J.D. zings McCain!
Finally, a little life in the candidacy of the man PHXated has its hopes on to knock John McCain out of the senate and then be a vulnerable GOP nominee in the general so the state has at least a chance to be represented from someone in the reality based community.
It’s an ad labeling John McCain a nominee for “Best Conservative Actor.”
Because, see, he only acts like a conservative. Get it?
McCain’s response, according to Dan Nowicki’s blog:
“Ex-Congressman J.D. Hayworth should immediately apologize and and take down his latest online ad, which is an outrageous offense to John McCain’s lifetime of honorable service to our state and nation, and insulting to Native Americans here in Arizona and across America," said Shiree Verdone, McCain’s campaign manager. "Mr. Hayworth is welcome to debate the challenges facing our state and nation, but this kind of character assassination has no place in the Republican Party, and Mr. Hayworth should ashamed of his campaign for running it.”
Now, if anything the ad would be insulting only to Pandorans, right? For McCain, though, the association would doubly sting, because Pandorans are the ultimate tree-huggers.
Anway, the ad also exposes how difficult it is to support the bozo-er of two bozos, running for the nominee of a group of backward as the Arizona Republican Party.
McCain’s problem isn’t that he’s a fake conservative. He’s a fake maverick, a fake moderate and a fake compromiser. The only reason he started departing from the GOP line was after he got caught in the Keating Five scandal, which is to say, after he got exposed as being a typical moralizing-on-the-outside, corrupt-on-the-inside Republican.
He went “mavericky” to distract attention from his crookedness.
New ad idea for J.D.: “For John Mccain, integrity is the real unobtanium!”
Nowicki also says that the Hayworth camp has fiddled with the ad to make it more Avataresque, here.
4:04 PM
J.D. Hayworth in the NYT
The anticipated challenger to John McCain’s Republican senatorial renomination this year gets a front-page profile ‘n’ pic in the paper of record today:
PHOENIX — J. D. Hayworth is a large man, and to compensate for his indulgences, he hits the elliptical trainer every morning at 4, zipping along to an incongruous soundtrack of Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra and old advertising jingles.
The story, while noting McCain has support in the state, sums up his recently philosophical somersaults thusly:
Mr. McCain now finds himself jammed, moving starkly — and often awkwardly — to the right, apparently in an effort to gain favor among the same voters whom Mr. Hayworth, a consistent voice for the far right, could pull toward him like taffy come summer.
Mr. McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantánamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court’s decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be O.K. by him if the military brass were on board.
The story also notes that Hayworth himself is no prize:
Mr. Hayworth, a former sportscaster who rode the 1994 wave of conservatism into Congress, where he then served six terms, has political baggage. He was a very large recipient of both money and largess — like sports skyboxes — from the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. His loss to Harry E. Mitchell, a Democrat, in his 2006 re-election bid was humiliating, and underscored voter distaste for some of his more boisterous ways.
In interviews with roughly 20 Republican voters in Scottsdale and the conservative city of Gilbert, not a Hayworth supporter could be found.
6:54 PM
John McCain hits a new low
Facing a likely re-election challenge from J.D. Hayworth, John McCain — bad pilot, bad husband, bad senator, bad presidential candidate, and noted maverick-when-convenient — continues to struggle to regain some of his right-wing bona-fides.
WSJ story today on McCain’s problems here.
He’s already come out opposing the current push to end “don’t ask don’t tell” in the military. John Stewart last night dug up a clip that shows the strenuousness of the contortions the moves are putting McCain through.
Video clip at the end of this post. The clip from four years ago shows McCain deflecting an inquiry about his position on the matter then by saying, “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”
Of course, at the historic hearing the other day, the leadership of the military came to the senate to tell them they should consider changing it.
McCain yesterday: “I’m extremely disappointed in your statement…. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ’don’t ask don’t tell’ policy. I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would still have to pass a law to repeal ’don’t ask don’t tell.’”
