Free Republic

Arkansas now a Toss-up It’s become clear over the past few months that Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), despite the increasing Republican lean of his state, has been holding his own, or better, against Rep. Tom Cotton (R, AR-4). Several positive polls for the incumbent, including a too-optimistic 11-point lead from NBC/Marist earlier this week, moved the HuffPost Pollster average in the race to 45.2% Pryor, 42.7% Cotton. Democrats are defending seven Senate seats in states that Mitt Romney won in 2012. In three of these races — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — we perceive a clear Republican edge,...

Republicans need to win six Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber, and most scenarios for victory include the Southern seats up for grabs. A poll out today from the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that may be tougher than first thought. Mark Pryor, considered to be one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the midterms, has a ten-point lead over his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton: The survey underscores a favorable political environment over all for Republicans in Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas — states President Obama lost in 2012 and where...

While maybe not the political “gaffe of the year,” Sen. Mark Pryor’s (D-AR) remark that his Republican challenger's military service gives him a “sense of entitlement” is certainly up there. Hence why Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) -- who is indeed running to unseat Sen. Pryor -- is now actively campaigning off his opponent’s verbal missteps. If for no other reason, this spot is effective because (as Matt Lewis also notes) it reminds voters that Pryor actually said that. And that’s important to emphasize. I’ve never served in the armed services, of course, but I’m fairly certain one does not return...

Four straight polls of the Arkansas Senate race have found Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) leading challenger Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR). Although some of the polls are from Democratic-leaning groups and each of the polls find him with a razor-thin lead, the fact that a rough handful of surveys found Pryor in the lead is notable given that Pryor is considered one of the most endangered Democrats in the 2014 election cycle.

On paper, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) should be this cycle’s most endangered incumbent.But rumors of his political death might have been premature.Eight months from Election Day, the centrist Democrat is still neck and neck with or ahead of his GOP opponent in private and partisan polls. An independent poll this week showed Pryor up 3 points and a second on Thursday put him up 10 points, despite a sour national climate and $6 million in negative ads already spent against him.Armed with a top recruit in freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, Republicans thought this was the year they would finally take...

Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year. The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing the group aged 65 and over by 21 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and by 12 points in the 2012 presidential race. Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. A recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades; in 2013, 48 percent considered themselves Republican. That spells trouble for Democrats, who...

After NBC's "Meet The Press" host David Gregory ran an anti-ObamaCare ad targeting Sen. Mark Pryor from Arkansas featuring a couple with a southern accents questioning the confusing nature of the Affordable Care Act, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker objected to Americans for Prosperity using people with southern accents in political ads running in Arkansas: "I think you could find someone who doesn't have a southern accent who is confused by this act," Parker said. "We always seem to find the character who seems a little countrified, who can't just fathom this. You know there there are plenty of smart...

President Obama’s populist economic pitch is fizzling. The White House hoped to hammer Republicans this year on an array of pocketbook issues centered on hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, an effort meant to appeal to independents and rally Democrats to the polls. Three months in, Obama’s approval ratings are flailing in the low 40s, and Senate Democrats haven’t even been able to unify their 55 members on a minimum wage bill. That’s made it tougher to contrast the positions of Democrats with Republicans in an election year that is shaping up to be about the healthcare law...

PRYOR: In the senate we have all kinds of different people, all kinds of different folks who come from different backgrounds. And I think that's part of this sense of entitlement, that he gives off, that almost is like, I served my country, therefore let me into the senate. That's not the way it works in Arkansas.

When the UAW failed miserably in Chattanooga and was not able to unionize the Volkswagen plant, even with a staked deck, it started a chain reaction and the next domino has fallen. The news that the AFL-CIO has decided to keep its money and not even try to save three Southern Democrat Senators comes as no real shock. The powerful union reviewed the polls and the political climate in North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas and decided backing the Democrats in these states would be throwing good money after bad. The decision left Democrat Senators Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Mary Landrieu...

The familiar Washington narrative on the scrum for the U.S. Senate has been rinsed, recycled and delivered once again: Republicans are primed to pick up the six seats necessary to capture control of the upper chamber. The midterm atmosphere sure looks ripe, the polling appears favorable but, as it did in 2010 and 2012, the most competitive batch of races will likely come down to candidate quality. It’s the key component that stifled GOP chances before, and could very well again. .... .... A closer look at the most competitive contests demonstrates why a Senate majority in 2014 is again...

