Author: Jimm Phillips

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Politico today that he remains undecided on who he will support in the race for the state’s open Senate seat, even as a new poll showed his erstwhile party’s candidate leading substantially despite a recent Vietnam service flap.

Lieberman said he was open to supporting former WWF CEO Linda McMahon, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the race.

“I said I’m open,” Lieberman told POLITICO. “Is it theoretically possible? Yes. I probably know Blumenthal better, but I know Linda McMahon – she was on the state board of higher education, and I met with her a couple of times in that capacity. This is the great privilege that voters of Connecticut gave me in 2006 as an independent. Wait and see.”

Lieberman’s comments came as a new Quinnipiac University poll showed state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) leading McMahon 56-31 percent despite the recent controversy. This represents a drop in support — he led McMahon 61-28 in Quinnipiac’s March 17 poll — but the drop is far less severe than the one indicated by a Rasmussen Reports poll earlier this month that showed Blumenthal’s lead dropping by 10 points.

The Vietnam incident appears to be less of an issue in the campaign than was generally believed, as 61 percent of people in the poll said Blumenthal’s flap made no difference in whether they would vote for him. Thirty-three percent said it made them less likely to vote for him. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with Blumenthal’s explanation.

“It looks like Connecticut voters forgive Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, or feel that there is nothing to forgive in the Vietnam service flap,” Quinnipiac Poll Director Douglas Schwartz said in a press release on the poll results. “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.”

Even before Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) was sworn in Tuesday, less than a week after his special election victory against a pair of feuding Democrats, pundits were already debating whether he would be able to win a full term in November. One thing some believe will work in his favor is his incumbency — and conventional wisdom states that Hawaii is one of the most pro-incumbent states in the nation. But at least one political expert says what appears to be state voters’ pro-incumbency attitude is actually just a case of being pro-Democrat.

“Generally I don’t think it’s any different than the rest of the country, which votes incumbents in most of time,” said Neal Milner, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii. “I think what’s important about Hawaii is not incumbency, it’s how strong it is for the Democrats.”

Djou won May 22 with only 39.4 percent of the vote, while his two Democratic opponents split a combined 58.4 percent. The district he now represents, which mainly covers the Honolulu metropolitan area, is overwhelmingly Democratic — Obama bested McCain here 70-28 percent. Before Saturday, the district had also not previously elected a Republican since 1988, when Pat Saiki won what would be her only re-election campaign. Djou has history on his side: In the more than 50 years since Hawaii became the 50th state, its voters have never voted out an incumbent member of its congressional delegation. But before his election, just two of those incumbents were Republicans: Saiki and Sen. Hiram Fong.

While voters have soured nationally on incumbents, even in their own districts, Hawaiians have somewhat bucked the trend. In a poll released March 26, Rasmussen Reports found that 51 percent of state voters felt their local representative deserved re-election, while 28 did not. (The broader meaning of that poll, though, is dubious, since at the time of its release, Hawaii had only one representative in Congress, the popular Mazie Hirono.) They were evenly divided about incumbents nationally — 38 percent said it was better for most incumbents to be re-elected while 37 percent felt most incumbents should be defeated.

A national Rasmussen poll released February 9 — the poll released closest to the Hawaii one — showed a far more anti-incumbent electorate. Just 38 percent of voters thought their local representative deserved re-election, while 39 percent did not. Sixty-three percent felt it was better for most incumbents to lose re-election, while 19 percent disagreed.

The dynamics that have affected politics in the continental United States over the past year — particularly the emergence of the Tea Party movement — have not influenced Hawaii’s races to the same degree, Milner said.

“We haven’t had the degree of outside anger and anti-incumbency pressure that you see elsewhere,” he said. “I’m still a little bit skeptical about how much that’s going to make a difference by the time November rolls around nationally, but right now Hawaii doesn’t have that same kind of dynamic.”

That may change now, as the national parties appear poised to do battle over Djou’s seat.

