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VA-05: Democrat Perriello in Peril, One More House Seat Poised for Republican Take-Away: In an election for US House of Representatives in Virginia's 5th Congressional District today, 07/20/10, Republican State Senator Robert Hurt defeats incumbent Democrat Tom Perriello 58% to 35%, according to this latest exclusive WDBJ-TV poll conducted by SurveyUSA. The seat is one of many Republicans hope to capture in November 2010. 39 "take-aways" are needed for Republicans to capture control of the US House of Representatives. Perriello, who defeated 6-term Republican Virgil Goode by 727 votes in 2008, today trails among most demographic groups. Among men, Hurt...

Facing GOP challengers, Dem fundraisers get spread thin Posted By Dan Hirschhorn On June 30, 2010 @ 3:00 pm Things seemed a lot simpler for Democrats last summer. The political climate had yet to turn violently against them. Viable Republicans had yet to come forward to challenge a host of potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Money wasn’t needed everywhere, so there was plenty to go around. Fast forward a year. Kathy Dahlkemper has an opponent. So do Chris Carney and Tim Holden. Paul Kanjorski faces the same guy he’s had to knock off twice. Even Patrick Murphy, Democratic poster-child of the...

For House Democrats: More Favorable Terrain Than ‘94 Rhodes Cook, Senior Columnist June 24th, 2010 Editor’s Note: Following last week’s article by Prof. Alan Abramowitz comparing 1994 and 2010 on the basis of open seat races, noted political author and Wall Street Journal online columnist Rhodes Cook delves into the differences between the “political terrain” of 1994 and that facing Democrats today. His smart commentary and scholarly analysis serves as a call to look beneath the surface and he offers a much-needed glimpse at the partisan and regional factors which will make or break this year for both political parties....

GOP Faces Possible NY 23 Repeat June 21, 2010 3:09 PM By Reid Wilson GOPers stung by a divisive intra-party battle last fall face the prospect of a split party, once again, in the race for an upstate NY House seat that should favor the minority. Last Nov., Rep. Bill Owens (D) won Army Sec. John McHugh's seat with just 48.3% of the vote. Still, it was enough to win after Assemb. Dede Scozzafava (R) and accountant Doug Hoffman, running on the Conservative Party line, split the GOP vote. After Hoffman attacked Scozzafava's moderate -- GOPers backing Hoffman labeled her...

GOP Poll Shows Rodriguez In Trouble June 17, 2010 11:26 AM By Reid Wilson Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX) faces a tough re-election bid against an Hispanic GOPer the party is excited about, according to a new survey for attorney Quico Canseco's (R) campaign. Rodriguez leads Canseco by a narrow 48%-45% margin, according to the survey, and the Dem doesn't have a lot of backup. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pres. Obama both have overwhelmingly negative images, and GOPers lead the generic ballot test by 5 points. Canseco is little-known, and he doesn't have a huge amount of cash to spend...

6.15.2010 NPR Survey of Swing Seats is Consistent with Generic Ballot Polling by Nate Silver @ 8:30 AM A new poll from Public Opinion Strategies and GQR for NPR, which shows Democrats performing badly in vulnerable House seats, is making a lot of waves this morning. It certainly contains bad news for Democrats -- however -- it is the same bad news that was already implied by generic ballot polling. The poll shows Democrats losing by an average of eight points -- 41 to 49 -- on average between the 70 districts that POS/GQR surveyed. However, ten of these districts...

The latest on South Dakota from Rasmussen: The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey, conducted two nights after the primary, finds Noem attracting 53% of the vote, while Herseth-Sandlin earns just 41%. Just five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate or are undecided. Prior to the primary, the incumbent held a three-point advantage over Noem. In April, Noem trailed by 15 points. It remains to be seen whether the bounce reflects a temporary aberration or signals a lasting change in the race. Incumbents who poll below 50% are considered potentially vulnerable, and Herseth-Sandlin has been below that mark all year....

Former Congressman Goode will endorse Republican nominee By BRIAN MCNEILL Published: June 9, 2010 Former GOP congressman Virgil H. Goode Jr. says he will endorse Republican nominee Robert Hurt in the race against U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy. Goode, a lawyer from Rocky Mount who represented the 5th District in Congress for six terms, lost his seat to Perriello in 2008 by a margin of only 727 votes. “Yes, I plan to support the nominee,” Goode said today. “I think he has a very good chance of beating Tom Perriello.” Hurt, a state lawmaker from Chatham, beat out six other...

New poll shows Labrador leading Minnick By Dustin Hurst June 9th, 2010 A new month brings new polling figures in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, and thing are looking up for Republican nominee Raul Labrador. Idaho’s only local political polling agency, Greg Smith and Associates, released its latest poll, taken Monday and Tuesday of this week, which found that Labrador is leading Democratic incumbent Walt Minnick by 12 percentage points, though about 30 percent of respondents remain undecided as to who they will support in November. The poll, released Wednesday, was taken among 400 people in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, which...

