Miscellany Blue - New Hampshire Politics

Jonathan Cohn:

Does the world really need another blog on politics and policy? There was a time when that question made sense. A year and a half ago, when I started a blog about health care reform, I distinctly remember thinking it would be a nice little diversion from my longer articles—a way to keep in touch with readers and, once in a while, to amplify a point I couldn’t make within the confines of the print magazine. I turned out to be very wrong. The blog became the focus of my work—the place where I reported and analyzed the news, in real time. 

For better and for worse, that’s pretty much the direction journalism is going these days. And while blogging will never substitute for longer writing—I, for one, have no intention of giving up the latter—I’ve come to appreciate that blogging is not an alternative to journalism. It is journalism, only faster and with more room for experimentation. Or, at least, it can be.

Bob Giuda’s campaign for Congress crashed and burned Monday afternoon, brought down by a 600-word blog post. Actual cause of death was the candidate’s own intemperate words and dismissive attitude, but it was the reporting by a college student on summer break that nailed the coffin shut.

Giuda, the former Marine pilot and FBI agent, met his match in Eliza Kern, a rising junior at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Kern is covering the NH-02 Congressional race this summer in her blog, Primary Wire. She accompanied Giuda to Rivier College in Nashua where he spoke to high school students attending a leadership seminar. And she nailed it:

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What is it about Republicans and sex and animals? First we infamously had former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) equating sex outside marriage with “man on dog”:

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.

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Following up on my earlier post documenting PAC contributions to the Bass campaign, I’ve compiled the complete list for your perusal: Bass 2010 PAC Contributions. I’ll update the list after the second quarter reports are filed.

Facts and figures provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. Data are for the 2009 - 2010 House election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data available electronically on Monday, June 28, 2010.

Nate Silver has updated his Senate forecast and projects the New Hampshire Senate seat as Lean Republican. Paul Hodes shows a slight uptick, but still trails in his race for Judd Gregg’s New Hampshire Senate seat.

New Hampshire. Although Paul Hodes has been underwhelming, the Republican primary is not until September 14th here, and the model thinks that Kelly Ayotte’s numbers are running a little ahead of where they should be even relative to the very pernicious national environment for Democrats. There’s also the chance that Republicans could nominate someone other than Ayoette, like Bill Binnie, who would turn the race into a toss-up.

Nationally, the overall trends have been flat but the picture for Democrats improved slightly based on primary results. The projection gives Democrats a +90% chance of holding at least 50 seats but only a +10% chance of gaining the seats necessary for a 60 seat majority.

Rick Santorum on President Obama:

“Obama is detached form [sic] the American experience. He just doesn’t identify with the average American because of his own background.  Indonesia and Hawaii.”

Note: Hawaii is America’s 50th state.

Nate Silver is not capable of simply stating that some people are assholes. He calculates the odds.

Even if there’s a 99.8 percent chance that any one given member of Journolist is not an asshole, the odds that you’ll have at least one asshole from among the 400 are over 50 percent. 

The congressional campaigns are gearing up for the last end-of-quarter fundraising push before the primary. We’ll probably pay too much attention to how much they raise – but not enough to where it comes from. Before the onslaught, let’s take one last look at the first quarter filings.

Campaign contributions are categorized as individual or a political action committee (PAC) contributions. Nothing says Washington Insider like PAC money, and in the NH-02 congressional campaign, Charlie Bass is clearly the leader of the PACs.

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 Oops. 

Former New Hampshire Attorney General-turned-Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte testified this week that changes in state law prevented her from busting the largest Ponzi scheme in state history, but as recently as June 2008 she was touting a mortgage task force and encouraging victims to bring their problems to her office’s attention.

Cross-posted to Blue Hampshire

An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity identifies 20 members of Congress who disclosed owning at least $1,001 worth of shares in BP or Transocean Ltd in their 2008 financial forms. One of the members is Judd Gregg, who had disclosed holding between $15,001 and $50,000 in BP stock — but he has since sold it off.

“Senator Gregg no longer owns any BP stock,” spokeswoman Laena Fallon told OpenSecrets Blog. Fallon did not elaborate on when or why he sold the stock.

So will he now dump his support for offshore drilling?

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The new NPR Battleground Poll surveys voters in 70 of the country’s most competitive congressional districts, including NH-01 and NH-02. The results illustrate the challenging political landscape Democrats will face in November.

The effort by individual campaigns will have to push against walls that seem very hard to move at this point. We tested Democratic and Republican arguments on the economy, health care, financial reform and the big picture for the 2010 election. The results consistently favored the Republicans and closely resembled the vote breakdown. Democrats are hurt by a combined lack of enthusiasm and an anti-incumbent tone. Among the other findings:

• 62 percent of Republicans in Democratic districts describe themselves as very enthusiastic about the upcoming election. That compares with 37 percent of Democrats in those same districts.

• By 57 to 37 percent, voters in these 60 Democratic seats believe that President Obama’s economic policies have produced record deficits while failing to slow job losses - and not averted a crisis or laid a foundation for future growth.

• President Obama’s approval rating is at 40 percent in the Democratic districts, but it [is] slightly better at 48 percent in the Republican districts where he outpaced John McCain in 2008.

The PA-12 special election proved that Democrats can win against these strong headwinds with a superior candidate, better strategy, and a strong grassroots effort. Our challenge is clear.

Cross-posted to Blue Hampshire

The next (and last?) chapter in my look at the partisan makeup of New Hampshire voters is a study of the 103 districts for the state House of Representatives. This is a follow up to earlier looks at the voting wards and the state Senate districts.

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I have consolidated the voter ward data from my initial New Hampshire Partisan Voting Index study to take a look at the partisan makeup of New Hampshire’s 24 state Senate districts. (For an introduction to the Cook PVI and my methodology, refer to the original diary.)

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The latest John DiStaso Granite Status column screams:

LYNCH STRUGGLES CONTINUE. A fourth consecutive poll of the New Hampshire governor’s race shows Democratic incumbent John Lynch falling short of the 50 percent mark in a head-to-head match-up Republican candidate John Stephen.

Why does he focus on Lynch falling short of the 50% mark, rather than the head-to-head numbers? Well, as every “political insider” knows, incumbents polling under 50% are vulnerable this early in the election because the undecided vote always breaks against the incumbent. Except, the conventional wisdom is wrong! And Nate Silver proves it.

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When I rolled out the New Hampshire voting ward PVI maps, one of the commenters referred to their predictive value. It’s an interesting comment. In my mind, the index has clear value as a means of measuring and comparing voting patterns across districts. But can it also be used to help predict election results?

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