Chris Gibson Announces His Retirement From Congress. Is Luján Lame Enough To Re-recruit Sean Eldridge?

Moderate Republican Chris Gibson-- and a glance at ProgressivePunch voting records show he is the only actual moderate left among House Republicans-- won't be running for reelection in 2016. In fact, yesterday he announced that he will be retiring from Congress at the end of this term. The only Republican in the House who voted more progressively than any Democrats-- in this case, reactionary Blue Dogs Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Collin Peterson (MN)-- is looking towards a statewide run in 2018. His Upper Hudson Valley/Catskills district (NY-19) is one of the bluesy districts in the country held by a Republican. If-- and its a big and unlikely "if"-- new DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján doesn't follow Steve Israel down the defeatist rabbit hole, its a district that can be won by a Democrat, especially in a presidential year-- and especially with Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket. The PVI is D+1 and Obama won the district twice, 53-45% against McCain and 52-46% against Romney. Hillary is far more popular there than Obama and, it can be expected that thousands of Democrats who didn't bother voting last November-- when Gibson trounced pathetic Steve Israel recruit Sean Eldridge 124,428 (65%) to 67,024 (35%)-- will turn out in 2016.

But will Eldridge, a multimillionaire by way of marriage, be the DCCC recruit again? He thinks he's going to be the first openly gay president, so he does need to get elected to something to get that ball rolling. A few days after his stunning-- and costly-- defeat, we suggested that he buy a new mansion in the Hamptons and run for the Suffolk County seat Republican Lee Zeldin just won (NY-01). In 2012, Julian Schreibman, spending a fraction of the money, did a lot better than Eldridge against Gibson. Schreibman spent $1,331,223 compared to Eldridge's $6,333,592 (of which $4,255,000 came from his own bank account). Where Eldridge wound up with 67,024 votes (35%), Schreibman took 134,295 (47%), something maybe even Ben Ray Luján could ask Israel about when Israel insists the DCCC anoint Eldridge again.

A problem for the Democratic Party is that the creeping centralization of decision-making, away from the local level and towards DC (particularly towards the DSCC and the DCCC) has crippled recruitment of decent candidates able to make a case to actual voters. Instead we wind up with cardboard candidates who have honed the skills to make their case to transactional corporate whores like Steve Israel. Being suited to persuade Steve Israel you're a good candidate, pretty much excludes you from actually being a good candidate. Is there anyone on a grassroots level looking at the Gibson seat? For sure-- but is Israel-- with Luján in tow-- preparing the squash local aspiration for Sean Eldridge's bank account?

On the Republican side of the aisle, the early contenders are Assemblyman Steve McLaughin, Rensselaer County Executive Kathy Jimino, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, Assemblyman Pete Lopez and state Sen. Jim Seward. Aside from Eldridge, Democrats looking at the race include Ulster County Executive Mike Hein and former state Sen. Terry Gipson, who lost his seat in the Republican wave in November.

Like Ted Cruz, Sean Eldridge Was Born In Canada And Like Cruz He Thinks He Can Be President

The first big New York Times coverage of Sean Eldridge's campaign for the Republican-held blue seat in the upper Hudson Valley/Catskills (NY-19) killed his race among actual progressives. This sentence went over especially badly for many: "Mr. Eldridge grew up in a middle-class community in Ohio, where both of his parents were doctors; they say he has a genuine understanding of people of modest means." Where I was from the kids with even just one parent who was a doctor were the richest members of the community-- not the ones who were of modest means. Eldridge's expensive, blue chip campaign is widely recognized as the worst-run, most embarrassing congressional campaign of 2014. He spent $6,333,592, more than double what he Republican opponent spent, and of that $4,255,000 (66%) was from his own bank account. (He spent an astounding $84.51 per vote he wound up with, nearly 4 times what his opponent spent.) Most of the rest came from his wealthy pals. Not much came from anyone of modest means.

He was recruited by Steve Israel for one reason-- the ability to self-fund, despite an obvious inability to win one of the most winnable seats the Republicans held. And Israel was happy to see Eldridge hire all the hack consultants that make the DCCC world spin round and round. One of Alex Isenstadt's first campaign reports on the 19th mentioned that Sean had turned the effort into a multimillion-dollar start-up.

It has unfolded in rapid-fire sequence. After Eldridge decided he wanted to run for office, he and Hughes in 2011 bought the first of two luxurious homes in the Hudson Valley region. Soon after, Eldridge set up a venture capital firm, Hudson River Ventures, that has provided millions in loans and equity lines to local companies. And now the first-time candidate, who’s running his first business, is touting the jobs he’s created in the blue-collar district.

“I know firsthand what it takes to support small businesses and create good jobs,” reads one pamphlet his campaign is plastering throughout the area.

...It’s difficult to size up the person behind the polished image Eldridge and his campaign are projecting to voters. He’s been running for more than half a year but remains mostly an enigma.

Congressional challengers typically seek maximum media exposure; Eldridge allows few chance encounters with the media. His campaign frequently posts pictures on his Facebook page of the candidate out and about in the district, but local reporters say they’re usually not made aware of his public schedule ahead of time. He declined to be interviewed by Politico, and the door to his campaign headquarters in Kingston was locked on a recent visit. No one answered a call on an intercom.

...Eldridge employs a team of prominent political consultants-- including media firm SKDKnickerbocker, polling outfit Global Strategy Group and veteran party operative Anne Lewis-- who carefully tend to his image. Through the end of last year [2013], he paid the three entities a total of $241,000, campaign records show.

Sean's campaign was entirely consultant dominated and they made a fortune off his grotesque loss. One, Jeff Pollock of Global Strategy Group, was used to track down the "spy" Sean insisted DWT had inside his campaign (who told us about the weekly bagels and lox deliveries from Steve Israel) by investigating Facebook patterns, although Sean confirmed the poor innocent suspect by seizing his cell phone and finding a friend of DWT on the call list! And Sean thinks-- or thought-- he was on a path to the presidency (of the United States); really. With all that money he was spending on consultants, he paid one of them to map out a long-term strategy to get him into the White House. Jamie Kirchick: "Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge have always been entitled brats. And now the media has finally noticed."

In just the past two months, one half of this pair managed to single-handedly destroy a storied journalistic institution, while the other suffered a crushing electoral defeat in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Last week, the 31-year-old Hughes forced the resignations of both the editor and literary editor of the New Republic, whose 100th anniversary he presided over last month at a star-studded gala in Washington, D.C.

In protest of the magazine’s newly ensconced CEO’s plan to transform TNR into a “vertically integrated digital media company,” the majority of the magazine’s senior and contributing editors resigned.

Weeks before the implosion at TNR, 28-year-old Eldridge lost his congressional bid by a stunning 30 points, despite having outspent his opponent nearly 3-to-1 in a district President Obama won by 6 percentage points. The couple had purchased a $2 million home in the district expressly so that Eldridge could run there, their purchase of a $5 million mansion in the adjoining 18th having come to naught after that seat was won by another gay Democrat in 2012.

...A New York Times profile, meanwhile, set the scene at a Paris Review fundraiser hosted by the couple at Cipriani (the 42nd Street location, not the Wall Street one, where they celebrated their wedding with 400 of their closest friends). In it, a series of Manhattan literary and media bigwigs prostrated themselves before the two like nobles at a royal court.

“They are very generous with their money and time,” Richard Socarides, a former Clinton administration staffer and television pundit prattled. “They are young, rich, smart, and good-looking. It’s a pretty powerful combination.”

