Slow for a Couple Days
ArchPundit
The Missouri Primary is on Tuesday so other than watching if the Republicans can find a Senate candidate, it may be slow over here, though Blog Saint Louis will be hopping.
Weller-Renner Poll
Public Opinion Strategies (R) poll; conducted 7/13-14; 400 likely voters; margin of error +/- 4.9% (polling memo, 7/22). Tested Rep. Jerry Weller (R-11) and McLean Co Board member Tari Renner (D).
General Election Matchup
Weller 60%
Renner 26 Fav/Unfav
52%/12%
7 /2
Two numbers stick out–Weller is over 50 in favorability, but just barely–but unfavorable numbers are very low. That is a problem. More of a prolem is that nearly no one knows who Tari is.
Donate to help out with that problem–to the right and down.
Share Some Info With Kerry
New tool is being developed to go the next step beyond Meet-Up and looks promising from the Kerry Campaign. Go here to sign-up.
The advantage of this kind of system is that it does to the internet what Direct Mail did to mailings years ago. In addition, it has a volunteer component to allow individuals to act in a decentralized way.
Also, soon to be up on the links section, check out ChicagoLand for Kerry
Crane Gets E-Mail
From the inbox:
Dear Constituent:
As your representative in Congress, I am requesting your permission to send you a few email updates every month. These communications will focus on the important issues facing Congress today.The Internet has provided us an opportunity to speak to you directly and brings you a new way to be heard.
If you do not wish to have me contact you via email or if you believe you have received this message in error, please click the link below and your name will be permanently deleted from the email list.
Sincerely,
Phil Crane
Member of Congress
Apparently, the guy didn’t have an e-mail address until recently.
Question out there–is mass e-mail regulated like Franking?
“Unless he has suffered some type of brain shock that has damaged him permanently.”
OK, so sometimes the candidate making news is bad too. On the 27th, The Northwest Herald ran a follow-up on the race being a tough one. Crane responds to the notion that Republicans might be supporting Bean:
“I can’t imagine some Republican doing that,” Crane said. “Unless he has suffered some type of brain shock that has damaged him permanently.”
I’m not even sure that is the worst quote:
rane, 72, said he has no plans to retire any time soon.
There is too much work on trade and taxes left to be done, he said. Crane often introduces legislation that would eliminate all federal taxes except a 10 percent income tax.
Crane said he offers the legislation in an attempt to make colleagues think about the issue.
“You just keep the faith and fight the fight, but remember that the war is eternal,” Crane said.
Make colleagues think about the issue?
I’m trying to think of a better quote to illustrate being out of touch with the voters and it isn’t coming to me. For good reason. As a younger guy Crane was probably personable enough to pull off the ideologue bit, but in a race like this with many, many new voters, he’s playing right into Bean’s strengths.
Crane Round-Up
The bad thing about having a credible challenger is that the other Party figures it out if you are too successful. The good news is that money doesn’t organize and if you don’t have an ground plan and mail strategy in place by now, you’ll be doing a lot of improvising without a good hand on how to use your resources best.
Several have complained that Crane is out of touch and tries to stand on decades-old achievements.
Herman said the Bean campaign is seeing some Republican support. A few Republican committeemen have contributed to the campaign, Herman said, although their donations are less than the $200 reporting threshold.
“A fourth of our volunteers [say they are] Republicans,” Herman said.
Crane’s Troubles in the UPI
I don’t have a permalink, but I had an article forwarded to me:
Concerns that Rep. Phil Crane, R-Ill., may have trouble in the upcoming election are being dismissed as “overblown” by some folks close to him.
The Democrats are saying that Crane, currently the longest-serving member of the House GOP Conference, has become “a lobbyist-dependent Washington insider.”
The “anxiety began to bubble over in June,” the Chicago Tribune reported, when GOP Rep. Ray LaHood said in an interview that Crane could be the election’s “November surprise.”
“The problem is he really just has not worked (his district) that well. He hasn’t paid attention to it,” said LaHood, who has since backed from his observation. Crane, meanwhile, is touting his frequent visits to the district over the last three months and his seniority as chairman of the House’s Trade Subcommittee.
A recent poll conducted for his opponent, Democrat businesswoman Melissa Bean, showed that 36 percent of voters in the district “are inclined” to re-elect Crane, but one prominent business lobbyists who is following the race closely says people should not be concerned. “The district is solidly GOP. For Bean to win it would require a convergence of anomalies that would be biblical in scope.”
“Crane is prepared for a fight,” he said, while “the rest of the Illinois GOP delegation are pouring a lot of resources into the race.”
(That’s Politics! looks at the inner workings of the American political process and is written by UPI’s Peter Roff, a 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.)
