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POLITICO
By: Alex Isanstadt
In an unprecedented expansion of their scope and profile, conservative women’s groups are plowing cash into the campaigns of female candidates across the map.
At least three separate groups are actively engaged in efforts to elect conservative women to Congress, providing a counterpoint to influential Democratic-oriented women’s groups, such as EMILY’s List, which have long played an outsize role in funneling resources into electing women to office.
The Susan B. Anthony List, an organization that backs female candidates who oppose abortion, is on track to raise and spend as much as $12 million this election cycle — $4 million more than the group spent in 2008 and more than twice as much as it spent in 2004. As recently as three weeks ago, the SBA List announced it was launching a $215,000 independent expenditure campaign in support of California GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who won the nomination June 8. The group also spent $200,000 in neighboring Nevada, where it backed former state GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden, who finished second in that state’s June 8 Senate primary.
“The stakes are high for women and unborn children this election,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, whose group claims 280,000 members. “Our membership is energized like never before, and we are committed to making gains at the ballot box in November.”
The groups’ leaders say they’ve been spurred to action by a confluence of political events — the inspirational value of Sarah Palin’s vice presidential nomination, an abundance of credentialed female conservative candidates and a landscape that is rife with opportunities for Republicans.
“We are definitely ramping up,” said Concerned Women for America Political Action Committee Executive Director Mike Mears. “We are seeing a lot going on out there.”
The Concerned Women for America PAC, another group that opposes abortion rights, plans to bundle $10,000-$15,000 for candidates in more than 40 targeted races this cycle and, for the first time in the organization’s history, will launch an independent expenditure campaign.
The 50,000-member organization has already endorsed 38 House and Senate candidates — more than double the number of contenders it backed in 2006 and 2008. In January, the PAC brought in Penny Nance, an outspoken and visible social conservative activist, to serve as its chief executive officer.
Independent Women’s Voice is another group that is suddenly flexing its muscles. IWV has invested more than a half-million dollars in key 2010 races — not enough to leave a big footprint in races but a significant amount for an organization that had never previously spent money on elections.
Already, IWV’s presence has been felt: In May, the group was the only outside organization on the airwaves in Hawaii’s House special election, spending about $250,000.
Heather Higgins, the organization’s president and chief executive officer and a longtime conservative activist, says the group is planning an independent expenditure campaign in the fall.
The increased involvement is in no small part the result of the increased number of viable GOP female candidates seeking office this year. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, 17 Republican women have sought Senate seats this cycle, compared with six in 2008. And 113 Republican women have sought House seats in 2010, compared with just 65 in 2008.
“There has been a big shift. We are seeing Republican women running and really stepping up,” said SBA’s Dannenfelser. “It’s qualitatively different this year than last.”
“We are seeing women come of age in politics,” added Concerned Women for America’s Nance. “It’s a coming of age in conservatism to have women embracing becoming our leaders.”
The more expansive conservative female presence is also a reflection of the rise and prominence of outspoken, high-profile female pols such as Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), both of whom are frequently credited with advancing an activist mind-set in conservative women’s circles.
Dannenfelser, whose organization played host to Palin at a May breakfast fundraiser in Washington, noted that the former Alaska governor played an important role in conservative politics — a world that is dominated by men.
Palin’s model “has absolutely produced a template to step up in a way we haven’t seen before,” said Dannenfelser. “You have a traditional woman doing a nontraditional thing. Before those doors opened, they were largely closed to Republican women.”
The issue agenda, once the primary focus for many of the groups, is another reason the groups have stepped up their efforts.
As the debate over federal funding for abortion took center stage in the health care push, the SBA List launched a “Votes Have Consequences” campaign aimed at contacting hundreds of thousands of anti-abortion voters across the country. Concerned Women for America PAC, for its part, is set to announce a similar campaign, targeting Democrats who voted for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal.
“When you’ve got a Congress that just passed don’t ask, don’t tell, when you’ve got an administration that is the most pro-abortion administration in years, I think that’s a factor,” said Mears. “I think groups are saying the stakes are pretty high.”
Social issues, however, aren’t the groups’ sole focus. IWV is centering its campaign on the nation’s ailing economy, running an ad in the Hawaii special election that hammered former Democratic Rep. Ed Case as a “tax-raising liberal.”
“For the last year, we think [Troubled Asset Relief Program], the stimulus and the health care bill have really brought economic issues to the fore,” said Higgins.