“The national parties don’t even send people out here for the pr0esidential elections,” Milner said. “It’s not worth the resources generally because they’re not close elections. So this really is different, and I think it’s going to change the nature of the campaign just since the National Republican Congressional Committee already did a lot of strategizing to affect the race between the two Democrats. This is not something that I’ve ever seen.”

While the state remains largely Democratic, Milner said, Djou has a chance of winning a full term if he runs the right kind of race.

“Djou’s a good campaigner,” Milner said. “I think he’s got options. None of them are particularly good, but they’re about as good as you’re going to get for a minority party there. One option is to try to mobilize the anger and get the independents to vote Republican. Another is to argue in ways that bring other left-leaning independents over to his party. The Republican base is small enough that he can’t rely on that, so he’s got to figure out other things. So one of the things is to see if he can mobilize some of that anger. But he’s not that kind of guy.”

The Democratic primary campaign continues to be nasty as tensions persist between former Rep. Ed Case and Sen. Daniel Inouye, who strongly backed state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa’s candidacy in the special election. If the Democrats remain divided up to the Sept. 18 primary, Djou may be able to exploit their divisions again, Milner said.

“The best thing Djou may have going for him is all the antagonism that the Democratic primary may create,” he said. “That may move independent voters, who already lean a little more to the right nationally than they did two years ago, into Djou’s camp. But he’s got a problem because of the numbers.”

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) has now distanced himself even further from state Republicans, this time by wading into a contentious battle over dueling redistricting amendments.

During a meeting with the Miami Herald’s editorial board this week, Crist endorsed a pair of ballot initiatives sponsored by the citizens group Fair District Florida — Amendments 5 and 6 — that seek to reform how lawmakers redraw legislative and congressional districts. At the same time, he trashed the majority-Republican legislature’s decision to put forward a third redistricting measure — Amendment 7 — that critics charge will effectively neuter Amendments 5 and 6. (See here for an explanation of what these amendments would do.)

Crist claimed the lawmakers’ amendment was effectively a way for state Republicans to preserve their numbers in the legislature and the state’s congressional delegation. He referred to the bill as a “silver bullet” that he would have vetoed if the state constitution gave him that power.

“Some people have gotten so rigid about their adherence to the party before doing what’s right for the people, it’s hurting our country,” he told the Herald.

Crist had previously reserved judgment on the Fair Districts amendments back in February 2009, claiming he needed to learn more about what they would do. But he also said he felt redistricting reform pushes always came from the minority party.

“It always seems like the party that’s not in power doesn’t like the way the districts are drawn,” he told the St. Petersburg Times.

His position is not a total reversal, however, as he had supported a constitutional amendment in 1993 that would have created an independent commission that would follow guidelines similar to what is included in the Fair Districts amendments. That amendment passed in the state Senate but then died in the then-majority-Democratic House.

This is just the latest in a series of dramas between Crist and the GOP since his April 29 announcement that he would forgo his run for the party’s Senate nomination in favor of an independent run for the seat. His battles with the state party leadership have been particularly nasty and public, culminating in the Republican Party of Florida’s widely reported eBay auction of its portrait of Crist for $7,700.

Crist’s comments on the redistricting amendments went public the same day the state chapters of the NAACP and League of Women Voters, as well as the Hispanic advocacy group Democracia Ahora, filed a lawsuit in Tallahassee to get Amendment 7 removed from the ballot. The plaintiffs claimed the amendment was “flying under false colors” by claiming to clarify Amendments 5 and 6 while allegedly being an attempt to do just what Crist claimed: preserve Republican majorities.

The state party’s press office had not returned requests for comment at the time of this article’s posting.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) announced this afternoon that he will not be mounting a write-in campaign, his only remaining option to retain the seat he has held since 1993.

“If I were to do it, it would revive all of those passions and divide the party in the state of Utah,” he said during a press conference in front of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s offices.