**SNIP** Midterm elections are often a reflection of the approval rating of the incumbent president and now President Obama stands at 42.8%. And elections in the 6th year of a PresidentÂ’s term are usually not good for the incumbentÂ’s party. To make things even worse for Democrats, the issues of a weak economy and Obamacare make November look bleak for Harry Reid and his Senate Democratic cohorts. â—¾Alaska, Mark Begich â—¾Arkansas, Mark Pryor â—¾Louisiana, Mary Landrieu â—¾Michigan, Open Seat (liberal Democrat Carl Levin retiring) â—¾Montana, John Walsh â—¾North Carolina, Kay Hagan â—¾South Dakota, being vacated by retiring Democrat Tim Johnson...

The Republican National Committee began running ads in 40 media markets Tuesday mostly targeting incumbent senators who supported President Barack Obama’s health care program. Billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, gave $2.5 million to help Democrats defend their majority in the Senate. The early action suggests Republicans see the president’s signature domestic achievement as their way to keep control of the House and perhaps win the Senate. With more than 300 days remaining before Election Day, both sides are looking to set the agenda before voters start paying attention. “Obamacare is going to be the issue in 2014,”...

President Obama endured a terrible 2013, raising GOP hopes of a Senate takeover in next year’s midterm elections that would turn him into an early lame duck. The GOP needs to win six seats in the upper chamber to take a 51-49 edge, something clearly obtainable with Democrats defending difficult seats in South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana and North Carolina. With the Senate and House in GOP hands, Obama would have little if any hope of moving his legislative agenda, and would be left to play defense against a GOP Congress in his final two years in...

Democrats and Republicans are amassing enormous war chests for a midterm battle that will decide who controls the Senate for the remainder of President Obama’s term. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to reclaim the Senate majority, and are gunning for Democratic incumbents in conservative-leaning states like Arkansas, Alaska, North Carolina, West Virginia and Louisiana. Democrats are mostly playing defense, but see a few opportunities to peel away seats from the GOP column. Here are the five Senate races to watch in 2014. KENTUCKY The reelection bid of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the marquee race...

Kellyanne Conway’s group did the polling. It’s not one of the news group polls, which use a Democratic and Republican pollster together. Can’t make Pryor feel good: Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor trails his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton, by seven points among likely voters in Arkansas, 48 percent to 41 percent, according to a new poll from a conservative group that says his support of the health care reform law is costing him.The survey, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was conducted Friday and Saturday for the Citizens United Political Victory Fund by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway of the polling company, Inc./WomanTrend....

I’m paraphrasing, natch, but there’s a reason why this ad is heavy on human imperfection and verrry light on party identification. Pryor’s rightly worried about how the Democratic agenda’s playing at home in Arkansas, and by “agenda” I don’t mean raising the minimum wage. Odds that a future ad will include the phrase “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”: 95 percent.Actually, O-Care’s only half his problem. The other half, Sean Trende argues, is that all signs over the past year point to an even steeper than expected drop-off for Democrats in 2014. Taken together, of the...

As Democrats on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly angry with the White House over problems with Obamacare — and increasingly uneasy about their individual fortunes heading into 2014 — Colorado Sen. Mark Udall Wednesday became the latest Democratic lawmaker to introduce legislation to change the beleaguered Affordable Care Act... With support building for a plan introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, that would allow people mislead by the president”s promise to keep their plans to actually do so indefinitely, Udall has come up with a scaled down version that would allow policyholders to keep their current plans, being cancelled under...

House Republicans are pouncing on President Obama’s apology for cancelled insurance plans to push him into backing legislation that would change ObamaCare. The president on Thursday said he was “sorry” that Americans were losing their healthcare plans despite his frequent assurances that individuals with insurance could keep them. Obama said he was seeking an administrative fix, but Republicans say they have a ready-made solution in the Keep Your Plan bill that they plan to bring up for a vote next week. A spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the president can’t address the problems plaguing the healthcare law through...

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (R) Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) Alaska Senator Mark Begich (D) Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran (R) Maine Senator Susan Collins (R) Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) Massachusetts Senator William "Mo" Cowan (D) Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D) Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (R) Minnesota Senator Al Franken (DFL) South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R) North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan (D) Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe (R) Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns (R) South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson (D) Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D) Kentucky...