And while social issues like abortion and gay marriage have for years dominated the agenda for conservative women, Kellyanne Conway, a GOP pollster who works with all three women’s groups, said homing in on the economy was key to appealing to those voters in 2010.
“I think, for years, women were concerned about the abortion issue. I think women’s issues in 2010 begin with the economy,” said Conway. “You can’t say abortion is a women’s issue and leave it at that. This year, the predominant concerns are jobs, the economy and health care.”
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The Washington Examiner
By: Sally C. Pipes
Devotees of big government, like Archimedes, believe that if they have a long lever and a place to stand, they can move the world.
In 2006, a bipartisan band of such politicians in Massachusetts immersed themselves in wishful thinking, ignored both hard facts and proven theory, and used their political muscle to build bureaucracy, increase taxes, and aggregated power to remake health care in the Bay State.
President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took the act nationwide with the passage in March 2010 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Like the canary in a mineshaft, Massachusetts provides a strong indication of our fate.
By now, Bay Staters should be celebrating reform. It promised to benefit all. The bureaucrats would design and broker affordable health plans, doctors and hospitals would get a bump in Medicaid rates, and the uninsured would no longer be a burden.
The system was cracked from the beginning, its promises undelivered even as it picked the pockets of business owners and taxpayers. The crack turned into a chasm this spring, when the state’s private carriers filed for double-digit rate increases for individual and small group plans.
This incensed Democratic Gov. Duval Patrick and the bureaucrats who simply said no. A court upheld their authority, and carriers were forced to continue at 2009 prices, booking loses daily.
They are still fighting in court, and another ruling is expected on the applications for rate increases on plans this summer.
In early June, two large carriers came back with more double-digit increases for plans renewing in July. They expect them to be declined. They are simply positioning themselves for a two-front war: One with the regulators and one with the providers they pay.
The system is inherently unstable and primed for a series of nasty fights. Like dry season at an Everglades watering hole, all the players confined in a tight space, hungry, and all eyeing the same receding resources. Like this tight ecosystem, the players will start to feed on each other, as survival of the politically-fittest takes hold.
This is the case in Massachusetts now. The state’s four largest carriers are hemorrhaging $150 million a month. Roughly a third of contracts are up for negotiation and they are pushing for givebacks.
Providers are crying poor. Reform actually hurt their numbers, as most of the newly-insured enrolled in government-run and subsidized plans under Commonwealth Care that pay less than the actual cost for care.
When you lose money on every unit, you can’t make it up on volume. Traditionally, the cost has been shifted to those with private insurance, but those days are over.
Hospitals and clinic operators maintain that two-thirds of the monies they collect are simply passed on to doctors, nurses, and other essential staff. Cuts here are akin to cuts in wages. Wage cuts will be resisted. The unionized will strike. Those who aren’t will slow down on the job. Doctors will reduce their level of service and some will take early retirement.
The political and bureaucratic response is naturally to clamp down with more control. Massachusetts’ political leaders and activists are making a strong push for a structure of mandatory global payments, which is merely a state-dominated HMO or single payer system. This, they claim, is the next logical step of health care reform.
Meanwhile, a bill in the state senate would force doctors to accept cut-rate reimbursements for Medicaid patients as a condition to practice medicine in the state. When voluntary exchange doesn’t work for politicians, they move to conscription.
In Massachusetts, it took four years to get to this point, and it’s certainly a downhill slide from here. Nationally, Obama’s bureaucrats are just getting started. The administration has yet to comply with the law’s requirement that it detail the myriad of powers it’s been granted, yet it has put the bureaucrats in place to get the job started.
While Obama did not get his Health Insurance Rate Authority into the final bill, the newly-created Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight within HHS will perform the same function.
The new authority has been staffed at the top by four individuals known to be tough on private insurers and more comfortable with the views of Ralph Nader than Adam Smith.
Former Missouri Insurance Commissioner Jay Angoff is the head watchdog. We can expect this team to pick up where Obama and Democrats in Congress left off beating up the insurance carriers including writing regulations to define when premium increases are reasonable.
At the end of the day, the carriers are merely pass-through entities that are necessary to administer the system. They will probably survive but, like regulated public utilities, will be guaranteed after their Medical Loss Ratios (the percentage that an insurer must pay out in claims) and administrative costs are controlled by government, a modest surplus for their efforts. The ultimate payers will be consumers and taxpayers, who will either pay more for less or more for nothing at all. What happens in Mass won’t be staying in Mass.
