Archive for December, 2009
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A bare majority. Actually, there are only 39 seats listed in the “lean Democratic†and “Democratic toss-up†columns, but as Taegan Goddard points out, if you toss in Bart Gordon’s retirement today in a very winnable GOP district you’re down to the magic number. But never mind that. Follow the first link to Cook and skim the column of “likely Democratic†seats, which are considered safe-ish, to see how many come from districts with a Republican-leaning PVI. If you see multiple retirements in that column — and the NRCC thinks you very well might — then suddenly a bunch of seats are in play on top of the 40 that are already shaky
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After a few phone calls and secret mole conversations, I’ve learned that Tom Campbell has been fielding calls from high ranking Republican Party members, each expressing their views that Campbell should exit the heated gubernatorial and enter the primary against Assemblyman Chuck Devore and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina.
Another source convinced me that Campbell is seriously considering the switch to the Republican primary to face incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer.
The story goes this way, Campbell has been fielding calls from wealthy, heavily funded GOP contributors who are said to be “unconvinced†of Carly Fiorina’s abilities, and are best described as party ‘centrists’ who have more leanings toward a ‘Campbell-like candidate’ versus the staunch conservative moniker-ed Devore.
Reports state that these GOP “funders†have already committed to a gubernatorial canidate, and they are looking for someone to attack their funds to in the US Senate race.
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Doubtful….but maybe Controller
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Former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell, asked about buzz that he's being urged to rethink his 2010 GOP gubernatorial run — and enter the U.S. Senate race — was unusually tightlipped Monday.
"I'm in the governor's race and I've got nothing else to comment on,'' he told the Chronicle. Asked about the accuracy of reports that he has been contacted regarding jumping into the GOP Senate race aimed at unseating Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer, Campbell declined comment. "What I said is just it,'' he said.
We reached Campbell following the rumors this week that popped up in Chris Cilizza's blog, The Fix, in the Washington Post Monday:
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Tom Campbell is a candidate looking for a government position for which to run. Campbell will NOT be the next Governor nor Senator – maybe California Controller though —-> for the past business school Dean.
Remember he cannot transfer the money he has raised so far for Governor to a Senate race.
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The National Republican Senatorial Committee is not officially taking sides in the California Senate primary, but that hasn't stopped it from forming a joint fundraising committee with Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, one of two candidates vying to take on Sen. Barbara Boxer (D).
The NRSC and the Fiorina campaign joined forces to form the Fiorina Victory Committee, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission on Dec. 4. The committee allows the party and Fiorina to split funds raised via joint events or appeals.
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President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. won't be on the midterm ballot next year, but their former Senate seats will be, and both races are now either tossups or leaning Republican in high-visibility contests.
Mr. Obama, who was a freshman senator from Illinois when he was elected president, and Mr. Biden, who was in his sixth term as a senator from Delaware, come from states that have been running strongly Democratic in past elections. No one doubts that Mr. Obama would have been a re-election shoo-in had he remained in the Senate and that Mr. Biden had his seat for the foreseeable future.
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Senate Democrats who thought they had found a workable compromise on health care reform learned otherwise from independent Sen. Joe Lieberman over the weekend.
The Connecticut senator, whose vote is critical to the bill's prospects, threatened Sunday to join Republicans in opposing health care legislation if it permits uninsured individuals as young to 55 to purchase Medicare coverage.
Lieberman expressed his opposition twice Sunday: first in an interview with CBS, and more strongly later, according to Democratic officials, in a private meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Reid, who is hoping to pass the legislation by Christmas, needs 60 votes to overcome Republican objections and has been counting on Lieberman to provide one.
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What do you do when you're the odd man out in California's battle of the multi-millionaires running for governor? You consider a more winnable fight.
The Fix reports that Tom Campbell (R) is "weighing a possible switch from the governor's race to a Senate bid, according to sources familiar with his thinking. Campbell consultant James Fifsis confirmed to the Fix that several Republican officials have approached the former congressman about making the switch but that no final decision had been made. Campbell has long been the odd man out in the governor's race — outshined by Whitman and Poizner. If Campbell makes the move, it will mark his third race for Senate in the last two decades."
