Senate and early voting updates
In the last week of the campaign Richard Douglas is making a charge down the stretch to grab the GOP nod for U.S. Senate. Witness this commercial, which is actually a pretty well-done 30-second spot:
But I can’t help noticing parallels between the 2010 and 2012 GOP Senate races. The two things which got eventual 2010 nominee Eric Wargotz through the primary and into a general election shellacking by Barbara Mikulski were the tacit backing of the state party establishment (as opposed to Jim Rutledge, who was perceived as more of a TEA Party candidate) and a lot of the candidate’s money. Fast forward to 2012 and you find that, on the first point, Richard Douglas has retained the services of Lawrence Scott’s political consulting firm. Lawrence Scott is the son of former MDGOP Chair and National Committeewoman candidate Audrey Scott, who has also endorsed Douglas.
I don’t doubt that Scott Strategies has had its share of successes over the years, but FEC records show his firm has received over $27,000 from Douglas. By comparison, the campaign has raised just over $26,000 in individual contributions.
So where is the money for what the Douglas campaign describes as a “six figure advertising buy focused on statewide radio, direct mail and voter turnout phone calls as the April 3 primary nears” coming from? Richard has secured over $100,000 in candidate loans, meaning his campaign is (as of the March 14 filing date) nearly $111,000 in debt with just over $20,000 cash on hand.
This is similar to 2010, where Eric Wargotz had over $500,000 cash on hand before his September primary but was $575,000 in debt based on campaign loans (he ended up raising just over $250,000 from outside contributors for the 2010 campaign but spent $1.24 million overall.)
By comparison, Dan Bongino raised over $187,000 in individual contributions by March 14, and had only loaned $3,000 to his campaign. A significant portion of his expenditures went to several paid members of his campaign rather than to an outside consultant. But maybe he needed a better audio feed for this spot, because it doesn’t compare well with his radio ads.
Of course, financially neither holds a candle to the nearly $1.9 million Ben Cardin had on hand. Ben obviously didn’t sleep through the class on how to shake down unions, PACs, and other special interests for campaign cash.
I also wanted to add a few words about early voting in Maryland. So far, according to the latest figures which now include five days of the six-day process, not even 2% of voters have come out. Even if the final day is as busy as Saturday was, fewer than one out of 40 registered voters will partake in the process. So I must ask: why are we bothering?
The only counties which may have significant early turnout (that being on the order of seven to eight percent) are Talbot and Kent counties; on the other hand some of the largest counties will likely lag under 2%. (Wicomico is at 2.37% with 1,063 voting at the Civic Center so far.)
As far as party affiliation, the GOP is ahead in terms of percentage with 2.17% turnout compared to 1.97% for Democrats. That’s a little ironic given the fact the GOP didn’t care for early voting when it was presented to the General Assembly, but both parties have encouraged its use since.
As for me, I’m going to the polls Tuesday like we should.
Pulling the polls
I had a couple interesting polls up which ended today.
For one, I found out that there’s a LOT of Dan Bongino fans who read my site. It’s either that or the others don’t take much stock in internet polls. But each time I’ve had a poll in the last few months Bongino has won, with the one exception being a poll I took last June when Eric Wargotz was still considering the race (Bongino was a close second in that one.)
But I can tell you right now that Dan won’t win 90-plus percent of the vote as he does in my poll. In fact, I would be surprised if any candidate came up with 50 percent – the dynamics of the GOP U.S. Senate race remind me of the 2010 nomination battle to face Barb Mikulski. Eric Wargotz won the race but didn’t even break 40 percent, and the top two got just 70 percent of the vote. This will not be a coronation like 2006 with Michael Steele by any means.
On the other hand, the poll I did regarding the ballot issues had some wild swings in it, and it definitely shows the passion behind both sides of the issue. My poll would suggest that the same-sex marriage referendum would have a more difficult time overturning that law than the referendum regarding in-state tuition for illegal aliens.
As you likely recall, there were four possible choices, which ranged from overturning both to keeping both, with the additional possibilities of voting for one but not the other. If you look at the possible outcomes, this is how they shook out:
- Overturn both: 212 votes
- Keep both: 209 votes
- Overturn only in-state tuition: 106 votes
- Overturn only gay marriage: 1 vote
So in theory the votes would turn out this way:
- Overturning in-state tuition: 318 yes, 210 no (60.2% yes, 39.8% no)
- Overturning gay marriage: 213 yes, 315 no (40.3% yes, 59.7% no)
Somehow I don’t quite think the margin will be that great in either case, as recent polling has both issues almost evenly split.
