Category Archives: Governor

Undecided Race Update

Jay Inslee (D)

All of the Senate races have now been determined, and the Democrats will lead a 55-45 majority in the next Congress, assuming Senator-Elect Angus King (I-ME) joins their caucus, as expected.

One governor’s race remains uncalled. In Washington, former Rep. Jay Inslee (D) has a 51.1-48.9% lead over Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) with still one-quarter of the vote remaining. Inslee has a 54,398 vote advantage with approximately 600,000 votes remaining. To win, McKenna would have to score a bit over 54% of the uncounted ballots. Mathematically this is certainly possible, but the trend suggests otherwise. Even if Inslee holds, the GOP gains one gubernatorial seat nationally, bringing their advantage to 30-19-1 over the Democrats and Rhode Island Independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee.

Here are the latest in the outstanding House races:

  • AZ-1: The race has been called in favor of former Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.
  • AZ-2: Rep. Ron Barber (D) vs. Martha McSally (R) – The Republican challenger leads by a scant 81 votes with as many as 65,000 votes left to count. This one, obviously, can go either way as the remaining ballots will determine the winner.
  • AZ-9: Kyrsten Sinema (D) vs. Vernon Parker (R) – About 70,000 ballots remain here, and Sinema’s lead has increased to 3,842 votes. To overtake the Democrat, Republican Parker would need just over 52% of the remaining ballots. This is a reasonable percentage, but Parker has yet to lead the race. Therefore, the trend favors Sinema.
  • CA-7: Rep. Dan Lungren (R) vs. Ami Bera (D) – Approximately 100,000 ballots still must be counted, and the challenger’s lead is a mere 184 votes. Both men have an equal chance of winning.
  • CA-36: Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R) vs. Raul Ruiz (D) – Challenger Ruiz has increased his advantage to 4,679 votes, though more than 50,000 ballots remain uncounted. To win, Rep. Bono Mack needs 55% of the remaining pool of votes. It is unlikely that she will reverse the trend.
  • CA-52: Rep. Brian Bilbray (R) vs. Scott Peters (D) – In a very similar situation to that of Rep. Lungren, it’s possible that as many as 100,000 ballots are still outstanding. Peters leads by 814 votes, meaning that Bilbray needs at least 50.5% of the remainder to pull out the victory.
  • FL-18: Rep. Allen West (R) vs. Patrick Murphy (D) – The congressman trails challenger Murphy by 2,456 votes with all precincts reporting. West is challenging voting irregularities in St. Lucie County, and several thousand provisional ballots remain. Unless West wins his challenge – claiming that certain precincts have been double counted – Murphy is likely to prevail.
  • NC-7: Rep. Mike McIntyre (D) vs. David Rouzer (R) – The congressman leads by 533 votes, with more than 5,000 to count. Many of those are from the challenger’s home county of Johnston, where he performed strongly. There is an outside chance that this election could turn around.
  • UT-4: Rep. Jim Matheson (D) vs. Mia Love (R) – Though challenger Love has already conceded, counting of the remaining 50,000 votes continues. Matheson leads with a 2,646 vote margin, meaning Love needs at least 53% of the remainder, which is unlikely to happen based upon the already known voting pattern.

Cicilline Wins in RI; NH Gov. Results

Rhode Island freshman Rep. David Cicilline won a 62 percent victory in the 1st Congressional District Democratic primary last night, a number not usually viewed as a strong performance for an incumbent before his own party’s voters, but was better than some people believed would be the final result.

Cicilline was running against marketing executive Anthony Gemma who placed second to the future congressman when the pair battled in a crowded open seat contest two years ago. Gemma attempted to attack Cicilline from the right, billing himself as a conservative – an unusual approach for an Ocean State Democrat. Not surprisingly, before a group of liberal primary voters the more conservative political strategy failed.

The congressman will now face former Rhode Island state police colonel Brendan Doherty, who was unopposed for the Republican nomination. The district is overwhelmingly Democratic, so Doherty must overcome a major challenge in a presidential year from a seat that President Obama will carry in a landslide. Still, the eastern Rhode Island district, stretching from Woonsocket, through part of Providence, and down through Newport, does merit watching in the general election.

Delaware and New Hampshire also hosted primaries last night. No races were seriously contested in the First State, but the New Hampshire gubernatorial race was of interest.

