Republicans don’t need to win a single state that Barack Obama won in 2012 in order to have a majority in the Senate after the midterm elections. That means all of the analysis about Republicans’ inability to appeal to swing voters or wooing moderate Democrats in blue states could be pointless. Republican candidates need to identify the voters…
Former Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s announcement that she is passing on a Senate race in 2014, combined with secondhand reports that U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson (son of retiring South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson) has also decided against a Senate bid, must have put big smiles on the faces of Republican strategists. It’s early in the 2014…
Forget background checks and gun control, divisions within the GOP on immigration, and Republican intransigence on negotiating a budget deal with the president. The current triple play of Benghazi, the IRS and now the Justice Department’s seizure of journalists’ phone records has the potential to be a political game changer for 2014. It’s hard to overstate the potential…
Latinos are growing in population and electoral clout but can’t seem to grow their numbers in the U.S. Senate. And if Republican Gabriel Gomez doesn’t win next month’s special election in Massachusetts, it could be three more years before another Latino is added to the U.S. Senate. Even though the midterm elections are still almost a year and…
A Harper Polling survey conducted for the Tea Party Leadership Fund, an obscure conservative group that has supported Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun and Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, is one of those polls probably meant for fundraising and little else. Though writing about the poll and the polling memo automatically gives them more attention than they deserve,…
Two of Democrats’ top picks to replace Sen. Tim Johnson (D) in South Dakota have declined to run, leaving the party’s hold on the seat in a precarious position. In the last few days, U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, son of the senator, and former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, indicated they would not run for the Senate. Even though…
A new poll conducted for Republican Gabriel Gomez’s campaign shows Gomez trailing Democratic Rep. Ed Markey by just three points. The May 5-7 poll of 800 likely special election voters by OnMessage, Inc., a Republican political consulting firm, found Markey leading Gomez 46 percent to 43 percent, with 11 percent undecided. According to an OnMessage polling memo, respondents…