=======
I, of course, hope that is the attitude, but I’d say looking at the demographics, the likely low turnout in the District, and the money Bean is raising, this is going to be a very hot race. One thing to consider is that a challenger who can raise enough money can challenge and Bean is doing that and that poll will pull in the DCCC. Especially with no TV (just useless in such a market) and no record to run against with Bean, Crane is going to have a really hard time framing the debate in terms beneficial to him. He has to have a strong turnout in his District, and there is little evidence he can produce that anymore.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Berkowitz Only Gets Part of the Problem
This isn’t a slam at Jeff, but he misses the key to a Plummer Candidacy. If Plummer puts in $5,000,000 (or just barely more) than Barack can raise $12,000 a person and coordinated party money–money he won’t need.
Any self-funder makes it easier for Barack in many ways.
Taking a small bit from the only decent resource I know of this–the Hotline:
Personal Funds Spending > $1,018,640 (2X threshold) then spending limit jumps to $6,000
Personal Funds Spending > $2,037,280 (4X threshold) then spending limit jumps to $12,000
Personal Funds Spending > $5,093,200 (10x threshold) then spending limit jumps to $12,000 and party committees can spend unlimited coordinated amounts on the campaign
Even Cox boots it up to $6,000/donor.
Just to add to the Republican nightmare the initial threshold is $509,320–though I don’t have the exact figure that donors can increase too at that point.
UPDATE: From a Democratic Source that demonstrates I only sort of get it, the intial threshhold doesn’t increase how much you can raise. It’s when you double the threshhold that increased limits kick in.
IOW, Cox says he’ll put in $1,000,000. That wouldn’t increase the limit. But $18,000 and some change more, Obama collects double.
The Effectiveness of the Kerry Speech
The Kerry speech was effective in two ways–it outlined a clear plan of attack on Bush, but also, it sold him to activists in the Democratic Party. One of his basic problems has been he isn’t terribly popular with a lot of voters because he is seen as sort of boring and overproduced. Complaints I’ve been known to make. That speech sold most of us and instead of being Anybody but Bush, I can now say I’m excited about a John Kerry Presidency. That’s a big accomplishment.
Will it work? Well that is what campaigns decide.
Overall the convention did two things well. It framed the debate on terms the Democrats think are favorable to them and then it provided a positive outlook for the future over just simple Bush rage.
The Winner of the 2004 Budget Fiasco?
Probably Cross-the only guy not getting negative publicity and for good reason.
But more than a party fight, this was a separation of powers fight and Rich Miller details the key element of that fight.
The administrative rule changes are a staggering increase in the power of the Lege and probably a very bad institutional organization, though certainly understandable given the current Governor. Miller describes it thusly:
The new powers given to the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules provide the Legislature with a huge weapon to check the governor’s previously awesome authority to run his administration. In the past, it was immensely difficult to stop a new administrative rule.
Rulemaking authority has been almost equal to, and in some cases has exceeded, legislative powers of passing bills. The importance of that rulemaking power can’t be overstated. Essentially, the governor could rewrite state laws to his own liking through the way he chose to implement them. Now, all it will take is a vote of eight out of the twelve JCAR members and a proposed rule is just about dead. That’s a big thing.
We elect Governor’s to implement policy. That’s their job as the Executive. Within that role is an amount discretion as to how to carry out laws with a check on it through administrative procedure rules and the ability of the courts to oversee the process. One of the reasons we do that is the assumption is that expertise is needed to decide how to specifically implement bills in highly technical areas. Expertise the legislature doesn’t generally have easily available nor does it have time to oversee such processes.
In reasonable times, the Lege looks for warning signs—or in the literature what is called as Fire alarms. When something wrong is brought to their attention from the bureaucracy, it is because there is a big shining light flashing over a problem. This is generally good because it catches the big problems and allocates legislative energy towards the most important areas of oversight.
The other way they could do this is called police patrols which means they monitor budgets and performance with regular audits. That job is generally given to the State Auditor except at budget time. It simply is too time consuming and ultimately, a Governor is elected to make single, coherent decisions within the legal framework.
If the trust breaks down between the branches as it has now down (the 50 Memorandums is staggering), the Lege starts to act more like a police patrol and in this case, they just institutionalized that method bureaucratic oversight.
While it takes up too much legislative time, the larger problem is that it trades a single coherent top-down bureaucracy into a bureaucracy with several masters—a recipe for incoherence and special favors. Instead of the Governor and the Lege settling their differences in enabling legislation, the rule making issue moves that bargaining process to a daily fight in the Lege leading to slower government. And we already see how this Governor does in negotiations with the Lege.
So the Governor didn’t just lose for himself, he lost for the institution as well.