News & discussion on house and senate races

realjohnboy wrote:

I agree with what Finn seemed to be saying in his carefully chosen words about the TN senate race. Folks, when talking to the press or a pollster, will say that it makes no difference that Mr Ford is black...but when they get into the privacy of the voting booth...

Then in the very next sentence, realjohnboy wrote:

We went through that here in Virginia when Doug Wilder ran and won for governor.

Huh? So, in the first instance, when the voters get into the privacy of the voting booth, what? Finish the sentence, please. When voters were in the privacy of the voting booth in the case of Doug Wilder, they (the majority) pulled the lever for him. They obviously thought he was the best candidate regardless of race.

Mont. senator in fight of political life

Yahoo! News
Sun Oct 15

[Conrad] Burns, in the fight of his political life against Democrat Jon Tester, has been citing [..] home-state money and projects to try to convince voters that they should re-elect him. For many people in this expansive state, it appears to be reason enough. [..]

Yet not everyone is on board.

[..] 80-year-old Gordon Matheson says Burns is not honest. Matheson mentions Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist from Washington, D.C., who was convicted on federal corruption charges this year. Burns took, and has since given away, about $150,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff. [..]

The race has become a referendum on Burns, and he is not helped by the unhappy mood of voters. [..]

Burns has hurt his cause, his mouth getting him into plenty of trouble:

_ He cursed out a Virginia firefighting crew after they spent days battling Montana wildfires. [..]

_ He said the United States is threatened by faceless terrorist who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

[His challenger, Democrat Jon] Tester has trailed Burns in fundraising ?- Burns had $5 million more than Tester at last count ?- but led the incumbent in several polls.

In the town of Polson, [..] shop owner Gerry Browning says she has not decided which candidate to support.

"Do I set aside my moral and ethical values to keep a man in office because he's powerful?" the 55-year-old Browning asked. [..]

Up the road, in the Republican stronghold of Kalispell, [..] 59-year-old Snuff Frisbee and four of his friends talk politics over their morning coffee. Most of the men are voting for Burns. But [..] Frisbee says he probably will not vote for either Burns or Tester.

"We have a political malaise right now that has to do with the war, but it also has to do with illegal immigration, it has to do with four or five really important issues that this Congress has not even attempted to address," says Frisbee, a financial adviser. [..]

[M]ost television ads have been negative: Burns has targeting Tester on his opposition to the Patriot Act and Democrats have hammered Burns on ethics and his comments to the firefighters.

In smaller towns, many people say they do not want a change in the state's congressional delegation, which has built a considerable amount of seniority. Burns is chairman of the Senate spending committee that oversees environmental programs.

Burns "has made some mistakes, but he has served us very well and allowed us to have some advances in our state that probably wouldn't have been possible if he didn't have the connections he's developed through the years," says Carol Nelson, [..] chairman of Kalispell's Chamber of Commerce. [..]

In more Democratic Missoula, Juli Nilson, 34, is among those who believes Burns has worn out his welcome. The self-employed mother of two young sons is frustrated with dishonesty and corruption in both political parties. [..]

Visiting Missoula [..], David Mayfield, 49, says he believes Burns is "on the take" and is not happy with the senator's support for snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. A Republican during the Reagan era, Mayfield says he can no longer support the party.

"I think the center has moved," he said.

Recent Rating Changes Point to a November ?'Nightmare' for GOP

CQPolitics
Oct. 15, 2006

In October 1994, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report alerted its readers to the increasing possibility of a Republican takeover of Congress. Using the traditional symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties, the cover illustration was a cartoon of a donkey having a nightmare of elephants storming up the steps of the Capitol.

A dozen years later, it would be the elephant sleeping fitfully. [..] The trend against the GOP is illustrated in changes that CQPolitics.com made to its ratings last week (Oct. 9-13). Congressional Quarterly's free elections Web site altered its forecasts on one Senate race and 17 House races ?- and in all but one case, the analysis showed the Democratic candidate gaining ground over his or her Republican opponent.

The momentum continues to clearly be on the Democrats' side: The job approval ratings for President Bush's Republican administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have plummeted deep into the danger zone.

The administration's handling of the war in Iraq is now opposed by a sizable majority of voters responding to polls; those polls show Democrats with big leads on their ability to address nearly all major issues; and the scandal over the House Republican leadership's actions in the scandal involving resigned Florida GOP Rep. Mark Foley has blunted efforts by Bush and his party's candidates to make their case for continued Republican control.

With that said, Democratic takeovers of the House or/and the Senate are still far from certain a little more than three weeks before the Nov. 7 vote. The lushly funded Republican campaign organizations are pumping millions of dollars into states and districts to defend their endangered seats, and the potent voter turnout machine the Republicans utilized in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections remains a critical factor until proven otherwise. [..]

In the Senate, Republicans would hold 49 seats to the Democrats' 46 if all of the races rates as leaning, favored or safe for those parties are added together. Four additional Republican seats are in No Clear Favorite, or tossup, races, to one Democratic seat.