Powerful indeed. At their 4,000-square-foot, $5 million SoHo loft, Hughes and Eldridge hosted fundraisers for Nancy Pelosi and Andrew Cuomo, and raised money for worthy causes like gay marriage. All the while they racked up favorable coverage in the mainstream press, and even more sycophantic mentions in the gay press. In 2011, Hughes and Eldridge graced the cover of The Advocate’s “40 under 40” issue, and the following year Hughes came in at No. 28 on OUT’s “Power List.” Nearly every profile remarked upon the young men’s precocity. They possessed “wisdom beyond their years,” observed The Advocate. “The youngest old man any of us knows,” an unnamed friend of Atlantic Publisher David Bradley said of Hughes.

Earlier this year, former TNR staffer and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank sent Hughes a fawning email in which he praised the young owner for “doing the Lord’s work” in purchasing the perpetually money-losing magazine, calling him a “21st-century Walter Lippman.”

...Eldridge’s path to fame is even more accidental. In 2010, he dropped out of law school to take up a job as communications director for a gay-rights organization, an appointment soon followed by his husband’s donation of a quarter-million dollars to the group. Nine months after Hughes told New York magazine, “He’s 26. He’s going to do all kinds of things in politics, but I don’t think there’s any rush,” to run for office, Eldridge announced his congressional candidacy.

Even by the already money-drenched standards of American politics, the Eldridge campaign was a jaw-dropping spectacle to behold. In preparation for a campaign, Eldridge established Hudson River Ventures, essentially a vote-buying apparatus masquerading as an economic-development project, to win over small-business owners and their employees. He then traipsed around the district dispensing “investments” ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 to local companies. The couple then bought a property in the town of Shokan, in New York’s 19th District, just months after Eldridge told the Times that it was their original mansion, in the 18th, where “we put down roots, where we want to have a family.”

Eldridge retained SKDKnickerbocker, a heavy-hitting Democratic political consulting firm, which also happened to be doing public-relations work for his investment fund. “Candidates who employ people in the districts they’re running in enjoy some advantages. What’s so unusual about this situation is that he’s being so transparent about it,” Paul Herrnson, executive director of the University of Connecticut’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, told Politico. Lacking any sense of irony, Eldridge made campaign-finance reform a signature plank.

To no one’s surprise except, perhaps, the pampered couple, Eldridge lost the race to the Republican incumbent 65 percent to 35 percent. In light of the massive amounts of money Hughes dumped into the race, it was one of the most humiliating defeats in the last election cycle. But Eldridge’s political ambition is not likely to be satiated. Several years ago, before he ever announced his candidacy, a source close to Eldridge told me that he had SKDKnickerbocker draw up a plan for him to become the first openly gay president of the United States (Eldridge was born in Canada and until recently held both Canadian and Israeli citizenship, which would make it difficult to overcome the Constitution’s natural-born citizenship clause). Expect the couple to find another mansion in a safe Democratic district where an aging representative is expected to retire.

One suspects that had this couple been heterosexual and conservative, the initial media attention would not have been quite so toadying. We would have no doubt been treated to endless stories about how a “rapacious” “right-wing” millionaire, who had done nothing to earn his fortune, set out to destroy one of liberalism’s great institutions all the while enabling his power-mad spouse to “buy” a seat in Congress. But everything about the Hughes-Eldridge pairing militated against such a portrayal. The prospect of a fresh-faced, conventionally liberal, gay couple hit every media sweet spot.

Hughes and Eldridge are not “role models for a future generation of… gay people,” as The Advocate absurdly stated. They are little more than entitled brats who, like most fabulously wealthy arrivistes who attain their fortunes through sheer luck rather than hard work, are used to getting everything they want, when they want it, and throw temper tantrums when they don’t.

In their elitism and sense of entitlement, they represent much of what liberals are supposed to despise. Most in the media and gay community were perfectly willing to ignore this imposture when the couple was throwing their money at the right causes and dispensing jobs to their journalist and political consultant friends. Hughes and Eldridge were beneficiaries of a corrupt and compliant media and political establishment that grasped at their filthy lucre. Only now that the fairy tale has come crashing down-- a magazine destroyed, a devastating political loss suffered-- is the herd willing to admit the obvious.

What's Next For The Ambitious Young Guy Who Ran The Worst Congressional Race Of 2014?

As far as we know, so far Sean Eldridge spent $4,659,027 in his failed NY-19 congressional run ($2,840,000 of which was from his personal wealth). His opponent, Chris Gibson, who spent $1,798,884, was an early DCCC target because the district has a PVI of D+1 and because Obama won the district twice, 175,800 (53%) to 150,359 (45%) against McCain and 157,279 (52%) to 138,384 (46%) against Romney. Problem though, is that while Obama was racking up an almost 20,000 vote margin in 2012, Gibson beat the DCCC's Red-to-Blue candidate, Julian Schreibman, by over 15,000 votes. That same Obama-electorate gave Gibson a 150,245 (53%) to 134,295 (47%) win. Still, the Beltway rule of thumb is that if an incumbent loses with less than 55% of the vote, they are a likely target the following year).

Schriebman's campaign had spent $1,331,223 to Gibson's $2,153,689-- and Democratic outside groups, primarily the DCCC and their House Majority PAC, spent $2,024,284 attacking Gibson while Republican outside groups spent $1,778,882 attacking Schreibman. This time, by recruiting a multimillionaire, the DCCC knew they wouldn't have to spend money in NY-19. They got poor naive Eldridge to hire all their crooked, high-priced consultants and it didn't cost them a nickel. Republican outside groups smeared Eldridge mercilessly (to the tune of $1,383,794), from the suburbs of Troy and Albany down the Hudson through Saugerties, Woodstock, Kingston, Rhinebeck and New Paltz to just before Poughkeepsie and west into the Catskills to Ellenville, Fallsburg, Monticello and up to Oneonta and Cooperstown. They-- the NRCC, Chamber of Commerce, the NRA and even the Environmental Defense Fund-- spent another $726,943 on ads bolstering Gibson.

The result was catastrophic for Eldridge, a Steve Israel mystery meat candidate who's campaign was off to a terrible start and went straight downhill from there. In the end, Sean was played for a fool by the DCCC. He spent a fortune on their worthless consultants and wound up with far fewer votes than Schreibman had two years earlier-- in fact less than half the voter Schreibman got and far less support among Democrats:

• Chris Gibson- 124,428 (64.99%)
• Sean Eldridge- 67,024 (35.01%)

Eldridge, who lives in Lower Manhattan but bought a $2 million house in Ulster County to make a run in the rural district somewhat more plausible, hopes to try again in 2016 when an extremely popular Hillary Clinton is on the top of the ticket. But someone who fared so poorly? Really? Nonpartisan polling a week before the election showed that even some Democrats in the district didn't much like him-- which was borne out on election day.

A week before Election Day, Republican Representative Chris Gibson continues to hold a commanding lead over Democrat Sean Eldridge. Gibson holds a 58-35 percent lead, virtually unchanged from his 57-33 percent lead seven weeks ago, according to a new Time Warner Cable News/Siena College poll of likely 19th C.D. voters released today.  By a 60-25 percent margin, voters have a favorable view of Gibson, whereas Eldridge divides voters, with 33 percent viewing him favorably and 35 percent unfavorably.

“Gibson heads into the final week of the campaign largely unscathed and with a commanding 23-point lead over Eldridge,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Over the last seven weeks, the Eldridge campaign has gained little or no traction with practically any constituency.