(By the way, as we move toward the 2010 elections, I think it’s interesting how the Obama administration is deliberately highlighting issues like this. So even though there is evidence of an anti-Democratic momentum in the air, however knuckle-headed it might be, the media spent the last two days talking about historic moves by the Dems to right what most rational people think is a long-overdue wrong — and re-running clips of drawling good old boys opposing it for the usual laughable reasons. It looked to me like evidence the administration was going to be using some of these wedge issues against the right in the coming months.)
The Daily Show:
9:12 PM
The Giffords race
The Republic analyzes:
“Giffords will have to use all of her considerable campaign-trail talents to defend her votes for the stimulus package and the health-care and energy bills in a district that has a track record supporting ‘middle of the road’ candidates,” wrote analyst David Wasserman for the “Cook Political Report.”
Giffords, whose 8th Congressional District encompasses parts of Tucson and communities in Arizona’s southeastern corner, voted with the president 90 percent of the time last year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly.
Although Democratic Reps. Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick also are considered vulnerable, they are less closely identified with Obama at a time when his priorities have been losing support in public-opinion polls and at the ballot box.
The paper notes at the end of the story that she has $1.6 million on hand.
4:20 PM
Phoenix is in the running for the 2010 GOP convention
The Republican National Committee said Monday that its short list for the 2012 convention includes Phoenix, Tampa and Salt Lake City.
Phoenix-area political and tourism leaders have been trying to attract either the GOP or Democratic national conventions downtown that summer. They are promoting the Metro light rail system as well as the region’s hotels and resorts and downtown venues including US Airways Center and the Phoenix Convention Center. Arizona is the home state of U.S. Sen. John McCain, who lost his 2008 presidential bid but won the state.
The potential fits in well with PHXated’s contention that the Democrats view Arizona as a key swing state in 2010. McCain did win the state in 2008, but with but 54 percent of the vote, a somewhat anemic showing for a favorite son and a moderate.
3:49 PM
J.D. Hayworth on 'Hardball'
Hayworth comes off like a genial lunatic under Matthews’ grilling, among other things still trying to make hay about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
He says he’s he’s “99 and 44 one-hundredths percent certain” he’ll be on the ballot in the August Republican primary. In answer to Matthews’ direct question whether he’s running, Hayworth says, “Oh, yes, we’re moving forward.” Making a reference to Arizona’s awkward election law, he dissembles and then says, “Let me say we’re in the process of filing the documents.”
5:31 PM
J.D. Hayworth to be on 'Hardball' today
The conservative talk-show host has quit his show but not formally announced a challenge against John McCain. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been promoting his appearance this afternoon, but it seems a stretch to think Hayworth would use the liberal network as an announcement platform.
Here’s Matthews’ segment on McCain from yesterday:
8:44 PM
John Shadegg retiring
Dan Nowicki reports in the AZ Republic:
“While representing the people of Arizona in the House was one of my goals in life, it is not the only one,” Shadegg said in a written statement. “After 16 years it is time for me to take my life in a new direction and to pursue my commitment to fight for freedom in a different venue.”
Shadegg and national Republicans immediately signaled that they believe they can continue to hold Shadegg’s 3rd Congressional District, which leans toward the GOP. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., carried the Phoenix-based district over President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
McCain did carry it, by about 56.5 percent, about two and a half points better than Shadegg. The spread would seem to represent McCain’s Favorite Son vote. Shadegg’s opponent, Bob Lord, had some national Democratic money support, particularly late in the race, but he was palpably inexperienced and something less than a known quantity.
Assuming the Democrats can find a serious candidate, that and the ineluctable bluing of the state would seem to put at least another five percentage points into play, making the seat at the very least competitive. Arguing against it is the national mood, which bears some signs of trending against the Democrats, particularly since the last jobs figures weren’t an improvement.
Nowicki:
So far one Democrat, Jon Hulburd, had announced his intention to challenge Shadegg. A Democratic source tells AZ/DC that Hulburd raised $315,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009. News that Shadegg is not running no doubt will launch a feeding frenzy among possible Republican candidates.
Shadegg’s father, the late Stephen Shadegg, was a former Arizona Republican Party chairman and a longtime confidant and campaign strategist of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.
Hulburd’s web site is here. Not much about him. The Swing State Project calls him a “lawyer, businessman, would-be-novelist, and former Gary Hart staffer.”