But I wouldn’t be surprised to see an October Surprise poll, conducted by one of the leading media outlets in the state, that suggests both of these ballot initiatives will go down to defeat by a significant margin. Of course, that poll will only come after attempts to soften up opposition by presenting the stories of committed gay couples who are pillars of the community, and all they want is to get married so they can enjoy matrimonial bliss like the regular couples do. They’ll also likely find an interracial straight couple who supports the gay marriage bill to carry forth the narrative that opposition to gay marriage is just like the opposition to interracial marriage decades ago.
And don’t think the other referendum will be spared: they’ll certainly have the obligatory portrayal of little Maria, the valedictorian of her class, who’s going to be denied her opportunity at the American Dream because her poor parents are illegal aliens and those mean old Republicans and conservatives only want white people to succeed. Will they play the race card? You betcha!
Nor should we be surprised if these polls show Barack Obama, Ben Cardin, and every other Democrat in the state with insurmountable leads; the overriding message will be that conservatives have a lost cause and may as well stay home on Election Day. That’s how they play the game, and our job is going to be one of shocking the world come November. (Oh, and watching the vote counters like a hawk.)
As Brian Griffiths pointed out at Red Maryland earlier this week, Democrats (and their allies who drink deeply of the public trough) are scared because, if these petition-based initiatives succeed, their grip on power will be significantly loosened and no longer could they rule the state by fiat simply because they can spend their way to an omnipresent majority in the General Assembly. So they’re trying to throw every obstacle they can in front of those who are fighting them, including intimidation at petition sites, needless appeals to Maryland courts, and now the bill Griffiths cites which would made it exceedingly difficult to collect signatures in the short time frame prescribed by law.
This was probably the last poll I’ll do on the Senate race, as the more important one begins just a couple weeks from now with early voting.
A second look before he leaps?
Well, we can’t count Eric Wargotz out can we?
In a move which both piques interest and certainly cheers a certain segment of the Maryland Republican Party, the aforenentioned 2010 GOP Senate candidate is reportedly taking a “second look” at the race, according to the Baltimore Sun and other blog reports. As examples, David Moon at Maryland Juice has the port side view on this while Richard Cross, who briefly worked with the 2010 Wargotz effort, also weighs in at Cross Purposes.
Obviously, this could be much ado about nothing. For one thing, there are only four days before the filing deadline, and while Eric likely has a portion of his team in place and certainly hasn’t closed out his campaign accounts from 2010 he’s already facing a field with some established frontrunners and an uphill battle to secure the same proportion of the primary vote he received two years ago.
But it appears Eric’s logic regarding a primary battle is sound to a certain extent – obviously Ben Cardin has a serious opponent. Yet on the other hand, it appears the Maryland Democratic Party is going all in for Cardin despite their own bylaws prohibiting the practice. While our state is perceived as a safely Democratic state, anything is possible and Democrats have to protect the seats they have in the Senate, bylaws be damned.
And there’s always the “testing the waters” theory: perhaps this trial balloon has been launched to see what sort of buzz is generated by the possibility of a late Wargotz entry. Obviously it’s enough to make me write something during an NFL playoff game, and perhaps there is a chance that disillusioned minority Democrats here in Maryland – who will surely turn out to vote for Barack Obama – make that vote and then cast a ballot for the Republican to punish Ben Cardin for running against one of their own. But I only see that as adding 2 to 5 percent to the total of the eventual GOP nominee, and whoever runs needs to make up the 10-point deficit Michael Steele had in the 2006 race.
Certainly Eric is free to toss his hat into the ring, as I always think the more primary choices I have the better. But no one is going to hand him the GOP nomination and many of the factors which led him to initially skip the 2012 contest will remain in place regardless of how the Democratic race goes. My thinking at the moment is that C. Anthony Muse has a steep climb in order to beat Ben Cardin, even without the state and national Democrats putting their thumbs on the scale. Sometimes the first gut instinct is the best one.
Odds and ends number 39
As always, these are my short takes on a number of subjects.