“Gibson has overwhelming support from 86 percent of Republicans, strong support from 60 percent of independents, and even has the support of more than one-quarter of Democrats, all virtually the same as the previous Time Warner Cable News/Siena poll,” Greenberg said. “He maintains a 13-point lead in the Ulster/Dutchess portion of the district and better than two-to-one leads in the other regions. He has a dominating 42-pont lead with men and leads among women by nine points. He leads by more than 20 points with voters 55 and older and has an even larger lead with voters younger than 55,” Greenberg said.

“As mailboxes across the 19th C.D. have been stuffed with literature promoting and attacking each candidate, and as airways have been flooded with both warm and fuzzy commercials and attack ads, Eldridge has become known to more voters. Unfortunately for him, there are as many voters that view him unfavorably as view him favorably,” Greenberg said.  “Gibson, who was well known throughout the district at the beginning of the campaign, continues to hold a better than two-to-one favorability rating.

“While Eldridge is viewed strongly favorably by Democrats and strongly unfavorably by Republicans, Gibson is viewed overwhelmingly favorably by Republicans and independents, even as Democrats are closely divided on their view of Gibson,” Greenberg said.

Although Steve Israel screwed him in the end and took him off the Red-to-Blue list, compare Eldridge's final results with those of Israel's final triaged dozen candidates:

• Sean Eldridge (NY-19)- 35.01%
• Gwen Graham (FL-02)- 50.44%
• Staci Appel (IA-03)- 42.33%
• Kathleen Rice (NY-04), who fit no crier of "Red to Blue"- 52.71%
• Domenic Recchia (NY-11)- 42.13%
• James Lee Witt (AR-04)- 42.59%
• Pete Aguilar (CA-31)- 51.36%
• Jim Mowrer (IA-04)- 38.27%
• Brad Ashford (NE-2)- 48.64%
• Manan Trivedi (PA-06)- 43.77%
• Nick Casey (WV-02)- 43.88%
• Emily Cain (ME-02), who fit no crier of "Red to Blue"- 41.82%
• Seth Moulton (MA-06), who fit no crier of "Red to Blue"- 54.65%

That's right, even in a D+1 district, Eldridge wound up with the lowest percentage, even measured against candidates who ran in R+15 (Witt) and R+11 (Casey) districts! It was a bad year for Democrats-- but not as bad as it was for Sean Eldridge. I'm hearing EMILY's List is already recruiting a candidate to beat Eldridge in the 2016 primary if he tries to run again. Maybe he can buy a house in the Hamptons next so he can take on far right freshman Republican Lee Zeldin, the only non-Christian in the next GOP House caucus-- and an easier race for Eldridge, who will certainly fit in better than he did in the Catskills. He might even seem authentic in that district. And it's closer to Manhattan.

What Did Pelosi See In Steve Israel? The DCCC Chairman Shows What He's Worth

In the final week of the midterm election cycle, House Republicans are on the offensive and an abysmally-led DCCC is retreating almost everywhere. Boehner is on the attack against Democratic incumbents while the DCCC-- which bragged all cycle about they have out raised the Republicans-- now says it doesn't have the resources to spend on its recruits and has abandoned almost all of them to their fates and the hands of surging Republicans.

The DCCC has been reduced to spending millions in districts that were "in the bag," like NY-11, where Michael Grimm was indicted on 20 criminal counts but will probably beat Israel's pathetic recruit, Domenic Recchia, or CA-31, where another execrable DCCC recruit, worthless bank lobbyist Pete Aguilar is making history by losing an overwhelmingly blue (D+5) district, despite out raising his GOP opponent $1,957,871 to $415,375. The GOP hasn't spent a nickel on behalf of Paul Chabot and the DCCC and their House Majority PAC have spent $1,297,759. Aguilar was also bolstered by the corrupt, right-wing Credit Union National Association PAC which took time out from their efforts on behalf of reactionaries Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Steve Southerland (R-FL) and Tony Strickland (R-CA) to pump $346,841 into Aguilar's campaign. All that said, an internal Aguilar poll shows him down 2-- and down 9 among high-propensity voters. As the DCCC should have learned in 2012, Aguilar's sleazy corrupt demeanor may make him fit in amazingly well among Beltway New Dems and the Steve Israel circle but ordinary working families in the Inland Empire want nothing to do with him. Had Steve Israel not interfered in the primary, Eloise Reyes would be up by double digits going into next week's vote.

Another Israel recruitment disaster has come home to roost in NY-19, a blue (D+1) district in Upstate New York, where Obama beat both McCain and Romney. The DCCC recruited a self-funding multimillionaire, turned him into a mystery-meat nothing and who now looks like he might not even get 40% of the vote. Last night the Siena Poll showed unimpressive GOP incumbent Chris Gibson leading Sean Eldridge by 23 points. This is a blue district... in New York. If Steve Israel, the most incompetent DCCC chairman since 1866, doesn't even know how to win those, why does anyone think he can win anything anywhere? Eldridge has outspent Gibson $4,659,027 to $1,798,884-- most of which, $2,840,000, came from his own personal bank account.

A week before Election Day, Republican Representative Chris Gibson continues to hold a commanding lead over Democrat Sean Eldridge. Gibson holds a 58-35 percent lead, virtually unchanged from his 57-33 percent lead seven weeks ago, according to a new Time Warner Cable News/Siena College poll of likely 19th C.D. voters released today.  By a 60-25 percent margin, voters have a favorable view of Gibson, whereas Eldridge divides voters, with 33 percent viewing him favorably and 35 percent unfavorably.

“Gibson heads into the final week of the campaign largely unscathed and with a commanding 23-point lead over Eldridge,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Over the last seven weeks, the Eldridge campaign has gained little or no traction with practically any constituency.

“Gibson has overwhelming support from 86 percent of Republicans, strong support from 60 percent of independents, and even has the support of more than one-quarter of Democrats, all virtually the same as the previous Time Warner Cable News/Siena poll,” Greenberg said. “He maintains a 13-point lead in the Ulster/Dutchess portion of the district and better than two-to-one leads in the other regions. He has a dominating 42-pont lead with men and leads among women by nine points. He leads by more than 20 points with voters 55 and older and has an even larger lead with voters younger than 55,” Greenberg said.

And the only really good news coming back from the pollsters-- from MI-06, the Paul Clements race against Fred Upton-- is a race Steve Israel not only refused to let the DCCC get involved with but one in which he worked actively against the Democrat to help the Republican! Despite Israel's treachery and despite him having wasted millions of dollars on races in Michigan he's now abandoned as hopeless, the MI-06 race is now within the margin of error. An entirely grassroots effort, it could well be the only glimmer of hope for House Democrats next Tuesday!

The race in Michigan Congressional District 6 has narrowed significantly in recent weeks, as voters have learned more about the negative aspects of Fred Upton’s tenure in Congress, and have been introduced to a viable alternative in Democrat Paul Clements. Additionally, political gaffes by Upton have brought scrutiny to this long-term incumbent who has never faced a credible challenger in a district that Barack Obama won in 2008 and trailed Mitt Romney by only 1.4 percentage points in 2012. Paul Clements has momentum in the closing days of the campaign, in what has turned out to be the most competitive congressional race in Michigan, for a seat that many thought was safe for Republicans.

Paul Clements has momentum on his side, and a top-ticket Democrat leading the way. The race for Congress has narrowed significantly since our last survey only three weeks ago (43% Clements – 47% Upton – 10% undecided). At the top of the ticket, Democrat Gary Peters has a strong lead in the U.S. Senate race in this district (48% Peters – 39% Terri Lynn Land – 12% undecided)... Clements’ path to victory comes by converting Democrats and Independents who are already supporting Democrat Gary Peters in the U.S. Senate race to his side.