Sally C. Pipes is president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, and author of The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care.
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Carrie Lukas joins the Martha Zoller Show to discuss feminism issues.
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The Wall Street Journal
The Primaries are producing some welcome new talent.
American democracy is nothing if not responsive, and on the evidence of the current primary season the frustrated American voter is demanding a transfusion of new political blood. The results have been volatile, and sometimes bewildering, but overall the elections are throwing up more candidates who are refreshingly unconventional.
Meg Whitman, left, winner of the Republican nomination for governor of California, and Carly Fiorina, the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate from California, celebrate at a post-primary election celebration in Anaheim, Calif.
Take California, where the Republican Party—the party of primogeniture and middle-aged white males—has nominated a pair of female former Silicon Valley CEOs to run for Governor and the Senate. Neither has run for office before, and both are running as pragmatic but unapologetic conservatives seeking to reform runaway governments in Sacramento and Washington. Both face difficult autumn races in that Democratic-leaning state, but this is the kind of tumultuous year when they might win.
If Carly Fiorina can defeat liberal Barbara Boxer, she would represent the largest ideological shift in one Senate seat in many years. Ms. Boxer is so doctrinaire, and so unpersuasive to her peers, that Democrats have stripped her of Senate leadership on climate legislation. But she is also a brutal and well-funded campaigner who will portray Ms. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard boss, as a cross between BP and Goldman Sachs who also favors back-alley abortions.
Ms. Fiorina’s message can be distilled into two themes: Grow the economy and cut spending. If that prevails on the Left Coast, we really do have a lovely revolution on our hands.
As for former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, she has the task of convincing voters that a rookie Republican can tame the special-interest mobs that run Sacramento. Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected on a similar promise but was broken by the unions and his own desire to be liked. Ms. Whitman will have to convince voters she won’t be rolled in the same way. Her support for a one-year moratorium on the state’s self-destructive climate-change rule AB32 is a tepid start, but she’ll need both tax- and spending-limit proposals if she’s going to win a mandate to overcome the gerrymandered far-left legislature.
Her Democratic opponent, former two-term Governor Jerry Brown, is a career politician but one who has been quirky enough in the past to make us wonder if he might take on Sacramento’s Greek chorus. On the other hand, he may now be so beholden to the unions to help him defeat Ms. Whitman that he won’t be able to challenge them on spending and pensions. This is the kind of big reform debate that California voters deserve.
Tea party candidates also showed their mettle on Tuesday, though in ways that make their staying power in November unpredictable. The rise and triumph of Republican state legislator Sharron Angle in Nevada’s Senate primary against two better known candidates happened so fast that we wonder how many Nevadans really know her generally conservative voting record.
She’d better know how to defend those votes, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is preparing to run ads portraying her as a radical even as you read this. “Further and Further Right” is the headline on a Democratic fund-raising pitch we recently saw describing several GOP Senate candidates, and with President Obama and his agenda down in the polls, going negative and ad hominem will be the party’s Alamo strategy.
Perhaps nowhere was the voter rebellion greater than in conservative South Carolina. Incumbent Republican Congressman Bob Inglis was crushed after his dalliance with cap and tax and his vote for TARP. Tea party favorite Nikki Haley prevailed over no fewer than three pillars of the GOP establishment, including the current Lieutenant Governor, state Attorney General, and a Member of Congress—and the state’s media establishment. The articulate conservative and daughter of Sikh immigrants barely missed avoiding the need for a runoff with 49% of the vote and is the favorite to win that on June 22.
Perhaps most revolutionary was the strong showing by black Republican Tim Scott in his Congressional primary against scions of two legendary South Carolina political families. Mr. Scott, a state legislator from the Charleston area where the Civil War began, ran well ahead of former Senator Strom Thurmond’s grandson and the son of former Republican Governor Carroll Campbell.
He faces a runoff against Paul Thurmond in the heavily GOP district, but his showing to date demonstrates how far the South has come on race matters. He would be the first black Republican in Congress from the Old Confederacy since Reconstruction.
The Obama Democrats lit the match for this voter tumult with their radical expansion of government. The voters are responding with a healthy fervor, with Republicans in particular looking for standard-bearers who will fight more than accommodate the status quo. While some of these new faces will falter before November, others look to be the kind of determined reformers that our political class naturally fears. So much the better
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IWV President and CEO Heather Higgins joins Vital Signs with Dr. Randy Tobler to discuss Djou’s win in Hawaii.