Bennett became the first incumbent to lose re-nomination this election cycle when he came in third during the state’s GOP convention May 8 in what he called the “nastiest race for a party nomination in the history of Utah.” Businessman Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee, who came in first and second respectively, will fight for the GOP nomination in the state primary election June 22. During the convention he had kept the write-in option open — he had missed the state deadline to run as an independent candidate — but did not commit at that time to continue his campaign.

“If I’m eliminated, I’m going to go home and get a good night sleep,” he told The Associated Press. “That’s the only commitment I’ll make.”

Bennett did not endorse Bridgewater or Lee during his press conference, but Politico reported Bennett and Bridgewater will meet later today.

Neither candidate in the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary will finish with a majority of the vote, while Rep. John Boozman (R) may be able to avoid a runoff and win his party’s nomination.

As of 11:26 p.m., Sen. Blanche Lincoln led Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in the Democratic primary 44-42 percent, with 52 percent reporting. The Associated Press now reports that the candidates will face a runoff on June 8. Boozman had 50 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, while former state Sen. Jim Holt was in second place with 17 percent, with 51 percent reporting.

Halter told reporters Monday he would consider it a victory if he forced Lincoln into a runoff.

The Democratic primary for the Pennsylvania Senate seat remains tight now, while former Club for Growth President Pat Toomey (R) easily won his own contest.

Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak were tied at 50 percent in the Democratic Senate primary as of 9:50 p.m, with 37 percent reporting. The Associated Press and other outlets called the Republican primary for Toomey, who led activist and perennial candidate Peg Luksik 79-21 percent. Meanwhile, Democrat Mark Critz led Republican Tim Burns 58-40 percent in the special election to replace the late Rep. John Murtha (D), with just around 20 percent reporting.

Specter’s race against Sestak had become tougher in recent weeks as polls began to show the two tied or trading small leads. The last poll to be released, from Qunnipiac University, showed Sestak leading Specter by one point. Specter had been a Republican for 44 years before rejoining the Democrats in late April 2009. He was previously a registered Democrat from 1951 through 1965.

Burns hoped to make the special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th house district a referendum on Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, while Critz distanced himself from the national party to a degree, labeling himself an “independent thinker.”

Updated at 9:50 p.m. on May 18.

Tea Party-supported candidate Rand Paul has captured the Republican nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, while state Attorney General Jack Conway (D) currently leads in his party’s primary.

The Associated Press called the race for Paul but has yet to make a projection in the Democratic race. As of 8:41 p.m., Paul led state Secretary of State Trey Grayson 59-36 percent, while Conway led Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo 47-41 percent.

Conway’s lead represents a significant change from recent polls, which all showed Mongiardo leading. The most recent poll, from Daily Kos/Research 2000, showed Mongiardo leading 39-36. It should be noted that this result did show momentum on Conway’s side, as Mongiardo had previously led 47-31. All recent polls of the Republican primary showed Paul with a significant lead over Grayson.

While the Republican primary result is clear, there is still drama playing out between the Paul and Grayson campaigns. Grayson has accused Paul’s people of conducting a voter intimidation drive at polling places, citing a Paul campaign document that directs his supporters to witness the vote tallying and make get out the vote calls. At least one arrest has occurred in connection with vote buying, as Hazard City police nabbed a local businessman accused of buying a vote for $20. The state’s election fraud hot line had received 106 calls as of 5 p.m., which included charges of vote buying and selling, many of which involved the GOP primary.

Paul’s campaign manager, David Adams, told The Lexington Herald-Leader the charges were “ridiculous” and that the problems were “much ado about nothing.”

On the House side, there is no drama whatsoever – all six incumbents went uncontested for re-nomination, as did the challengers in three districts. Air Force veteran Todd Lally (R) will challenge Rep. John Yarmuth (D), while attorney Andy Barr (R) will take on Rep. Ben Chandler (D). EMS pilot Jim Holbert (D) led by 6 points in his race to challenge Rep. Hal Rogers (R).

Updated at 8:41 p.m. on May 18.