...With persistent outside pressure focused on how Fred Upton has changed in the 27 years he has spent in Washington, it is possible for Paul Clements to defeat a long-time Republican incumbent. It is the job of the Clements campaign to finish with powerful positive communications in the closing week of the race, to continue to introduce Clements to Democrats and Independents who are inclined to split their ticket, but have growing reservations about supporting Fred Upton. With a strong fundraising week to finish the campaign, we can make this the “race to watch” in Michigan next Tuesday.

As recently as last week, Israel was working the phones, demanding Democratic groups not help Clements beat Upton. If Clements wins next week, it will be a resounding victory for the grassroots over the corrupt, transpartisan Beltway Establishment of which both Upton and Israel are so emblematic.

Tuesday Alex Isenstadt wrote that House Democrats are fretting over the prospect of debilitating losses Tuesday. They should have fretted when Pelosi reappointed Israel after his disastrous 2012 cycle. Israel is trying too blame progressive donors and President Obama's unpopularity to take the spotlight away from his own corruption, his deals with the GOP leadership, and, most of all, his breathtaking incompetence.

Looking to contain the damage, Democrats are pumping money into liberal congressional districts that were long thought to be safely in their column. Over the last several days, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has directed resources to maintain seats in Hawaii and Nevada, both of which broke sharply for the president in 2012-- an indication of just how much the terrain has shifted against the party over the past two years.

Other unexpected races are suddenly in play. Some Democrats, for example, have begun to worry about the prospects of California Rep. Lois Capps, an eight-term congresswoman who is typically a lock for reelection but who now finds herself in a competitive race against Republican Chris Mitchum, a perennial candidate and the son of the late actor Robert Mitchum. In a sign of how seriously national Democrats are taking the threat, the DCCC is making a last-minute purchase of $99,000 worth of radio advertising in the Santa Barbara area to boost Capps, according to a committee aide.

...Capps isn’t the only incumbent Democratic officials are scrambling at the last minute to defend. DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) recently coordinated a fundraising event for Rep. Dave Loebsack, a fourth-term Iowa incumbent who has recently come under barrage from GOP groups, and reached out to donors on his behalf.

On Tuesday afternoon, Israel and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will hold a hastily-planned conference call for members to provide them with an update on the political terrain and to press them to contribute to the party’s coffers.

...In many instances, Republicans are spending money to put races in play that had long been considered safe for Democrats. American Action Network, a national group with ties to House Speaker John Boehner, has begun airing TV commercials in blue districts in Hawaii and eastern Iowa.

The maneuvering has prompted Democratic groups to yank money from districts they’re trying to seize from Republicans in order to protect seats they already control. Over the past several weeks, the DCCC has pulled funds from top recruits in Colorado and Virginia and begun running TV ads in two eastern Iowa districts, both of which Obama won in 2012.

The Wall Street Journal had a similar report yesterday-- Republicans advancing, Israel leading Democrats into retreat after retreat. "The last-minute maneuvering has the potential, if races break their way, to bring Republicans closer to the 12-seat gain needed to match the party’s post-World War II record of holding 246 House seats. Democrats, aware of the headwind against them, have withdrawn money recently from some GOP-held districts and redirected it largely to endangered incumbents in an effort to limit GOP gains."

The Republican entrance into additional districts-- in Iowa, Nevada and elsewhere-- adds to evidence that voters are making a late turn away from the Democratic party. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg survey released Sunday found Republicans with a four-point lead among registered voters on which party should control Congress, with 46% favoring the GOP and 42% preferring Democratic control.

Had Pelosi chosen a more competent, less corrupt DCCC chair after Israel wrecked the Democrats' hopes to win back the House in 2012, would the situation be different today? Undoubtably... and we'll be exploring the specifics of that, race by race, over the next two weeks.

Don't Be Surprised That The NRCC Is Just As Incompetent And Lame As The DCCC

I don't know why the NRCC is wasting money on TV ads against Lower Manhattan multimillionaire Sean Eldridge in the Hudson Valley. You can watch it above. Eldridge will be lucky if he breaks 40% in November, very lucky. Although the district is blue and Obama won it against McCain in 2008 and against Romney in 2012, Eldridge has run a sappy, messageless campaign that's accomplishing nothing but making a bunch of slimy political consultants richer. The only publicly available polls show mediocre Republican backbencher Chris Gibson absolutely creaming him. In 2012, Julian Schreibman-- the Democratic candidate who had none of the personal wealth Eldridge has been throwing into the race ($1,340,000 from his own bank account at the time of the last FEC deadline in June)-- held Gibson to a 53-47% margin. Eldridge hired DFM Research to poll for him and they reported that Gibson was up 56-29%. And that was after Eldridge had already spent $962,959! Two weeks ago Siena, a non-partisan firm polled the district and didn't find much change. Gibson was leading Eldridge 57-33%. So why bother with the ad-- especially since the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA had already jumped in with, respectively, $650,567 and $28,600 in ads smearing poor (rich) Eldridge?

Not only is the ad unnecessary, it also is ineffective-- fine for a Republican primary but completely idiotic in a district like NY-19, using stale and failed Republican talking points that may help turn out the Fox News/Hate Talk Radio GOP base, but will do nothing-- zip-- to persuade independents, let alone Democrats, to turn against Eldridge. If anything, it will probably excite as many Democrats in his favor and it excites Republicans against him. This is typical clueless NRCC standard operating procedure-- the only reason someone as incompetent as DCCC chairman Steve Israel can walk around DC without being laughed at by busboys and parking attendants.

Yesterday the NRCC released 8 ads like the lame anti-Eldridge ad. Their targets are Ron Barber (Blue Dog-AZ), Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV), John Foust (VA), Aaron Woolf (NY), Staci Appel (IA), Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Emily Cain (New Dem-ME), and, of course, Eldridge. Most of the ads-- each of which can be viewed by clicking on the link under the candidate's name-- are self-referential, patently misleading Republican hogwash: failed talking points that persuade no one. The ads that aren't that just meaningless rote Republican dribble and so negative and vicious-- the ones against Woolf and Appel-- that they'll probably do the Democrats more good than harm.

But, no doubt some advertising consultants made a mint on this multimillion dollar buy. So… in the end that's all it's about for these Beltway sleaze buckets anyway. And, by the way, here's Eldridge's own latest ad. I wonder why someone thought reminding people that he's one of the richest candidates for Congress running anywhere-- by bringing up the role of money in politics-- was a good idea.

Checking In On Sean Eldridge's Campaign In Upstate New York… Oy

This morning Alex Isenstadt did a provocatively titled article for Politico, The Worst Campaigns of 2014. How hard is it to point to Eric Canter's loss and laugh your ass off now? Or Pat Roberts'? Or Chris McDaniels'? I'm looking for some Beltway pundits who wrote that Cantor was in trouble before Dave Brat popped out of the fascist swamp to beat the Majority Leader back home. More interesting that these obvious banner races, however, is Isenstadt's inclusion of poor (which) Sean Eldridge. It's been clear since last spring, when Isenstadt wrote his classic Chasing Sean Eldridge piece that he had a special animus for the self-entitled, "brazen" little rich kid trying to buy himself a House seat in Upstate New York.

