Red To Blue Has Now Become A Democratic Candidate Death Sentence

We’ve been talking a lot about the very predictable catastrophic impact the Steve Israel Effect has been having on Democratic campaigns from coast to coast. Although a staffer in one of Israel’s victims’ campaigns was willing to tell us that his candidate has basically stopped making donor calls and just chops wood now, cursing Israel with every swing of his ax, most of the candidates and staffers don’t want to go on the record about how they feel about the DCCC wrecking their campaigns at the last minute. Bitterness is rampant and every campaign told me that Israel never called anyone, just pulled the plug and then had a low-level lackey call to tell the campaign that they were finished. Some read it online before they got word of it from the DCCC.

“They recruited us,” one furious campaign manager told me yesterday, “in a district where they’ve had problems finding good candidates. They brought us to Washington and told us not to worry about the money, that they’d take care of it. But as soon as we agreed to run, it was nothing but all about the money.” I asked him if his candidate would run again. He told me the same thing everyone else did— “not if Steve Israel is anywhere near the DCCC.”

Several campaign managers have told me that Israel is trying to buy silence from the candidates who’s campaigns he destroyed by promising them the nomination in 2016, expected to be a better year. Most of them realize he’s in no position to make any such promise.

The latest victim of The Steve Israel Effect is Aimee Belgard in South Jersey (NJ-03), an open R+1 district that Obama won both times. Belgard is running against a corrupt corporate whore, Tom MacArthur. The most recent DCCC poll, by IVR last week, shows Belgard up 43-42%.

Democrat and Burlington County Freeholder Aimee Belgard leads Republican Insurance Executive Tom MacArthur Insurance by 1 point as of the DCCC’s latest poll of likely general election voters in NJ-03. These results come on the heels of a recent Stockton Polling Institute survey which found the race tied within the margin of error, and confirms that the momentum of the open- seat race has shifted in Belgard’s favor.

In the congressional race, Belgard leads MacArthur 43% to 42% overall with 15% of voters still undecided.

Support for Belgard is especially strong with independent voters— a key voting bloc in the likely electorate (8 point lead over MacArthur), and she performs competitively in the Republican-leaning Ocean County portion of the district.

New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District is a true swing district and one of Democrats’ top pick-up opportunities or the 2014 cycle. President Obama carried this district in both 2008 and 2012, and incumbent Republican Jon Runyan will not seek reelection in 2014.

Not good enough for Israel! The House Majority PAC pulled back yesterday, leaving Belgard in the lurch and probably unable to defend herself in the last weeks of the campaign. The DCCC is still spending on relatively inexpensive cable ads but there is a question of whether or not Belgard will have enough communication on broadcast media as she needs in such a close race.

House Majority PAC moved a massive broadcast television reservation for the week of Oct. 14, pushing it back and splitting it in half over broadcast airwaves for the two final weeks of the midterms, according to the super PAC’s Executive Director Ali Lapp. She told CQ Roll Call it is undetermined if the group will follow through with its Philadelphia ad reservation through Election Day.

The other Red-to-Blue candidates who’s campaigns Israel has torpedoed include Amanda Renteria and Michael Eggman in California, Jim Mowrer in Iowa, Ann Callis in Illinois, Jerry Cannon, Pam Byrnes, Eric Schertzing and Bobbie McKenzie in Michigan, Manan Trivedi and Kevin Strouse in Pennsylvania, John Foust and Suzanne Patrick in Virginia, Sean Eldridge, Aaron Woolf and Martha Robertson in New York, Jennifer Garrison and Michael Wager in Ohio, Rocky Lara in New Mexico, Andrew Romanoff in Colorado, John Lewis in Montana, James Lee Witt and Jackie McPherson in Arkansas, Erin Bilbray in Nevada, Nick Casey in West Virginia, and Elisabeth Jensen in Kentucky.

These are the races Israel is still rolling the dice in:

• AR-02- Patrick Henry Hays- $69,186 last week (of $756,580 spent) R+8
• FL-02- Gwen Graham- $138,515 last week (of $1,593,519) R+6
• IA-03- Staci Appel- $14,172 last week (of $62,430) even PVI
• NY-11- Domenic Recchia- $9,162 last week (of $1,395,668) R+2
• CA-31- Pete Aguilar- $66,967 last week (of $945,454) D+5
• NE-02- Brad Ashford- $206,833 last week (of $608,979) R+4
• ME-02- Emily Cain- $10,420 last week (of $317,215) D+2

Pathetic.

And that’s it. All those tens of millions of dollars they bragged about raising all cycle has gone into their corrupt pockets and into the campaigns of mostly conservative Democrats who have no grassroots support because they vote with the GOP all the time, like worthless Blue Dogs John Barrow ($1,406,732), Collin Peterson ($1,879,662), Ron Barber ($1,612,060), Nick Rahall (3,340,474), Cheri Bustos ($1,282,279) and Pete Gallego ($1,185,973).