The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is planning on spending money to protect vulnerable seats in 2010. They have included first-termer Erik Paulsen in this list. Interestingly, this list doesn't include Rep. Michele Bachmann whose insane pronouncements and embarrassing behavior have made her a target of national Democratic fundraising.
Among those on the list are Reps. Dan Lungren, Ken Calvert and Brian Bilbray of California, Judy Biggert of Illinois, Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, Thad McCotter of Michigan, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, Leonard Lance of New Jersey, Christopher Lee of New York and Dave Reichert of Washington.
As part of the effort to assist these vulnerable members, the NRCC will be organizing fundraising events, bringing in high-profile Republican surrogates and committing resources to their campaigns. In exchange, the committee is demanding that candidates meet strict fundraising benchmarks and commit to assembling a strong campaign plan.
The NRCC also intends to monitor the members' list of political consultants to make sure their resources are being spent effectively. All qualifying participants signed a contract laying out their fundraising goals and defining their campaign's responsibilities. Republicans hope the new program will provide a level of accountability that committee officials believe was absent from vulnerable incumbent retention programs in previous election cycles.
(Politico)
Now we know why the National Republican Campaign Committee threw Erik Paulsen to the wolves in the Third district and bought up ad time for Michele Bachmann in the Sixth: The DCCC has added Democratic challenger El Tinklenberg to its Red to Blue list, providing a late infusion of profile enhancement and some TV advertising to make things interesting.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has added eight challengers to its Red to Blue program, expanding the program to more than 60 races.
The DCCC is now targeting nearly one-third of Republican-held seats.
Included now are previous long-shots Larry Joe Doherty in Texas, Becky Greenwald in Iowa, Jim Harlan in Louisiana, Linda Ketner in South Carolina, Nick Leibham in California, Josh Segall in Alabama, Dennis Shulman in New Jersey and El Tinklenberg in Minnesota.
Emphasis added to the figure of 1/3 of Republican-held seats being contested by the DCCC -- that is an astonishing figure, and speaks to the excitement and revved-up feel among Democratic activists, professionals, and donors this year.
I'm not a huge fan of Tinklenberg's policies -- on the issues he ranges from moderate-ish to downright conservative, garnering him an endorsement from the Blue Dog Coalition. That's not a huge boon in my eyes, since once the Democratic caucus expands dramatically in 2009 it's going to be the Blue Dogs, and not the Republican Caucus, who stand in the way of real reform on a variety of issues. There's going to be some real fireworks in the Democratic Caucus in the next Congress, and it will be up to the leadership to ensure a good working relationship between moderates, progressives, and liberals from across the nation.
Be that as it may, there are some points working in Tinklenberg's favor -- namely, that the expansion of the R2B list includes several great progressive leaders (including Dennis Shulman in New Jersey), and Michele Bachmann has so completely fouled the image of her entire district with her reactionary conservative bent. I would rather have a very conservative Democrat than Bachmann in the Sixth district seat, so a centrist like Tinklenberg will be a marked improvement.
Hypocrites might be bad messengers, but that doesn't mean the message is wrong. Jim Ramstad and Bill Frenzel had a press conference to denounce Ashwin Madia's campaign tactics, calling them the dirtiest they've ever seen in the district. No, they didn't mention the press conference where Paulsen surrogates denounced Madia for being demographically incorrect. That's the hypocrisy, but the message is essentially correct. The DCCC made truth-stretching attacks on Paulsen. I wasn't donating money to the DCCC anyway since House leadership refused to pursue impeachment of the thief who acts as president, but any thoughts of reconsidering that stance by the way the DCCC engages in the sorts of attacks that undermine the candidates they mean to help.
Independence Party candidate David Dillon received the support of 8 percent of respondents, while "undecided" got 9 percent.
Key points:
The survey was conducted September 29 - 30 and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.
In the survey, 82 percent of respondents said that the country is "off on the wrong track" and when asked who would "take us in a new direction," Ashwin Madia led 40 - 16 percent over Paulsen.
The DCCC would not immediately release any of the underlying data, unfortunately. However, a statistically significant lead like this represents great growth for the Madia campaign, and puts Paulsen's immediate shift to all-attack-ads-all-the-gosh-darned-time campaigning in perspective. My suspicion is that the Paulsen campaign's internal numbers reflect this poll's results, and they recognized a couple of weeks ago that going on the attack was their only viable route to victory.