There are worse run campaigns than Sean's around the country-- and, of course, Isenstadt refrains from delving into the toxicity of the Sean Eldridge/Steve Israel relationship that makes this race nationally interesting-- but there is Eldridge's shattered and failed campaign right up there with Eric Cantor's and Chris McDaniels'. It's really more gratuitous and mean than newsworthy:

Eldridge’s 2014 campaign may be the most confounding of them all. A venture capitalist married to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, the 28-year-old Eldridge initially looked well positioned to make a serious play for an upstate New York congressional seat.

Instead, it’s been one problem after the next. He’s been widely characterized as a carpetbagger. He split with his campaign manager over the summer. He’s faced endless questions about his qualifications, and he’s had a poor relationship with the news media.

For all the speculation that Eldridge would dump big bucks into the race, it hasn’t happened. Through the end of June, he’d raised only a little more than the Republican incumbent, Rep. Chris Gibson. And the money he has raised hasn’t always been put to good use: In one of Eldridge’s first TV ads, he awkwardly referred to himself in the third person.

One recent poll showed Eldridge losing by 24 points.

Despite this being a blue district (PVI is D+1) that Obama won both times-- 53-45% in 2008 and 52-46% in 2012-- Eldridge has virtually no shot whatsoever. Having completely blown the advantage PPP found in an early survey of the district (above) -- a 48-42% Democratic advantage-- the $1,340,000 check Eldridge wrote to his campaign and the $962,959 he's already spent, has brought him backwards, not forwards towards the goal of beating the GOP's one actual moderate, backbencher Chris Gibson.

Last cycle, Gibson beat Democrat Julian Schreibman 150,245 (53%) to 134,295 (47%), a close call. This cycle, Steve Israel decided to give the nomination to the implausible Eldridge, who didn't live in the district, for one reason: he's rich and he and his husband donate a lot to the DCCC. Israel didn't look for a good candidate, just one with money; typical Israel; typical DCCC. Now Eldridge, who has followed the DCCC's pathetic mystery meat line to a "t," won't come anywhere near Schreibman's 47% performance. Local politicos say it would be a miracle if Eldridge even cracks 40% in November and that he (and the DCCC) have set back the Democrats' ability to take back the district by a cycle or two.

Eldridge is a smart kid and he knows what he's fighting for now. He wants to 2016 nomination. With Hillary Clinton on the top of the ticket, NY-19 will be poised for a blue wave. Eldridge wants to be swept into Congress with that wave. But Israel won't be Fed-Exing his staff third-rate bagels and cream cheese next cycle. Israel will be gone from the DCCC. And a rich loser who can't even hit 40% in a blue district isn't going to be too appealing to a new DCCC chairman serious about taking back the House in 2016. No idea why Isenstadt didn't mention any of that in his Politico piece this morning. Oh, right… Politico is never mean to Steve Israel, only his hapless, defenseless recruits.

Meanwhile, someone close to the disintegrating Eldridge campaign told us that no one in the campaign talks to anyone in the campaign anymore and that Eldridge is nowhere to be seen. Maybe he's out eating bagels and cream cheese with Israel and Wasserman Schultz.

Sean Eldridge Taking Upstate New York By Storm?

Sean at home in his $5 million dollar Soho loft

-by Concerned Monticello Democrat

As far as campaign budgets go, Sean Eldridge has more money than God. Or, to be more precise, $3,069,179 raised so far ($1,340,000 from his own bank account); $962,959 already spent, albeit mostly wasted on over-priced consultants taking him for a ride; and $2,106,220 cash-on-hand, all as of the June 30 filing deadline. It could easily double as campaign professionals (hustlers) persuade Sean to pay no attention to the polls that show him losing by over 20 points.

This self-funding multimillionaire, married to lucky Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes, has the resources to employ nearly the entire Hudson Valley with campaign jobs-- and every unemployed comedian in the Catskills to boot. Let’s take a quick geographical tour of the district to see if there would be individuals who could benefit from such jobs.

This upstate New York District has some of the poorest areas of the region. The Poughkeepsie and Albany/Troy areas plus Ulster County and Oneonta (home to most of the Democratic base) are filled with unemployed residents and struggling students who would love nothing more than a paid canvassing position in a giant, robust Sean Eldridge field campaign.

I am willing to bet Sean Eldridge could spend a fraction of his fortune building a paid canvass that would inspire the entire region and leave voters with the feeling that Sean is a truly philanthropic member of their community who does care about something in New York State beyond Soho-- and something beyond a career move to Congress.

Not to mention, it would set Sean up pretty well for a potential 2016 primary by giving him access to political machinery necessary in a Democratic primary.

But, as my source at the DCCC willingly told me, Sean wants nothing to do with such a field program. Sean doesn’t want to employ poor minorities in his campaign, but rather, he wants to spend millions in paid advertising that lines pockets of talentless consultants who he likes partying with when he and young Chris fly into town (Washington, DC) with a $10 million dollar check for the DNC. Paid field operations may win elections for serious candidates but they are difficult, tedious and, worst of all, they don't yield any fat commissions for the Beltway power brokers and consultants to way paid media buys do.

Sean Eldridge is this year's ultimate rich dilettante in his quest for Congress. He believes that money should be spent lining his friends’ pockets, while leaving his district’s poorest residents starving and unemployed. Not a good get-out-the-vote strategy, at least not for a Democrat.

Sean Eldridge believes that money will buy him a seat in Congress. He believes that he can spend millions to dupe the residents of New York 19 with glossy mailers, and TV and digital ads just like Steve Israel was able to dupe him into thinking he was the next Barack Obama by sending his staff weekly bagels and cream cheese via Federal Express. I hope he didn't soil his Gucci sweater vest with cream cheese and chives.

Shame on you, Sean Eldridge. You know nothing about how to win a political campaign and you're wasting a good opportunity Democrats have in a swing district Obama won twice. You waste your money, and you leave the most needy in the district hungry and unemployed.

Go back to your 4,000 square foot loft on Crosby Street with it's 12-foot high ceilings and spend your loot on nicer things than polling and TV ads. Go to the Brunello Cucinelli store, or Ascot Chang, and buy some more nice shoes and shirts.

If you're not going to help Upstate New York’s poor communities stay in Soho and Tribeca with your millionaire pals. Your Prada and Tom Ford style/mindset will ruin your potential political career and render you unelectable anywhere.

You are the ultimate loser, a perfect Steve Israel recruit. Speaking of which... is it really such a good idea for the DCCC ads to keep putting Gibson down because he supports tax breaks for millionaires? Generically, it isn't a bad line of attack, but when most NY-19 voters hear the word "millionaire," they probably immediately think of Sean!

All Is Not Lost For Sean Eldridge… He Has A 1% Chance To Win

Chuck and Sean-- haimish?

Monday the New York State AFL-CIO rolled out its congressional endorsements, It endorsed all the Democrats-- almost. Steve Israel's DCCC failed to recruit candidates against Chris Collins (in Kathy Hochul's old suburban Buffalo district), Richard Hanna in the swing district he took from Michael Acuri in 2010, and, of course, against Israel's crony Peter King on Long Island. The AFL-CIO ignored Democrats Pat Maher in the Long Island district, ignored Jim O'Connell's race against Collins and actually endorsed Hanna where no Democrat or WFP candidate is even running. The AFL-CIO did endorse every other Democratic challenger in the state-- except multimillionaire Sean Eldridge, who's running against the House's only real moderate Republican, Chris Gibson (NY-19). So, endorsements for vile corporatists Kathleen Rice (NY-04) and Domenic Recchia (NY-11), for Aaron Woolf (NY-21) and Martha Robertson (NY-23) but nothing for Eldridge. Looks like AFL-CIO endorsements-- unlike DCCC backing-- aren't for sale.