7:00 AM
The McCain push poll
A push poll is essentially a survey conducted by a pollster trying to get a fore-ordained conclusion. You do it by including disparaging information about one candidate in the questions. The process works for you in two ways: You can good poll numbers to crow about, and you’ve spread negative information about your opponent.
Last month, you’ll recall, a poll from Rasmussen, an established pollster, had John McCain and J.D. Hayworth running within a few points of each other in a potential matchup for the Republican senatorial primary next year.
The McCain organization, horrified at those numbers hanging over him, no doubt commissioned a more friendly poll, from a right-wing group called Tarrance, to combat it.
In the Republic the other day, Dan Nowicki did a story about it. Unsurprisingly, it showed McCain with a 20-point lede over a potential Hayworth challenge.
While Nowicki made it clear at the top it was a Republican poll, the hedline didn’t (in the print edition), and you had to read to the end of the article before you found out that the poll did smear Heyworth in the questions.
The pollster’s line is that McCain was winning before the questioners started disparaging Hayworth.
Still, I think the story should have led with the fact that it was a push poll. And Nowicki should have asked the pollster who specifically paid for it.
That said, he also didn’t report what to me was a big difference between the two polls. The Rasmussen one was a “robo poll” that questioned about 600 Arizonans via automated calling. The Tarrance one asked the same number by a live person over the phone. The latter is the superior process.
7:00 AM
The WSJ says Ann Kirkpatrick's seat is in danger
An overview in the Wall Street Journal today takes a look at Democratic House seats that might be in danger in the 2010 Congressional elections. While she’s not mentioned in the story, a pull-out graphic with the story prominently displays Ann Kirkpatrick’s northeast district, the Arizona first.
PHXated noted last week that the Cook Report and 538.com, using their own analysis, had Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, and Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, on their list of most vulnerable Dem districts.
Last week, Joe Biden was in town to raise money not for them but Kirkpatrick. And the EVT’s Le Templar noted as well that the district’s conservative nature means Kirkpatrick, too, may be vulnerable next year.
12:00 AM
How will Arizona's House delegation do in the 2010 elections?
(Update below.)
Over at 538.com, Tom Shaller has posted an overview of the most vulnerable Democratic House seats in 2010. The site doesn’t do on-the-ground political analysis so much as crunch numbers and assess macro factors like fund-raising.
In this case, Shaller took numbers on the races from the Cook Political Report and then added a few factors. In all, they included: The rep’s votes on health care and cap and trade; the traditional political nature of their districts; their most recent win margin; and the cash on hand they and their potential opponents have.
The bad news for Arizona Democrats is that two local House seats by these measures look vulnerable. Indeed, Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, is one of the nine most vulnerable across the country.
Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, is one of fifteen members on the next-most-vulnerable tier.
Their districts are superficially similar, with urban anchors in the affluent eastern parts of Phoenix and Tucson, respectively.
The Cook report is a very sophisticated operation (as 538.com is as well); I’d just make one observation that neither seems to have noted in the case of these two races; that the Arizona Republican vote in 2008 was skewed because of McCain’s favorite-son status.
McCain got less than 52 percent of the vote in Mitchell’s district, and just above 52 percent in Giffords’. It seems arguable that both would have gone at least slightly Democratic were anyone else running on the GOP side.
That said, the 2010 campaigns will be run in a much different political climate, and one without the energized folks who came out for Obama. Both parties are prepared for significant Democratic losses next year, and it’s possible two of them will come from Arizona.
