.”
GOP operative Andy Parrish, a former chief of staff to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), “is expected to tell an Iowa Senate ethics panel that her 2012 presidential campaign made improper payments to its state chairman,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
“Parrish’s willingness to go public against his former employer and political mentor is likely to send shock waves through Minnesota GOP circles, where both he and his attorney are well-known figures.”
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was forced to flee a courtroom “moments after judges ordered his arrest, dealing a fresh blow to hopes of reviving his political career at next month’s general elections,” Reuters reports.
“Musharraf’s hasty exit from the Islamabad High Court seemed to symbolize the diminished influence of a former army chief who once dominated Pakistan’s political landscape, but whose bid to stage a triumphal comeback has garnered widespread scorn.”
Gabrielle Giffords: “Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on.”
Jason Zengerle: “Indeed, while Jenny has never come out and publicly opposed Mark’s congressional candidacy — choosing to remain officially neutral — she’s waged a brutally effective passive-aggressive campaign against it. Whether it was revealing to me that Mark had shamelessly asked her to manage his election bid; or telling the Washington Post that, until the night Mark’s fiancée showed up onstage at his victory party in April, one of her sons had never met the woman; or just generally making it known that she is furious that he’s running, Jenny has done a masterful job of keeping her ex-husband’s past (and not-so-past) transgressions in the news. She has seeded the ground with political land mines, stood back, and waited for Mark to step on one.”
In addition to a trespassing complaint, Jenny Sanford has accused former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) of shirking their divorce agreement on at least three other occasions, the Washington Post reports.
“She filed a complaint against him in March 2012 for violating the terms of having their sons on the Sanford family’s Coosaw plantation. The terms state that ‘no airplanes will be flown at the children.’ She has also accused him of failing to properly insure the property and of missing a child support payment.”
“I see this as just Round One.”
— President Obama, speaking after defeat of an expanded gun background check bill in the Senate.
The Senate failed to advance a bipartisan background check proposal that Democrats had hoped would be the core of any bill, Roll Call reports.
The background check legislation received only 54 votes, six short of the 60 needed to clear a threatened filibuster.
National Journal: “But don’t call this good news for Obama’s enemies, at least not yet,
because under new rules of politics that are still being written, the
victory could be Pyrrhic. In an era of voter empowerment and surprise,
the GOP’s opposition to a popular gun regulation could backfire.”
Iowa State Sen. Dennis Guth (R) said the media has “bamboozled” the public into a growing acceptance of gay relationships and argues his family faces “multiple health risks” because of sexually transmitted infections he says are associated with a gay lifestyle, the Mason City Globe Gazette reports.
Radio Iowa quotes Guth: “If I saw someone going the wrong way on a one-way street, I would make every effort to stop and redirect them.”
He’s hosting a radio show in Philadelphia, the Philly Post reports.
“Local radio station WPHT, for mysterious reasons, has handed its afternoon drive-time radio show over to a man who’s never hosted a radio show, has no ties to Philadelphia save for a few long-ago political consultancy gigs, and whose credibility–for a myriad of reasons–is at an all-time low…”
“I listened to the entire first show on Monday, and while I admit I was skeptical about his chances at success before I listened, after the first day, I’m even more skeptical. And that was before Morris leapt to the conclusion, minutes after the Boston Marathon bombing, that Obama policy must be to blame.”
The Washington Post has learned that tensions within former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R) family “flared up as recently as April 2, at the celebration of Sanford’s runoff election victory when the former governor thrust two of his sons on-stage with the Argentine woman who was at the center of the spectacular sex scandal that broke up his marriage.”
It was the first time Sanford’s teenage son Bolton he had ever been in the presence of Maria Belen Chapur.
Jenny Sanford confirmed: “That was indeed Bolton’s first intro and both boys were quite upset and visibly so.”
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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