Virginians don't much care for their governor

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Boo-hoo:

PPP's newest Virginia poll finds that Bob McDonnell's net approval rating has dropped 12 points in the last month, and that for the first time since taking office he's under water. Only 36% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 41% who disapprove.

McDonnell's numbers are down across the board from our last poll of the state. He's dropped from 73% approval with Republicans to 62%, 22% approval with Democrats to 14%, and from a 39/41 spread to a 36/43 one with independents. McDonnell's favorability numbers are even worse than his approval numbers with just 32% of voters seeing him in a positive light to 45% who have a negative opinion.

McDonnell's ethics issues seem to be driving this downturn in his popularity.

Oh really? You think?

I guess this is what happens when you take gifts from a shady corporate exec trying to buy influence, arousing the FBI's interest, and spend public money improperly at your mansion, and otherwise come across as a walking ethics violation.

But the question is how McDonnell's current troubles will impact the Republican ticket, specifically blow job hater Ken Cuccinelli (running for governor) and all-around wacko E.W. Jackson (running for lieutenant governor). (Those PPP numbers are coming today. Stay tuned.)

Suffice it to say, Virginia Republicans don't look all that good at the moment.

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Behind the Ad: Terry McAuliffe, king of the platitudes

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Terry McAuliffe gubernatorial campaign.

Where: Virginia.

What's going on: Democratic candidate for governor in Virgina Terry McAuliffe says a divisive ideological agenda is bad and job creation is good. And he's a uniter, not a divider. Thanks for that, Terry.

By the way, Public Policy Polling just released a poll on the race indicating that neither candidate is much liked:

Terry McAuliffe is not popular, with 29% of voters holding a favorable opinion of him to 33% with a negative one. But we find that Ken Cuccinelli is even more unpopular, with 44% of voters rating him unfavorably to just 32% with a positive opinion. As a result we find McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli by a 5 point margin, 42/37. McAuliffe also led by 5 points on our January poll, but the share of voters who are undecided has spiked from 13% at the start of the year now up to 21%.

Last man standing!


(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

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Special election in Alabama's 1st Congressional District

By Richard K. Barry

Earlier in May, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala) announced that he would resign from Congress to take a job at the University of Alabama. A date has not been set for the special election to replace him, but this is a very reliable red state, so Democrats shouldn't get excited. 

Word now is that Rick Santorum will endorse conservative columnist Quin Hillyer. As a safe Republican seat, this will draw a lot of competition in the primary so I suppose Santorum could help his candidate stand out. 

Roll Call: 

Aside from Hillyer, consultants say the most likely and viable candidates in the race include:

-- State Sen. Tripp Pittman, a wealthy owner of a tractor company in Baldwin County, a rural area in the 1st District.

-- First-term state Sen. Bill Hightower. 

-- Former state Sen. Bradley Byrne, a lawyer who lost a Republican gubernatorial primary bid in 2010. 

-- Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran, who consultants say is well-respected in the community and has strong name recognition.

If you want to know how red a district it is, Romney beat Obama by a margin of 62 to 37 percent last November. 

Will this one get national attention like the South Carolina 1st? Uh, no. 

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

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Anthony Weiner's rise

By Carl 

(I promise, that's the only dick joke in the post.)

Anthony Weiner has officially announced his candidacy for mayor of the city of New York, to replace three term gadabout-with-nothing-better-to-do-than-trash-my-city Michael Bloomberg.

I'll probably end up voting for him in the primary.

That speaks less of Weiner, who has always come off in my book as a bit of a dick (ok, sorry, my bad), than it does about the other candidates running in the Democratic primary, which is essentially the coronation of the next mayor. Weiner is currently polling second at 15%, and that poll was taken before he formally announced. Christine Quinn, the "frontrunner," is polling at 25%, which speaks volumes about a woman who has been Council Speaker for twelve years.

Quinn should be the presumptive nominee, but at 25% she's polling very weakly for someone with as much visibility as she's forced upon New Yorkers, and with good reason: she's really pretty shitty, unless you live in the West Village or happen to be gay. For those constituents, she's about as progressive as they come.

For working and middle class New Yorkers, not so much.


We can start with the fact that she flipped on term limits, likely to get access to Bloomberg's Rolodex of campaign contributors. She was against them before she was for them, and the cynical calculation that went on in her head must have made her dizzy. We can move onto the fact that she aided Bloomberg in defunding program after program designed to help the poor and middle class families of New York, all to help her get some tax breaks for close friends who dabbles in real estate, most notably the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital in the Village which was rezoned to a residential property and is being developed by Rudin Management.

I wonder how much money and through what trust Rudin has contributed to Quinn, her campaign, and to political organizations that assist Quinn? He's not clumsy enough to have given money in his own name to her campaign directly. One way to get around this is to have an entity controlled by Rudin but not directly owned by him contribute money, possibly to the city or state Democratic party, which will then spend it on Quinn. Happens all the time in New York, which purportedly has the cleanest campaign finance laws in the country.

It's been sad watching Quinn come down from her moral high ground, where she protested the St. Patrick's Day Parade at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, over the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the march.

And now, she's just another politico. Very, very sad.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

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Los Angeles mayoral election is today

By Richard K. Barry

Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti wrapped up their campaigns yesterday in the race to be the next mayor of Los Angeles. As a local newspaper put it, they have been campaigning furiously in an attempt to "avoid the potential lowest turnout for an open mayoral seat in modern history."

Reuters:

Tuesday's vote is a runoff between the two veteran Democrats, who in March were the top vote-getters in a primary election in which Garcetti got 33 percent and Greuel 29 percent. One of them would have had to have won more than 50 percent of the ballots cast to have been elected outright.

The non-partisan campaign has centered on what Greuel and Garcetti agree is a dire financial outlook facing America's second most populous metropolis, and the political clout commanded by the city's public employee unions.

Though turnout might be low, that hasn't stopped the candidates from spending record amounts of cash, which passed the $33 million mark on Sunday:

In the campaign's final days, Garcetti vastly outspent Greuel on the airwaves and other campaign efforts, but Greuel had far more support from the outside groups.

A new poll by the Los Angeles Times and USC has Garcetti with a narrowing lead of 7 points.

Here is Chuck Todd's analysis. 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

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Behind the Ad: Fun with names in New Jersey

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Barbara Buono campaign for governor.

Where: New Jersey.

What's going on: The ad starts out having fun with the fact that some people have a hard time pronouncing Buono's last name. It's not pronounced like Sonny Bono, or Bono the singer, etc., etc.,

And then, somewhat gratuitously, she introduces the name and picture of popular New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Aaron Blake at The Washington Post says this:

Buono's use of Cuomo is particularly interesting given how close Cuomo has been with Christie — especially given their work on Hurricane Sandy-related issues in recent months. Cuomo also has sometimes endorsed against his party's nominee or withheld his endorsement altogether, so it's no cinch that he will back her candidacy.

Buono's ad doesn't say Cuomo has endorsed her, but it sure suggests that she'd like to be associated with his political brand — which will be quite familiar to voters in the Garden State.

Blake calls this sneaky. I'm not sure. As he admits, she doesn't say Cuomo has endorsed her. And what is so wrong with wanting to be associated with the popular brand of someone in your own party in your own region?

Come on. She's going to get thumped. Give her something. 


(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

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