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HONOLULU — Democratic Party Candidate Ed Case Monday pointed to the website of a national Republican group, Independent Women’s Voice, as proof he was hurt by $200,000 worth of negative ads geared to help Republican Charles Djou win.
The Independent Women’s Voice boasted on its website Monday that it “contributed to such an important victory for Republicans in President Obama’s backyard.”
IWV said its ads were tremendously important is swaying undecided voters away from Case and over to Djou.
Analysts also think the negative ads may have suppressed some Case voters by making them upset enough to stay away from the polls.
IWV’s ad called “the Case is Closed” questioned Case’s voting record as well as his campaign staff hires.
IWV’s website cites a study that said its negative TV commercial “helped draw away from Mr. Case among Democrats, Republicans and independents.”
Case said Monday negative advertising from the IWV as well as Djou himself swayed undecided votes away from him.
“I said all along I was the No. 1 threat to Charles Djou and he set our quite a while ago to attack me and tear me down and he succeeded and now those who participated in the ad are bragging about it. They were also saying I was leading in polls up until a few weeks before the election. They set out to focus their fire on me and they did that,” said Case.
In polls before the election, Djou was the frontrunner with Case second and Democrat Colleen Hanabusa trailing third.
But Saturday when mail-in and walk-in votes were counted, Hanabusa swept past Case to second place.
The negative ads against Case were on the air the last two weeks of the race.
“Their intention was to attack me when independent voters were trying to make up their minds. That is exactly why the attack ads came when they did,” said Case.
IWV president Heather Higgins said, “We are thrilled to have contributed to such an important victory for Republicans.”
Case and Hanabusa Monday were back on the campaign trail preparing for the fall primary and general Elections for the next full two year term for the 1st Congressional District seat.
Hawaii Democrats don’t intend to let Djou retain the seat. Djou is the first Republican in 20 years to be elected to a Hawaii congressional seat.
The seat was vacated in February when Democrat Neil Abercrombie stepped down to run for Hawaii governor.
Case said as he campaigns for September’s primary election he will keep stressing as he has all along that he’s the only one who can beat Charles Djou in the general election.
Hanabusa will campaign the same way she did in the special election by making use of organized groups of union workers, party insiders and grassroots volunteers.
“You know we intend to keep doing what we did before,” said Hanabusa.
Hanabusa said she is also depending support from Hawaii’s Sens. Dan Inouye and Daniel Akaka who endorsed her at the beginning of the special election.
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POLITICO
By: Alex Isenstadt
| Among the organizations that can claim partial credit for Republican Charles Djou’s victory in last weekend’s Hawaii House election is one conservative group that never spent money in an election before 2010 – and seems to have gotten a taste for the fight.
Independent Women’s Voice spent about a quarter-million dollars on ads blasting former Democratic Rep. Ed Case as a “tax-raising liberal.” It was the only outside group on either side of the aisle to spend money on the airwaves.
The Hawaii special election is only the second race that Independent Women’s Voice has invested in heavily. Earlier this year, the group spent more than $200,000 in the Massachusetts election that ended with Republican Sen. Scott Brown’s victory. It also spent a smaller sum – $20,000 – on get-out-the-vote efforts in the special election this month in Pennsylvania’s 12h Congressional District.
Heather Higgins, the president and CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, said the group saw an opportunity to make a mark on the Hawaii campaign as the National Republican Congressional Committee stayed off the airwaves there.
“We thought we could make a difference,” Higgins explained. “We try to pick our shots and we try to play in a way where we get results.”
Higgins said her organization plans to remain active in the midterms through issue ads and an independent expenditure campaign, but has not decided exactly how much money it intends to spend. |
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National Journal
Reid Wilson
Rep.-elect Charles Djou‘s (R) upset win in HI 01 this weekend, and Dems’ decision several weeks ago to abandon the race, was the result of a GOP decision to focus their fire on ex-Rep. Ed Case (D), who both parties saw as the stronger Dem running.
Party strategists on both sides acknoweldge Case had the name recognition and the political acumen to beat Djou in a one-on-one matchup. The DCCC quietly helped his campaign, while GOP-affiliated groups, most notably a group called Independent Women’s Voice, focused their TV ads and mail campaigns entirely on Case, rather than on state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa(R).
