Mereja

Author: Daniela Altimari

  • Blumenthal campaign on the Q poll: “Dick is taking nothing for granted”

    Repeating a phrase that has become the campaign mantra, Blumenthal spokeswoman Maura Downes said the campaign takes nothing for granted, not even with a 25 percentage point lead over Republican Linda McMahon.

    “The people of Connecticut know they can count on Dick Blumenthal to stand up for them against even the toughest opponents, and that’s what he’ll do in the U.S. Senate,” Downes said in an email. “Dick is taking nothing for granted in this race — he is focused on listening to people on the issues that matter most to them, like jobs and the economy, and working hard to earn their support.”

     

  • All about Joe

    Washington Post politics blogger David Weigel provides some important context on today’s “news” that Joe Lieberman might endorse Republican Linda McMahon.

    Blumenthal and Lieberman have a long and complicated relationship, one that was severely strained by the 2006 Senate race. Blumenthal endorsed Lieberman early that year, but, like most of the rest of the state’s Democratic establishment, united behind Ned Lamont when he won the Democratic primary.

    UPDATE: The fact that Lieberman is toying with the idea of backing McMahon is suprising in another way as well. Lieberman co-sponsored the Family Entertainment Protection Act, which would have made it a federal crime to sell videos with “mature” content to minors. (The bill did not become law.)

    It makes you wonder what a family-values guy like him thinks of the push-the-envelope-on-sex-and-violence content that reigned during the WWE’s “Attitude Era.”

     

  • And speaking of provocative blog posts…

    CT Blue, aka Democratic activist John Wirzbicki of Noank, observes that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon has deftly avoided ideological categorization, despite some national media types who have her pegged as a Tea Partier.

    “My read, and I think this is widely shared around here, is that she has, so far, avoided committing herself to any agenda, right wing or otherwise,” Wirzbicki writes. 

    “She has no particular loyalty to the Republican party, that’s clear. She’s a little like Bloomberg in that respect-the party is just a vehicle to get her where she wants to go. Had there been a vulnerable Republican in the seat, she’d be a Democrat right now.”

     

  • More from Dick Blumenthal’s best frenemy

    Brian Lockhart of Hearst Newspapers catches up with Richard Blumenthal’s good friend, Chris Shays, who says he never told the New York Times that he heard Blumenthal specifically say he served in Vietnam.

    Courant colleague Rick Green also weighs in on the Shays-Blumenthal brouhaha.

    And speaking of interesting reading, check out Colin McEnroe on the wide gulf between what the D.C. chattering class is saying and what Connecticut voters think.

     

  • Patru on the Q: “Sometimes pollsters just get it wrong”

    Ed Patru, spokesman for Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate campaign, had this to say in response to today’s Q poll showing his candidate down by 25 percentage points:

    “Sometimes pollsters just get it wrong and this is one of those times,” Patru said via email. “Even Dick Blumenthal’s pollster has the race much closer than this. And, there have been two other independent polls conducted this month that have shown the race to be within 13 points in early May, and 3 points in late May.” 

  • Q Poll: Blumenthal trumps McMahon by 25 points; voters shrug off Vietnam matter

    This morning’s Q poll shows just how hard it will be for Republicans to win a U.S. Senate seat
    in Connecticut. Despite potentially damaging revelations that Democrat Richard Blumenthal misrepresented his military record — and despite an early and pervasive ad campaign launched by Republican Linda McMahon — state voters are sticking with Blumenthal.

    The attorney general beats McMahon by 25 percentage points, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. That’s a drop from the 33 point lead that Blumenthal held over the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO in the March Q poll, but still a significant lead.

    Even more heartening for Blumenthal: Questions about his military record, first raised last week by a New York Times report, don’t appear to have hurt him. Sixty one percent of the voters say it doesn’t matter to them that Blumenthal misrepresented his service by saying on several occasions that he served in the Vietnam War when in fact he remained stateside.
    “It looks like Connecticut voters forgive Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, or feel that there is nothing to forgive in the Vietnam service flap,” Q Poll director Doug Schwartz said in press release accompanying the poll’s release. “While he has taken a hit with voters, his poll numbers were so high to begin with that he still maintains a commanding lead over Linda McMahon.”

    And there’s more good news for Blumenthal. He wins every “character” question the poll asked. He’s seen as having strong leadership qualities, being honest and having  the necessary experience to be a U.S. Senator, topping McMahon’s ratings in each of those categories.