New Hampshire is one of two states, neighboring Vermont is the other, that limits its governor’s to two-year terms. Retiring incumbent John Lynch (D), who won four consecutive elections to the Governor’s Mansion, still only served eight years in office.

In the Democratic primary, former state Senate majority leader Maggie Hassan, as expected, won the nomination but her margin of victory was larger than most predicted. She defeated former state Sen. Jackie Cilley 54-39 percent. Hassan will now face Republican Ovide Lamontagne, who captured a strong 68 percent in his party primary. Approximately 99,000 people voted in the Republican primary versus the 78,000 neighborhood for the Democrats.

The New Hampshire general election is projected to be tight across the board. It could be a determining state in the presidential campaign; the two congressional races are expected to be close; and the governor’s contest, of which the finalists were decided last night, begins with a slight Republican tilt.

GOP incumbents Frank Guinta in the 1st District and Charlie Bass in NH-2 secured renomination with more than 82 percent of the vote. Both general election campaigns are re-matches from their 2010 battles. Guinta again faces former representative Carol Shea-Porter, whom he unseated. Similarly, Bass once more takes on Democratic lobbyist Ann McLane Kuster. In 2010, the two fought to a one-point final decision.

Last Primaries Tomorrow

Tomorrow marks the last regular primary election of this political cycle, as voters go to the polls in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Louisianans also haven’t chosen their nominees and will do so in their unique version of the jungle primary that occurs on general election day, Nov. 6. In the Bayou State, if no 2012 candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, then the top two finishers will run-off on Dec. 1.

Tomorrow, however, will decide two key races: choosing gubernatorial nominees in the open New Hampshire statewide race, and whether freshman Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI-1) survives his competitive Democratic primary challenge.

The 1st Congressional District of Rhode Island encompasses the eastern part of the state, beginning at the Massachusetts border with the city of Woonsocket, taking part of the city of Providence, and then traveling south all the way through the upscale city of Newport and out to the Atlantic Ocean. Though the seat is heavily Democratic in nature (Obama ’08: 67 percent), Rhode Island voters do tend to send Republicans to Washington from time to time. Therefore, with former state police colonel Brendan Doherty (R) waiting in the wings for tomorrow’s winner, determining the Democratic nominee, especially in the person of a beleaguered Rep. Cicilline, will not end the battle for this seat.

Cicilline has problems tomorrow not so much for what he has done in Congress, but rather as a hangover from his tenure as Providence mayor. The city is teetering on bankruptcy, and Cicilline has been taking major hits in the local media for his expenditure budgets while he was the city’s chief executive. The Providence Journal newspaper has detailed the waste and abuse in city spending over the course of months, and popular local radio talk show host Buddy Cianci, the former Providence mayor who spent time in federal prison for his improprieties in office, uses Cicilline as his regular whipping boy.

The prolonged attention has caused the congressman grief and though he will likely be renominated tomorrow night, the margin between he and Democratic challenger Anthony Gemma could provide a clue as to how the general election will unfold.

Gemma is a marketing executive who ran two years ago when the seat was open, placing second to Cicilline in a four-person Democratic primary field with 23.3 percent to the winner’s 37.7 percent. Despite Cicilline being so well-known and facing three people who were largely unfamiliar to the voting populace, more than 62 percent of 2010 Democratic primary voters chose another candidate. He then won an unimpressive 51-45 percent victory in the general election. With increased negatives since that time, tomorrow’s race should be considered a serious challenge despite Gemma only raising slightly over $300,000 for the campaign.

The most competitive New Hampshire primary race is the Democratic battle for the right to succeed retiring four-term Gov. John Lynch (D). New Hampshire and Vermont are the only two states who still utilize two-year terms for their governors. So, even though Lynch has won four elections, the first New Hampshire chief executive in the modern era to do so, he has only served eight years.

Two former state legislators are squaring off for their party’s nomination, Democratic former state Senate majority leader Maggie Hassan and ex-state senator Jackie Cilley. The winner – and Hassan is only a slight favorite tomorrow – will likely face GOP former gubernatorial nominee and ex-chairman of the state Board of Education, Ovide Lamontagne. The November contest will likely be as close as the presidential election here will be, in what will prove to be a tight and politically pivotal state.