For a GOP perspective on the race in the eighth, Greg Petterson points to the recent deposing of a longtime Democratic city council person in Tucson and offers this assessment:
When you are trying assess how Tuesday’s election will affect the 2010 race, remember that Tucson is the Democratic core of Gabby Gifford’s district. Yet, if the election were held today, Giffords would have to struggle to win an election in Tucson itself. Add back the Republican portions of the district and CD 8 is looking like solid Republican territory.
p.s. : As I noted above, the 538.com analysis wasn’t on-the-ground political prognosticating. It was all about crunching the numbers. Here’s the EVT’s Le Templar, who is on the ground, on an Arizona House race that didn’t get the blog’s attention:
The vice president is raising money today for one incumbent not included on that most-vulnerable list: Ann Kirkpatrick. The Congressional District 1 race is flying under the radar because Democrats have more registered voters and Kirkpatrick’s potential challengers haven’t raised much money, yet. But the district is quite conservative and Kirkpatrick won her first term in the fallout from former Rep. Rick Renzi’s criminal indictment for political corruption. There’s also this video where Kirkpatrick literally walked out of a meeting with her constituents. Expect that video to get a lot of air time and blogger references in the coming year.
My guess is Kirkpatrick will be at least as vulnerable as Mitchell and Giffords next year.
Arizona’s polity is obviously in a state of upheaval from top to bottom, and as it moved from red-state to swing-state status there will certainly be volatility. But speaking generally about the Democrats from the national perspective, it strikes me that what too often isn’t noticed is that bad times for the Democrats and the new president came conveniently early.
Just a year from the election the country seems to have hit bottom. The health-care debate and unemployment are still drags, of course. (And might turn out to be game-changers on their own if they are not resolved by next summer.)
Still, it’s an odd advantage, but an advantage nonetheless, that the party has a year to deal with the problems rather than a period of months or even weeks. That they might be resolved during that time is a possibility that is too-infrequently raised, I think.
7:29 PM
Joe Biden is in town today
Republic report here.
During a visit to Phoenix Monday morning, Vice President Joe Biden praised the federal stimulus for its early effects in Arizona and reminded state Democrats how well the economy has already responded.
“Only 12 states have gotten more money obligated than the state of Arizona has,” Biden said of the state’s $5 billion in federal aid.
Biden spoke to several dozen supporters at the downtown Wyndham Phoenix Hotel, where he attended a fundraiser for Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell.
Emphasis added. Biden’s words are a reminder that Arizona, for all the states-rights bravado spouted by its Republican political representatives, is one of those states who get a lot more back from the U.S. Government than it puts it.
(Indeed, with the exception of Washington D.C., virtually all the whiny traditional “red states” benefit from taxes in this way. Details here—with an easy-to-comprehend map—and here.)
Le Templar, in the EVT, notes the political aims of the visit:
Vice President Joe Biden is in Arizona this morning, trying to build support for the White House economic stimulus efforts and attending a fundraiser for some Democrats in the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Biden’s visit coincides with a growing national consensus that Reps. Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords could be especially at risk to a national shift in voter sentiment back to the Republican Party.
12:00 AM
Who voted how in the House on health care and the unemployment extension
Arizona’s congressional delegation voted on party lines on the big health-care bill in the House; less noticed was another important vote over the weekend, this one on extending unemployment benefits.
Dan Nowicki in the Republic noticed it:
Three Arizona Republicans on Thursday made up 25 percent of the House opposition to the bill to extend unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.
The House voted 403-12 to pass the legislation, which on Wednesday had won 98-0 Senate approval. Reps. Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and John Shadegg were among the 12 “no” votes.
The measure, signed Friday by President Barack Obama, would extend jobless benefits for 14 weeks across the nation and provide an additional six weeks of benefits on top of that for job-seekers in states where the unemployment rate is 8.5 percent or greater.
Emphasis added. Nowicki notes that the Democratic Party blasted Shadegg immediately after the vote—a sign that the party is targeting him next year.
As PHXated has argued before, how the Democrats view Arizona is going to be the most far-reaching political story in the state for the next three years.
If the economy takes another nose dive or even if it just remains stagnant, the Democrats will of course take a hit. But as Obama’s regular appearances here in the state testify, Arizona is on the party’s radar as a swing state in 2012. Even as a favorite son, McCain got only a bit above 53 percent of the vote last year, and the demographic shifts do not favor Republicans. The state could have eleven or twelve electoral votes after the 2010 census; a swing from red to blue would represent a big 22- or 24-vote swing for the Democrats.
Back to the unemployment vote: Note how by Republican logic, tax cuts help the economy by putting money back into the hands of people, but for some reason extending extending unemployment benefits—i.e., putting money into the hands of people—doesn’t.
