Oklahoma Senate race takes shape, as U.S. Rep. James Lankford gets in
Lankford, a Baptist pastor and rising star in the GOP leadership, is already drawing flack from conservative activists
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
OKLAHOMA CITY (CFP) — Oklahoma Republican U.S. Rep. James Lankford is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tom Coburn, getting into a race that’s shaping up as a battle between the GOP establishment and its Tea Party wing.
U.S. Rep. James Lankford
Lankford, 45, a Baptist pastor who was first elected to represent the state’s 5th District — based in and around Oklahoma City — in 2010, says he feels “a clear calling” to seek higher office.
“The Senate is currently the most contentious body in our government,” Lankford said in a YouTube video announcing his Senate bid. “I want to continue to bring Oklahoma common sense and solutions to a place that needs both.”
In just his second term in Congress, Lankford was elected as chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, the fifth highest position in the House leadership. He also has a coveted seat on the influential House Budget Committee, chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee.
However, that insider resume is already drawing fire from Senate Conservatives Fund, an activist group that has angered Senate GOP leaders by backing Tea Party insurgents trying to topple incumbents.
“We have reviewed his record, and it’s clear that conservatives cannot count on him to fight for their principles,” said Matt Hoskins, the group’s executive director, in a statement.
The group is critical of Lankford for his support of the recent bi-partisan budget deal, designed to avoid a government shutdown, as well as his votes to increase the federal debt limit. He’s also being criticized for a comment he made last summer that he “wouldn’t prohibit forever” illegal immigrants working their way to legal status.
The SCF is pushing instead for first-term U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine of Tulsa to run for Coburn’s seat. Bridenstine, a Tea Party favorite, made headlines last year after he voted against the re-election of Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
Bridenstine has said he is considering the race but has not announced a decision.
Two other Republicans mentioned as possible candidates for Coburn’s seat, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, have said they will not run.
Coburn, 65, who is battling prostate cancer, announced January 17 that he would leave office at the end of the year, triggering a special election for the remaining two years of his term.
View Lankford’s announcement statement:
U.S. Senator David Vitter running for Louisiana governor
Vitter says the governorship will be his last political job “period”
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
NEW ORLEANS (CFP) — Trying to swap the swamps of Washington for the bayous of Baton Rouge, Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter will seek the governorship of his home state of Louisiana in 2015.
U.S. Senator David Vitter
“I can have a bigger impact in addressing the unique challenges and opportunities we face in Louisiana, helping us truly reach our full potential,” Vitter said in YouTube video announcing his candidacy posted January 21.
Vitter, 52, who served five years in the U.S. House before being elected senator in 2004, also said the governorship “will be my last political job, elected or appointed, period.”
Because Louisiana holds its state elections in off years and his Senate term doesn’t end until 2016, Vitter can pursue the governorship in 2015 without giving up his seat. And if he is elected governor, he will be in the unique position of being able to appoint a successor for the rest of his Senate term.
He will face at least one fellow Republican in the governor’s race, Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne, 59, who issued a statement saying Vitter’s entry was “expected.”
“It is my hope that the governor’s race will offer Louisianians the opportunity to compare and contrast the records of all the candidates, as well as the merits of their ideas to keep our state growing,” Dardenne said.
In Louisiana, Vitter, Dardenne and all other candidates from any party run together in a single primary, with the top two vote getters vying in a runoff if no one gets a majority.
One Democrat has also announced, State Rep. John Bel Edwards, 47, from Roseland. There has also been speculation that another prominent and popular Democrat, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu might make the governor’s race if he wins re-election in February.
Landrieu is the brother of Vitter’s seatmate in the Senate, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, who is up for re-election in 2014.
One question in the 2015 governor’s race will be whether any of Vitter’s opponents dredge up a prostitution scandal that ensnared the senator in 2007.
After Vitter’s number turned up in a published list of phone records of a Washington madam, Debora Jeane Palfrey, he admitted to what he termed “serious sin,” although he did not directly admit to patronizing prostitutes. Vitter, a Roman Catholic, said he had been forgiven by God and his family.
In 2010, his Democratic opponent, former U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, attempted to make the prostitution scandal an issue, even airing TV ads about the allegations. But in the end, Vitter buried Melancon, capturing 57 percent of the vote.