At the congressional level, the general election contests are virtually set as Rep. Frank Guinta (R) defends his 1st District seat against the woman he unseated two years ago, former representative Carol Shea-Porter (D). The 2nd District contest will also feature a re-match of the 2010 campaign, a fierce one-point race between current Rep. Charlie Bass (R) and lobbyist Ann McLane Kuster (D). An equally close contest is forecast for this year. The two Republican incumbents face multiple primary opponents tomorrow, but none are serious. Both Democratic candidates are unopposed.

Exit Polling: Not So Fast

One of the postscripts of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s recall election victory yesterday was the news media’s prodigious reporting of the associated exit polling. Along with coverage of Walker being re-elected was their secondary story that President Obama leads Mitt Romney within this same voting universe, 51-44 percent. But, just how accurate are typical exit poll findings?

As we have seen in many elections, early exit poll reporting has been wrong. Most famously was the networks calling the state of Florida for Al Gore back in 2000, based upon exit polling, and announcing that the then-vice president had defeated George W. Bush. But, there have been many other incorrect predictions based upon this type of electoral polling over the years, just not as famous as in the Bush-Gore contest.

Exit data is sometimes flawed because the polling samples are not randomly selected. This lessens the reliability factor. Survey firms will choose polling places based upon electoral voting history, selecting precincts that accurately reflect the statewide voting patterns. While at the polling stations, it is the voters themselves that volunteer to answer the survey questions instead of the pollsters conducting more random sorting procedures within the sample cell. Therefore, the data found in these polls should not be considered in the same reliability category as benchmark or even tracking surveys that are conducted over a long period of time. That’s not to say exit polling has little value. One simply must take into account that their reliability factor is much lower.

Walker’s Convincing Win in Wisconsin; NJ-9 Surprise

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) handily repelled his recall challenge with a 53-46 percent victory over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) with a turnout larger than the 2010 midterm vote that originally elected him. The extraordinary outcome yielded a voter participation rate exceeding 2.5 million voters. In the 2010 midterm election, the total turnout was just under 2.2 million. Walker won that election over Barrett 52-46 percent, so he even slightly increased his margin of victory, too. The 2008 presidential election year turnout saw 2.9 million Wisconsin voters going to the polls, putting the size of the recall participation rate into perspective.

In a separate race, even though the two ran as a team in the midterm, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R) also survived her recall, 53-47 percent. Three of the four Republican state senators who were facing recalls also won, but the lone Democratic victory does flip majority control by one vote. Much more in-depth analysis will be forthcoming about this race in the coming days.

In New Jersey’s new 9th Congressional District, in what was projected as a close contest between paired incumbents Steve Rothman (D-NJ-9) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ-8), recorded the exact opposite result. Veteran Rep. Pascrell, trumpeting his backing from former President Bill Clinton but long thought to be the underdog here, scored an impressive 61-39 percent victory over Rep. Rothman. This is especially stunning considering that two of the three Democratic county party structures officially endorsed Rothman. Pascrell rode a huge turnout and overwhelming 92 percent loyalty factor from his Democratic voting base in Passaic County, thus leading to his strong victory. He will now cruise in the general election.

Major Primary Voting Today

Today, Gov. Scott Walker (R) faces Wisconsin voters to determine whether he should be recalled from office. All late polling shows a very close race, with Walker right at the 50 percent mark and his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, hovering in the high 40s. Clearly, this race will come down to favoring the side that does the best job of turning out its votes.

In New Jersey, 9th District Democratic voters are forced to choose between incumbent Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ-8) and Steve Rothman (D-NJ-9). The winner of today’s vote will claim the seat in the November general election. A tight finish is forecast. New Jersey lost a district in reapportionment, which forced these two incumbents to fight for one seat.

Turning to Iowa, Rep. David Loebsack (D-IA-2) is the prohibitive favorite to repel a primary challenge from state Sen. Joe Seng. The state legislator appears strong on paper but is making little effort to secure the congressional nomination.

Out west, New Mexico’s 1st District open seat Democratic primary is in toss-up mode. Statewide, Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-NM-1) and former representative Heather Wilson (R-NM-1) will win their respective parties’ Senatorial nominations. Likewise for Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) and Sen. Jon Tester (D) in Montana. Voters will also nominate a Democrat and Republican in the open at-large Treasure State House seat tonight. South Dakota voters will choose a Democratic opponent for freshman Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD-AL).