A rebounding economy would take an arrow out of the GOP’s quiver; it could also make our local right-wing congresspeople vulnerable for not having helped the recovery along—and in this specific case, delivering a big “Screw you” as well to the people made most vulnerable by the downturn.
12:00 AM
538.com on John McCain's 2010 senate race
Nate Silver’s clear-thinking analysis of the possibility of party flips in next year’s senate races sees things as pretty balanced right now: Eight Republicans and seven Dems in the fifteen races most likely to see a party switch.
The possible re-election of Arizona’s senior senator comes far down on his list, number 23 out of 38 races. (There’s more than 33 or 34 because of vacancies.) Here’s what Silver says about the race; the down red arrow means the chance of a party flip has decreased in the past month:
23.
Arizona (R-McCain) — Finally some polling numbers out; PPP shows him with somewhat tepid approval numbers, but doesn’t show any of the potential Democratic candidates coming particularly close — certainly not close enough to get anyone like Gabby Giffords interested in a kamikaze mission. Still, McCain has been very quiet, and it might be wise to hedge some against the possibility of a last-minute retirement.
12:47 AM
Biden holds fundraiser for Gabrielle Giffords
At the event, in Delaware, Biden raises worries of a GOP re-takeover of the House of Representatives. This story, in Roll Call, details the supposed vulnerability of three Arizona Dems:
Democratic members of Congress hold 49 districts that McCain won in 2008, including three in Arizona. Giffords’ district and that of Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) gave McCain 52 percent of the vote; Rep. Anne Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) won despite McCain taking 54 percent of the vote in her largely rural First District.
[…]
The fundraiser, held in Greenville, Del., will benefit Giffords’ bid for a third term. Giffords beat state Sen. Tim Bee® by a 55 percent to 43 percent margin in 2008, as both parties spent heavily on behalf of both candidates.
It doesn’t pay to argue with Roll Call on political matters, But I don’t think the argument applies quite so strongly to the Arizona delegation. McCain’s results here were outsized because of his favorite son status. And in the event, of the three only Mitchell got less than 55 percent of the vote.
Right now it’s entirely to the Democratic’s advantage to have hyperbolic worries like this come into play. It’s best to be in trouble—or look like you’re in trouble—14 months out. The party has an entire year for the impact of the presumed health care reform sink in and the economy to be on firmer ground.
The ruling party is always supposed to suffer in the first mid-year elections; the Democrats could take hits in the off-year New Jersey and Virginia governor races in November; and of course new troubles, like Afghanistan, may come to the fore and strain the administration’s ability to lay the blame on the mess on the previous administration. (Where it of course belongs.)
But given the ebb and flow of political difficulties I think the Democrats can only be happy what seems like a major ebb is happening this far out from the next round of elections.
6:00 AM
Can Ann Kirkpatrick be defeated in 2010?
Greg Patterson thinks so. His candidate is Rusty Bowers; his argument is that Kirkpatrick’s victory last year rested on new voters:
They’re young, idealistic Obama supporters who aren’t going to vote in 2010. Those voters aren’t coming back to the polls in a non-presidential year and they sure as heck aren’t coming back without Obama on the ticket. […] Forget about the percentage of the electorate who—like Bowers—are 4th or 5th generation LDS Arizonans. Focus on turnout. The extra 75,000 young idealistic voters who showed up to vote for Obama aren’t going to be there in 2010. In 2010, CD 1 is a Republican seat.
(Emphases added. I also deleted some rantings in the middle of that graf that detracted from his argument.)
Patterson may be right. I’d note three things. One is that the national Democratic party is going to remain focused on Arizona; it plainly smells blood here. The other, which explains the first, is that the three of the state’s eight congressional districts held by Republicans are all seeing their center of gravity pulled inward to Maricopa County, where demographic shifts, culturally and racially, long term are working against the GOP.
And finally, the elections are 14 months away. Anything can happen, of course, but a year from now it may seem plain that the economy, for one, had bottomed out ths summer. Obama has more than a year to show improvement in the lousy condition President Bush left the country, and the world, in.
6:00 AM