    Seventy six percent approve of the way Blumenthal does his job as the state’s attorney general and 76 percent think he has “the right kind of experience” to be a U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

    However, there was a glimmer of good news for the McMahon camp. Blumenthal is seen as less “honest and trustworthy” than he was in a January Q poll. Then, 81 percent of respondents viewed him as such; in the current poll, 60 percent said he was “honest and trustworthy.”

    The Q poll shows a starkly different result than a Rasmussen poll released on May 19. That survey, taken the day the Times published its report in the newspaper, showed McMahon had essentially closed the gap with Blumenthal, coming within three percentage points of him.


    McMahon has already spent at least $15 million on the race, and has run a series of television ads touting her business experience. But the poll found that 39 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion of her. That’s an increase over the 26 percent unfavorable rating she received in the March poll.

    The poll found that 61 percent of all voters view Blumenthal favorable — as do 41 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of military households.
    The poll was conducted May 24 and 25, just days after McMahon’s stunning victory at the state GOP convention. 
    “What is surprising is that McMahon gets no bounce from her Republican convention victory,” Schwartz said. “Her negatives went up 13 points from 26 percent unfavorable to 39 percent unfavorable. The more voters get to know McMahon the less they like her.” 

    The poll surveyed 1,159 Connecticut registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. 


  • Will Simmons seek a return to his old congressional seat? He’s not saying but a DC GOP operative says “we’d be happy to have him.”

    With his apparent decision to abandon his U.S. Senate bid in the face of the Linda McMahon juggernaut, will Simmons seek a return to the cozy confines of the 2nd Congressional District?

    He represented the 2nd for six years before losing to U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney in 2006 by less than 100 votes. Some Republicans think the cards are stacked in their favor this year (just as they were for the Democrats in ’06) and Simmons would be a plum recruit for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
    The Simmons campaign isn’t saying and some of his allies predict that he will skip the congressional race and announce that he’s sitting out the remainder of the 2010 election cycle entirely. 
    The rumor of a Simmons switch first flared up a few months ago. The Simmons camp dismissed it as wishful thinking being fed by McMahon staffers.
    Simmons’ cash — he says he has more than $1 million in his campaign account — could be transferred to a House race. He would have to go out and collect signatures to force his way onto the ballot, but that’s not an insurmountable obstacle.
    Some GOP insiders say they are less than enchanted with the 2nd District candidate endorsed by the party convention on Friday: Daria Novak, a former State Department expert from Madison who has never held elective office before.
    Suzanne Novak, Daria Novak’s sister and campaign manager, said they had heard the rumor that Simmons would switch off and on for some time. “That’s been out there for some time,” Suzanne Novak said late tonight. When the Novak campaign talked about it with Simmons, “he told us he had no intention of doing that.”
    Novak said tonight she doesn’t know if that has changed.
    Some Republicans speculated that the NRCC may have tapped Simmons on the shoulder and asked him to run in the 2nd. Party officials wouldn’t comment but DC operative said privately “we’d be happy to have him.”

  • Sources say Rob Simmons will drop out of U.S. Senate race tomorrow.

    Rob Simmons will hold a press conference for this morning in New London to announce he’s leaving the U.S. Senate race, sources said late today.

    The former congressman and Vietnam War veteran lost the Republican convention’s endorsement on Friday to former World Wrestling CEO Linda McMahon.
    Simmons entered the Senate race in the winter of 2009, when a politically ailing Sen. Christopher Dodd was the preumptive Democratic nominee. Throughout the spring and summer and into the fall, Simmons sat atop public opinion polls.
    Then McMahon entered the race in September and began spending millions onf television ads and direct mail. 
    Throughout the increasingly bitter campaign between Simmons and McMahon, Simmons had said he would abide by the convention’s choice and not force a primary. However on Friday he announced a change of heart and said he would primary McMahon for the party’s nomination after all.
    Late Monday, the Simmons campaign sent out a press release alerting reporters to the press conference at the Radisson Hotel in New London, but declined to provide any additional details.
    “If that’s the decision he’s made, I know it was a difficult decision,” said state Sen. John Kissel of Enfield, a longtime Simmons supporter. “I’m proud of Rob if he’s come to that conclusion. I don’t have any specific information…it would be right for the party and right for Rob.”

    McMahon, a political outsider who has never held elective office, has enormous resources. She said she would spend up to $50 million of her vast fortune on the campaign.