Let’s begin with something the nanny state of Maryland has already addressed, banning hand-held cel phones or texting while driving. Now the National Transportation Safety Board wants to take this ban nationwide, never mind there are already laws in every state against inattentive driving.
I do quite a bit of driving as part of my job and I have to tell you that there are a lot of drivers out there who are on their cel phone – some may be hands-free and others are holding on to theirs. But aside from the fact they may have one or both hands on the steering wheel, I don’t think they’re any more distracted than someone who’s eating their lunch on the run, adjusting their heater or the radio, or yelling at the kids. Should we ban all those activities as well? Trust me, if I were an undercover cop I could rack up a lot of fines for the state by picking up folks who I saw talking on the phone, and could probably find a few scofflaws texting as well.
We don’t need a national texting ban – just a little more common sense.
Speaking of common sense, I think there’s another area where we’re lacking. The internet is great because of its freedom, but there are those who want to enact Chinese-style internet censorship because they’re worried about copyright infringement. This site pokes fun at the idea.
But this could be a serious problem for a blogger like me, because I have my occasional Friday Night Videos series and some of these artists cover songs by other artists. Obviously that’s not a significant portion of my content and I don’t think I’m going to cost any of these original artists any money. But in theory I could run afoul of the law, and that’s completely ridiculous. It’s amazing the excuses people can come up with to dampen the internet, because copyright infringement is only the beginning – next will be restricting what one can say. Constitution? We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution.
Finally, speaking of the internet, this was an interesting e-mail.
I just received a spam message from a candidate you did an article on. It is a nice Christmas message, and below is says I am on their “Supporters list. ”
I, however, am not on the list. I actually don’t even know who this guy is. Furthermore, I have never been to Maryland. I have never voted in a US election. I am actually Canadian.
And I hate spam like cats hate water. And I find it reprehensible that someone running for senate would be spamming – which here is against the law. I believe it is down there too.
Should I be invited though, I would be happy to make a trip down there and give you guys an honest opinion of the candidates you have running for senate. Please forward this appropriately if need be.
Well I appreciate the readership from north of the border, but it brings up a great point about e-mail address harvesting.
I have no idea just how many e-mail lists I’m on, and there’s a reason I tried to avoid placing any of my work e-mails on e-mail lists – to avoid situations like this person’s.
Still, I’d be curious to know how the e-mail got on the list – probably a typo, judging by the fact it’s a fairly common Gmail address – and what this person really thinks about our Senate candidates.
The best irony, though, is that Eric Wargotz isn’t even running this year but he’s now known in a far-flung place like Regina, Saskatchewan. And now so am I.
Update: There was one more item I meant to throw in. People like to rag on Walmart and those who frequent it, but this writer – presumably one who won’t be part of the 99% since she’s working her way through college – brings up a great point about the need for welfare reform, to wit:
I spent hours upon hours toiling away at a register, scanning, bagging, and dealing with questionable clientele. These were all expected parts of the job, and I was okay with it. What I didn’t expect to be part of my job at Wal-Mart was to witness massive amounts of welfare fraud and abuse.
Read the rest. It’s going to be interesting to see what Maine does with their system since the Republicans were swept into power last year – of course, having said that, one has to consider that what passes for Republican in Maine are RINOs like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
The Maryland Republican Party as a career ladder?
You know, I think this was a reason some were concerned about Alex Mooney becoming chair.
But late on Tuesday the Maryland Republican Party Chair announced he was forming an exploratory committee for the Sixth District seat now held by Roscoe Bartlett, who is beginning to look more and more like a lame duck candidate – case in point, the strong suspicion that his (now former) chief of staff, Bud Otis, may be making a bid for the GOP nomination. Bear in mind there were already several candidates in the race for the Sixth District before all this intrigue began, making the statewide Senate race look cut-and-dried by comparison.
A secondary election day
I always thought it was the Tuesday after the first Monday, but today was quite the election day on three different fronts.
One election I participated in was a straw poll held at the MDGOP Fall Convention over the weekend, with the results tabulated and announced today. (My analysis comes after the jump.)
Two fewer for Senate
For William Capps, it was an uphill battle and one he decided to no longer keep fighting. Over the weekend he withdrew from the race for Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat and endorsed Dan Bongino.