A poll taken in November by Southern Media and Opinion research put Vitter’s approval rating in Louisiana at 58 percent, compared to 46 percent for Senator Landrieu and just 38 percent for President Obama.
Vitter’s approval rating was 42 percent among Democrats and 84 percent among Republicans.
Watch the video of Vitter’s announcement:
Texas governor hopeful Wendy Davis questioned over her campaign biography
Davis’s characterization of her up-from-the-bootstraps life story challenged by Dallas Morning News
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
DALLAS (CFP) — State Senator Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, is clarifying her characterizations of her life story, after the Dallas Morning News published a story calling some of the details into question.
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis
On the campaign trail, Davis has highlighted her past as a divorced teenage mother who lived in a trailer before working her way through Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School.
But in a January 18 story, the Dallas Morning News challenged some of the details of her biography:
- Davis divorced at 21, not 19 as she has previously said, and lived in a trailer for only a few months after the divorce with her daughter, Amber, before moving into an apartment.
- Three years later, she married for the second time, and her husband helped pay for the remainder of her education at TCU and law school at Harvard. Together, they had a second daughter, Dru.
- She left her second husband, Jeff Davis, the day after the last payment was made on her student loans at Harvard, according to Jeff Davis.
- When they divorced, Jeff Davis was granted custody of both daughters, and Wendy Davis was ordered to pay $1,200 in monthly child support.
After the story ran, Davis issued a statement clarifying some of the details of her life story. However, she defended overall impression left by her previous characterizations.
“The truth is that at age 19, I was a teenage mother living alone with my daughter in a trailer and struggling to keep us afloat on my way to a divorce,” she said. “And I knew then that I was going to have to work my way up and out of that life if I was going to give my daughter a better life and a better future, and that’s what I’ve done.”
“I am proud of where I came from and I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance.”
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott
Davis also accused her Republican opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, of instigating what she termed a political attack.
However, in a tweet, the author of the Dallas Morning News piece, Wayne Slater, denied that the Abbott campaign was behind the story.
“I talked to no — zero — Abbott people,” Slater said.
In her statement, Davis concedes that she was divorced at 21, not 19. However, she said she and her first husband separated when she was 19 and that she lived in a trailer with Amber until the divorce.
She also says that after she and Jeff Davis divorced, they shared custody of their daughters, although the younger daughter, Dru, lived with her ex-husband in their family home. The older daughter was already away at college.
She also says her ex-husband “helped her fulfill her dream of attending Harvard by cashing in a 401k and later they took out loans.”
“She and Jeff Davis have a healthy and respectful relationship based on their mutual love of their daughters,” the statement said.
Davis, 50, who represents a Fort Worth-area district in the Texas Senate, shot to fame last June when she led a more than 11-hour filibuster against an anti-abortion bill.
The bill would have prohibited bill abortions after 20 weeks, required abortion clinics to meet the same requirements as outpatient surgery centers and forced abortion doctors to get admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
Her filibuster ran out the clock on a special legislative session called by Governor Rick Perry. He promptly called another special session – which cost Texas taxpayers $800,000 – and the legislature passed the abortion restrictions, which are now being challenged in court.
Abbott, 56, a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court, is in his third term as attorney general. Given that no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994, he starts the race as the prohibitive favorite.
Abbott also holds a huge fundraising advantage. Through the end of 2013, he had raised more than $27 million dollars, compared to $4.6 million for Davis, according to reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission.
Perry, who has been governor since 2001, announced last summer that he would not seek re-election.
Kentucky U.S. Senator Rand Paul organizes class-action suit over NSA surveillance
Paul is taking names of potential plaintiffs on his Web site — names that could be the foundation of a 2016 White House bid
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is organizing a class-action lawsuit against the National Security Agency over its surveillance programs — a novel political gambit that could lay the groundwork for a 2016 White House bid.
Paul is soliciting potential plaintiffs for the suit on two political Web sites he operates — Rand Paul 2016 and RAND PAC. His stated goal is to get 10 million Americans to sign up for the class-action suit.
However, an unnamed senior Paul advisor told Politico that any names collected may also be added a database for Paul’s future political campaigns.
That would give him access to a ready pool of voters upset by NSA surveillance — voters who would be inclined to support Paul. He’s also asking them for donations.
Paul, 51, is in his first term in the Senate. He is up for re-election in Kentucky in 2016, but he is also being mentioned as a possible 2016 presidential candidate.