In the House, the Republicans' projected advantage, which heading into October still exceeded the majority point of 218 seats, has shrunk to 209 ?- just one seat more than the 208 projected to the Democrats. And all of the 18 seats currently rated as No Clear Favorite are currently held by Republicans.

More ratings changes are expected over the coming days.

It does amuse me to see that no one here has actually been able to predict just what seats the Dems will actually take next month. Not here, nor on any of the Lefty websites I've perused. Curious, isn't it?

Court official: Saddam verdict, sentence if guilty, to be announced Nov 5.
The Associated Press

Published: October 16, 2006


BAGHDAD, Iraq A verdict against Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants charged with crimes against humanity in connection with an anti-Shiite crackdown in the 1980s will be announced Nov. 5, chief investigating judge Raid Juhi said Monday. Sentences for those found guilty will be issued the same day, he said

So they announce the guilty verdict on November 5, the newspapers have it splashed all over the front page by Monday, November 6, which is the day before Election Day.


The first good news coming out of Iraq in months and it comes out two days before Election Day.

Gotta hand it to him. How did Rove manage this?

The poll found a striking slippage in the president's standing among white evangelical Christians, a constituency that has provided a strong vote cushion for Republican candidates in recent elections. In November 2004, 76 percent of white evangelical Christians in Ohio voted for Mr. Bush. When asked in this poll whether they approved or disapproved of the job Mr. Bush was doing as president, 49 percent approved while 45 percent disapproved.

Sex talk dominates N.C. election debate

Yahoo! News (AP)
Tue Oct 17

U.S. Rep. Brad Miller chuckled through most of the first debate with his Republican challenger, who led a tense and often awkward discussion about sex-related issues Tuesday.

Vernon Robinson, who has run a series of brash advertisements about the two-term Democratic congressman, charged that Miller wants to import homosexuals to the United States and supported scientific studies that would pay teenage girls to watch pornography.

"Those are San Francisco values, not North Carolina values," said Robinson, repeating a common theme of his campaign.

A bemused Miller countered by blasting Robinson for a campaign mailer that implicitly suggested the congressman was gay and criticized Miller for being "childless." Miller's wife had a hysterectomy more than two decades ago.

"It's clear that Vernon Robinson is obsessed with sex," Miller said after the 40-minute debate [..].

During the debate, Robinson complained that Miller was one of 129 co-sponsors of a bill that would have allowed homosexuals to bring their partners to the United States.

After the debate, Miller acknowledged supporting the bill and said the measure would have produced "a form of a civil union. It is a limited, modest, legal recognition of a long-term relationship so we aren't forcing gays to be in temporary, casual relationships."

Robinson repeatedly talked about how Miller voted in 2003 to support a package of research grants for the National Institutes of Health, noting that they contained research on the sexual arousal of girls, the masturbation habits of old men and other sex-themed studies.

[..] Miller asked voters to look at Robinson's record in campaigns. "They know every campaign he runs consists of things he just makes up, wild distortions or ridiculous exaggerations," Miller said. [..] Robinson, a former university business professor, began his political career in 1988 with an unsuccessful run for the state Senate. He's entered about a dozen races for office, including North Carolina superintendent of public instruction, the state House and his local board of education.

Robinson's deep conservative convictions helped him win a spot on the Winston-Salem City Council in 1997. While he earned re-election four years later, he was ousted last year after he erected a 1-ton monument of the Ten Commandments in front of city hall.

Nimh, Blatham, Sierra et al...
Johnboy likes to play games. Fantasy football, fantasy baseball. There is is even a thread where normally respected members of A2K pick the winners in pro football games each week without knowing doodly squat about the subject. I run that game, and I am a mercilous hustler.

How about a new thread on "Pick the Senate Races?"

I can provide some of the content, as can yall, but we would need someone to put it into a glitzy format.

For example:
VIRGINIA: Repub George Allen (incumbent) vs Dem Jim Webb

Probably 15 races in all, although some of those are not that close.

I think it would be kind of amusiing if we could pull it off.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A dramatic shift in the voting patterns of the up to 21 percent of the voting-age public identified as libertarian will likely tilt the balance of the 2006 midterm election, according to a new report.

Libertarians have traditionally voted for Republican candidates, and have voted overwhelmingly for almost every Republican presidential candidate since at least 1972, according to the report.

But the study's authors, Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Boaz and America's Future Foundation Executive Director David Kirby, conclude that this group of voters has suddenly -- and silently -- become the nation's largest swing vote. Libertarians, the study concludes, have become disillusioned with Republican overspending, social intolerance, civil liberties infringements, and the floundering war in Iraq -- and will likely abandon the GOP for the first time in generations.

"Libertarians are, simply put, the most important swing vote out there this year," says Boaz. "Although the media will inevitably frame the debate in terms of liberal vs. conservative, Moore vs. Coulter, this election will not be settled on blue vs. red. It will be settled on purple."