The GOP’s entire strategy hinged on treating the race as a one-on-one contest. Case had soft name-ID, according to partisan polling. His support came from independents and those who lean Dem. All the party needed to do was win over the soft GOPers to build a winning coalition.
In the end, the strategy of targeting Case accomplished its goal; Djou took 39% of the vote to Hanabusa’s 31%. Case came in third place, with 28%.
But Dems face deeper problems even as they work to convince the media they can win back the district. The party tried to nudge Hanabusa out of the race, arguing she has a ceiling much lower than Case’s.
Hanabusa’s second-place finish will complicate those efforts. Local Dems are already angry with the national party for meddling, and with labor and the party establishment — including Sens. Daniel Inouye (D) and Daniel Akaka (D) — solidly behind Hanabusa, Case faces an uphill fight to win the Dem primary.
What’s more, the Sept. 18 primary gives the eventual winner just 6 weeks to stock up on much-needed cash before a general election. Djou already has $200K in the bank for a general contest, giving him an important financial head start.
Dems are beginning to consider the need for some kind of compromise candidate. Hanabusa is still unlikely to win a general election, they believe, and Case will have trouble winning a primary. Though official behind-the-scenes talks have yet to begin, they are likely to start in earnest in the future.
Dems don’t have a lot of time; the filing deadline is July 20. DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen is optimistic about his chances of winning the seat back this Nov., despite the fact that HI has never booted an incumbent. If Dems want to change that streak and back up their chairman’s claims, they have to move fast to heal what is, at the moment, a splintered party.
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The New York Times
By: Michael Luo
WAYNESBURG, Pa. — Sam Boyd has been a Democrat his entire adult life, just like many here in this mostly rural, economically impoverished southwestern corner of the state, where the party’s roots run as deep as the coal underfoot.
But in Tuesday’s closely watched special election to succeed the late Representative John P. Murtha in the state’s 12th Congressional District, Mr. Boyd, 65, is leaning toward casting his vote for the Republican candidate, Tim Burns, a millionaire former software entrepreneur who got involved in politics through the Tea Party movement.
“I’m for Burns for the reason I was for Obama,” said Mr. Boyd, a retired general contractor who served as an unpaid campaign liaison for Mr. Murtha in his county. “I want change.”
Whether or not Mr. Burns pulls off a victory over his Democratic opponent, Mark Critz, in what polls suggest is a competitive race, voters like Mr. Boyd embody the nightmare scenario for Democrats nationally: that even committed Democrats will turn on their party.
Both parties have poured money and political star power into the contest, hoping to shape the political narrative heading into the fall.
Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, headlined a rally for Mr. Burns in Washington, Pa., on Friday. (Mr. Boyd got to meet Mr. Brown afterward and shake his hand.) Former President Bill Clinton was scheduled to stump for Mr. Critz in Johnstown on Sunday.
Democratic leaders hope that improved economic news will help Mr. Critz, as well as their party nationwide. But that may not be enough to convince voters like Mr. Boyd, who only a year and a half ago was putting up Murtha and Obama signs across Greene County, the southwestern-most part of this sprawling district.
Mr. Boyd’s path to discontent since then traces the bumpy legislative path in Washington, from the auto bailouts to the stimulus plan to the passage of the health care overhaul.
His decision on Tuesday, as well as that of other voters like him in this heavily Democratic district, represents a test of Republicans’ ability to make the midterm elections a referendum on President Obama and the Democratic-led Congress.
Mr. Boyd, who first joined his local Young Democrats club as a 14-year-old, says he now regrets voting for Mr. Obama, even though he hastened to add that he still found the president personally appealing.
“I just think I bought the sizzle, not the steak,” he said.
Voters here are grappling with the end of the 36-year reign of Mr. Murtha, who died in February. Mr. Murtha, a legendary master of the earmark process, used his powerful position as the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s military subcommittee to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to his sagging district. That bounty helped him maintain a stranglehold on power over a region pocked with shuttered steel mills and factories.
Even here in Greene County, a two-hour drive from Johnstown, where Mr. Murtha used to live and a place he treated as the hub of his district, the signs of his munificence are everywhere, from Murtha Road, where the local Wal-Mart is located, to the defense contractor that anchors the county’s technology park.