It could have been worse. The New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), which refused to endorse Andrew Cuomo, not only didn't endorse Eldridge… they endorsed Gibson! And on top of that, the latest polling shows Eldridge-- in a 50/50 D+1 district-- unable to even break 30%. Worse yet, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Action PAC today launched a $230,000 ad buy in favor of Gibson:



As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline Gibson had raised $2,261,120 and had $1,910,550 in cash on hand. Eldridge had raised $3,069,179 and had $2,106,220 on hand. But $1,340,000 came right out of Eldridge's personal bank account and most of the rest came from his wealthy friends in Manhattan, where he lives. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already spent $350,000 bolstering Gibson and the DCCC's response? $9,136 (mostly in the form of bagels and lox Fed-Exed to Eldridge staffers weekly by Steve Israel).

The irony of all this, is that left to his own devises, Eldridge probably isn't a bad candidate. He may be too young and self-entitled but I hear he's got some progressive instincts. The problem is that in an effort to cement backing from the DCCC and Blue Dog Steve Israel, he's repressed those progressive instincts and come out like a tepid centrist. Multimillionaire tepid centrists may give Israel a woody but that isn't what inspires Democratic voters-- ergo the 29% support even after spending all that money (although, admittedly most of it was wasted on really horrible consultants the DCCC pushed on poor Sean like Jeffrey Pollock at the Global Strategy Group and the maker of insipid SKDKnickerbocker ads, Andrew Shipley). And to add insult to injury, even after Eldridge twisted himself into a pretzel to fit into Israel's mystery meat loser model, the DCCC support for him… doesn't go beyond the bagels and cream cheese.

The DCCC didn't even include Eldridge on their Red-to-Blue list until Eldridge threatened that he and his husband would stop financing Democrats and when Israel announced which districts the DCCC would be investing all those tens of millions of dollars they trick the Democratic grassroots to give them, NY-19 was not on the list. Israel is willing to throw away millions on absurd races in Michigan and Arkansas-- and is pumping money into NY races to help Recchia, Woolf and Robertson (all in tougher districts than Eldridge's) while studiously ignoring NY-19. Their House Majority PAC has taken the same stance: No money for NY-19.

Advice to Eldridge: forget Steve Israel and his failed Blue Dog stratagems. Think about how Elizabeth Warren displaced Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, how Alan Grayson beat GOP incumbent Ric Keller (in an R+3 district) and how Matt Cartwright beat Hoyer/Israel-backed Blue Dog Tim Holden last cycle in a Pennsylvania not very far from where you are. Hint: none of them bought into the mystery meat/GOP-light precepts of the Beltway Democrats that are wrecking your campaign. Candidates shall not live on bagels alone.

Eldridge's consultant-heavy campaign can do a lot better than this tepid, uninspiring, cookie-cutter, DCCC-grade crap he released yesterday, an ad that will neither inspire Democrats to go to the polls nor change the mind of a single independent or Republican-- just a total waste of money for everyone but the consultants who are getting rich while leading Eldridge down the garden path:

A Centrist Platform Will Not Turn Out Democratic Voters In NY-19… And Neither Will Steve Israel's Bagels And Lox

After college, a whole lot of friends of mine chose to move out of NYC and raise their families in the northern Hudson Valley. The ones who moved up to Dutchess, Ulster and Columbia wound up in a quintessential swing district, NY-19. The district is 89.7% white and the median household income is $53,769, a bit below the state's $55,246. This area used to be part of the Republican heartland of the Northeast and even a very successful local boy, Franklin Roosevelt, never carried the area in any of his presidential runs! Even George Bush won the district both times. More recently, as the Republican Party has shown itself to be a Confederate Party based on hatred and bigotry, it has become safer for Democrats in national elections.

Obama beat McCain 53-45% and four years later beat Romney 52-46%. The PVI is D+1, one of only 5 D+ anything congressional districts in the entire country with a Republican incumbent. And in the case of NY-19 that incumbent is literally the only genuine moderate left in the Republican Party: Chris Gibson. In the current session of Congress (2013-14), Gibson's 40.00 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is more in line with progressive policies than 8 Democrats (Matheson, Barrow, McIntyre, Barber, Peterson, Gallego, Sinema and Owens) and virtually identical to his next door neighbor to the south, Sean Patrick Maloney. Dullards at the DCCC can call him a teabagger all they want, voters are aware that his record is more nuanced than the way their cookie cutter attacks portray him. And more nuanced than their cookie cutter candidate, Sean Eldridge, tries-- unsuccessfully-- to portray him.

DMF, polling for Amtrak, released a nonpartisan survey for NY-19 this week. Beyond the questions about Amtrak, however, is a glimpse about how voters see politics in this very bellwether, swing district. Let's start with who they know, who they don't know, who they like and who they dislike:

Despite having written himself a check for $1,340,000 and having already spent $962,959, 45% of the voters have never heard of Eldridge and another 35% have no opinion of him one way or the other. His favorability is 10% as opposed to Gibson's 48%. Eldridge was recruited by Steve Israel because he and his husband, Chris Hughes of Facebook fame, are such generous contributors to the party. But Israel has done nothing for the campaign other than give Eldridge disastrous advice that will prevent him from ever being elected to anything-- and sending weekly care packages for his staff of mostly unappreciated bagels and lox every Friday.

The district doesn't seem blue enough to throw our a decent congressman for a political unknown-- even a rich one who's spreading around the money among local entrepreneurs. Obama's favorable/unfavorable is 38/57%, Cuomo's is 41/51% and the Democratic Party is even more disliked than the Republican Party-- 41/49% for the GOP and 41/50 for the Dems. When asked if the election were held today 29% say they'd vote for Eldridge and 56% say they'd vote for Gibson. 15% haven't made up their minds yet. 50% of the voters in the district want to see the Republicans maintain a majority in Congress and only 41% want to see a Democratic takeover.

Delusion swept Eldridge headquarters when they saw the poll, claiming it's not that bad and pointing out that Gibson is "underwater" in terms of favorability. No one in the country likes their congressmen this cycle but, in reality, Ginson is one of the least disliked. Sure, he's not quite at 50% but his favorable/unfavorable rating is 48/16%. His reelection prospects seem pretty solid.

That said, Eldridge has a couple of things going for him. He has $2,106,220 cash on hand-- and has access to unlimited amounts of personal wealth-- while Gibson only has $1,910,550 on hand. (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is in big for Gibson though, and has already spent $350,000 on his behalf. It's unlikely the DCCC will spend more than the $9,136 that Israel has already spent on Eldridge, presumably for the bagels and lox.) There are, however, two very populist measures that could work for Eldridge… if he was a populist candidate instead of a Steve Israel candidate. Take into account the anti-Democratic Party mood in the district and then look at how these same respondents answered these two questions:

• Many in Congress are saying that the only way to truly cut federal spending is through entitlement reform. One proposal would increase the age one can get Medicare, from age 65, to age 67. Do you approve or disapprove increasing the age one can receive Medicare?

Approve raising age…………... 24%
Disapprove raising age………. 70%
Unsure………………………………….. 6%

• Others have suggested to cut federal spending by increasing the minimum age one can receive reduced Social Security benefits, from the current age of 62, to age 64. Do you approve or disapprove increasing the age one can begin receiving Social Security?