For much of the evening Tuesday, any one of four candidates were in line to win the Republican nomination for the 199th Legislative District seat. North Middleton Township resident and local attorney Stephen Bloom appears to have emerged victorious in the seven-way Republican primary to earn the nomination. As of Wednesday morning, all absentee ballots have been included in the results. Bloom won the 199th race by 284 votes, unofficially, with 2,163 votes. Denny Lebo had 1,879. The county board of elections will meet at 9 a.m. May 25 to certify ballot results. They will then be sent to the...

New House Ratings Ride a Republican Tide By Bob Benenson, CQ-Roll Call Senior Elections Analyst For the Democrats who control Congress, the outlook for this year’s midterm elections is the evil twin of the one they enjoyed in each of the past two election cycles — as CQ Politics’ latest race rating revisions underscore. In 2006 and 2008, Democrats surged in response to the collapse of President George W. Bush ’s popularity, and Republicans had to walk away from many efforts to challenge for what could have been vulnerable Democratic seats. This year, the voter backlash is against President Barack...

Kos poll: Burns by six By: Josh Kraushaar April 30, 2010 12:59 PM EDT Weighed down in his district by low presidential favorability ratings and a health care law that's unpopular there, Pennsylvania Democrat Mark Critz now trails by six points in next month's special election for the seat of the late Rep. John Murtha, according to a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll released Friday. Critz, who served on Murtha's staff before the congressman's death, takes 40 percent of the vote in the poll compared with 46 percent for Republican businessman Tim Burns. The poll shows President Barack Obama's favorability number...

Many of the defense contractors that benefited from the late Rep. John Murtha's power to dole out Pentagon contracts are lining up to help elect his top aide to the seat. Defense contractors, local business officers and lobbyists that relied on earmarked federal contracts from Murtha (D-Pa.) recently chipped in $142,400 to elect Mark Critz, an analysis by The Washington Post shows. Those donations made up more than 52 percent of the individual contributions that Critz raised in the first-quarter of 2010 as he seeks to replace his late boss, new campaign records reveal. Critz is a friendly face to...

Sunday, April 25, 2010 Rating change: GOP projected to win Murtha's seat With the Pennsylvania preview comes one more projected GOP takeover. On May 18th, a special election will be held to fill the seat vacated by John Murtha's unexpected passing. The pundits call it a toss-up, but polls give Republican Tim Burns an slight edge over Democrat Mark Critz. As a result, the race moves to a Weak GOP Gain. I'm looking forward to seeing if the momentum displayed in Massachusetts in January will still be going strong in May in southwestern Pennsylvania. This change brings the projected House...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Republican leaders urged party loyalists on Saturday to concentrate on winning seats in November congressional elections and worry later about who to pick to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012. "Don't get distracted by 2012," Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told the Southern Republican Conference, a four-day pep rally that is hearing from several potential 2012 candidates, Barbour included. "The election we've got to be focused on is 2010. We can't wait until 2012 to start taking our country back," he said. Republicans are energized in opposition to Obama's agenda and harbor hopes of wresting the U.S....

Glenn Nye, D-VA has announced a no vote on the health care bill. Was he an expected no? According to Lopez late last night, Stupak appeared to be holding firm.

Skelton to Introduce Legislation to Protect TRICARE Washington, D.C.—Today, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) released the statement below regarding his intent to introduce legislation to explicitly state in law that TRICARE and the DOD nonappropriated fund (NAF) health plans meet all of the health care requirements currently under consideration by Congress for individual health insurance. These programs provide health coverage to members of the military and their families, military retirees and their families, and employees of U.S. military post/base exchanges and other nonappropriated fund activities. “Our nation’s military provides us with first-class protection, and it is our...

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100319/NEWS/100319064

"Without the votes to pass the Senate version of the ObamaCare Nightmare, you have to wonder why House Democrats are so giddy. All smiles, they promise to pass ObamaCare this week. One has to wonder if Nancy Pelosi and her pals are going to bypass going Nuclear and instead use the "Slaughter" Cheat to pass Socialist Health Care... ...The Slaughter Cheat involves the House first passing the bill to "fix" the Senate bill they never approved, and then changing the rules for a moment and declaring that the approval of the "fix" bill means that they have automatically passed the...

Democracy by Slaughter [Daniel Foster] The sense around here for the last week or so has been that "only the House vote matters" in deciding the fate of Obamacare. But what if the Democrats can pass the bill with no House vote at all? Astoundingly, House Democrats appear to be preparing to do just that: House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday. Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once...