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Day By Day by Chris Muir
Chris, Tiger Woods will take a hit financial as his sponsors start to drop him like a hot rock. But, the REAL financial turmoil will be his divorce when all of the tabloid stories about his numerous girl friends begin to fill the supermarket magazine racks.
How anyone could possibly think to keep so many secrets a secret is beyond belief.
But, Woods will resume his golf career later in the 2010 season.
After all, what does he have left?
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State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner will contribute $15 million of his personal fortune to his GOP campaign for governor this month as he battles another Silicon Valley multimillionaire for the nomination, his campaign spokesman said Sunday.
Spokesman Jarrod Agen told The Associated Press that the donation will be transferred by the end of December, bringing Poizner's personal contributions to more than $19 million. That's about the same amount his rival and front-runner, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, has given her campaign to date.
Whitman, a political novice, has so far dominated in fundraising and polls against Poizner and the other Republican seeking the party's nomination, former Congressman Tom Campbell.
Poizner said in a statement Sunday that he intends to communicate to voters his proposal to slash taxes and spending and create a $10 billion rainy day fund….
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Dang, that is a hunk of change.
Let the television wars begin between Meg Whitman & Poizner
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Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.
The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.
An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 — specifically, work on a neutron initiator.
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With relatively little cash to finance his long-shot bid for the U.S. Senate next year, it's safe to say state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, needs every cent he can get.
But after a Minnesota man complained that DeVore had successfully solicited money from his mother-in-law, who suffers from dementia, the candidate quickly returned the money.
"Ethical fundraising is a tremendous concern of ours," said Joshua Treviño, DeVore's communications director.
The story began with an e-mail last week to the Mercury News from one Jim Gelbmann of Woodbury, Minn. He complained that DeVore — who's battling former HP mogul Carly Fiorina in the GOP primary for the chance to take on incumbent Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. — was one of dozens of solicitors to whom his 87-year-old mother-in-law had sent money over the preceding few months.
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Direct mail indeed and DeVore raised a whole $16.00. Not ready for prime time?
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There are a couple reasons worth mentioning why I think you haven't seen much of what some people are calling for. First, the Democrats are desperate to talk about anything other than the problems with their bills, so obvious Republican shenanigans would be a godsend for them. Dick Durbin loves nothing more than going to the floor to complain about process and obstructionism. Democrats would much rather talk about how awful Republicans are than the merits of their legislation.
The other reason is, I'd argue, that I think our strategy is having an effect. Since these bills debuted, Republicans have spoken almost nonstop about how the bills cut Medicare, raise taxes, increase premiums, and increase the debt
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Obstructionism not yet since the GOP is making headway. Erickson at Red State is premature.
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Two key senators criticized the most recent healthcare compromise Sunday, saying the policies replacing the public option are still unacceptable.
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare "buy-in" option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker.
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Day By Day by Chris Muir
The Obama/Democrat Party campaign folks are watching one of the most collosal collapses since – well, the GOP in 2006. With a President elected with super majorities in each house of Congress, he has been unable to move his political agenda forward as he falls precipitously in the polls.
Fancy the fact that Sarah Palin after her Going Rogue book tour has now pulled within one point of the President.
Who woulda thunk this would have been the change you can believe in……?
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The news of sticker shock to health care premiums under Obamacare had already begun to circulate today when suddenly a bad news cycle became truly awful for the high priests of Obamacare. First the American Cancer Society and other groups noticed that the Senate bill had snuck in the authority of insurance companies to set annual or lifetime benefit caps which shocked some Obamacare supporters.
And then the roof fell in: The Office of the Actuary in the Department of Health and Human Services issued a devastating assessment of the Senate plan which concluded it would drive overall health care costs higher, that it would lead to Medicare benefit cuts, that its long-term care insurance plan would likely be a costly failure, that 33 million people would remain uninsured after the plan was in effect, and that the cuts to doctors and hospitals envisioned by the plan were unsustainable, and that one in five hospitals would move to unprofitability under the plan.