But now, there is clearly an opening for Republicans. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in this district by more than 2 to 1, but the Democrats who populate the area tend to be conservative, like Mr. Boyd, especially when it comes to social issues. With mostly white, blue-collar voters, it is also the kind of district that gave the Obama campaign fits. It is the only district in the country that voted for the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, in 2004 and for the Republican nominee, John McCain, in 2008.
Congressional committees on both sides are on pace to spend about a million dollars each on the race to replace Mr. Murtha. Outside groups have also poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race. Mr. Burns has lent his campaign $380,000 out of his own pocket.
Advertisements by Mr. Burns, as well as the National Republican Campaign Committee, have almost invariably sought to tie Mr. Critz, who was Mr. Murtha’s district director, to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is extremely unpopular in the district, and to a lesser extent President Obama, whose approval ratings here are similarly abysmal.
“It’s going to come down to, do you think country is on the right track under this administration or the wrong track?” Mr. Burns said in an interview at his campaign headquarters in Washington, Pa. “I know the majority of the people in this district are not happy with Washington.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Critz has sought to draw a bright line between him and national Democratic leaders, saying he would have opposed the health care bill, as well ascap-and-trade climate legislation that is viewed coolly in this area where coal mining remains a way of life. He has tried to focus on local issues, describing his job with Mr. Murtha as that of economic development director and arguing that he can bring jobs to the area.
“This campaign is not about Washington, D.C.,” he said during a debate this month with Mr. Burns. “It’s about Washington, Pa. It’s about Washington Township, Cambria County.”
Some voters have decided that Mr. Critz, with his knowledge of the district and the Byzantine art of securing federal money, would be a better champion, even if the earmarking process that has benefited them so much is now roundly vilified.
“Politics is not a clean game, but you better know how to play the game,” Buzz Walters, a friend of Mr. Boyd who runs a tire shop in nearby Rogersville, said on a recent morning as the political talk among several friends grew heated.
Interviews with some two dozen voters in the district, most of them Democrats, found varying degrees of approval or disenchantment with Washington. Some resented efforts to turn the race into a broader referendum, saying they would make up their minds as they always have, based on the experience or character of the candidates. Others said they were so disgusted at politics in general that they were planning to stay away from the polls.
(The state’s primary is also being held on Tuesday, forcing the candidates to battle on two fronts: winning the special election and fending off challengers from their own party so they can run for a full term in November).
It is the angry talk among longtime Democrats, albeit ones who often sounded decidedly like Republicans, that is potentially most worrisome to party leaders.
“I just think we need a better balance of power in Washington,” Jim Stephenson, 62, a retired electrician, said at the Airport Restaurant here, where both he and Mr. Boyd often spend their mornings.
With Mr. Boyd, the Obama administration’s communications challenges are clearly evident. He said he was not necessarily opposed to the health care law but would “like to know what’s in the thing,” calling it “smoke and mirrors.” As for the stimulus plan, he said he only knew what he could see. And, he said, he had not seen the economy improve.
It is the growing deficit that riles him the most, he said. Rumors of a potential second stimulus package last year caused him to sink into a depression for several days. With four grandchildren, he said he was worried for their future.
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The Washington Examiner
By: Michael Barone
On Monday I wrote a blogpost noting that a poll showed Republican Charles Djou well ahead of the two Democratic candidates in the first-past-the-post Hawaii 1 special election scheduled for May 22. One reason for Djou’s performance may be the TV ad placed by Independent Women’s Voice targeting one of the Democrats, former Congressman Ed Case.
IVW took a poll showing that Case had more potential to gain votes than the other Democrat, state Senator Colleen Hanabusa, who is part of the longtime Hawaii Democratic machine which held the governorship and the legislature from 1962 to 2002. Case, who opposed the machine-backed incumbent Senator Daniel Akaka in the 2006 Democratic primary, potentially had some credibility as a reform-minded candidate. Last week the IWV put up this ad, which links Case to former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (he hired a Blagojevich advisor.
This is reportedly the only independent expenditure made against a Democrat in this race; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was running negative ads against Djou before deciding to pull out of the race last weekend. The poll cited above showed Case running about even with Hanabusa, and far behind what is needed to win.
Independent expenditure ads worked for Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 cycle. Now IWV may be showing that independent expenditure ads may be working for Republicans in the 2010 cycle—even in Hawaii-1, where Barack Obama was born and which he carried 70%-28% in November 2008.