Approve raising age………………... 34%
Disaprove raising age………………. 61%
Unsure………………………………………... 5%

Tossing out the losing Steve Israel playbook and going the populist route could win this seat for Eldridge. Sticking to the failed DCCC formula isn't going to even get Eldridge to the 47% that Julian Schreibman got against Gibson in 2012. He'll do better than the 29% the poll is predicting… but not that much better. Schreibman won Sullivan and Ulster counties and came close in Dutchess and Otsego. Other than squeaking to a win in deep blue Ulster, I'd be surprised if Eldridge's centrist message gets him anywhere in these counties and he's not going to make any headway at all in Rensselaer, Greene, Broome or Delaware-- especially in light of the findings of a new CBS poll released this morning that show that among those who say they are more enthusiastic about voting, Republicans lead 47-40%.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post asked CBS’s polling team for a more specific breakdown of who's fired up about voting and who isn't. Bad news for the Democrats, especially those following the DCCC corporatist game plan, a proven loser.

• Among unmarried women, only 29 percent are more enthusiastic about voting, while 57 percent are less enthusiastic. By contrast, married women (who are more likely to vote Republican) are more enthusiastic by 45-42.

• Among nonwhites, only 31 percent are more enthusiastic about voting, while 56 percent are less enthusiastic.

• Among voters aged 18-29, only 35 percent are more enthusiastic about voting, while 45 percent are less enthusiastic.

It’s still too early to read too much into these numbers. But findings like these bear watching to see if we will again see those core Democratic groups drop off in a midterm year. Those groups are key pillars of the emerging Democratic coalition that appears increasingly formidable in national elections, but their tendency not to show up in midterms is also central to continued Republican dominance in Congressional races despite the GOP’s national demographic challenges.

If the DCCC can't beat Chris Gibson in NY-19-- which it appears they can't-- this is going to be another really bad cycle for Steve Israel 

Are Self-Entitled Politicians With Too Much Money Endangering The Rest Of Us?

Monday we did two posts about the problem climate deniers pose for normal people-- the first one here and the other one here. In both posts, we looked specifically at the Florida congressmembers whose districts are likely to sink under the waves and who are still denying climate change science to please the Cheney types and their donors (while betraying their constituents). Most of them are Republicans, of course-- crooks and idiots like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, Dennis Ross, Vern Buchanan, Bill Posey-- but there are two Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- New Dems Joe Garcia and, much worse, Patrick Murphy-- who have been working hand-in-first with their Republican colleagues to undermine progress in dealing with Global Warming.

Last week, Chris Mooney, writing in Mother Jones, reported on an interesting analysis of a study by Jeremiah Bohr in the journal Climate Change, pointing to the problem from a different perspective: wealthy Republicans are the worst climate deniers. Mooney rues a phenomenon he calls the "smart idiot" effect and another, related one he called the "rich idiot: effect. He writes that "Apparently being highly informed or capable interacts with preexisting political biases to make those on the right more likely to be wrong than they would be if they had less education or knowledge… The study finds that among Republicans, as levels of income increase, so does their likelihood of 'dismissing the dangers associated with climate change.' But among Democrats and independents, there is little or no change in climate views as levels of income increase or decrease."

[T]he survey asked the following: "In general, do you think that a rise in the world's temperature caused by climate change is extremely dangerous for the environment, very dangerous, somewhat dangerous, not very dangerous, or not dangerous at all for the environment?"

Bohr looked specifically at those individuals who chose the "not very dangerous" or "not dangerous at all" options. And he found that at the lowest income level, the probability that a Republican would give one of these dismissive answers was only 17.7 percent. But at the highest income level, it was 51.2 percent. Here's a visualization of the chief finding, showing how the likelihood of a Republican giving one of these answers changes in relation to wealth:

This therefore leads to a surprising conclusion: "At the bottom quintile of income, Republicans are not significantly different from either Independents or Democrats" with respect to their denial of climate risks, the study reports. It's only as income increases that Republicans become so much more likely to be deniers.

So why does this occur? There are several possibilities discussed in the paper.

The first is that income is actually a proxy for something else: Namely, being politically aware. It's possible that being wealthy is related to paying more attention to politics and your political party, and people who do so would be more aware of what those who agree with them on other issues actually think about global warming. (The study controlled for another possible influencing factor, education.)

The other possibility, though, is that climate denial is a defense of economic interests. "Among individuals with conservative political orientations, there is a correlation between occupying advantageous positions within industrial economic systems and an unwillingness to acknowledge the risks associated with climate change," Bohr writes. "Perhaps to validate their economic interests, these individuals are more likely to process information on climate science through political filters that result in denying the risks produced by climate change."

There are way too many millionaires and multimillionaires in Congress to adequately represent the country or their districts. Both corrupt Beltway parties recruit them as a matter of course. Sunday, Roll Call's Emily Cahn looked at some especially unsavory new ones recruited for November: Maine GOP extremist Bruce Poliquin, crooked Minnesota businessman Stewart Mills, and South Jersey sleaze bag Tom MacArthur. (Richer than any of them is DCCC mystery meat candidate Sean Eldridge (who married well.) She reported that "Middle class people do not begrudge people who make money. As long as they’re honest and hard working, everyone aspires to be that guy or that woman," said Democratic pollster John Anzalone of wealthy candidates. "It’s when you either are screwing someone else or taking advantage of someone else, or once you get there are taking care of the rich rather than the middle class." Anzalone's firm works for Blue Dogs and New Dems and is very much a part of the infrastructure of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Eldridge has faced relentless attacks on his personal fortune from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Dubbing him “$ean Eldridge,” the NRCC called out the candidate for carpetbagging into the Hudson Valley district, buying a $2 million home there, and investing some of his immense wealth in banks, oil and tobacco companies he criticizes on the trail.

MacArthur also took flack for how he earned his millions in an ugly GOP primary to succeed retiring Rep. Jon Runyan, R-N.J. MacArthur’s primary opponent, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, said insurance adjusters affiliated with MacArthur made families “jump through hoops” to receive insurance money after their homes and properties were destroyed from a natural disaster.

It’s an attack line that Belgard has already started to use against MacArthur in the general election. In this south New Jersey district, many of the voters faced similar battles with insurance companies after their homes were decimated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

“He got rich by helping insurance companies shortchange the victims of hurricanes and wildfires-- no one should expect him to start standing up for the middle class now that he’s running for Congress,” Belgard’s campaign manager Hannah Ledford said in a statement.

Nolan began criticizing Mills’ wealth-- derived from his family’s popular chain of sport and farming equipment stores peppered through the Midwest-- calling him a “one percenter” who is “personally offended … that the rich should pay more taxes.” It’s an attack that could work in this district, where the median household income is $46,692-- the lowest of the Gopher State’s eight House districts-- according to the most recent U.S. Census.

Poliquin also faced attacks on his wealth in a Republican primary from his opponent, former state Sen. Kevin Raye. Raye labeled Poliquin as a self-funding Wall Street hedge fund manager who could not relate to working-class Mainers.

Cain [a new Dem herself with Wall Street sympathies] has yet to use that attack line against Poliquin now that the race has moved on the to general election.

...And all four of the candidates are already trying to inoculate themselves from attacks on their affluence either by telling rags-to-riches success stories, describing themselves as job creators, or touting their philanthropic endeavors.

In his first ad for the general election contest, MacArthur’s family and friends in the community describe him as a man who ascended from middle-class roots to be a successful businessman who gives back to his community.