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The Reid bill is really tottering now. "If this thing falls apart, you can look back to today as the tipping point," says a Republican aide in the Senate, echoing what Lamar Alexander notes in the Costa post below. First, there was last night's CNN poll showing 61 percent opposition. Then, there was the devastating CMS report today. "Nobody went to the floor that I could see to defend it on the Democratic side," says the aide. The back-drop for all this is the non-deal that Reid hyped as a break-through earlier this week, only to have it unravel almost immediately. Even Bill Nelson says the Medicare buy-in is basically a "non-starter."
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The Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution released a report today detailing how Americans — including Californians — are opting to stay in the state they live in at the highest rate since World War II.
"Migration away from areas stretching from San Francisco to San Diego, where high housing prices fueled 'middle-class flight' to the interior West, has now retrenched as home foreclosures rise and job opportunities diminish in states like Nevada and Arizona," according to the report, called The Great American Migration Slowdown: Regional and Metropolitan Dimensions.
"During the middle part of the decade," the report said, "younger couples and singles with moderate education levels dominated the groups leaving California for lower-cost housing and job opportunities in surrounding states. Now, the state seems to be retaining many of these same groups, particularly younger whites and Hispanics who are married couples or singles, as housing cost pressures ease."
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When the GOP controlled Congress and the White House, many Democrats and their allies in the media complained that Republicans were more interested in pursuing a narrow ideological agenda intended to transform government and society rather than in solving the nation's problems.
Whether you agreed with that assessment, the charge wasn't completely unreasonable. Tax cuts to strangle government, deregulation for the sake of deregulation and social policy to advance the conservative agenda at any cost (e.g., Terri Schiavo) seemed among the rules of the day, no matter what the problem or the public's desire.
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"A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer," reports the AP. The Senate Finance Committee barred annual caps altogether. The merged Senate bill only erases "unreasonable" annual caps. What's "unreasonable?" Hard to say.
Hill sources explain that this was inserted because CBO said premiums would "go through the roof" if insurers couldn't cap benefits. The official quote from Jim Manley, Harry Reid's spokesperson, says much the same thing. "We are concerned that banning all annual limits, regardless of whether services are voluntary, could lead to higher premiums," he explained. "We continue to work with experts on how best to accomplish our goals of preventing insurance companies from imposing arbitrary coverage limits while providing the premium relief American families need and deserve.â€
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Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.
This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.
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It's hard to imagine a better illustration of the panic and recklessness stringing ObamaCare along in the Senate than the putative deal that Harry Reid announced this week. The Majority Leader is claiming that a Medicare "buy-in" for people from ages 55 to 64 has overcome the liberal-moderate impasse over the "public option." But if anything, this gambit is an even faster road to government-run health care.
The public option—an insurance program open to everyone, financed by taxpayers and run like Medicare—is intended as a veiled substitute for "single-payer" Canada-style insurance. Under the cover of "choice" and "competition," the entitlement would quickly squeeze out private insurance as people gravitated to "free" coverage and the government held down costs via price controls the way Medicare does now.
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Well, DUH and this is why they did not promote this idea in the begiinning of the health care debate.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surrounded with doctors, speaks at a health care news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009
Photo ops with the physicians in Washington above probably won’t help Dingy Harry Reid much in Nevada as he trails his two Republican opponents for re-election.
- Lowden (R) 49%, Reid (D) 43% (chart)
- Tarkanian (R) 49%, Reid (D) 43% (chart)
- Angle (R) 47%, Reid (D) 43%
Favorable / Unfavorable
- Harry Reid: 40 / 57 (chart)
But, look at the trend in favorable and unfavorable:
Can you count Harry Reid out?
Stay tuned…….
Technorati Tags: Harry_Reid, Sue_Lowden, Danny_Tarkanian
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