A champion of the GOP’s libertarian wing, Paul has been a harsh critic of NSA programs that sweep up phone records of millions of Americans for use in terrorism investigations.
Last week, President Barack Obama announced changes to the program to provide more judicial oversight — changes Paul insisted do not go far enough to protect Americans’ constitutional liberties.
In his solicitation for plaintiffs, Paul said he was “outraged” by the surveillance and “that’s why I’m going to do everything I can to stop this madness.”
“So please sign below and join my class-action lawsuit and help stop the government’s outrageous spying program on the American people,” Paul said.
“After you sign up, please make a generous donation to help rally up to ten million Americans to support my lawsuit to stop Big Brother from infringing on our Fourth Amendment freedoms.”
People who sign up will have their name, email address and ZIP code put in Paul’s political database. All of those fields are required.
A Paul adviser told Politico that more than 300,000 have signed on as possible plaintiffs.
If Paul does seek the White House in 2016, his presidential ambitions may be complicated by a Kentucky law that prohibits him from running simultaneously for Senate and president.
State Republicans currently aren’t in a position to change that law because Democrats control the state House.
The law would only apply if Paul was successful in getting the Republican nomination. If he ran in the presidential primaries and didn’t win, he would be free to run for re-election to the Senate, as his father, Ron Paul, did in his U.S. House seat in Texas after he sought the White House in 2008.
Paul’s camp maintains the Kentucky law is unconstitutional because of a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that a state can’t impose its own restrictions in races for federal offices.
Analysis: Results in Arkansas Senate election bode ill for Democrats in November
Victory by an anti-Obamacare Republican in a Democratic district may forecast trouble ahead for Mark Pryor and Mike Ross
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
JONESBORO, Arkansas (CFP) — The results of a special election to fill a vacancy in the Arkansas Senate are making Natural State Democrats mighty nervous.
Republican John Cooper easily defeated Democrat Steve Rockwell in a district in Jonesboro, in the northeastern part of the state.
Rockwell was a moderate businessman in the image of Governor Mike Beebe and former U.S. House Rep. Mike Ross, the Democratic candidate for governor this year.
He was also running in a what had been a Democratic district, in a part of the state that traditionally leans Democratic.
But Cooper, a retired AT&T manager, based his campaign on opposition to the state’s private-option expansion of Medicaid to cover uninsured Arkansans — an expansion made possible by the federal Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.
Rockwell supported the private option, which Beebe pushed through the legislature last year. While the propoal had substantial Republican support at the time, a strongly anti-Obamacare faction of the GOP was incensed and has been making their displeasure known ever since.
Cooper’s victory may imperil the private option, which will come before the legislature again this year. The first time around, it passed in the Senate with just two votes to spare, one of which was cast by the man Cooper is replacing, Paul Bookout.
But perhaps more ominously for Democrats, it indicates the potency of Obamacare as a issue Republicans can use in November.
Pryor, who voted for Obamacare, is being assailed for that vote at every turn by his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton.
Ross may also face the backlash in the governor’s race. He supported Obamacare on a key vote in a House committee, although, in the end, he voted against it on the floor. But he has come out in favor of the public option in Arkansas.
Of the three Republicans in the gubernatorial primary, two — Little Rock businessman Curtis Coleman and State Rep. Debra Hobbs of Rogers — have come out against the private option. Hobbs voted against it; Coleman’s campaign Web site features a petition calling for its repeal.
The Republican frontrunner, former U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, has not taken a clear position on the private option. However, he has been highly critical of Ross for his committe vote for the Obamacare bill.
Coleman and Hobbs have been trying to make hay out of Hutchinson’s lack of clarity on the private option. It remains to be seen if either one of them can ride it to victory in the primary.
But no matter who Republicans end up nominating, Obamacare is going to be the 800-pound gorilla in both the races for Senate and governor. And if the Jonesboro Senate race is a barometer of how it may play, that is not good news for Pryor or Ross.
Even more problematic may be the fact that the fight over the private option will dominate the upcoming legislative budget session, pitting Beebe and his Democratic allies in the legislature against a very noisy anti-Obamacare faction for weeks on end.
One potential silver lining for Ross and Pryor: If Republicans manage to torpedo the private option, as many as 250,000 Arkansans who will be thrown off the insurance rolls may get mad enough to fight back.
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