But there’s something he alluded to in his statement that I haven’t received official word on. Capps notes that Pat McDonough has already entered the Senate race, but as for now he’s still on the fence between running for the U.S. Senate and running for Congress. Earlier this summer he had announced he was considering a Senate run based on how redistricting went, but nothing is official yet. If I were a betting man, though, I think Capps is correct and McDonough will take his statewide shot.
Another name candidate who hadn’t finalized his plans is Eric Wargotz, the 2010 GOP nominee. Back in September he put out a fundraising appeal which was to help him make a decision, and I had it on pretty good authority that choice would be made around the first of November.
Well, consider Eric a couple days late but this literally just came as I was writing the post:
As many of you know, our team has been carefully considering a run for US Senate in 2012. After extensive research, I was humbled to learn that I remain popular among Republican primary voters and remain well positioned to win the Republican nomination for US Senate in Maryland once again.
Unfortunately, support for the incumbent Senator (and the President) remains strong in Maryland, despite the national political environment. In this political reality, we find ourselves in the position of being able to win the Republican nomination but falling short in the general election.
Therefore, regrettably, I have decided to forgo entering the 2012 US Senate race.
My family and I are grateful for your continued support and well-wishes over the past several years in this endeavor. I was honored to serve as your 2010 Republican U.S. Senate nominee and I will continue to work diligently to bring Maryland closer to a true, two-party state.
May God Bless you, the State of Maryland and our great Country.
So that’s the news, hot off the press. We’ll see now what move McDonough makes.
Where the action was
I’d love to have said I was there, but family has to come first and my parents came from many miles away.
But I was cheered to see the lineup for the Turning the Tides Conference presented by the Maryland Conservative Action Network, as it included a number of luminaries as well as breakout discussions on a number of subjects near and dear to the hearts of conservatives in Maryland and everywhere else, for that matter. Not only that, the event drew over 200 activists from across Maryland and received coverage from both the old and new media outlets. They even had their very own counterprotest from a liberal former member of the House of Delegates.
So it sounds like we had a nice event. But now the question is ‘where do we go from here?’
Stuck, unless a judge bails us out
I’ll let Maryland Republican Party Chair Alex Mooney get the first word in:
Earlier today, the House of Delegates passed Governor O’Malley’s gerrymandered Congressional District Plan.
After only a short debate, the House voted to pass it 91-46. It needed 85 votes for passage. We were 7 votes away from stalling the Governor’s plan. 7 votes. And last night, we were only 3 votes away from stopping it in the Senate. (Emphasis in original.)
Well, you already know how I feel about the situation, but I have two other observations to add before I call it a night.
First of all, there probably is or will shortly be a party at State Senator Rob Garagiola’s house because the governor did his level best to put him in Congress – never mind he has nothing at all in common with the residents of the “traditional” Sixth District.
Second, my hunch is pretty strong that we have one more Republican Senate entrant, and his name will not be Eric Wargotz. I think Pat McDonough sees the writing on the Congressional wall and will go for a statewide race. Of course, there is one caveat – he would have to do a lot of campaigning during the regular General Assembly session. But we know he’s running for something and it’s more likely now that a statewide race will be his preference.
But it’s those seven damn votes in the House of Delegates and three in the Senate which may haunt us for the next ten years. Even more so is the thought we were thisclose to keeping two Senate seats, and if we were only one vote short perhaps one other Democrat besides Senator Muse would have turned. (Knowing that, we also know that Jim Mathias voted for the plan. I also looked up the committee vote, and sure enough Delegate Norm “Five Dollar” Conway voted it out of committee. Why am I not shocked?)
So we fight on. In 2014 it’s time to remember this because they can’t get rid of all the conservatives. If we turn out 100 percent we still win.
Bongino newest poll champion
You know, I have so much fun with these occasional polls I do.
As I said in June when I did the last Senate one, I obviously know the polls are manipulated. But in making the assumption that those who would manipulate a poll exist in the same general proportion as supporters in the population at large, I can at least gather a trend. At least in this sort of instance it’s doubtful anyone would lie to a pollster.