A report in the NY Times horrified Democrats when Eldridge whined that he understands how working people live because both his parents were mere doctors. Cahn writes that "it’s hard for these same candidates to run from their wealth-- especially when they put some of their own funds into their campaigns." MacArthur has already spent more than $2 million from his own pocket on his race, making him vulnerable to criticism he is trying to buy the seat. MacArthur is a Climate Change denier and can be expected, if he beats Belgard, to vote with his party against virtually all measures to address the problem. Eldridge has put nearly a million dollars of his own funds into his race already, but he's presumably more environmentally-sensitive. It's worth noting that his opponent, Chris Gibson, has the best voting record on Climate Change of any Republican in the House-- and better than several conservative Democrats.



The newest Member of Congress, teabagger Curt Clawson, who just replaced Republican cocaine dealer and ex-Hate Talk Radio host Trey Radel, is an especially shady character who spent $3,699,679 on his special election, $3,653,076 (92%) of which came from his own pocketbook. Clawson is an especially vile self-promoter who once spent $2,000,000 advertising a challenge to President Obama in a game of basketball. His district, FL-19, stretches along the Gulf Coast from Boca Grande and Fort Meyers in the north, through Naples and down to Collier-Seminole State Park and Marco Island in the south. It's just a matter of time-- probably within out lifetimes-- that every inch of FL-19 will be uninhabitable and soon afterwards will disappear under the waves. Clawson wants to abolish the EPA and dismisses Global Warming and Climate Change entirely. He is the poster boy for Mooney's post and Bohr's study. One of his first acts in Congress, last week, was to vote for an amendment by the coal industry's David McKinley (R-WV) "to prohibit use of funds to design, implement, administer or carry out specified assessments regarding climate change."

Also worth noting, the Republican dubbed "the worst enemy of the planet earth" by the L.A. Times, Energy and Commerce Committee chair, Fred Upton (R-MI), is an hereditary multimillionaire who was lucky enough to have been born into the family that started, many generations ago, Whirlpool. Upton makes a point of bottling up and destroying every single Climate Change bill that comes through the system.

Did Steve Israel Send Lox With The Bagels And Cream Cheese To Sean Eldridge's Campaign?

Yesterday there was all kinds of commotion on the right from a hum drum post about Sean Eldridge firing his campaign manager and the quality of assistance his campaign gets from Steve Israel. One person in the campaign seems angry that I mentioned Israel sent widely unappreciated bagels and cream cheese every week and another told me the story lacked credibility because I didn't mention the lox (while another refused to even confirm that there ever even was lox).

On the other hand, my suspicions about why Eldridge dumped campaign manager Mike Reid were partially confirmed. Ever hear of a Beltway outfit called Global Strategy? They do expensive "internal polls" for Blue Dogs and New Dems that the DCCC backs. Their polls are generally kept away from the press or just released in bits and pieces to help whomever is paying for the poll. Bad results are buried. Reid got the blame from some especially bad results, I'm being told.

We mentioned yesterday that Eldridge raised and self-funded $2,448,887 so far. But as of the June 4 FEC filing deadline he only had $1,564,418 cash on hand. That's because he-- Reid-- had already spent $884,469. That's not an inordinate amount to introduce a well-heeled challenger in a contest against an incumbent. But many critics thought a great deal of the money was wasted on nonsense that did him no good. I'm told that the secret Global Strategy poll confirmed that and that for all that money spent-- $965,000 from his own checkbook-- "poor" Sean was losing miserably-- in the vicinity of just 25% of the vote to Gibson's 60%.

NY-19 has a PVI of D+1 and last year's DCCC candidate, Julian Schreibman, spent a total of $1,331,223 for the whole campaign (against Gibson's $2,153,689). On top of that, the DCCC put in $1,685,047 and their House Majority PAC put in another $352,665, mostly in negative ads about Gibson. The end result was a 53-47% victory for Gibson-- even as Obama beat Romney 52-46% on the same day. Schriebman lost 9 of the 11 counties:

• Broome- Gibson 70%
• Columbia- Gibson- 56%
• Delaware- Gibson- 61%
• Dutchess- Gibson- 54%
• Greene- Gibson- 64%
• Montgomery- Gibson- 68%
• Otsego- Gibson- 53%
• Rensselaer- Gibson- 63%
• Schoharie- Gibson- 67%
• Sullivan- Schreibman- 52%
• Ulster- Schreibman- 58%

There are 7 full counties in the district and parts of 4 other. Bolded are the full counties that were won by Obama. For Sean to win in November he needs to do better in these counties and he needs to discourage GOP participation in the counties where Gibson and Romney did best, especially Schoharie, Delaware, Sullivan and in the heavily Republican precincts in the other counties.

But Eldridge is playing right from a losing DCCC playbook, calling Gibson, the single least right-wing Republican in Congress-- less right-wing than a dozen Democrats, including New Dem-next-door Sean Patrick Maloney-- a Tea Party candidate and a conservative. Voters know better and aren't buying Steve Israel's failed, moronic messaging. What Gibson should be having done by a third party-- is informing core Republican voters in the reddest precincts that Gibson votes with the Democrats on key GOP values issues and that he's not worth voting for. If Eldridge ignored Steve Israel's proven failure of a strategy and failed, hackish strategists, he could actually turn this thing around and win. But that isn't what he's doing. He's following Israel's idiotic, cookie-cutter campaign-in-a-box precepts and… well, a 25% polling result speaks for itself.

As long as we're talking about polls, by the way, Lynn Vavreck had a fascinating piece in the NY Times this morning, Why Polls Can Sometimes Get Things So Wrong. "The science of polling is sound," she asserts, "but if you ask the wrong group of people your poll questions, you can get the wrong answers."

The pre-election poll that generated so much attention was done by McLaughlin & Associates just ahead of the Virginia primary. It showed Mr. Cantor ahead with 62 percent of the vote. Of course, Mr. Cantor did not win with 62 percent of the vote. He lost, winning only 44.5 percent. In a memo detailing the results of a postelection survey, McLaughlin & Associates explained that a different set of voters turned up at the polls than those they had expected.

This is an error in judgment, not a failure of polling as a science. Right after that election, some people said Mr. Cantor’s poll demonstrated that polls cannot predict elections. But that glosses over the important point that it is nearly impossible for a well-executed poll to produce an estimate as far off base as the one in Mr. Cantor’s race.

…It’s getting harder for pollsters to identify the right set of people from which to draw a sample as campaigns in low-turnout elections become better at mobilizing voters, many of whom pollsters hadn’t anticipated voting. It’s a bigger challenge in primaries and midterm elections as far fewer people participate in these contests relative to presidential races. Using lists of registered voters and their turnout histories may have been a way for pollsters to gain efficiency in identifying potential primary voters in the past, but that efficiency is now looking like a liability.

This morning, Beltway mouthpiece Politico succinctly laid out Gibson's winning strategy against Eldridge: "Eldridge, a 27-year-old Democrat, has been beset by perceptions that he is an inexperienced, wealthy, out-of-touch transplant in New York's 19th District, where he is taking on Republican incumbent Chris Gibson, a war veteran with four Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart." Polling isn't going to save Sean Eldridge's campaign any more than bagels and cream cheese (with or without lox) will. Ignoring Steve Israel, ignoring the foolish, incompetent operatives he sends around the country to make sure money is spent "properly," and ignoring his failed DCCC could. But Eldridge doesn't have the intestinal fortitude or the vision to do any such thing. So… who will be the Democratic candidate against Gibson in 2016 when Hillary is on the top of the ticket?