  • Simmon to make announcement “on the future of the Senate campaign” tomorrow

    The Simmons campaign has called a press conference for 9 a.m. in New London. Spokesman Raj Shah won’t say what the topic will be. “I’m on a tight leash on this one,” he said by phone tonight. But he promised it will be “newsworthy.”

  • Blumenthal campaign says its own poll shows he still has the support of the people of Connecticut

    Connecticut voters are standing by Richard Blumenthal, even as he continues to face strong criticism for misrepresenting his military record.

    At least that’s the main finding of an internal poll of 602 likely voters conducted by the Blumenthal campaign last week, right after the New York Times disclosed that Blumenthal had, on several occasions, incorrectly implied that he served in the Vietnam War.

    Al Quinlan, Blumenthal’s pollster, said his survey, taken May 19 and 20, puts the Democratic attorney general’s personal favorable rating at 55 percent, compared with an unfavorable rating of 28 percent.

    And it’s not because people aren’t familiar with the story of Blumenthal’s military embellishments. More than 90 percent of those polled said they knew about the story.

    But because the poll was commissioned by the Blumenthal campaign, it is already drawing scorn from the campaign of Linda McMahon, one of his Republican opponents.

    “I think the public understands Dick Blumenthal at this point is in 100% damage control mode, and this poll is part of that effort,” McMahon spokesman Ed Patru said. “Nobody believes his untrue statements about Vietnam have made him more popular, but that is what Dick Blumenthal’s latest poll would have us believe. Perhaps his pollsters misstated something in the numbers.”

     

     

     

     

     

    Quinlan and campaign staffer Marla Romash spoke about the poll in a conference call with Connecticut reporters this afternoon. He said a head-to-heard match up between Blumenthal and McMahon shows the Democrat on top, 55 to 40 percentage points.

    “The point were trying to make today is a narrow one,” Romash said. “A man who has taken a very serious attack thanks to $16 million of opposition research still has the support of the people of Connecticut.”

    The survey also found that, by a 59 percent to 31 percent ratio, repondents said they felt Blumenthal addressed the matter honestly.

    When asked if the campaign had conducted earlier polls, Quinlan and Romash declined to say.

    “This is not about being desperate,” Quinlan said. “This is about not taking anything for granted…that’s the way the campaign’s going to be run.”

    Patru of the McMahon campaign said in an email that the Blumenthal internal numbers “do not square with other public data from independent and more credible sources. A Rasmussen poll released May 6 showed Linda within 13 points of Dick Blumenthal, 52-39. A Rasmussen poll released Wednesday, May 19 (the day after the explosive story on Blumenthal was published in The New York Times) showed Linda within three points of Blumenthal, 58-55.” 

     

  • You know things are bad when your name become a verb

    Writing about the California Senate race on his blog, RedState.com, conservative political commentator and CNN contributor Erick Erickson says that allies of Republican Carly Fiorina try to “Dick Blumenthal” GOP opponent Chuck DeVore.

     

  • Dodd on Blumenthal: “His record of service to our state certainly outweighs” his misstatements

    Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., stressed Monday that he continues to strongly support the candidacy of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal for U.S. Senate, the Courant’s Ken Gosselin reports.

    The comments came in a press conference in Hartford following a controversy last week over Blumenthal’s past statement on his military service during the Vietnam War.

    “He has apologized for these misstatements along the way,” Dodd said. “His record of service to our state certainly outweighs the misstatements that he has acknowledged and apologized for. What ought to be important to people come November is to elect a United States senator to protect our state, stand up for it, fight for it. I’m confident Dick Blumenthal is the best individual to do that for our state.”

    He added: “I can’t think of a better legacy I could have than to have Dick Blumenthal follow me in that job.”

     

  • Blumenthal: “I have made mistakes and I am sorry.”

    After nearly a week of criticism following revelations that he misrepresented his military record, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal apologized.
    “At times when I have sought to honor veterans, I have not been as clear or precise as I should have been about my service in the Marine Corps Reserves,” Blumenthal said in a statement emailed to the Courant late Sunday by his spokeswoman, Maura Downes. “I have firmly and clearly expressed regret and taken responsibility for my words.
    “I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone,” Blumenthal said. “I will always champion the cause of Connecticut’s and our nation’s veterans.”
    Blumenthal, who has been Connecticut’s Attorney General for the past 20 years, has been under intense fire since the New York Times reported last week that he had, on several occasions through the years, incorrectly stated that he served in the Vietnam War. In fact, Blumenthal received five draft deferments, the Times reported, and was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves who served in the U.S. during the war.
    On Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the story broke, Blumenthal held a press conference at the Veterans of Foreign War hall in West Hartford and expressed regret for those occasions when he has “misspoken” about his service, but never uttered the words “I am sorry.”
    The lack of an apology provided fresh fuel to his critics, with several veterans groups, editorial boards and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano urging him to say he is sorry. The Courant sent an email to his campaign Sunday afternoon asking if an apology would be forthcoming and, several hours later, the campaign released his statement.