These results, though, show a trend which may only be occurring within Republican circles until we know for sure if other key contenders are getting into the party. Here’s how the poll went:
- Daniel Bongino – 3,425 votes (75.66%)
- Eric Wargotz – 1,068 votes (23.59%)
- Robert Broadus – 23 votes (0.51%)
- William Capps – 5 votes (0.11%)
- Rich Douglas – 2 votes (0.04%)
- Rick Hoover – 2 votes (0.04%)
- Pat McDonough – 1 vote (0.02%)
- Corrogan Vaughn – 1 vote (0.02%)
Having said that a trend may exist, I need to caution those reading into the results that there’s little chance Dan Bongino will get 76% of the vote – I don’t care if the Constitutional Conservatives Fund of Senator Mike Lee has endorsed Dan or not, he’s not getting 75 percent of the GOP vote. In 2006 Michael Steele didn’t even get 90 percent and he was the sitting lieutenant governor, had plenty of name recognition, and basically controlled the whole Maryland GOP apparatus. I can see something in the 40′s for Bongino if all goes right but a lot depends on who else gets into the race and we won’t have a couple possible entrants with statewide name recognition make a formal announcement on their status until later this month.
But I have to admire how Dan is laying the groundwork for his campaign, including people passionate enough to drive internet poll numbers over 75 percent.
Let’s compare this to June numbers, for example. The number of votes cast was nearly the same (4,716 in June vs. 4,527 now) but the results were somewhat different:
- Eric Wargotz – 44.87%
- Daniel Bongino – 36.28%
- William Capps – 17.62%
- Corrogan Vaughn – 0.81%
- Robert Broadus – 0.23%
- Rick Hoover – 0.19%
Since I didn’t figure Capps ever really had 18 percent, the idea of a two-man race at the time had merit. But if Eric decides not to run – and remember, he had not made a final decision as of a couple weeks ago – that only leaves Pat McDonough as a possible major opponent. (I wouldn’t completely discount Rich Douglas either, given his background.)
This election is a little bit different than the last cycle, where the primary was late – so late, in fact, that federal law precludes us from having a September primary again. (Too bad, because I liked that compressed season.) Now there’s less than six months remaining until election day and truly we won’t be really paying attention until after the holidays anyway. It’s possible we could have a post-holiday bid, sort of like Bob Ehrlich’s coyness about his 2010 try for governor, but like Ehrlich it would have to be someone with some name recognition already because the filing deadline is January 11.
In any case it won’t be as easy as voting in a monoblogue poll.
U.S. Senate hopeful Rich Douglas meets the Wicomico GOP Central Committee
Normally I don’t do this.
My usual custom is to discuss the Wicomico County Republican Club meetings but not Central Committee meetings, mainly because we talk shop there and I like to keep the opposition guessing. Judging by recent election results around these parts, that strategy works pretty well.
But we had a special guest tonight as newly committed U.S. Senate candidate Rich Douglas came a-callin’. So I’ll discuss a little bit about what he said.
Odds and ends number 34
Believe it or not, I have been besieged with another plethora of items which deserve perhaps an paragraph or three of comment on my part. So let me get crackin’ on them.
Since I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him in person, I would suggest that those of you who are political activists consider attending David Craig’s campaign school. It will make a stop here on the Lower Eastern Shore at the Comfort Inn in Cambridge this Saturday (October 1st) from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s absolutely free and includes lunch too. You can sign up for the event here.
You know, I’d be curious to know if any liberals show up because it’s a freebie. But if it’s conducted like the “Bloggers and Burgers” confab you should leave the Craig campaign school neither hungry nor uninformed.
Speaking of liberals and freebies, there’s 116 people in Salisbury who really must suffer from terminal ignorance. I got this in my e-mail the other day, simply because September 30 is coming:
Here’s something you don’t have in common with 116 other supporters of this movement who tell us they live in Salisbury, MD.
That many of your neighbors have decided to own a piece of this campaign by making a donation of whatever they could afford. For some, that meant just $5. For others, it meant $100 or more. But each had their own personal reason for giving.
Our records show that you aren’t one of the 116 people where you’re from who have stepped up for 2012. Now’s your chance to change that.
Since the e-mail came from Jim Messina of the Obama 2012 campaign, don’t hold your breath waiting for my gift. I might give a little to Herman Cain, though.
It makes me curious, though – how many of my readers have donated to a Presidential campaign? I haven’t done so yet this cycle, but I did donate to Rep. Duncan Hunter’s ill-fated bid last time. He was my first.
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