Madia, on the other hand, has remained generally positive on his own account (the D-trip's attack ads against Paulsen and a punch-back response to Paulsen's attack notwithstanding) and is building a winning machine with support from Sen. Russ Feingold this past weekend, U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tonight and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) tomorrow -- not to mention the many committed volunteers making the whole thing happen on the ground.
A simple, creative hook from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in this ad going after Erik Paulsen as a career politician who's got to go...
What do you think about this ad? Effective message? Good production value? Leave thoughts in the comments.
I'm also a little surprised the NRCC looks this worried about the district. The DCCC has a crushing cash advantage over its Republican counterpart, and the NRCC simply does not have the resources to be throwing into questionable districts like these. That committee's first responsibility is protecting vulnerable incumbents, of which the Republican Party currently has many.
All this, despite the fact that Republican candidate Erik Paulsen has spent the vast majority of his time so far raising money instead of formulating specific platform proposals and communicating with the people of the 3rd district -- the NRCC is THAT worried that they're going to commit scarce resources to a toss-up open seat?
Madia is kicking ass and taking names right now. If the NRCC does go through with its ad buy, we know what it will contain: questionable claims against Madia's campaign, 10-year-old quotes from when he was a student government member at the U, maybe even some good old-fashioned swift-boating of his Marine service (which will not be taken kindly). But on the issues, Madia is winning right now, in terms of setting the initiative of the campaign he's winning, and if there's any bounce from his hitting the airwaves to increase his name-recognition, he'll win the ad wars too when the NRCC starts thinking it's a lost cause and pulls back its ad buy.
That scenario, my friends, is by no means out of the question.
I'll be on my way to the open house at the Madia campaign's new headquarters in Maple Grove. If you're around this evening between 6:30 and 8:30, you should drop by and see what's going on.
The address is 10200 73rd Ave., Maple Grove -- I'll post a quick roundup and some photos when I get home.
As a piece of actual campaign-related news, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has expanded its ad time reservations from the 30-plus districts in which it reserved time recently (including MN-03) to include 20 more. The expansion brings the DCCC's reserved commitment to more than $53 million -- about ten times the NRCC's total cash on hand figure.
With only the RNC and the McCain campaign raising considerable sums of money, a lot of Republican House candidates are going to be in big, big trouble this year.
At a brunch event in Maple Grove Sunday, DFL-endorsed congressional candidate Ashwin Madia said he would have voted "No" on the recent FISA amendment bill, saying it "put the cart before the horse" in providing immunity to the telecom corporations before their actions on behalf of the Bush Administration have been investigated.
The attorney and Iraq veteran added that "Congress diminished probable cause, a standard for search and seizure that's held for 200 years."
He also responded to the Republican Party's recent charge of weakness on Iran by sticking to his message that Iran is a concern, not a threat, and that aggressive diplomacy should be used first: "I think it's troubling that they [Iran] launched missiles recently, but I'm a little unclear on why it's so important for some people to focus on the semantics instead of policy, and why they're so excited about a military showdown with another Middle East country. I've always said all options should be on the table, but the military option should be the last option."
Continuing the Third district theme over the past couple of days (can't avoid lots of good news!), Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) will be in town on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in support of Ashwin Madia. A press conference is scheduled for this morning at the State Capitol and Van Hollen will attend a fundraiser for Madia this evening in Edina.
Last night's live blog was a lively affair -- I particularly liked Madia's answer to my question about priorities in January 2009 when he's sworn into office as the Third district's next Representative:
1. Responsibly end the war in Iraq. We just don't have the troops or the money to keep up our current level of deployment there, and I'd like to start a redeployment of forces.
2. Balance our budget. This is a vital issue for the fiscal health of our nation. We need to be responsible and honest about our budgeting practices and start paying down our debt.
3. Invest in renewable energy, develop a comprehensive energy plan in our country, and start addressing global climate change. I think it's way past time for this for a number of reasons: 1) it's a security issue for us to be so dependent on foreign oil; 2) our dependence on foreign oil has allowed prices to rise to record levels, and in turn has hurt working families and our economy as a whole; 3) there's a lot of new money and jobs in the renewable energy industry; and 4) global climate change will result in more and more catastrophic weather patterns across the world unless we take action.
No freshman member of Congress is going to be able to walk into the Capitol and start knocking heads together until they get their way, but these priorities are going to be right in line with those of an expanded Democratic majority in the House and the Senate and a Democratic White House dedicated to turning things around on all of these fronts. These points are a great place to start turning around the travesty that is the last eight years in American government.