But the state with the most elections is California, where a new primary election law is changing the face of Golden State politics. Today, the top two finishers in every district election will qualify for the November vote regardless of political party affiliation. This will likely lead to at least seven Democrat vs. Democrat general elections and possibly two Republican vs. Republican. See yesterday’s post for a breakdown of how the races look going into the election there.

The Big June 5th Primary is Fast Approaching

Next Tuesday, six states go to the polls to nominate Senate and House candidates, and possibly recall a governor. On Monday, we’ll cover all of the hot California races. Today, we look at the other states voting on June 5.

• Iowa: In a state promising to be a hotbed of presidential campaign activity in the general election, two, and possibly three, House seats will also be highly competitive. The contenders in Districts 3 and 4 are already set. District 3, anchored in Des Moines and Council Bluffs, will feature a general election incumbent pairing between veteran representatives Leonard Boswell (D-IA-3) and Tom Latham (R-IA-4). The new 3rd is very marginal, and this will be a close race. But Tuesday’s primary carries no drama for either man. To the northwest is new District 4, featuring Rep. Steve King (R-IA-5) defending his position against Christie Vilsack (D), the state’s former First Lady. The seat leans Republican, so King is favored, but, as in District 3, Tuesday’s vote is already well-defined.

In the southeastern 2nd District, Rep. David Loebsack (D) faces Davenport state Sen. Joe Seng. Loebsack should hold, but he loses his Cedar Rapids power base to District 1 and adds Davenport, a city he has not previously represented but one in which Seng has served in local government as well as the state legislature. The 2nd has the chance of becoming moderately competitive in the general election particularly if Seng pulls a big upset over the incumbent on Tuesday.

• Montana: A gubernatorial primary is underway for the state’s at-large open seat. Attorney General Steve Bullock is the prohibitive favorite in the Democratic primary. Former Rep. Rick Hill (R-MT-AL) is attempting a political comeback in this race after being out of office for 12 years. The Senate competitors are already set: Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT-AL). In the open House race, former lieutenant governor nominee Steve Daines has the inside track to the Republican nomination, while the Democrats are in a battle among seven candidates led by state Sen. Kim Gillian and state Rep. Franke Wilmer.

• New Jersey: The races here are quiet except for the 9th District Democratic pairing between representatives Steve Rothman (D-NJ-9) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ-8). This race has been hotly contested for weeks and turned nasty on several occasions. Most believe Rothman has the slight advantage, particularly with official party endorsements in two of the district’s three counties. Pascrell needs a larger than normal turnout in Passaic County to snatch a close win. Surprisingly, the mayor of the district’s largest city, Paterson, has endorsed Rothman as has a member of the city council. These endorsements sting Pascrell because he was a former Paterson mayor before being elected to Congress. The representative does have former president Bill Clinton’s public support. A wild finish is guaranteed here.

• New Mexico: In the Senate campaign, it appears that Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-NM-1) and ex-Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM-1) are headed for their respective party nominations. This will be a highly competitive general election. In Heinrich’s open House race, a tight Democratic primary is evolving. Polls show state Sen. Eric Griego and Bernalillo County commissioner and former congressional candidate Michelle Lujan Grisham to be in a virtual tie, with former Albuquerque mayor Martin Chavez trailing the duo. There is no run-off election in New Mexico, so this race will likely being decided on Tuesday by only a handful of votes. Republicans will nominate former state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones. The eventual Democratic nominee has the inside track for the fall election.

• South Dakota: Little in the way of contests are occurring in South Dakota. There is no Senate race this year, and freshman Rep. Kristi Noem (R) is positioning herself for a second term. For the Democrats, Minnehaha County Commissioner Jeff Barth and former congressional aide Matt Varilek vie for the right to challenge Noem. Though South Dakota does feature a run-off, the two-way race guarantees that Democratic voters will choose a nominee on Tuesday night. Noem will be a big favorite in the general election.

• Wisconsin: Finally, the long-awaited recall election for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) will be decided next Tuesday. Momentum had been swinging Walker’s way and he still seems to have more energy behind his candidacy than does Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, his Democratic opponent. At least one survey, however, the Lake Research poll taken for the Democratic Party, shows the race to be a tie. All others give Walker a slight lead. The race will turn on the rate of voter participation and both sides are gearing up for a major effort. The result here could be a harbinger for the general election, certainly in Wisconsin, but possibly nationwide, too. Arguably, this race will have the greatest effect on national politics of any June 5 campaign.

The plethora of California congressional races will be covered in our Monday report.