  • Breaking news: Blumenthal says he’s sorry

    E-mail statement from attorney general and Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal:

    “At times when I have sought to honor veterans, I have not been as clear or precise as I should have been about my service in the Marine Corps Reserves,” Blumenthal says via email tonight.


    “I have firmly and clearly expressed regret and taken responsibility for my words. I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone.  I will always champion the cause of Connecticut’s and our nation’s veterans.”


  • SUV carrying Bill Clinton involved in accident on the Merritt Parkway

    “It was just a fluke,” Clinton tells Fox 61’s John Charton. The former president was en-route to New Haven; he was giving a commencement speech at Yale.

  • Scully: Where are the African Americans and Latinos in Linda McMahon’s ad campaign?

    Fresh off Corey Brinson’s observations about the lack of diversity on the Republican ticket comes Patrick Scully’s criticism that Linda McMahon’s campaign ads and brochures look awfully white.

    “One would think that having access to the best professional campaign people would mean all voting demographics would be covered. They’re not,” writes Scully, a Democratic operative who runs a consulting firm, in his blog, The Hanging Shad.

    “McMahon should have to answer for spending millions to appeal to the country club set to the detriment of diversity,” Scully writes. “According to the Census Bureau’s latest numbers, racial minorities comprised nearly 28% of Connecticut’s population. McMahon’s campaign imagery is nowhere near reflective of the state she wants to represent in the US Senate.”

    Scully’s criticism comes a few days after another prominent Democrat, Jonathan Pelto, sent around a YouTube clip in which McMahon’s husband, wrestling impresario Vince McMahon, appears to uttering the n-word.

    What does the McMahon campaign think of this new line of attack? Is it just a way to divert attention from Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s Vietnam War misrepresentations? I have an email out to McMahon spokesman Ed Patru seeking comment.






  • Delegates from Simsbury say Republican convention had an energy it didn’t have before

    Simsbury Republican town committee member Darren Cunningham remembers a time when the party had to go begging to find enough delegates for its convention.
     
    “There have been a lot of lean years,” he said. “It wasn’t popular to run with an ‘R’ next to your name.”
     
    Not this year, they say. There are an abundance of Republican candidates and “we had almost three people for every one delegate position,” Cunningham said.
     
    As the curtain draws on the 2010 Republican convention, Cunningham, 34, and fellow Simsbury delegate Greg Piecuch, 33, said they saw an energy they hadn’t seen before.
     
    Piecuch, who is running for state representative from the 16th District, said he felt that energy earlier on Sunday when all the GOP legislative candidates were gathered in a room with party leaders. 
     
    Cunningham, who ran unsuccessfully for First Selectman last year against Mary Glassman, said candidates such as Bloomfield’s Corey Brinson, Justin Bernier and Jeff Wright of Newington are revitalizating the party.
     
    “We all love Jodi Rell,” but her departure from the state’s political scene “is sort of the end of an era.”   
     
     
     

  • GOP declares war on paperwork

    State government generates too much paperwork.

    And both Jerry Farrell Jr., who won the Republican party’s endorsement for secretary of the state, and Mark Boughton, the convention’s choice lieutenant governor, pledged to reduce it.

     

  • The Public Editor weighs in

    Read Clark Hoyt’s take on Blumenthal, the Times and the war here.

  • Race and the GOP

    Corey Brinson, who lost his bid for secretary of the state, was the only African American candidate at the state convention on Saturday.

    And don’t think he didn’t notice.  

    “The state is 25 percent people of color. The convention is not,” Brinson told the Courant’s Jenna Carlesso.
     
    Brinson ultimately lost the convention endorsement to Jerry Farrell Jr., the state’s consumer protection commissioner.

    However, he garnered nearly 40 percent of the votes, more than enough to force a primary. Brinson, a lawyer from Bloomfield, said he would decide Monday whether he will wage a primary.
     
    Asked about whether he was standing in the way of that change in the Republican Party, Farrell replied: “I don’t think any of us are minorities. We’re all Americans. We all have something to offer.”
     
    “I am who I am. I can’t be something else,” Farrell added.